John Hawthorne (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles John Hawthorne is the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford University, though he continues to teach on a visiting basis at Princeton University. He is primarily known for his work in metaphysics and epistemology; his 2006 collection Metaphysical Essays offers original treatments of fundamental topics in philosophy, including identity, ontology, vagueness, and causation. In his book Knowledge and Lotteries, Hawthorne defends a view in epistemology according to which the presence of knowledge is dependent on the subject's interests. (He terms the view 'Subject- Sensitive Invariantism'). Unlike contextualism, Hawthorne's view does not require that the meaning of the word "know" changes from one context of ascription to another. His view is thus a variety of invariantism. However, whether a subject has knowledge depends to a surprising extent on features of the subject's context, including practical concerns. This position can be classed as a form of pragmatism (Hawthorne, 2004: p. 180). See Jason Stanley for a similar view.