Aristotle on Knowledge

This chapter considers Aristotle’s epistemology, focusing on issues explored in Part I. It asks how he conceives of epistêmê in the Posterior Analytics. In particular, is it knowledge and, if so, is it knowledge as such or just a kind of knowledge? In considering this question, the chapter compares Aristotle’s account of epistêmê in the Posterior Analytics with Plato’s account of it in the Meno. It argues that, in defining epistêmê, Aristotle is defining knowledge—but just one kind of knowledge, not knowledge as such. Epistêmê counts as knowledge because it is a truth-entailing cognitive condition that is appropriately cognitively superior to mere true belief. But it isn’t knowledge as such, because Aristotle recognizes other cognitive conditions that also fall under the concept of knowledge but that do not count as epistêmê as it is defined in 1.2

Epistemic Value

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 Search for the Source of Epistemic Good

To explain why knowledge is better than mere true belief is remarkably difficultI call this Zagzebski calls this “the value problem,” and most forms of reliabilism cannot handle it. This chapter argues that the value problem is more general than a problem for reliabilism, infecting a host of different theories, including some that are internalist. The chapter aims to answer two questions: (1) What makes knowing p better than merely truly believing p? and (2) What makes some instances of knowing good enough to make the investigation of knowledge worthy of so much attention? The answer involves the connection between the good of believing truths of certain kinds and a good life. The kind of value that makes knowledge a fitting object of extensive philosophical inquiry is not independent of moral value and the wider values of a good life.

From Reliabilism to Virtue Epistemology

This chapter is Zagzebski’s first paper that discusses “the value problem,” or the problem that an account of knowledge must identify what makes knowledge better than mere true belief. One of the problems with reliabilism is that it does not explain what makes the good of knowledge greater than the good of true belief. In Virtues of the Mind she gave this objection only to process reliabilism. In this chapter she develops the objection in more detail, and argues that the problem pushes first in the direction of three offspring of process reliabilism—faculty reliabilism, proper functionalism, and agent reliabilism, and she then argues that an account of knowledge based on virtuous motives grounded in the motive for truth can solve the value problem.

Intellectual Motivation and the Good of Truth

This chapter is one of Zagzebski’s papers on the problem of what makes knowledge more valuable than mere true belief, otherwise known as the value problem. I distinguish four ways a belief can possess value by its relation to the good of truth: (i) a belief can have value because truth is its consequence; (ii) a belief can have teleological value in the Aristotelian sense if truth is a necessary component of a good natural end; (iii) a belief can be valuable in that truth is its aim; and (iv) a belief can be good in virtue of arising from a good motive—namely, valuing truth or disvaluing falsehood. She argues that the fourth way is superior to the first three in explaining what makes knowledge better than mere true belief.

Conhecimento sem valor?

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

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.

Knowledge, concept of

The branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and extent of human knowledge is called epistemology (from the Greek epistēmē meaning knowledge, and logos meaning theory). Knowledge seems to come in many varieties: we know people, places and things; we know how to perform tasks; we know facts. Factual knowledge has been the central focus of epistemology. We can know a fact only if we have a true belief about it. However, since only some true beliefs are knowledge (consider, for example, a lucky guess), the central question asked by epistemologists is ‘What converts mere true belief into knowledge?’. There are many, and often conflicting, answers to this question. The primary traditional answer has been that our true beliefs must be based upon sufficiently good reasons in order to be certifiable as knowledge. Foundationalists have held that the structure of reasons is such that our reasons ultimately rest upon basic reasons that have no further reasons supporting them. Coherentists have argued that there are no foundational reasons. Rather, they argue that our beliefs are mutually supporting. In addition to the constraints upon the overall structure of reasons, epistemologists have proposed various general principles governing reasons. For example, it seems that if my reasons are adequate to affirm some fact, those reasons should be adequate to eliminate other incompatible hypotheses. This initially plausible principle appears to lead directly to some deep puzzles and, perhaps, even to scepticism. Indeed, many of the principles that seem initially plausible lead to various unexpected and unwelcome conclusions. Alternatives to the primary traditional answer to the central epistemic question have been developed, in part because of the supposed failures of traditional epistemology. These alternative views claim that it is something other than good reasons which distinguishes (mere) true beliefs from knowledge. Reliabilists claim that a true belief produced by a sufficiently reliable process is knowledge. Good reasoning is but one of the many ways in which beliefs can be reliably produced. The issue of whether the objections to traditional epistemology are valid or whether the proposed substitutes are better remains unresolved.

IS TRUE BELIEF REALLY A FUNDAMENTAL EPISTEMIC VALUE?

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.

On Virtue, Credit and Safety

According to robust virtue epistemology, the difference between knowledge and mere true belief is that in cases of knowledge, the subject’s cognitive success is attributable to her cognitive agency. But what does it take for a subject’s cognitive success to be attributable to her cognitive agency? A promising answer is that the subject’s cognitive abilities have to contribute to the safety of her epistemic standing with respect to her inquiry, in order for her cognitive success to be attributable to her cognitive agency. Call this idea the contribution thesis. The author will argue that the contribution thesis follows naturally from virtue epistemological accounts of knowledge, and that it is precisely the contribution thesis that allows the virtue epistemologist to deal with a wide variety of objections. Nevertheless, the principal aim of this paper is to argue that virtue epistemological theories of knowledge that are committed to the contribution thesis are ultimately untenable. There are cases of knowledge where the subject’s cognitive abilities do not improve the safety of the subject’s belief.