Contextualism about justified belief

Philosophers' Imprint 8:1-20 (2008)
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Abstract

This paper presents a new argument for a form of contextualism about ‘justified belief’, the argument being based on considerations concerning the nature of belief. It is then argued that this form of contextualism, although it is true, cannot help to answer the threat of scepticism. However, it can explain many other puzzling phenomena: it can give an account of the linguistic mechanisms that determine how the extension of ‘justified belief’ shifts with context; it can help to defuse some puzzles regarding the closure of justified belief under competent deduction; and it can give a plausible account of the role that practical concerns play in the thinking of a rational believer, allowing for a more plausible kind of "intellectualism" about justified belief.

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Ralph Wedgwood
University of Southern California

Citations of this work

Between Probability and Certainty: What Justifies Belief.Martin Smith - 2016 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Epistemic Teleology and the Separateness of Propositions.Selim Berker - 2013 - Philosophical Review 122 (3):337-393.
Rape Culture and Epistemology.Bianca Crewe & Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa - 2021 - In Jennifer Lackey, Applied Epistemology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 253–282.

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