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IS TRUE BELIEF REALLY A FUNDAMENTAL EPISTEMIC VALUE?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2018

Lance K. Aschliman
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Abstract

In 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.

Type
Articles
Information
Episteme , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 88 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018

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