What's the difference between having no hammer and having a broken hammer? — TheMadFool

You can repair the hammer.

I thank everyone for the comments in the thread and I apologise that I haven't been able to engage in it in the last few days due to personal circumstances. I have only replied to the one on 'personal meanings' so far because it caught my attention, and I will write some more replies as soon as I am able to, but please continue debating the nature of belief...

Jack

You can repair the hammer. — Tom Storm

You can try. I don't think it's possible. At least not in the foreseeable future.

The problem with most positions in this thread is with people's obsession with "absolute" concepts. — Nickolasgaspar

Only a Sith deals in absolutes — Obi-Wan Kenobi

Perfectionism (psychology)

What's the difference between having no hammer and having a broken hammer?
Same as the difference between having no car and having a car with an empty fuel tank ... having no body and having a dead body ... etc.
How does one know whether a proposition is factually true?
Equivocating "know" again. Just look: It's raining iff it's raining. Also, sound inferential arguments.
Justification?
Foundherentism (S. Haack) works for me. — 180 Proof

:up: I have a lot of catching up to do.

Knowledge is just one reason why people accept a claim. — Nickolasgaspar

What claim and acceptance are you talking about here? Who is claiming what, and who is accepting which? It sounds like somebody is doing some deal to me. What is this got to do with knowledge?
Unless it is some Scientific knowledge or in the case of legal matters discussed in the courts, do you need to claim and accept knowledge? One just know something is true in many cases, and it can be unconscious state of mind that one knows that P, and one knows how to play guitar without having to claim or ask someone to accept.

IOW, knowledge can be subjective mental state or objects in most cases. I am sure that you heard about "knowing that" and "knowing how".

Btw there is one standard for identifying a claim as knowledge but many ways to produce knowledge claims — Nickolasgaspar

Can you elaborate on this with more detail and some examples? Thanks.

Well, knowledge is nothing more than claims or statements that explain facts of reality and carry instrumental value.
From what I understand ,correct me if I am wrong, like most people in here, you view Knowledge as an absolute idealistic "goal" of our intellectual endeavors.
That is one aspect of the concept but its not what the one that we are limited in real life.
In real life we are forced to come up with knowledge claims based on current available observations and facts.

So as with any claim, we either accept it or reject it (believe in it)based on the standards we hold valuable.
If our standards of valuation are Objective independent verification(good evidence) then we accept/believe a knowledge claim. If not (bad evidence or lack of it) then we accept/believe a faith claim.

-"Can you elaborate on this with more detail and some examples? Thanks.
-Sure. Knowledge claim is that which is supported by Objective evidence and can be used either as information or produce further knowledge or testable predictions or technical applications.
Different methods of producing knowledge are the scientific, any empirical (every day knowledge, production of technology like car industry, experience) and reasoning (i.e. deductive or inductive reasoning).

No, I never said knowledge has to be absolute. I don't think anyone here said that. Knowledge is just verified belief, and belief is just unverified knowledge. The difference can be fuzzy and transitory between the two in many cases.

I am not sure if claim and acceptance of knowledge is relevant here. People must accept court decisions even if they don't agree with, sometime judges accept the claims based on false alibis by mistakes, and often panel of judges in new scientific fair are forced to accept certain scientific claims even if it lacks certainty and truths, because they are desperately in need of funding, or because the claimer is his boss or teacher in the universities or institutions, or they want their country's fame in the field etc. If one trusts the claims and acceptance in truths and knowledge on public basis, I feel that it is too naive, loose and simple a view. Maybe it will do for sociology or group psychology topics, but not for epistemological one.

We should more focus on the personal subjective case of forming knowledge and belief here.

-"Knowledge is just verified belief, and belief is just unverified knowledge. "
-So knowledge, as you just stated, is used as a qualifier(evaluation term) for a belief that is verified(justified).(a belief that is verified is called Knowledge)
Now you will need a second qualifier for a belief that is unverified...that is faith. The term "belief" IS the umbrella term and the qualifier changes with its status of verification.
Do we agree on that?

-"I am not sure if claim and acceptance of knowledge is relevant here."
-I don't know how you can do without those.

-" People must accept court decisions even if they don't agree with,"
-A belief is by definition something that we agree and accept without force.

-"sometime judges accept the claims based on false alibis by mistakes...."
-The judiciary system demands from Judges and jury to make a decision based on objective facts not on what they. The act of forceful accept due to law or peer pressure doesn't change the fact that people CAN willingly accept claims and statements without being forced.
I don't know how this objection changes anything.

-". If one trusts the claims and acceptance in truths and knowledge on public basis, I feel that it is too naive, loose and simple a view."
-Again "believe in" describes the act of willingly accepting a claim as reasonable or true. I really can not understand why the word describing the act is a taboo for you!
None of the other applications of forceful acceptance of an order or claim changes the act of people believing /accepting a claim as true or reasonable and as their personal position/belief.

I forgot to acknowledge that you never did state that knowledge should be absolute and knowledge claims aren't subject to change.
I only stated that aspect of knowledge since it is a common assumption of people. People tend to mix the aspect of knowledge as an absolute goal to its real use as a tentative evaluation term of claims.

Now you will need a second qualifier for a belief that is unverified...that is faith. The term "belief" IS the umbrella term and the qualifier changes with its status of verification.
Do we agree on that? — Nickolasgaspar

Faith is different in that it is supported by the emotional side of mental state. When one has faith in something, someone or in God, one does not need rational evidence for verifying his faith. Faith is also on the whole system, entity, act or body of something, which is wider scope, such as I have faith in her for her ability or my faith in the system, I can rely on it etc. It is abstract and non conditional.

Belief is supported by at least some sort of inductive evidence, and it is also specific. It has a clear and narrow scope or concrete object, such as I believe that it will rain tomorrow too, because it was raining heavily today. I believe that there is a dog next door, because I hear the dog barking etc.

-A belief is by definition something that we agree and accept without force. — Nickolasgaspar

Sure. You simply believe something or don't. You don't get forced to believe in something. That is why I couldn't understand what you were talking about, when you were talking about claim and accept.

When you have to accept something, you are forced. The analogy from the court system, and having to accept the judgments, making decisions on false alibis which caused false beliefs ... is all about accepting claims, which has nothing to do with beliefs, and also contingent matter which has possibility of falsities from all sorts of different situations and outcomes.

You simply believe or know something or don't. You don't accept some claims from someone's belief or knowledge. It is not a matter of acceptance. Acceptance is either forced or you are doing some favour to someone. Or when someone is offering you something. Knowledge or belief offered? - sorry never heard of that. You yourself know or believe something someone or not.

I have been reading this thread a few days late and one aspect of discussion which I think is interesting is the question of delusions and illusions. In the case of delusions, there is a clear a acknowledgeable falsehood, even though it may be clung to by someone. However, with an illusion it is a matter of perception and different 'images' of 'reality' or 'truth' and this is where it gets a bit more complicated.

That is because any view is only one of a plurality of possibilities, and this is where the issue of subjectivity and objectivity comes in. These are often seen as two distinct modes. However, as beings in time and space human beings are subjects within a larger objective sphere. So, perception and gaining knowledge involves belief and personal perception, but also extending outwards to wider spheres of objective and intersubjective of knowledge.

I think that your concept of faith as the emotional aspect of belief is important because human beings are not guided by reason alone, but by a complex mixture of the two. It may be a problem if people develop 'faith' on the basis of emotional needs entirely, but, probably most people develop 'faith' based on aspects of emotional bias, and it may be that they remain unaware of this, as an aspect of bias which may be almost unconscious.

-"Faith is different in that it is supported by the emotional side of mental state. When one has faith in something, someone or in God, one does not need rational evidence for verifying his faith. Faith is also on the whole system, entity, act or body of something, which is wider scope, such as I have faith in her for her ability or my faith in the system, I can rely on it etc. It is abstract and non conditional."
-Why are you explaining the obvious differences between a faith based belief and a knowledge based belief???????
How do you think that the distinction renders faith not a belief?

-"Sure. You simply believe something or don't. You don't get forced to believe in something. That is why I couldn't understand what you were talking about, when you were talking about claim and accept."
- Why...what is difficult about the term "accept"? Other you accept a claim or not. If you accept it ...its your belief.

-"When you have to accept something, you are forced."
-You are cheating there. I never said that you "HAVE TO" accept. Have you never used the term accept without the qualifier "have to" in front????
I can either accept or reject a statement without being forced by anyone other my own beliefs.

-"The analogy from the court system, and having to accept the judgments, making decisions on false alibis which caused false beliefs ... is all about accepting claims, which has nothing to do with beliefs,"
-Yes your example was irrelevant to the framework of belief since you are using an irrelevant common usage of the word "accept."
Words have more than one common usages.

-"You simply believe or know something or don't."
-So you can point to a claim that you know it is true but you don't believe it?
If you can then your arguments is "yours".

-"You don't accept some claims from someone's belief or knowledge. It is not a matter of acceptance."
-Do you accept my claim that there is a god named Osiris? If you don't accept it then you don't believe in this god, if you do accept my claim as true than you believe in that god.
I don't know why this is so difficult for you.
In Philosophical discussions we constantly ask our interlocutors on whether they accept our presumptions or principles before we proceed to the next premise. Have you ever had a philosophical discussion before?

-" Acceptance is either forced or you are doing some favour to someone."
-of course not! You do understand that you can google the meaning of words ???
I quote the most popular definitions :
accept
/əkˈsɛpt/
1.
consent to receive or undertake (something offered).
"he accepted a pen as a present"

2. believe or come to recognize (a proposition) as valid or correct.

-" Knowledge or belief offered? - sorry never heard of that. You yourself know or believe something someone or not. "
-Now you have!

You are suggesting that it is not possible to know a falsehood and I think that it is so much easier to know falsehoods than 'truth' itself. We can say that the world was NOT created in 7 days and so many ideas can be rejected on the basis of entire lack of credibility. So, I would suggest that perception of what is false is such an important starting point for all else.

I think that your idea of 'forced' belief is interesting, because in some ways ideas can be enforced in childhood and later as a form of subconscious programming. It goes beyond the surfaces of logic and, ideas may be conveyed on a subliminal level, almost hypnotically and it is at this deeper level of consciousness that the core of belief may function.

Well I never expressed such an idea. Of course that doesn't mean that ideas aren't "forced" by our social circles, education and peers.
The idea of learning about the rules principles and criteria of Logic is to form your beliefs based on knowledge and valid reasoning.

I am sorry if you think that I read your reply wrongly and I am certainly in favour of valid reasoning and logic. I believe that individuals are socialised into specific belief systems, and this programming is deepseated. But, certainly, I am in favour of logic and reasoning, as a way of exploring it. Philosophy is a means of providing the tools for going beyond mere acceptance of what childhood socialisation offers, and about going beyond skeleton structures of belief, to the most informed perspectives possible.

I have been thinking about how I was encouraged to use the expression, 'I believe' on some academic courses as an ownership of ideas? I am wondering about the nature of 'belief', and what that means in terms of personal construction of meaning and the wider scope of meaning? Does " belief' make any sense at all beyond the scope of personal meanings, and how can the idea of belief be seen in the wider scope of philosophy, especially in relation to objective and subjective aspects of thinking? — Jack Cummins

I believe starting a thought with "I believe" is inviting an argument and very good manners. It is friendlier than communicating as though we do not doubt ourselves, and sort of like Socrates, who insisted he knew nothing, which is the beginning of wisdom.

We all check if a thought is true or not by checking with our bodies. Instead of saying "I believe" we could also say "that feels right" because we rely on our bodies to know truth, or right from wrong unless we are intentionally using the scientific method to know truth.

Interesting spell check insists I should say "the truth" as though there can be only one truth. Have we totally lost sight that we can have different truths and they can be valid from our point of view? I am starting a thread to question what spell is doing to the way we think.

For instance, you can say you believe in angels or God, but if you literally say, I believe the ocean is blue, something is off because belief doesn't enter into it. You understand the ocean is blue, you see it. It's not an issue of belief.

This might be one of those words that gets you stuck in a fly bottle. — Manuel

I think it's the pressure of science. We know that what we see is model spun up by our brains, and we've attempted to press-gang the word "belief" into describing how we interact with our environment relying on such models. It has made it hard for us even to hear how strange it is to say, "I believe the ocean is blue." To modern, sophisticated ears, that doesn't sound bizarre; it sounds like an obvious truth, even a bit redundant.

Yes. Even our brains are models spun up by our experience, so it is counter-intuitive.

Believing that the ocean is blue can be said in an epistemology discussion, but like you said, it's too trivial. And it shows the impreciseness of the word "belief".

I think "understand" is a slightly better word.

Yes, in other words, cognitive biases – first-person perspectives – which constrain, even impair, conceptions and/or perceptions and by which we involuntarily project confabulated "illusions" (i.e. emotionally-vested beliefs, or make-believe) to fill the gaps in our knowing and, thereby, deny uncertainties in order to reduce – cope with – the anxieties uncertainty engenders. Thus, the function of fallibilistic defeasible reasoning (e.g. methodological naturalism) as a meta-cognitive corrective à la prescriptive lenses for myopia. Such reasoning filters-out, or coarse-grains away, the (alternative) "possibilities" you mention, Jack, which evidences very often show are only "mere possibilities" (i.e. just-so stories) that can never be actualized, even in principle, because sufficient conditions for them cannot be met.

Possibilities, of course, are endless but only those which are actualizable and not "merely possible", are the needles-in-haystacks or critical-paths-through-mazes or signals-in-the-noise ... which constitute knowledge. IME, this concentric ^diagram [impossibilities [mere possibilities [possibilities [probabilities]]]] maps understanding: we (can) know probabilities (histories, sciences), speculatively contemplate possibilities (arts, philosophy) and endlessly confabulate the rest ("personal meanings" aka e.g. illusions, fictions or myths ... re: woo).

edit:

^[D [C [B [A]]]] such that (in Cantorian fashion) A is the subset of B is the subset of C is the subset of D.

One formulation I've come across a few times:

Lily believes X iff Lily lives as if X were true.

Not sure that works but I think it does capture something important about belief. In that it informs our actions and decisions, and that is critical to what it is to believe something.

:up:

I think that your concept of faith as the emotional aspect of belief is important because human beings are not guided by reason alone, but by a complex mixture of the two. It may be a problem if people develop 'faith' on the basis of emotional needs entirely, but, probably most people develop 'faith' based on aspects of emotional bias, and it may be that they remain unaware of this, as an aspect of bias which may be almost unconscious. — Jack Cummins

I wouldn't say that faith is entirely emotion based. No that was not what I meant. Some textbooks define faith as type of belief, especially in context with religious faith. Religious faith is belief in the revealed truths.

Faith definitely has epistemic basis, but also supported by emotional ground. That was what I meant.

I think your point on unconsciousness with faith also is very meaningful idea. Yes, I think it can have unconsciousness origin as well.

-Why are you explaining the obvious differences between a faith based belief and a knowledge based belief???????
How do you think that the distinction renders faith not a belief? — Nickolasgaspar

Faith and belief are closely related. Some textbooks define faith as a type of belief. Read my reply to @Jack Cummins.

-Do you accept my claim that there is a god named Osiris? If you don't accept it then you don't believe in this god, if you do accept my claim as true than you believe in that god.
I don't know why this is so difficult for you.
In Philosophical discussions we constantly ask our interlocutors on whether they accept our presumptions or principles before we proceed to the next premise. Have you ever had a philosophical discussion before? — Nickolasgaspar

I think you must learn how to quote someone's posts properly before anything. It is difficult to read your posts physically, because you are not quoting posts properly.

For accepting your God Osiris, no, why should I accept or consider your claims about it? I don't know who you are, and you are not even quoting posts properly, therefore it is difficult to read what your writings are about in most times. I wouldn't certainly take seriously whatever your claims were about Osiris. I have my own beliefs on my own things, and that is it.

Have you ever had a philosophical discussion before? — Nickolasgaspar

Have you ever written an English sentence in an intelligible and coherent way, so others can understand you?

hmmm....you didn't acknowledge the common usage of the term "accept" I quoted....that is suspicious behavior.

-"Faith and belief are closely related. Some textbooks define faith as a type of belief. Read my reply to... "
-Again My statement was that Faith is a type of Belief (that which is not based on good reason)
Since you replied to my posts why don't you address my position ?

hmmm....you didn't acknowledge the common usage of the term "accept" I quoted....that is suspicious behavior. — Nickolasgaspar

"Accept" is not a relevant concept in this topic, and that is my point.

-Again My statement was that Faith is a type of Belief (that which is not based on good reason)
Since you replied to my posts why don't you address my position ? — Nickolasgaspar

Please read my earlier posts. I said that there are different types of beliefs and knowledge, and faith too.

-""Accept" is not a relevant concept in this topic, and that is my point."
-The definitions I quoted shows that your point is wrong.

-"Please read my earlier posts. I said that there are different types of beliefs and knowledge, and faith too."
-And how are they different. My position is that a belief can either be based on knowledge or faith(rational and irrational).
What other type of beliefs are there?

I would only accept claims of others, if I was looking for some confirmation on something. I would also consider accepting the claims only after considerable debates and discussions, and if the claim based on the conclusion of the debates or discussions were reasonable to accept.

So, it is a very special case, when claims and acceptances are relevant to beliefs, faiths or knowledge.

Differences between faiths and beliefs, it is mainly a semantic difference. When you say your faith to a religion, that means that you are following the religion. It has nothing to do with belief. You are a faithful religious man. Your faith to your religion, faith here means simply you are a follower of the religion. It doesn't tell us if you believe in the resurrection of Jesus, it doesn't tell us if you believed in the creation of the world in 7 days. It doesn't say anything in details of what you believe or not.

But when you say, you have faith in God's benevolence to humans. The faith here is similar to belief. You believe in God that he is benevolent to humans.
If you say, I have faith in the UN for their good work. You believe that the UN still is doing a good job for world peace.

So, you see, faith in some contexts has nothing to do with belief, but in some other contexts it is very similar to belief. They are not simply all the same thing, or totally different things.