Clarifying Pragmatic Encroachment: A Reply to Charity Anderson and John Hawthorne on Knowledge, Practical Adequacy, and Stakes

This chapter addresses concerns that pragmatic encroachers are committed to problematic knowledge variance. It first replies to Charity Anderson and John Hawthorne’s new putative problem cases, which purport to show that pragmatic encroachment is committed to problematic variations in knowledge depending on what choices are available to the potential knower. It argues that the new cases do not provide any new reasons to be concerned about the pragmatic encroacher’s commitment to knowledge-variance. The chapter further argues that concerns about knowledge-variance are not limited to the pragmatic encroacher, but come up for traditional purist invariantism as well.