posted July 28, 2012 11:29 PM            

Knowledge and belief are two concepts that can really make you get lost in deep thought if you think long over them. There are more than one aspects in which you can look at the two concepts. Philosophers have always debated about where lies the difference between knowledge and belief. Here is an account of knowledge vs. belief.

Plato's "Justified True Belief"
Many philosophers have tried to explore the nature of human knowledge and the means through which we acquire it. (Here knowledge is not equal to truckloads of information, as is available on the Internet!) Plato has said, something that is a justified true belief is knowledge. Understanding the definition would require a clear and concise understanding of the terms involved in it. Let us take a look at them. 'Justified' means something that is rational and reasonable. 'Truth' means something that is in accordance with fact. ['Fact' means something that can be verified, usually based on personal experience.] And 'belief' is something one holds to be true. So, if you have a belief, you have a reason enough to believe in it, and if your belief is in accordance with the truth, it becomes your knowledge.

The Gettier Problems
Many philosophers of Plato's time, and many that came after him, did not agree with Plato's definition of knowledge. The most significant explanation was given by Edmund Gettier in 1963 in his paper Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Gettier gave examples - famously known as Gettier problems - which investigated situations in which the boundaries between knowledge and belief seemed hazy. Now, suppose you have a justified belief that your friend will win a race he/she is participating in. Suppose you also have a justified belief that your friend is going to wear a red T-shirt for the race. Hence you justifiably conclude that, "the person who will win the race will be wearing a red T-shirt". This is your belief. Now consider that your friend does not win the race, but the person who wins it is wearing a red T-shirt. Thus your belief that the person who will win the race will be wearing a red T-shirt turned out to be justifiable and true. But was it knowledge? Not really, for it was a belief that only coincidentally turned out to be true.

The Moore's Paradox
G. E. Moore's concept - known as Moore's Paradox - also put the definition of knowledge to test. Moore's paradox elicits how it is sometimes difficult to assert two statements at a time. For example, you may at some point of time have a justifiable belief that the bus you take to college will be late. And you may also have a justifiable belief that you are going to reach college on time. Now consider that the bus did arrive late, but you met a friend who took you along. So the conjunction of your beliefs has turned out to be true (i.e. the bus really was late, like you believed, but you also reached college on time, like you believed). However, will it not sound absurd to assert the two beliefs in conjunction? "The bus will arrive late, but I will reach college on time." The two statements seem contradictory, but both can be justifiable beliefs that actually turn true. Then why is it difficult to assert so?

Knowledge vs. Belief - The Real Picture

Having taken into consideration two radically opposite points of view on knowledge, let us try to look at the two concepts separately.

Knowledge
Knowledge is the realization of a fact. You may come to know about things through various mediums - books, Internet, education or experience. Going back to the definition of knowledge as justified true belief, we know something to be true (or to be a fact) if we can verify it. Experience is something we rely on, the most, to verify our knowledge. It works most of the time. You can support knowledge and verify it using experimental or statistical data. This is also why knowledge can be 'proven' to be wrong.

There are various types of knowledge, according to epistemology (branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of human knowledge and its scope and limitations). Propositional knowledge is also dubbed as 'knowledge that'. For example, you know that two multiplied by three is equal to six. Then there is 'knowledge how'. For example, you know how to multiply two by three. There is also 'knowledge by acquaintance'. For example, you know your city, you know a person. All types of knowledge are tangible.

Belief
While knowledge is regarded tangible, belief is a psychological state. This itself makes the whole concept vulnerable to strong debates and accusations. A belief is not something that can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched. It is all in the mind; something that we all feel but cannot prove by the scientific method.

Beliefs are of two main types - commendatory beliefs (belief in ability, for example, "I believe I am a good writer.") and existential claim beliefs (belief in the existence of something, for example "I believe in God.") While commendatory beliefs are held by most people as essential, beliefs related to existential claims are a topic of much debate.

Knowledge and Belief: How are they Different?
Knowledge is indispensable, yes. However, belief is equally important. A simple example - if I do not believe that a tablet of an analgesic will take care of my headache, I will never test my belief. Hence I may never know for a fact that an analgesic actually does relieve headache. However, even if I don't believe, it does not change the fact that analgesic tablets do relieve headaches. In this sense, knowledge is not based on belief. However, the more you can base your belief with fact, the stronger your belief will become. (or in turn, the lesser facts you find to base your belief on, the weaker it will become). Hence belief is affected by the knowledge you have.

The biggest difference between belief and knowledge is - it is the tendency of most people to test their beliefs and not their knowledge. When we are sure we know something, we do not really go back and try to verify it. We tend to accept our knowledge more readily than our beliefs. Our beliefs, however, are constantly put to test; by us, by people around, by situations, experiences among many other things.

By: Mrunal Belvalkar

Click me ;-)

posted July 29, 2012 07:13 AM            

Applied to religion, I think that it's very important to recognize a difference between knowledge and belief, and to accept that all religion is belief. No religion can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by scientifically-verifiable means. (And conversely, atheists cannot prove beyond any doubt that nothing spiritual exists--it goes both ways). On top of that, religious texts do allow for multiple interpretations in many cases, so even within a religion, even within a specific denomination, people cannot prove 100% without any other argument being reasonable that they are right and that their approach is right.

I get frustrated when people (especially preachers/prominent people, be they militant atheists or religious fundies; I'm referring to/thinking of people that I've known personally in real life and not LL) speak of their beliefs as though they are some kind of verified provable fact, that their way is the only possible way that things could be, etc., but what annoys me most of all is when people say that they know that they are right. They don't. They can't. It's something that I had to come to terms with and make peace with when I decided to pursue a faith. Until I die, I will never know for sure if I'm right--and maybe not even then. None of us will ever know until we get there, and even when that happens, who's to say that any divine power, if there is one, would grant us answers? I've always believed since I was little that we'd get some kind of 'closure' on some questions (though not on the Really Big Stuff), but I could be completely wrong, too.

posted July 29, 2012 07:43 AM            

Belief is the understanding of a thing acquired by inference. For
example, we conclude the existence of fire from the presence of
smoke in a place without actually witnessing the fire.

If we see the fire itself, our seeing the existence of fire
becomes knowledge.

Knowledge of a thing we witness with the eye may, however, be
further improved on through actual experience. For example, by
thrusting our hand into the fire. Thus we reach the highest stage of
certainty or Certitude.

posted July 29, 2012 03:02 PM            

I wanted to toss a bit of a debate into the mix (related to The Gettier Problems) and argue that "Knowledge" and "Truth", are so dependent on belief, that their boundaries are eventually indistinguishable.

Let's take gravity for example. We all know gravity exists because it is a force we can measure. Could the earth randomly stop having a gravitational pull? All signs point to no, BUT is it impossible? Is there some aspect of gravity we don't yet understand? Could gravity surprise us? The answer is yes, and that makes our "knowledge" of gravity a bit better than an educated guess. I have heard people argue that "what science does not understand, it will eventually understand in time". I wonder if we will ever run out of things to misunderstand?

Take the concept of infinity, Infinity is a mathematical concept which describes continuation without end. Many of us "know" that there is nothing larger than infinity, because by nature it is endless. until recently in the grand timeline of human knowledge, mathematicians would have agreed.

If you count from 0 and add +1 infinitely, that would be an "infinity".
If you count from 0 and subtract -1 infinitely, that would be an equally large "infinity"
If you count from 0 and subtract -1 while adding +1 in the opposite direction, that "infinity" would be larger than the above two.
If you count from 0 and add +1/2 infinitely, you would never reach 1 and that would be an infinitely larger "infinity" than the first three examples.

Today we "Know" there are an infinite amount of infinities all varying in shape, dimension, and size. But the mathematician who suggested the idea to his colleagues was laughed out of their confidence. By the time they all came around, he was dieing in a sanitarium.

And finally using the example from the post "However, even if I don't believe, it does not change the fact that analgesic tablets do relieve headaches". The fact that analgesic tablets do relieve headaches also doesn't change if the person taking them has an allergic reaction and dies, if the person has a migraine which analgesics can't cure, if the person has a headache due to a tumor or stroke, etc... It does however create a few new "facts" including, "sometimes analgesic tablets don't fix headaches" and "sometimes analgesic tablets cause allergic reactions". This makes the original statement about analgesic tablets more of a conditional statement, based on what the person believes or what they want a consumer to believe.

There is value to knowledge, but that value is based on our "belief" and acceptance (or in many cases assumption) that knowledge will continue to function as we understand it. In kabbalah, the majority of our cognitive facilities exist below a giant abyss referred to as Daath. Daath represents "knowledge" or "what we know to be true". It is described as an abyss, because the further one invests their energy into what they know to be true, the further they separate their self from understanding, wisdom, and universal truth.

Just tossing that in the mix =)

posted July 31, 2012 12:16 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Randall:
Gonna jack the infinity spiel.

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Jack away =)