Two purposes of knowledge attribution and the contextualism debate
Abstract
In this chapter, we follow Edward Craig’s (1990) advice: ask what the concept of knowledge does for us and use our findings as clues about its application conditions. What a concept does for us is a matter of what we can do with it, and what we do with concepts is deploy them in thought and language. So, we will examine the purposes we have in attributing knowledge. This chapter examines two such purposes, agent evaluation and informant-suggestion, and brings the results to bear on an important debate about the application conditions of the concept of knowledge—the debate between contextualists and their rivals.
Citation
McGrath , M 2015 , Two purposes of knowledge attribution and the contextualism debate . in D K Henderson & J Greco (eds) , Epistemic Evaluation : Purposeful Epistemology . Oxford University Press , New York, NY, USA , pp. 138-157 .
Publication
Epistemic Evaluation
Type
Book item
Rights
Copyright 2015 the Author. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the final published version of the work, which was originally published at https://global.oup.com/academic/product/epistemic-evaluation-9780199642632.
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