contextualistas

Contextualistas, or contextualists, are scholars who defend contextualism—the view that the interpretation of statements and their truth conditions depend on contextual factors. Contextualists argue that linguistic meaning and epistemic judgments cannot be captured by context-invariant semantics; instead, factors such as the speaker's intentions, the audience, time, place, and the purposes of inquiry influence how statements are understood and evaluated.

In philosophy of language, contextualism maintains that the truth conditions of utterances vary with context. For example, the truth of “John is tall” can shift with different standards of comparison used in different contexts, making the sentence true in one context and not in another, without any change to the sentence itself.

In epistemology, contextualists claim that knowledge ascriptions are context-sensitive: whether “X knows that P” is true can depend on the assessment context and its standards for justification. In ordinary circumstances, everyday standards suffice; in skeptical or high-stakes contexts, stricter standards may apply.

Contextualism also appears in linguistics, law, and moral philosophy, where researchers examine how context shapes interpretation, justificatory standards, and ethical or legal evaluations. The approach emphasizes that meaning, justification, and assessment are not fixed across all situations but are influenced by the surrounding context.

Historically, contextualism emerged as a reaction against invariantist theories that assign fixed truth conditions or knowledge standards regardless of context. Today, contextualistas are involved in ongoing debates about the flexibility of meaning and knowledge and about how best to model context in semantics and epistemology.