In this post I will address a certain problem in philosophy that I have been in nearly constant confrontation with: what is a belief?
Psychologists regard beliefs as states of the brain in which a person holds a certain proposition to be true or false. Thus, I can either believe that the statement "God exists" is either true or false. Beliefs are thoughts about the truth value of propositions. We then act upon those beliefs. That is the psychological story.
The philosophical story is much less clear. A pure definition of the term 'belief' is hard to come by. Most philosophers argue that the term 'belief' is in direct reference to the three tiered structure of the traditional formulation of knowledge: Justified true belief is knowledge. The problem here is that this does not give us a solid understanding of what a belief is. If we take the psychological stance of a belief being a state of the brain that holds certain propositions true or false, then we can join that with justification (whatever test for that we can determine later) and an actual objective determination of the truth value of the proposition, we then have knowledge. Whatever the case may be, we see that until it gets called knowledge (as in successfully passes the test), the truth values of beliefs in reality are undetermined. How that determination occurs, if in fact it does, has been a matter of debate for most of the past two centuries of Anglo-American philosophy. In the end, we either have said determination or we do not. If we do, if we have some sort of naturalized epistemology (that is, an epistemology grounded in empirical understanding of the natural world via science), then we can be successful in considering something to lie in the category of knowledge.
For example, I have a belief that the proposition "today is Wednesday" is true. I am justified in believing that the proposition is indeed true, and as far as we can tell, it is true. Here I know that the proposition "today is Wednesday" is true. I contend here that I no longer belief that the statement "it is Wednesday" is true, I know it to be true. Thus, belief is no longer in the equation. Here lies the dragon: beliefs depend upon the uncertainty of the truth value of the proposition in question. Once the truth value has been determined via some sort of agreed upon procedure (such as empirical investigation), then we add it to the body of knowledge we possess. We no longer believe it, we know it to be true.
The argument in the above paragraph rankles the contemporary analytic philosopher because it chops at the knees justified true belief as being a constant state for a piece of knowledge. We are led from that argument to picture a process of moving from belief to knowledge in such a way as to clear out the belief from the brain. A new state is in effect and the old state is gone. This is more in keeping with modern psychological research, however, and so we must be willing to consider it to be the case. Belief is not part of knowledge, but something separate from it.
Even if we have this new conception of belief as a temporary state on the road to knowledge, we still have not determined what exactly the requirements for the test of determining the truth value of a belief are. We like to say that empirical verification is where it's at, but verificationism has multiple problems that require either ad hoc revisions or an outright jettison of certain supposedly verified statements that are blatantly false. If we decide that verificationism is a failure and we move on to falsifiablilty, that does very little to actually confirm the truth value of any proposition. In fact, in the end, we tend to see that it is nearly impossible to say for certain (outside of very special sorts of statements) that any proposition is true or false. It becomes an approximation game, a probability contest.
If the probability contest is the model we actually use in determining the truth value of propositions, then those values can be suspect. This means that the last, and most important tier of the justified true belief model of epistemology is nearly impossible to achieve. Thus, we believe most things, but know very little. Justification and determination of the truth value of the claim become the same thing. This is troubling to many, but for me, it is another opening of the door, another widening of the gap between what we claim to know and what we know. We confront. once again, our lack of ability to reach certainty.
1 comment:
Hey Phil, thanks for the very thought-provoking piece. Two things:
First, I agree with you that the traditional analysis of the concept of knowledge has some problems, even letting alone the Gettier-style counterexamples. You put your finger on one of its key limitations: It requires two different evaluations, ‘justification’ and ‘truth.’ And implied in this are two different standards, ‘justification’ and ‘something-somehow-better-than-justification.’
In practical terms, we can see how something like hindsight or repeated tests of a claim by independent observers might qualify for a stronger standard than a single person’s current justification of that claim (this is the scientific route). Or a single person might use his own hindsight to determine if his childhood beliefs were really knowledge. But there is no way for me to use the traditional analysis as a standard for calling my current beliefs ‘knowledge,’ because in the present tense I can’t meaningfully separate ‘justification’ and ‘truth.’ And, as you pointed out, some of the limitations on my ability to justify a belief are going to work their way into any presumably-more-objective determination of its actual truth.
These qualms aside, I find it interesting that the traditional analysis requires something known to be seen from two different perspectives. This may reflect something fundamental about how we gain confidence in our ideas.
Second, your contention that beliefs are exclusive of knowledge does indeed rankle with me, but only because it rests on an equivocation. You begin the argument with one sense of ‘belief’ and finish with another. To summarize your main points:
Philosophy (under the traditional analysis) tells us that knowledge is justified true belief. But this doesn’t tell us much about belief itself, so we may substitute for our argument the psychological definition of belief (a thought about the truth value of a proposition which one acts upon). Say I believe q, I’m justified in believing q, and q is true. In this case, we can say I know q. But here I no longer “believe” q, I “know” it. Therefore beliefs depend on the uncertainty of the proposition in question, and beliefs must be a separate category from knowledge.
By the end of the argument you are no longer using the psychological sense of ‘belief’ (as a thought about the truth value of a proposition which one acts upon), but the sense of ‘belief’ as “mere belief” (as contrasted with knowledge or certainty). The psychological sense of ‘belief’ covers knowledge just fine (if I know something, I certainly have the thought that it is true, and I would act upon it). But the second sense of belief as “mere belief” clearly excludes it.
We hear echoes of this second sense when people say, “I don’t like painting, I love it;’ or “Evolution isn’t a theory, it’s a fact.” Actually, ‘theory’ and ‘belief’ have much in common. Each in its primary sense describes a broad category which includes a range of members of different cognitive value; within each the superlative category can be described as ‘fact’ or ‘knowledge’ (or ‘truth’). Both also have another sense of using the broad category in contrast to the superlative category, to stress the undetermined value of the idea (theory as opposed to fact). We regularly see Intelligent Design advocates confusing the two, in cases wherein they hear a scientist discourse on the virtues of the “theory of evolution” and report enthusiastically to their allies that “Even scientists admit it’s just a theory!” (So avoiding this confusion not only strengthens your argument, it puts you in better ideological company.)
Again, thanks for the meaty thought-food. See you in Empiricism (if not sooner).
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