Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Epistemic contextualism (EC), as I will understand it, is the thesis that the relation expressed by the term "knows" depends on the epistemic standard in play at the context of use. Some philosophers claim that EC is confronted with the so-called "factivity problem." They argue that the factivity of knowledge, that S knows that p only if p, together with further supposedly plausible principles, implies that EC is contradictory. I show that proponents of the factivity problem do not develop a single argument against EC but rather a family of related arguments. My thesis will be that if these various versions of the factivity problem are kept separate each of them can easily be seen to be mistaken.