Ideas of Stephen Schiffer, by Theme

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

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13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 6. Contextual Justification / a. Contextualism

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.

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.