ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews evidence in experimental cognitive science for epistemic contextualism in linguistic behavior. It reviews studies that have found mixed experimental evidence regarding the motivation for epistemic contextualism in linguistic behavior. Epistemic contextualism is primarily motivated by empirical claims about the linguistic behavior of competent speakers in certain situations. Confirmation of empirical predictions does not always constitute good evidence to accept one theory over a rival theory. Some philosophers have argued that contextualism is preferable to rival theories because it provides theoretical solutions to skeptical problems like brain-in-the-vat (BIV) scenarios or the lottery paradox. The chapter concludes that despite over thirty years of theoretical developments in philosophy and five years of experimental testing in cognitive science, epistemic contextualism remains underdetermined by existing experimental evidence, yielding little motivation to accept it as an account of our actual linguistic practices.
