Epistemological Contextualism (EC) suggests that truth can depend on different epistemic standards, which can in turn be determined by context. Consider the following skeptical argument, known as the Skeptical Paradox, (SP):
- I know that I have hands.
- But I don’t know that I have hands if I don’t know that I’m not a BIV, (a bodiless brain-in-a-vat, with my reality created by a computer).
- I don’t know that I’m not a BIV.
Taken independently, these claims each seems highly plausible, yet when taken collectively, they seem inconsistent. While (3) is not as intuitively obvious as (1), it still seems plausible because a BIV would have perceptual experiences that are very similar (if not the same as me), thus, he would also assume he were a [real boy]. Like the BIV, I only have my perceptual experiences to go on, so I cannot rule out the possibility that I’m also a BIV. Yet (3) would seem to be incompatible with (1). Thus, it would seem that (if I am to remain consistent) I must give up one of these claims. But which one should I give up, and why?
EC suggests that ‘know’ functions like an indexical (an expression whose meaning depends on the context. [Here] is an indexical, because when I say, “I am here,” at work it doesn’t mean the same thing as when I say it at home. Similarly, [I] is an indexical because it means something different when I say it than it does when you say it.
Contextualists have put the point this way: “…the truth-conditions of [knowledge ascribing] and [knowledge denying] sentences ([such as] ‘S knows that P’ and ‘S doesn’t know that P’ …) vary in certain ways according to the contexts in which they are uttered. What so varies is the epistemic standards that S must meet… in order for such a statement to be true. (DeRose 1999a, p. 187)
EC resolves SP by suggesting that some epistemic standards are set very high by a given contexts—such as those in which we are considering and taking seriously certain skeptical hypotheses. Given this high (skeptical) standard, they say, we can no more know that we have hands than we can know that we are not a BIV. On the other hand, if we are to say that we know anything, in our practical daily lives, we must lower our standards and assume that we can ‘know’ that we are not BIV. But at this reduced standard level, we can say that we are NOT a BIV, and we can say that we DO have hands.
While EC allows us to deal with various epistemological difficulties (such as the SP argument above) it misses the more fundamental dynamics of what is actually happening. To understand this, consider the scenario where Tom is watching a (dead) actor play a cowboy on a TV show, and he is tying a knot in some rope. Given this scenario, does it make any sense to suggest that the person on the screen doesn’t have any hands? Or that he isn’t a cowboy? Or that he isn’t tying a knot in rope?
I think this has relatively little to do with how ‘strict’ our epistemological standard is. That would suggest that the statement, “The character on the screen has hands,” is somehow less true than the statement, “I have hands,” which is a notion that I reject. Instead, I would suggest that both statements are equally true, but the reason they are is because words can have more than one definition, and which way we understand the word depends on the context.
Like EC, this notion of truth involves context, but it is not a variation of EC because the context doesn’t help determine an epistemic standard for determining truth. Instead, the context helps us determine which definition is appropriate—but both definitions lead to truths of equivalent epistemic standards. So, what is the difference?
The obvious difference is that [My hand] is a [real, physical object], but the [hand of the TV character] not physically real in the same sense. It is a [real physical image] of a [real physical object], not the [physical object] itself. Thus, in this case, we can express the difference as: one is [physical] and one is [conceptual]. We know that the image on the screen represents a [physical hand], just as the letters “hand” can stand for or represent a [physical hand]. And we know this representation is [conceptual] because we recognize the ‘fingers’ of a stick figure as being a [hand], even though it bears very little resemblance to a real hand.
There are other ways to define differences in various [types of hands]. For instance, the [hand of a statue] is a [physical object] too, but it is still conceptually different from the [hand of a living creature], because it isn’t mobile and can’t grasp objects. Similarlyl, an [injured hand] is different from an [uninjured hand], [my hands] are different from [your hands], and [my left hand] is different from [my right hand]. And so forth.
Various types of context play a role in helping us determine which definition is appropriate for a given expression. The word [my] modifies [hand] in one way. If I’ve just touched a metal statue and I say, “His hands are cold,” then the fact that I’m looking at the statue and that metal is often colder than its surroundings is the context that indicates another definition for hand is appropriate.
How does this help us deal with the Skeptical Paradox argument, presented above? Well, obviously, just like the statue (or the actor’s image) the BIV has hands. It is absurd to suggest that the BIV doesn’t have hands, when he uses them all the time. What the BIV doesn’t have are [hands that are physical in the same sense that my hands are physical]. I can’t even deny that the BIV has [physical hands], for there is a clear distinction (within the VAT) between what is ‘physical’ and what is ‘conceptual’… So within the perspective of the VAT, the BIV has [physical hands]. They simply aren’t physical in the same way that my hands are physical.
In this way, we can acknowledge that premises (1) and (3) (of the SP argument given above) are equally valid, and yet they are not in conflict. On the other hand, (2) is only true with respect to one of those definitions for hand—but it is false for the other definition. It is this fact that gives SP the appearance of being a paradox.