Knowledge and the value of cognitive ability

Synthese 190 (17):3715-3729 (2013)
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Abstract

We challenge a line of thinking at the fore of recent work on epistemic value: the line (suggested by Kvanvig in The value of knowledge and the pursuit of understanding, 2003 and others) that if the value of knowledge is “swamped” by the value of mere true belief, then we have good reason to doubt its theoretical importance in epistemology. We offer a value-driven argument for the theoretical importance of knowledge—one that stands even if the value of knowledge is “swamped” by the value of true belief. Specifically, we contend that even if knowledge itself has no special epistemic value, its relationship to other items of value—cognitive abilities—gives ample reason to locate the concept at the very core of epistemology

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Author Profiles

J. Adam Carter
University of Glasgow
Benjamin W. Jarvis
Brown University (PhD)

Citations of this work

Are abilities dispositions?Barbara Vetter - 2019 - Synthese 196 (196):201-220.
Varieties of cognitive achievement.J. Adam Carter, Benjamin W. Jarvis & Katherine Rubin - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (6):1603-1623.
Extended cognition and epistemic luck.J. Adam Carter - 2013 - Synthese 190 (18):4201-4214.
Knowledge-How and Epistemic Value.J. Adam Carter & Duncan Pritchard - 2015 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (4):799-816.
Epistemological Implications of Relativism.J. Adam Carter - 2017 - In Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Contextualism. Routledge. pp. 292-301.

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References found in this work

Justification and the Truth-Connection.Clayton Littlejohn - 2012 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Knowledge and lotteries.John Hawthorne - 2004 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Epistemic Luck.Duncan Pritchard - 2005 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
A virtue epistemology.Ernest Sosa - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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