Belief: Encyclopedia II - Belief - Belief knowledge and epistemology

Belief - Belief knowledge and epistemology

Knowledge is often defined as justified true belief, in that the belief must be considered to correspond to reality and must be derived from valid evidence and arguments. However, this definition has been challenged by the Gettier problem which suggests that justified true belief does not provide a complete picture of knowledge.

Belief can be understood as a state of mind in the process of increasing understanding that sometimes called deduction. As people develop structures of understandings from their observed or learned facts (generally accepted truths), they create a theory that is not unlike a bridge, sitting on those pillars of facts. This process of building these structures is sometimes called induction. That is they create a general understanding of the specific facts. As they use those theories in their daily activities, research or experimentation, they use this state of mind that says: I believe the underlying structure is what I understand to be true, so based on this theory (faith), I will see what is to come of it. This thinking of applying the faith is sometimes called deduction. That is they develop a new specific information from their general understanding. This application of the general principle to a specific situation is what can be called faith in ANY circumstances and belief is our thinking that it is applicable in this given situation. The religious belief does not differ in its essence from this thinking. The difference lies in the general approach to the specifics: it could be said that science generally builds up from facts using induction, while religion generally builds down from accepted general principles using deduction. The common area of these two pyramids is a diamond that accepted from both directions. The understanding (faith) and the applicability of that understanding (belief) are such pairs

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Belief knowledge and epistemology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki