Week 1: Truth, Knowledge & Belief
Lee Brentnell
To what extent do you agree with this diagram? Use your learner profile, AOK, WOK, concepts of knowledge and truth to respond.
As a helping guide, attached to this first post is a short review of Plato's concept of truth and the 3 tests for truth.
Bryce
Moira Muir
telseymclandress
Victoria Sajtovich
I mostly agree with the diagram. My main disagreement comes from the placement of the "Knowledge" sphere. I think that the Knowledge sphere should be extended into the "Beliefs" circle, as one can believe something that may not necessarily be true (i.e. the Aztecs believed that the universe would end if they did not provide sacrifices for the Gods – the universe has not ended thus far and our society does not engage in human sacrifice). Before I go any further, I will define the terms Truth, Belief, and Knowledge as I understand them. Hopefully, these definitions can be used to understand my perspective, as well as any potential flaws in my logic.
The Truth: The accurate, universally applicable description that accounts for everything; the objective description of reality. (In this context, "universally applicable" also accounts for universes outside our own [if they exist] and any metaphysical realms.)
A Truth: An aspect of this universal description, but is still 100% true on its own (a proposition that does not account for the whole picture, but accurately describes a part).
Belief: An entirely subjective conviction of the truth; an idea that is accepted by an individual to be true.
Knowledge: A collection of beliefs about reality that is generally accepted as true by members of society based on our "Ways of Knowing" and checks done to verify that belief as "true". Knowledge relies on actualization: an understanding of a particular belief and why it is logical to believe that it is true.
Therefore, I agree with the orientation of the Truths and Beliefs circle. The Knowledge circle should be extended into the Beliefs circle (for reasons previously explained), while maintaining the overlap of Truth & Belief. The reason this space must be maintained is to account for individual innovation and intuition. The only way that our society’s knowledge (and ultimate understanding of Truth) can progress is if individuals think outside the box and propose that something is true without being a part of the knowledge base. Individual belief about the true fosters scientific analysis and the evolution of knowledge. Also, this area of Truths & Beliefs can also be seen as intuition – someone having a hunch that something is true without fully understanding why they believe that particular thing is true. Finally, the universal set should include all propositions, not just the outside of the diagram, as propositions can be divided into the categories of Truths, Beliefs, Knowledge, and Fallacies (as well as categories which are a combination of these titles).
Just a side thought that I had: like the wave-particle duality, do we alter the Truth by analyzing it? It seems like our perspectives (the basis of our beliefs – “observation” in this analogy) largely limit the extent that we can understand the Truth. So, for my analogy: on one hand, the Truth behaves like a wave, and is, unexamined, a set of objective principles that transcend time and space, fluidly working together to compose and govern the universe (or multiverse). And conversely, the Truth behaves like a particle, a specific thing that humanity believes it can “pin down” and determine to explain the universe. Possibly, the Truth encompasses both possibilities at the same time: it is a fluid, objective reality that exists outside our observations, as well as the specific, subjective reality that we live in and observe in effort to explain the universe. (Again, just a thought I had. I am open to rebuttals and other ideas!)
Nicole Martinek
I think something that needs to be questioned when looking at this, is the extent to which one believes ['I believe in this' versus 'I believe, as in I think, this'] and whether or not this applies to the perspective of an individual or of the collective. So is a truth universal or is it based on the perspective of the individual viewer? Knowledge is normally defined as awareness or acquaintance with a truth or fact, however one's beliefs are often perceived as the truth and also fall into the category of truths. One's belief, for example their belief in a god or in science, is not going to become altered based on their position in the world [that's not to say it can't be changed or influenced in time], it's a truth based on belief. If someone would make the proposition that "evolution is false", I would personally disagree with them and categorize that as belief, but they would more likely categorize it as truth/belief/knowledge because it's a truth based on belief which they are (more likely) knowledgeable about. Obviously my version of this Venn-diagram is going to look different than others and is impacted by my opinion and prejudices.
Taking this from a personal perspective (so you may disagree with my reasoning) I disagree with the Venn-diagram due to the placement of the knowledge circle. I think it should instead look more like a Venn-diagram with three sets, so the knowledge circle would be placed like the beliefs and truths circles and there would be areas of overlap in between them; I don't think that knowledge should be limited by only the truth or by belief, or both as shown above. This makes more sense to me because you can have knowledge of a proposition whilst still not knowing if it is true or believe in it, basically being neutral on the subject all together. I can believe the laws of science to be true but not have the knowledge to support my position so it really falls into the belief/truths category, however if it is later disproved knowing it's false doesn't mean I won't still believe in it -putting it [the new truth] in more of a truth/knowledge category. Society may prove something to be false but that won't impact my belief in it, someone can tell me that something, for example a fiction book, isn't real but if I have extensive knowledge on the subject objectively, I'll know it's not real, but that doesn't mean I don't believe in it or some part of it -this places it in a category of knowledge/belief. Another thing is that I may have knowledge on something that is completely false, either by my perspective or society's, and therefore not believe in it, placing it in the knowledge category on it's own and this is where the actual wording of the proposition comes into play.
P.S. No idea if you understand what I'm getting at so my apologies for any resulting confusion, I kinda ranted on a bit.
Molly Sun
I think that this Venn diagram is valid, but perhaps too simplistic. I believe that this diagram shows the very basic form of knowledge, and could definitely be refined to be more accurate. The three circles are not enough to cover everything. There is more to knowledge than just truth and belief, while at the same time, knowledge could be just belief (metaphysical). Truth is subjective, and according to this graph, the classification of something as truth or non-truth would determine whether or not it is knowledge. If it is not true, it cannot be knowledge. Also, truth and belief are correlating ideas, the legitimacy of an idea would influence the subject’s belief to it. As Terence said, “You believe that easily which you hope for earnestly”, thus one’s belief would also impact the subjective truth. As an argument against it, do rumors count as knowledge? If many sources told me something in which I have no opinion of nor any foreknowledge of, I may simply believe it. Is it truth? Is it still knowledge?
Kiara Bliss
I don’t agree with this diagram. Truth and belief make up knowledge, but knowledge also makes up truth and belief. Knowledge only exists in combination with truth and belief. So for something to be true, according to Plato, it must be eternally true, true to more people than just yourself, and true no matter what people think to be true. In a way, truth is the same thing as evidence because it is the only solid way to demonstrate the truth behind the logic, without evidence, it isn't true so truth is evidence. This shows that there can’t be truth without belief to support the logic and most people won’t believe anything to be true unless there is supporting evidence. Plato states that for a “true belief’ the belief must be supported by logic, empirical evidence, memory, and authority. All of those qualities require evidence or truth, for example; logic needs previous truth to make the educated assumption, empirical evidence is self-explanatory, memory is evidence of something that was experienced in the past, and authority is when someone has taken evidence to its maximum potential if they’re an expert. All different types of evidence can be used as a source of knowledge. The types of knowledge are; empirical, rational, pragmatism, mystical, revealed, and authority. Truth (evidence) and belief are needed to categorize something as knowledge because you can’t have one without the other. And knowledge is needed to believe that something is true or that the truth is believable because without knowledge people wouldn't be able to differentiate what could possibly be true or what is believable. The diagram needs to be a three-way Venn Diagram to show the equality and dependence of each of the aspects and the thought that the truth is in fact evidence.
Caileigh Reid
Mattew Olsen
jyler
Kajal Patel
By way of example, consider the moons of Jupiter. I can testify that Jupiter had moons. The vast preponderance of the evidence suggests that the major moons have been there for millions of years. All the available evidence indicates that in 1610, at the time Galileo first said Jupiter had moons, it did in fact have moons. In this sense, we can define a notion of truth. This is meant to be an objective (not subjective) notion of truth. We must evaluate separately the truth of each proposition, such as the narrow question of whether Jupiter has moons.
Now let us consider how knowledge differs from truth:
Throughout history up until 1610, nobody knew Jupiter had moons. There was a complete lack of knowledge.
There was at least a brief period when Galileo was the only person who knew Jupiter had moons.
Eventually larger numbers of people knew Jupiter had moons.
This example shows that knowledge can change with time, and can be very unevenly distributed. By way of contrast, note that the truth didn’t change in 1610; only the knowledge changed; thus proving my point that truths shape our knowledge. I would also like to add that truths are more useful when somebody knows them, so it is important to create and disseminate knowledge.
The relationship between belief and knowledge is that a belief is knowledge if the belief is true, and if the believer has a justification (reasonable and necessarily plausible assertions /evidence / guidance) for believing it is true. In that time period, Galileo had trouble persuading society to believe that Jupiter had moons, however Galileo justified his proposition by using different models, which were later proved to be true.
Last but not least, I believe that propositions are meant to orientated outside the universal set because they challenge our conventional thinking; I picture them as a way of “thinking outside the box”(or outside the circle in this case.” They lead to new ideas, inventions and discoveries, and are associated with an element of risk-taking; just as in our IB learner's profile.
QUESTIONS/ COMMENTS IN REGARDS TO THE DIAGRAM:
(Sorry if my Galileo example didn`t work… I thought the belief part didn`t! I was curious about this along I was looking at this diagram- Isn’t knowledge essentially a justified true belief? Later on, I was also digressing a bit from my chosen perspective on this diagram and I had another thought which sort of turned into a question… Logically, all knowledge is thus constrained by the conditions presently known no postulation can be made that these conditions will not change, therefore, isn’t all knowledge merely belief? )
Rogan Hall
Jacob Kitchen (Google Drive)
I agree with the diagram because all ideas in the universe do fall within some sort of boundaries and that all propositions may have some truth and/or believability. Our current understanding of the world today says that, facts must have some truths which are based off of a judgement of some kind. This also means that for people to believe in that judgement they need to learn and understand it before they believe in that fact, otherwise they have no desire to retain the fact and call the fact important. In turn, that means for humans to believe that something is knowledge, the fact must be proven in some way, whether it be by a rationalistic idea or a metaphysical idea(etc.), neither at this point in time can be proven wrong. As time passes and our ideas change, perhaps those ideas which were once believable and thought to be true, are know just old propositions which have been phased out for newer and more believable truths which are now called knowledge. The idea of what is knowledge will always be changing and with human judgement and thought going into what is knowledge, there is always that unknown of mistakes and the future, meaning that the venn diagram is true for the present, but false for the past and the future because, as said early, humans need to believe the truth for it to be called knowledge.
