The role of context in contextualism

Epistemic contextualism holds that the truth conditions of knowledge attributions vary from one context of utterance to another. On this view, different utterances of the same knowledge sentence of the form " S knows that P " convey different propositions in different contexts. What proposition an utterance of " S knows that P " conveys depends on the epistemic standards in place in the context of utterance. In " ordinary, " or " low-standards, " contexts, the truth of an utterance of " S knows that P " requires, in addition to S " s having a true belief that P, that S satisfy relatively low epistemic standards, whereas in " high-standards, " or " skeptical, " contexts, an utterance of the same knowledge sentence will be false unless S satisfies higher epistemic standards. 1 But how are epistemic standards fixed? Different contextualists have given different answers to these questions, but there is general agreement that the content of a knowledge claim depend on what we may call features of the broad context, that is, the presuppositions, interests, purposes, etc., of the participants in the conversation, as well as the conversational maneuvers performed by these participants. 2 Call this the broad context view: according to this view, features of the broad context contribute to determining what proposition a knowledge claim made in that context conveys. The broad context view is, I will argue, seriously misguided. I will propose an alternative account of how the content of a knowledge attribution is determined, and show how it avoids the problems that affect the broad context view. According to this alternative, which I will call the intentionalist view, the epistemic standards conveyed by a knowledge claim are determined by the communicative intention of the speaker. I will argue that intentionalism has several advantages over the broad context view. This paper concerns an internal debate among proponents of contextualism. I will thus not put forward any new argument in favor of contextualism in general. However, I hope 2 that by defending what I take to be a more plausible form of contextualism, I will make this view appear more palatable and less objectionable to non-contextualists. Before I explain why the broad context view is mistaken, a few remarks are in order. In this paper, I will remain neutral about what epistemic standards consist in. Jonathan Schaffer (2005b) considers three possible answers to the question …