That's a pretty simple distinction, but you've asked for us to define abstract concepts without using definitions or abstract concepts. So let's just say, knowledge is what you know and beliefs are what you believe. A belief implies some level of doubt, while knowledge is just the information you have in your head. There is a lot of overlap. I know that the sun will rise tomorrow, because I understand how the earth rotates and orbits the sun. I believe it will happen because I understand physics and observable phenomena. Put it another way, it is a high-confidence belief based on the knowledge obtained through observation and study. Some beliefs are based on nothing more than hope, and some knowledge is beyond any doubt. I believe the Phillies can win the World Series, but I know our bullpen pitches cantaloupes and our hitters are streaky as shit.
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Your last example reminds me of someone editing Wikipedia to list Ronnie O'Sullivan as the winner of the World Open, about 20 minutes before the final match finished.
They were right, and anyone would agree that it was all-but-certain, but it hadn't actually happened yet.
What if you should have some doubt (belief) but due to ignorance or hubris do not and so you elevate a concept to 'knowledge' that should not rightfully be there? I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm genuinely curious about that gray area of misplaced confidence.
Then you apply the scientific method and/or research in search of truth.
What you're asking about there seems like it's really: "Is something being knowledge vs belief subjective or objective?"
The answer, just like for "is cereal soup?", is that it's all semantics. It's not like there's some Authority who's created the Platonic Form of Knowledge that Beliefs cannot partake of, and there's a clear delineation between Knowledge and Belief. We're just using these weird shapes, sounds, hand gestures, or whatever else to try to do telepathy and get our thoughts into someone else's head. Like all semantic questions, what this comes down to is: have you chosen the right word to convey your thought? If people seem to not be getting it, try the other one.
It sounds like you’re interested in epistemology. Take a dive into this Wikipedia article and give at least the parts on Justified True Beliefs a read.
knowledge is provable, repeatable, demonstratable. faith is by its very nature none of those.
Just to help, you can't have knowledge about something that is based around faith. For example, the Bible requires faith for you to believe in God, however you can have extensive knowledge about what the Bible says without actually believing any of the religious bullshit.
One could argue that the more knowledge one has of the bible, the greater degree of faith one needs to believe in it.
At some point on that linear curve, a make or break decision needs to be made. Here, I made a graph:
I'm a Marxist-Leninist, so the dialectical theory of knowledge. What starts as ideas are tested and confirmed or denied in reality, which then sharpens ideas to be retested and confirmed or denied in reality again, in a spiral. Ideas come from real, material conditions, and it is through this cycle that theory meets practice, sharpening each more effectively.
What's Marxism have to do with it? Sounds exactly like the scientific method to me. Applying it to politics is an unnecessary step in this discussion.
How familiar are you with Dialectical Materialism? That's a Marxist conception, very similar to the scientific method. Marx wasn't just an advocate for Socialized production and eventually Communism out of any moral superiority to Capitalism, but because he applied Dialectical and Historical Materialist analysis to Capitalism to predict where it was headed: monopoly and centralized syndicates, ripe for siezure and public planning.
The Dialectical theory of knowledge is similar to an endless refinement and spiral of the scientific method.
Not familiar at all, that's why I asked! Thanks, I'll have to read some.
My favorite primer is Elementary Principles of Philosophy, it's great and starts from the very beginning.
We just choose who to believe, I don't KNOW how computers work, I've just chosen to believe it's thinking sand and not some kind of ghosts/magic, I don't even have tools or any other means to test it, I mean why we even trust those IT guys in the age of internet, when the access to knowledge is abundant it's weird there's no conspiracy theories about that, like we see now in all others domains, bunch of armchair specialists sitting in their parents basements knowing better than specialists about medicine, climate, earth shape and everything
Technology is magic. I know how to operate a lot of it, but I have no idea of the inner workings. I'm poking my fingers on a lighted piece of glass with liquid inside to type this message... And that works because some wizards a thousand miles away are using angry rocks to boil water to make domesticated lightning.
The veil lifts too easily and I hate it.
I would say that beliefs are unprovable, and knowledge is provable. If I claim the sun will rise tomorrow, we can test that. If I claim god exists but is hiding, we cannot test that. The former is knowledge, the latter belief
I don't classify ideas in my head into those two categories like that. They are all beliefs. I have a sense of how confident I am of each idea. Like how surprised I would be if they were proved wrong. And I try to maintain awareness of why I have that confidence, like other beliefs that support it, evidence, etc.
That's imperfect, like I can't claim that there aren't ideas that, if challenged, I'd think about what my supporting evidence is and come up with bupkis. Anything is up for doubt and reevaluation.
I feel pretty strongly that this is the right approach, and that people failing to have a similar approach is a serious problem in the world.
Knowledge = Belief + Evidence
What really matters is how good of a critical thinker you are, and what you'll accept as evidence, but if you're decently educated, you should be able to manage it. The key is not accepting secondhand evidence from untrustworthy sources, and to seek firsthand evidence that you can see with your own eyes.
As for "Objective Truth", that doesn't exist. Not only are our experiences obligatorily filtered through our subjective human perceptions, but relativity allows for multiple conflicting truths to exist simultaneously in spacetime, so it literally can't exist, and even if it could, we would be blind to it.
I define it by whether something is independently verifiable.
I am told that there are 8* planets in our solar system, and where they are located. If I wanted to, I could buy a big telescope, point it at the sky and find all 8.
I am told that it is possible to boil water through nuclear fission. If I had the means, I could take a number of resources, spend decades researching nuclear physics, build my own test reactor, and verify that this is possible.
I am told that the earth is flat. I could get a pilots license, buy a plane, and fly to Antarctica to see the ice wall. I would find that there is no ice wall, just a number of scientists who are very passionate about ice samples. Therefore, it is not independently verifyable.
I don't have the money to verify all of these claims, but they are all claims that have been verified by hundreds, if not thousands of independent people and organizations throughout history.
There should be absolutely no room for any kind of personal distinction between the two.
Knowledge can be proven.
Faith/belief cannot be proven.
If you can prove something is real then you cannot believe in it.
I don't believe the moon is real because I have knowledge that it is indeed real, and I can prove it by telling you to just look at it.
I cannot factually know that God doesn't exist because I cannot prove that using any kind of experiment or test, so I cannot "know" that it's true no matter how strong my belief in that statement is.
Any "personal definition" of either of those is factually wrong. If we could all walk around with our own personal meanings behind concepts we wouldn't have a functional language.
As neat and tidy as your explanation is, I think you are vastly oversimplifying the concept.
You say the moon is real because you can see it, and you can prove it's there by telling other people to just go look at it. Alrighty then, I've seen bigfoot. In fact, lots of people say they've seen bigfoot. Therefore he must exist too, right? The photos "prove" his existence just as much as you pointing to the sky saying the moon exists cause there it is.
Now, I realize that there's probably some degree of hyperbole in your statement, so I'll walk this back a little. If the defining metric of your separation between these concepts is whether the hypothesis can be proven through experimentation, that's all well and good. However, I would argue that, in 99.9% of cases, it's still a belief statement. Let's continue with the moon example, but, rather than "seeing is knowing", let's apply the same standard that you applied to God. So, you "know" the moon exists, not just because you can see it, but because it's existence can be empirically proven through experimentation. What sort of experiments would you conduct to do that, exactly? Have you done those experiments? Or, like the rest of the rational world, do you accept that scientists have done those experiments already and decided, yup, moon's there? Cause, if you're taking someone else's word for it, do you personally "know" what they are saying is true, or do you believe them based upon their credentials, the credentials of those who support the argument, and your own personal beliefs/knowledge?
As another example, let's imagine for a sec we're philosophers/scientists of the ancient world. I have a theory that the heavier something is, the faster it will fall. You may know where I'm going with this if you remember your elementary school science classes. I believe in the power of experimental evidence, and so, to test my theory, I climb to the top of the Acropolis and drop a feather and a rock. The feather falls much more slowly than the rock. Eureka, I've proved my theory and therefore I now KNOW that an object's weight affects its fall.
Now, anyone not born in 850 BC Athens in this thread will point out that it's a flawed experiment, since I'm not controlling for air resistance, and if you conducted the same experiment in a vacuum chamber, both objects would fall at the the same rate. However, the technology to test my hypothesis with all of the salient variables controlled did not exist at that time. So, even though it's now widely known that my experiment was flawed, it wouldn't have been at the time, and I would have the data to back up my theory. I could simply say try it yourself, it's a self-evident fact.
Finally, your statement about subjectivity of definition being an obstacle to functional language is so alarmist as to border on ridiculous. If this question were "how do you personally define the distinction between 'yes' and 'no'", then sure I can get on board a little bit more with your point. However this is much more like 'twilight' vs 'dusk'. Crack open a dictionary and you'll find that there is a stark, objective distinction between those terms, much as you pointed out that belief and knowledge have very different definitions. For the record, since I had to look it up to ensure I wasn't telling tales here, sunset is the moment the sun finishes crossing the horizon, twilight is the period between sunset and dusk when light is still in the sky but the sun is not, and dusk is the moment the sun is 18 degrees below the horizon. So, I know that these are unique terms with specific, mutually exclusive definitions. But let me tell you something, I believe that if I randomly substituted one term for another based purely on my personal whimsy, people are gonna get what I mean regardless.
That's incredibly naive I'm afraid. This sort of logic works in very simple cases, but quickly breaks down in any complex scenario. The reality is that a lot of knowledge cannot be easily verified because it's just too complex. Take a peer reviewed scientific study as an example, the study might reference a different study as its basis, that references another study, and so on. If one of the studies in the chain wasn't conducted properly, and nobody noticed then the whole basis could be flawed. This sort of thing happens all the time in practice.
What you really have is an ideology, which is a set of beliefs that fit together and create a coherent narrative of how the world works. A lot of the knowledge that you integrate into your world view has various biases and interpretations associated with it. Thus, it's not an absolute truth about the world, but merely an interpretation of it.
Degree of certainty is the difference
Belief doesn't need confirmation, but knowledge assumes some confirmation.
Belief regards opinions, in which people have a free choice to accept or reject the idea. There is no notion of rightness or wrongness.
Knowledge regards conclusions from a set of axioms, in which people who accept the axioms are honor-bound to accept the conclusions. To reject the conclusion while accepting the axioms would be wrong.
So, if we haven't studied the underlying axioms or foundation of a conclusion, we cannot have knowledge of it? That seems to imply the only things we have knowledge of are the things we have invested significant time and energy into. It's that correct?
Knowledge is evidence based and has certainty based off of repeatable observable data. Belief is educated hope, based on the unknown when compared to the known.
There is an overlap though, but first I'll answer your question.
Belief is anything you take as a truth, often without any means of proof. There are conscious beliefs and I guess subconscious ones.
Knowledge is anything you are aware of; your personal recollection of life data.
Therefore anything you consciously believe in requires you to first acquire knowledge of it.
Things get complicated because we usually take in most knowledge as facts and truths, which means we believe in a lot of what we know. But it's not easy to always know which knowledge actually doesn't represent reality.
Probably doesn't answer your question completely, but I'm a big fan of the phrase "my understanding is . . . " In other words, this is what I "know" as fact, but I'm aware that my knowledge could be wrong or insufficient and I'm willing to be corrected or updated. I use this phrase almost any time I'm asserting something as fact, as a kind of cya.
I think this is a really interesting question. To me, if I hear a claim, I might say I accept it as knowledge or believe it as a worldview.
For example, I get irked by people asking if I “believe” in climate change. To me, it’s not a matter of belief: there is a body of knowledge being scrutinised by extraordinarily smart and talented people. I accept the existence of and need to mitigate climate change.
On the other hand, do I believe we’re not alone in the universe? I can’t rely on knowledge, it’s a lot of intuition.
I have seen a lot of scientific evidence that shows how life can form from natural processes. Using that and my understanding of evolution, I have little doubt that there is life on other planets. I'm also convinced that there exists what we would call intelligent life on other planets. When it comes to life that can traverse the universe I hesitate to have any confidense. If we find it to be possible, with warp technology or wormholes, then I will assume it could have been discovered somewhere else as well. The biggest hold up I have for such advanced species is the tendency for extinction from societal competition or extraplanetary forces from asteroids to star death.
I think everyone inhabits a sort of superposition of all possible worlds consistent with their sensory observations. But there are some of those possible worlds with which we identify more strongly—where we feel more ourselves. So belief is a kind of probability multiplied by self-recognition.
For example: “We believe these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal”, etc.—it’s not an assertion of objective truth, it’s a declaration of which world we choose to live in.
For me it's the difference between a preponderance of evidence suggesting such, and something being applied and proven until any doubt is removed.
For example, I was trying to find studs in drywall recently (last house was plaster and lathe), and looking at things Socratically, I could use a stud finder but I might be drilling into conduit or a pipe. So I was like "I can use magnets to hit drywall screws to try to confirm the presence of a stud", and it seems reasonable, but I've never attempted it in practice, and there could be all sorts of things a magnet could hit, since I've no experience with drywall, how close a steel pipe could be, any of that. So it's a belief. It'd be rather arrogant of me to accept this as a reliable method without testing this method, drill through a pipe and wind up with egg on my face.
So, I tested this by getting two magnets to stick vertically, then measured 16" out, got 2 more magnets to stick vertically, kept doing that until I hit half a dozen spots, all 16" apart. Drilled a pilot hole, felt resistance and the smell of wood, drilled a couple more.
I think somewhere between mounting a flat screen to fixing 3 closet shelves it became knowledge, not sure exactly when, but all the doubts were removed and it never blew up in my face. I can just waltz in a room and sink a bunch of holes in the right spot now without being skeptical of some electronic stud finder.
I guess what I mean to say is that testing something and having it consistently work and be reproducible is what leads to knowledge imo
Knowledge is what happens when you've evaluated enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis that something is false. If you haven't seen the evidence, but still think it's true or false (you don't lack belief), then you have a belief about it. As such, knowledge is a type of belief with extra justification.
If I've reviewed enough evidence I'm comfortable saying I can reject the null hypothesis, that is I have a belief that it's knowledge, I'll call it as such. If I haven't, I'll couch my confidence in my belief accordingly.
Belief is seeing that the light is green even when it isn't.
Knowledge is accepting that the light is red when it is.
Believing that the light is green will not help you when you get flattened by a truck. Knowing that the light is red will keep you from dying pointlessly.
Knowledge is the first step on the path to wisdom. Belief is delusion.
If you cannot demonstrate, or point to a demonstration, then all you can do is guess. You can make an educated guess based on other demonstrations, but if you cling to your guesswork as if it were demonstrated to be true, and you internalize your guesswork as part of your identity, and you refuse to let go of it when confronted with contradictory demonstrations, then you are a fool.
Your description makes belief sound like willful ignorance.
It sounds like the real challenge is knowing when you have enough information to convert your educated guess into full-blown knowledge
I’m not interested in what the dictionary says or a textbook definition I’m interested in your personal distinction between the two ideas. How do you decide to put an idea in one category versus the other? I’m not interested in the abstract concepts like ‘objective truth’ I want to know how it works in real life for you.
Huh. I guess I don't categorize concepts like that... is it normal to? I believe what I think is true. The certainty of that belief depends on either my own knowledge of supporting facts; or the credibility of someone else's knowledge in a field I'm not familiar with. If new knowledge reveals a belief to be incorrect, I recognize that at some point I succumbed to bullshit, and need to adjust my belief accordingly.
Knowledge can be externally verified by an independent party.
Belief can be corroborated but not verified.
For me, everything is a belief unless it satisfies the following criteria:
- It is generally accepted as true among experts
- There is ample evidence that is both personally convincing and leaves no room for alternate interpretations (not the same as #1, since many fields have "commonly accepted knowledge" that is generally acknowledged as most likely true but has no evidence to back it up)
- It is specific enough that it cannot be interpreted in a way that is misleading
I find that the one that trips up most people is #3, since some people speak in technically true but overly broad statements and the listener ends up filling in the gaps with their own biases. The listener leaves feeling like their biases have been confirmed by data, not realizing that they have been misled.
In the end, according to my criteria, very little can be categorized as true knowledge. But that's fine. You can still make judgements from partial or biased data or personal beliefs. You just can't be resolute about it and say that it's true.
I want to know how it works in real life for you.
What works for me in real life is know as little as possible, view all beliefs as clouds moving across the sky
Belief is either something I want to be true, or seems true although I don't have solid evidence. I believe that in the universe there will be many worlds with living beings that eventually evolve to be comparable to humans in mental capacity and the ability to create, but that due to how space time works we will never directly interact with them. They won't be close enough, or our time periods of existence won't match up if either of us attempt interstellar travel. Millions of years is a blink of an eye in the scope of the universe, but it is so vast that the odds are high that another planet will have similar conditions for carbon based life, not to mention other possible forms of life.
Knowledge is supported by evidence. It might not be a perfect explanation or understanding, but it is what is known based on the current information. We now know planets exist around other stars, but before we could observe them it would be a belief to say they existed. The difference is supporting evidence.
When I challenge my established concepts with new ideas or angles, and realize my previously held truth doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, or is reinforced or expanded upon. For example, “is a hot dog a sandwich?” makes me reconsider how so much depends on context, and how we as humans crave labelling and categorizing to the point of it being detrimental (see biological sex vs gender, Star Trek edit wars, classical music and pornography cataloguing, etc)
If so much is contextual, is there no knowledge based on truth or fact?