Questions concerning the value of knowledge and truth range from those that suggest complete skepticism about such value to those that reflect more discriminating concerns about the precise nature of the value in question and the comparative judgment that one of the two is more valuable than the other.

The Comparative Question and the Pragmatic Account

The history of epistemology has its conceptual roots in the dialogues of Plato, and the question of the value of knowledge and truth arises there as well. In Plato's Meno, Socrates and Meno discuss a number of issues, including the issue of the nature and value of knowledge. Socrates raises the question of the value of knowledge, and Meno answers by proposing a pragmatic theory: knowledge is valuable because it gets us what we want. Socrates immediately proposes a counterexample, to the...