There is an alarming lack of purely philosophical threads on this forum. Here is my attempt to rectify the situation. The issue I'm about to discuss is actually incredibly involved and encompasses a number of questions. I'm going to start with the stripped-down version lest I waste my time writing this for no one to respond.
The Value Problem
There is a long held intuition in epistemology (the study of knowledge) that knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief. The difference between knowing that P and having a mere true belief that P is that a lucky guess counts as a true belief, but not knowledge. This makes sense to most people. Knowing the answer seems intuitively more valuable than just correctly guessing the answer. In the Meno (one of Plato's works), Socrates asks Meno this very question. In particular, Socrates wants to know what practical value knowledge has over a correct guess. Suppose you want to get to Larissa. You can either ask someone who knows the way, or someone who merely has a true belief on how to get there. But either way, you'll be given the right directions to Larissa. At least, this is Socrates' example. We can modernize it a bit. Let's say you're a contestant on a game show. You are 1 question away from winning a cash prize. Is there any difference here between knowing the answer and just guessing correctly? Either way, you win the cash. This is supposed to show that the added value of knowledge cannot be practical value. Knowledge is not any better at guiding our actions that mere true belief. Both will get us our desired, practical outcome. So here's the question: where does the added value of knowledge come from? Just to get your minds working, here are two options (though they are hardly the only two). Some philosophers have looked for the added value in some kind of justification. A justified true belief (that is, a belief you have some reason for holding) seems better than a lucky true belief. And some philosophers hold that the value problem is insoluble - that is, there is no additional value for knowledge over mere true belief. But please, don't just limit yourself to the above two options. There are plenty of ways of thinking about the problem, these are just there to get the juices flowing.
