Peter Baumann develops and defends a distinctive version of epistemic contextualism, the view that the truth conditions or the meaning of knowledge attributions can vary with the context of the attributor. Baumann discusses problems and objections, and provides an extension of contextualism beyond epistemology.

In epistemology and in philosophy of language there is fierce debate about the role of context in knowledge, understanding, and meaning. Many contemporary epistemologists take seriously the thesis that epistemic vocabulary is context-sensitive. This thesis is of course a semantic claim, so it has brought epistemologists into contact with work on context in semantics by philosophers of language. This volume brings together the debates, in a set of twelve specially written essays representing the latest work by leading figures in the two fields. All future work on contextualism will start here.

Epistemic contextualism is a recent and hotly debated topic in philosophy. Contextualists argue that the language we use to attribute knowledge can only be properly understood relative to a specified context. How much can our knowledge depend on context? Is there a limit, and if so, where does it lie? What is the relationship between epistemic contextualism and fundamental topics in philosophy such as objectivity, truth, and relativism? The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Contextualism is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising thirty-seven chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into eight parts: Data and motivations for contextualism Methodological issues Epistemological implications Doing without contextualism Relativism and disagreement Semantic implementations Contextualism outside ‘knows’ Foundational linguistic issues. Within these sections central issues, debates and problems are examined, including contextualism and thought experiments and paradoxes such as the Gettier problem and the lottery paradox; semantics and pragmatics; the relationship between contextualism, relativism, and disagreement; and contextualism about related topics like ethical judgments and modality. The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Contextualism is essential reading for students and researchers in epistemology and philosophy of language. It will also be very useful for those in related fields such as linguistics and philosophy of mind.

It's an obvious enough observation that the standards that govern whether ordinary speakers will say that someone knows something vary with context: What we are happy to call "knowledge" in some ("low-standards") contexts we'll deny is "knowledge" in other ("high-standards") contexts. But do these varying standards for when ordinary speakers will attribute knowledge, and for when they are in some important sense warranted in attributing knowledge, reflect varying standards for when it is or would be true for them to attribute knowledge? Or are the standards that govern whether such claims are true always the same? And what are the implications for epistemology if these truth-conditions for knowledge claims shift with context? Contextualism, the view that the epistemic standards a subject must meet in order for a claim attributing "knowledge" to her to be true do vary with context, has been hotly debated in epistemology and philosophy of language during the last few decades. In The Case for Contextualism Keith DeRose offers a sustained state-of-the-art exposition and defense of the contextualist position, presenting and advancing the most powerful arguments in favor of the view and against its "invariantist" rivals, and responding to the most pressing objections facing contextualism.

Jonathan Ichikawa synthesizes two prominent ideas in epistemology: contextualism about knowledge ascriptions, and the 'knowledge first' emphasis on the theoretical primacy of knowledge. He argues that in thinking clearly about knowledge, epistemologists must also think about the dynamic aspects of the words we use to talk about knowledge.

This book approaches classic epistemological problems from a contextualist perspective. The author takes as his point of departure the fact that we are situated beings, more specifically that every single moment in our lives is already given within the framework of a specific context in the midst of which we understand ourselves and what surrounds us. In the process of his investigation, the author explores, in a fresh way, the works of key thinkers in epistemology. These include Bernard Bolzano, René Descartes, Gottlob Frege, Edmund Husserl, Immanuel Kant and Ludwig Wittgenstein, but also contemporary authors such as Stewart Cohen, Keith DeRose, David Lewis, Duncan Pritchard, Ernest Sosa and Charles Travis. Some of the topics covered are attributions of knowledge, the correspondence theory of truth, objectivity and subjectivity, possible worlds, primary and secondary evidence, scepticism, transcendentalism and relativism. The book also introduces a new contextualist thought-experiment for dealing with moral questions. Contextualism has received a great deal of attention in contemporary epistemology. It has the potential to resolve a number of issues that traditional epistemological approaches cannot address. In particular, a contextualist view opens the way to an understanding of those cognitive processes that require situational information to be fully grasped. However, contextualism poses serious difficulties in regard to epistemic invariance. This book offers readers an innovative approach to some fundamental questions in this field.

Blome-Tillmann puts forth an innovative account of epistemic contextualism based on the idea that pragmatic presuppositions play a central role in the semantics of knowledge attributions. Using the resulting theory, he establishes its significance for a variety of issues within epistemology and the philosophy of language.