The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. , No.

 April 

ISSN –

KNOWLEDGE, SPEAKER AND SUBJECT

B S C

I contrast two solutions to the lottery paradox concerning knowledge: contextualism and subject-
sensitive invariantism. I defend contextualism against an objection that it cannot explain how
‘knows’ and its cognates function inside propositional attitude reports. I then argue that subject-
sensitive invariantism fails to provide a satisfactory resolution of the paradox.

Sceptical arguments or paradoxes concerning knowledge of the external

world typically exploit global sceptical hypotheses involving Cartesian
demons or brains in a vat. Discussion of these paradoxes often centres on
issues peculiar to these exotic hypotheses. As has been noted, such sceptical
paradoxes can be reconstructed in terms of more mundane sceptical hypo-
theses, thereby avoiding the controversies surrounding the exotic global
hypotheses.1
Contextualists, myself among them, have argued that contextualism can
resolve these sceptical paradoxes. In my own view, contextualism is parti-
cularly well suited to resolving the paradoxes formulated in terms of the
mundane hypotheses.
Various objections have been raised to contextualist treatment of these
paradoxes. One such objection focuses on how knowledge ascriptions inter-
act with certain disquotational principles. In what follows, I defend context-
ualism against this kind of objection and argue that contextualism is superior
to a recently proposed alternative approach to the sceptical paradoxes.

CONTEXTUALISM AND THE PARADOX

Suppose Smith has a low-paying job with no prospect for getting a higher-
paying job. He has no investments and no other sources of income. Given
1 As far as I know, J. Vogel, ‘Are There Counter-Examples to the Closure Principle?’, in

M. Roth and G. Ross (eds), Doubting: Contemporary Perspectives on Scepticism (Dordrecht: Kluwer,
), was the first to make this point explicitly.

© The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, . Published by Blackwell Publishing,  Garsington Road, Oxford  , UK,
and  Main Street, Malden,  , USA.
 STEWART COHEN

his situation, it seems right to say that Smith knows that he’ll never be a
multi-millionaire. As it turns out, Smith has a ticket in the New York State
lottery. Should he win, he would become a multi-millionaire. But it seems
wrong to say that Smith knows he will lose the lottery. The paradox arises
given a plausible closure principle that entails that Smith knows he will
never get rich only if Smith knows he will lose the lottery.
This paradox generalizes in interesting ways. So, for example, if Smith
recently left his car in lot , it seems right to say that he now knows that his
car is parked in lot . But it seems wrong to say that Smith knows his car has
not been stolen.
For virtually any ordinary proposition p we think we know (Smith will
never get rich, Smith’s car is parked in lot , etc.), there is some ‘lottery
proposition’ l (e.g. Smith will lose the lottery, Smith’s car has not been
stolen, etc.) such that we think both that we do not know l and that we know
p only if we know l. This can lead us to adopt a sceptical frame of mind and
hold that we do not know p after all. A successful anti-sceptical resolution of
this paradox must explain how, despite our sceptical intuitions, it remains
true that we know what we ordinarily claim to know. Thus a successful
resolution must provide some account of why we have our sceptical intui-
tions. Otherwise the paradox has not been resolved.
Contextualism is the thesis that ascriptions of knowledge are context-
sensitive. A common thread in contextualist theories is that the salience of
error possibilities raises the standards for how strong one’s epistemic position
has to be in order for one to know. Contextualism resolves the sceptical
paradox by construing our apparently inconsistent intuitions as resulting
from contextual shifts in these standards. So, for example, our intuition that
the sentence ‘Smith knows his car is parked in lot ’ is true is explained
by the fact that at ordinary contexts, the statement is in fact true. Our
apparently conflicting intuition that the sentence ‘Smith does not know his
car has not been stolen’ is false results from our shifting to a stricter context
when we consider the possibility that Smith’s car has been stolen. At this
new context, the sentence is indeed false. But deductive closure for know-
ledge is preserved relative to a context. So at everyday contexts, both ‘Smith
knows his car is parked in lot ’ and ‘Smith knows his car has not been
stolen’ are true. At stricter contexts, neither sentence is true.2

2 For an excellent extended discussion of this paradox and the contextualist proposal for
resolving it, see J. Hawthorne, Knowledge and Lotteries (Oxford UP, ).

© The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, 

 KNOWLEDGE , SPEAKER AND SUBJECT 

CONTEXTUALISM AND DISQUOTATION

John Hawthorne, Jason Stanley and Wayne Davis have argued that con-
textualism runs into trouble when we consider very plausible principles
regarding belief ascription and disquotation.3 In what follows I will use
Hawthorne’s version of the argument. We begin with some stipulations and
some principles.
Stipulations:

(i) Smith is at C, a low standards context, Jones is at C*, a high

standards context
(ii) ‘Smith knows he has feet’ is true at C, and false at C*
(iii) Jones knows (i) and (ii).

Assumptions:

True belief principle (TBP): if a speaker sincerely accepts an utterance u and

u has semantic value p, then the belief manifested by his sincerely
accepting that utterance is true iff the semantic value p is true
True belief schema (TBS): if X believes that p, then X’s belief is true if and
only if p
Disquotational schema for ‘knows’ (DSK): if an English speaker E sincerely
utters a sentence s of the form ‘I know that p’, and the sentence in the
that-clause means that p, then E believes that he knows that p, and
expresses that belief by uttering s.
Suppose:
. Smith sincerely utters ‘I know I have feet’.
Then Jones can reason as follows:
. The belief Smith manifests by his sincere utterance of ‘I know I have
feet’ is true [stipulations (i)–(iii) and TBP]
. The belief Smith expresses by his sincere utterance of ‘I know I have
feet’ is that he knows he has feet [() and DSK]
. Smith knows he has feet [(), () and TBS].
But () is false [stipulations (i) and (ii)].
3 See Hawthorne; J. Stanley, ‘On the Linguistic Basis for Contextualism’, Philosophical

Studies,  (), pp. –; W. Davis, ‘Are Knowledge Claims Indexical?’, Erkenntnis, 
(), pp. –.

© The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, 

 STEWART COHEN

Thus we must deny at least one of TBP, DSK and TBS. But each of these
principles seems compelling. Thus we must deny the contextualist assump-
tions underlying the stipulations.
What should the contextualist say in response to this argument? As Peter
Ludlow notes, Hawthorne assumes that when Jones reports Smith’s know-
ledge (self-)ascription, the semantic value of ‘knows’ in Jones’ report is fixed
by the standard that governs Jones’ knowledge ascriptions.4 But there is no
reason why a contextualist need agree with this. What should a contextualist
say about how the semantic value of ‘knows’ gets fixed when a speaker is
reporting on someone else’s knowledge ascription?
Let’s first consider a scenario where Jones knows that the standard at his
context differs from the standard at Smith’s context. This is the scenario
Hawthorne imagines: Jones knows that he is at a high standards context and
that Smith is at a low standards context. But Ludlow claims that under these
conditions, the belief Jones attributes to Smith when in () he disquotes
Smith’s utterance ‘I know I have feet’ will be the belief that Smith knows-by-
low-standards that he has feet. But then () will be false (in Jones’ mouth)
only if we equivocate on ‘knows’ in the inference from () to ().
Hawthorne clearly assumes that a contextualist must say that when Jones
disquotes Smith’s utterance, he attributes to Smith the belief that Smith
knows-by-high-standards that he has feet. Who is correct – Ludlow or
Hawthorne?
Consider first what happens in the case of a context-sensitive term like the
indexical ‘I’. When Jones disquotes Smith’s utterance in his belief report, he
naturally replaces ‘I’ with ‘he’. The underlying principle here is that when
you disquote an utterance of a context-sensitive term, you do so in a way
that preserves semantic value. In the case of ‘I’, the language provides an
easy way for the speaker to do this, viz by replacing ‘I’ with ‘he’.
Now according to contextualism, ‘knows’ (along with ‘flat’, ‘tall’, etc.) is
context-sensitive in ways analogous to indexical terms. But unlike the case of
‘I’, the language does not provide a handy word to substitute when we
disquote that will preserve semantic value. But this is no reason to deny that
when we disquote utterances containing these kinds of context-sensitive
terms, we do so in a way that preserves semantic value. How do we do it?
We rely on various features that determine context – e.g., speaker inten-
tions, listener expectations, etc. – to preserve semantic value. But then given
Hawthorne’s assumption that Jones knows that Smith is at a low standards
context, it seems natural to interpret his report of Smith’s belief as Ludlow
suggests, where ‘knows’ in Jones’ mouth means ‘knows-by-low-standards’.
4 P. Ludlow, ‘Contextualism and the New Linguistic Turn in Epistemology’, unpublished
ms.

© The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, 

 KNOWLEDGE , SPEAKER AND SUBJECT 

Let’s test this out on a case involving a relatively uncontroversial context-

sensitive term, ‘tall’. Suppose you and I are discussing the heights of pro-
fessional basketball players. We say things like ‘Danny is not tall’ and ‘Kevin
is not tall’ (they’re both between ’ and ’”). But we do say ‘Shaquille is
tall’, ‘Kareem is tall’ (they’re both over ’). So at our context, one must be
very tall in order to be tall simpliciter. At the time, we happen to be in public
and we witness the following. Byron walks by and a little girl sees him and
says to her mother, ‘Wow, he’s tall’ (Byron is ’”). Now suppose I say to
you ‘She believes he’s tall’. By my lights, what I’ve said is true. But that
means that when I report her belief to you, the word ‘tall’ in my mouth
expresses ‘tall-by-ordinary-standards’ and not ‘tall-by-basketball-standards’.
That is to say, the semantic value of ‘tall’ in my mouth will have switched to
the semantic value of ‘tall’ in the girl’s mouth. The most plausible account of
how this occurs is that when we focus on the comment of the girl in our
conversation, our context shifts.5
If this is correct, then Ludlow seems to be correct about the meaning of
‘knows’ in (). Just as I switch to a low standards context when I say ‘She
believes he’s tall’, so Jones shifts to a low standards context when he says
‘Smith believes he knows he has feet’.
Now consider the scenario where Jones mistakenly believes that the
standard of his context does not differ from the standard of Smith’s context.
There are different ways in which this possibility could be realized: Jones
might not be aware that ‘knows’ is context-sensitive, or he might know this,
but mistakenly think that Smith’s standard is the same as his own. On either
of these assumptions, we of course have to give up our stipulation that Jones
knows that ‘Smith knows he has feet’ expresses a true proposition at Smith’s
context.
In such a case, it is plausible to suppose that Jones’ utterance means that
Smith believes he knows-by-high-standards that he has feet. But under this
scenario, Jones is not entitled to premise (). If Jones does not know that
Smith’s standard is the same as his own, then he has no basis for inferring
that Smith’s utterance expresses a true belief. Since Jones knows the
sentence Smith utters expresses a false proposition at his own ( Jones’) con-
text, he should (in the relevant sense) infer that Jones’ utterance expresses a
false belief.
So under either assumption about what Jones knows about Smith’s con-
text, Hawthorne’s argument fails. The argument is supposed to show that
the contextualist is forced to give up DSK. (Hawthorne suggests that if the
contextualist has to give up one of TBS, TBP or DSK, it will surely be
5 This was suggested to me by Tim Williamson.

© The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, 

 STEWART COHEN

DSK.) Despite the fact that his argument fails to show this, our second
scenario shows that none the less contextualism is incompatible with the
generality of DSK. That is, the contextualist must hold that under certain
conditions, the sentence expressing DSK will express a false proposition. For
what will sentence () mean in Jones’ mouth under this scenario? Presum-
ably, if Jones does not know that Smith’s context differs from his own, then
he will mistakenly attribute to Smith the false belief that Smith knows-by-
high-standards that he has feet. If this is correct, then under this scenario,
Jones disquotes Smith’s utterance ‘I know I have feet’ by uttering ‘Smith
believes that he knows he has feet’, thereby attributing to Smith a belief he
does not hold. So despite the fact that Hawthorne’s argument does not show
it, the contextualist must hold that DSK will sometimes express a false
proposition. But it should not be surprising that the thesis that knowledge
ascriptions are context-sensitive has this result.
Hawthorne takes the incompatibility of contextualism with DSK as a
serious problem for contextualism. As he notes, DSK will strike competent
speakers of English as quite plausible in general. Does this mean we should
reject contextualism after all? Of course the contextualist does hold that
DSK expresses a true proposition in some circumstances. It is just that a
fully general statement of the principle must be meta-linguistic:
CDSK. A sentence of the form ‘If an English speaker E sincerely utters a
sentence s of the form “I know that p” and the sentence in the that-
clause means that p, then E believes that he knows that p, and ex-
presses that belief by uttering s’ is true when uttered by A only if both
A’s utterance and E’s utterance are governed by the same standard.
Is the fully general truth of CDSK always sufficient to explain why com-
petent speakers find DSK to be plausible? Note that just as DSK strikes
competent speakers as plausible, so will analogous object-language disquota-
tion principle for other context-sensitive terms, e.g., ‘flat’:
DSF. If an English speaker E sincerely utters a sentence s of the form ‘x is
flat’, then E believes that x is flat, and expresses the belief by uttering s.
But owing to the fact that ‘flat’ is context-sensitive, DSF will run into
problems analogous to the problems for DSK. Thus a fully general state-
ment of this principle must be meta-linguistic as well:
MDSF. A sentence of the form ‘If an English speaker E sincerely utters a
sentence s of the form “x is flat”, then E believes that x is flat, and
expresses that belief by uttering s’ is true as uttered by A only if both
A’s utterance and E’s utterance are governed by the same standard.
© The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, 
 KNOWLEDGE , SPEAKER AND SUBJECT 

Since any disquotation principle for similarly context-sensitive terms will

require a meta-linguistic formulation, it is no problem for contextualism that
the disquotation principle for ‘knows’ requires such a formulation.
The contextualist’s meta-linguistic rendering of DSK follows the same
strategy as the contextualist uses to explain the intuitive appeal of the deduc-
tive closure principle for knowledge, which, at least in one form, says
CK. If X knows p and X competently deduces q from p, then X knows q.6
But the contextualist holds that an utterance of CK could be false if the
standard shifts in mid-utterance. Thus the contextualist holds that a fully
general statement of the closure principle must be meta-linguistic:
MCK. A sentence of the form ‘If X knows p and X competently deduces q
from p, then X knows q’ is true at a fixed standard.
And the same would hold for plausible closure principles involving ‘flat’.
Consider the following principle:
CF. If x is flat, and y is as flat as x, then y is flat.
Given that the standards for flatness could shift in mid-utterance, a correct
fully general statement of this principle will be
MCF. A sentence of the form ‘If x is flat, and y is as flat as x, then y is flat’ is
true at a fixed standard.
Earlier in this section, we noted that when Jones disquotes Smith, know-
ing that Smith is at a low standards context, the semantic value of ‘knows’ in
Jones’ utterance is fixed by the semantic value of ‘knows’ in Smith’s
utterance. Given that Jones knows that what Smith says is true, can he apply
TBS and truly say Smith knows that he has hands? In a footnote,
Hawthorne (p. , fn. ) concedes that there is a kind of de voce (Quine)
belief ascription whereby when Jones disquotes Smith’s utterance, the
semantic value of ‘knows’ is fixed by Smith’s utterance. But Hawthorne
argues that if Jones then applies TBS, he will speak falsely when he utters
‘Smith knows he has feet’. So is contextualism committed to denying TBS?
Recall the case I described earlier involving ‘tall’. Given that I know that
what the girl says is true, can I apply TBS and say ‘Byron is tall’? Here I
think it is unclear what standard governs my utterance. Surely, if TBS can
fail in the case of belief ascriptions involving ‘knows’, it can fail in belief
ascriptions involving ‘tall’. All this would show is that we need to formulate
TBS meta-linguistically as well:
6 This version of the deductive closure principle is due to Tim Williamson, Knowledge and its
Limits (Oxford UP, ).

© The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, 

 STEWART COHEN

MTBS. A sentence of the form ‘If x believes p, then x’s belief is true if and
only if p’ is true provided the semantic value of p remains fixed.
In the background of this discussion of ‘knows’ and belief-ascriptions has
been the contextualist’s claim that in the case of a context-sensitive term, a
speaker can be competent in his use of the term and yet be blind to the fact
that the term is context-sensitive. This claim lies at the heart of the con-
textualist treatment of the paradox. For the contextualist resolution of the
paradox essentially involves the claim that competent speakers can unknow-
ingly shift contexts when they utter sentences containing ‘know’. This point
will prove to be important when we compare contextualism with an
alternative account of the paradox.

THE ALTERNATIVE TO CONTEXTUALISM:

SUBJECT-SENSITIVE INVARIANTISM

Hawthorne proposes an alternative to contextualism which he calls ‘subject-

sensitive invariantism’ (SSI). ( Jason Stanley proposes in unpublished work a
theory in the same spirit.) To understand the difference between SSI and
contextualism we need to distinguish, with respect to a particular knowledge
ascription, between the speaker/ascriber and the subject. Suppose I say
‘John knows his car is parked in lot ’. Then I am the speaker/ascriber
making the ascription and John is the subject of the ascription.
Contextualism says that the truth-value of a knowledge ascription is
sensitive to whether error possibilities are salient to the ascriber. So if the
possibility that John’s car has been stolen is salient to me, then I speak truly
when I say ‘John does not know his car is in lot ’. This remains true even if
this possibility is not salient to John.
SSI denies that there is context-sensitivity in the above sense of ascriber/
speaker sensitivity. Rather, SSI says that the truth-value of a knowledge
ascription is sensitive to whether error possibilities are salient to the subject of
the ascription. On this view, the truth-value of a knowledge ascription is the
same regardless of who is doing the ascribing (thus the name ‘subject-
sensitive invariantism’). So if the possibility of error is salient to John, then he
fails to know his car is in lot  at any ascriber context. So if we say that John
knows, because no error possibility is salient to us, we speak falsely if some
error possibility is salient to him. Moreover if the possibility of error
is salient to us, we may say John fails to know. But if no error possibility is
salient to him, again we may be speaking falsely.

© The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, 

 KNOWLEDGE , SPEAKER AND SUBJECT 

SSI takes a phenomenon that contextualism views as a kind of speaker-

sensitivity for knowledge ascriptions, and construes it instead as a kind of
subject-sensitivity – as an element of the subject’s circumstances that affects
whether the subject knows. In itself, subject-sensitivity is a mundane pheno-
menon. The truth-value of a knowledge ascription is sensitive to many
features of the subject’s circumstances – whether the proposition is true,
whether the subject has evidence, etc. What is distinctive about SSI is that it
includes the salience of error possibilities as an important feature of the
subject’s circumstances.
According to SSI, the sceptical lottery paradox results not from shifting
ascriber context, but rather from changes in the subject’s circumstances. So
S knows that his car is parked in lot  only if the possibility that the car has
been stolen is not salient to S. Once that possibility becomes salient to S, he
fails to know his car is parked in lot  – and if he knew it previously, he stops
knowing it.

OBJECTION TO SSI: THE SCOPE OF KNOWLEDGE DENIALS

Inevitably the conflict between contextualism and SSI will come down to
which view has the greater intuitive costs. And no doubt contextualism does
have intuitive costs, despite my best attempts to mitigate them. But now I
want to look at a serious problem for SSI: it does not meet our constraint on
a satisfactory resolution of the sceptical lottery paradox. Recall that any
non-sceptical response to the paradox must explain the appeal of our
sceptical intuitions. But here is a fact about those intuitions. When we are in
a sceptical frame of mind, it seems to us that we have made a discovery –
there are lots of things we think we know (e.g., where our cars are parked),
that in fact we do not know. And when we are in this frame of mind, not
only do we have a strong intuitive inclination to deny that we know, we have
the same inclination to deny that others know. Moreover, we are inclined to
deny that we ourselves knew previously.
Contextualism can explain why this is so. Our sceptical frame of mind
tracks the fact that we are at a high standards context. And when we are at
such a context, those standards will govern not only our self-ascriptions of
knowledge, but also our ascriptions to others (and to our earlier selves) as
well. So when we judge that others (along with our previous selves) fail to
know, we are actually making true judgements.
But SSI is unable to explain why we make these judgements. According
to SSI, when we are in a sceptical frame of mind, we fail to know because

© The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, 

 STEWART COHEN

error possibilities are salient to us. But this has no implications for whether
others know. That will depend on whether error possibilities are salient to
them. But we know, even when we are in a sceptical frame of mind, that in
many instances, error possibilities are not salient to others or to our previous
selves. But then SSI cannot explain why when we are in a sceptical frame of
mind, we have a strong intuitive inclination to deny that others and our
previous selves know. But this is just to say that SSI does not succeed in
explaining our sceptical intuitions, and so has not given a satisfactory
resolution of the paradox.
But doesn’t contextualism fail to account for some of our sceptical intui-
tions as well? When we are in a high standards context, we think a sentence
of the form ‘I know p’ in the mouth of a speaker at a low standards context
expresses a false proposition. But it looks as if contextualism has no ex-
planation of why we think this, given that on a contextualist view, ‘I
know ...’ in the mouths of speakers at low standard contexts expresses a true
proposition. But then contextualism fails to account for these sceptical intui-
tions that such sentences are false.
So does contextualism enjoy any advantage over SSI in explaining our
sceptical intuitions? I think that it does. For while each view has the result
that some of our sceptical intuitions are mistaken, the contextualist has an
explanation of why we make these mistakes. Recall that the contextualist’s
attempt to resolve the paradox depends on the claim that competent
speakers can unknowingly shift contexts when they utter sentences con-
taining ‘know’. Although ‘knows’ has a contextualist semantics, competent
speakers can be blind to this fact. As we saw earlier, this can lead them to
disquote other speakers’ utterances of the form ‘S knows p’ when, owing
to the fact that they are in a different context, they should not. So when I
am in a sceptical context, I move from the fact that ‘I know’ is false in my
mouth to the conclusion that it is false in the mouths of others as well.
Moreover, there is no special pleading by the contextualist here, because
we can see exactly the same phenomenon at work in the case of another
context-sensitive term, viz ‘flat’. As Peter Unger pointed out, by noting that
all surfaces have microscopic irregularities, one can get competent speakers
to worry that no surface is flat.7 But this intuition conflicts with our common
sense belief that lots of surfaces are flat. Surely this appearance of paradox
can be resolved by noting that ‘flat’ is context-sensitive. When we are in the
kind of strict context induced by Unger’s considerations, our utterance that
‘Nothing is flat’ is true. But this does not conflict with the fact that in
everyday contexts, our utterances of the form ‘x is flat’ can be true.
7 P. Unger, Ignorance: a Case for Scepticism (Oxford UP, ).

© The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, 

 KNOWLEDGE , SPEAKER AND SUBJECT 

But notice that when we are in the grip of ‘flatness scepticism’, we feel
enlightened, in the same way as we do when we are in the grip of knowledge
scepticism. We feel that we have discovered something very surprising. As
we would say, ‘Nothing is flat’. This leads us to deny that others’ utterances
of the form ‘x is flat’, as well as our own earlier utterances of that form,
express true propositions. This is so despite the fact that even if we are in a
high standards context and so cannot truly say ‘This table is flat’, others at
low standard contexts can.
Of course this is exactly the same sort of mistake as the contextualist
attributes to us regarding ‘knows’, and it has exactly the same explanation,
viz competent speakers can be blind to the context-sensitivity of a term in
their language, even though because they are competent, their ascriptions
involving the term will track contextual shifts. So the contextualist’s appeal
to this kind of explanation is not special pleading.
Can the proponent of SSI explain our sceptical intuitions by appealing to
similar kinds of limitations of competent speakers? In the case of context-
sensitive (i.e., speaker-sensitive) predicates, there are two ways speakers can
be misled. They can be aware that the sentences they utter are context-
sensitive, but still be mistaken about what standards are in play at a parti-
cular context. Or, as the contextualist’s semantic blindness thesis holds, they
can fail to be aware that the sentences they utter are context-sensitive.
And there will be analogous ways in which competent speakers can be
misled by the kind of subject-sensitivity SSI posits. They could be aware that
the truth-values of the sentences they utter are sensitive to what is salient
to the subject, but still be mistaken about what is in fact salient to the sub-
ject. Or they could fail to be aware that the sentences they utter are subject-
sensitive in this way.
But neither option will help SSI explain the sort of mistake it attributes to
competent speakers. The first option fails because when I mistakenly deny
knowledge to my earlier self, I am not mistaken about what was salient to my
earlier self. Ex hypothesi, I know that no error possibilities were salient to
my earlier self.
The second option borrows a page from the contextualist’s semantic
blindness thesis. But recall that according to that thesis, even though
speakers are blind, in the relevant sense, to the context-sensitivity of ‘knows’,
they are none the less competent in its use. That is, when error possibilities
become salient to them, their ascriptions track the attendant contextual
shift. Now proponents of SSI will have to say something analogous about
the kind of semantic blindness they attribute to competent speakers. They
will have to say that although these speakers are unaware that knowledge
ascriptions are subject-sensitive in this way, when it is clear that error
© The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, 
 STEWART COHEN

possibilities are salient to a subject, they deny that the subject knows. For
presumably, positing this kind of subject-sensitivity is supposed to explain
why we deny knowledge to ourselves when error possibilities are salient to
us. But then the SSI theorist’s semantic blindness thesis cannot explain why
we deny knowledge to others when although error possibilities are salient to
us, we know that error possibilities are not salient to them. But in order
to explain our sceptical intuitions, that is the very kind of mistake that the
SSI theorist needs to explain.

AN ATTEMPT AT AN EXPLANATION: THE AVAILABILITY BIAS

Hawthorne is aware that his theory makes false predictions about when
speakers will deny knowledge to others. To handle the problem, he appeals
to the fact that when we reason, we make use of what psychologists call ‘the
availability heuristic’. People using this heuristic assess the probability of an
event on the basis of how easy it is to recall or imagine instances of it.
Because frequently occurring events are generally more easy to recall or
imagine, this heuristic works well most of the time. But the availability
heuristic can introduce biases when factors unrelated to the frequency of an
event facilitate our recalling or imagining the event. Hawthorne (p. ) cites
studies which show that ‘... when a certain scenario is made vivid, the
perceived risk of that scenario may rise dramatically’.8 He then speculates
that ‘when certain non-knowledge-destroying counter-possibilities are made
salient, we overestimate their real danger; as a result, we may find ourselves
inclined to deny knowledge to others in cases where there is in fact no real
danger of error’ (ibid.). So, for example, when I claim to know that I will be
at the conference and the possibility of fatal heart attacks is made salient, I
tend to overestimate the probability with which heart attacks occur. This
leads me to deny (falsely) that anyone knows he will not suffer a fatal heart
attack and so to deny (falsely) that anyone knows that he will be at the
conference.
Does Hawthorne’s explanation succeed? In other work,9 I have objected
to this explanation on the grounds that it is not at all clear that the data
concerning the availability heuristic support Hawthorne’s hypothesis. What
he needs to explain is why, in general, we have sceptical intuitions when error
8 The studies are cited in P. Slovic et al., ‘Fact versus Fears: Understanding Perceived Risk’,
in R. Schwing and W. Abers (eds), Societal Risk Assessment: How Safe is Safe Enough? (Dordrecht:
Kluwer, ).
9 See my ‘Knowledge, Assertion, and Practical Reasoning’, Philosophical Issues
(forthcoming).

© The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, 

 KNOWLEDGE , SPEAKER AND SUBJECT 

possibilities are salient to us. But it is not always true that when we consider
these kinds of possibilities, we tend to overestimate the frequency with which
they occur. In those same studies which Hawthorne cites, it was noted that
while people tend to overestimate causes of death that are dramatic and
sensational – plane crashes, tornadoes, homicide – they also tend to
underestimate those causes of death which tend to be unspectacular, such as
causes of death which claim one victim at a time and are common in non-
fatal form – e.g., smallpox vaccination, stroke, stomach cancer and diabetes.
People also tend to underestimate risks to themselves. For example, people
tend to make countless automobile trips without accidents. Moreover the
news media show them that when accidents do occur, they happen to
others. Employing the availability heuristic, people underestimate the risk that
they themselves will be in an accident. (This leads them to decide they need
not bother to wear seatbelts.)
So when error possibilities that are unspectacular, are generally non-
lethal or involve ourselves become salient, it is not at all clear that we will
tend to overestimate their frequency. But then Hawthorne cannot explain
our sceptical intuitions about others by claiming that availability considera-
tions lead us to overestimate the likelihood of these error possibilities.
In response, Hawthorne argues that the phenomena I adduce show only
that ‘dramatic events tend to be imaginatively more salient than mundane
ones and hence, other things being equal, one is more likely to distort one’s
risk judgements in favour of dramatic events than in favour of mundane
ones’.10 He claims that I overlook the fact that ‘discussing or otherwise
considering a hazard tends to make it imaginatively salient which in turn
tends to make one raise one’s estimation of the danger of it occurring’. His
point, I take it, is that the reason why we overestimate the likelihood of
spectacular events but underestimate the likelihood of mundane events is
that the former, but not the latter, tend to be imaginatively more salient.
This is consistent with its being the case that the very act of considering
error possibilities, spectacular or mundane, makes them imaginatively
salient, and thus leads us to overestimate their likelihood.
It is not clear that the phenomena I adduce do not address this latter
point as well. According to the literature cited by Hawthorne, people were
asked to estimate the frequency of various causes of death. Presumably, in
order to estimate the frequency of these events, they had to consider them.
They may even have imagined instances of these events. Nevertheless, as the
authors Hawthorne cites report, ‘In keeping with availability considerations,
overestimated causes of death were dramatic and sensational, whereas
10 See Hawthorne, ‘Replies’, Philosophical Issues (forthcoming).

© The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, 

 STEWART COHEN

underestimated causes tended to be unspectacular events, which claim one

victim at a time and are common in non-fatal form’ (Slovic et al., p. ; my
italics). So people will underestimate the likelihood of some events they have
been asked to consider and may even have imagined. Notice that this is
consistent with people assigning a higher probability to the risk after con-
sidering it than prior to considering it. The important point is that however
the actual consideration of the risk affects their probability assignment, they
end up underestimating the likelihood of the risk. Moreover, in many cases, all
it takes to put someone in a sceptical frame of mind with respect to whether
he knows, e.g., that he will be attending the convention is to ask him a
question like ‘Do you know you will not die from a stroke or car accident
prior to the convention?’. If so, then Hawthorne cannot argue that in
general, salience considerations lead us to deny knowledge to ourselves and
others by leading us to overestimate the likelihood of certain possibilities. Thus
Hawthorne’s attempt to use the availability heuristic to explain our sceptical
judgements fails. This means that SSI fails to give a satisfactory account of
the paradox.11

Arizona State University

11 I received helpful comments from Tom Blackson, John Devlin, Richard Feldman, Greg

Fitch, John Hawthorne, Jonathan Schaffer, Nico Silins, David Sosa, Jonathan Vogel and Tim
Williamson.

© The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, 