Value beyond truth-value: a practical response to skepticism

Synthese 198 (9):8601-8619 (2020)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

I aim to offer a practical response to skepticism. I begin by surveying a family of responses to skepticism that I term “dogmatic” and argue that they are problematically evasive; they do not address what I take to be a question that is central to many skeptics: Why am I justified in maintaining some beliefs that fail to meet ordinary standards of doxastic evaluation? I then turn to a discussion of these standards of evaluation and to the different kinds of doxastic value to which they appeal. While there is something good about having a true belief and something bad about having a false one, I argue the value of true beliefs is not intrinsic or final. Truth and knowledge are valuable because they contribute to both individual and collective flourishing. But if contributing to flourishing is what ultimately provides truth with its value, then we have discovered another doxastic value. I call this kind of doxastic value “practical.” The practical response addresses the skeptic’s question by claiming that some beliefs can be justified by appealing to their practical, rather than alethic, value. In fleshing out this practical response I contrast it both with dogmatic responses as well as some seemingly similar “practical” alternatives, namely Crispin Wright’s appeals to entitlements and Susanna Rinard’s “pragmatic skepticism.” I end by addressing some objections.

Other Versions

No versions found

Similar books and articles

Why Do We Value True Beliefs?Trevor Hedberg - 2017 - Syndicate Philosophy 1.
Love, Beneficence, and the Hedonic Constraint.Noah Lemos - 2016 - American Philosophical Quarterly 53 (3):259-268.
Epistemic value and virtue epistemology.Tsung-Hsing Ho - 2015 - Dissertation, University of Southampton
No Exception for Belief.Susanna Rinard - 2017 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (1):121-143.
A Meno Problem for Evidentialism.Daniel M. Mittag - 2014 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 52 (2):250-266.
Holding the Faith True.John Zeis - 2013 - Res Philosophica 90 (2):161-170.

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-04-08

Downloads
424 (#58,328)

6 months
90 (#64,481)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Philosophical explanations.Robert Nozick - 1981 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
On Certainty (ed. Anscombe and von Wright).Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1969 - San Francisco: Harper Torchbooks. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe, G. H. von Wright & Mel Bochner.
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40).David Hume - 1739 - Mineola, N.Y.: Oxford University Press. Edited by Ernest Campbell Mossner.
The skeptic and the dogmatist.James Pryor - 2000 - Noûs 34 (4):517–549.

View all 33 references / Add more references