Epistemic Value and the Jamesian Goals

Abstract

William James famously tells us that there are two main goals for rational believers: believing truth and avoiding error. Horowitz argues that epistemic consequentialism—in particular its embodiment in epistemic utility theory—seems to be well positioned to explain how epistemic agents might permissibly weight these goals differently. After all, practical versions of consequentialism render it permissible for agents with different goals to act differently in the same situation. Nevertheless, Horowitz argues that epistemic consequentialism doesn’t allow for this kind of permissivism and goes on to argue that this reveals a deep disanalogy between decision theory and the formally similar epistemic utility theory. This raises the question whether epistemic utility theory is a genuinely consequentialist theory at all.