 One conclusion Lynch has drawn from such thought experiments is that understanding has a value that mere knowledge lacks, a position we’ve seen has been embraced for different reasons in  §4  by Kvanvig and others. A further conclusion, advanced by Pritchard (2013) and Carter (2017), concerns the extent to which the acquisition of knowledge involves ‘epistemic dependence’—viz., dependence on factors outwith one’s cognitive agency. They argue that the greater the scope of epistemic dependence, the more valuable it becomes to cultivate virtues like intellectual autonomy that regulate the appropriate reliance and outsourcing (e.g., on other individuals, technology, medicine, etc.) while at the same time maintaining one’s intellectual self-direction.