Knowledge and Truth
I’ve recently been made painfully aware (yet again) that there is a significant difference between knowledge and truth. Yes, I know, huge epiphany right? The problem most likely stems from the fact that in our culture we use these two terms interchangeably. It isn’t difficult to understand why because they are so closely related. Of course there are several competing defintions of truth, but for a majority of ages it has been viewed as that which corresponds to the way things really are. Knowledge, on the otherhand, is typically the process of justifying our beliefs. More precisely, knowledge is the end result of a process whereby certain conditions must be satisfied to move information from the category of opinion or unjustified beliefs and into the category of knowledge. Knowledge (in its final form or its unjustified form) is whether I believe something to be the case and truth is one of the metrics that determines if what I possess is knowledge or some sort of crazy opinion.
Now, the real fun begins. This is where the entire skepticism, rationalism and epiricism debates get off the ground. We have to determine a) what constitutes truth about the world and b) what the definitive, “absolute” criteria for knowledge is. Many readers (are there many out there?) may wonder why I bother with these distinctions and questions when most would consider these sorts of activities intuitive or obvious. I bother because it is these distinctions or the blurring of them that leads to many situations where individuals presume and act as if they have a type of knowledge that is certain, but in case of point they either have propositional knowledge or, even worse, mere opinion (unjustified belief).
I would agree that through my senses many things about which I have knowledge don’t require this rigorous type of reflection. The challenge, one that I intend to at worst understand completely and at best overcome, is that we all too often place far too many objects into the effortless category. This isn’t to mean, as I’ve said before, that we can’t know anyhing. We have to realize, however, that the nature of a significant portion of our knowledge is propositional. No, I’m not aiming for some positivist certitude here. We can have confidence that our beliefs are true when they pass certain tests (logical, empirical), but we have to remember that it does not give us certain knowledge. We may be right, but we do not know for sure (healthy skepiticism). This realization gives us a bit more humility in our assertions. We should be confident, but not the same type we would have as if we possessed *certainty. Many will ask what the difference is. Sure, we would use the propositional and the certain type of knowledge in the same manner, but shouldn’t there be some distinctions in our presentations and discussions of these types of knowledge? The issue, for me, is that we all too often walk around and present knowledge as the certain kind when in fact we carry something far different. It is why, I think, the label JTB (Justified True Belief) is an appropriate one.
I know there are all sorts of questions about where this leaves matters metaphysical in nature or where this leaves religious faith. I’ve implicitly sketched this outline within the context of this present and past reality (sciences, history, sociology) and have left the questions of faith and other matters to the reader to consider. I imagine I’ll write about the impact of knowledge and truth (epistemology) on these sort of “facts”, but that will have to wait until later. I want to make it clear, that this doesn’t mean we can only know things we can test with our senses (that sort of criteria has its own sort of problems). There are many type of knowledge (how to make something, people I know) that don’t fall within my brief outline. As you can see from only a few sentences of the epilogue that the knowledge problem is foundational and yet we presume so about it much everyday. Is it possible to continue living in ignorance? Sure, civilizations have done it since the dawn of time. In Plato’s words through Socrates “The unexamined life is not worth living”. It isn’t just about truth, but about how we can use that truth to live life better (or how we ought to).