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This chapter explains and develops a version of Interest-Relative Invariantism about knowledge, according to which whether or not someone knows that p at a certain time depends in part on what is at stake for them in being right about p at that time.

This chapter is devoted to a thorough-going comparison of Interest-Relativism Invariantism and contextualism. It argues that the contextualist is committed to a worse error-theory than the advocate of Interest-Relativism Invariantism. It concludes by arguing that neither contextualism nor Interest-Relative Invariantism helps with the problem of skepticism.

Relativism about knowledge-attributions is the thesis that knowledge attributions express propositions the truth of which is relative to a judge. On this view, a knowledge attribution may express a proposition that is true for one judge, and false for another. This chapter explains and criticizes various versions of relativism about knowledge attributions.

This chapter discusses contextualist and interest-relative accounts of the sorites paradox and the Liar Paradox. It concludes that a pure interest-relative account is completely untenable for such cases. Thus, Interest-Relative Invariantism is plausible in the epistemic case only because of specific features of epistemic notions.

This chapter discusses the ontological status of fictional characters and the logical constraints on creating characters. Drawing on Jerrold Levinson's arguments for the creation of musical works, it proposes that fictional characters are initiated types, grounded in acts of storytelling, although not essentially bound to any one, even if tied to a reasonably determinate historico-cultural context. Character identity is interest-relative and a character's variant identity conditions determine which of its properties are essential. Fictional characters are created just to the extent that their grounding narratives are created, narratives which allow for indexicality in character identification. The literary dimension is also explored, accommodating symbolic, value-laden, and interpretation-dependent factors.

The usage evidence—various scenarios that realistically depict where and when we attribute knowledge to ourselves and others—shows that all the alternatives (epistemic contextualism, subject-sensitive invariantism, knowledge relativism) to intellectual invariantism fail. They fail for several reasons: When cases are compared, speaker-hearers tend to retract one or the other conflicting knowledge claim; the intuitions elicited by various cases don’t consistently satisfy any particular position; the situations under which speaker-hearers retract knowledge claims under pressure seem to support an invariantist position. Nevertheless, no standard invariantist position seems supported by the usage data because speaker-hearers do seem to shift because of differences either in the interests of the agents to whom knowledge is attributed, for example, oneself, or because of other apparently non-epistemic reasons. Attempts to use pragmatic tools, such as implicatures, to handle the apparent shifts in knowledge standards are shown to fail as well.

Accepting probabilistic knowledge gives rise to a difficult puzzle: how can Smith know that it is at least .6 likely that Jones smokes, when he is happy to admit that there is a significant chance that this belief will turn out to be wrong? This apparently simple question actually has several skeptical arguments mixed up in it. This chapter distinguishes four such arguments and defends different anti-skeptical responses for each. Taken together, these responses support a bright conclusion. As long as some probabilistic beliefs can be true, and some true beliefs can be knowledge, some probabilistic beliefs can be knowledge. The chapter discusses the claim that probabilistic contents can be true at worlds in some deflationary sense, and also responds to the worry that this claim effaces the distinction between propositional and probabilistic contents.

This chapter develops and defends two probabilistic knowledge norms of action. The first is a knowledge norm for reasons, namely that you may treat a probabilistic content as a reason for action if and only if you know it. This norm can help explain intuitive judgments about rational action. It can also help us rethink alleged instances of pragmatic encroachment often cited as challenges for existing knowledge norms of action. The second norm defended in this chapter is a knowledge norm for decisions. According to this norm, an action is permissible for you if and only if it is considered permissible for an agent with imprecise credences whose beliefs exactly match your probabilistic knowledge. This norm provides a precise interpretation of the controversial view that standard decision theory cannot guide decisions about transformative experiences, where this interpretation succeeds in answering a wide range of recent objections to this view.