Abstract
Our curiosity has us interested in finding out the truth. Knowing the fact of the matter fulfills the interest. This fulfillment is something satisfying about knowledge. Additionally, knowledge is a good way for a person to relate to a proposition. The knowing relation is good because of what knowledge is. In other words, knowledge is intrinsically good. The credibility of these assessments calls for some explanation. A traditional view is that knowledge is justified true belief with no Gettier accidents. This conception is particularly helpful in accounting for the assessments of knowledge. Features of the relation of a mind to a known proposition that are articulated in the traditional view make the relation satisfying and attractive. What is explicit in the traditional view renders these assets of knowledge readily understandable. The view explains the assets better than do alternative conceptions of knowledge.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
This is an attribution of greater intrinsic value. It is independent of the widely supported claim that knowledge is extrinsically better than true belief. For instance, Timothy Williamson argues that knowledge is less vulnerable to the future loss of true belief than is true belief that is not knowledge (Williamson 2000, 60–64, 79). Sherrilyn Roush argues that knowledge, properly conceived, gives a knower an advantageous sort of preparedness (Roush 2010). Apart from philosophical work, it is a commonplace that knowing a truth that interests us tends to give us more confidence and peace of mind than does believing it without knowing (except when the fact itself is disturbing). These are extrinsic assets of knowledge. The aim here is to explain an intrinsic value that knowledge has—a goodness that it has in virtue of its nature.
The fourth condition entails justification and truth. It can revised so as not to entail any other condition, with some added inelegance in its formulation: “(4*) If (1)–(3), then the justification that S has …” Replacing (4) with (4*) would serve to make the conditions logically independent. But the underlying idea is better conveyed by (4) as it stands: The idea is that knowledge requires that justification and truth are rightly related.
An anonymous reviewer observes that a solution to the Gettier problem might incorporate elements like safety or sensitivity from other accounts of knowledge. The reviewer wonders whether this inclusion would undercut the reasons given below to prefer TAK to the other accounts. The main reasons given below would remain in force. The main reasons are explanatory strengths of TAK’s conditions that are missing in accounts that do not have those conditions. Adding parts of other accounts to complete TAK’s fourth condition, if that were successful, would elaborate on its explanations. The explanatory advantages would be preserved.
Being sure can be ‘fitting to one’s evidence’ in other respects, e.g., for the practical purpose of bolstering confidence or giving solace. The fit involved in TAK’s third condition, however, is a fit between being sure and the evidential indications that one has that one is meeting the intellectual goal of truth by one’s attitude toward the proposition. Practical reasons for being sure play no role in this relation. (I thank an anonymous reviewer for noting that there are other ways in which it can be fitting to be sure.)
When we know, meeting the fourth condition is not a purely external accident. Reflection can make available support for thinking that the justification is rightly related to some suitable fact. For instance, justifying perceptual evidence appears on reflection to derive properly from a perceived fact, justifying testimonial evidence appears to derive properly from the fact asserted, and so forth. Whether or not we reflect, when we know we cannot have good reason to doubt that the anti-Gettier condition is met. Good reason to doubt this would defeat the justification. It would indicate some real chance that our evidence for the belief was accidental and misleading. This would be an undercutting defeater. The fourth condition requires undefeated justification to be rightly related to a fact.
Locus classicus: (Nozick 1981, Chapter 3).
The notion of a belief-forming method is vague. We can add to the case that trust in the predictions of this fortuneteller is a settled feature of Creed’s psychology. This makes it quite natural to regard his belief-forming method as the one attributed here: taking the fortuneteller’s word for the winning number. Still, Creed’s psychology would have broader tendencies in the vicinity too, say, a tendency to be generally superstitious. Any of these might be counted as a more general ‘method’ that Creed is employing. The broader ‘methods’ would be less likely to be truth-tracking. But that is contingent. Any credible candidate for a method, however general, would happen to track the truth in some possible circumstances. On any reasonable conception of what ‘method’ is implemented, a ‘method’ that forms rationally indefensible beliefs might have happened to track the truth. This is enough to imply the existence of the explanatory problem developed here. (I thank an anonymous reviewer for calling attention to the generality problem concerning CAK ‘methods’.)
The same question about ‘method’ individuation arises here as in the Creed case (see the previous footnote). Only some extremely narrow specification of Cie’s ‘method,’ such as the method of believing by experiencing a green visual quality, would avoid the objection. Unless Cie had some reason to focus on green—and the example need not include any such reason—her psychology would not implement that method.
Substantially the same problem arises for a view that replaces the justification condition with a ‘safety’ condition. Safety adds to true belief a certain modal profile: a safely believed proposition is true in some sufficiently high proportion of the other possible worlds that are sufficiently similar to the actual world in which the person believes the proposition. (For an overview of epistemological uses of this idea, see [Rabinowitz].) As with truth-tracking, safety need not do well by our curiosity. All nearby otherworldly environments might happen to shelter an unreasonable belief from falsehood. For example, the belief might be metaphysically or physically necessary. It would have no tendency to be false, no matter how unreasonably it was believed. A repair of this problem has been proposed: require the belief to be formed by a method that is generally reliable. (See the discussion of Timothy Williamson’s and Duncan Prichard’s views of safety, and the relevant bibliography, in [Rabinowitz].) But reliable safe belief formation too can occur without the believer having any intellectually satisfying relation to the belief. A method of safely believing can have an accidental reliability. This happens in the well-known cases of Keith Lehrer’s Mr. Truetemp, who has no idea that his method of temperature assessment is to employ an accurate thermometer implant, and Laurence BonJour’s Norman, who has no idea that he is a reliable clairvoyant. As such cases illustrate, safe reliability need not satisfy intellectual interest any better than does a lucky guess.
The general idea—what is intrinsically good is suited for our affection when considered on its own—derives from work by Brentano (1969). Roderick Chisholm proposes something similar to the present test as a definition of intrinsic goodness (Chisholm 1981). The claim made here is epistemic, not definitional. The claim is that finding an appealing unity in some state of affairs is evidence that it is intrinsically good, and the more appealing, the better. This is true, if we have reflective access to something about some states of affairs that indicates to us their positive intrinsic value by tending to elicit in us some correspondingly positive affective response to them. The correctness of the epistemic test does not depend on the correctness of any definition.
Some disunity is prized for its incongruousness, as in the cases of some jazz improvisations and some paintings. The prized sort of clash may be structurally the same as the incongruity in some instances of irrational belief. Perhaps a willfully irrational Kierkegaardian embrace of a contradiction provides an example. These disunities are reflectively appealing, so the parallel test—reflectively appealing disunity—finds something intrinsically good about them. This is not problematic. What the proposed test for intrinsic goodness evinces about knowledge, versus mere true belief, is only that there is something intrinsically better about knowledge. This allows that some disunities, including some irrational beliefs, are also intrinsically good. It even allows that some irrational beliefs are intrinsically better than some instances of knowledge. Perhaps they are intrinsically better aesthetically, while knowledge is intellectually intrinsically good.
Another concern about the test: It might be that a devilishly ingenious evil plot exemplifies the same sort of unity. Such evil states of affairs might have some positive intrinsic value, in virtue of having a structure that is attractively unified. This is consistent with their being intrinsically very bad, by including the overriding evil of bad intentions, vices, harm, or the like.
A last concern about the test: It might be thought that the attraction is an effective test of having some intrinsic goodness if, but only if, intrinsic goodness is part of the best explanation of the attraction. It might be doubted that the goodness could be part of the explanation. A brief answer: It is not unreasonable to think that the intrinsically good things are the members a natural kind that tends, by its nature, to elicit some sorts of favorable feelings. Consideration of an isolated possible state of affairs clears away some distractions to noticing its nature. It is not unreasonable to think that our positive affective response to this consideration is attuned to the approval-eliciting features. These thoughts outline a defense of the efficacy of the test for intrinsic goodness.
The relevant part of the world need not be in the environment of the knower. It can be any factual state of affairs. Justifying evidence can unite a person in an epistemic way with a state of the person’s own mind or with an abstract mathematical fact. (I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising questions about the range of the unity.)
Michael DePaul makes a similar point about what might enable us to recognize the value (DePaul 2009, 132).
Locus classicus: (Greco 2004).
It might be thought that it is the reliability of perception that makes perceptual believing virtuous. If so, then the perception of thunder in the example would make it a case of virtuous belief acquisition. But then exercising “intellectual virtue” occurs even where the person’s intentional doxastic inclinations are decidedly vicious, as in the thunder example. Instantiating a process that tends toward truth, no matter how unwittingly, is not obviously a good thing on its own. It is the evident independent goodness of exercising a genuine virtue that gives the virtue theoretic approach some promise for explaining the intrnsic value of knowledge. The reflective appeal of familiar intellectual virtues like careful inquiry, responsiveness to evidence, and open-mindedness is not shared by all dispositions that happen to tend toward true beliefs. A theory allowing any such disposition to sufficie is thus poorly equipped to explain why knowledge seems intrinsically better than true belief. Also, any sort of goodness of a knowledge-acquiring disposition is in the wrong place. It does not explain what is intrinsically good about the knowing relationship itself.
Greco may intend his emphasis on achievement to be an elaboration of his original virtue theoretic view rather than a different explanation of the value. Regardless of his purpose, achievements are plainly good and we seek an account of what is intrinsically good about knowledge. So it is worth considering whether it helps the theory to require explicitly that the exercise of virtue yields an achievement.
Locus classicus: (Fumerton 1985). Fumerton’s whole view of knowledge requires more than acquaintance with the known fact. We need not address the whole view. We shall see that this acquaintance requirement is problematic for present purposes.
The question of how knowledge has greater value is appropriately called ‘The Meno Problem’. [Pritchard].
References
Brentano, F. (1969). In R. Chisholm, E. Schneewind (Eds.) The origin of our knowledge of right and wrong. London: Routledge.
Chisholm, R. (1981). Defining intrinsic value. Analysis, 44(2), 99–100.
DePaul, M. (2009). Ugly analyses and value. In A. Haddock, A. Millar, & D. Pritchard (Eds.), Epistemic value. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fumerton, R. (1985). Metaphysical and epistemological problems of perception. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Greco, J. (2004). Knowledge as credit for true belief. In M. DePaul & L. Zagzebski (Eds.), Intellectual virtue: Perspectives from ethics and epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Greco, J. (2012). A (different) virtue epistemology. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 85(1), 1–26.
Kvanvig, J. (2003). The value of knowledge and the pursuit of understanding (pp. 113–139). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kvanvig, J. (2009). Response to critics. In A. Haddock, A. Millar, & D. Pritchard (Eds.), Epistemic value. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nozick, R. (1981). Philosophical explanations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Pritchard, D. The value of knowledge. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-value/.
Rabinowitz, D. The safety condition on knowledge. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/safety-c/.
Roush, S. (2010). The value of knowledge and the pursuit of survival. Metaphilosophy, 41(3), 255–278.
Williamson, T. (2000). Knowledge and its limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Conee, E. Good to know. Philos Stud 174, 311–331 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0683-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0683-6