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Ideas of Stephen Schiffer, by Text

[American, fl. 2005, PhD from Oxford. Professor at New York University.]

1996	Contextualist Solutions to Scepticism

p.325	p.9	19508	Contextualism needs a semantics for knowledge sentences that are partly indexical
			Full Idea: Contextualist semantics must capture the 'indexical' nature of knowledge claims, the fact that different utterances of a knowledge sentence with no apparent indexical terms can express different propositions.
			From: Stephen Schiffer (Contextualist Solutions to Scepticism [1996], p.325), quoted by Keith DeRose - The Case for Contextualism 1.5
			A reaction: Schiffer tries to show that this is too difficult, and DeRose defends contextualism against the charge.

p.326-7	p.10	19509	The indexical aspect of contextual knowledge might be hidden, or it might be in what 'know' means
			Full Idea: One might have a 'hidden-indexical' theory of knowledge sentences: they contain constituents that are not the semantic values of any terms; ...or 'to know' itself might be indexical, as in 'I know[easy] I have hands' or 'I know[tough] I have hands'.
			From: Stephen Schiffer (Contextualist Solutions to Scepticism [1996], p.326-7), quoted by Keith DeRose - The Case for Contextualism 1.5
			A reaction: [very compressed] Given the choice, I would have thought it was in 'know', since to say 'either you know p or you don't' sounds silly to me.