Philosophy: Lottery Paradox, Contextualism, and the Assertion Constraint
The lottery paradox is said to suggest that we don’t know much about the external world. Contextualists claim to have a solution for its resulting contradiction. So, our claim to knowledge of the external world re-enters the picture. Even though contextualism offers a promising solution, there are a series of objections that put this view under contention. The assertion constraint is commonly used as one of these objections to contextualism.
The thesis of this paper argues that the assertion constraint does not invalidate the contextualist solution for the lottery paradox. As a result, contextualists regain claim to external world knowledge by fending off the issues created by lottery type scenarios.
Although the lottery paradox comes in many different forms, all of them follow roughly the same structure. Suppose there is a lottery with 1000 tickets. Exactly one ticket wins.
The following premises follow:
- Some ticket will win (Exactly one).
- Suppose something needs a probability over 99% to be possible (Most arbitrary numbers would work).
- Ticket 1 will not win (from 2)
- Ticket 2 will not win (from 2)
- So, Ticket n + 1 will not win. (2, 3, and 4)
- Premises 1 and 5 contradict each other.
Premise 6 underlines that two of the prima facie plausible judgments do not cohere. Unless the lottery paradox resists all objections, our claim to confident knowledge loses ground. After all, the paradox implies that your partial knowledge can never be absolute knowledge, even if you have every single piece. If contextualism fails, we don’t know much about the external world because many instances of knowledge are not complete.
Contextualism introduces the ability to change knowledge ascriptions depending on the situation. Under this view, context influences the way in which knowledge is evaluated. For example, Allen Iverson is unanimously considered a tall person compared to the rest of the human population. On the other hand, he is considered small compared to other NBA players. We feel the ideas were adequately expressed even though they clearly disagree with each other. The contextualist view says these different knowledge ascriptions can be simultaneously true as long as they are uttered in appropriate contexts.
What separates contextualism from other solutions to the lottery paradox? Contextualism also has the advantages of accommodating the Moorean constraint, the lottery constraint, and single-premise closure.
The assertion constraint, a rule stating that one should only assert what one knows, attacks the contingent attributes of contextualism. Certain contexts require agents who only have access to low levels of knowledge. For example, gamblers never claim that they know they have a winning ticket. According to contextualism, this is because the question itself forces the conversation to enter a lottery context. As conditions for knowledge are high in such a contexts (presumably because statistics and money are involved), people don’t claim any knowledge. Conversely, if we casually discuss the weather, a situation where stakes are low, we can comfortably claim knowledge. The assertion constraint takes issue with these types of fringe case knowledge requirements that contextualism allows. If the assertion constraint is true, then we cannot assert to have knowledge in extreme cases.
Contextualists have the option to propose a different type of knowledge-assertion relationship. So, one should only assert what one knows depending on the context sensitive requirements of knowledge under which the utterance is made. Consequently, extreme requirements for knowledge no longer cause disagreement because the conditions for assertions are calibrated.
Furthermore, one should wonder why the assertion constraint is of any importance at all? After all, it is a normative notion which seems completely unrelated to discussions about knowledge. Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to base normative principles on our knowledge? Currently the assertion principle seems to put the cart before the horse.
Overall, it seems like the assertion constraint does not dramatically hinder the contextualist solution to the lottery paradox. Essentially, contextualism wins out over the assertion constraint. The assertion constraint does not have enough pull on the contextualist solution. As a result, the lottery paradox remains diffused by contextualism. This is not meant to be taken as an admittance that we can have absolute knowledge of the external world. Rather, it shows that the problem the lottery paradox poses our knowledge of the external world is diffused by contextualism despite assertion constraint objections.
Sources: Hawthorne, John. Knowledge and Lotteries. Oxford: Clarendon, 2004. Print.
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