This paper argues that if epistemological contextualism is correct, then not only have knowledge-ascribing sentences context-sensitive truth conditions, certain comparative and superlative constructions involving ‘know’ have context-sensitive truth conditions as well. But not only is there no evidence for the truth of the latter consequence, the evidence seems to indicate that it is false.

The position I aim to criticize has been defended by, most notably, Stewart Cohen, Keith DeRose, and David Lewis. While the contextualist theories offered by these authors differ in their details, the problem to be presented seems to arise irrespective of these details. And though in most of the illustrations below I rely on Lewis's account, I could have made essentially the same points in terms of any of the other accounts.

In so many of his epistemological writings, Aristotle defends a sensible flavor of gradualism about our cognitive capacities: we Start with the partial grasps afforded by what is better known to us, and if things go well, we end up with understandings of those objects better known by nature. The picture is of a step-wise process, rather than a transforming moment of illumination.

In a difficult passage in Metaphysics IX, however, Aristotle introduces a kind of cognition which admits of no more or less, no better or worse. With respect to simples (ta asuntheta), Aristotle Claims, knowing is like touching — there is contact, or there isn't. Put differently, for simple objects, what is necessary for thinking of them at all is sufficient for grasping them completely. For this reason, Aristotle sees error about simples as impossible: any successful thinking about them will be such as to preclude error. The only possible mistakes are failures even to have them in mind.

Among the current topics in Hume scholarship witnessing an upsurge in attention, few can match the inherent complexities associated with his doctrine of space, that of ten neglected and occasionally maligned theory put forth in Book I, Part II, of the Treatise.Yet despite this increase in academie interest, Hume's concept of spatial magnitude — i.e., the spatial size or magnitude of visible and tangible figures — as opposed to his more generai notion of space, has not attracted the same degree of attention. Even if commentators agree that Hume took the idea of space to be an idea derived from ‘the impressions of color'd points, dispos'd in a certain manner’ (T 1.2.3.3), this fact does not teil us what measures the distance between these impressions (perceptions), or what psychological processes and empirical properties are involved in the act of determining size or magnitude. If one bears in mind that the concept of spatial magnitude is also intimately connected with the status of geometry, and the debate on whether Hume endorsed a synthetic or analytic a priori account of geometrical knowledge, the failure to study exhaustively Hume's concept of distance becomes all the more astonishing.

In philosophy of mind, there is functionalism about mental states and functionalism about mental contents. The former — mental State functionalism — says that mental states are individuated by their functional relations with mental inputs, Outputs, and other mental states. The latter — usually called functional or conceptual or inferential role semantics — says that mental contents are constituted by their functional relations with mental inputs, Outputs, and other mental contents (and in some versions of the theory, with things in the environment). If we add to mental State functionalism the popular view that mental states have their content essentially, then mental state functionalism may be seen as a form of functional role semantics and a solution to the problem of mental content, namely, the problem of giving a naturalistic explanation of mental content. According to this solution, the functional relations that constitute contents are physically realized — in a metaphysically unmysterious way — by the functional relations between mental inputs, outputs, and the mental states bearing those contents.

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues for two principles that concern magnitudes. The first is the principle that ‘All intuitions are extensive magnitudes,’ which appears in the Axioms of Intuition (B202); the second is the principle that ‘In all appearances the real, which is an object of sensation, has an intensive magnitude, that is, a degree,’ which appears in the Anticipations of Perception (B207). A circle drawn in geometry and the space occupied by an object such as a book are paradigm examples of extensive magnitudes, while the intensity of a light is a paradigm example of an intensive magnitude. These principles justify and explain the possibility of applying mathematics to objects of experience. The Axioms principle also explains the possibility of any mathematical cognition at all.