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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reliabilist Virtue Epistemology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Greco ◽  
Jonathan Reibsamen
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Naturalized Epistemology ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
Intellectual Abilities ◽  
Virtue Reliabilism ◽  
Virtue Responsibilism ◽  
The Gettier Problem

According to reliabilist virtue epistemology, or virtue reliabilism, knowledge is true belief that is produced by intellectual excellence (or virtue), where intellectual excellence is understood in terms of reliable, truth-directed cognitive dispositions. This chapter explains why virtue reliabilism is a form of epistemological externalism, is a moderately naturalized epistemology, and is distinct from virtue responsibilism. It explains virtue reliabilism’s answers to various forms of skepticism, its solution to the Gettier Problem, and its explanation of the value of knowledge. The chapter also describes several varieties of contemporary virtue reliabilism. Finally, it offers replies to two recently prominent objections to virtue reliabilism: that it is committed to an untenable epistemological individualism, and that there are empirical reasons to doubt whether people generally have the kinds of intellectual abilities that virtue reliabilism requires for knowledge.

scholarly journals ARE INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES TRUTH-RELEVANT?

Episteme ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-392
Author(s):  
Blake Roeber
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Narrow Sense ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Ernest Sosa ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
Wide Range

ABSTRACTAccording to attributor virtue epistemology (the view defended by Ernest Sosa, John Greco, and others), S knows that p only if her true belief that p is attributable to some intellectual virtue, competence, or ability that she possesses. Attributor virtue epistemology captures a wide range of our intuitions about the nature and value of knowledge, and it has many able defenders. Unfortunately, it has an unrecognized consequence that many epistemologists will think is sufficient for rejecting it: namely, it makes knowledge depend on factors that aren't truth-relevant, even in the broadest sense of this term, and it also makes knowledge depend in counterintuitive ways on factors that are truth-relevant in the more common narrow sense of this term. As I show in this paper, the primary objection to interest-relative views in the pragmatic encroachment debate can be raised even more effectively against attributor virtue epistemology.

The Value of Knowledge and the Gettier Game

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Foley
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Additional Advantage ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Way Of Thinking

Recent literature on the nature of knowledge is filled with stories in which a subject has a true belief but intuitively seems not to have knowledge. All these stories can be understood in the same way. They are all ones in which the subject is ignorant of something important about the situation, and this ignorance can be used to explain why the subject lacks knowledge. Knowledge is a matter of having accurate and comprehensive enough information, where the test of enough is negative. One cannot lack important true beliefs. This way of thinking about knowledge has the additional advantage of dissolving puzzles about the value of knowledge and true belief, puzzles that other accounts of knowledge find it surprisingly difficult to handle.

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.

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