UC Berkeley

Why is knowledge better than mere true belief ? To make progress in answering that question, we need to distinguish two ways to understand it. It might mean: why is knowledge epistemically better than mere true belief ? Or it might mean: why do we have reason to prefer epistemically better beliefs to epistemically worse beliefs? In the same way, the question "why is a Ferrari better than a lemon?" might mean "why are good cars better as cars than worse cars?" It might be, that is, a request for a general theory of car-wise goodness. Or it might instead be asking why car-wise goodness matters: "why prefer a good car to a bad one?"

Why is knowledge epistemically better than true belief ? According to plausible accounts, the epistemic value of a belief is a matter either of the likelihood that it is true or its degree of support by one's total evidence. These accounts, however, can't make sense of some comparative epistemic evaluations. They must treat the Churchlands' philosophically reasoned belief that there are no beliefs as epistemically just as bad as a wikipedia reader's rash belief in the same proposition, although intuitively it is epistemically better. And the plausible accounts must treat some beliefs in "commissive" versions of Moore's paradox, such as "it's raining, but I believe it's not raining," as epistemically ideal, though intuitively they are not.

What these plausible accounts overlook is that the epistemic value of a belief is in part a matter of how influential the evidence for it is: how it might affect what the total evidence of other believers supports. This "discursive epistemic value" is what the Churchlands' beliefs have, and what all commissive Moorean beliefs lack. The Churchlands' evidence is more influential than the freshman's, whereas the commissive Moorean believer's evidence can never be maximally influential.

Discursive epistemic value also helps answer the second question, by solving "the Meno Problem." Roughly, the Meno problem is to explain why we have reason to prefer knowledge to mere true belief, given that they are in some sense practically equivalent. The standard explanation is that knowers are more likely to retain their true beliefs in the future. But this explanation is unsatisfying, since it seems to make the epistemic status of the knowledge otiose. After all, if knowledge were preferable only as a means to further true beliefs, then the epistemic status of knowledge would be dispensable. In contrast, on my account, it is precisely the epistemic status of knowledge - and in particular its discursive epistemic value - which makes knowers more persuasive and qualifies them to teach.

Of course, knowers are not always more persuasive. So discursive epistemic value does not always give us reason to prefer knowledge to mere true belief. But that is, I argue, as it should be. We do not always have reason to prefer knowledge to true belief. Epistemic goodness amplifies reasons for or against having a true belief. So, in general, only when we have reason to prefer having a true belief to lacking it do we have reason to prefer an epistemically good true belief to a mere true belief. By contrast, when we don't have reason to prefer a true belief in the first place, we often actually have reason to prefer that it be epistemically bad. For instance, the depressive's self-destructive belief about his own mediocrity is all the worse for being supported by influential evidence.

In addition to other applications, discursive epistemic value affords an satisfying internalist response to an externalist demand. How, externalists may demand, are internalist requirements conducive to anything of epistemic value? If I am right, the internalist may reply: they are conducive to discursive epistemic value.