The Value Problem In The Contemporary Epistemology And Solutions

The value problem of knowledge is one of the most prominent issue in the contemporary epistemology in the nearly two decades.It refers to the question that whether knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief.It is only used to fight against reliabilism at the beginning and assert that knowledge that is claimed by reliabilism is not valuable than true belief because the reliable process which should add additional value to knowledge is swamped by true belief. As a result, knowledge is the same as true belief.But reliabilists think knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief in intuition.This is the dilemma caused by the value problem.Later, Pritchard shows that every theory of knowledge which contains true belief will suffer’the swamping problem’, which makes nearly all the theory of knowledge fall into the value problem, instead of merely reliabilism.In order to solve the value problem, Pritchard comes up with’the swamping argument’which is just three claims and analyses the reason why the value problem is only the inconsistent of the three claims and roughly describes the way out of the value problem.This paper, according to the three claims of’the swamping argument’from Pritchard and the combination of the three claims, holds the belief that there are four alternative ways:appealing to the practice value of knowledge,appealing to the epistemic value monist,appealing to the epistemic value pluralism and agreeing with the claim that knowledge has a final value,appealing to the epistemic value pluralism but against the claim that knowledge has a final value, and presents four solutions on the basis of the literature in hand and different theories of knowledge in detail:the conditional probability solution and value autonomization of Goldman and Olsson, evidentialism of Williamson,virtue epistemology of Sosa and the understanding of Kvanvig.Accepting the primise of their theories to some extent, the conclusions are shown in the following:Goldman and Olsson think where knowledge is more valuable than true belief is the practice value, which means knowledge makes the similar kind of belief more likely to be true in the future.Williamson claims that the value of knowledge is about the value of evidence.Sosa holds the belief that knowledge is more valuable than true belief because knowledge is formed by the intelligence virtue of the agent. Kvanvig deems that the distinctive value of understanding is subjective justified true belief.The writer advocates the first three solutions are successful to some degree,and rejects the fourth one.