Pragmatics in Epistemology: Analyzing Pragmatic Encroachment vs. Epistemic Purism

Epistemological orthodoxy is a purist one in the sense that it permits only truth-related factors to be relevant to whether or not true belief amounts to knowledge. Contrary to this orthodoxy, ‘Pragmatic Encroachment’ argues that embracing fallibilism we must concede that in addition to truth-related factors, there are pragmatic conditions on knowledge mainly in what is at stake for us in our practical situation. Independent of fallibilism there is also a positive case for ‘Pragmatic Encroachment’ to be made namely a principled argument for a pragmatist link between knowledge and action (KJ). What you know is warranted enough to justify you in both action and belief. KJ is defended on the basis of two premises on reasons, and when combined with fallibilism, it entails the denial of purism. This may seem counterintuitive; thus, theories like epistemic contextualism and subject-sensitive invariantism have tried to combine purism and the intuitions concerning pragmatic encroachment. This endeavor, as we shall show, is without success. Critical reflections on pragmatic encroachment are based for the most part on its relation with belief, including certain conceptions of outright belief and degrees of confidences or credences in graded belief. In contrast to what these reflections aim at, pragmatic encroachment is not reducible to a pragmatic account of belief. Bearing in mind above considerations, it may turn out that the denial of purism is not as much counterintuitive at it may seem.