Certainty

The idea that I found most interesting from this reading was Lynch's approach to certainty. I have been struggling with the idea of certainty in regards to truth throughout some of the discussions we have had in class. It seems as though certainty is nearly impossible. Lynch points out that, in many peoples' minds, truth and absolute certainty are intertwined. However, he tries to detach the two a bit. It is necessary to acknowledge different levels of certainty. Lynch uses examples to illustrate how he views these different levels, and how we already use these. The example I like the most was the example of the detective only having to be certain beyond a reasonable doubt. Being able to put the idea of degrees of certainty into an example such as this helped me to understand what Lynch was talking about. I think that Lynch's degrees of certainty may help with the definition of knowledge that we started to examine in lab today. We went through some examples of how justification may not be sufficient in determining knowledge. I'm also struggling with deciding how similar certainty beyond a reasonable doubt, based upon investigation, etc., is to justification.