But I don’t think it does. As I said, one may have a psychosomatic pain - such as the so-called ‘phantom pain’ that amputees suffer in a limb that is no longer there - but that it is pain is indisputable. In which case you could be wrong about the cause of pain but the fact of there being pain is apodictic.
It’s true that knowledge can be a belief or a skill like riding a bike or learning how to count. I’m concentrating on knowledge as a belief, but knowledge as a skill is often overlooked.
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Will you examine whether some knowledge beliefs are better than others and why? How might this be done?
You should add understand in my opinion.
Knowing: Having direct, verifiable awareness or absolute certainty based on facts, evidence, or direct personal experience.
Understanding: Comprehending the underlying meaning, patterns, or mechanics of how something works.
Believing: Accepting something as true or real without complete proof, often driven by faith, emotion, or external information.
Part of this examination will include why some claims to knowledge have stronger support than others. So, a stronger argument would give us better grounds for accepting one conclusion as true over a competing conclusion.
For e.g., suppose I hear a rumor that a meeting has been cancelled, but the organizer says that it’s still scheduled. The organizer’s statement in most cases gives me better grounds because he/she is in a position to know. This would give me a reason to favor one account over the other.
We can examine where the information comes from, whether it supports a particular claim, and whether there are relevant reasons to doubt the claim. We also need to understand what the evidence does and doesn’t establish.
But sufficient justification doesn’t mean having the strongest justification imaginable. The organizer’s message may be enough. We don’t need to launch an investigation unless there’s good reason to question it. I’ll develop this idea further when examining what makes justification sufficient for knowledge.
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Yes, understanding is part of the account I’m developing. It includes understanding what’s being claimed and how the it’s justified.
Direct experience (e.g. knowledge by acquaintance) can give us knowledge, and some knowledge can be known with absolute certainty. But neither is required in every case. We also know, for e.g., through reliable testimony.
Faith doesn’t require conclusive proof, although it may have reasons behind it, or it may lack reasons. But much of our everyday knowledge also lacks conclusive proof, so that absence alone doesn’t distinguish belief from knowledge.
By belief I mean believing something is true, whether through faith, emotion, or evidence. Having conclusive grounds doesn’t stop it from being a belief. But knowledge includes belief, together with truth and a sufficiently understood justification.
Post 4
Believing that something is the case involves taking it to be true. But what does it mean to understand what’s true?
One point I draw from Witt is that understanding shows itself in how we use our words. For e.g., a student might repeat that a triangle has three sides. But if the student is unable distinguish triangles from squares, then repeating the definition hasn’t shown understanding.
Understanding becomes apparent when the student can apply the word to different examples and contexts, distinguish cases where it doesn’t apply, and recognize a mistake. So we observe what the student can do with the concept.
This doesn’t mean that we have to give a technical explanation of everything we know. Understanding can be shown in practice without a detailed verbal explanation. Nor does it require being free of mistakes.
The point carries over to knowledge claims. We need to grasp what we’re claiming and how our grounds bear on our claims. Being able to repeat a claim and list some reasons doesn’t, by itself, show understanding. This is part of what I mean by understanding within justification.
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To be able to inform you of the Correct answer here, what do you mean by ‘epistemically knowing’ something compared to just ‘knowing’ something?
If you remove the word ‘epistemically’, the answer to what is the difference between ‘believing something’ and ‘knowing something’ is you can believe absolutely anything and you do not need proof, evidence, facts, nor arguments for that thing. ‘Knowing something’, however, requires irrefutable facts and proof.
For example, some people believe that the Universe began, and/or is expanding, and they do so because they cannot prove this to be true. However, since the proof already exists, it is already known that the Universe did not begin, and is not expanding.
you only believe something when you are not sure. However, when you know something, for sure, then there is no reason to believe it anymore.
Once you know, for sure, belief is unnecessary.
Again, you only believe things because you are unsure, but once you are sure, you know. When you know for sure, there is no need for belief.
Examining the grounds for your beliefs to find out those grounds are sufficient for your beliefs is just circular nonsense.
Either you know something for sure; that is, you have the proof and irrefutable facts for it, or you do not.
If you do not yet know something for sure, then you can either accept that ‘that’ is just your view only or what you just think is true, or you can choose to pre/assume or believe ‘that’ is true. But if you do the latter, then this has a negative effect for two reasons;
- you are believing something that could be false.
- you are not open to finding out what the actual irrefutable Truth is exactly.
Well, obviously, that would all depend on what the word ‘philosophy’ means or is referring to, to you, here, exactly.
How do you know this, exactly?
For anyone who says things like, “We cannot know the truth”, “Truth cannot be known”, “We cannot know”, or “We can never truly know something”, do you really not see the contradiction here?
Human beings who would say something like this are obviously not yet aware of something, as there are at least two things that can be irrefutably Truly known.
Only if and when one chooses to have or hold a belief. Otherwise, knowledge is certainly not a form of belief, at all.
Also, and by the way, if anyone Truly wants to examine beliefs, then obviously beliefs have to be put forward for ‘us’ to ‘look at’ and discuss them.
We could also directly by-pass examining beliefs, as beliefs are Truly unnecessary in Life and just a waste, as I have partly explained the reasons why previously, and instead just move directly to examining the grounds for what is known, then we can ‘look at’ and discuss the actual proofs and irrefutable facts that are already here.
Examining the grounds for beliefs, which may or may not be false or true, would involve a lot of unnecessary work. However, when someone claims to know something, then they MUST already have the irrefutalb facts and/or proof for that claim. Therefore, we can go and ‘look at’ and discuss the easily accessible grounds.
Why even bother with things that could be true or false, which is essentially what a belief is, when we could just concentrate on the proof and the facts, which is what MUSE already exist for what is known.
To gather and order data in a manner that makes direct sense.
Such as by halving, and collecting a half in correspondence with the other half.
We know if and when we have the irrefutable proof.
We know that what we know is Truth when we know everyone could agree with and accept the same.
Good stuff. But I think there’s an element of getting carried away, here? We assume that humans can absorb and learn what you describe, and the real world disagrees, much of the time. Does this matter, in this topic? Perhaps not… 
Death and Taxes?
This reminds of the thread “Choosing”. We can’t help but believe, but we can choose to epistemically know.
When I go to work, I believe the building where my work is sits at the address I’ve known. I don’t really investigate every morning whether they have moved my building to a different address. But I believe it is where I left it yesterday. To me it would be irrational to think if one morning I question whether my building had been moved. Or my place of work had been moved to a different location, maybe in another city or country.
But I could epistemically find out. I could do a few things. Check the facts online, check my email if my employer had sent me a notice, or check the news if the building had burned down and now I must work somewhere else. This I choose to do.
No.
By the way, one only exists if people allow it to exist. The other one is, in the Truest sense, False anyway.
But believing is a choice.
Can you, however, choose to not know something after you have come to know it? Can you stop “yourself” from coming to know something? Can you always choose to stop “yourself” from learning, and thus knowing things?
This silly example has not worked previously.
Yes, again, ‘you’ can ‘choose’ to believe this if ‘you’ really want to. But, obviously, ‘you’ do NOT HAVE TO believe this at all.
So, ‘you’ do NOT HAVE TO choose to irrationally think this way.
WHY would you even want to start thinking irrationally like this for anyway, exactly?
Yes, ‘this’ you choose to do, exactly like you choose to believe and disbelieve other things as well.
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The reason I sometimes refer to the use of the word know epistemically, is to differentiate the distinct uses of the word. For e.g., sometimes the use of the word know is just an expression of a conviction, and that conviction may or may not be justified. The epistemic use is what I’m concentrating on in this thread, viz., the traditional view of knowledge as justified true belief (JTB). So, the point is not to conflate these different uses of know.
The I’ll leave you to your thoughts; but I suspect there is something fundamental here that is awry.
Post 5
I want to explain at least five ways of acquiring knowledge, viz., testimony, inference, sensory experience, linguistic training, and pure logic. These aren’t isolated from one another, i.e., they often work together. For e.g., science uses inference, sensory experience, and testimony to develop a theory.
Testimony. Much of what we know comes through what others tell us. For e.g., we read books, listen to lectures, listen to experts in their particular field, and we also listen to others we trust.
Inference. This includes deductive and inductive reasoning. Suppose all trains on a particular route are cancelled, and my train runs on that route, then it follows that my train is cancelled. So, in a valid deductive argument, if the premises are true, the conclusion follows necessarily.
Inductive arguments work differently. Suppose several witnesses describe an accident, and their accounts mostly agree, and the details fit the physical evidence. Taken together, these grounds can justify the conclusion that the accident happened as described. The conclusion isn’t guaranteed as in a deductive argument, but that doesn’t prevent the evidence from being sufficient for knowledge. The strength depends on the evidence.
I’ll repeat something I pointed out earlier, viz., some knowledge is absolute, as in a deductive argument, but most of our knowledge, including science, is inductive. All inductive arguments are probability based depending on the strength of the argument.
Sensory experience. I know that the orange juice is sweet because I’ve tasted it. My justification come through sensory experience. If someone tells me it’s sour, tasting it also gives me a way to check their testimony.
Linguistic training. A child learns what red means through examples, practice, and correction. We point to red objects, and contrast them with other colors, and correct their mistakes. The child shows that it understands by using the word correctly in different contexts. Linguistic training enables us to understand what’s being claimed and avoid misapplying concepts.
Pure logic. Either George Washington had false teeth or he didn’t. This has the form X or not X. We can know that the whole statement is true without investigating his teeth. Its truth follows from its logical form.
These distinctions help us identify how we justify our claims to know in everyday situations. To develop this further, we need to look at the everyday activities in which we make, check, and correct claims. This brings us to Wittgenstein’s idea of language-games.