In Defense of Indexicalism:Comments on Davis

Wayne Davis (2004) argues against the thesis that knowledge claims are indexical, and he presents an alternative account of the contextual variability of our use of “S knows p”. In this commentary I focus on the following three points. First, I want to supplement Davis’s considerations about the inability of indexicalism to deal with “skeptical paradoxes” by considering what the consequence would be if the indexicalist’s explanation of these paradoxes were satisfactory. Second, I am going to take a brief look at Davis’s alternative theory. Third, in the main part of my commentary I try to show that indexicalism may be true in spite of the linguistic evidence Davis presents against it.