There is broad agreement that knowledge is more than just true belief. What, though, must be added to true belief to get knowledge? According to traditional epistemology, two more ingredients are necessary: justification understood as having good reasons, and beliefs that are non accidentally true.
Having justified belief is not a way of possessing truth. This is because, unlike true belief, justification does not entail truth: a belief can be justified even though it is false. This does not mean that there aren’t some forms of justification that do entail truth – justification by mathematical proof might be one. Such forms of justification are called “infallible” justification. But most forms of justification are fallible: they don’t guarantee truth; e.g. justification by induction, or by the evidence of our senses. So, in general, having a justified belief does not entail that the justified belief is true.
Monism about epistemic values defends the view that truth is the primary epistemic value. It would appear that we want justified beliefs because we want true beliefs rather than we want true beliefs because we want justified beliefs. This would allows us to view the truth goal as the ultimate and primary epistemic goal. There aren't any intrinsic value accruing to justified belief that would be independent from the value of non-accidentally true belief.
Pluralism about epistemic values defends the view that truth is not the primary epistemic value. In addition to truth, there are many other epistemic values: for example, understanding, justification, and making sense of something. Among these, truth is not primary, but just one goal among others. Just truth, as primary candidate is unduly reductive. Epistemology is more than truth as a goal: it is the study of successful cognition. Thus the pluralist rejects the account of truth as the primary epistemic goal, touching upon such topics as the beliefs that are non accidentally true, and reliabilism. A central concept is that of the reliability of a process or method of belief formation.
Is epistemology about justified beliefs for their own sake? Truth can be regarded as the primary epistemic goal?