Is knowledge also a belief?

@ 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”.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

How can we test our perceptions?

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.

If I see something, I accept it as belief or knowledge based on previous experience. I have calibrated my thinking by comparing it to other people and I have a reasonable belief that my brain and senses are operating normally.

Therefore, when I’m in my house and I see a cup of coffee next to me, I accept it as knowledge that there is a cup of coffee there. I don’t doubt it. (Should I consider it belief rather than knowledge? An interesting question.)

If someone comes in and tells me that there is no cup of coffee there, then I would reevaluate the situation. It it possible that I am wrong? Is it possible that he is wrong? Is he trying to prank me?

If my perceptions are out sync with other people many times, then I would suspect that I’m malfunctioning.

It’s not necessarily a matter of perceptions being out of sync with others either though, being the problem. Illusions are susceptible to all people, for one example

If all people have the same illusion, then you need not worry about it. It can be factored out.

If some people have some illusions at some times, then you need to look at what many people are experiencing and by comparing and contrasting, you can come to objective conclusions as to what is reasonable.

Visual Perceptions can are testable through, well, touching for one example. For example, perhaps when you leave for work one morning, there is what looks like a piece of steel rebar pierced through your windshield of your car. The glass looks shattered. But then you touch it, the rebar is no longer rebar, it is styrofoam upon touching it. The glass shattered on your windshield is no longer glass, nor is it shattered, but it is a sticker that is put on top of a glass to give it the impression that it is shattered. When you look closer, from different angels, your visual perception realizes that the styrofoam isn’t even pierced through your windshield, your cognitive processes gave rise to you to see what probably was a shadow on the inside of your car to make you think that it actually pierced through the windshield. So usually perception is often tested with other perception and reasoning and logic are applied to test your perception - which coalesces with your prior knowledge and experience to result in a more accurate perception. But is it ever complete? Your perception can be peer reviewed for further assurance that your faculties aren’t. If you look again, do you perceive the same? Perceptions are often validated through prior knowledge and understanding. But does that make it knowledge when we look at something and identify it conceptually in our minds a certain way, at first glance, second glass, even through touching?

Each object usually requires different “tests” to verify that you know what you are seeing… Is it something that is consistently there, day in day out, saw by everyone? Such as the sun? Do we know the sun exists? Yes, of course we know the sun exists. There’s implications aside from it being seen, that verify its existence. Heat comes from the sun, so we can feel the heat when its rays touch us. Life thrives from the sun, chlorophyll forms from chemical interaction with the sun. We see this through growing plants, growing gardens, testing its implications. We could know the sun exists, even if we never saw it.

“Factored out”? There comes a possible dilemma, that how do we know what is an illusion, if all people have the same illusions…

Yes there are ways to confirm certain perceptions are illusions, such as we have with say the “water on blacktop” illusion we often see when we drive… but what if we don’t know of an illusion, we haven’t reasoned it as one…

phyllo

How are you defining “see” here, phyllo? With your eyes or with your mind as in coming to understand it?

If with your own eyes, why accept it as a belief - belief is accepting something because of certain things which you do see but not enough to be able to prove it…not being certain.
If i see a tree, I know it’s a tree. That’s knowledge. That’s memory. Why is it necessary to compare what you see to what others see unless you know that you sometimes hallucinate.

I would probably use the word “fact” here rather than knowledge. But knowledge works. Knowledge is the sum of everything which you see around you that proves that cup is there. Hmmmm

Seeing the cup of coffee is not belief. You either know a thing or you believe a thing.

Again, only if you are prone to hallucinations would you doubt yourself. Hallucinations deal more with beliefs than with true knowledge. Have you drank from the cup of coffee yet?

But why would you do that? Wouldn’t it depend on WHO you are and know yourself to be? Maybe the people you hang out with take hallucinagens (sp?)

Is knowledge also a belief?
It probably doesn’t mean much but the world “belie” is within the word belief - which means of an appearance) fail to give a true notion or impression of (something); disguise or contradict.

All knowledge begins as belief until examined and proven within reason.