Knowledge Attributions and Objective Contexts
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University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK
2008
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ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-ucin12114072252021-08-03T06:12:38Z Knowledge Attributions and Objective Contexts MION, GIOVANNI Philosophy <p>The goal of my dissertation is to defend the idea that knowledge is context relative, but, in contrast to current versions of epistemic contextualism, on my view, knowledge is relative to contexts that are objective in the sense that participants to a conversation might be unaware of the content of the context that truly governs their conversation.</p><p>The dissertation starts with an analysis of current versions of epistemic contextualism. Epistemic contextualism comes in different forms: contextualists invoke different context shifting mechanisms and have different linguistic models. Nevertheless, all contextualists share the same subjective conception of what contexts are. In other words, contextualists like Stewart Cohen, Keith DeRose and David Lewis implicitly assume that the content of a sentence of the form "S knows that p" is determined by the intentions and beliefs of the individual speaker or by the intentions and beliefs of all the participants to the conversation. In either case, contextualists implicitly assume a subjective conception of context.</p><p>In contrast, following Christopher Gauker's conception of what a context is, in my dissertation, I defend a different form of epistemic contextualism. On my view also, knowledge is context relative, but it is not relative to the speaker's mental states; rather, it is relative to the speakers' conversational goals and the physical/social/cultural environment in which the conversation takes place. On this account, even if goals turn out to be psychological entities (for example, desires we are willing to act upon), once the goals of a conversation are established, the best way to achieve them depends upon the way the world really is. In this sense, I contend, contexts are objective entities.</p><p>So, I am also a contextualist about knowledge. But, on my view, from the fact that knowledge ascriptions are context relative, it does not follow that they are also intention-based. On the contrary, my basic claim is that we get a better understanding of the way in which knowledge is attributed if we assume that knowledge attributions are context relative, but that they are not intention-based.</p> 2008-08-25 English text University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1211407225 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1211407225 unrestricted This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws. |
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NDLTD |
| language |
English |
| sources |
NDLTD |
| topic |
Philosophy |
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Philosophy MION, GIOVANNI Knowledge Attributions and Objective Contexts |
| author |
MION, GIOVANNI |
| author_facet |
MION, GIOVANNI |
| author_sort |
MION, GIOVANNI |
| title |
Knowledge Attributions and Objective Contexts |
| title_short |
Knowledge Attributions and Objective Contexts |
| title_full |
Knowledge Attributions and Objective Contexts |
| title_fullStr |
Knowledge Attributions and Objective Contexts |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Knowledge Attributions and Objective Contexts |
| title_sort |
knowledge attributions and objective contexts |
| publisher |
University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK |
| publishDate |
2008 |
| url |
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1211407225 |
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