What is the Value of Truth?

Truth is often thought to be a core human value. But why exactly is it valuable? Is it truly a fundamental value, or is it rather valuable only for its usefulness? How can we make sense of the idea that truth is a fundamental value? And can we know what’s true anyway – does truth even exist? In this book, Duncan Pritchard and Chris Ranalli debate what it means for truth to be valuable, and whether it really is a fundamental value at all.Pritchard begins by defending truth’s fundamental value. Examining how people ordinarily understand truth, he draws out insights into what it would mean to value truth as a fundamental good. Pritchard then takes on some common objections to this view—including the idea that ‘objective’ truths don’t exist and so are nothing to care about—before narrowing his focus to argue that truth also has a fundamental epistemic value (veritism). Chris Ranalli argues that it’s difficult to understand how truth could be valuable for its own sake, that its value is ultimately due to other things we care about. He argues against truth’s alleged absolute, intrinsic, and final value. He also draws on research in social psychology to show that there’s no reason to qualify truth as “fundamental” because belief can aim at goals that are remote from the truth. Similarly, Ranalli shows that veritism is mistaken: epistemically, truth is just one value among others, that there are other epistemic values that can better explain different kinds of cognitive states, from belief and credence to perceptual experience and intuition.Together, the authors develop and defend their own unique views while responding to each other’s objections in a dialog format that is both accessible to students and rewarding for scholars as well.