Hawthorne against contextualist 'inappropriate'

John Hawthorne gives an argument that contextualists about knowledge face considerable pressure to be contextualists about terms that refer to things widely thought to be linked to knowledge, like 'is epsitemically permitted to assert' or 'relies inappropriately upon in one's practical reasoning'. I'm inclined to agree. He argues, however, that it's not at all plausible to treat words like 'inappropriately' as in the relevant way context-sensitive. Now actually, I'm sort of inclined to agree with that, too, although I'm not at all sure he's right. What I am pretty sure of is that his argument for this conclusion is pretty bad.

Suppose I'm in an everyday context and have pretty good evidence for the true p, such that 'I know that p' is true in my context. Then I go ahead and assert that p and rely on p in my practical reasoning. Now you come along in a more skeptical context where 'Jonathan knows that p' is false. Now you want to say, 'Jonathan ought not to have asserted p' and 'relying on p was inappropriate.' Hawthorne says that a contextualist treatment of this latter is implausible:

Assertability conditions and propriety conditions for practical reasoning just don't seem to vary in that way. The practical reasoning considered above is inappropriate, regardless of what an ascriber is attending to, and parallel remarks apply to the propriety of flat-out assertions of lottery propositions (in the setting envisaged). (90)

I can't read this as anything but a pretty blatant use/mention confusion. The relevant kind of contextualist can explain and predict that “the practical reasoning above is inappropriate, regardless of what an ascriber is attending to” is true. It’s exactly the same reason why, pace Lewis when he’s being sloppy, it’s not a result of contextualism about 'knows' that whether S knows p depends in part on what an ascriber is attending to. That, again, is just the same reason why it’s not true that whether you are female depends on whom I’m talking to. Your gender has nothing to do with me; neither, according to contextualism about ‘knows’, does whether you know p. And neither, according to the hypothetical view under consideration under which ‘inappropriate’ is context-sensitive, does whether your action is inappropriate depend on anything about me.

Knowledge norm of practical reasoning

In chapter 1 of Knowledge and Lotteries, John Hawthorne introduces the knowledge norm of practical reasoning: "At a rough first pass, one ought only to use that which one knows as a premise in one's deliberations." (p.30) He then immediately qualifies this principle in two ways with this footnote (fn.77):

Qualification 1: "In a situation where I have no clue what is going on, I may take certain things for granted in order to prevent paralysis, especially when I need to act quickly."

Qualification 2: "If I am in a situation where the difference between 'Probably p' and 'p' is irrelevant to the case at hand, I may use 'p' as a basis on which to act even though I only know that probably p."

I don't see why either of these are true in a sense that demands qualification of the rough first pass given above. With regard to qualification 1, let's suppose I'm in a situation where I have no clue what is going on. This isn't literally plausible, of course; in any situation in which my actions are rationally evaluable, I'll have some clue what's going on. So I suppose this must be understood as a kind of exaggeration. Perhaps, for instance, I suddenly find myself being charged at by a rhinoceros, and have no idea how I got there. It's clear, however, that if I just stand pat I will be very shortly gored to death. There's a button nearby with no label; I don't really have any clue what it is or what it does. But it may well be rational to press it, since that's the only real option I have and it's clear that if I do nothing, I will die. Maybe the button will open a trap door for rhino or for me—who knows? It's worth a try.

The thing is, all the premises that I'm using, if I so reason, are things I know. I know that there's a rhino; I know that I'll die if I do nothing; I know that there's a button; I know that maybe if I press the button I'll survive. So I don't see what pressure cases in which I have to act under extreme uncertainty put on the rough principle stated.

Similarly, if I'm in a situation where the difference between 'probably p' and 'p' is irrelevant to the case at hand, why think that I'm using 'p' as a basis to act? We've just stipulated that 'probably p' will do just as well—why not say I'm acting on that known proposition?

I don't really see what Hawthorne is up to in this footnote. (I suspect these issues may be developed in the later paper with Jason Stanley -- I read that a couple of years ago, but need to have another look.)