IS TRUE BELIEF REALLY A FUNDAMENTAL EPISTEMIC VALUE?

Episteme ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-104
Author(s):  
Lance K. Aschliman
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
A Value ◽  
Fundamental Value ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Mere True Belief

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I question the orthodox position that true belief is a fundamental epistemic value. I begin by raising a particularly epistemic version of the so-called “value problem of knowledge” in order to set up the basic explanandum and to motivate some of the claims to follow. In the second section, I take aim at what I call “bottom-up approaches” to this value problem, views that attempt to explain the added epistemic value of knowledge in terms of its relation to a more fundamental value of true belief. The final section is a presentation of a value-theoretic alternative, one that explains the value problem presented in the first section while also doing justice to intuitions that may cause us to worry about bottom-up approaches. In short, knowledge and not mere true belief is a fundamental epistemic value as it is the constitutive goal of propositional inquiry.

Epistemic value

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Greco ◽  
Luis Pinto de Sa
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
Process Reliabilism ◽  
Mere True Belief

Epistemic value is a kind of value possessed by knowledge, and perhaps other epistemic goods such as justification and understanding. The problem of explaining the value of knowledge is perennial in philosophy, going back at least as far as Plato’s Meno. One formulation of the problem is to explain why and in what sense knowledge is valuable. Another version of the problem is to explain why and in what sense knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief or opinion. This article looks at various formulations of the value problem and various accounts of the value of knowledge in ancient and modern philosophy. The article then considers some contemporary discussions of the value problem, including the charge that reliabilist accounts cannot account for the value of knowledge over mere true belief. Various virtue-theoretic accounts of epistemic value are discussed as possible improvements over process reliabilism, and the epistemic value of understanding (as compared to knowledge) is considered.

Through Virtues to Knowledge

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 6-21
Author(s):  
Artur R. Karimov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Causal Connection ◽  
Epistemic Values ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
A Value ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Fundamental Value

By all accounts, virtue epistemology is making a value turn in contemporary analytic epistemology. In this article, this twist is explicated through the transformation of the understanding of epistemic values and the value of the epistemic. In the first sense, we are talking about how the view has changed on what determines the epistemic value of such categories as truth, knowledge, understanding, etc. In the second sense, we are talking about the value of our epistemic concepts (the value of the epistemic): what is true belief, knowledge, etc. for? It is shown how the causal link between our beliefs and intellectual virtues allows us to explain the nature and value of knowledge as a central category of epistemology. The author reveals the difference between the main types of virtue epistemology through the prism of two different approaches to the justification of values: value internalism and value externalism. Value externalism assumes that a state/motive/action gains value from something outside of a person's consciousness. In contrast, value internalism holds that the conditions that determine value are internal to consciousness. For reliabilism, the value of cognitive success lies in its causal connection with the reliable competences of the subject, for responsibilism – with virtuous motives of cognitive activity. Common to reliabilism and responsibilism is that they shift the focus from the value of an effect (truth) to its relationship with the value of a cause – an ability or excellent trait of intellectual character. The main approaches to substantiating the fundamental value of knowledge in virtue epistemology are analyzed. If for reliabilism the highest epistemic value is truth as cognitive achievement, then for responsibilism the value of epistemic categories is primarily in their moral significance – the achievement of a good life and happiness (eudaimonia). In conclusion, the problematic aspects of virtue epistemology are formulated and promising directions for its further development are shown.

How to Be an Epistemic Value Pluralist

Dialogue ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Matheson
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Value Pluralism ◽  
Epistemic Values ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
Justified Belief

ABSTRACT: In this paper I defend an epistemic value pluralism according to which true belief, justified belief, and knowledge are all fundamental epistemic values. After laying out reasons to reject epistemic value monism in its central forms, I present my pluralist alternative and show how it can adequately explain the greater epistemic value of knowledge over both true belief and justified belief, despite their fundamentality. I conclude with a sketch of how this pluralism might be generalized beyond the epistemic domain to the ethical.

Can Virtue Reliabilism Explain the Value of Knowledge?

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Berit Brogaard
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
Virtue Reliabilism ◽  
Mere True Belief

I IntroductionA fundamental intuition about knowledge is that it is more valuable than mere true belief. This intuition is pervasive. We have an almost universal desire to know and nearly no desire to believe the truth accidentally. However, it turns out to be extremely difficult to explain why knowledge is more valuable. Linda Zagzebski and others have called this the ‘value problem.’ They argue that the value problem is particularly difficult to unravel for generic reliabilism. According to generic reliabilism, knowledge is true belief produced by reliable belief-forming processes or faculties. But, the critics argue, ‘the reliability of the source of a belief cannot explain the [value difference] between knowledge and true belief.’ For reliably formed beliefs allegedly are valuable only insofar as they tend to be true.

scholarly journals Testimony and Value in the Theory of Knowledge

2015 ◽  
Vol 64 (159) ◽  
pp. 87-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leandro De Brasi
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
The State ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Novel Theory ◽  
Mere True Belief

<span>The approach set forth by Edward Craig in </span><span>Knowledge and the State of Nature</span><span> has a greater explanatory value than it has been granted to date, and his suitably modified project can resolve a number of puzzling issues regarding the value of knowledge. The paper argues that a novel theory that relates knowledge to testimony is capable of explaining why knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief and why it has a distinctive value. Significantly, this theory avoids the recently advanced revisionism regarding the focus of epistemological research.</span>

scholarly journals Conhecimento sem valor?

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-357
Author(s):  
Felipe Rocha L. Santos
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Good Theory ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
Final Value ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology ◽  
Mere True Belief

The value problem is the problem that arises from the following reasoning: if both the knowledge and mere true belief are equally useful, then for what reason knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief. Despite being formulated initially in Plato’s Meno dialogue, the value problem seems to have received little attention since. In contemporary epistemology, the value problem became central, requiring that any good theory of knowledge should be able to explain the value of knowledge in order to be a good theory of knowledge. Recently, new demands to the value of problem arise, demanding that it should be explained not only the reason why knowledge is more valuable, but also the reason why knowledge has final value. In this paper, two answers to the value problem that have been made recently are analyzed, namely the reliabilist solution and the virtue epistemology solution, and I will conclude that both solutions fail to explain the final value of knowledge.

Epistemic Value

2021 ◽  
pp. 133-158
Author(s):  
Christoph Kelp
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Mere True Belief

Chapter 5 turns to issues relating to epistemic value. It argues that activities with constitutive aims constitute value domains in which the constitutive aims are domain-relative for-their-own-sake values. Applying this to the case of the two forms of inquiry, we get the results that knowledge and understanding are valuable for their own sake in the domains constituted by these activities. Chapter 5 argues that the two forms of inquiry constitute the epistemic domain, thus shedding light on the boundaries and the structure of the epistemic domain. Finally, it is shown that the resulting view can solve a number of so-called value problems in epistemology, including the difficult tertiary value problem according to which knowledge must come out more valuable than mere true belief as a matter of kind.

The Value of Knowledge

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Foley
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
Mere True Belief

This chapter turns to the value of knowledge. If the primary aim of inquiry is the acquisition of true beliefs, where does this leave knowledge? Is not it more valuable than mere true belief? The chapter considers why this is so, and asks that if knowledge is really more valuable than true belief, should it rather than true belief be the primary aim of inquiry. On some accounts of knowledge, it is surprisingly difficult to deal with such questions. This chapter introduces an approach to address these issues, and goes on to explain that it is more important to have true beliefs about some issues than others, and that the standards of importance are not solely intellectual.

All swamping, no problem

Analysis ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Bjelde
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Standard Account ◽  
Fundamental Value ◽  
Better Than

Abstract The swamping problem is to explain why knowledge is epistemically better than true belief despite being no more true, if truth is the sole fundamental epistemic value. But Carter and Jarvis (2012) argue that the swamping thesis at the heart of the problem ‘is problematic whether or not one thinks that truth is the sole epistemic good’. I offer a counterexample to this claim, in the form of a theory of epistemic value for which the swamping thesis is not problematic: evidence monism. Then I argue that another kind of response to the swamping problem given by Sylvan 2018 does not escape the problem unscathed, because it is not only instrumentalism that gives rise to the swamping problem. The upshot is that, given a standard account of fundamental value, the swamping problem favours evidence monism over truth monism.

Increased Wall-to-Wall Curing Contraction in Thin Bonded Resin Layers

1989 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.J. Feilzer ◽  
A.J. De Gee ◽  
C.L. Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Polymerization Shrinkage ◽  
A Value ◽  
Set Up

Wall-to-wall (WTW) polymerization contraction of filled and unfilled chemically and photo-initiated resins was studied in relation to the WTW distance. In an experimental set-up, the resins were bonded to two opposing disks, and the axial (WTW) displacement resulting from the polymerization shrinkage was measured continuously. It was found that the WTW contraction increased with decreasing WTW distance and ultimately reached a value of almost three times the linear polymerization shrinkage.

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