Contrastivism Rather Than Something Else? On The Limits Of Epistemic Contrastivism

Authors

Peter Baumann, Swarthmore CollegeFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-1-2008

Published In

Erkenntnis

Abstract

One of the most recent trends in epistemology is contrastivism. It can be characterized as the thesis that knowledge is a ternary relation between a subject, a proposition known and a contrast proposition. According to contrastivism, knowledge attributions have the form “S knows that p, rather than q”. In this paper I raise several problems for contrastivism: it lacks plausibility for many cases of knowledge, is too narrow concerning the third relatum, and overlooks a further relativity of the knowledge relation.

Comments

Reprinted in: (2012). Conceptions of Knowledge. 395-411.

This work is a preprint and is freely available courtesy of the author.

Recommended Citation

Peter Baumann. (2008). "Contrastivism Rather Than Something Else? On The Limits Of Epistemic Contrastivism". Erkenntnis. Volume 69, Issue 2. 189-200. DOI: 10.1007/s10670-008-9111-4
https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-philosophy/17