Pragmatic Encroachment:New Practical Turn In Knowledge Attribution Of Contemporary Epistemology

The development of western epistemology has basically been characterized by a kind of intellectualism since Socrates.Both traditional epistemological contextualism and classical invariantism hold that the factors affecting knowledge attribution is determined by truth-conductive factor,such as belief,evidence.This issue is only discussed in the purview of theoretical rationality.The rise of Pragmatic Encroachment is accompanied by contextualism of knowledge attribution.It holds that the practical environment is to some extent related to the truth of knowledge attribution.In the past ten years,many epistemologists have put forward the slogan of‘Pragmatic Encroachment',which advocates that pragmatic factors determine or‘encroach' the necessary conditions of knowledge,and thus begin to focus on the practical rationality of the cognitive.This paper attempts to propose a revised version of Pragmatic Encroachment in order to better solve the problem of knowledge attribution which shows that the pragmatism approach in contemporary epistemology has its rationality.First of all,it defines the meaning of Pragmatic Encroachment.According to the different standard for "encroach",it can be divided into two versions.The weak version only advocates that knowledge has a pragmatic condition,while the strong version holds that knowledge can vary with mere variation of pragmatic factors,so it can be regarded as a strong version.And all the arguments and refutations that followed us were based on the divergence on the question of ‘which version is a real Pragmatic Encroachment'.Secondly,it is necessary to put forward the pragmatic condition of epistemic justification to further elaborate the basic principle of Pragmatic Encroachment.Furthermore,we need to accept knowledge-action principle,knowledge-reason principle and knowledge-justification principle as fundamental theory so as to construct its analytical frameworkThirdly,the two versions of Pragmatic Encroachment suffer from the objection of rationalism and pragmatism respectively.For the former,we can defend it from two aspects: establishing the rationality of the thesis and proving the form of argument beestablished.For the latter,based on intuition and knowledge model construction,we can appeal to thought cases and experimental philosophy to defend it.Pragmatic factors influence knowledge attribution through the interactive relationship between knowledge and action-reason.Our principles ensure better warranted for action-reason.Given the influence of pragmatic factors in the case analysis,we can demonstrate that there is an inevitable link between knowledge attribution and Pragmatic Encroachment.Finally,this paper proposes to solve the knowledge attribution from a pragmatic,fallibilist and contextual perspective,and takes time-constraints-sensitivity and epistemic excellence as examples to provide abundant supporting evidence for knowledge analysis.In fact,I support a partial Pragmatic Encroachment rather than an entire one and it is not considered as a deviation from the traditional knowledge analysis path.Taking Pragmatic Encroachment as a breakthrough point to discuss the practical turn in knowledge attribution of contemporary epistemology will not only help pragmatism inject new vitality into the knowledge analysis path with justification as the core,but provide better guidance for the belief formation and the action choice.