Beyond Truth and Falsehood: The Real Value of Knowing That p

Current epistemological dogma has it that the twin goalsof believing truths and avoiding errors exhaust our cognitive aspirations.On such a view, (call it the “TG view”) the only evaluationsthat count as genuinely epistemological are those that evaluatesomething (a belief, believer, set of beliefs, a cognitivetrait or process, etc.) in terms of its connection to thesetwo goods. In particular, this view implies that all theepistemic value of knowledge must be derived from thevalue of the two goals cited in TG. I argue thatthis implication is false, and thus that the TG view must be abandoned. I propose a candidate to replacethe TG view that makes better sense of the value ofknowledge.