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Can Virtue Reliabilism Explain the Value of Knowledge?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Berit Brogaard
Berit Brogaard*
Affiliation:
University of Missouri-St. Louis, St. Louis, MO63121, USA
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Extract

I Introduction

A 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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , September 2006 , pp. 335 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2006

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References

1 See e.g. M.R. Depaul, ‘Is Truth Our Epistemic End?’ (Pacific Division APA, 1989); L. Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996), 300-2; ‘The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good,’ Metaphilosopky 34 (2003): 12-28; W. Jones, ‘Why Do We Value Knowledge?’ American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (1997): 423-40; J. Kvanvig, ‘Why Should Inquiring Minds Want to Know?’ TheMonist 81 (1998): 426-51; The Value of Knowledge and thePursuit of Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003); and W.D. Riggs, ‘Reliability and the Value of Knowledge,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (2002): 79-96

2 Zagzebski, ‘The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good/ 12-13

3 See e.g. John Greco, ‘Virtues in Epistemology,’ in The Oxford Handbook ofEpistemology, P.K. Moser, ed. (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press 2002), 311; W.D. Riggs, ‘Reliability and the Value of Knowledge'; L. Zagzebski, ‘The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good'; and J. Kvanvig, The Value of Knowledge.

4 ‘The Search for the Source of Epistemic Good,’ 13.

5 See Philip Percival, ‘The Pursuit of Epistemic Good,’ Metaphilosophy 34 (2003): 38.

6 ‘The Search for the Source of the Epistemic Good,’ 14-15.

7 Ibid.

8 W.D. Riggs, ‘Reliability and the Value of Knowledge,’ 95

9 W.D. Riggs, ‘Reliability and the Value of Knowledge,’ 95.

10 More cautiously: two things that have the same intrinsic properties have the same amount of instrumental value in the same sort of environment.

11 Wlodek Rabinowicz and Toni Roennow-Rasmussen, ‘A Distinction in Value: Intrinsic and for its own sake,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100, part 1 (1999): 33-49; and ‘Tropic of Value,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (2003): 389-403

12 P. Percival, ‘The Pursuit of Epistemic Good,’ 33

13 J. Greco, ‘Agent Reliabilism,’ Philosophical Perspectives 13 (1999): 273

14 J. Greco, ‘Agent Reliabilism,’ 286

15 See e.g. S. Luper, ‘The Epistemic Predicament: Knowledge, Nozickian Tracking, and Skepticism,’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (1984): 26-60; S. Luper, ‘The Causal Indicator Analysis of Knowledge,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (1987): 563-87; R.M. Sainsbury, ‘Easy Possibilities,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (1997): 907, and E. Sosa, ‘How to Defeat Opposition to Moore,’ Philosophical Perspectives 13 (1999): 141-52.

16 D. Lewis, ‘Veridical Hallucinations and Prosthetic Vision,’ in Perceptual Knowledge, J. Dancy, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1988), 85

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 Zagzebski is an exception. She argues that the acquisition and use of our intellectual virtues are always under our voluntary control.

20 J. Greco, ‘Agent Reliabilism,’ 287

21 This example is due, near enough, to Mark Sainsbury. See R.M. Sainsbury, ‘Easy Possibilities,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (1997): 911. Sainsbury uses this example to show that features of our situation (so-called hidden snags) that may defeat knowledge by shrinking the range of our reliability need to be actual and not merely possible. I am using the example here in my own way.

22 This problem is due to Keith Lehrer and Stewart Cohen. See their ‘Justification, Truth and Coherence,’ Synthese 55 (1983): 191-208.

23 See Ernest Sosa, ‘Intellectual Virtue in Perspective,’ in Knowledge in Perspective: Collected Essays in Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991), 288ff.

24 A point urged vigorously by Jonathan Kvanvig. See The Value of Knowledge, 180ff.

25 K. Lehrer and T. Paxson, ‘Knowledge: Undefeated Justified True Belief,’ Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969), 228

26 See J. Kvanvig, ‘Why Should Inquiring Minds Want to Know?’ and The Value of Knowledge, ch. 8.

27 See e.g. S. Luper, ‘The Causal Indicator Analysis of Knowledge.'

28 The Value oj'Knowledge , 202-3.

29 I would like to thank an anonymous referee, Matt Bell, Phillip Dennis, John Gabriel, Tom Paxson, Duncan Pritchard, Joe Salerno, Barry Smith, Jim Stone, and the participants in a seminar at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, for their helpful comments and/or discussion.