The Gettier problem and context

The relationship between contextualism and Gettier cases is controversial. Yet, David Lewis, in his influential “Elusive Knowledge”, links his contextualist thoughts to the discussion of some standard Gettier cases. This chapter explores the question whether contextualism can provide a satisfactory account of Gettier scenarios. We compare a contextualist account of lottery cases and of fake-barn cases (which Lewis seems to regard as very close to Gettier examples) with a contextualist account of standard Gettier problems. We conclude that contextualism may at best provide a partial reconstruction and explanation of the problem underlying Gettier scenarios.