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Denying knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Esben Nedenskov Petersen
Esben Nedenskov Petersen*
Affiliation:
Institute for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, 5230 Odense M, Denmark
*
*Email: esben@sdu.dk
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Abstract

Intuitions about contextualist cases such as Cohen’s airport case pose a problem for classical anti-skeptical versions of invariantism. Recently, Tim Black (2005), Jessica Brown (2006), and Patrick Rysiew (2001, 2005, 2007) have argued that the classical invariantist can respond by arguing that pragmatic aspects of epistemic discourse are responsible for the relevant problematic intuitions. This paper identifies the mechanisms of conversational implicature and impliciture as the basic sources of hope for this explanatory strategy. It then argues that neither of these sources provides the classical invariantist with a convincing response to the airport case and its analogs.

Keywords

InvariantismContextualismPragmaticsImplicatureImpliciture

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Type
Articles
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Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , February 2014, pp. 36 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2014

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