Online Encyclopedia
Contextualism
The view in philosophy that any decision or action or utterance always takes place in a context and can only be understood within that context (cf indexicality). Therefore, any 'laws' which attempt to predict (for example) human behaviour will only ever be context specific. More controversially, the strong version of this thesis implies that even fundamental concepts like 'truth' might only be context specific. Some philosophers argue that the idea that this view might lead to relativism. Nevertheless, contextualist views are increasingly popular within philosophy.
Last updated: 10-24-2004 05:10:45