Abstract

What is the final end of cognition? Currently, there are two responses to this question that are frequently encountered. The first is championed by philosophers such as Quine, Kornblith, and Bonjour. It is the "commonsense" claim that Truth is the final end of cognition. Recently, however, Stephen Stich has argued that the final end of cognition is the sum total of all the things we value intrinsically. In contrast, I argue that the end in question is knowledge. Here, the term 'knowledge' is used to express a concept closely akin to the Aristotelian concept of understanding. That is, the end of cognition is not the simple acquisition of a large number of facts. Instead, it is a kind of synoptic understanding where the causal structure of the world is made clear. ;I show that knowledge is the final end of cognition by addressing two further questions. First, what justification is there for the claim that knowledge is an intrinsic value? Second, if there is such a thing as epistemic normativity, then what sort of metaphysics must be presupposed to account for its existence? With respect to the first question, I evaluate the Platonic and Spinozistic justifications of the claim in chapters one and two and argue that they are inadequate. It is shown that while each philosopher contends that knowledge is a value of great import, the justification of this claim, in both cases, amounts to a disguised appeal to the great utility of knowledge in the pursuit of the Good. Thus, Plato and Spinoza only succeed in demonstrating that knowledge has derivative value. With respect to the second question, I show in the last chapter that if there is such a thing as epistemic normativity, the conditions of the existence of epistemic normativity include an intrinsic value as its final end. Moreover, I show that this end is knowledge