The Analysis Of Information Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy
The word “you” refers to a unique individual, relying on the conversational context by which it's uttered; specifically, it depends on the individual one is addressing. Other context-sensitive phrases are gradable adjectives like “tall”—how tall one thing must be to rely as “tall” is determined by the conversational context—and quantifiers l ike “everyone”—which folks rely as part of “everyone” depends on the conversational context. Contextualists about “knows” suppose that this verb belongs on the record of context-sensitive terms. A consequence of contextualism is that sentences containing “knows” might specific distinct propositions, relying on the conversational contexts during which they’re uttered. This function permits contextualists to offer an efficient, although not uncontroversial, response to skepticism. For a extra thorough overview of contextualism and its bearing on skepticism, see Rysiew 2011 or Ichikawa forthcoming-b. This is because their phonetic capability is...