One of the most venerable and enduring intuitions in epistemology concerns the relationship between true belief and knowledge. Famously articulated by Socrates, it holds that true belief does not suffice for knowledge. I discuss a matching intuition about ignorance according to which true belief does not suffice for the absence of ignorance. I argue that the latter intuition undercuts the New View of Ignorance and supports the Standard View of Ignorance.

How is epistemic justification related to knowledge? Is it, as widely thought, constitutive of knowledge? Is it merely a means to knowledge, or merely a means to something else, such as truth? In a recent article in this journal, Hofmann (2005, Synthese, 146(3), 357–369) addresses these questions in attempting to defend an important argument articulated by Sartwell (1992, The Journal of Philosophy, 89(4), 167–180) and reconstructed and criticized by Le Morvan (2002, Erkenntnis: An International Journal of Analytic Philosophy, 56(2), 151–168). (...) This Sartwellian argument purported to show that, since epistemic justification is of merely instrumental value, it is not constitutive of knowledge. In this paper, I argue that Hofmann’s defense of Sartwell fails, but that its failure brings to light some important lessons concerning the nature of justification and its relationship to truth and knowledge. (shrink)

Goldman's project of a veritistic social epistemology is based on a descriptive-success account of truth and a weak notion of knowledge as mere true belief. It is argued that, contrary to Goldman's opinion, pragmatism and social constructivism are not necessarily ruled out by the descriptive-success account of truth. Furthermore, it is shown that it appears to be questionable whether Goldman has succeeded to show that there is a weak notion of knowledge. But even if such a weak notion of knowledge (...) can be defended, this notion can result in a complete separation of knowledge from epistemic value, which does not seem to be in accordance with Goldman's concept of societal knowledge. (shrink)