Abstract
The main aim of this paper is to analyse David Lewis’ version of contextualism and his solution to the Gettier problem and the lottery problem through the employment of his Rule of Relevance and Stewart Cohen’s response to these problems. Here I analyse whether Stewart Cohen’s response to David Lewis’ solutions to these problems is on the right track or not. Hence, I try to analyse some concept in David Lewis and Stewart Cohen which has remained unanalysed. Cohen tries to show that when we try to solve some variation of the lottery problem and the Gettier problem by applying Lewis’s Rule of Relevance, then it generates some counterintuitive result. So Cohen gives Lewis some alternatives (which are explained in “The Strategy of Biting the Bullet and the Problem of Interference” and “Biting the Bullet Strategy as a Natural Extension of Contextualist Resolution to the Sceptical Problem and the Pity Poor Bill Variation of the Lottery Problem” sections) to avoid this counterintuitive result; this attempt, however, affects some other presuppositions of the contextual theory of David Lewis. My aim in this paper is to show how without taking these alternatives suggested by Cohen, Lewis can apply his Rules of Relevance to solve the lottery problem and the Gettier problem without any counterintuitive result.
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Notes
Plato’s definition of Knowledge as cited in Gettier (1963).
Feldman (2003, p. 115).
I thank the reviewer for indicating this point.
Within the lottery paradox in the pity poor Bill variation, one of the reviewers indicates an important point that it is not clear that the claim “We know that pity poor Bill will never be rich” is a knowledge claim at all. Reviewer asks is it knowledge calim or is it merely an opinion or merely a belief which the subjects have about bad habit of Bill. One cannot draw a clear distinction between the knowledge claim and belief-claim/opinion in this case. It is not clear whether the statement “We know that pity poor Bill will never be rich” expresses merely an opinion/belief or a knowledge claim. As the situation is presented in the pity poor Bill variation, what is more plausible is to regard “We know that pity poor Bill will never be rich” as an opinion formed about habit of the person Bill. Though the term knowledge is used in the sentence, when we take the entire sentence into account it seems that the sentence expresses an opinion rather than a belief. Since this confusion persists we need to contemplate also on two matters that we ignore: (a) ignoring the possibility that Bill might win, (b) ignoring Bill’s lottery having resemblance with other tickets and one of those tickets having the resemblance with actuality. If the claim “We know that pity poor Bill will never be rich” is a proper knowledge claim, then (a) and (b) cannot be ignored. The reviewer points out that the fact that if we are in a position to ignore (a) and (b), then what we claim is not a knowledge claim but a mere opinion about the person.
Lewis (1996). See p. 565.
Cohen (1998). See p. 295.
One could say that third possibility is not a relevant alternative here. But this could be seen to be a relevant alternative by considering the following scenario. Consider that the presence of many sheep-shaped rocks on the hill and Smith happens to pick out the sheep itself. We won’t say that Smith knows that there is a sheep on the hill. In this case the third possibility becomes a relevant alternative which is to be eliminated. This case is similar to the fake barn case.
Biting the bullet means intuitively we feel that Ann’s ascription is not correct. Suppose we take the risk of saying that Ann’s ascription is correct, then we are biting the bullet. If we accept Ann’s ascription as correct, then what is required from us is to explain how Ann’s ascription is correct.
Cohen (1998). See p. 298.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 299.
In the beginning we had mentioned about a new context that is, the context of analysing. Anyone who is concerned with the analysing the situation is considered to be in one context. In order to address the problems we will consider this context as a separate context. Significance of this will be clear from the explanations given in for lottery problem.
Lewis (1996). See p. 566.
Cohen (1998). See p. 293.
Cohen (1998). See p. 295.
Ibid.
What is suggested by Cohen through Case 2 seems to be problematic for me. In Case 2, Smith B has evidence which justifies him to believe that he is actually looking at a sheep-shaped rock on a sheep less hill. But in accordance with Cohen’s suggestion, Smith B believes that there is a sheep on the hill. The point is that, suppose someone has evidence to believe that P normally she might believe that P. It is very unusual that Smith B believes that there is a sheep on the hill, even after having evidence which justifies him (Smith B) to believe that what he sees is a sheep-shaped rock on a sheepless hill.
Cohen, however, makes the following response: (personal communication thorough email dated: June 18, 2014).
According to Cohen, sometimes people believe propositions even though they have evidence against those propositions, because of the biasness towards those propositions. According to him, sometimes people are dogmatic or ideological which might lead them to disregard evidence against their views. Or sometimes they may be simply inattentive to the evidence against their belief. In all of these cases, the person's belief in the proposition is unjustified. So even if in Case 2, Smith B is an unusual case, it is certainly a possible case. Even he has evidence which justifies him to believe that he is actually looking at a sheep-shaped rock on a sheepless hill, still he believes that there is a sheep on the hill for which he does not have any evidence because of a biased attitude towards that proposition. To make the point clearer, let me consider an example of Galileo. Galileo was convicted of heresy by the Catholic Church because of holding the belief that earth revolves around the sun. This belief went against the orthodoxy of Catholic Church that the belief that earth was the immovable centre of the universe. Even if the Catholic Church were to be provided with all the evidence showing that in fact the earth revolves around the sun at the time of the controversy, the orthodox believers would have continued to believe that Earth was the immovable centre of the universe. At that the orthodox believers is in a kind of situation that is similar to Case 2 of Smith B. Suppose consider a person Mr. X even now believes that earth is immovable centre of the universe and even if Mr. X has all the evidence against it, then Mr. X is in a kind of situation that is similar to Case 2 of Smith B.
Lewis (1996).
Ibid., p. 554.
Ibid., p. 555.
Ibid.
Nozick (1981, pp. 172–196).
In his view, attributions of knowledge about a subject can vary from context to context. What changes from one context to another is the strength of the epistemic position of the subject. It is by considering the subject’s strength of epistemic position, speakers of the conversational context attributes knowledge or ignorance to the subject. For details ……. DeRose, “Solving the Skeptical Problem.” Reprinted in Ernest Sosa, Jaegwon Kim, Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath (eds.), Epistemology: An Anthology, Blackwell, Malden, Mass, (1999). pp. 669-690, See p. 678.
Lewis (1996, p. 554).
References
Cohen, S. (1998). Contextualist solutions to epistemological problems: Scepticism, gettier and the lottery. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 76(2), 289–306. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048409812348411.
DeRose, K. (1999). Solving the skeptical problem. In K. DeRose & T. A. Warfield (Eds.), Skepticism (pp. 183–219). New York: Oxford University Press.
Feldman, R. (2003). Epistemology. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Gettier, E. L. (1963). Is justified true belief knowledge. Analysis, 23(6), 121–123. https://doi.org/10.1093/analyse/23.6.121.
Lewis, D. (1996). Elusive knowledge. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74(4), 549–567. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048409612347521.
Nozick, R. (1981). Knowledge. In Philosophical explanations (pp. 172–185). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20451-2_29.
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Deka, J. Countering the Counter Examples of Stewart Cohen: An Advancement of David Lewis’ Contextualist Solution to Gettier Problem, Lottery Paradox and Sceptical Paradox. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 38, 9–38 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-020-00227-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-020-00227-1