Abstract

This paper deals with the question whether truth is valuable and, eventually, what kind of value is applicable to it. First, I describe a trend of 20th century philosophy – ‘veriphobia’ – that challenges the value of truth. Then I use two arguments loosely based on the distinction between object-language and meta-language to show that veriphobia ultimately fails to make sense of its claims. With the value of truth regained, I discuss the matter of cognitive and pragmatic truth value, presenting arguments both against the view according to which the cognitive value of truth is intrinsic to truth itself and the view according to which truth is pragmatically valuable. In the end I propose a new way to understand the cognitive value of truth.