Knowledge Ascription & Practical Rationality

Epistemologists have been searching for a theory of knowledge ascription in order to explain various phenomena of ordinary knowledge ascription and to make most of our knowledge ascriptions true.Though there was no consensus on the semantic meaning of 'S knows p',traditional epistemologists have all agreed that the semantic contents expressed by the utterances of knowledge ascription are invariant.Moreover,the only thing that makes S know p is S' epistemic position with respect to p where the notion'epistemic position' refers to the position that S stands on any truth-conducive dimension with respect to p.These standpoints conform to the traditional understanding of knowledge.However,in virtue of lottery puzzle skeptics attempt to show that only when the epistemic probability of losing the lottery reaches 1,we can know the lottery proposition.Therefore nearly all of our ordinary knowledge ascriptions are false.Contextualism has emerged in order to resist the skeptical attack on ordinary knowledge.Contextualism is the semantic thesis that knowledge ascriptions,instances of "S knows p" are context-sensitive in a distinctive epistemic way.Contextualists have distinguished the ordinary context from the skeptical context.Contextualists concedes that we fail to reach the stringent standard of knowledge ascription in skeptical context.But this doesn't impede us standing in the relation expressed by the verb "know" in the ordinary context.Nonetheless,the contextualist thesis about knowledge ascriptions is not plausible by appeal to an analogy to other uncontroversial context-sensitive expressions.In addition,neither of the two candidates of the mechanism for context-shift,sailence and practical environment,can fully explain the phenomena of ordinary knowledge ascription.Given this predicament,the study of knowledge ascription has averted to factors outside the epistemic domain.Some epistemologists have extended the factors that make a true belief into knowledge to those that fall within the purview of practical rationality.Anti-intellectualism is the thesis that the truth-value of a knowledge ascription can vary with the change of subject's practical environment.This is due to a connection between knowledge and action,which seems to constitute one of the most fundamental roles for knowledge.The explanation that the anti-intellectualists give for the phenomena of knowledge ascription in terms of practical rationality is more consistent with our intuitions and common sense than that of contextualists.The anti-intellectualists disagree on what kind of connection between knowledge and action.Hawthorne and Stanley have argued that S knows that p if and only if it is appropriate for S to use p as a reason for a p-related action.Fantl and McGrath have proposed that knowledge is warranted enough to be a justifying reason for S to any pragmatic activity including believing and acting because of the pragmatic encroachment on justification.Based on our intuitions on rational actions,the connection raised by Fantl and McGrath is more plausible than the one raised by Hawthorne and Stanley.Also,the pragmatic definition they gave to fallibilism has made their theory even more promising.However,none of these has radically changed the value of knowledge into a practical one.