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What criteria can we use to distinguish between knowledge, belief, and…
What criteria can we use to distinguish between knowledge, belief, and opinion? (CCH2A)
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Knowledge
If we can't know something for sure, does that mean that we can't have knowledge? (i.e., certainty)
The status of something as "knowledge" can change (for example, something we "know" might turn out to be a "false belief"). Does that mean that knowledge can be incorrect? Or were we mistaken that we had knowledge?
We could say that knowledge HAS TO BE coherent with other knowledge claims, and that when it fails to be, it becomes a belief)
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Is knowledge contestable, or does it need to be agreed upon?
If we think that knowledge has to be objectively true (or maybe just true), then doesn't that threaten historical knowledge? Or knowledge from the arts?
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Knowledge is similar to a map (this might help us with the problem of certainty -- as long as it "works")
Does knowledge need to be true, and if so, what definition of truth?
How is knowledge affected by the context of knower (the historical context, the perspective, etc.)?
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Supported by facts, and backed up by an investigation (or some other process, depending on the area)
Belief
Do beliefs give us a certain comfort that knowledge cannot? Does that give us an incentive to keep claims at the level of belief?
Collective belief might be considered as knowledge, even if it lacks some other quality we usually associate with knowledge
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Belief is also often contained within communities of believers (in the case of religion, for example)
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Belief: personally generated views, which don't need to fit into a broader system of claims
Opinion
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Is it possible for us to make our own opinions, or do they come to us already formed by others? What is our "own" opinion?
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An opinion is like a belief that you are expected to defend, whereas everyone is entitled to their own beliefs
We could claim that opinions are the most personal of the three, that beliefs are more shareable and more broadly shared, and that knowledge is most broadly shared
Maybe truth has something to do with this: knowledge is more broadly shareable because it is the most likely of these categories to be true
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