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What is insensitive semantics (or semantic minimalism? This may become clear in this chapter from Cappelen and Lepore's objections to their opponents. They signal two main opponents: moderate contextualists and radical contextualists. This chapter presents the position of the latter. It argues that the former position collapses into the latter; Radical contextualism is incoherent, or inconsistent, on various counts, as this chapter shows. The chapter concludes therefore that semantic minimalism is the only game in town.

This chapter examines the more purely philosophical aspect of the question of the paradoxes of truth. It first considers a particular paradoxical derivation that uses the equivalence principle not in the form of the T-biconditionals (which immediately raise questions about what kind of conditional is involved), but of rules of T-introduction and T-elimination. It then explains the concept of revenge as well as logical and contextualist “solutions” and the so-called “paraconsistency.” It concludes with a discussion of inconsistency theories such as defeatism and deflationism. The background assumptions about meaning behind an integrated deflationist/defeatist theory might run as follows. Meaning can be given by rules, but rules can be inconsistent. There is even a result in mathematical logic (Church's theorem) to the effect that there is no mechanical test for inconsistency of rules, making it unlikely we have any filter preventing us from ever internalizing inconsistencies.

This concluding chapter considers the current vogue in appropriations of Spinoza. Broadly speaking, the chapter finds in the recent literature two basic positions on Spinoza's place in the world of Jewish secularism: the “presentists,” who seek to vouch for Spinoza's anticipation of the modern, secular Jew and drive home his relevance to the contemporary culture wars; and the “contextualists,” who look askance at interpretations of Spinoza as a Jewish precursor, judging such readings guilty of everything from historical anachronism at the very least to a groundless “Judaizing” of the Amsterdam philosopher more problematically. This chapter, as with the rest of this volume, maintains a contextualist stance, and discusses this position in more depth in the larger context of the contemporary revival of Spinoza in modern Jewish culture.

This chapter considers the extent to which contextualism constitutes a further rival view in epistemology proper, and offers reasons to doubt that it is. Contextualism has gained center stage in epistemology mainly through its way with the skeptic, from the early days of “relevant alternatives” to more recent incarnations. Contextualism in epistemology concerns mainly threshold-setting mechanisms. The words involved, mainly the verb “to know” and its cognates, mark whether the subject lies above a threshold along one or more dimensions. While this chapter proceeds with an acceptance of the elements of contextualism, the chapter also enters some doubts about its implications for epistemology proper.

Addresses the classical ‘justified true belief’ account of knowledge. Examines Robert Fogelin's reinterpretation of the traditional analysis as conjoining assessments of epistemic propriety and truth‐determinativeness, and the diagnosis of Gettier problems suggested by it. A perspectivalist revision of Fogelin's account is advanced, defended, and distinguished from widespread ‘contextualist’ views. Concludes with a demonstration that the revised analysis avoids various forms of scepticism.

I argue that the contextualist antiskeptical strategy fails because it misconstrues skepticism by overlooking two important aspects of skepticism: first, all of our knowledge of the external world is brought into question at one fell swoop; second, skepticism depends on certain ideas about sense perception and its role in our knowledge of the world. Contextualists may have solved “the skeptical paradox” in their own terms, but such a solution cannot in any way make skepticism less threatening to human knowledge or to the philosophical understanding of human knowledge. I also discuss some important aspects of the practice of knowledge attribution in order to show that the more we can make sense of particular knowledge attributions, the less we can take skepticism seriously, and that the practice of knowledge attribution as we understand and engage in it presupposes that we have knowledge of the world.

This chapter talks about Jewish philanthropy, which is an arena of clashing approaches to the study of the Jewish past. These approaches are called “essentialist,” “contextualist,” and “comparative.” The modernization of Jewish philanthropy, like the modernization of Jewish economic perceptions, may have its roots in many lands across a broad swath of time, but it was most clearly adumbrated by the western Sephardim. It was the result of many factors: the economic dislocation of large segments of Ashkezanic Jewry, which brought them under the care of relatively prosperous Sephardim; changes in sensibility among the Sephardim about poverty, labor, and charity; and finally, the vast and tenuous nature of the Sephardic diaspora, which encouraged the development of a Jewish identity defined more by economic and philanthropic activity than by halakhic discourse and ritual observance.

This chapter discusses four theoretical approaches—psychometric theories, information-processing theories, Piagetian and neo-Piagetian theories, and contextualist theories—and the associated methodologies that are used to understand intelligence and intellectual development. It then reflects on a relatively new theory that, following from the triarchic theory of intelligence, conceptualizes abilities as competencies in development. This multifaceted account of intelligence has been proposed to integrate what are often considered to be disparate paradigms. The triarchic theory of intelligence comprises three subtheories: a componential subtheory dealing with the (universal) components of intelligence; a contextual subtheory dealing with processes of adaptation, shaping, and selection; and an experiential subtheory dealing with the importance of coping with novelty and automatization. This chapter also examines experience and cognitive capacity as determinants of intellectual development.

One of the fundamental problems debated in linguistics and law is that of the ‘alleged priority’ of literal interpretation. In the law, there is a clear preference for what is called, vaguely, literal meaning. In general, although judges often see their role as giving effect to the intention of the legislator or of the parties, jurists tend to avoid reliance on the ‘slippery’ concept of legislative intention, and prefer to rely on the ordinary clear natural or even ‘grammatical’ meaning. In linguistics, the nature of literal meaning is the subject of an ongoing debate opposing the so-called ‘literalists’ and the ‘contextualists’. Although the literalists admit that no observable utterance occurs without a context and that literal acontextual meaning can be no more than an unobservable theoretical concept, they nevertheless assume the existence of an abstract literal meaning as a necessary starting point for interpretation in context. The contextualists, on the other hand, prefer to assume that words take their meaning directly from the context, and that ‘literal meaning’ therefore plays no genuine role in understanding. If this approach is on the right lines, the consequences would be important in legal interpretation. This chapter argues that despite the commonly stated preference for ‘true and correct’ meanings in the interpretation of statutory expressions, legal practice (as opposed to theory) tends, contrary to expectation, to corroborate the contextualist view. Even though the contextualist approach to semantic interpretation directly contradicts his theory of open texture on many points, H. L. A. Hart is unlikely to have rejected it out of hand.

In this chapter, the critical-contextualist approach is applied to a case study in which the findings of three expert committee reports on the possible links between diet and health are analyzed. Such committee reports sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) are helpful in explaining the cogency of scientific argumentation. This case analysis, by using different source materials and argumentation-theoretic tools, highlights three directions of normative concern on the part of participants. These directions include the content of the reports, the quality of the committee transactions, and the public merits of the reports. The chapter concludes with the discussion of tensions in the rhetorical use of process ideals that are identified after examining the debates surrounding the reports and NAS procedures.

This chapter revisits all the previous chapters of the book and explains the “prescriptive character of critical contextualism in relation to substantive critical assessment.” Three types of controversies posing challenges for contextualist analysis—interdisciplinary scientific controversies, science-intensive policy debates, and exchanges between atheistic champions of evolutionary biology and Christian believers—are also discussed. Several important questions about the relation of scientific arguments to discursive contexts outside the sciences have been raised in two case studies discussed in previous chapters of the book. This chapter emphasizes that the answers to certain scientific questions depend on how one views the “good society.”

A life course perspective was central to the design of the study. This involves linking historical and biographical time and thus highlighting the structure-agency dynamic. Chapter 2 outlines the main concepts in the theoretical framework of a life course perspective. Since time, at individual and institutional levels, is an essential feature of the perspective the chapter presents a brief overview of some of the broader historical changes that have affected the lives of the interviewees. In addition to drawing on literature from welfare state research it also includes brief descriptions of some main characteristics of political, economic and social dimensions in the countries between 1945 and 1980 to outline the type of society the interviewees were born into and the traditions in which their upbringing was rooted. An analytical distinction is made between west, south and east European countries.

The thesis of the modal supervenience of temporality was presented in Representing Time (Jaszczolt 2009), and was well supported by theoretical arguments and by evidence from various languages. It also easily yielded to a Default-Semantic (DS, Jaszczolt 2005) formal analysis; however, there remained an important Unresolved Question (UQ), concerning the translatability of what intuitively seems to be a qualitative difference between the past, the present and the future into quantitative differences, that is, in the DS-terms, differences represented as the ‘delta index’ on the acceptability operator (ACC_Δ). In this chapter I present two possible answers to the UQ: that (i) the differences between P, N, and F are underlyingly quantitative rather than qualitative (which I call the Direct-Quantitative View, DQ), and that (ii) the differences are qualitative and the value of modal detachment (Δ) is contextually established (the Modal-Contextualist View, MC). Next, I focus on the DQ view and assess its compatibility with the tensed and tenseless theories of time, concluding that both uphold it. Finally, I argue that the MC view is also tenable as an answer to the UQ, and is independently supported by cross-linguistic data. I conclude with some remarks on conceptual and naturalistic reductionism.

The chapter draws attention to the phenomenon of a steadily increasing intensity of science news in mass media, and discusses its impact on both science and media. The central role of media in staging public deliberation of science by generating a scientific public sphere, the key theme of the book, is introduced and the development of the field of public engagement with science and technology (PEST) in India is elaborated. Research on science reporting in Indian media is discussed in detail to situate the scope of the present study. Following this the emphasis of the book is presented and the public controversies over science discussed in the book are introduced. The chapter also describes the research methods and organization of the book.

The Introduction situates the book within current debates in the historiography of international law. While the book’s sources are examined in their historical context, contextualist approaches to intellectual history can emphasize to different degrees theoretical or historical dimensions. This book largely emphasizes the former. Relatedly, contextualist legal history can be purely historical or used as an instrument of critique of the present. By helping to reveal the various interests that go into the making of legal norms and vocabularies, and by showing from the outside the legitimizing function of legal norms, legal history can unsettle contemporary understandings of the law. However, when instrumentalized as critique, intellectual history risks focusing excessively on the present and become anachronistic.

This chapter examines whether and how concepts vary across and within individuals (inter- and intra-individual variation) by examining what constrains variation of concepts. To address this issue, the chapter focuses on an independently interesting case study: inter- and intra-individual variation in the concept of race. The case study contrasts two competing hypotheses about the concept of race: the biological and the social hypotheses. According to the first hypothesis, the concept of race is a biological concept that is constrained by folk biology; according to the second, it is the concept of a social category. The chapter shows that people’s folk biology constrains the concept of race and thus limits how much concepts of race can vary within and across individuals.

This chapter surveys the academic literature and scholarly contributions to the study of Islamism. It sheds light on how scholars have studied and interpreted Islamists’ ideology, discourse, and activism. It also examines different theoretical and analytical approaches that have dominated the realm of Islamism over the past few decades. It shows the shortcomings of the essentialist and contextualist approaches in studying Islamism. The chapter critically investigates the literature on the Brotherhood and argues that until recently the Brotherhood was one of the most academically understudied movements in light of its history, importance, and influence.

In this chapter the classical form of skeptical argument, based on skeptical hypotheses, is presented. Then a contextualist response to the problem of skepticism, built upon the “Rule of Sensitivity,” is explained, defended, and shown to be superior to other solutions, including other contextualist solutions, Nozick’s solution, and, especially, skeptical solutions. It is argued that the best conclusion we can draw from the skeptic’s argument is that we are not ordinarily mistaken when we claim or ascribe knowledge, despite the best efforts of the “bold skeptic” to show that we are. Rather, the main insights to be rationally drawn from a study of the skeptic’s argument involve the context-sensitivity of attributions of knowledge, and the role that the Rule of Sensitivity plays in changing the epistemic standards that govern these attributions.

In this chapter, substantive Mooreanism, according to which one does know that one is not a brain in a vat, is explained, and two main varieties of it are distinguished. Contextualist Mooreanism, (a) on which it is only claimed that one knows that one is not a brain in a vat according to ordinary standards for knowledge, and (b) on which one seeks to defeat bold skepticism (according to which one doesn’t know simple, seemingly obvious truths about the external world, even by ordinary standards for knowledge), is contrasted with Putnam-style responses, on which one seeks to refute the skeptic, utilizing semantic externalism. Problems with the Putnam-style attempt to refute skepticism are identified, and then, more radically, it is argued that in important ways, such a refutation of skepticism would not have provided an adequate response to skepticism even if it could have been accomplished.