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Publication Details

Stewart Cohen and the Contextualist Theory of Justification

(Original title: Stewart Cohen and the Contextualist Theory of Justification)
Filozofia, 66 (2011), 4, 347-352.
Type of work: Papers
Publication language: English
Abstract

Epistemic contextualism is a thesis about truth conditions of knowledge ascribed to sentences such as “S knows that p” and “S does not know that p”. According to contextualists it is the speaker’s context – the one attributing knowledge – that is pertinent to the truth conditions and truth value of knowledge attributions. Thus, in one context a speaker might say “S knows p” while in another context another he/she might say “S does not know p” without any contradiction involved. Cohen’s version of contextualism takes justification, rather than knowledge, to come in degrees. I shall argue that Cohen’s contextualist theory of justification suffers from several major problems.

Keywords

Epistemic Contextualism, Justification, Non-evidential rationality

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