Epistemic Emotions and the Value of Truth
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Epistemic Emotions and the Value of Truth Laura Candiotto 1 Received: 6 August 2019 / Accepted: 12 November 2019/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract In this paper, I discuss the intrinsic value of truth from the perspective of the emotion studies in virtue epistemology. The strategy is the one that looks at epistemic emotions as driving forces towards truth as the most valuable epistemic good. But in doing so, a puzzle arises: how can the value of truth be intrinsic (as the most valuable epistemic good) and instrumental (being useful to the epistemic agent)? My answer lies in the difference established by Duncan Pritchard (Pritchard 2014) between epistemic value and the value of the epistemic applied to the case of subjective motivations to knowing. I argue that the value of truth is intrinsic as epistemic value and that this is not only compatible with the idea that truth can have different kinds of instrumental values but also that the subjective value of truth, disclosed by epistemic emotions, can make the value of truth stronger if regulated within patterns of virtuous enquiry. Keywords Epistemic emotions . Motivation . Intrinsic and instrumental values . The value of truth . Intellectual virtues . Ethics of knowledge
1 Introduction In the last decades, there has been an upsurge interest in the function played by emotions in the cognitive processes. Inspired by the evidence provided by cognitive science, philosophers of mind have started to integrate emotions in their theories of mind and employ the concept of “cognitive emotions”, “intellectual emotions”, or
* Laura Candiotto [email protected]
1
Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany
L. Candiotto
“epistemic emotions” for depicting their positive role in the cognitive enterprise (Scheffler 1991; Stocker 2004; Morton 2010).1 Epistemologists have remained more sceptical about the possible positive role of emotions in knowledge acquisition, and the majority of studies have been dedicated to their detrimental function instead.2 An exception can be found in the research programs of some proponents of virtue epistemology: in this case, emotions are studied in their entanglement to those intellectual virtues that can reliably bring to knowledge (Zagzebski 2003, Morton 2010, Brady 2013, BLIND with Candiotto (2017a, b). In this paper, I am going to discuss the intrinsic value of truth from the perspective of the emotion studies in virtue epistemology. The strategy is the one that looks at epistemic emotions as driving forces towards truth as the most valuable epistemic good. This allows me to engage with important implication for the value of truth, the one that highlights its value in relation to the motivations of the epistemic agent. But in doing so, a puzzle arises: how can the value of truth be intrinsic (as the most valuable epistemic good) and instrumental (being useful to the epistemic agent)? This puzzle has been already discussed by many philosophers since the antiquity.3 What I want to discuss here is a specific meaning of the puzzle, the one
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