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?