ABSTRACT
One of the initial motivations for epistemological contextualism was that the appropriateness of self-ascriptions of knowledge seemed to depend, in some circumstances, on factors that were traditionally thought to be epistemologically irrelevant. So whether our hero S was prepared to say, “I know that p”, would depend not just on how strong S’s evidence for p was, or how strongly she believed it, but on factors such as how much it mattered whether p was true, or what alternatives to p were salient in her thought or talk.
