Epistemic Goals and Epistemic Values

The truth exerts a powerful attraction. Reading the newspaper over breakfast a few months ago, I came across the following quote from Ricky Williams, a running back for the Miami Dolphins who was in the process of walking away from his million-dollar salary to pursue a career in holistic medicine. ‘‘I’m going to search for the truth,’’ Williams said. ‘‘Everything I’m doing in my life is about finding the truth.’’ And Socrates, more notably, could think of no greater compliment to pay his dialogue partners than that they entered the discussion only for the sake of truth. Thus when Socrates lost his patience with someone, it was almost always because the person placed more importance in protecting his reputation, or in impressing the crowd, than in finding the truth for its own sake. There are a variety of conclusions that epistemologists are tempted to draw from such examples. That truth is the goal of inquiry, for example. Or that truth has an intrinsic or standing value for us, insofar as we are cognitive agents. Or even that truth is the only thing, from an epistemic point of view, that has an intrinsic or standing value. These apparently straightforward conclusions lead to a number of significant worries, however. For example, if we say that truth is the only intrinsically valuable thing from an epistemic point of view, then why do we think that knowledge is better than mere true belief, or that a justified true belief is better or more valuable than an unjustified true belief? A justified true belief that it is raining is not more true than an unjustified