On Belief, Knowledge, and Justification

[smoothmoniker]

Originally Posted by Schrodinger's Cat

Just to make sure we are on the same page - as I understand it, you consider "justified" = "true"? You seem to consider that some statements can be more "justified" than others, depending upon the accumulation of evidence either way?

No, I'm not trying to say anything like justified = truth. I'm trying to make a distinction between justification for belief and the fact of the matter, and to say that we can understand them as different evaluative schemes.

This might seem petty, but the reason why I want to make this distinction is so that we can put together a list of things that count toward justification for a belief, about either physical or metaphysical things.

In your philosophy, is there anything which we may accept as "givens" or "material reality" versus a "belief" which may or may not be true?

For example, would you consider the equation

force = mass x acceleration

a "belief" or a "true" statement useful for describing the behavior of objects under the laws of classical physics?

I'm actually going to go a different direction with this than skepticism vs. realism. My answer is going to be skepticism -or- realism. I think the way this fleshes out is this - whether you are a radical skeptic, and say that nothing is verifiable, or you are a realist, and say that our perceptions are trustworthy and that some things can be verifiable, that you have to carry that same perspective through both the physical and the metaphysical.

I'm not trying to dodge the question, and I will take it up later, but for now, I'm more interested in knowing if you thing anything is verifiable, and if so, then what counts toward verification? If nothing is verifiable, then what counts toward justification? In a personal sense, what evidences cause you to say "I know this" or "I believe this to be true"?