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The difference between belief and knowledge - notes on philosophy

Writer's picture: Ragha Abhinaya MRagha Abhinaya M

▪️Assertion: A linguistic act; either spoken or written that has a truth value, which can be true, false or indeterminate.

▪️Proposition: Is the content of your assertion; the meaning of what you are saying. Your assertion may change based on the language you are saying it in but the meaning remains the same, hence the proposition.

▪️What we think while we are proposing something constitutes *Propositional Attitude of Belief and Disbelief*

Belief: Propositional attitude of truth

Knowledge: Justified true belief

Justification: Evidence of something being as it is;  


Comes from Testimony, most of the times.

First person observation over time.

So, to know something, we must first believe that thing and that belief must be true.

We can have false beliefs but not false knowledge


Eg: if you knew something and later, it turns out to be false, then you never knew that thing at all. You just had a belief.

Likewise, if you believed something and accidentally, it turned out to be true, this doesn’t count as knowledge as well.


EDMUND GETTIER:

Proposed Gettier cases: Where you have justified true belief but not knowledge.

So, jones had 10 coins and his boss told smith that he would get the job. This led smith to believe that the person who got the job had 10 coins. Smith gets the job and turns out he has 10 coins as well. Justified (boss gave evidence) true ( he counted 10 coins ) and belief. But turns out the boss lied. 

Smith didn’t know! He just stumbled into the truth.

You don’t know something if you simply stumbled into the right answer.


Generate your own Gettier case now!


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© 2019 by Ragha Abhinaya M.

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