Knowledge and justification
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Hume and the distinction between belief and knowledge
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Rationalism is effectively based on the assumption that we can draw a particular distinction between knowing and believing – Hume effectively denies this, which brings us back to the very beginning of our discussion. There we seemed to follow a logical chain of reasoning that led us through the examination of the concepts of knowledge, belief and justification to the tripartite definition of knowledge as true, justified belief. However, if we revisit this argument we shall discover, in the light of what has been said subsequently about rationalism, that the claim that knowledge is true, justified belief implies metaphysical assumptions about the nature of the human mind which can also be questioned. Rationalists maintain that the mind has an extra-sensory power, that they call reason, that enables them to know things for certain independently of experience. Therefore, they draw a strong distinction between knowledge and belief. Knowledge, which is founded on reason, has for its objects universals (or forms) that are non-spatial and non-temporal. It is because one can apprehend such universals that necessary truths, such as those of logic and mathematics, can be grasped. But suppose that no such extra-sensory power of reason exists; then it would not be possible to justify this division between knowledge and belief. To say that we can comprehend by knowledge an idea of absolute certainty that does not permit of any possibility of error is to say that the mind is capable of attaining to a particular state of mind. It is quite possible to argue that no such state of mind exists, and consequently the distinction implied in the tripartite definition of knowledge collapses. If this is so, then the distinction between knowledge and belief must be based on something other than the idea of a process of justification that guarantees certainty; if justification is involved, then it does not guarantee certainty in the sense that what is know could not possibly be false.
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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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