Knowledge Vs. Belief Vs. Opinion

[SalixIncendium]

Dictionary definitions aside, for the purposes of contributing to this forum, how do you differentiate knowledge, belief, and opinion?

In other words, what, for you, is the difference between the following statements?

I know...
I believe...
In my opinion...​

 

[Spirit of Light]

Personally i would swap "I know" with "in my understanding"

You can believe you know sometimes but you can have an opinion, and still miss the true answer.

 

[questfortruth]

Dictionary definitions aside, for the purposes of contributing to this forum, how do you differentiate knowledge, belief, and opinion?

In other words, what, for you, is the difference between the following statements?

I know...
I believe...
In my opinion...​

Faith is staying true to Knowledge. As example, if one knows, that masturbation is sin, then does not do it.

"In my opinion" - hypothesis.

 

[Eddi]

For me: I use “I know” when talking about things that are uncontroversial, if many other people are likely to agree with what I’m saying

And I use “I believe” or “in my opinion” if there is a controversy

e.g. “I believe in God” and “I know 4 + 4 = 8"

 

[Mock Turtle]

In my opinion, I believe I know I am alive - but I could be wrong.

 

[bobhikes]

Dictionary definitions aside, for the purposes of contributing to this forum, how do you differentiate knowledge, belief, and opinion?

In other words, what, for you, is the difference between the following statements?

I know...
I believe...
In my opinion...​

I know should be defined as some thing I learned and verified.
I believe should be defined as something critical to my self image but may not be verifiable
In my opinion should be defined as something I'd like to think but have no real belief or knowledge of.

 

[Sunstone]

"I know": That is to say, I have a justified true belief with a Gettier defeat.

If my belief is not justified, if it is not warranted, then it is not knowledge. For how can I say I know something if I have no adequate reason to believe it is true?​

If my belief is not true, then it is not knowledge. For how can I call "knowledge" something that is not true?​

If my belief is not a belief, if I do not actually subscribe to a view, then how can I say I know it?​

Note: A Gettier defeat is a technical detail that is seldom needed or comes into play, but that is crucially important to have when it does come into play -- assuming you want to call something "knowledge".


"Opinion" I use in various and sundry ways.

 

[SalixIncendium]

"I know": I have a justified true belief with a Gettier defeat.

The other two I use in various and sundry ways.

Thanks for posting this! This is the first time I've heard of the Gettier Problem. I'm going to do some additional reading on this.

 

[Sunstone]

Thanks for posting this! This is the first time I've heard of the Gettier Problem. I'm going to do some additional reading on this.

Please tell me your take on Gettier problems after you read up on them. Either in this thread or in a PM. I would love to hear your views.

 

[Sunstone]

I can have a belief, but that is not knowledge. My belief could be false.

I can have a true belief, but that still is not knowledge. My belief could be a guess.

I can have a justified true belief. That's getting there, but it still is not knowledge. My belief might be a coincidence, a trick of sorts, an illusion, a Gettier case.

I can have a justified true belief with a Gettier defeat. Now -- at last -- I can legitimately say that I know something.

 

[SalixIncendium]

Please tell me your take on Gettier problems after you read up on them. Either in this thread or in a PM. I would love to hear your views.

Seems to me that the Gettier problems have to do with unknown variables that have not been considered prior to the assertion or claim of knowledge, and therefore justification, truth, and belief are not sufficient conditions for knowledge.

 

[Sunstone]

Seems to me that the Gettier problems have to do with unknown variables that have not be considered prior to the assertion or claim of knowledge, and therefore justification, truth, and belief are not sufficient conditions for knowledge.

Exactly. They are still controversial in the sense that not everyone is an old stick-in-the-mud who insists that they must be dealt with before one can legitimately claim to know something. I am though. I'm an old stick-in-the-mud. I also hate it when kids play on my grass.

 

[BSM1]

Please tell me your take on Gettier problems after you read up on them. Either in this thread or in a PM. I would love to hear your views.

Well he was certainly entitled to his opinion...

 

[Vinayaka]

Dictionary definitions aside, for the purposes of contributing to this forum, how do you differentiate knowledge, belief, and opinion?

In other words, what, for you, is the difference between the following statements?

I know...
I believe...
In my opinion...​

For religious belief, for me 'I know' means the person has convinced themselves, or attempted to convince themselves, to the degree it's hard-set in their own minds. So essentially, to me, 'I know' is meaningless. They don't know. It's a psychological phenomena related to security issues, or hard programming.

The other two I see as practically identical, and realistic.

 

[Salvador]

Dictionary definitions aside, for the purposes of contributing to this forum, how do you differentiate knowledge, belief, and opinion?

In other words, what, for you, is the difference between the following statements?

I know...
I believe...
In my opinion...​

I believe like knowledge, my opinions are based on fact.

 

[viole]

Dictionary definitions aside, for the purposes of contributing to this forum, how do you differentiate knowledge, belief, and opinion?

In other words, what, for you, is the difference between the following statements?

I know...
I believe...
In my opinion...​

well, let us use an example, where the right parts cannot be moved without looking funny.

I know...that the speed of light in vacuum is constant
I believe...there is life elsewhere in the universe
In my opinion...Hip Hop is terrible

Ciao

- viole

 

[atanu]

Dictionary definitions aside, for the purposes of contributing to this forum, how do you differentiate knowledge, belief, and opinion?

In other words, what, for you, is the difference between the following statements?

I know...
I believe...
In my opinion...​

I know that I exist.
I believe that "I am" constitutes a general and is all-pervasive.
In my opinion, as I gather from my discussions, most people have not given a thought on this line.

 

[Polymath257]

Exactly. They are still controversial in the sense that not everyone is an old stick-in-the-mud who insists that they must be dealt with before one can legitimately claim to know something. I am though. I'm an old stick-in-the-mud. I also hate it when kids play on my grass.

Let's take a real world example. If you go back 150 years, there was a 'law of nature' called 'the conservation of mass'. Every piece of evidence was consistent with that law. It was justified both through theory and observation, often at exquisitely detailed levels. For example, the gas Argon was discovered by finding a mass deficit in air at sub-percentage levels.

So, was 'conservation of mass' a piece of scientific knowledge? if you had asked any scientist 150 years ago, they would have answered with an unqualified yes. At the time, it was considered to be a true belief, to be highly justified, and there were no known defeaters.

But, in fact, the conservation of mass *is* violated in nuclear reactions. The atomic bomb at Hiroshima violated the conservation of mass by about one gram.

Now, we fast forward to today. We have a more general 'law of nature' that we call 'the conservation of energy'. The modern version subsumes the conservation of mass *and* the version of the conservation of energy known 150 years ago by allowing for mass and energy to interconvert via E=mc^2.

So, now, is 'the conservation of energy' in the modern variant 'knowledge'? it is justified. It is true to 'the best of our knowledge(!!!)'.

And maybe that is the point: that we have 'to the best of our knowledge' and not 'knowledge' itself. Gettier problems are all issues when 'to the best of our knowledge' turns out to be a problem. We lucked into the truth as opposed to really justifying it.

We never *know* we are not in a Gettier case.

 

[Polymath257]

So,

To the best of our knowledge, the speed of light in a vacuum is constant.

I believe that Ceasar crossed the Rubicon.

And my opinion is that tomatoes taste awful.

 

[ChristineM]

I know...

I have seen sufficient evidence to convince me.

I believe...

Evidence is irrelevant

In my opinion...

See i believe...