Some thoughts & a link to another article

If we take it to be true that we only believe things that we accept as true (insofar as if we thought something wasn’t true it’d be literally impossible to believe it), should we be concerned with whether the beliefs that we currently have and think are true really are true? That is, should we just accept that we have made no mistakes in our beliefs or should we, at minimum, be willing to change beliefs if there’s evidence of a belief being mistaken or, more challenging, be actively testing our beliefs to make sure that they are true?

One way of looking at the issue of truth is to ask ourselves what do we mean when we claim to have the truth or claim that a belief or statement is true?

A second issue, moving to the topic of knowledge, is what do we mean when we say that we know something? Under what circumstances can we reasonably be said to use know or knowledge correctly?

If I ask people to guess whether Caesar had on an even or odd number of hairs on his head when he died, at least some folks are going to guess accurately. Does this mean that I’m using know correctly if I say that at least some of these folks know whether there was an even or odd number of hairs on Caesar’s head?

The issue that we’re looking at here isn’t whether knowledge is possible (that is, whether we can ever know that we know – insofar as that appears to necessitate a level of certainty regarding the truth of our beliefs) but what are we alleging when we are alleging to know something? Similarly, we aren’t asking if or how we can get truth but what are we alleging when we allege that something is true?

Hopefully this either helps out or, at least, doesn’t make life more difficult for you.

If you found the first article manageable, go on to this one