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.

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.

The Special Value of Experience

2021 ◽  
pp. 130-168
Author(s):  
Chris Ranalli
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Special Value ◽  
Better Than

Why think that conscious experience of reality is any more epistemically valuable than testimony? I argue that conscious experience of reality is epistemically valuable because it provides cognitive contact with reality. Cognitive contact with reality is a goal of experiential inquiry which does not reduce to the goal of getting true beliefs or propositional knowledge. Such inquiry has awareness of the truth-makers of one’s true beliefs as its proper goal. As such, one reason why conscious experience of reality is more epistemically valuable than testimony about reality is that it gives us more epistemic goods than only true belief or propositional knowledge. I defend this view from two rival accounts. First, that while conscious experience of reality has greater value than testimony, its value is only eudaimonic. Second, that while it has greater epistemic value than testimony, this value is not distinctive: for it only promotes truth better than testimony.

scholarly journals Epistemic Value Theory and Social Epistemology

Episteme ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Fallis
Keyword(s):  
Social Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Social World ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Epistemic Values ◽  
Alvin Goldman ◽  
Real People ◽  
Epistemic Value Theory ◽  
Better Than

ABSTRACTIn order to guide the decisions of real people who want to bring about good epistemic outcomes for themselves and others, we need to understand our epistemic values. In Knowledge in a Social World, Alvin Goldman has proposed an epistemic value theory that allows us to say whether one outcome is epistemically better than another. However, it has been suggested that Goldman's theory is not really an epistemic value theory at all because whether one outcome is epistemically better than another partly depends on our non-epistemic interests. In this paper, I argue that an epistemic value theory that serves the purposes of social epistemology must incorporate non-epistemic interests in much the way that Goldman's theory does. In fact, I argue that Goldman's theory does not go far enough in this direction. In particular, the epistemic value of having a particular true belief should actually be weighted by how interested we are in the topic.

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.

scholarly journals Accuracy and epistemic conservatism

Analysis ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 658-669 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Steinberger
Keyword(s):  
Utility Theory ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Methodological Principle ◽  
Epistemic Risk ◽  
Epistemic Utility ◽  
Epistemic Conservatism

Abstract Epistemic utility theory (EUT) is generally coupled with veritism. Veritism is the view that truth is the sole fundamental epistemic value. Veritism, when paired with EUT, entails a methodological commitment: norms of epistemic rationality are justified only if they can be derived from considerations of accuracy alone. According to EUT, then, believing truly has epistemic value, while believing falsely has epistemic disvalue. This raises the question as to how the rational believer should balance the prospect of true belief against the risk of error. A strong intuitive case can be made for a kind of epistemic conservatism – that we should disvalue error more than we value true belief. I argue that none of the ways in which advocates of veritist EUT have sought to motivate conservatism can be squared with their methodological commitments. Short of any such justification, they must therefore either abandon their most central methodological principle or else adopt a permissive line with respect to epistemic risk.

Towards a Global Hedonism

2021 ◽  
pp. 41-64
Author(s):  
Roger Crisp
Keyword(s):  
Lower Order ◽  
General Position ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Basic Category ◽  
Absolute Value ◽  
The World ◽  
Fundamental Value

This chapter argues that, of all alleged values of any kind, only pleasure is of ultimate axiological significance. It begins with the suggestion that absolute value—the value some item has through possessing a lower-order evaluative property that makes the world in which it is instantiated good—is foundational. Pleasantness is characterized as a basic category of phenomenal consciousness, and the charge of reductionism against hedonism based on this conception is refuted. Defences of hedonism against various forms of objection that it is counter-intuitive are modelled on an analogy with defences of consequentialism, and the general position is then applied to moral, aesthetic, and epistemic value. It is claimed that those attracted by the parsimony and elegance of welfarism (the view that the fundamental value is well-being) might find these qualities within hedonism in particular.

The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good

2020 ◽  
pp. 152-167
Author(s):  
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Mere True Belief ◽  
Better Than

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

2020 ◽  
pp. 141-151
Author(s):  
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Process Reliabilism ◽  
Proper Functionalism ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mere True Belief ◽  
Better Than

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.

Pritchard’s Case for Veritism

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 46-53
Author(s):  
John Greco ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Constitutive Relation ◽  
Central Point ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Instrumental Value ◽  
Duncan Pritchard ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Fundamental Value ◽  
In Virtue Of

In his “In Defense of Veritism”, Duncan Pritchard reconsiders the case for epistemic value truth monism, or the thesis that truth is the sole fundamental epistemic good. I begin by clarifying Pritchard’s thesis, and then turn to an evaluation of Pritchard’s defense. By way of clarification, Pritchard understands “fundamental” value to be non-instrumental value. Accordingly, Pritchard’s veritism turns out to be the thesis that truth is the sole epistemic good with non-instrumental epistemic value, all other epistemic goods being valuable in virtue of their instrumental relation to truth. By way of evaluation, I argue that the case for veritism has not been made. The central point is this: Even if all epistemic value involves some or other relation to the truth, there are multiple relations to truth in addition to instrumental relations. Moreover, some of these seem capable of grounding further, fundamental (i.e., non-instrumental) epistemic goods. For example, knowledge has a constitutive relation to truth, and knowledge seems to be epistemically valuable for its own sake. Likewise, justified belief has an intentional relation to truth, and justified belief seems to be epistemically valuable for its own sake. Finally, I argue that, contra Pritchard, this central point seems confirmed rather than undermined by looking to the notion of an intellectually virtuous inquirer. Plausibly, a virtuous inquirer values such goods as justified belief and knowledge for their own sake qua epistemic goods, and not merely for their instrumental value for attaining truth.

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.

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