Epistemic value

In this dissertation I offer three major contributions: one backwards looking, one to a lively contemporary debate, and one to a debate that is still developing. Chapter one is a brief introductory chapter. Chapter two is a critical survey of the so-called Swamping Problem, namely, that some proposed theories of knowledge do not adequately differentiate between mere true belief and knowledge in terms of value. Zagzebski’s own writings indicate that she wanted a view on which knowledge was creditable. Her opponents respond to her challenge without satisfying this desideratum; I suggest that they are correct to do so. The upshot is that we should think knowledge’s value is conditional, and so not categorically creditable. In the third chapter I turn from the value of knowledge to a more active debate over the nature and value of understanding. Though there is much discussion of understanding in the contemporary literature, no account of objectual understanding has yet been widely accepted. I provide two, and discuss their upshots with regards to the value of understanding. In the fourth, forward-looking chapter, I discuss fundamentality theories of epistemic value. These are theories on which some state, feature, or property is attributed fundamental value in order to afford derivative explanations of the value of other states, features, and properties within a given evaluative domain. A challenge to theories of this kind is presented: there are too many of them for us to endorse one specific fundamentality theory responsibly. The remainder of chapter four is an attempt to break this deadlock. An appendix follows the main text. It offers an argument against translating epistêmê, as it occurs in an oft-discussed passage in Plato’s Meno, as “knowledge.” The dissertation mirrors the development of the contemporary debates related to epistemic value: it begins in chapter two with a narrow focus on the value of knowledge, moves in chapter three to understanding as a possible bearer of important value within the epistemic domain, and then in chapter four broadens in scope from a narrow focus on the value of certain epistemic states to consider theories which could unite our epistemic evaluative practices and normative intuitions.Philosoph