Comments on Michael Williams' Contextualism, Externalism and Epistemic Standards

TIMOTHY WILLIAMSON

COMMENTS ON MICHAEL WILLIAMS’CONTEXTUALISM, EXTERNALISM AND

EPISTEMIC STANDARDS

Michael Williams’ paper ‘Contextualism, Externalism and Epis-temic Standards’ is a searching critique of a kind of epistemo-logy that he calls ‘simple conversational contextualism’, or ‘SCC’for short. He characterizes SCC as a view that encompasses fiveclaims:

(i) Our practices of epistemic evaluation embody mechanismsthatraise and lowerthe standards for attributing knowledge.

(ii) This raising and lowering of standards consists in the expan-sion and contraction of the range of error-possibilities inplay.

(iii) Standards are raised and lowered primarily by changes in theconventionalcontext, in particular by what claim has beenmade and/or by what error-possibilities (‘defeaters’) havebeen brought up or are being attended to.

(iv) Philosophical reflection, or ‘doing epistemology’, createsa context where, because there is no limit on the error-possibilities that may be brought into play, epistemic stand-ards rise to the maximal level, where they turn out to beunsatisfiable.

(v) Although doing epistemology raises standards so as to makesceptical conclusions true, this does not invalidate everydayknowledge-attributions, which are true at everyday standards.

According to Williams, SCC adequately explains neither the deeppower of sceptical arguments nor their supposed ultimate failure.Although he concentrates on David Lewis’s version of SCC (1996),he claims that his main objections generalize to other versions ofSCC, such as that developed by Keith DeRose (1995).

Philosophical Studies103: 25–33, 2001.© 2001Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

26 TIMOTHY WILLIAMSON

1.

Before we assess Williams’s critique of Lewis, we should note animmediate problem with thesis (v) of SCC. According to (v), anutterance of a sentence of the form ‘S knows that P’ in the contextof everyday life expresses a true proposition, but an utterance ofthe very same sentence type in the context of doing epistemologyexpresses a different and false proposition. Now however everydaythe context, ‘know’ is factive:pS knows that Pq entailspPq. As alegitimate oversimplification, we may assume thatpPq is a sentencelike ‘The next train leaves at 2 p.m.’, which does not itself containepistemic vocabulary and which expresses the same propositionin the different contexts at issue (of course what proposition itexpresses will in fact vary with context, but not through the raisingand lowering of epistemic standards). Thus SCCists are committedto holding that the non-epistemic propositions ‘knowledge’ of whichwe attribute to each other in everyday contexts are true. SCCistsalso hold that we do not ‘know’ those propositions by the stand-ards that govern the term ‘know’ in epistemological contexts. ButSCCists, when engaged in expounding SCC,are in an epistem-ological context, so they should assent to the claim ‘We do notknow those propositions’. Thus an SCCist is committed to the asser-tion ‘Everyday propositions are true and I don’t know it’, and tocorresponding assertions about particular everyday propositions, forinstance ‘The next train leaves at 2 p.m. and I don’t know that thenext train leaves at 2 p.m.’. But those assertions exemplify Moore’sparadox for ‘know’. An SCCist is therefore committed to Moore-paradoxical assertions. It does not follow that SCC is false, forMoore-paradoxical assertions can be true. Nevertheless, we shouldnot make Moore-paradoxical assertions (see Williamson 1996a and2000a for one explanation of why not). Consequently, the SCCist’sentitlement to assert SCC is undermined.

Of course, a more accurate statement of SCC would say thateveryday ‘knowledge’ attributions areoftentrue, rather thanalwaystrue. However, that correction does not meet the underlying diffi-culty. For if everyday ‘knowledge’ attributions are often true, thenmany everyday non-epistemic beliefs are true. But the SCCist thinksthat ‘I do not know that many everyday non-epistemic beliefsare true’ expresses a truth in epistemological contexts, given the

COMMENTS ON CONTEXTUALISM, EXTERNALISM AND EPISTEMIC STANDARDS 27

extreme sceptical possibilities then in play. In those contexts, theSCCist still seems to be committed to the Moore-paradoxical asser-tion ‘Many everybody non-epistemic beliefs are true and I don’tknow that many everyday non-epistemic beliefs are true’.

In response to related difficulties, Lewis (1996) distinguishesbetween contexts in which we use epistemological language andcontexts in which we mention it to discuss its semantics and prag-matics (Stewart Cohen made a similar proposal in discussion). Butwhen we do SCC-style epistemology, we are in a context in whichwe are doing both things simultaneously. Perhaps SCCists shouldretreat a little, and when operating epistemologically claim only thatin some possible situationsmany everyday ‘knowledge’ attributionsare true, without claiming to be in such a situation themselves.That preserves much of the spirit of SCC. It would not concedeeverythingto the sceptic, for the sceptic typically argues that wedo not know because wecannotknow. According to such a sceptic,the sentence ‘I know that the next train leaves at 2 p.m.’ expresses anecessary falsehood as uttered in an everyday context. The SCCistdisagrees, holding that in that context the sentence expresses atworst a contingent falsehood, at best a contingent truth. Neverthe-less, the SCCist’s admission in the epistemological context ‘I don’tknow that categorical knowledge claims made in actual everydaycontexts are true’ would constitute a major concession to scepticism.It might also go some way towards meeting Williams’ charge thatSCC cannot take scepticism seriously enough.

2.

I turn to Williams’ case against Lewis. On a regimented version ofLewis’s account,pS knows that Pq as uttered in a context C is truewith respect to a possible situation6 if and only if pPq as uttered inC is true with respect to every possible situation not properly ignoredin C in which S has exactly the same perceptual experience andmemory (narrowly construed) as in6. Lewis lists rules of properignoring.

Much of the variation in epistemic standards between everydayand epistemological contexts is achieved by the Rule of Atten-tion, according to which no possibility attended to in C is properly


ignored in C. But Williams makes his main attack on the combina-tion of the Rule of Actuality and the Rule of Resemblance. The Ruleof Actuality says that6, the possibility the knowledge attribution isabout (better, in Kaplan’s terminology, the circumstance of evalu-ation), is not properly ignored in C. This rule is needed to guaranteethe factiveness of ‘know’:pS knows that Pq as uttered in C is truewith respect to6 only if pPq as uttered in C is true with respect to6.For simplicity, Lewis treats the possibility6 the knowledge attribu-tion is about as actuality, although something more general is neededto understand attributions of counterfactual knowledge correctly. Iwill follow Lewis’s simplification. The Rule of Resemblance saysthat if a possibility6 is not properly ignored in C (in virtue ofrules other than this one) and a possibility6∗ saliently resembles6 then6∗ is not properly ignored in C. Lewis notes a problem forthe combination of Actuality and Resemblance. For some extremesceptical scenario will exactly resemble actuality in the apparentlysalient respect of the subject’s perceptual experience and memory.Since actuality is not properly ignored by the Rule of Actuality, theextreme sceptical scenario is also (it seems) not properly ignoredby the Rule of Resemblance, no matter what the context of utter-ance. Since that result would falsify even ‘knowledge’ attributionsmade in everyday contexts, Lewis treats resemblance in respect ofperceptual experience and memory as anad hocexception to therule. Not surprisingly, Williams regards the need for this move asleaving us with an unsatisfying response to scepticism. To his ownregret, Lewis motivates thead hocmoveonly by the desirability ofavoiding blanket scepticism.

Dissatisfaction withad hocmoves is a sound intellectual instinct.But we need to go deeper. We might consider the possibility thatthe word ‘knowledge’ simply does express anad hocconcept. I donot myself believe that; indeed, I believe the opposite (Williamson2000a). Nevertheless, we can surely entertain a concept that, by stip-ulation, works just as Lewis says the concept expressed by ‘know-ledge’ works,ad hocexceptions and all. Call itLewis-knowledge.We do not assume thatpS Lewis-knows that Pq is either necessary orsufficient forpS knows that Pq. Now Williams defines ‘radical scep-ticism’ as a scepticism that ‘challenge[s] our capacity for makingany well-founded distinctions with respect to epistemic status’.


Since he contrasts radical scepticism with knowledge-specific scep-ticism, ‘epistemic status’ here must mean something much widerthan just ‘knowing or not knowing’. So it seems reasonable to treatthe distinction between Lewis-knowing and not Lewis-knowing asitself a difference with respect to epistemic status. I will provision-ally assume that it counts as ‘well-founded’, although I am not surewhat Williams means by the phrase. Thead hocdefinition of Lewis-knowing may not make it the most interesting of such distinctions,but it still seems enough to defeat radical scepticism as Williamsdefines it, since some but not all ‘Lewis-knowledge’-attributionsmade in everyday contexts are true. William can hardly argue that itis a matter of total cognitive indifference whether we Lewis-know,for by the Rule of Actuality Lewis-knowledge is just as factiveas knowledge, and a truth-entailing status is presumably of somecognitive interest. Thus thead hocnature of Lewis’s account wouldnot prevent it from indirectly defeating radical scepticism.

Williams might reply as follows. Lewis-knowing is a good statusto attain, just as believing truly is a good status to attain. But unlessthat status is in some senseavailableto us, its interest for us is purelynotional. Scepticism is radical enough if it challenges our capacityfor making any first-personally available distinctions with respect toepistemic status, for they are the only ones that we can do somethingwith. Such a reply follows familiar internalist lines. There are signsin the paper that might suggest that Williams is indeed sympatheticto its gist. He dismisses the suggestion that one might say ‘I mayhave knowledge, though I don’t know whether I do’ on the groundsthat to say that ‘would be to let go of the idea of epistemic responsi-bility [ . . .] altogether’. Since the envisaged remark is equivalent to‘Maybe I know without knowing that I know’, it sounds as thoughWilliams is appealing to some kind of internalism. Probably that isnot his intention, but then I am not sure what his argument is.

One complication is that the structure of Lewis’s definition of‘knowledge’ seems to validate the very strong logic S5 for theconcept expressed, as Lloyd Humberstone has pointed out (inconversation). In effect, Lewis defines ‘knowledge’ as a modalnotion across relevant possible worlds centred on the subject, a kindof epistemic necessity, for which a world6∗ is accessible in thesense of the possible worlds semantics from a world6 if and only if


6∗ is uneliminated by the subject’s evidence in6, that is, if and onlyif ‘the subject’s perceptual experience and memory in [6∗] exactlymatch his perceptual experience and memory in [6]’. But exactmatching in perceptual experience and memory is an equivalencerelation; it is reflexive, symmetric and transitive over the worlds inquestion. It is an elementary result of possible worlds semantics thatif accessibility is an equivalence relation, then all the theorems ofS5 are validated. Those theorems include2p ⊃ 22p and∼2p ⊃2∼2p. Thus Lewis appears to be committed to the very strong prin-ciples that if one knows something then one knows that one knowsit and that if one does not know something then one knows thatone does not know it. Consequently, even if Lewis is wrong about‘knowledge’ in the ordinary sense, Lewis-knowledge is transparenton its own terms: if one Lewis-knows something then one Lewis-knows that one Lewis-knows it and if one does not Lewis-knowsomething then one Lewis-knows that one does not Lewis-know it.Of course, it does not follow that Lewis-knowledge is transparentonour terms. That is, it does not follow that, even if Lewis is wrongabout ‘knowledge’ in the ordinary sense, if one Lewis-knows some-thing then one knows that one Lewis-knows it and that if one doesnot Lewis-know something then one knows that one does not Lewis-know it. If Lewis’s definition does indeed validate an S5 logic, thenit defines a notion very different from that ordinarily expressed by‘know’. For if my diary is at home while I falsely believe that Iknow that it is in the office, then I do not know that it is in the office(because it isn’t), but I do not know that I do not know that it is inthe office (because I believe that I do know).

Obviously there are large issues, here, to which I can onlygesture. If the availability of a status implies that one isalwaysin a position to know whether one attains that status, then it isarguable thatno non-trivial status of any kind is available (Willi-amson, 1996b, 2000a). Perfectionist high-standards internalism isas misguided as perfectionist high-standards anti-scepticism. If theavailability of a status implies only that, except in cognitivelyunfavourable circumstances, one isusually in a position to knowwhether one attains that status, then Williams has not shown thatLewis-knowing is not an available status.


Williams claims that his critique of Lewis generalizes to SCCas such. He says that ‘no version of contextualism that limits itsconception of context-shifting to conversational considerations willbe able to handle’ the similarity between our presumed actual situ-ation and various sceptical alternatives, because ‘this similarity is aninvariant feature of our epistemic position’. I find it hard to followthe argument here. SCC as such is not committed to a Rule ofResemblance. Other SCCists, such as DeRose, may deny that anysuch rule governs conversational relevance.

3.

According to Williams, the second limitation of SCC is that itconfuses two dimensions on which possibilities may be close orremote:

The idea of “remoteness” involved in the high-standards scepticism associatedwith the Rule of Attention is the commonsense idea offactualremoteness: scep-tical possibilities represent worlds in which most of what we ordinarily believe isfalse. But according to the sceptic, while such worlds are factually remote (thatis the point) they are epistemically close. So recognising this is not a matter ofimposing higher than normal standards. It is just a matter of recognising the fixwe are always in.

This passage mischaracterizes factual remoteness. For if, by somemischance, our actualityis an extreme sceptical possibility, then thatpossibility is not factually remote; but it is still (pacePutnam) onein which most of what we ordinarily believe is false.

The quoted passage is also too kind to sceptics by allowing themto conceive of epistemic accessibility as a kind of closeness. Forcloseness is presumably a symmetric relation; ifx is close toy thenyis close tox. If epistemic accessibility is symmetric, then the scepticwins (Williams, 1978, pp. 309–313; Williamson, 1995, pp. 536–537, 2000a,b). For everyday actuality is epistemically accessiblefrom a corresponding sceptical scenario, in the sense that (by anyepistemic standard) everything one knows in the sceptical scenariois true in everyday actuality. But to say that the sceptical scenariois epistemically accessible from everyday actuality is to say thateverything one knows in everyday actuality is true in the scepticalscenario, which is just to cave in to scepticism.


Neither of what Williams describes as dimensions of closenessand remoteness is genuinely such. Nevertheless, we do have anintuitive notion of factual closeness and remoteness; it is neitherdoxastic nor epistemic. We find it in the ordinary concept ofdanger.In the middle of the Sahara desert, you are usually not in danger ofdrowning, whether you know your situation or are under the illu-sion that you been thrown into the sea with your legs tied together.Thrown into the sea with your legs tied together, you are usuallyin danger of drowning, whether you know your situation or areunder the illusion that you are in the middle of the Sahara desert.What matters is whether you are in fact likely to drown; what youbelieve or know has no constitutive relevance. Even under causaldeterminism, you can be in actual danger of drowning without actu-ally drowning, because possibilities in which you drown are closeenough to actuality. In this sense, someone in an everyday situationmay be in no danger at all of being a brain in a vat, even if hehappens to believe that heis a brain in a vat. Equally, a brain in a vatmay be in no danger at all of being in the situation it takes itself itto be in. The resemblance between everyday actuality and the scep-tical scenario is irrelevant to this kind of closeness. Several authorshave recently investigated such a notion of closeness possibility(Sainsbury, 1997; Peacocke, 1999; Williamson, 2000a).

On a simple externalist account, to know that P is to believe thatP without thereby being in danger of having a false belief. Such aview might become a form of SCC with an account of the conver-sational standards that govern how close possibilities need to be toconstitute a danger, for example by using ideas from DeRose (1995).I do not think that such a concept would be more than a usefulapproximation to the concept we express with the word ‘knowledge’(Williamson, 2000a). But I do not see that Williams’ argumentsestablish its inadequacy. He has still to explain the deep mistakesupposedly underlying all forms of SCC.

REFERENCES

DeRose, K. (1995): ‘Solving the Skeptical Problem’,The Philosophical Review104, 8–51.


Lewis, D.K. (1996): ‘Elusive Knowledge’,Australasian Journal of Philosophy74, 549–567. Reprinted in hisPapers in Metaphysics and Epistemology(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Peacocke, C.A.B. (1999):Being Known, Oxford: Clarendon Press.Sainsbury, R.M. (1997): ‘Easy Possibilities’,Philosophy and Phenomenological

Research57, 907–919.Williams, B.A.O. (1978):Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, London:

Penguin.Williams, M. (1999): ‘Contextualism, Externalism and Epistemic Standards’, this

issue.Williamson, T. (1995): ‘Is Knowing a State of Mind?’Mind 104, 533–565.Williamson, T. (1996a): ‘Knowing and Asserting’,The Philosophical Review105,

489–523.Williamson, T. (1996b): ‘Cognitive Homelessness’,The Journal of Philosophy

93, 554–573.Williamson, T. (2000a):Knowledge and Its Limits, Oxford: Oxford University

Press.Williamson, T. (2000b): ‘Scepticism and Evidence’,Philosophy and Phenomen-

ological Research60, 613–628.

New College Oxford

Comments on Michael Williams' Contextualism, Externalism and Epistemic Standards

Documents

Transcript of Comments on Michael Williams' Contextualism, Externalism and Epistemic Standards