**Clarifying the Concepts of Knowledge**

Metaphysics & Epistemology
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Post 1, Why Conceptual Clarity Matters

Before asking whether we know this or that, it’s worth asking what we mean by knowledge in the first place. The word is familiar, but familiar words are often the ones that mislead us most easily. We use them confidently because they belong to ordinary speech, but when we begin to argue philosophically, small shifts in use can create large confusions.

This thread is an attempt to slow things down and look carefully at the basic concepts involved in knowledge, viz., truth, fact, belief, justification, evidence, certainty, doubt, proof, understanding, error, and knowledge itself. I don’t want to begin with a particular controversy or application. I want to begin with the concepts that make such controversies intelligible. Before we can ask whether some claim is known, justified, proven, doubtful, certain, or defeated, we need to be clearer about how these words function.

One common source of confusion is that we often treat related concepts as though they were interchangeable. A belief isn’t the same thing as knowledge. Evidence isn’t always proof. Certainty doesn’t always mean the same thing in every context. Doubt isn’t merely the ability to imagine an alternative. And justification isn’t merely having something to say in defense of a belief.

Another source of confusion is that a word can have more than one legitimate use. This is especially true of words like certainty and proof. Someone may say, “I’m certain,” to express conviction. But that isn’t the same as saying that a claim is epistemically secure. Likewise, we speak of mathematical proof, legal proof, empirical proof, practical proof, and ordinary demonstration, but these aren’t all the same thing. If we slide from one use to another without noticing it, the argument can appear stronger than it is.

So the purpose of this thread isn’t to build a grand theory. It’s to clarify the concepts step by step. I want to begin with facts and truth, then move to belief, justification, evidence, understanding, knowledge, certainty, doubt, proof, error, possibility, explanation, and defeaters. The hope is that by the end we’ll have a clearer map of how these concepts relate to one another.

The guiding thought is simple. Many philosophical problems don’t begin with technical mistakes. They begin with ordinary words being used too loosely. If we can become clearer about the concepts, we may also become clearer about the arguments built from them.

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Hello. I find your ambition interesting, but I would like to offer a friendly warning regarding a few severe limitations I perceive in this project.

First, your approach seems structurally very close to the original project of analytic philosophy: the premise that classical philosophical statements are mostly devoid of sense, and that we must therefore construct perfectly clarified, “certified” propositions.

We all know the historical result of this ambition: it ultimately produced a disparate collection of highly artificial statements with a totally insignificant scope. I am curious: how do you plan to avoid falling into this exact same trap of producing artificial insignificance?

Second, let us suppose you actually succeed in establishing these precise, clarified notions. You will then possess a new theoretical corpus. However, you will inevitably be forced to either recycle old words (which carry their own historical baggage) or create a brand new jargon.

Consequently, you will spend all your time and energy trying to endlessly recenter the discussions, constantly dragging people from their usual context of signification back into your new, specific context.

Doesn’t this risk turning your genuine pursuit of knowledge into an endless, exhausting linguistic maintenance task?

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I’m not trying to construct perfectly clarified propositions or concepts (What Russell first thought Witt was doing in the Tractatus). I’m also not starting from the assumption that ordinary philosophical claims are mostly devoid of sense. That isn’t my view. Ordinary language works quite well in everyday settings. The problem arises when we take familiar words such as truth, belief, certainty, proof, evidence, and knowledge, and move them into philosophical argument without noticing that they have different uses.

So the aim isn’t to purify language. It’s much more modest than that. I’m trying to distinguish uses that often get run together.

Take certainty, for example. When someone says, “I’m certain,” that may simply express conviction. But that isn’t the same as saying that the claim is epistemically certain. A person can be subjectively certain and still be wrong. Or take proof. We sometimes use proof in a loose inductive sense, where the evidence is strong enough to establish a claim for practical or epistemic purposes. But we also use proof in a stricter deductive sense, where the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises, as in mathematics or formal logic. Those aren’t the same use. If we move between them without noticing the shift, the argument can appear stronger than it is.

That’s the sort of thing I’m trying to clarify. I’m not trying to replace ordinary words with technical substitutes. I’m trying to keep track of what we’re doing with the words we already use.

So I don’t see this as a move toward artificial insignificance. In fact, I see it as a way of staying close to ordinary use. The question isn’t, “Can we replace ordinary words with purified ones?” The question is, “How is this word functioning in this context?” That seems to me to be the opposite of artificiality. It’s an attempt to prevent confusion by paying attention to actual use.

On your second point, I agree that there’s always a danger of creating jargon. But that’s not what I’m trying to do here either. I don’t want to create a new theoretical vocabulary and then force everyone else to speak it. I want to make the ordinary vocabulary less slippery. There’s nothing wrong with continuing to use words like knowledge, belief, truth, certainty, and proof, provided we’re alert to what the word is doing in a particular context.

Will that require occasional recentering? Yes, probably. But I don’t see that as a defect. In philosophical discussion, part of the work consists in noticing when a word has shifted its function. If someone moves from subjective certainty to epistemic certainty, or from proof in a loose inductive sense to proof in a strict deductive sense, or from mere possibility to explanation, then pointing that out isn’t linguistic maintenance for its own sake. It’s part of keeping the argument clear.

So I’m not trying to create a sealed theoretical corpus. It’s closer to a usable map. The map may be imperfect, but it can still help us see when we’ve moved from one use to another without noticing how the role of the concept has shifted. That’s all I’m after at this point in the thread. Not final definitions, not certified propositions, and not a new jargon, just a clearer view of how these concepts function when we use them to talk about knowledge.

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OK but is that not what is done half of time in each TPF thread? Your normative way of doing that will not have great success I’m afraid.

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Depends on how you define success.

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That Mt. Everest is in Nepal is a fact. It’s a curious fact, but that’s another story. It is also perfectly ok to say that that Mt. Everest is in Nepal is a a truth, a curious one at that. I don’t see a difference between facts and truths. My hunch is that it’s a domain issue. For example news providers report facts/truths (salva veritate) while philosophers are truth-oriented. They are synonyms, facts and truths.

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Post 2, Facts and Truth

A good place to begin is with the distinction between facts and truth. The two concepts are closely related, but they don’t do the same work.

A fact is what is the case. If the book is on the table, then it’s a fact that the book is on the table. The fact isn’t the sentence, “The book is on the table.” Nor is it my belief that the book is on the table. The fact is what obtains (what is the case), i.e., the thing being so.

Truth belongs to what we say, believe, assert, judge, or think. A statement is true when it gets what is the case right. If I say, “The book is on the table,” and the book is on the table, then my statement is true. If the book isn’t on the table, then my statement is false. So, again, facts concern what is the case. Truth concerns whether a statement, belief, or assertion gets what is the case right.

This may seem obvious, but it’s easy to blur the distinction. We sometimes speak as if truth itself were a kind of object, or as if facts were just statements we strongly accept. But facts aren’t made into facts by our believing them. A fact is not a belief with extra confidence attached to it. Nor is a fact simply whatever a person or group happens to accept. If something is the case, it’s the case whether I recognize it or not.

On the other hand, truth isn’t the same thing as sincerity, certainty, evidence, or proof. A person can sincerely believe something false. A person can feel certain and still be wrong. A person can have evidence for a claim, and the claim can still turn out to be false. And a person may lack proof even when the claim in question is true. These concepts are connected, but they aren’t interchangeable.

This is one reason philosophical arguments can become confused. Someone may say, “That’s true for me,” when what they mean is, “That’s what I believe,” or “That’s how things seem to me,” or “That’s what matters to me.” Those may be important claims, but they aren’t the same as truth. If truth means getting what is the case right, then truth isn’t private in that sense. My belief may be mine, but whether the belief is true depends on whether it gets things right.

There’s also a difference between a fact and our access to a fact. We may not know whether something is the case. We may need observation, memory, reasoning, measurement, testimony, or some other way of checking. We may disagree about what the facts are. But those questions concern how we find out what’s true. They don’t make truth the same as our method of finding it.

This distinction matters for knowledge. If knowledge is more than sincere belief, then truth has to be part of it. To know something, the belief in question has to get things right. A false belief can be sincere, useful, understandable, emotionally important, or widely accepted, but it can’t be knowledge.

At the same time, truth alone isn’t enough. A person can believe something true by accident. Suppose someone guesses that a coin will land heads, and it does. The belief was true, but it wasn’t knowledge. So truth is necessary for knowledge, but it doesn’t by itself give us knowledge.

So the first distinction is this. Facts are what is the case. Truth belongs to statements, beliefs, and assertions when they get what is the case right. Once that distinction is in place, we can move to belief, because knowledge involves belief, but belief by itself doesn’t amount to knowledge.

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I agree that in ordinary speech we often use fact and truth interchangeably. Someone might say, “It’s a fact that Mt. Everest is in Nepal,” and someone else might say, “It’s true that Mt. Everest is in Nepal.”

But I don’t think they’re strict synonyms. The difference I’m after concerns the role the words play, especially in epistemology.

A fact is what is the case. Truth belongs to what is said, believed, asserted, or judged. So, if I say, “Mt. Everest is in Nepal,” the statement is true if it gets the relevant fact right. The fact is not itself the sentence. Nor is it my belief. The fact is the thing’s being so, or does it mirror reality. The truth of the statement depends on whether it gets that right.

Now, you’re correct that we also say things like “that’s a truth” or “that’s one of the truths of geography.” But in that use, truth usually means something like a true proposition, a true statement, or something correctly asserted. It’s a count noun use of truth. That’s legitimate, but it doesn’t erase the difference between the fact and the statement’s being true.

This is why I don’t think it’s a domain issue, as though journalists deal in facts and philosophers deal in truths. A journalist can report true statements about facts. A philosopher can ask what makes a statement true. The words overlap in ordinary usage, but they don’t function identically in analysis.

The distinction matters because otherwise we can slide too quickly between what is the case and what someone says, believes, or asserts about what is the case. That slide may not matter in casual conversation, but it matters when we’re trying to understand knowledge. Knowledge involves belief, but the belief has to be true, i.e., it has to get the facts right. So the distinction between fact and truth helps us keep apart the world’s being a certain way and our claims about the world being correct.

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As it is not nothing at all, there is it and it is that which it is.

“What is the case” is too derivative of a concern to me. It should be started with “there is __" and "that which __ is” and then “what there is” and then “why there is what there is at all?”

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@Sam26

Interesting. Your post is a bit convoluted for me, but I can see a seed germinating there. :smiley: I have to say, as it is, it’s a bit non liquet. Hopefully as the discussion progresses we’ll get a better picture of what you think is going on with epistemological concepts. Language, I believe, evolves; it has so much so that etymology is no longer as helpful as it once was. For example one would be quite baffled if you look up the root of “Lucifer”.

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The distinction is indeed confusing. To get clear about what work they do - apparently with the same, or closely related material - we need to look closely at how they are used, and especially where they are not interchangeable.
It would be neat if we could place them in different categories. “Fact”, after all, is a noun; it even seems to be a count noun, though the criterion of identity, if there is one, is very unclear. “True”, on the other hand, seems to be an adjective, but this gets very confusing when we remember that we also have a noun - “truths” - that seems to apply to all and only facts, and vice versa.

These are quite commonplace starting-points. But how much do they really help? There may be something here, but 1) “What is the case” does not provide any clear distinction between facts and truths. 2) “What we say” &c drags us into the tangled briars of propositions, thoughts, etc without clarifying anything. On the contrary, we seem driven to provide some metaphysical intervention between what we say… and the facts - even, sometimes, a mirror of the facts or perhaps a shadow of the facts.

I do think that “True” has uses that “Fact” does not. We talk of true set squares and of true, as opposed to magnetic, north. We talk of being a true friend or a false lover. There are facts here, but talk of a factual set square or compass is confusing.

One might think that truth is a property, but I don’t think that’s enough, or at least it isn’t a simple property. There is always room for a question “what is your set square, compass, friend” true to. So truth is a relationship to something else. But a fact exists, as it were, in its own right; it is (to go back to etymology) something done, fixed (roughly).

I don’t know if any of this is right. But I am sure that what we should be looking for is differences, while acknowledging overlaps. Didn’t Wittgenstein say somewhere “I’ll teach you differences”?

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I really like what you’ve begun here. The goals are modest but important, and you’ve made an excellent case for conceptual analysis at this level, where usage and context are so often ignored or minimized in favor of singular definitions.

Because your viewpoint is so clear, it allows me to ask a very basic question, jumping off from this:

I could interpret “A fact is what is the case” in either of two ways.

  1. “I will use the word ‘fact’ to mean ‘what is the case’.”
  2. "A fact is something that is the case. I claim this because . . . " and here you would have to fill in an explanation of why your use of “fact” is not merely your own lexical choice, but rather is correct according to some standard.

Could you say which of these two interpretations is closer to your intention?

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Time to trot out one of my favorite quotes from Stephen J. Gould. It lays out a pragmatic, useful definition of what a fact is:

In science, “fact” can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.”

Can you name a fact that doesn’t meet this standard? What could “fact” mean that is different from this?

As for the difference between a fact and the truth—I think making a big deal of any difference between the two isn’t very helpful. Truth applies to a proposition about a fact. That’s not very complicated.

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Neither interpretation quite captures what I mean, though the first is closer than the second.

I’m not trying to issue a private stipulation, as though I’m simply saying, “For my purposes, I’ll use fact this way.” But I’m also not trying to prove, from some external standpoint, that this is the one correct essence of a fact. I’m trying to point to a familiar use of the word, one that already has a place in ordinary language.

When I say, “A fact is what is the case,” I’m offering a reminder about how the word is normally used. We already distinguish between what is the case and what someone says, believes, asserts, reports, or denies. If the book is on the table, that’s what is the case. If I say, “The book is on the table,” then my statement is true if it gets that right. If I believe the book is on the table, then my belief is true if it gets that right. So the point of saying “a fact is what is the case” is to mark the role that fact plays in that contrast.

So the standard isn’t my private choice of meaning. The standard is the ordinary use of the word within our shared practices. We do say things like, “That’s not a fact, that’s just your opinion,” or “We need to establish the facts,” or “He got the facts wrong.” In those uses, fact contrasts with belief, opinion, assertion, interpretation, or mistake. That’s the use I’m trying to bring into clearer view.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the word fact has only one use. We also say things like “scientific facts,” “historical facts,” “brute facts,” “institutional facts,” or even “the fact that he was angry.” Those uses may need further sorting. But they still depend, in one way or another, on the idea of something’s that is the case.

So I’m not trying to legislate a definition. I’m trying to clarify a use. The claim isn’t, “Here’s my private meaning of fact.” It’s closer to, “Notice how the word fact functions when we distinguish what is the case from what is believed, asserted, denied, or merely supposed.” That distinction is what matters for the larger question of knowledge.

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I think Gould’s quote is useful, but I’d take it as describing how the word fact often functions within scientific inquiry, not as exhausting every use of the word.

In that context, a fact is something so well confirmed that withholding provisional assent would be unreasonable. That makes sense. Scientific “facts” are not usually presented as infallible deliverances from nowhere. They’re claims that have survived enough checking, testing, and confirmation that they’re treated as settled for the purposes of inquiry.

But that’s already an epistemic use of fact, i.e., it concerns what we’re entitled to treat as established. My point in the post was more basic. I was distinguishing what is the case from what someone says, believes, asserts, or judges.

So, can I name a fact that doesn’t meet Gould’s standard? In one sense, yes. Suppose there are exactly seventeen coins in a drawer no one has opened for twenty years. If there are seventeen coins there, then that’s what is the case. But it hasn’t been confirmed “to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.” No one may know it at all. Still, if the drawer contains seventeen coins, then it’s a fact that it contains seventeen coins.

Of course, we wouldn’t call it an established fact. That’s the distinction I’m after. There’s a difference between something’s being the case and our being entitled to treat it as established.

So I don’t disagree with Gould. I’d just say he’s talking about facts as they function in science, where the issue is what has been sufficiently confirmed. That’s an important use. But it isn’t the only use. In ordinary and philosophical contexts, we also use fact to mark what is the case, whether or not anyone has yet confirmed it.

On the truth point, I mostly agree with you. Truth applies to a proposition, statement, assertion, or belief about a fact. That isn’t terribly complicated. But the distinction is still useful because people often slide between what is the case, what they believe is the case, and what they’re justified in treating as established. My aim isn’t to make the distinction more mysterious than it is. It’s simply to keep those roles apart.

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Yes, that’s pretty much what I hoped you’d say. So, with respect, maybe instead of “A fact is what is the case,” it would be better to say, “A prevalent, sensible use of ‘fact’ in ordinary language equates the term with ‘what is the case,’ and I will adopt that usage here.” It’s more cumbersome, certainly, but your project is to be precise and careful about making such distinctions, so I think it’s worth it.

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I think that’s right, and I take your point.

I probably don’t need to say it quite so formally, but I agree with the concern behind your wording. When I say, “A fact is what is the case,” I don’t mean that I’ve discovered the hidden essence of facts, nor that I’m imposing a private definition on the discussion. I mean that this is a familiar and useful way the word fact functions in ordinary language, especially when we’re contrasting facts with beliefs, opinions, assertions, guesses, or interpretations.

So I’d be happy to qualify it along these lines:

I’ll use fact in a familiar ordinary sense, to mean what is the case.

That seems to preserve the point without making the sentence too heavy. Your version is more exact, but for the purposes of a forum post, I want to keep the language readable while still being careful.

The larger point is that I’m not trying to settle every possible use of the word fact. I’m trying to mark one important use, namely the use in which facts contrast with what someone merely believes, says, assumes, or reports. In that sense, “the book is on the table” is true if the book is on the table. The fact is the book’s being there. The statement is true if it gets that right.

So I agree with your caution. I should make clear that I’m clarifying a use, not legislating an essence.

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Post 3, Belief

In the last post I distinguished between facts and truth. I used fact in a familiar ordinary sense, to mean what is the case. Truth, by contrast, belongs to statements, beliefs, assertions, or judgments when they get what is the case right.

The next concept is belief, because knowledge involves belief, but belief by itself isn’t knowledge.

A belief is a way of taking something to be true. If I believe that the book is on the table, then I take it that the book is on the table. I may be right or wrong, but belief has that direction. It aims at truth, even when it misses.

This already separates belief from truth. A belief can be sincere and still false. I may honestly believe that I left my keys on the counter, only to find them later in my coat pocket. My belief was genuine, but it didn’t get things right. So sincerity doesn’t turn belief into truth.

Belief is also not the same as knowledge. Someone may believe something true without knowing it. Suppose I guess that a coin will land heads, and it does. My belief was true, but it wasn’t knowledge. It was true by accident. Something more is needed if a true belief is to count as knowledge.

Belief is also not the same as subjective certainty, i.e., felt conviction. I can believe something without feeling certain of it. I may believe it will rain tomorrow, while recognizing that I could be wrong. And I can feel subjectively certain about something that turns out to be false. So belief and subjective certainty can come apart.

Nor is belief the same as justification. I may believe something because I saw it, measured it, remembered it, inferred it, or heard it from a reliable source. In those cases, the belief may have justification. But I may also believe something because I misunderstood the evidence, trusted the wrong source, or simply wanted it to be true. The presence of belief doesn’t automatically supply justification.

This is why belief occupies an important place in the concept of knowledge. Knowledge isn’t detached from belief. If I know that the book is on the table, then I believe that the book is on the table. But the reverse doesn’t follow. If I believe that the book is on the table, it doesn’t follow that I know it. Belief is necessary for knowledge, but it isn’t sufficient.

There’s also a difference between merely saying something and believing it. A person can repeat a sentence without believing it. A student can memorize the words of an answer without understanding them. Someone can say what others expect to hear while withholding assent. So belief isn’t just the production of a sentence. It involves taking the claim to be so.

At the same time, belief doesn’t have to involve dramatic psychological intensity. I believe many things quietly. I believe there are trees outside, that I had breakfast this morning, that water freezes under certain conditions, and that other people have minds. These beliefs may not constantly appear before my attention, but they still shape how I think and act.

So belief is best understood, at least for present purposes, as taking something to be true. But that leaves several questions open. Is the belief true? Is it justified? Does the person understand what’s being believed? Is the belief protected from relevant error or defeat?

Those questions take us beyond belief itself. That’s why the next concept has to be justification. Belief may aim at truth, but justification concerns whether the belief is connected to truth in the right way.

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Great quote ! That’s in the spirit of what I was saying about “truth.” It’s worth nothing that this is normative definition. It would be perverse ---- antisocial or uncooperative — to withold ( provisional ) assent.

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I agree with much of what you say in the post I quote from, but here I must object. “Belief is taking to be true” accomplishes nothing, it seems to me, because I call “true” what I believe — and it’s not clear that “true” accomplishes anything more than the indication of belief. So belief may be the more fundamental concept !

I don’t intend to derail your thread, because this is already being discussed elsewhere, but I hope it’s OK that I check in with you on this to see if you also have some sense of the vacuity or at least the elusiveness of this concept “truth.”

For instance, everything is “built” on a “connection” to what looks to me like the most obscure concept of the lot.

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