Do Justification, Belief And Trust Really Describe Knowledge?

Reason, aside from knowledge, tends to be the resonating factor in both the works of Plato and Descartes. Through reason we are able to use questioning (Plato) and doubt (Descartes) to train our line of thinking. The main theme that they both share is the consistent application of the use of reason to better define our questions or doubts. In defining what is philosophy, these common

The topic of knowledge and belief has been a subject of investigation and a primary field in philosophical research for centuries. Whether it was Aristotle or Descartes, multiple ideas on knowledge and belief arise, such as the epistemological theories of foundationalism or coherentism, which provide philosophical explanations to this debate. For the sake of this essay, and in my own opinion, knowledge should be distinguished from belief. Everyone is subject to different types of beliefs based on upbringing, however knowledge of basic items is universal, therefore it immediately becomes apparent that there is a clear distinction between the two concepts.

Epistemology or theory of knowledge is a branch of philosophy related to the scope and nature of knowledge. The subject focuses on examining the nature of knowledge, and how it relates to beliefs, justification, and truth. Epistemology contract with the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims. “Epistemology is the philosophical investigation into this question: What can we know? The question, at first, seems pretty simple: It seems pretty obvious that I know that 3+5+8, that the sun will rise tomorrow and that my chances of winning the lottery aren’t very good. I also know

Edmund Gettier’s argument that justified true belief is not a sufficient definition for knowledge is correct. There are many scenarios in which the conditions for justified true belief are met but cannot be said to qualify as knowledge; therefore justified true belief is not a sufficient definition for knowledge.

Socrates and Glaucon conclude that knowledge and true belief are different powers so their natures cannot be the same (Republic 477c-478a). Knowledge is the most effective power, while true belief

In this counterexample of the traditional view of knowledge that Gettier illustrates, a true justified belief evolved from a false justified belief. What the Gettier problem shows us is that in order for a true belief to qualify as knowledge, it must satisfy two conditions; it must not be a lucky guess (that is, it must be justified), and it must not be a lucky truth. A true belief that isn't a lucky guess, it may still be a lucky truth, and thus fall short of being knowledge. So where must knowledge come from?

Jacobi and Mendelssohn have two opposing views as to the position faith and reason when considering the knowledge of God. Jacobi advocates faith while Mendelssohn prefers reason. They are on opposite sides of the pantheism controversy. In pantheism, God is omnipresent. Everyone can learn to intellectually love God and, as he is everywhere, we require no mediation to communicate with Him. Spinoza spawned a school of thought called Spinozism. In this he uses the concept of a subject and predicate relationship and the principle of sufficient reason to determine the existence of God. He values both faith and reason. Lessing is of the same opinion, that both faith and reason are necessary components. He incorporates them into his idea of humanism and general acceptance which will evolve into a religion of universal reason. Jacobi and Mendelssohn are of two separate minds. Jacobi believes faith is the only source of truth while Mendelssohn thinks reason is the more logical path.

       The theory of the Ideas is the base of Plato’s philosophy: the Ideas are not only the real objects ontologically speaking, but they are the authentically objects of knowledge epistemologically speaking. From  the point of view  of ethics and  politics,  they are the foundation of  the right behaviour,  and anthropologically speaking they are  the base  of Plato’s dualism and they even allow him demonstrate  the immortality of  the soul.

Plato argued that true knowledge was not obtained through the knowledge of the physical world around us, but from these unchanging ideas. Plato’s theory of knowledge is well explained through his discussion of the Divided Line; a line divided into two unequal parts. One section represents the visible order and the other intelligible order, relating to opinion and knowledge, respectively. The stages of cognition flow upwards: imagining, belief, thinking, and intelligence. The visible, changing world of opinion begins with the awareness of images through perception. Awareness of images can include

A perpetual conflict emanating throughout all mankind questions the significance of knowledge to human nature, regarding knowledge’s definition, acquisition, branches, and value. Major role models in the foundation of philosophy - specifically, in this essay, Plato and Aristotle - obsess over the significance of knowledge and its importance to and relationship with the development of human beings and their mindsets. Although Plato’s view on knowledge describes the internal predisposed essence of all Forms and the need for a superior being to extract them from the student, Aristotle’s outlook resides as more reliable and realistic due to his beliefs in the premise of knowledge in the sensation and perception, with continuing development in memory, experience, art and science, and, ultimately, true wisdom.

Plato and Aristotle view knowledge and the process whereby it is obtained. They both point out that many epistemological concepts which they believe where knowledge comes from and what it is actually. Most of them have been astonished me in certain ways, but I found that rationalism and "wisdom consists in knowing the cause which made a material thing to be what it is" make the most sense to me regarding the nature of knowledge. As the following, we will discuss about why these two philosophical viewpoints are superior and the others are inferior.

Epistemology is purposed with discovering and studying what knowledge is and how we can classify what we know, how we know it, and provide some type of framework for how we arrived at this conclusion. In the journey to identify what knowledge is the certainty principle was one of the first concepts that I learned that explained how we, as humans, consider ourselves to know something. The certainty concept suggests that knowledge requires evidence that is sufficient to rule out the possibility of error. This concept is exemplified in cases like The Gettier problem in the instance that we suppose (S) someone to know (P) a particular proposition. As Gettier established the Justified True Belief as a conceptual formula for knowledge, certainty

While implementing restrictions of the belief forming method allows the theory to overcome cases like the one above, it does not allow the theory to successfully track knowledge in all cases. To show that this is the case, I will present several counterexamples to the revised theory. Tristan Haze formulated two new counterexamples to Nozick’s theory in 2015, I will begin by presenting one of these new counterexamples. Suppose that I have a counterfactually robust delusional belief that my neighbor is some sort of divine oracle. In actuality, my neighbor is just a reliable and truthful tax lawyer. Now suppose that my neighbor wishes to tell me some point about tax law, P. At some point, my neighbor tells me P and I believe him because I believe he is a divine oracle. Had I believed that he was a lawyer, I would not have believed P because of my inherent distrust of lawyers. Intuitively, it seems as though I do not know P because my belief rests on a delusion. Nonetheless, Nozick’s theory posits that I do know P as it meets all the conditions. Conditions (1) and (2) are naturally met as it is true and I believe it. Condition (3) seems to hold because if P were not true, my truthful and reliable neighbor would not have told me P, thus I wouldn 't believe it. Lastly, condition (4) holds; if it were true, I would believe P because my neighbor would have told me

Philosophers have conventionally defined knowledge as a belief that is both true and justified. Plato first introduces this concept of knowledge in Thaeaetetus where he presents knowledge, to be justified true belief. This definition sufficed until, Edmund Gettier, an American philosopher, pointed out that the conditions could be fulfilled inadvertently, in ways that did not amount to what Plato intuitively regarded to as knowledge. The goal of the Gettier problem is to showcase that one can have a belief which is true and justified, yet still not amounting to knowledge. By analyzing the concepts of Plato’s theory, I will bring to light its inadequacies, proving the complication Gettier poses to be a genuine philosophical problem.

If the seed of knowledge is belief, what turns belief into knowledge? This is where justification comes in (some philosophers use the term “warrant” to refer to this element). A person knows something if they’re justified in believing it to be true (and, of course, it actually is true). There are dozens of competing theories of justification and there is little consensus about which is the right one. It’s sometimes easier to describe when a belief isn’t justified than when it is. In general, philosophers agree that a person isn’t justified if their belief is: