Knowledge and justification
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The possibility of scepticism and categories of belief
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If knowledge = true, justified belief, then what processes could justify a belief? If knowledge is true, justified belief, and if the process of justification is one that guarantees certainty, then surely nothing is certain, and nothing is known? One can play a game – take any belief whatsoever and demonstrate that it is not certain. Here is a list of categories of belief. Religious/theological Example: I believe that God exists. Beliefs about material reality Example: I believe that a table continues to exist even when I am not looking at it. Scientific belief. Example: I believe that gravity causes lead balls to fall to the ground. Metaphysical beliefs about the nature of the mind. Example: I believe I have a soul. Beliefs about the content of the mind. Example: I believe I am feeling pain. Beliefs about other minds. Example: I believe that my wife is conscious. Moral beliefs. Example: I believe that it is wrong to lie. Political beliefs. Example: I believe in a market economy. Aesthetic beliefs Example: I believe that this statue of Venus is beautiful. Beliefs about the abstract. Example: I believe that there exists an abstract reality that makes my ideas meaningful. Cosmological beliefs. Example: I believe that the universe began 15 billion years ago with a big bang. Historical beliefs. Example: I believe that Christopher Columbus discovered America. Beliefs about the future. Example: I believe that I will die. Beliefs about mathematics. Example: I believe that 2 and 2 is equal to 4. Beliefs about logic. Example: I believe that something cannot be both black and not black at the same time. Beliefs about meaning – analytical beliefs. Example: I believe that knowledge is true, justified belief. Beliefs about intentions and motives. Example: I believe that President Nixon intended to cover-up the Watergate burglary. Beliefs about sense-data. Example: I believe that I am seeing a yellow blob right now. There may be other categories that are not included in the list. It is perhaps surprising to discover that there are arguments against the claim that any of these categories can supply beliefs capable of certainty. A global sceptic would argue that there is no category of belief that can attain to certainty.
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Contents of
Knowledge and justification
1 The distinction between knowledge and belief
2 Unsound, invalid, possible world and fallacy
3 Counterexample, exposing a fallacy
4 Belief and doubt
5 Believing that and knowing that
6 Knowledge and certainty - the tripartite definition of knowledge
7 True, justified belief
8 Plato: The Theaetetus
9 Plato: Forms
10 The possibility of scepticism and categories of belief
11 Global scepticism
12 The Argument from Authority
13 Valid argument, inference and justification
14 Chain of deductive inferences, self-evident truths
15 Sense experience, empiricism
16 The dialectic method, thesis and antithesis
17 Rationalism and empiricism; the Discourse on the Method
18 The Cogito, Reason and Rational Insight
19 Bertrand Russell, Acquaintance
20 Universals, Forms
21 Scepticism, Existentialism and Faith
22 The evil genius argument
23 Existentialism
24 Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling - the Absurd
25 Foundation for Knowledge
26 Theory of Knowledge, Epistemology and Metaphysics
27 Rationalism, Mathematics and Logic, Innateness
28 Innate Ideas
29 The a priori
30 Truth by convention, Hume and the Method of Doubt
31 Hume and the distinction between belief and knowledge
32 Hume and the definition of belief
33 Truth as a logical operator on sentences
34 The correspondence theory of truth
35 Wittgenstein: On Certainty
36 Wittgenstein and the coherence theory of truth
37 William James and Pragmatism
38 W.V.O. Quine, pragmatism and the Two Dogmas of Empiricism
39 Postivism and pragmatism
40 Pragmatism and utilitarianism
41 Pragmatism and religiion
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