Knowledge and Belief

[Enai de a lukal]

For most intelligent folks, the difference between belief and knowledge is fairly obvious. However, not everyone is so lucky, so this thread will (hopefully) help certain posters understand this basic difference.

Belief, as the state of holding a certain proposition or claim to be true, is a necessary condition for knowledge- that is to say that, if person A knows P, then necessarily, person A believes P as well. But it is not a sufficient condition- if person A believes P, it does not follow that person A knows P. Thus, knowledge is a subset of belief; all knowledge is belief, but not all belief is knowledge. The easiest way to distinguish the two are to consider examples of belief that are not examples of knowledge- such as instances of false beliefs.

Consider some trivial examples (and I apologize to the majority of you who have already mastered this elementary distinction and have no need of such examples)-

Person A believes that 2+2=5.
It is not the case that person A knows that 2+2=5.

Person A believes that the Detroit Lions won the Super Bowl in 2012.
It is not the case that person A knows that the Detroit Lions won the Super Bowl in 2012.

We could obviously adduce as many such examples as we like, but there's no need. And the difference between belief and knowledge is made similarly stark by contrasting knowing how (as opposed to the- propositional-knowing that) verses mistakenly believing how; if I know how to change a tire, I can successfully change a tire, and achieve the desired result. If I believe I know how to change a tire, but am mistaken, I can't successfully change the tire and cannot achieve the desired result.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Person A believes that the Detroit Lions won the Super Bowl in 2012.It is not the case that person A knows that the Detroit Lions won the Super Bowl in 2012.

How interesting. So you believe that knowledge is contingent on popular opinion. On raw vote.

If 98% of humanity says that the Lions lost, while 2% declare that the Lions won, then you would say that the 98% actually know, while the 2% don't.

So then in medieval Europe, you would have been forced to know that Jesus rose physically from the dead.

It sounds chaotic to me. I don't see how you can keep up with majority opinion on everything so that you can conform your knowledge to it.

By the way, is there a tipping point? Do you know things with 51% agreement vote or do you need a larger majority?

 

[Enai de a lukal]

How interesting. So you believe that knowledge is contingent on popular opinion. On raw vote.

If 98% of humanity says that the Lions lost, while 2% declare that the Lions won, then you would say that the 98% actually know, while the 2% don't.

So then in medieval Europe, you would have been forced to know that Jesus rose physically from the dead.

It sounds chaotic to me. I don't see how you can keep up with majority opinion on everything so that you can conform your knowledge to it.

By the way, is there a tipping point? Do you know things with 51% agreement vote or do you need a larger majority?

I have no idea what you're talking about, nobody said anything about popular opinion or consensus.

It is a fact that the New York Giants won the Super Bowl in 2012- this is not determined by popular consensus, or a vote, but by the score at the end of the Super Bowl (this is usually how sporting events work). Thus, if you believe that a team which did not win the Super Bowl in 2012 won the Super Bowl in 2012 (such as the Lions, or any team besides the Giants), this belief is false. It doesn't matter whether 98% of the population also holds this false belief (although this would never happen, given that the Super Bowl is one of the most widely viewed events there is)- we cannot believe things into reality; reality isn't that concerned with obliging our whims.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

I have no idea what you're talking about, nobody said anything about popular opinion or consensus.

Forgive me. I can't help jumping ahead to the chase sometimes -- the preliminary stuff bores me so.

I'll try to slow my pace.

It is a fact that the New York Giants won the Super Bowl in 2012- this is not determined by popular consensus, or a vote, but by the score at the end of the Super Bowl (this is usually how sporting events work).

I knew you would say that. Most people would. Not everyone has looked closely at the problem, so let's roll up our sleeves and do that.

You're saying that there are 'facts' in the world. And presumably these 'facts' are limited to the physical observations of a majority of human beings (the witnesses to your Superbowl). Even if 2% of the observers came home and reported that the Ravens won, you wouldn't care. You'd go with the 98% who reported that the Giants had won.

Yes? I'm accurately recounting your position so far?

And so you must believe that the Miracle of the Sun (seen by 70,000 people at once), for example, is a fact.

Address that and let's see where we get to.

Thus, if you believe that a team which did not win the Super Bowl in 2012 won the Super Bowl in 2012 (such as the Lions, or any team besides the Giants), this belief is false. It doesn't matter whether 98% of the population also holds this false belief....

So you are of a like mind with the guys who know they are Jesus, yes? Or that they have pink elephants tromping through their garages?

Since it is true, you can know it is true and ignore the majority opinion?

 

[Quintessence]

I find your insinuation that those who do not see a black and white difference between "belief" and "knowledge" to be mentally deficient quite problematic, to put it politely.

It also does a disservice to the diversity of epistemological perspectives found in philosophy. This isn't to say your perspective doesn't have merit, but I have a problem with it being presented as THE perspective.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

You're saying that there are 'facts' in the world.

Indeed there are. Would you disagree, for instance, that it is a fact that we're participating in a thread titled "Knowledge and Belief" on the website religiousforums.com?Or, if there are no facts- is that a fact? (if not, then there are facts )

And presumably these 'facts' are limited to the physical observations of a majority of human beings (the witnesses to your Superbowl).

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean; limited to physical observations of the majority of human beings how?

Even if 2% of the observers came home and reported that the Ravens won, you wouldn't care. You'd go with the 98% who reported that the Giants had won.

Not necessarily- it isn't a matter of consensus. Perhaps if I repeat this a few more times it will finally sink in...

Yes? I'm accurately recounting your position so far?

No, not really.

And so you must believe that the Miracle of the Sun (seen by 70,000 people at once), for example, is a fact.

If by "the Miracle of the Sun" you mean the existence of the sun, then yes, I do. Don't you?

So you are of a like mind with the guys who know they are Jesus, yes? Or that they have pink elephants tromping through their garages?

Um, no. It seems like you may be though, since you're apparently implying that there is no differentiation between, e.g. believing you are actually a semi-historical religious figure who lived two thousand years ago and believing that Barack Obama is the President of the US.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

I find your insinuation that those who do not see a black and white difference between "belief" and "knowledge" to be mentally deficient quite problematic, to put it politely.

I never said there was a "black and white" difference. But there is clearly a difference (not all distinctions are sharp distinctions, and not all differences are qualitative)- whether there is a difference is not a difficult or interesting question. The question is what the difference consists in.

It also does a disservice to the diversity of epistemological perspectives found in philosophy.

The opposite is true. Denying any distinction between belief and knowledge is to deny the entire field of epistemology (as well as common sense). The only epistemological perspective which lends any credence to the thesis that there is no distinction between belief and knowledge is epistemological relativism, which is untenable. As we will see here, since that seems to be precisely what AmbiguousGuy is trying to endorse (if he could just spit it out, that is).

This isn't to say your perspective doesn't have merit, but I have a problem with it being presented as THE perspective.

Then show where I've gone wrong, don't simply whine about it.

 

[Falvlun]

I disagree. I think the distinction between knowledge and belief-- at least practically speaking-- is level of certainty the person places upon it. If they are certain that a thing is true, then this is considered knowledge. If they are not completely certain, but still hold the thing to be true, then it is just considered a belief.

I find that defining knowledge on anything higher than a practical level tends to fail, since it is rather impossible to know on a perfectly objective level that what you claim to know is true, or that your evidence is adequate, or that your reasoning is sound.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

If they are certain that a thing is true, then this is considered knowledge. If they are not completely certain, but still hold the thing to be true, then it is just considered a belief.

So if I am certain that, e.g., Micheal Jordan is the President of the US, then I know that Micheal Jordan is the President of the US?

:areyoucra

 

[Enai de a lukal]

If you want to claim that there is no differentiation between knowledge and belief generally, then you're committed to claiming that the following beliefs are not distinguishable on any epistemic grounds-

I believe Martha Stewart is 200 years old.

I believe (and know) that the name of this thread is "Knowledge and Belief"

So are you prepared to say that any (patently false) belief (such as, for instance, that 2+2=5, that the sun is actually the moon, that our weather is controlled by space aliens, etc.) is indistinguishable from any piece of knowledge (that 2+2=4, that the earth orbits the sun, that today is Sept. 7th, etc.)?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I have no idea what you're talking about, nobody said anything about popular opinion or consensus.

Take the president of the US at any given time (or the US). Why is someone the president of the US? Because enough people in the world believe this to be true. That's also why there is a US. Sports teams do not win or loose in the way that (we think) people are made up of cells and molecules. Long before the brain was believed to be the center of cognition, it was. Yet whether sports teams exist, or win or loose, depends upon enough people understanding a bunch of people wearing certain jerseys as "the Detroit Lions", the Super Bowl to be identified with a bunch of running around, a ball going in certain directions at certain tames and landing in certain places, etc. As shown by trading every year, sports teams are ephemeral. They do not consist of the entities that physically make them up but are intersubjective creations. As such, although they are "real" (I can believe that the Detroit Lions didn't win the Super Bowl in 2012, and I'd be wrong, just as I'd be wrong if I said the president of the US that year was Al Gore), but they are only "real" insofar as people create the intersubjective reality that allows this.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Indeed there are. Would you disagree, for instance, that it is a fact that we're participating in a thread titled "Knowledge and Belief" on the website religiousforums.com?

Nah. I despise that little word 'fact.' It does more to discombobulate clear thought than most any other word except for 'know' or 'knowledge.' So I tend to avoid using it.

Or, if there are no facts- is that a fact? (if not, then there are facts )

Don't let language jerk you around. That's my advice. Think of yourself as its master rather than its servant. Otherwise any little linguistic contradiction will have the power to disturb you.

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean; limited to physical observations of the majority of human beings how?

Yikes. This is teeth-pullingly difficult.

In the end, when I push you to examine the problem very closely, you'll have to say how you determine what is a fact and what isn't. Yes?

And, to be safe, you will point to our human senses. If we can see or hear a thing, you'll say, then that's a fact.

But I'll ask, What about hallucination?

And you'll finally come to the realization that we must go with the vast majority of humanity and its collective physical observations. Oh, we can discount the odd hallucinator here and there, you'll tell me. Those don't count.

In other words, for you a 'fact' is whatever the majority of people declare that they saw with their eyes/heard with their ears.

And then I will point you once again to the Miracle of The Sun and other apparent mass hallucinations and note that you must consider that miracle to be a fact, too.

Not necessarily- it isn't a matter of consensus. Perhaps if I repeat this a few more times it will finally sink in...

I'm pretty sure you just haven't thought about it deeply enough yet. Let's say you wake up tomorrow and 99% of humanity behaves as if the Ravens won the Superbowl in 2012 (or whenever it was.)

Will you continue knowing that the Giants won? If so, on what basis?

If not, then you have gone with majority opinion, as I set forth earlier.

Um, no. It seems like you may be though, since you're apparently implying that there is no differentiation between, e.g. believing you are actually a semi-historical religious figure who lived two thousand years ago and believing that Barack Obama is the President of the US.

There was no Jesus. I know this and I believe it. It's easy to know stuff. That's because knowing stuff is no different from believing stuff. You don't even have to click your heels or anything. You can just stand in one spot and suddenly know a thing.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

I disagree. I think the distinction between knowledge and belief-- at least practically speaking-- is level of certainty the person places upon it. If they are certain that a thing is true, then this is considered knowledge. If they are not completely certain, but still hold the thing to be true, then it is just considered a belief.

Yep. That's really all there is to it, I think... one's level of personal psychological certainty.

If I'm absolutely certain that a thing is true, then I know it.

But if I have sufficient doubt, then I only believe it.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Take the president of the US at any given time (or the US). Why is someone the president of the US? Because enough people in the world believe this to be true. That's also why there is a US.

Sure, and on second thought that was a pretty bad example, in that who the President of the US is is a function of consensus- albeit in a different sense. This was probably unnecessarily confusing.

Sports teams do not win or loose in the way that (we think) people are made up of cells and molecules. Long before the brain was believed to be the center of cognition, it was. Yet whether sports teams exist, or win or loose, depends upon enough people understanding a bunch of people wearing certain jerseys as "the Detroit Lions", the Super Bowl to be identified with a bunch of running around, a ball going in certain directions at certain tames and landing in certain places, etc. As shown by trading every year, sports teams are ephemeral. They do not consist of the entities that physically make them up but are intersubjective creations. As such, although they are "real"

Of course- sports are a social convention. So, as above, there is a sense in which popular consensus could be such that the NY Giants were NOT the Super Bowl champs; we can imagine, for instance, a counterfactual society just like ours, only, their conventions are such that in professional football the winner of the game is the one with the FEWEST points- in that case, the Patriots would have been the winners. But once again, what is differentiating knowing who won the game versus mistakenly believing who won the game are the relevant states-of-affairs (the conventions that govern the game of football, and how the game actually plays out on the field).

(I can believe that the Detroit Lions didn't win the Super Bowl in 2012, and I'd be wrong, just as I'd be wrong if I said the president of the US that year was Al Gore), but they are only "real" insofar as people create the intersubjective reality that allows this.

Indeed- thus these were less than ideal examples (the distinction is obviously much more sharp when we consider tautologies or mathematical truths, or facts pertaining to material objects- but even here, the conventional element of language remains). But as you say, we can still distinguish between between knowing and believing falsely- on the basis of what the "inter-subjective reality" is like.

And we should also point out that the other, and equally crucial, distinction between knowledge and belief is that of justification or warrant- the basis one has for holding a given belief. If I believe that the Giants won the Super Bowl in 2012 because their jerseys are blue and blue is my favorite color, then I did not know who won the Super Bowl, even though my belief was correct- it was essentially a lucky guess. When one knows something, this means that one believes it, that one has adequate grounds for believing it, and that it is the case.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

I find your insinuation that those who do not see a black and white difference between "belief" and "knowledge" to be mentally deficient quite problematic, to put it politely.

In his defense, he and I have come tumbling in together from another, somewhat-contentious, thread. That may be why we both seem to be packing a bit of tude.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Nah.I despise that little word 'fact.' It does more to discombobulate clear thought than most any other word except for 'know' or 'knowledge.' So I tend to avoid using it.

If we are participating in a thread titled "Knowledge and Belief", then it is a fact that we are participating in a thread titled "Knowledge and Belief". That's just what "fact" means. If you don't like the word "fact", for whatever weird and secretive reason, let's come up with a new term- how about "shmact"?

Don't let language jerk you around. That's my advice.

I don't. That's why I would never claim something like "(it is a fact that) there are no facts".

Yikes. This is teeth-pullingly difficult.

If you've only just been introduced to the philosophy of perception, I guess...

In the end, when I push you to examine the problem very closely, you'll have to say how you determine what is a fact and what isn't. Yes?

Indeed. And that will vary depending on the type of fact in question- is it a claim about the visual qualities of a material object ("that shirt is red")? Then we'd better take a look. Is is a claim about mathematics? Then we'd better determine the rules of our formal system and perform the relevant calculations.

And, to be safe, you will point to our human senses.

Again, this depends on what type of claim we're concerned with. If the claim is whether 88 is divisible by 3 with no remainder, then no, sensory evidence will not be relevant.

But I'll ask, What about hallucination?

Indeed, we can never tell, in a moment, whether a given perception is veridical or not. Correspondence only discerns itself through coherence. Welcome to the philosophy of perception, my friend. The only reason we can discern hallucinations from veridical perceptions at all is because the hallucination does not cohere with the rest of the relevant data (for instance, whether we still see green gnomes the next day after dropping LSD, or by touching the stick that is in the water to see if it really is crooked, as it appears)

And then I will point you once again to the Miracle of The Sun and other apparent mass hallucinations and note that you must consider that miracle to be a fact, too.

What is the "Miracle of the Sun"? Is that your phrase for the existence of our sun? Lol...

Let's say you wake up tomorrow and 99% of humanity behaves as if the Ravens won the Superbowl in 2012 (or whenever it was.)

It would still depend on all the other relevant factors. Perhaps everyone else has been drugged with some memory-altering drug?

Now, if such an improbable situation were to occur- that 99% of humanity acted as if the Super Bowl champion was a team other than the actual Super Bowl champion, would it be very likely that you would end up believing- or knowing- that the team that in fact (er, shmact) won the Super Bowl won the Super Bowl? Probably not- it would be exceedingly difficult and unlikely, the odds would be stacked against you. But how likely someone is to arrive at the correct belief (knowledge) in certain fantastical situations does not imply that there is no distinction between belief and knowledge generally. (e.g. between knowing that the Giants won the Super Bowl in '12 and believing that the Lions won it, between believing your body has left the earth for certain intervals and knowing that it has not, between knowing that renates are cordates and believing they are not, and so on, ad naseum)

There was no Jesus. I know this and I believe it. It's easy to know stuff. That's because knowing stuff is no different from believing stuff. You don't even have to click your heels or anything. You can just stand in one spot and suddenly know a thing.

Believing is really easy- we can believe whatever we want. Knowledge, however, is constrained by reality. It would be nice if reality obliged our every fantasy and whim- alas, most people are not born with magical powers like this.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

This was probably unnecessarily confusing.

I don't know. I started to give another example in my original response that I thought better and then I got to your part about changing a tire and I thought "well, that tops mine." (It was from my intro to logic class, with one of my favorite professors of all time, and involves superman vs. clark kent and what lois lane knows/believes about superman vs. what she knows/believes about clark kent).

 

[ManTimeForgot]

I have no idea what you're talking about, nobody said anything about popular opinion or consensus.

It is a fact that the New York Giants won the Super Bowl in 2012- this is not determined by popular consensus, or a vote, but by the score at the end of the Super Bowl (this is usually how sporting events work). Thus, if you believe that a team which did not win the Super Bowl in 2012 won the Super Bowl in 2012 (such as the Lions, or any team besides the Giants), this belief is false. It doesn't matter whether 98% of the population also holds this false belief (although this would never happen, given that the Super Bowl is one of the most widely viewed events there is)- we cannot believe things into reality; reality isn't that concerned with obliging our whims.

Truth about our experiences do not necessarily indicate that the content of our experiences are also true. Anyone who has ever done drugs (or hallucinated for any reason) can tell you that just because it is true that you had a sensation doesn't necessarily mean that there is any real object to correspond to that content.


It is Highly Probable that the New York Giants won the 2012 Super Bowl, but even those people who were there don't necessarily know with strictest certainty that that is in fact what transpired. The only content we can know for a 100% fact outside our own experiences are tautologies and contradictions; everything else is subject to varying degrees of certainty.


I place an extremely high probability on gravity existing (in some form); I place a slightly less probability on the Sun existing as a result of undergoing nuclear fusion; I place a further more remote probability on earth being 4.54 billion years old; then more remote than that of the universe being 13.8 billion years old. It would require more evidence than I can currently imagine to make me believe that the existence of gravity was a fallacy. Whereas, I can conceive of us having made an error in dating the age of the universe, but I consider it to be unlikely. So if I had to quantify my beliefs I might say: Proposition A) 99.9999% likely Proposition D) 90% likely.

So if I had to place bets I would always (in the absence of gaining further knowledge between now and then) bet on those propositions, but none of those can be considered knowledge at least a priori. The truth of my current experience is that I am experiencing something I call gravity (and presumably others call gravity). The more removed something is from our sensory experiences though, (whether by experiment or by mere observation) the less likelihood we are supposed to afford that proposition. Past a certain threshold of likelihood we all engage in epistemological shorthand of saying we "Know something." Whether that probability threshold lay at 90% or at 99% is going to differ from person to person.


I readily admit that this distinction is nuanced, and possibly unhelpful for certain classes of people, but I also don't think that one should shy away from the truth if it proves inconvenient either. It is almost always best to present the full truth and then explain exceptions to the best of our ability than to allow anyone to "discover the real truth," and then go back to believing incorrectly because they "know they had the truth shaded," even if it was done "for their benefit."

MTF

 

[Slapstick]

For most intelligent folks, the difference between belief and knowledge is fairly obvious. However, not everyone is so lucky, so this thread will (hopefully) help certain posters understand this basic difference.

Belief, as the state of holding a certain proposition or claim to be true, is a necessary condition for knowledge- that is to say that, if person A knows P, then necessarily, person A believes P as well. But it is not a sufficient condition- if person A believes P, it does not follow that person A knows P. Thus, knowledge is a subset of belief; all knowledge is belief, but not all belief is knowledge. The easiest way to distinguish the two are to consider examples of belief that are not examples of knowledge- such as instances of false beliefs.

Consider some trivial examples (and I apologize to the majority of you who have already mastered this elementary distinction and have no need of such examples)-

Person A believes that 2+2=5.
It is not the case that person A knows that 2+2=5.

Person A believes that the Detroit Lions won the Super Bowl in 2012.
It is not the case that person A knows that the Detroit Lions won the Super Bowl in 2012.

We could obviously adduce as many such examples as we like, but there's no need. And the difference between belief and knowledge is made similarly stark by contrasting knowing how (as opposed to the- propositional-knowing that) verses mistakenly believing how; if I know how to change a tire, I can successfully change a tire, and achieve the desired result. If I believe I know how to change a tire, but am mistaken, I can't successfully change the tire and cannot achieve the desired result.

When you compare belief with knowledge you are comparing apples with oranges. Yes they can both be classified as fruit, but beyond that there are no other similarities that can’t be said about anything else.
What I mean by this is that you have a gross misrepresentation of what a belief entails and you are falling way short of what can be considered knowledge without first understanding how that knowledge was acquired or came about.

 

[Tiberius]

If something is knowledge, then you can demonstrate it to others. I can demonstrate that 2+2=4. I can demonstrate that the universe is billions of years old. I can demonstrate that the sun is a star.

Belief is something that you are sure is correct. A belief may be true, but it may not be true. I believe there is no fairy fluttering silently behind my head, ready to disappear should I turn around, but I can't prove it.