Error possibility, contextualism, and bias

Practical Reason and the Possibility of Error

Survey Participation, Nonresponse Bias, Measurement Error Bias, and Total Bias

A common hypothesis about practices to reduce survey nonresponse is that those persons brought into the respondent pool through persuasive efforts may provide data filled with measurement error. Two questions flow from this hypothesis. First, does the mean square error of a statistic increase when sample persons who are less likely to be contacted or cooperate are incorporated into the responde...

Skepticism, Contextualism, and Discrimination”

The skeptic says that “knowledge” is an absolute term, whereas the contextualist says that ‘knowledge” is a relationally absolute term. Which is the better hypothesis about “knowledge”? And what implications do these hypotheses about “knowledge” have for knowledge? I argue that the skeptic has the better hypothesis about “knowledge”, but that both hypotheses about “knowledge” have deeply anti-s...

Metaethical Contextualism

An important function of language is to create and develop interpersonal relationships in communication. In inquiry we share and coordinate our beliefs about how the world is. But we also take a stance and socially orient ourselves toward possible acts, attitudes, and states of affairs. We evaluate possibilities as desirable, appropriate, horrible, trivial, permissible, wonderful. We make deman...

Nonindexical contextualism

Philosophers on all sides of the contextualism debates have had an overly narrow conception of what semantic context sensitivity could be. They have conflated context sensitivity (dependence of truth or extension on features of context) with indexicality (dependence of content on features of context). As a result of this conflation, proponents of contextualism have taken arguments that establis...