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A philosophical framework holding that knowledge claims are context-dependent—that what counts as knowledge, what standards of justification apply, and what evidence is relevant vary with the context of the knower and the situation. Epistemological contextualism challenges the idea of universal, timeless epistemic standards. A claim that counts as knowledge in a scientific context may not in a courtroom; what counts as evidence in daily life may not in a laboratory. Contextualism doesn't make knowledge subjective; it recognizes that epistemic standards are appropriate to contexts and that asking for a single universal standard is itself a mistake. It demands that we attend to the contexts in which knowledge claims are made.
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