In order to guide the decisions of real people who want to bring about good epistemic outcomes for themselves and others, we need to understand our epistemic values. In Knowledge in a Social World, Alvin Goldman has proposed an epistemic value theory that allows us to say whether one outcome is epistemically better than another. However, it has been suggested that Goldmanâ s theory is not really an epistemic value theory at all because whether one outcome is epistemically better than another partly depends on our non-epistemic interests. In this paper, I argue that an epistemic value theory that serves the purposes of social epistemology must incorporate non-epistemic interests in much the way that Goldmanâ s theory does. In fact, I argue that Goldmanâ s theory does not go far enough in this direction. In particular, the epistemic value of having a particular true belief should actually be weighted by how interested we are in the topic.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/105269 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Fallis, Don |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Journal Article (On-line/Unpaginated) |
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