Against swamping

Abstract

The Swamping Argument – highlighted by Kvanvig (2003; 2010) – purports to show that the epistemic value of truth will always swamp the epistemic value of any non-factive epistemic properties (e.g. justification), so that these properties can never add any epistemic value to an already-true belief. Consequently (and counter-intuitively), knowledge is never more epistemically valuable than mere true belief. We show that the Swamping Argument fails. Parity of reasoning yields the disastrous conclusion that non-factive epistemic properties – most saliently justification – are never epistemically valuable properties of a belief. We close by diagnosing why philosophers have been mistakenly attracted to the argument.

knowledge, epistemic value, swamping problem, value of knowledge