Enlightened [Elitist] Agnosticism

[robvalue]

Rob explain something to me - How is believing something is true different from knowing? If I know something is true I also believe it is true. It is belief with knowledge. I know something happens and therefore I believe it is true. Aren't the two related? Maybe I'm getting too philosophical here. The way I see it, when you know something you also believe (with evidence) that it is true. For example, I know gravity is true because I've experienced it, and I also believe the law of gravity is true because there's no evidence that it's false

What would you say to this, Rob? The classic definition of knowledge is "justified true belief". So knowledge is a branch of belief, it just requires that you hold it for the right reasons. To claim knowledge that no gods exist requires more than certainty. I am completely satisfied that no further effort to find a god is needed or likely to pay off, so I am plenty certain. But to say I know that means at a minimum that I can provide a slam dunk argument. That is where the murky nature of the definition of gods gets in the way. Sure I could argue that no planet wide flood ever happened or that there was never a first human, just a line of earlier forms gradually becoming recognizably modern. But then that only addresses a literal, fundamentalist interpretation of the bible - very low growing fruit indeed.

Whatever way you look at it, knowledge is a subset of belief. Everything you think you know you must also believe, but not everything you believe you need to, or are able to, know.

Defining what "know" means is very difficult. In the strictest form, you can only "know" things that can be proved with logic, and then truth still depends on the truth of the premises. Once you go past that and deal with reality rather than the abstract, there is always uncertainty. But at this point the difference between belief and knoweldge could be demonstrated. I could have a complex problem which I can't quite solve, so I don't know what the answer is. But I may hold a belief about the answer. I may believe, for example, the answer is 1 but I cannot yet prove it. I may or may not have good reasons for that belief.

So to use "know" in everyday life, I would go with justified belief. I wouldn't put in "true" because then you can only "know" facts, and also the justification part is then irrelevant. The only question is the level of justification, and who is judging it. I can say I know the way from my house to the high street. I feel I'm justified to hold that belief beyond reasonable doubt. But say I'd suffered a blow to the head without realising it, and it messed with my memory. Now I still "know" the way to the high street, as far as I am concerned, for the same justification. It's just now I'm wrong. If you cannot "know" something unless it's factual, then we can never know what we know... we're back to inevitable uncertainty of reality, and the word "know" becomes useless.

So I'd say "knowing" something, in everyday terms, is relative. I may consider I know something, because I feel justified, but you may feel I don't know it because you think my justification is not sufficient.

As a final example... I start a night out with £100 in my pocket. After buying several drinks, I have lost track of how much money I have. I need £10 for the taxi home. Without looking in my pocket, I do not know if I have enough left. But I feel confident that I haven't spent more than £90, I feel like that is pretty unlikely. So I believe I have at least £10, but I don't claim to know it. I feel strongly enough that I believe I have enough money, but I do not know if I actually do.

Comments welcome! It's a tricky subject and this is just my take on things

When it comes to gods, or any unfalsifiable proposition, I believe they are false on the whole, but I consider the truth unknowable. I don't claim, even to myself, that I have justification to "know" an unfalsifiable proposition is false. Someone else may well feel they do, so they can "know" there is no God.