Normative scorekeeping

Epistemic contextualists think that the truth-conditions of ‘knowledge’ ascriptions depend in part on the context in which they are uttered. But what features of context play a role in determining truth-conditions? The idea that the making salient of error-possibilities is a central part of the story has often been attributed to contextualists, and a number of contextualists seem to endorse it (see Cohen 1999, 61; Hawthorne 2004, 63-6). In this paper I’m going to argue that the focus on salience relations is a mistake. On the view that I defend in this paper, the relevant features of context are facts about what error-possibilities and alternatives those in the context have a reason to consider, not facts about what error-possibilities and alternatives those in the context actually consider. As I’ll argue, this view has certain advantages over the standard view.