Friday Question: Is knowledge more valuable than mere true opinion?

Each Friday we will be posting a question e-mailed to us (northernirelandphilblog at gmail.com), and today's question has its roots in Plato's Meno. While much is explored in the Meno, one particularly interesting topic concerns the value of knowledge. In the Meno dialogue, Plato's progatonist Socrates makes an observation with some important implications: he tells Meno that while you can get to Larissa by knowing the way, you will get there no less by a mere guess that (luckily) turns out to be correct. This case is suggestive of a more general idea, which is that, from a purely practical point of view, it seems that lucky guesses are just as valuable as knowledge.

But is knowledge any more valuable for our practical purposes than mere true opinion? That's one question. If yes, then we must explain why (in light of the fact that the Larissa example suggests a negative answer to this question). If, persuaded by the Larissa example, we deny that knowledge has any practical value exceeding that of mere true belief, then how can this be reconciled with the widely-held view that knowledge is (in virtue of something) to be preferred to mere true opinion? Here a related question is germane: might knowledge be superior to mere true opinion in virtue of something other than what makes it something practically good to have?

The Euthyphro Dilemma (Part One)

One aim of moral theories is to provide an account of right action. Such an account will specify the conditions under which a given action counts as morally prohibited, permissible or obligatory. One such moral theory that enjoys a rich historical precedent as well as a central place within the three great monotheistic religions--Judaism, Christianity and Islam--is called Divine Command Theory (DCT). According to Divine Command Theory, God is viewed as the creator of not only the material world and the humans that inhabit it, but equally as the creator of  the moral laws against which human conduct is morally evaluable. Accordingly, on the Divine Command Theory, an action is right if God commands it, wrong if God forbids it.

DCT has been considered an attractive view by (among others) those who want to ground the objectivity of morality in the face of contentions that what makes conduct right (or wrong) depends merely on sentiment or custom. The aim of this post however is to explore a particular objection to DCT, an objection that is among the oldest and most striking. The objection was raised famously by Plato in his dialogue The Euthyphro. In this dialogue, the protagonist Socrates critically reflects on DCT's core contention that an action's rightness (or wrongness) can be accounted for simply by appeal to what God commands. Socrates asks:

Is conduct right because God commands it, or does God command it because it is right?

This question takes the form of a dilemma: Either conduct is right because God commands it, or God commands it because it is right. Part of appreciating the force of Socrates' point is realizing that one cannot have it both ways.

Once the dilemma is recognized as a genuine one, though, philosophers have argued that taking either "horn" of the dilemma is problematic for a defender of Divine Command Theory. Thus, Euthyphro's Dilemma has often been discussed as motivating an objection to Divine Command Theory, and naturally, defenders of DCT have tried to maintain that DCT is compatible with an endorsement of either of the two horns of the dilemma.

At this point, we invite readers to weigh in with responses to Socrates' question, and to consider whether or why Divine Command Theory stands threatened by an endorsement of either horn of Socrates' dilemma. In Part Two of this post, we will outline some of the standard philosophical problems associated with endorsing DCT alongside either horn of Socrates' dilemma. But for now, we invite readers to engage directly with Socrates' famous question.

Welcome!

Welcome to Northern Ireland's community philosophy blog, administered by philosophers at Queen's University Belfast on behalf of the Belfast Branch of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. Our aim is to provide a forum for philosophical discussion and to promote philosophical dialogue in a way that is both casual and inclusive.  We will be posting here regularly and on a variety of philosophical topics which we aim to make accessible to a general readership. Though all are welcome to contribute to the blog, we encourage posters to strive to be clear, open-minded and respectful. We invite you to engage in discussion with us as well as to submit your own questions and/or blog discussion topics to northernirelandphilblog@gmail.com. Along with our regular posts, we will include each week one post that addresses a question received via e-mail. Thanks for visiting!