Is knowledge also a belief?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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So to further understand my perspective, frame of reference, let me elaborate a bit. This thread seems to be running over in other threads I have created, of course, there’s reason why that is, there is a connection. There is a connection to my philosophy in differing subjects and there are roots in this epistemic frame to essentially every philosophy I have stated. The branches are throughout the forum in my other threads, this being a root, so to speak.

There is incredulity on this philosophy so I think it is warranted to explain how I have gotten to this point. Although, this explanation doesn’t really matter or provide a case for this thesis of mine.

I have had multiple schemata destroyed, crushed, obliterated in my life. A schema is “an organized pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them. It can also be described as a mental structure of preconceived ideas, a framework representing some aspect of the world, or a system of organizing and perceiving new information. Schemata influence attention and the absorption of new knowledge: people are more likely to notice things that fit into their schema, while re-interpreting contradictions to the schema as exceptions or distorting them to fit. Schemata have a tendency to remain unchanged, even in the face of contradictory information. Schemata can help in understanding the world and the rapidly changing environment. People can organize new perceptions into schemata quickly as most situations do not require complex thought when using schema, since automatic thought is all that is required.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_(psychology)

The first big schema was destroyed through breaking free from religious indoctrination, it was a belief oriented schema that was based on dogma that was essentially forced upon me through indoctrination from childhood through 13 years of Catholic schooling. The second, was through mental illness. This was a perceptual schema, which is “A structured internal representation (1) of an object or image acquired through perception”
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100316467

Both of these schemata were imperative to my understanding of reality. My understanding of reality was deeply flawed I found upon the destruction of these schemata. The destruction of my perceptual schema through mental illness lingers more prevalent today as critical to my current perceptual schema, which is inherently different from the schema that arose from religious indoctrination. When I was mentally ill, I naturally perceived reality through a highly imaginative state of mind. Hallucinations occurred constantly at times, hallucinations were optical, auditory, olfactory (related to the sense of smell) and to a lesser extent, somatosensory (related to the sense of touch). A perceptual schema is imperitive to understanding everything. Through my minds capacity to entirely create an alternate reality because of hallucinations due to mental illness and my subsequent recovery, I have been keenly aware of the power of the mind in general to do this as a mentally healthy person. While recovering from mental illness I spent great lengths of time reflecting upon what I thought was real from hallucinations to what probably really happened instead. I had to fix my understanding of reality because upon my recovery, I knew my understanding was based on a great deal of hallucination. I went down a perceptual rabbit hole and came out more aware of the nature of perception, cognition, and conceptualization. I became aware of how to identify the difference between hallucination and actual perception of reality - which I then came to find out there isn’t necessarily a whole lot of difference when you get down to it. Colors, are a product of our mind, for example. What we hear is a product of our mind. What we see, is a product of our mind. Our mind determines our perception of reality more so than many people would give them credit for. People think what they see is what is there, I know what we say is a product of our mind. This is an important distinction to make and one that eventually rose to weeding out belief due to this nature of perception, cognition and conceptualization. Perhaps its hard for others who haven’t experienced what I have to weed out belief, because there is no need to. They function fine. Perhaps they don’t know the depths that our mind produces our perception of reality. Perhaps they think what they see is knowledge and look no further.

I am grateful for my experience because it made me stronger. I took a great interest in learning so that I could not only catch myself if hallucinations struck me down again, but to understand why this happened, how this happened to me. What came of it was a greater understanding of essentially everything, I would say. If you would like to read more about my experience of mental illness, I wrote a book depicting the issues I had. I always was curious in high school, while learning what schizophrenia and psychosis was, to try to vicariously understand what it was. It was impossible. But now that I have experienced it first hand, I like to help others who would never experience it try to view it vicariously, and I hope that is why my book has done for those who have read it so far. The link is here: http://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Madness-Christopher-Markowski-ebook/dp/B006ZR34BE

So I hope that this post may help with some of the incredulity that seems to be out there among my dissenters. Maybe it doesn’t, but I don’t mind trying.

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I really have no desire to have any more schemata destroyed. As the wiki article describes “Schemata have a tendency to remain unchanged, even in the face of contradictory information”, I have produced essentially a schemata that is not as rigid as in years past, that is full of doubt, and that makes it adaptable as such; it is open. So my current schemata is very pliable, not rigid, full of awe. It is even whimsical of sorts. One that allows for change, as change for my schemata is known too well. For a schema to be destroyed is like trial by fire; from the ashes something stronger comes out. If there were to be more, it would be embraced, but it is not easy. However, I I may have become increasingly efficient at this process. In any case - this is why I have so much doubt. Human psychology also shows us why so much doubt it needed. But let us not doubt so much that we forsake what we know.

“The mark of a mature, psychologically healthy mind is indeed the ability to live with uncertainty and ambiguity, but only as much as there really is. Uncertainty is no virtue when the facts are clear, and ambiguity is mere obfuscation when more precise terms are applicable.” Julian Baggini

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So in a case like that (not confirmed, but still there), would you say “There is a rock on Europa that looks like a spoon” is not true, or true but nobody knows that it’s true, or some other thing?

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I would say that the truth of the statement cannot be determined at this time. Unknowable rather than true or false.

On the other hand, one could justify it on statistical grounds. With thousands of rocks, there is a high probability that there is at least one rock which looks like a spoon. In that case, probably true rather than true or false.

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An interesting situation is one that happens all the time … one witness to an event.

I can say that I am playing with a rubber ball as I type this. Is it true? I know the answer ,however, nobody else can know if it is true or not. (Unless I’m secretly being observed or filmed)

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@ Ww iii ANGRY

You have opened a thread with an interesting theme of epistemology ( =D> ), but the content of your posts shows that you want a non-epistemological theme ( :blush: ).

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@ THE OTHERS.

Imagine you inhabit an epistemological house with two floors. The first floor as the lower floor is your belief and the second floor as the upper floor your knowledge. If you take away your first floor, you are not able anymore to inhabit your house; but if you take away your second floor, you can remain in your house and just inhabit the first floor.

Belief and knowledge have the same roots, but they are not equal, because belief is more relevant than knowledge when it comes to epistomological certainty. Knowledge can be easier destroyed than belief. If you are uncertain, then remember your epistemological beliefs, because your beliefs make you more certain again than knowledge. The conclusion that knowledge can give you more epistemological certainty than belief is a fallacy. If you want to maintain your knowledge, then support it with your belief - like the lower floor supports the upper floor. This does not men that knowledge is not relevant. No! Knowledge is jeweled, but it is more fragile than belief. That is the reason why knowledge needs more to be maintained or nursed than belief. But this maintaining or nursing is not possible without belief. That is the reason why belief is more relevant than knowledge. Your knowledge is of no benefit to you without belief. It is worthless without belief.

If someone wants to make out of knowledge belief or/and out of belief knowledge, then the most effective way is to change the semantics of both words, namely by exchanging both meanings. That is what the rulers and their functionaries have been doing for so long by their so called “political correctness”, which is just not more than rhetoric, propaganda, semantical supremacy. They are destroying knowledge, because they try to replace it by belief, which they call “knowledge”.

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It is also the greatest semantical war theater of all time.

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Yes. of course. And that fact is what we should know and even can know with more certainty than scientific knowledge. Do you know what I mean?

I agree with you, Moreno.

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You are just not capable of knowing what beliefs are and what they mean. So it is no wonder that you are also not capable of believing in knowledge.

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If your model could, would, or should be accepted, then rather in the following way:

BFK.jpg
Truth is more than this model can show. If you wanted to model truth, then you would try to model the impossibility or God.

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Thank you for your contribution Arminius, you are welcome to build upon my thesis with your own epistemic framework of course. Of course, your explanation of how it is better is lacking, so I imagine it is just because you wish or need to hold on to some dear beliefs, for belief’s sake. Or perhaps, for the sake of your schemata or your perception of what you can fathom as possible in this case. You wouldn’t want to become broken, of course.

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So the next step here is to provide justification for what is knowledge. How does something become known? Is seeing believing, or knowing, or neither? Can it be neither? It should be information, most certainly. How that information is processed depends on the capabilities of the individual. Perception, however, “is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment” - a very apt definition. It is critical to knowledge, but is it all that is necessary for something to become knowledge? Please note that perception in this sense, and sight, are two different things. Sight is used in perception, but something far more important occurs in organizing, identifying and interpreting the sensory information of sight. What occurs tells us our abilities as humans, our limitations. If I see a tree, does that mean I know the tree is there? It depends. I’ve seen trees before that weren’t there. How do I know? Because they were proven to be hallucinations. In a world in which things aren’t what they seem, it isn’t necessarily the world’s fault, but is the limitations of our “sight”.

We see things based on our subjective ability of our sight. Human eyesight is fairly similar from person to person, as say, compared to a snake that sees in infrared. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_sensing_in_snakes
Who is objectively seeing a tree, a snake, or a human? Of course, neither. There is no reason why the processing of light reflected from an object is more accurate to the identity of object, as opposed to the processing of heat emitting from an object, is to the identity of an object. Even still, we do not base our perception off of sight a lone. We do not even process sight as a sole percept that we can consciously perceive without the other interference from our natural cognitive processes that lead to perception. We may not even know what eyesight is that is unfiltered from all the processes that occur during perception. Not only can the health of our body affect what we “see”, so to speak, or rather perceive, but our biological make up and our experience combines to produce the totality of everything we use in perceiving things with sight. What that can lead to are great variances, unknown variances even in person to person. People can sometimes even, see what they want to see, which can be seen as a form of confirmation bias, in so much as there is “selective perception” as well as even seeing things that aren’t really there because of what our mind might seem normal… or seeing aspects of things that aren’t really there because of many numbers of factors that occur during perception. So why not take what you see even, with a grain of salt? Perhaps its too difficult. Perhaps it must be how you want it to be. Perhaps you aren’t capable? Perhaps you think its not possible. Or perhaps you do.

So is sight alone a qualifier for knowledge? No, it is not. But then again, we never really ever use sight alone. It’s always perception, its always processed, and presented into our consciousness based on unconscious processes that naturally occur.

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He’s more than capable, he just has ideological reasons for insisting on using the word wrong. If it was a lack of understanding, one of us would have cleared it up by now. You have to distance yourself from the notion that the people you meet are just one good turn of phrase away from agreeing with you. Some are, but many, perhaps most, have no interest at all in listening to anything you have to say, and only make counter points as a sort of excuse, or an attempt to win a game.

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Everything is processed. That’s the starting point of human existence.

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Very good. So when an understanding of the flaws of perception become prevalent in our psyche, then shouldn’t we take steps to stop taking our perception for granted? Stop believing it to be true, remove certainty, remove belief and allow doubt to settle in. Perception is the beginning of knowledge, is a necessary component of knowledge, but more is needed for a state of knowing. A state of belief of perception can occur and for most it does, but suspending belief in favor of recognizing your subjective flawed faculties, you can essentially begin a less subjective journey of understanding and wisdom.

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I don’t think that what you are saying about belief and doubt logically follows from the flaws of perception. One simply works around human limitations and one accepts that these limitations are always there whether talking about knowledge or belief.

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Well if belief is acceptance that their perception is true, in the face of all these flaws, why persist in accepting it as true? More than just perception is required for knowledge, but not belief. Keep in mind, knowledge is not merely accepting something as true.

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How can we test our perceptions?

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I think it is both: an understanding problem and an ideological problem. And this seeming unsurmountability would be solvable, if it was not a mix of both: an understanding problem and an ideological problem.

Probably you remember the follwing conversation:

Again: Ignore him?

During my study at the university I have met many types of students who were back then exactly like he is now. It is their ideological conceitedness that makes them so cocksure and ignorant, so that they do not only appear like stupid people but really are stupid people. You do not really have to care whether their incapacity is based on genetic defects or on ideological defects, because the effect is the same old stupidity as ever.