Does Contextualism Hinge on a Methodological Dispute?

This chapter provides an overview of some of the methodological debates surrounding contextualism and considers whether they are, in effect, based on an underlying methodological dispute. It considers the case-based motivations of contextualism and DeRose's "methodology of the straightforward". The chapter also considers the methodology that consists in modeling a contextualist semantics of "knows" on other context-sensitive linguistic phenomena. It explains the attempts to motivate contextualism by appeal to imagined conceptual genealogies or functional roles. The chapter discusses the challenges from experimental philosophy from a methodological perspective. It explores whether the debates over the case for contextualism are based on a methodological dispute. Epistemic contextualism is, roughly, the semantic thesis that the truth-conditional contribution of "knows" varies with variations in the context of utterance. The contextualism has since its earliest developments been surrounded by disputes of a methodological character.