Semantics, Pragmatics, and the Role of Semantic Content 论文

摘要

Followers of Wittgenstein allegedly once held that a meaningful claim to know that p could only be made if there was some doubt about the truth of p. The correct response to this thesis involved appealing to the distinction between the semantic content of a sentence and features attaching (merely) to its use. It is inappropriate to assert a knowledge-claim unless someone in the audience has doubt about what the speaker claims to know. But this fact has nothing to do with the semantic content of knowledgeascriptions; it is entirely explicable by appeal to pragmatic facts about felicitous assertion (that is, a kind of use of a sentence). According to the contextualist about knowledge, the (propositional) semantic content of knowledge-claims is sensitive to context. In a context in which skeptical possibilities are sufficiently salient, the word "know " expresses a relation that holds between persons and a highly restricted range of propositions. In a context in which skeptical possibilities are not salient, the word "know " expresses a different relation, one that a person can bear to a proposition even if she is in a fairly weak epistemic position with respect to it. In support of her position, the contextualist often points to the