Contextualism, preface paradox and skeptical paradox

Abstract

Although controversial, epistemic contextualism claims to offer the best explanation for some phenomena analyzed in contemporary epistemology, for example, it claims to solve or explain the appeal of certain paradoxes while keeping the truth of our ordinary knowledge attributions. As argued by contextualists, the advantage that they offer to explain the appeal of certain paradoxes lies in the fact that no logical principles need to be rejected – such as the principle of deductive closure. The preface paradox – the apparent logical inconsistency that occurs when an author states in the preface of his book that, although he believes each claim he has made in the book is true, it is likely that the book contains at least one error – doesn't seem to have been explored enough by contextualists. In what follows we intend to suggest a version of the preface paradox by proposing an argument analogous to the argument that contextualists offer to explain the skeptical paradox. Therefore I intend to offer, through a contextualist analysis, an explanation for the preface paradox. Whether a contextualist response to this paradox is adequate or not will be a matter of dispute and doesn't fit in our discussion here. My goal is just to suggest that a similar analysis applied by the contextualist to solve the skeptical paradox can be constructed to explain the preface paradox.