Pritchard’s Case for Veritism

Abstract

In his “In Defense of Veritism”, Duncan Pritchard reconsiders the case for epistemic value truth monism, or the thesis that truth is the sole fundamental epistemic good. I begin by clarifying Pritchard’s thesis, and then turn to an evaluation of Pritchard’s defense. By way of clarification, Pritchard understands “fundamental” value to be non-instrumental value. Accordingly, Pritchard’s veritism turns out to be the thesis that truth is the sole epistemic good with non-instrumental epistemic value, all other epistemic goods being valuable in virtue of their instrumental relation to truth. By way of evaluation, I argue that the case for veritism has not been made. The central point is this: Even if all epistemic value involves some or other relation to the truth, there are multiple relations to truth in addition to instrumental relations. Moreover, some of these seem capable of grounding further, fundamental (i.e., non-instrumental) epistemic goods. For example, knowledge has a constitutive relation to truth, and knowledge seems to be epistemically valuable for its own sake. Likewise, justified belief has an intentional relation to truth, and justified belief seems to be epistemically valuable for its own sake. Finally, I argue that, contra Pritchard, this central point seems confirmed rather than undermined by looking to the notion of an intellectually virtuous inquirer. Plausibly, a virtuous inquirer values such goods as justified belief and knowledge for their own sake qua epistemic goods, and not merely for their instrumental value for attaining truth.