Qin Wang

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, School of Humanities and Social Science, Faculty Member

Hong Kong Baptist University, Associate Degree, Lecturer

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Lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen)
Supervisors: Max Deutsch and Patrick Hawley

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Leo Tarasov

The University of Manchester

Zvonimir Čuljak

University of Zagreb

Gerhard Preyer

Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main

洁 Jie 高 Gao

Zhejiang University

Geoff Pynn

Northern Illinois University

Peter Baumann

Swarthmore College

Michael Hannon

University of Nottingham

David Coss

Indiana University Kokomo

Dan Zeman

Universidade do Porto

Nat Hansen

University of Reading

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Papers by Qin Wang

Contextualism and Disagreement

Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, Jan 1, 2011

This paper argues that attributor contextualism is in conflict with ordinary language methodology... more This paper argues that attributor contextualism is in conflict with ordinary language methodology. Attributor contextualism has at its center the thesis that, the truth-values of knowledge attributions vary with the conversational (speaker) contexts. This thesis entails that if two speakers in similar contexts make conflicting knowledge attributions, at least one of these attributions is false. One important argument for attributor contextualism depends on ordinary language methodology, a methodology that places great trust in ordinary speakers and prevents judging a substantial group of ordinary speakers' simple knowledge attributions false. I argue that there is strong empirical evidence that ordinary speakers do extensively disagree in similar contexts. My conclusion is that one cannot coherently hold the attributor contextualist thesis and use ordinary language methodology, because the lesson we learn from the empirical evidence is that using the methodology would prove the thesis false. Since prominent attributor contextualists explicitly adopt the methodology, and that the methodology is what distinguishes attributor contextualism from its main rival, invariantism, the conflict with the methodology is a problem for attributor contextualism.

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