According to a popular objection against epistemic contextualism, contextualists who endorse the factivity of knowledge, the principle of epistemic closure and the knowledge norm of assertion cannot coherently defend their theory without abandoning their response to skepticism. After examining and criticizing three responses to this objection, we offer our own solution. First, we question the assumption that contextualists ought to be interpreted as asserting the content of their theory. Second, we argue that contextualists need not hold that high epistemic standards (...) govern contexts in which they defend their theory. (shrink)

It has been frequently suggested that epistemic contextualists violate the knowledge norm of assertion; by its own lights contextualism cannot be known and hence not be knowingly stated. I have defended contextualists against this objection by showing that it rests on a misunderstanding of their commitments. In M. Montminy's and W. Skolits' recent contribution to this journal, their criticism of my solution forms the background against which the authors develop their own. The present reply ventures to demonstrate that their objections (...) are ineffective, since they rest on a confusion of two different ways in which contextualism is unknowable. The precise nature of the original problem will be clarified and my solution briefly restated. (shrink)

The article responds to the objections M.D. Ashfield has raised to my recent attempt at saving epistemic contextualism from the knowability problem. First, it shows that Ashfield’s criticisms of my minimal conception of epistemic contextualism, even if correct, cannot reinstate the knowability problem. Second, it argues that these criticisms are based on a misunderstanding of the commitments of my minimal conception. I conclude that there is still no reason to maintain that epistemic contextualism has the knowability problem.

It has been argued that epistemic contextualism faces the so-called factivity problem and hence cannot be stated properly. The basic idea behind this charge is that contextualists supposedly have to say, on the one hand, that knowledge ascribing sentences like “S knows that S has hands” are true when used in ordinary contexts while, on the other hand, they are not true by the standard of their own context. In my paper, I want to show that the argument to the (...) factivity problem fails because it rests on the mistaken premise that contextualists are committed to the truth of particular ordinary knowledge attributions. (shrink)