Knowledge
Introduction
The primary purpose of this website is to gain a better understanding of your beliefs. But where did those beliefs come from in the first place? Whether the topic is a new religious claim, a dating decision, or an opinion on government policy, you are constantly taking in information and filtering through it to make sense of the world. New experiences and ideas are compared and contrasted with your current beliefs and previous experiences to help you decide what is true.
To understand our beliefs, we have to understand the process we use to make sense of the world in the first place. At the center of our discussion about worldviews is really a conversation about how we process facts and turn them into knowledge. What does it mean to actually know something? Most people sense that there’s a difference between believing something and knowing something, yet it can be difficult to articulate or put our finger on. If we gain a better understanding of what knowledge is, and how it works, then we'll be better equipped to evaluate and refine what we believe.
What is knowledge?
The study of knowledge is called epistemology, and it seeks to understand what knowledge is and how we acquire it. Surprisingly, philosophers do not have a universally agreed upon definition of knowledge. They do agree that knowledge is comprised of at least three key components: a belief, a justification for that belief, and truth.
Belief - Beliefs require personal conviction in the claim that is being made. This means knowledge doesn't just float around abstractly in the world, but is possessed by an individual.
Justification - There should be good and valid reasons for holding the belief. Unsurprisingly, what makes your belief "reasonable" and "valid" are frequently debated.
Truth - The final component requires the belief to be true. If the belief isn't grounded in truth, then it isn't knowledge!
How can we know anything?
In Worldview Introduction, we mentioned that the only thing we can be truly certain of is our own existence. Our certainty should be considered knowledge because it easily meets the criteria provided above. It is logically incoherent if we believe that we do NOT exist, because the very act of believing something provides evidence (justification) that we DO exist.
After proving our own existence, we begin making unprovable assumptions about ourselves and about the world. We assume that a world external to ourselves exists. Although we cannot prove that reality exists, we believe that it does based on our experiences and senses: we can see, hear, taste, smell, and touch things. We reason that our senses are not merely elaborate illusions but the product of engaging with the world around us. They might lead us astray occasionally, but our senses provide a reasonable basis for learning about the world around us. We assume that memory can be trusted, that logic holds steady, and that other people exist. None of these things can be absolutely proven from scratch, but we rely on them every day without thinking twice.
Perfect certainty is impossible
Since our worldviews heavily rely on assumptions about the world, we can never reach perfect certainty about anything! This doesn't make our knowledge or beliefs useless, it just acknowledges that we have limitations in our ability to discern and validate the truth. All beliefs, religious or otherwise, require faith since we cannot have perfect confidence in anything. The only way to achieve perfect or absolute certainty of something is to make no assumptions, which we are incapable of doing. We would also need to be able to prove that this belief holds true under every scenario, and and cannot be invalidated or contradicted by any other aspect of reality. Absolute confidence would require omniscience, the ability to know everything without error.
A reasonable basis
Although we cannot have perfect, complete knowledge about anything, that doesn't mean our knowledge is useless or that all beliefs are equal. Some ideas are better supported than others, usually due to stronger evidence, more reliable sources, or more coherent reasoning. Epistemology helps us sort through these layers. It equips us to recognize the difference between a belief that is well-founded and one that simply feels right but lacks support. By learning how knowledge works, we give ourselves a better chance of building a worldview that can hold up under scrutiny and pressure.
If we want to take our worldview seriously, we have to ask: Are our assumptions justified? What separates a reasonable starting point from a reckless one? These questions may sound abstract, but they show up in real-life situations all the time. When someone challenges your beliefs, whether religious, scientific, moral, or otherwise, it's rarely just a clash of opinions. It's often a deeper disagreement about how we come to know things in the first place.