On Belief, Knowledge, and Justification

[smoothmoniker]

Ok, here’s my project in this thread. I want to explore the concepts of knowledge, belief, and justification, and in particular how these concepts operate in relationship to both physical and metaphysical concepts. I’m going to do this in multiple posts, in some sort of coherent logical argument, and in order to accomplish this, I’m going to ask for a specific type of thread courtesy that seems in keeping with the spirit of the Cellar: Please use this thread to respond to the actual arguments that I’m presenting, and not as a catch-all thread to drop in your own random theories about these concepts. If you think that these concepts are related in a different manner than how I’m relating them, either make a cogent argument against one of my points that illustrates where my argument is weak or defeatable, or start a new thread that presents your understanding of them from scratch.

I really do want interaction in this thread, and I would love nothing better than for someone to present a really strong argument against my thesis, but please make it *against* my thesis, and not merely presented alongside. To make that task easier, I’m going to number the paragraphs in my argument, so that you can easily respond with things like "You're such a dumbass, as illustrated in (3.4)".

A’ight, some vocabulary up front, just so that we’re starting on the same page.

(1.1) Belief = a statement about something in reality, which the person holds as true to reality, but about which the actual fact of the matter is unverified (or unverifiable). For example, “I believe that Undertoad is a person living in the Philadelphia area, and I act as if that is true in reality, but I have not yet travelled to Philly and seen his house.”

(1.2) Justification = the accumulated evidence that counts toward a belief being true to reality. The justification for my belief about Undertoad is as follows: he has several times indicated that he is a person living in the Philadelphia are, he has special information about locations and events in Philadelphia that would be consistent with him living near there, and there seem to be several people here in the Cellar who indicate that they know him to be from the Philadelphia area. All of these things count toward my belief about Undertoad being justified.

(1.3) Knowledge = a justified, true belief. That is to say, a belief which I hold, and have justification for holding, which is also true to reality. If Undertoad does in fact live in the Philadelphia area, and I have sufficient justification for holding that belief, then I can say that I “know” that Undertoad lives in Philadelphia.

(1.4) Physical – anything which exists in the natural world, which can be investigate by empirical senses. An apple, a rock, the law of gravity are all things that fall under my definition of physical things.

(1.5) Metaphysical – anything which exists outside of the causal chain of the natural, physical world, but which has interaction with it. God, the soul, supernatural miracles, universal moral law, things like astrology, psychics, and reincarnation would fall under the definition of the metaphysical. The human mind, if you consider it to be something apart from just the chemical interactions of the brain, is a metaphysical concept.

This interaction between justification and knowledge is going to be where the crux of this conversation occurs.