Is There a Value Problem?

According to the standard conception of the “value problem” in epistemology, the problem originates with a compelling pretheoretical intuition to the effect that knowledge is more valuable than true belief. Call this the “guiding intuition.” The guiding intuition is thought to motivate a constraint on an analysis of knowledge such that any plausible analysis must entail that knowledge is more valuable than true belief. A problem emerges in light of two additional considerations. The first is that knowledge is roughly justified or warranted true belief. The second is that given certain popular accounts of knowledge, the value of justification or warrant is apparently derivative from and reducible to the value of true belief. But if knowledge is justified true belief, then these accounts apparently fail to entail that knowledge has value over and above the value of true belief and so fail to satisfy the relevant constraint. Defenders of these theories of knowledge have generally responded by attempting to show that the value of justification as they conceive of it is not entirely derivative from the value of true belief and hence that their theories do satisfy the relevant constraint and so are able to overcome the value problem.