Epistemic Value

An Epistemic Value is a value for an epistemic item.

• Context:
  • It can inform Epistemic Appraisal.
  • …
• Example(s):
  • Is truth the central value informing epistemic appraisal?
  • Evidential Robustness.
  • Predictive Power.
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • Moral Value.
  • Aesthetic Value.
• See: Epistemology.

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References

2015

• (Tuana, 2015) ⇒ Nancy Tuana. (2015). “Coupled Ethical-epistemic Analysis in Teaching Ethics.” In: Communications of the ACM Journal, 58(12). doi:10.1145/2835957
  • QUOTE: Various types of values can be involved in each domain including ethical values (the good of society, equity, sustainability), aesthetic values (simplicity, elegance, complexity), or epistemic values (predictive power, reliability, coherence, scope).
    • What is a good basis for the selection of research topics?
    • What counts as evidence and what constitutes robust evidentiary support?
    • What is the likelihood that a model, hypothesis, or theoretical explanation will provide convincing explanation?
    • Are epistemic and ethical values relevant to applying results to other research problems or to social problems (for example, via decision-support)?
  • … They had to balance evidential robustness and predictive power (epistemic values), a decision that remains controversial despite improvements in scientific understanding and modeling of ice sheet dynamics (for example, Chang et al.2). Balancing these epistemic values has ethical implications: a decision to not include ice sheet data might result in underreporting future sea level rise.7 Does the value assigned to evidential robustness outweigh the impact on predictive power? Also at stake is whether ice sheet data helps the wider community understand the impact of climate change mitigation and adaptation decisions. Epistemic and ethical values are coupled.

2013

• http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemic-utility/
  • QUOTE: … In epistemic utility theory, the states of the world remain the same, but the possible actions an agent might perform are replaced by the possible epistemic states she might adopt, and the utility function is replaced, for each agent, by an epistemic utility function, which takes a state of the world and a possible epistemic state and returns a measure of the purely epistemic value that the agent would attach to being in that epistemic state at that state of the world.

2009

• (Greco, 2009) ⇒ John Greco. (2009). “The Value Problem." Epistemic value
  • QUOTE: … rather than knowledge, and so epistemology ought to focus on the former rather than on the latter (Kaplan 1985). In a similar vein, Kvanvig and Pritchard argue that understanding rather than knowledge has a distinctive epistemic value, and so the focus ...
• (Haddock & Pritchard, 2009) ⇒ Adrian Haddock, and Duncan Pritchard, eds. (2009). “Epistemic Value." Oxford University Press,
  • QUOTE: (BOOK OVERVIEW) Recent epistemology has reflected a growing interest in issues about the value of knowledge and the values informing epistemic appraisal. Is knowledge more valuable than merely true belief or even justified true belief? Is truth the central value informing epistemic appraisal or do other values enter the picture? Epistemic Value is a collection of previously unpublished articles on such issues by leading philosophers in the field. It will stimulate discussion of the nature of knowledge and of directions that might be taken by the theory of knowledge. The contributors are Jason Baehr, Michael Brady, Berit Brogaard, Michael DePaul, Pascal Engel, Catherine Elgin, Alvin Goldman, John Greco, Stephen Grimm, Ward Jones, Martin Kusch, Jonathan Kvanvig, Michael Lynch, Erik Olsson, Wayne Riggs and Matthew Weiner

2007

• (Pritchard, 2007) ⇒ Duncan Pritchard. (2007). “Recent Work on Epistemic Value." American Philosophical Quarterly
  • QUOTE: One of the most interesting developments in recent work in epistemology has been its focus on epistemic value. Indeed, it has been suggested - by Wayne Riggs (2006) - that contemporary epistemology is at present undergoing a “value-turn," such is the impact that …

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