Christoph Kelp

Bank Cases and the Contextualism/Invariantism Debate
Abstract. This paper raises four worries for attributor contextualist theories of knowledge attributions (AC), or to be more precise, to versions of AC that are motivated by the likes of the so-called “Bank cases”. The first concerns the plausibility of the underlying methodological thesis, the second is that AC itself fails to live up to the demands of this methodology, the third uses the second to suggest that invariantism offers more unified theory than AC and so may turn out to be preferable on theoretical grounds, while, according to the fourth, invariantism but not contextualism can accommodate a plausible version of the methodological thesis.

Knowledge: The Safe-Apt View
Abstract. According to virtue epistemology, knowledge involves cognitive success that is due to cognitive competence. This paper explores the prospects of a virtue theory of knowledge that, so far, has no takers in the literature. It combines features from a couple of different virtue theories: like Pritchard’s (2010; Forthcoming) view, it qualifies as a what I call an “impure” version of virtue epistemology, according to which the competence condition is supplemented by an additional (safety) condition; like Sosa’s (2007; Forthcoming) view, it construes the because relation at issue in the competence condition in terms of competence manifestation. I argue that this virtue epistemology can steer clear of a number of old and new problems that arise for its rivals on both sides and therefore deserves at the very least to be taken seriously.

What’s So Good about Knowledge
Abstract. This paper offers a novel account of the value of knowledge. The account is novel insofar as it advocates a shift in focus from the value of individual items of knowledge to the value of the commodity of knowledge. It is argued that the commodity of knowledge is valuable in at least two ways: (i) in a wide range of areas, knowledge is our way of being in cognitive contact with the world and (ii) for agents the good life is a life rich enough in knowledge.

Towards A Knowledge-Based Account of Understanding
Abstract. Recent epistemology has witnessed a surge of interest in the nature of understanding. One crucial question here is whether understanding is, in some sense to be specified, factive. Among defenders of the factivity of understanding, there is a controversy over whether understanding can be analysed in terms of knowledge. The aim of this paper is to provide a novel knowledge-based account of understanding and to argue that this account is preferable at least to the most prominent non-knowledge based accounts of understanding in recent literature.