 What we need, it seems, is an account of pure cognitive value, one that embodies the idea that getting at the truth is itself valuable whatever its practical benefits. As noted this possibility was first explicitly raised by Hempel, and developed in various difference ways in the 1960s and 1970s by Levi (1967) and Hilpinen (1968), amongst others. (For recent developments see the entry  epistemic utility arguments for probabilism,  §6.)