Absolute truth: A necessity or just a convenience.

[Eclogite]

Anybody here have any interest in defining our terms? :confused:

What a strange idea. (:edizzy: ) That would lead to logical conclusions, general agreement and advances in mutual understanding. All of these are the opposite of what forums are for!:naughty:

 

Knowing is the condition of being aware of an established, validated fact or theory.

Believing is the condition of favouring a particular interpretation of observations of phenomena.

 

Beliefs are a form of opinion that have been entrenched through long or intesive use.

 

Beliefs are only ever absolute in a subjective sense. Absolute beliefs tend to be associated with individuals having limited critical faculties.

 

If you disbelieve a belief you call it sapience.

[hallenrm]

Knowing is the condition of being aware of an established, validated fact or theory.

Believing is the condition of favouring a particular interpretation of observations of phenomena.

Beliefs are a form of opinion that have been entrenched through long or intesive use.

.

Cosider this, for centuries people believed, and they would say knew, that the Earth is at the center.

 

Extrapolating your thought, I would say, knowing is believing in what the Authority of your time believes in.:hihi:

[Eclogite]

Cosider this, for centuries people believed, and they would say knew, that the Earth is at the center.

 

Extrapolating your thought, I would say, knowing is believing in what the Authority of your time believes in.:esmoking:

I would like you to use another example. the one you have chosen here does not (I believe:) ) validate your conclusion.

 

For millenia informed people knew, through reasoned observation and deduction, that the Earth was a sphere. This was the authoritative position. It was the uneducated or unthinking who believed the Earth was flat.

 

A similar situation exists today. We know, beyond any doubt, that evolution is a fact. A substantial number of the uneducated and unthinking believe it is false.

[ughaibu]

I rather like the idea that truth is dependent on the knower's assessment of both the reliability of the method by which the knowledge is acquired and the importance of the consequences of the knowledge, in effect, truth as risk management. As an example of a peculiar and unflattering manifestation of this, on more than one occasion I have had my direct, first-hand experiences of things in far away places, denied by Brits without direct experience, on the grounds that my reports are contradicted by television. Perhaps this latter comes under 'hyper-real reliabilism'(?)

[Pyrotex]

I would like you to use another example. ...We know, beyond any doubt, that e... is a fact. A substantial number of the uneducated and unthinking believe it is false.

You are of course 100% correct. I would like to kindly point out that using the "E-word" even once in a thread carries a 85.7% chance of inducing Topic Chaosification Chain Reaction (TCCR) in that thread. :eek: :D

 

Let me try my hand at some definitions.

To know is generally used to mean, to have obtained a piece of information. The information may eventually turn out to be incorrect, but at the time is considered to be factual by all (most) of those who have it.

 

To Know (with a capital K) is also used in a different sense, as a distinction from to think. "I used to think that Santa was real but now I Know he isn't." In Science, to Know is the state of highest confidence in a piece of information, in so far as it is based upon ample evidence and mathematical modeling.

 

To believe is something like choosing your best guess, based not so much on personal acquisition of evidence and modeling, as upon sharing the expressed beliefs of a body of people you trust. To believe can also be a default position when there is not enough evidence to persuade one to switch sides.

 

A belief and an opinion are, IMO (circular reference??), very similar. Any difference may be one of duration. If I have had an opinion for "a long time" then it is a belief. If I just formed my opinion 5 minutes ago after reading your post, then it is an opinion. I am likely to be attached to my belief but not very attached to my opinion.

 

Anybody want to take a stab at knowledge? Both "personal" and "cultural"?

[arkain101]

I will give it a go.

 

Knowledge is an understanding and awareness of information that can at the time be either correct or incorrect, relative to another(s) opinion, but is information that contains a significant amount of value in respect to the persons application of such information and where it is being directed.

In short it is, a result of psychological understanding and awareness of data which contains a value which stands true but may not be in the grand sense factual information.