Karlo Gardavski: Contextualism and Pragmatism: Epistemic Practices in a Deontic Space

Invitation pdf

Karlo Gardavski
(University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences)

Contextualism and Pragmatism: Epistemic Practices in a Deontic Space

Abstract
Within the presentation, I want to showcase and expand the epistemological position offered by Michael Williams in the form of contextualism, where the concept of knowledge received its pragmatic reinterpretation. Here, the questions of knowledge (epistemology) and meaning (philosophy of language) are combined in the symbiosis “knowledge of meaning” as the central question of contextualism. The answer that Williams offers is a redescription of epistemic practices in the form of a deontic vocabulary. This vocabulary is actually part of the normative vocabulary. The deontic concepts at the heart of Williams' contextualism are epistemic responsibility and reliability. As a further extension of contextualism, this presentation will offer the concepts of recognition and recollection (Brandom), which can serve as explanatory meta-concepts to show how an epistemic game is played. “No responsibility without reliability” will be the slogan of the contextualism in this presentation.

The first part will be focused on the explication of pragmatist background in Williams' philosophy, primarily the concepts of linguistic priority, epistemological behaviorism, and normative pragmatism. The second part will aim to show how contextualism appears as an antidote to skepticism and foundationalist epistemology (both of which Williams sees as two sides of the same coin). More specifically, I want to show how hinge epistemology, as a relatively new form of foundationalism, has unsustainable commitments in its interpretation of the late Wittgenstein, and how Williams' reception (interpretation) of Wittgenstein could be a potential answer. In the last part of the presentation, I would like to expand the contextualist assumptions about the deontic structure of epistemic practices through the concepts of recognition and recollection, whose main role is to show how authority and responsibility (normative statuses) are attributed and acknowledged (normative attitudes) within communicative societies. “Accredited” subjects are products of epistemic practices, and they have the status of reliability which is exclusively a social status.