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Chapter 10 - Abominable Conjunctions, Contextualism, and the Spreading Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2019

Marc Alspector-Kelly
Affiliation:
Western Michigan University
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Summary

In this chapter I consider the abominable conjunction and spreading problems. With respect to the former, I first compare closure-affirming and closure-denying versions of contextualism. I argue that, abominable conjunctions notwithstanding, appeal to intuition favors neither version of contextualism over the other. I then point out that contextualism is as susceptible to the arguments of the previous chapters as is any other view: there is no plausible source of warrant for Q, not even in ordinary, “low-standards” contexts. As a result, closure-denying contextualism is the more plausible version. I then turn to classical moderate invariantist views. I first provide an explanation for the intuition that abominable conjunctions are infelicitous by appeal to the knowledge rule of assertion, which explanation doesn’t support closure. I defend that explanation by pointing out that closure explains neither the infelicity of certain Gettier-esque versions of abominable conjunctions nor retraction phenomena. However, the knowledge-rule explanation doesn’t explain the infelicity of third-person abominable conjunctions or our apparent willingness to deny that we know Q. I argue that it need do neither. I then suggest that claims to know P, but not necessarily knowledge of P itself, involve assuming – but not knowing – that pertinent skeptical hypotheses are false.
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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