Abstract
Often the first issue addressed by a theory of justified belief is the goal, purpose, or objective of epistemic justification.' What, in short, is the point of epistemic justification? Or, to put it a bit differently, why value justification: why is it worth having or pursuing?2 Prominent epistemologists, including both externalists and internalists, have proposed (or sometimes just assumed) the following answer: the ultimate aim of epistemic justification is to maximize true belief and minimize false belief. This answer specifies what I'll call the aim, an aim that gets endorsed (sometimes with qualifications) by a number of well-known accounts of justification. William Alston, an externalist with certain internalist scruples,3 is among the most explicit champions of the nominal aim:
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