How does knowledge differ from belief? How do we know if what we think to be true is mere belief or knowledge?

Question

In other words, we think a lot of things to be true... some of them we claim to be our beliefs and some other things we claim to be our knowledge.... how do we make out the difference between what we know and what we believe?

Answer 1

This is just a gateway question to a major sticking point, that consciousness and experience are matters of subjective perception. Knowledge and belief are separated by proof, but evidence is only as reliable as the senses we use to perceive it and the mind that gives it relevance.

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From a philosophical standpoint! Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we shouldn't base our choices on the best available evidence. I'm just saying that at the end of the day, even our power to fact-check objective evidence is subject to, well, subjectivity.

Answer 2

Belief is something you think is true, yet you have no basis for this from your experiences. You can be holding a belief and not even know that you have no basis for it, this is because beliefs are so often 'inherited' from influences around you when you grow up, such as from society, your family and friends, etc.

It's not wrong to have a belief, yet if one doesn't question their beliefs then the way that one sees the world is filtered through the belief system, all perception of reality is altered to fit the belief. If this wasn't the case, the belief would break down. So I think a good approach for beliefs is rather than to say this is true, is to say this is my current theory. Then one stays open and flexible for expansion in one's understanding.

True knowledge comes directly from experience and isn't something you can parrot as intellectual material.

If you have a direct experience and you learn something essential from it, typically about yourself and your true nature, then you can know this is your true knowledge, all the rest of what you think you know are beliefs - you haven't verified them. Understand I'm not saying that one needs to prove that the world is round, yet even at the scientific level much knowledge is assumed to be true. The more it's repeated the more true people believe it to be and thus also the harder it is for anyone with a different understanding to tell others that something else might be true, such as how Galileo was received when he told people the earth was not flat. People still behave the same way today, when anything new is introduced that doesn't confirm what they thought they knew, then they call the messenger of such information: crazy.

Mostly what we think is true is false, this is because we have a bias towards believing our unique way of percieving the world and happenings. Perception is ephemeral, it happens as thoughts, thoughts aren't reality. Reality has many different interpretations. So now you might ask which is the right interpretation? The answer: there is none.

Betsy

Answer 3

This is indeed a tough question! Superb question too!

Knowledge could easily be differentiated from belief since the former is an undertanding acquired through experience and there is a clear and certain apprehension of truth. Knowledge is all the mind knows from whatever source derived, obtained or on whatever process.; the aggregate facts, truths or principal acquired or retained by the mind, including alike the intuitions native to the mind and all that had been learned respecting phenomena, causes , laws, principles and literature.

Intuition is a primary knowledge antecedent to all teaching or reasoning. Experience is a knowledge too that has entered directly into one's own life. Like a child's experience that fire will burn.

Belief on the otherhand, is a probable knowledge. It needs an acceptance from a person to be true or real. It requires a level of confidence and reliance as to its integrity or veracity. It is a faith without evidence. Unlike knowledge it is a wisdom, a consciousness and a learning based on truth.

Belief, as an intellectual process, is the acceptance of something as true on other grounds than personal observation and experience we so-called knowledge.

Hope this differentiation makes a lot of sense. Thanks for asking. Hmmmm! this was a tough one. Great question!

Have a great day!

Answer 4

I begin with the observation that the common expression, "I believe X to be true" is redundant. To believe something is necessarily to believe its truth, which is why no one says of anything, "I believe X even though it's false."

"I believe X" and "I know X," are from the subjective point of view sentences of identical significance.

Knowledge differs from belief only from an outside perspective. I can say of you, "You believe X even though it's false." I might by at the top of the hill, and see a huge army approaching. I might then call down to you (you're on the bottom of the hill, and on the opposite side from the approaching army), "You believe our nation is at peace, even though its false."

That, then, is the difference between knowledge and belief. In any specific instance, some people just happen to be better positioned than others.

Answer 5

By crude standards, we could not distinguish beliefs from knowledge because these 2 seemed to be woven in the same cloth, so to speak, until science sifted knowledge from beliefs. Today, they are by and large already distinguishable by the scientific method that proved one to be true and the other to be false. What is left unproved that could not be measured by even advanced laboratory experimentation are superstitious beliefs, or urban legends, although, even as we speak, some studies have revealed the worthiness of these beliefs as truth until proved otherwise conclusively.

Answer 6

This question may be the most significant question EVER asked. It goes to the heart of all of humanity's suffering.

In fact, the importance of holding 'beliefs' is conditioned and socialized into us. BUT, it is IMPOSSIBLE to know anything for certain while you harbor any belief at all. Beliefs are our conditioned ego identity and these subconscious beliefs about self and the world, control our experience of reality - our perceptions, thoughts, feelings and reactions.

This is the reason why it is so critical to become the OBSERVER of the programmed thought system and understand the origins of fear/attachments. Otherwise we are trapped in a holographic experience of our illusions; a reality that simply replicates our original defensive encounters.

In this state we experience a delusional reality unaware that it is mirroring the contents of consciousness. Enlightenment is about waking up from this dream.

Answer 7

"First Knowledge" is what axioms represent. They are the "universals of universals" and are absolutely true by virtue of the terminology. But new data can change the logic to new terminologies, which themselves refute the old axiom.
"Believing" an axiom is knowledge because to believe otherwise is a contradiction of the terminology. All particulars derived from axioms are debatable, but if they make epistemological sense to you, then it must be considered "your" knowledge, even when it conflicts with everyone else's. Copernicus and Galileo come to mind in this situation.
Opinions are educated guesses based on what knowledge you do believe, but for which you have no clear and present epistemological proof.

Answer 8

What is Knowledge, It is accumulated memory and belief also the same based on the experiences or stories from ancestors.

So basically Knowledge is a Storage of Beliefs which is again Knowledge of experiences

Answer 9

Belief is what we choose to tell OURSELVES is true about Reality until we experience what IS true regardless what we believe.

Experiencing what IS true about Reality is knowledge.

We can choose to believe that 2+2=5 for eternity until we have acquired FOR OURSELVES the necessary knowledge of the immutable principle that correctly sums the answer.

Is the Earth still flat?

Belief is what you use to process the idea that Erickson, Columbus, or Magellan discovered otherwise.

Knowledge is what you gain experiencing for YOURSELF what they found to be true about the spherical reality of the Earth.

Belief is what you utilize to process the answers you've received to your question.

Knowledge is what you find out for yourself is true (or not) about these answers.

Orin

Answer 10

Knowledge is something you gain over time from study or training or common sense whereas belief is something you are brought up to believe by you family and churches around you.

There is a big difference as a belief is something we feel we have to believe and can not go against whereas knowledge is something you must earn. Not every is knowledgable but every one has beleifs even athiests who believe in nothing.

Good point and great question


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