Martin Montminy

Epistemic contextualism, many critics argue, entails that ordinary speakers are blind to the fact that knowledge claims have context-sensitive truth conditions. This attribution of blindness, critics add, seriously undermines contextualism. I show that this criticism and, in general, discussions about the error theory entailed by contextualism, greatly underestimates the complexity and diversity of the data about ordinary speakers? inter-contextual judgments, as well as the range of explanatory moves that are open to both invariantists and contextualists concerning such judgments. Contextualism does entail that some speakers suffer from semantic blindness; however, at its roots, this blindness concerns not the context-sensitivity of knowledge claims, but the question whether knowledge sentences possess context-independent truth conditions. I argue that this blindness should not be deemed problematic, but that invariantism entails an error theory that is, by comparison, much more troubling

This paper explores the relationships between Davidson's indeterminacy of interpretation thesis and two semantic properties of sentences that have come to be recognized recently, namely semantic incompleteness and semantic indecision.1 More specifically, I will examine what the indeterminacy thesis entails for sentences of the form 'By sentence S (or word w), agent A means that m' and 'Agent A believes that p.' My primary goal is to shed light on the indeterminacy thesis and its consequences. I will distinguish two kinds of indeterminacy that have very different sources and very different consequences. But this does not purport to be an exhaustive study: there may well be other forms of indeterminacy that this ..

Contextualism, in its standard form, is the view that the truth conditions of sentences of the form ‘S knows that P’ vary according to the context in which they are uttered. One possible objection to contextualism appeals to what Keith DeRose calls a warranted assertability maneuver (or WAM), according to which it is not our knowledge sentences themselves that have context-sensitive truth conditions, but what is pragmatically conveyed by the use of such sentences. Thus, proponents of WAMs argue, the context sensitivity of knowledge attributions is not a semantic phenomenon but a pragmatic one. I examine a number of WAMs and show that each (i) is seriously flawed, or (ii) undercuts standard contextualism if we hold a minimalist conception of semantic content. I propose an alternative form of contextualism that accommodates minimalism and is immune to the second type of WAM, and show that this new form of contextualism shares the virtues of standard contextualism.

Cet ouvrage s'adresse principalement aux étudiants du premier cycle universitaire dont le cursus demande une bonne connaissance de l'analyse critique de l'argumentation, ainsi qu'à ceux qui suivent les cours de philosophie du niveau collégial. Nous sommes constamment exposés à des discours qui cherchent à influencer notre manière de penser les choses. Politique, éthique, économie ou même sport, le domaine importe peu: les argumentations s'opposent dans une infinie variété. On en vient à penser qu'un point de vue particulier n'est jamais qu'une affaire d'opinion. Mais c'est oublier le fait que même sur des sujets controversés, les positions de chacun devraient s'appuyer sur des raisons. Or, ces raisons peuvent être adéquates ou non. Il n'est pas toujours possible - ou souhaitable - d'exclure les incertitudes d'une question complexe. En revanche, l'exercice méthodique de la pensée critique permet dé différencier les raisonnements acceptables de ceux qui ne le sont pas. Parce qu'elle permet d'analyser, de classifier et d'évaluer les raisonnements tels qu'ils s'expriment dans le langage courant, la logique informelle est, en la matière, un instrument extrêmement utile. Ce manuel en décrit avec concision les notions et les techniques fondamentales, dont l'assimilation est soutenue à chaque étape par de nombreux exercices.

Would a tiny contribution such as the addition of one drop of water to the canteen of a thirsty person relieve her suffering? According to Barnett’s 2017 paper ‘No free lunch’, the answer is ‘yes’: even tiny contributions can make a morally relevant difference. To defend this answer, Barnett raises an objection against the rival view that tiny contributions never make any difference. I argue that we should reject both Barnett’s and the rival view. I propose an alternative account that reflects the vagueness at play in the outcome of tiny contributions and entails that, in a range of cases, it is indeterminate whether these contributions make any difference.