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Knowledge and Belief



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How do you profess your religious convictions?

  • I believe

    Votes: 3 75.0%
  • I know

    Votes: 1 25.0%

  • Total voters
    4
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I've been bothered by this question for awhile: how do we define (and differentiate) what we know and what we believe, especially on religious questions? I've come up with a short "survey" to explore what we mean when we use those words.

Start with a question: according to your epistemology and beliefs, would you say "I believe a god exists" or "I know a god exists"? Why would you choose one word over the other (I believe / I know)?

Then: give an analogous statement. For example:

I believe in God AS I believe in Science

or

I know God to exist AS I know myself to exist.

(Note: You don't have to restrict yourself to the question of god's existence, and certainly not to any particular god. Use whatever best reflects your own religious beliefs/knowledge.)

Atheists, agnostics and other non-religious members are welcome to participate as well, talking about how they separate the terms 'belief' and 'knowledge' (the atheist/agnostic split in particular interests me in regard to this). This being a discussion, it's fine to call into question others' posts, but it should be to question how they use these terms, not simply what they profess to know or believe.



"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." -- C. S. Lewis
 

Orion

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Epistemologically, an instance of knowledge (speaking about knowing something here, not the general sense) is true. Knowledge is related to facts and is thus correct, so you can't have incorrect knowledge - the closest might be a sense of knowing or knowledge while actually being mis- or uninformed.
Meanwhile you can have wrong beliefs that are just as much 'belief-like' as correct ones, and beliefs can be held without external validation. One could even have a 'true' belief without ever having experienced anything to gain knowledge on the subject, but that's a coincidental sort of thing.

A really simplified table I drew up, not taking into account derivations of knowledge or beliefs.
|Know: Yes|Know: No
Believe: Yes|Truth|Faith
Believe: No|Denial|Ignorance
 

Nyangoro

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Personally, I've always separated truth and belief in terms of perception (for the most part, anyway). Truth is something we know throughout perception (however limited), while belief is something that we know without (or perhaps even in spite of) perception.

The reason I'm so fixated on that idea of "perceiving," is that it seems the most important element in the entire study of epistemology. What is "true" is constantly changing and altering based on the new, equally perceived evidence; and this occurs just as rapidly in the modern era as everything else. Honestly, Men in Black, comedy though it is, has one of the most profound lines on the matter in all of film:

Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.

Now, mind you, I'm not trying to espouse solipsism here. If nothing, our ability to definitively "know" (or get closer to) the truth only improves as time goes on and we become more aware of the way things work. This becomes especially obvious when you look at the field of mathematics, wherein we define the rules (or truths) ourselves in order to relate numbers in meaningful ways that match up with all the other things that we perceive.

However, that doesn't change the reality that our "knowledge" is in a constant state of flux and is largely dependent on our own capacity to take in and interpret information. Look at color, for instance. Sure, we all see the same spectrum in the same order, but we see different hues and have different thresholds for distinct changes in color. That's why we have the question of whether a tennis ball is yellow or green. Some see one, some see the other. I tend to see green, because I perceive a broader range of green than I do yellow.

So, basically, I see that knowledge is something you have perceived and interpreted directly. Belief, on the other hand, hasn't been perceived directly, but rather indirectly (or not at all). There may be a definitive truth to be found (and I believe that there is), it's just a matter of whether or not we're truly capable of ascertaining it. Until then, the question of truth lies not in immutable reality, but in our very mutable means of understanding it.
 

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Interestingly, the first two replies are not explicitly about religion (which is fine!); even more interesting, Phoenix and I had this discussion a few years back, and he brought up almost exactly the same argument Orion brings up below (with, perhaps, one crucial difference).

Epistemologically, an instance of knowledge (speaking about knowing something here, not the general sense) is true. Knowledge is related to facts and is thus correct, so you can't have incorrect knowledge - the closest might be a sense of knowing or knowledge while actually being mis- or uninformed.
I still don't get from this what exactly it means "to know" something. To draw a religious example: say I am a Millennialist, and I state that the world will end in 2012 (it's pre-2012). Most people would classify that as a belief. But then 2012 comes along, and the world does end! Does my epistemological status change from belief to knowledge simply because the thing I "believed" to happen did in fact happen? What separates an instance of knowledge from what you describe below as a "true" belief?

Orion said:
Meanwhile you can have wrong beliefs that are just as much 'belief-like' as correct ones, and beliefs can be held without external validation. One could even have a 'true' belief without ever having experienced anything to gain knowledge on the subject, but that's a coincidental sort of thing.
Here you describe belief as something that "can be held without external validation." Is knowledge therefore what you hold with external validation, what Nyangoro calls "perception"?

Orion said:
A really simplified table I drew up, not taking into account derivations of knowledge or beliefs.
|Know: Yes|Know: No
Believe: Yes|Truth|Faith
Believe: No|Denial|Ignorance
I like your table. What interests me most is the difference between "Truth" and "Faith".

Personally, I've always separated truth and belief in terms of perception (for the most part, anyway). Truth is something we know throughout perception (however limited), while belief is something that we know without (or perhaps even in spite of) perception.

The reason I'm so fixated on that idea of "perceiving," is that it seems the most important element in the entire study of epistemology.
This is interesting! I like how you differentiate by "perception," and I want to pursue that. However, first I have to ask you to clear up how you're using some terms for me. The OP asks how we define "knowledge" and "belief"; your post defines "truth" and "belief", and goes on to define belief as "something that we know without (or perhaps even in spite of) perception." So I must ask, similarly as to Orion, what do you mean by "to know" here?

Nyangoro said:
What is "true" is constantly changing and altering based on the new, equally perceived evidence; and this occurs just as rapidly in the modern era as everything else. Honestly, Men in Black, comedy though it is, has one of the most profound lines on the matter in all of film:

"Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."
I like that line, but must ask again: would you say "Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe" or "Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody believed that the Earth was the center of the universe"? Or does it not make a real difference?

Nyangoro said:
Now, mind you, I'm not trying to espouse solipsism here. If nothing, our ability to definitively "know" (or get closer to) the truth only improves as time goes on and we become more aware of the way things work. This becomes especially obvious when you look at the field of mathematics, wherein we define the rules (or truths) ourselves in order to relate numbers in meaningful ways that match up with all the other things that we perceive.
Fascinating video that you (indirectly) pointed me to! Also relevant to what we are discussing here. In this video, the host points out that math is not empirical, or in your terms "perceivable", yet math makes claims to truth! You suggest that it does this through matching up with other things that we do perceive, but that is not technically how we "prove" things in mathematics. "Pure" or abstract mathematics is not concerned with what can be perceived in the physical universe, and even applied mathematics might be considered "quasi-empirical" at most. This suggests that if we accept mathematical "truths," we need a different model of "Truth" (or knowledge).

Wikipedia - I used this article to supplement what was presented in the video. It also includes arguments for mathematical empiricism, which the video (and I) did not address.

Nyangoro said:
However, that doesn't change the reality that our "knowledge" is in a constant state of flux and is largely dependent on our own capacity to take in and interpret information. Look at color, for instance. Sure, we all see the same spectrum in the same order, but we see different hues and have different thresholds for distinct changes in color. That's why we have the question of whether a tennis ball is yellow or green. Some see one, some see the other. I tend to see green, because I perceive a broader range of green than I do yellow.

So, basically, I see that knowledge is something you have perceived and interpreted directly. Belief, on the other hand, hasn't been perceived directly, but rather indirectly (or not at all). There may be a definitive truth to be found (and I believe that there is), it's just a matter of whether or not we're truly capable of ascertaining it. Until then, the question of truth lies not in immutable reality, but in our very mutable means of understanding it.
This is even more interesting than what I understood you to be saying above- if I understand you correctly here, you're saying that knowledge is perception, regardless of whether that perception is "correct" or corresponds to some immutable truth or "what really happened." In that case, it would be very different from Orion's definition of knowledge as relating to facts and thus correct. Am I on the right track?
 
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Orion

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I still don't get from this what exactly it means "to know" something. To draw a religious example: say I am a Millennialist, and I state that the world will end in 2012 (it's pre-2012). Most people would classify that as a belief. But then 2012 comes along, and the world does end! Does my epistemological status change from belief to knowledge simply because the thing I "believed" to happen did in fact happen? What separates an instance of knowledge from what you describe below as a "true" belief?
That would be a belief vindicated or validated, but if you didn't have correct information to base your belief upon before it was validated, then you were lucky enough to have your crackpot idea validated.

Here you describe belief as something that "can be held without external validation." Is knowledge therefore what you hold with external validation, what Nyangoro calls "perception"?
Yes, knowledge requires a form of perception, though that logically leads you to ask how valid is a piece of knowledge based on how its perceived. It could come from your own experience (say, first hand) from those immediately around you (second hand) or impersonal/societal sources (third hand).

I like your table. What interests me most is the difference between "Truth" and "Faith".
This isn't strictly faith in the religious sense, but faith would be a belief you've chosen to adopt before it's been vindicated with sufficient experience (given what might be implied by the belief), or maybe even you've held onto it in spite of evidence to the contrary.
 

Nyangoro

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This is interesting! I like how you differentiate by "perception," and I want to pursue that. However, first I have to ask you to clear up how you're using some terms for me. The OP asks how we define "knowledge" and "belief"; your post defines "truth" and "belief", and goes on to define belief as "something that we know without (or perhaps even in spite of) perception." So I must ask, similarly as to Orion, what do you mean by "to know" here?

My apologies, I was using words interchangeably. To make it less confusing, I define it like this:

Knowledge = Information that has been duly perceived by the holder(s) of said information.

Belief = Information that has not been duly perceived by the holder(s) of said information.

Perception, of course, is the interpretation of stimuli by our brains. The term "duly" here is meant to refer to more scientific means of affirmation; or, put differently, that the perception is repeatable/verifiable. For example, the knowledge that my phone is black. I can look at my phone as many times as I want to confirm this. Others can look at my phone to confirm this as well. However, take the case of a ghost sighting. Such a perception typically occurs "out of the corner of one's eye," and cannot be perceived a second time despite people's best efforts.

I like that line, but must ask again: would you say "Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe" or "Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody believed that the Earth was the center of the universe"? Or does it not make a real difference?

I would say that they did "know." However, now we "know" that those statements are not true. My definition of knowledge allows for said knowledge to be incorrect. Knowledge, as I define it, is mutable; a concept separate from truth (which I, henceforth, define as the immutable realities/occurances that exist regardless of our perception of them).

The reason I make this distinction is because we don't operate in especially different ways than we did all those years ago. Just as we "know" based on our current perceptions, they "knew" based on theirs. They looked out over the horizon, had no means to perceive a curve, and knew the world was flat. They looked at the stars, perceived that they moved around us, and knew that the earth was the center of the universe. The only difference is that we now have the means to perceive what they could not. Someone perceived points of light in the night sky moving backwards, and therefore "knew" that something in their thinking was wrong.

So who is to say that, centuries from now, the things that we so adamantly regard as "true" based on our "knowledge" won't later be thought of as incorrect by the minds of our ancestors? Sure, you could assume a plateau in our potential capacity to perceive (and that's definitely possible), but such a plateau would also be based on our current capacity. I'm sure that hundreds of years ago, they could not have fathomed the strides that that modern world has taken. They likely thought that our abilities as humans would plateau well before the point that we've reached due to their own limits (speculation, admittedly, but I still very much doubt that they were able to envision our current situation). The same could easily be true of us far into the future; or perhaps even near into the future, if the rate of technology continues to increase as exponentially as it currently does.

Fascinating video that you (indirectly) pointed me to! Also relevant to what we are discussing here. In this video, the host points out that math is not empirical, or in your terms "perceivable", yet math makes claims to truth! You suggest that it does this through matching up with other things that we do perceive, but that is not technically how we "prove" things in mathematics. "Pure" or abstract mathematics is not concerned with what can be perceived in the physical universe, and even applied mathematics might be considered "quasi-empirical" at most. This suggests that if we accept mathematical "truths," we need a different model of "Truth" (or knowledge).

Wikipedia - I used this article to supplement what was presented in the video. It also includes arguments for mathematical empiricism, which the video (and I) did not address.

Indeed, I may have been hasty in my use of mathematics to support that I do not promote solipsism. It's a fascinating idea to think that these concepts, lauded as truth, are things that are imperceptible in and of themselves. Truly, mathematics often prove themselves in hindsight. The rules are determined, tested out in (ideally) real world application, and then verified after the fact should the results come out as planned. Yet, that only works in instances where a real world application is feasible, which is certainly not the case for a lot of upper-level mathematics. Then comes the thought that some of these decisions seem rather arbitrary. Calculus was formed after finding that Algebra wasn't able to answer all mathematical questions, for example. Physics, meanwhile, seems constantly threatened with being rewritten.

Mathematics, I suppose, would just be another example of our capacity to perceive, then. Just as back in the days when we thought the earth was the center of the universe, we accept our current understanding of mathematics until such a time as we discover something that requires the rules be rewritten to match it.

This is even more interesting than what I understood you to be saying above- if I understand you correctly here, you're saying that knowledge is perception, regardless of whether that perception is "correct" or corresponds to some immutable truth or "what really happened." In that case, it would be very different from Orion's definition of knowledge as relating to facts and thus correct. Am I on the right track?

In a nutshell, yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Again, we operate on the assumption that our knowledge is the truth, no matter the era. It's only later that we discover if our past knowledge matched with truth; and even then, it may still only be probable that our perceptions are truth.

Going back to my phone example, my phone is black. I "know" this, because I've looked at my phone numerous times. As such, without even looking at my phone, I can be reasonably assured that it remains black. Yet, despite the extremely high likelihood of "my phone is black" being true (to the point where I can operate under the assumption of that knowledge), it's always possible that something happened to change the color of my phone.

Now, again, I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to promote solipsism. We can operate under the assumption of our knowledge (and have been doing so since antiquity). Not to mention that, in order to perceive something; something must, therefore, exist to be perceived. I merely feel it appropriate to distinguish knowledge and belief from truth via the concept of perception, since that's precisely how we operate. After all, the only way for us to determine truth is to utilize our capacity to perceive. We cannot intrinsically "know," we must first perceive. Which makes perception an irremovable part of the process.

To end this post with another example, let's go back to color. Not our ability to perceive color, however; but rather, that of the mantis shrimp. Sight is, obviously, a large part of how we perceive the world. We have three photoreceptors (red, green, and blue) that allow us to visually perceive our surroundings. Logically, we base a lot of our knowledge on that ability, to the point where we convert wavelengths beyond our ability to perceive (ultraviolet, infrared, etc.) to formats that we can.

But, as many are aware, not all animals share the same number of photo receptors. Some have different numbers of photoreceptors. Dogs, for instance, only have blue and green. Many birds have a fourth photoreceptor that lets them perceive ultraviolet waves. Some creatures, like Octopuses, don't have color photoreceptors, but instead have those that let them see polarized light. Then you have the mantis shrimp. They have sixteen photoreceptors to our three, over five times as many. Their eyes allow them to see ultraviolet, our visible spectrum, "depth," and polarized light (including circular polarized light, something that only they are known to perceive naturally).

To me, this is fascinating. Since we attempt to determine truth from knowledge, and our knowledge is based on perception, our search for the truth is limited by our ability to perceive (as I've said before). So what, then, if our limits were different? How much else would we "know"? How different would our body of knowledge be if we had the eyes of a mantis shrimp? It's things like that which lead me to define knowledge and belief as inseparable from perception.

EDIT: Well, this post ended up being longer than I expected, lol
 
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That would be a belief vindicated or validated, but if you didn't have correct information to base your belief upon before it was validated, then you were lucky enough to have your crackpot idea validated.

Yes, knowledge requires a form of perception, though that logically leads you to ask how valid is a piece of knowledge based on how its perceived. It could come from your own experience (say, first hand) from those immediately around you (second hand) or impersonal/societal sources (third hand).
Alright, so a "lucky guess" doesn't count; there has to be a methodology of knowledge, a way of knowing independent of the results. However, I'm still not clear on what that methodology is. You mention perception, coming from first hand, second hand, and third hand sources. But almost everything we would call a belief or knowledge comes from those germs, religious, scientific, and otherwise. People report first-hand experiences of god, they are reinforced by authority figures and peers in the community, and there is absolutely a strong cultural/societal support for the existence of a god/gods in many parts of the world. Are these the qualifications of knowledge?

Orion said:
This isn't strictly faith in the religious sense, but faith would be a belief you've chosen to adopt before it's been vindicated with sufficient experience (given what might be implied by the belief), or maybe even you've held onto it in spite of evidence to the contrary.
Following from my question above: what counts as "sufficient experience"?

I have omitted parts of Nyangoro's post in my reply, because, as he noted in hindsight, it is rather long. If I skipped over anything that you think should be addressed further, feel free to bring it up again in a following post.
My apologies, I was using words interchangeably. To make it less confusing, I define it like this:

Knowledge = Information that has been duly perceived by the holder(s) of said information.

Belief = Information that has not been duly perceived by the holder(s) of said information.
I understand now, thank you. That word "duly" however...

Nyangoro said:
Perception, of course, is the interpretation of stimuli by our brains. The term "duly" here is meant to refer to more scientific means of affirmation; or, put differently, that the perception is repeatable/verifiable. For example, the knowledge that my phone is black. I can look at my phone as many times as I want to confirm this. Others can look at my phone to confirm this as well. However, take the case of a ghost sighting. Such a perception typically occurs "out of the corner of one's eye," and cannot be perceived a second time despite people's best efforts.
How very scientifically-minded! To "know" something, I must not only perceive it, but be able to reproduce the act of perceiving! This introduces a conundrum however: if I were to say "My mother fell down the stairs last Thursday," I have no way of repeating/verifying that exact occurrence. Even if I were to push my mother down the stairs Friday, Saturday, or even the following Thursday, none of these would be able to repeat/verify the original occurrence and my perception of it.* The same goes for all historical events, or all events that occur in time--the French Revolution, the Holocaust, the assassination of JFK, the moon landing, the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center. Even events that I personally experienced are called into question. What is the study of history?

*I apologize for the morbid example

Nevermore said:
I would say that they did "know." However, now we "know" that those statements are not true. My definition of knowledge allows for said knowledge to be incorrect. Knowledge, as I define it, is mutable; a concept separate from truth (which I, henceforth, define as the immutable realities/occurances that exist regardless of our perception of them).
I want to emphasize this point, that knowledge and truth are separate as you define them. Can we then make any meaningful claim to truth? If knowledge is perception, and truth lies (so to speak) outside of perception, how can we assume any relation between them?

Nevermore said:
In a nutshell, yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Again, we operate on the assumption that our knowledge is the truth, no matter the era. It's only later that we discover if our past knowledge matched with truth; and even then, it may still only be probable that our perceptions are truth.

[...]

Now, again, I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to promote solipsism. We can operate under the assumption of our knowledge (and have been doing so since antiquity). Not to mention that, in order to perceive something; something must, therefore, exist to be perceived. I merely feel it appropriate to distinguish knowledge and belief from truth via the concept of perception, since that's precisely how we operate. After all, the only way for us to determine truth is to utilize our capacity to perceive. We cannot intrinsically "know," we must first perceive. Which makes perception an irremovable part of the process.
Again, where is the connection? At what point can we say "What we have Known (perceived) is in fact Truth, at least in approximation"? How do we make that leap, if truth is independent of perception?

Nyangoro said:
To me, this is fascinating. Since we attempt to determine truth from knowledge, and our knowledge is based on perception, our search for the truth is limited by our ability to perceive (as I've said before). So what, then, if our limits were different? How much else would we "know"? How different would our body of knowledge be if we had the eyes of a mantis shrimp? It's things like that which lead me to define knowledge and belief as inseparable from perception.
I have nothing to add to this, I just think it's an interesting illustration of your philosophy. It makes sense to me.
 
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