A widely discussed philosophical puzzle in contemporary epistemology is the so-called sceptical paradox. Ascriber contextualism has taken centre stage as the anti-sceptical theory that purportedly offers the best solution to the sceptical paradox. Ascriber contextualists Stewart Cohen (1988, 1999) and Keith DeRose (1995) advertise their anti-sceptical theory as the one that exclusively explains and solves it. This is false advertising, however. My thesis, which has been greatly influenced by the critical work of Michael Williams (1991) and Duncan Pritchard (2005), is that the generation of the sceptical paradox depends on whether the epistemologist is an internalist or externalist about knowledge, and that the ascriber contextualist attempt to solve the sceptical paradox rests on a long history of mistakes concerning internalist assumptions made by externalists Fred Dretske (1970) and Robert Nozick (1981). By applying the semantic thesis of ascriber contextualism to epistemology, ascriber contextualists seek to emend the rejection of the closure principle made by these externalists. This rejection came from these externalists mistakenly making internalist assumptions when facing sceptical hypotheses. Unfortunately, ascriber contextualists leave much unfixed, and end up inheriting and suffering from the serious mistake about internalist assumptions that had plagued the epistemologies of these externalists and now infects the ascriber contextualist solution to the sceptical paradox. With the help of hindsight to examine this history and an appreciation of how the adoption of one of these respective views about knowledge makes all the difference for whether the sceptical paradox arises, we come to see that the contextualist solution to the sceptical paradox is unnecessary.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:USASK/oai:usask.ca:etd-09092010-182657 |
| Date | 13 September 2010 |
| Creators | MacDonald, Ian James |
| Contributors | Neufeld, Eric, Pfeifer, Karl, Hudson, Robert, Dayton, Eric |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | University of Saskatchewan Library |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-09092010-182657/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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