User:Tom Morris/Epistemic value

In epistemology, the problem of epistemic value refers to a range of arguments presented against accounts of knowledge broadly in the tradition of justified true belief-based theories. The question posed of such accounts is to ask what value is added by some belief being knowledge rather than just being a true belief.

History

Raising of the value problem has historically been attributed to Plato in §97—100 of the dialogue Meno.

SOCRATES: I will explain. If a man knew the way to Larisa, or anywhere else, and went to the place and led others thither, would he not be a right and good guide?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And a person who had a right opinion about the way, but had never been and did not know, might be a good guide also, might he not?

MENO: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And while he has true opinion about that which the other knows, he will be just as good a guide if he thinks the truth, as he who knows the truth?

MENO: Exactly.

SOCRATES: Then true opinion is as good a guide to correct action as knowledge; and that was the point which we omitted in our speculation about the nature of virtue, when we said that knowledge only is the guide of right action; whereas there is also right opinion.

MENO: True.

SOCRATES: Then right opinion is not less useful than knowledge?

MENO: The difference, Socrates, is only that he who has knowledge will always be right; but he who has right opinion will sometimes be right, and sometimes not.

SOCRATES: What do you mean? Can he be wrong who has right opinion, so long as he has right opinion?

MENO: I admit the cogency of your argument, and therefore, Socrates, I wonder that knowledge should be preferred to right opinion—or why they should ever differ.

— Plato, Meno, §97

Plato (in the voice of Socrates‚ proceeds to answer Meno by arguing that knowledge is more valuable as it is "fastened by the tie of the cause" (§98) of that knowledge.

Swamping problems

The epistemologist Duncan Pritchard has described the value problem as having two forms: primary and secondary. The primary value problem refers to what value knowledge has over true belief, following the sort of justified true belief model that is implicit in the Meno. But the secondary value problem also exists and poses a problem for all sorts of analyses of knowledge including those reformulated to try and cope with the challenges presented by the Gettier problem. Under an analysis of knowledge that has been tempered to deal with Gettier cases, what value does knowledge have over a justified true belief that doesn't amount to knowledge? More generally, a secondary value problem may appear when one can ask why knowledge is more valuable than a subset of the constituent parts of knowledge.

In contemporary philosophy, the value problem is linked with the swamping problem, generally attributed to Jonathan Kvanvig.