Epistemology Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Virtue epistemology === {{Main|Virtue epistemology}} In contemporary philosophy, epistemologists including [[Ernest Sosa]], [[John Greco (philosopher)|John Greco]], [[Jonathan Kvanvig]],<ref name="Kvanvig2003"/> [[Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski|Linda Zagzebski]], and [[Duncan Pritchard]] have defended virtue epistemology as a solution to the value problem. They argue that epistemology should also evaluate the "properties" of people as epistemic agents (i.e., intellectual virtues), rather than merely the properties of propositions and propositional mental attitudes. The value problem has been presented as an argument against epistemic [[reliabilism]] by [[Linda Zagzebski]], Wayne Riggs, and [[Richard Swinburne]], among others. Zagzebski analogizes the value of knowledge to the value of espresso produced by an espresso maker: "The liquid in this cup is not improved by the fact that it comes from a reliable espresso maker. If the espresso tastes good, it makes no difference if it comes from an unreliable machine."<ref name="Zagzebski2017"/> For Zagzebski, the value of knowledge deflates to the value of mere true belief. She assumes that reliability in itself has no value or disvalue, but Goldman and Olsson disagree. They point out that Zagzebski's conclusion rests on the assumption of veritism: all that matters is the acquisition of true belief.<ref name="GoldmanOlsson2009"/> To the contrary, they argue that a reliable process for acquiring a true belief adds value to the merely true belief by making it more likely that future beliefs of a similar kind will be true. By analogy, having a reliable espresso maker that produced a good cup of espresso would be more valuable than having an unreliable one that luckily produced a good cup because the reliable one would more likely produce good future cups compared to the unreliable one. The value problem is important to assessing the adequacy of theories of knowledge that conceive of knowledge as consisting of true belief and other components. According to [[Jonathan Kvanvig]], an adequate account of knowledge should resist counterexamples and allow an explanation of the value of knowledge over mere true belief. Should a theory of knowledge fail to do so, it would prove inadequate.<ref name="Kvanvig2003" />{{page needed|date=March 2019}} One of the more influential responses to the problem is that knowledge is not particularly valuable and is not what ought to be the main focus of epistemology. Instead, epistemologists ought to focus on other mental states, such as understanding.<ref name="Kvanvig2003" /> Advocates of virtue epistemology have argued that the value of knowledge comes from an internal relationship between the knower and the mental state of believing.<ref name="SEP knowledge-value" /> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page