Keith DeRose's (1992, 2009, 2011) epistemic contextualism maintains that when S makes a knowledge attribution, the truth conditions of the statement "S knows that P" vary in a specific way depending on the context of S's assertion. This "specific way" is jointly determined by both epistemic and practical factors. In particular, the claim that stakes (as a practical factor) affect knowledge attributions has been challenged by experimental philosophy, generating a substantial body of literature (among others, Beaman & Francis 2023; Buckwalter 2021; Dinges & Zakkou 2020; Francis, Beaman & Hansen 2019; Pinillos 2012, 2024; Porter et al. 2024; Rose et al. 2019; Shurakov 2025; Wu 2023). However, I argue that when experimental philosophy tests these claims, it fails to clearly distinguish between the interpretations of objective knowledge and knowledge attributions under different theoretical frameworks. Consequently, existing experimental results fail to provide an objective evaluation of DeRose's contextualism. Therefore, this paper will argue that, due to the failure to clearly distinguish between knowledge attributions and objective knowledge, the empirical findings of experimental philosophy cannot provide an objective assessment of DeRose's contextualism.
