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This chapter attempts to clarify and defend the idea, VT, that true belief is desirable and false belief undesirable, to see if one can explain why it is correct, and to examine its epistemological import. It shows that our endorsement of VT (i) explains why we frown on lying and other forms of deceit; (ii) generalizes to cover degrees of belief; (iii) extends beyond our appreciation of the potential instrumental utility of true belief, to include a respect for the value of truth ‘for its own sake’; (iv) is nonetheless explained by the enormous pragmatic significance of truth; (v) cannot rationalize the norms of justification to which we subscribe (e.g., induction); but (vi) can rationalize both our disposition to initiate investigations (including the gathering of new evidence) and the special care with which we deploy our norms of justification when matters of importance are at issue; (vii) plays no role in constituting either our concept of truth (pace Dummett), or our concept of belief (pace Boghossian), or belief itself (pace Shah and Velleman); (viii) involves no commitment to ‘metaphysical realism’ (pace Rorty); but (ix) serves, on the contrary, as a paradigm illustration of deflationism, since its articulation, VT, deploys ‘true’ merely as a device of generalization.

In this chapter the following two questions are addressed: ‘What does it mean to say that truth is a value?’ and ’How seriously, from what we might call the meta-normative point of view, should we take this value?’ It is argued that in a certain sense to be explained, we have no choice but to take it very seriously, simply because we lack any standpoint from which we can make skepticism about the value, or, as we shall see, the values, of truth intelligible.

This chapter examines an argument that a number of philosophers have recently employed to show that something ordinarily considered valuable is not, in fact, valuable. The argument begins by emphasizing that the analysis of the concept of the putatively valuable thing is a ‘hodgepodge,’ ‘gerrymandered,’ ‘an ad hoc sprawl,’—in short, ugly. Reflecting upon the ugly analysis, we are supposed to intuitively judge that ‘things like that’ to lack value. The argument concludes that the putatively valuable thing is not valuable. Stephen Stich uses the argument to show true belief lacks value. The argument figures prominently in Jonathan Kvanvig's argument that knowledge has no distinctive value. Timothy Williamson flips the argument: since knowledge is obviously valuable, but its analyses have been forced to become increasingly ugly, knowledge is not analysable. This form of argument is rejected.

Introducing a distinction between standard and non-standard reasons, based on the ability to directly follow them, the chapter uses it to solve the ‘right kind of reason’ and the Toxin Puzzle, and to explain the difference between practical reasons and adaptive reasons, of which epistemic reasons are an instance. It then argues that normativity cannot be explained by its relationship to value because epistemic reasons are not related to value at all.

This chapter argues that epistemic values always arise from something one cares about, and it is caring that gives rise to the demand to be epistemically conscientious. The chapter argues further that epistemic values enjoy a privileged place in the panorama of what people care about because these values are entailed by anything one cares about. That means that people cannot resolve a conflict between the value of truth and something else they care about by following the one they care about the most because caring about truth in any domain is entailed by caring about any other domain.