Contextualism and radical scepticism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10811637 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Duncan Pritchard (0000-0002-5997-0752, University of Edinburgh, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 195 |
| Issue | 11 |
| Pages | 4733-4750 |
| Publication date | 2018-11-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Synthese (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0039-7857 • E-ISSN: 1573-0964 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11229-016-1122-0 |
| OpenAlex | W2380196046 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 23 |
A critique of attributer contextualist treatments of the problem of radical scepticism is offered. It is argued that while such proposals, standardly conceived, gain some purchase against the closure-based formulation of this problem, they run aground when applied to the logically distinct underdetermination-based formulation. A specific kind of attributer contextualism—rational support contextualism—is then explored. This is better placed to deal with underdetermination-based radical scepticism via its endorsement of ascriptions of factive rational support in everyday contexts of epistemic appraisal. But such a proposal is faced with a dialectical impasse with regard to the competing epistemological disjunctivist response to radical scepticism. While the former has dialectical advantages over the latter with regard to closure-based radical scepticism, the latter has the dialectical upper-hand when it comes to underdetermination-based radical scepticism. It is claimed that the way to resolve this issue—and thereby to understand that we should not expect a unified treatment of these two formulations of the sceptical problem, much less one that is cast along contextualist lines—is to recognise how these two formulations reflect distinct sources of scepticism
Contextualism · Dialectic · Epistemology · Linguistics · Metaphysics · Philosophy of language · Philosophy of science · Skepticism · Underdetermination · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Free Will and Agency · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science
Epistemic Angst
Epistemological Disjunctivism
Knowledge and Practical Interests
Cartesian Skepticism and Inference to the Best Explanation
Epistemic Operators
Justification and truth
Elusive knowledge
Justification, truth, and coherence
Wittgenstein and the groundlessness of our believing
Solving the Skeptical Problem
Contextualism and the Problem of the External World
Knowledge and the Internal
Reply to Hawthorne
Epistemic Angst
Philosophical Explanations
The Structure of Sceptical Arguments
| Highly cited | No |
|---|