The love of truth
Introduction
Peter Lipton’s answers to the questions that end the passage above were resolutely affirmative. He held that the proper aim of science is the development of true theories, and that we are entitled to believe that our best scientific theories are at least approximately true. Lipton was a great lover of truth—as well as a great lover of a good joke. Here is one of his jokes about truth:
A husband and wife are looking through the window of a bookshop. The husband says to the wife: “Check it out, there’s a book called The Truth.” The wife peers at the book more closely and says: “And what do you know? It’s the revised edition!”
This paper focuses on the widespread view that the proper epistemic aim is true belief, and that this explains why we ought to form our beliefs on the basis of our evidence. I will argue that this view is untenable. However, I will ultimately attempt to vindicate the love of truth, by arguing that knowledge is the proper epistemic goal. We should not aim merely to believe the truth; we should aim to know it.
Section snippets
Truth
It is frequently said that belief aims at truth, that truth is the fundamental epistemic goal, or that truth is the fundamental epistemic value. But what does all of this mean? Truth is generally thought to be a property of propositions, but nobody thinks that true propositions are epsitemically valuable, as such; nor that false propositions are epistemically defective, as such. The claim that truth is fundamentally epistemically valuable is usually intended to mean that true beliefs are of
The norm of truth
One way to approach the question of what norms are fundamental to epistemology is ‘teleological’—to start with an account of epistemic value, and derive epistemic norms from the account of value. Thus, we find those who begin with the view that all and only true beliefs have fundamental, intrinsic epistemic value, and then derive normative implications from this account of value. A number of epistemologists seem to adopt this type of approach, even if it is not characterized explicitly in this
Privileging the truth norm
The lover of truth could argue that (T) can supply an indirect explanation of why we should follow (E). This suggestion is inspired by a well known solution to what is called the ‘paradox of hedonism’. The (egoistic) hedonist says that what you ought to do is maximize your own pleasure. However, if you adopt the maximization of your own pleasure as your sole, ultimate end, then this will prevent you from having certain sorts of experiences that are great sources of pleasure. For instance, if
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge an enormous debt of gratitude to Peter Lipton, in honour of whom this paper has been written. Peter was my ‘second’ supervisor, when my primary supervisor went on leave. However, Peter patiently read as many drafts as a primary supervisor would, despite the fact that, by his own admission, the topic of my thesis gave him a headache. Peter was always a tremendous source of encouragement, wisdom, jokes and, of course, devastating criticism, always delivered with the
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