Well, you kind of backed off on your position I think.

When you dither, I cannot tell what you mean to say or write or believe.

although I also think that much of what is generally considered to be knowledge might be more accurately classed as belief. — Janus

So, perhaps we are more kindred spirits waiting to fight and then we end up drinking a beer together talking about ex girlfriends.

OK, so

All facts are a subset of all beliefs.
Knowledge is not knowing and the word 'to know' is stupid therefore. It implies a failure in understanding.

"Doubt may be an unpleasant condition, but certainty is absurd" - Voltaire was right.

Perfection is knowing. Is ANYONE perfect? (Yes I caps YELL in text to show emphasis. It's more natural to me and appealing to my anger nature than is doing ctrl-I for Italics emphasis. )

Most people describe me as offensive, not defensive. They are neither one correct. But everyone is free to use their set of beliefs.

We all operate in life only from a well of beliefs.

What distinguishes a 'fact' from a belief is that THAT PERSON ONLY (<--- yup) has decided that enough evidence exists to make that fact iota something that is fairly far along the match curve towards infinity, e.g. perfection. For them its a fact.

The fact that many people share the same facts has not so much bearing on the factuality of any fact. As a matter of fact, 'facts' are always wrong in some way. That is TRUE and more factual than most facts, because as a part of that fact we ALREADY INCLUDE the flexibility that fact is only belief.

That leads to an interesting quandary whereby you can claim that most facts are only beliefs, but THAT fact is made more factual, if you follow, which might lead one to say that such a fact was incontrovertible.

The latter type of 'fact' is BETTER in some way than other 'facts' are.

So that is the basis of this argument and in brief, obviously.

The latter type of 'fact' is BETTER in some way than other 'facts' are. — Chet Hawkins

An important but vague claim.

An important but vague claim. — Leontiskos

Well you walked into this one:
Someone who 'knows' (ha ha), observes, claims, that this is vague SHOULD be able to say how so.

- In the sense that it provides no information about how or why some facts are better than others.

In the sense that it provides no information about how or why some facts are better than others. — Leontiskos

Ah but of course it does. You have to do some of the work!

And the REAL bite here is I DID already do that work.

The flexibility of belief being included in the concept definition of fact SOFTENS the fact to make it incontrovertible. Were facts 'knowing', they would partake of the nature of perfection. But they are not.
So if we properly state that facts are only a subset of beliefs we are on safer ground. Doubt is properly maintained.

- An explication of the relation between facts and beliefs in itself does nothing to distinguish better facts from worse facts, so I don't see how you "already did that work."

(And I assume you meant "controvertible" rather than "incontrovertible")

That is TRUE and more factual than most facts, because as a part of that fact we ALREADY INCLUDE the flexibility that fact is only belief. — Chet Hawkins

That is the single statement (among others) most able to show that I already did that work.

(And I assume you mean "controvertible" rather than "incontrovertible") — Leontiskos

No I meant what I said. Don't put words in my mouth. My feets is already there.

What makes the softer claim incontrovertible is that it effectively says very little upon which we can certainly depend. It is similar to saying, 'The only thing we can know is that we don't know anything!' THAT we can know which is ... not really so comforting, but, it is in a way.

Juxtaposition IS NOT contradiction. Muddle that one through.

- So are you saying that a fact which claims to be nothing more than a belief is better than a fact which claims to be something more than a belief?

(I'm going to turn this over to @Janus now...)

So are you saying that a fact which claims to be nothing more than a belief is better than a fact that claims to be something more than a belief? — Leontiskos

No, not quite.
There are three levels in there.
Knowing
Fact
Belief

At least the 'fact' part is SUPPOSED to have due diligence. But so often it does not, in terms of validation. Further, knowing is elusive, distant, impossible most likely. So fact is closer to 'just' belief than it is to 'knowing'. We just don't even really know how hard knowing is.

And if I had had the time, I would have bubbled belief around the word fact to show its inclusion in the belief set (properly).

You only know stuff that's true.

You can believe whatever you like, true or not.

Ergo, knowledge is at the least restricted to those beliefs which are true.

Belief is assent (true if warranted, opinion if unwarranted, delusion if its negation is warranted).

Knowledge consists of truths or not-yet-falsified claims the statuses of which are independent of dis/belief.

It would better be put “there is only belief.” Or “there is no knowledge.”

You can’t know what a belief is or what the difference between beliefs and knowledge are if knowledge is only belief.

You can’t say knowledge is only belief unless the two words are synonymous. And in that case nothing has been added to the notion of belief or of knowledge.

In order to wonder if knowledge is or is not belief, mustn’t you look at two different things and see where they are the same?

So what is the difference between knowledge and belief? We still have this question. You’d have to define that difference first before you might relate them as in “knowledge is only belief.”

Knowledge is not knowing and the word 'to know' is stupid therefore. It implies a failure in understanding. — Chet Hawkins

Then so does belief imply the same failure. So I can still wonder about knowledge versus belief, just from a position of failure in understanding.

What distinguishes a 'fact' from a belief is that THAT PERSON ONLY (<--- yup) has decided… — Chet Hawkins

A “fact” distinguished from a “belief” - based on a decision. Ok. I see the moving parts a bit here. A fact on the one hand, a belief in that fact on the other based on a decision. But you need two things to make a decision. So there must be a difference, say between knowledge on the one hand and what we believe is a fact on the other.

To take the position that knowledge is only belief, it is better put that knowledge is knowledge and belief is belief, and we each of us have very little knowledge, although we are full of beliefs.

But you can’t have belief without a separate sense of knowledge.

As a matter of fact, 'facts' are always wrong in some way. — Chet Hawkins

Right here you assert you have knowledge (where you say ”as a matter of fact”) separately from belief (where you say “facts are always wrong”). And you negate your own point since what you end up saying is “As a matter of fact ( which is wrong),…” And in order to understand how a fact is a wrong fact, there must be something else that is understood, like a belief in the ability to know facts and to know they’re wrong.

I believe if you have a belief, you have knowledge separately, unavoidably, incontrovertibly resting on the horizon, the context with that belief, but not only that belief.

There are three levels in there.
Knowing
Fact
Belief — Chet Hawkins

You can’t make different levels out of knowledge and belief if “knowledge is only belief.”

It would better be put “there is only belief.” Or “there is no knowledge.” — Fire Ologist

I fairly well agree. When I spoke of knowledge in that sense I erred. That is to say, colloquial knowledge, what most people call knowledge is only a well of beliefs, a set of beliefs.

But you are CORRECT that if I say we can't know, that such a thing is impossible, then indeed (i am saying) there is only belief. There is no knowledge! Acknowledged!

The creation of this thread is motivated by a claim made by Chet Hawkins:

Knowledge is only belief.
— Chet Hawkins — Janus

This is a bit like saying Magnus Carlsen's chess games are chess games. Well, yes. But ithey are rigorously arrived at games, showing great skill. Chess isn't particular about something else. But in the game of believing, the beliefs are about things. They lead to useful activities and skills applicable to all fields of life, or they don't.

I think it is good to realize that knowledge is form of belief. I think that adds a note of humility. What we are sure is true today may be overturned.

But the word 'only' can be misleading. All beliefs are the same and what people call knowledge is no better than any other belief, might be the conclusion/implication.

Some methodologies are better than others.

Some methodologies are better than others. — Bylaw

You acknowledged the central point, though. And I am down with your qualifications, as well, not therefore.

"Knowledge" is a very funny word. People try to formalize it in all sorts of weird ways, but I think most people, when they say they "know" something, mean pretty much the same thing as "I believe it, and I'm really really really confident of my belief."

It can't go unnoticed how various people "know" things that contradict what other people "know" as well. Some people know that Jesus is King, other people know Muhammad was the last prophet, other people know Krishna is the eighth avatar of Vishnu.

So if we just look at how the word "know" is used, it's used to refer to extreme confidence (or even extreme faith). It's just a privileged type of belief, privileged specifically by the person with that belief such that they place it above beliefs they have that they don't call "knowledge".

Knowledge consists of truths or not-yet-falsified claims the statuses of which are independent of dis/belief. — 180 Proof

Perhaps outside the concept of justified true belief:
"The general idea behind the belief condition is that you can only know what you believe."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/#KnowJustTrueBeli

Chet says that statement is incontrovertible. I would like to see an argument to support that contention. — Janus

If you take JTB (above) into the picture then that's an argument against it because belief only is insufficient.

You presumably don't know that...

There is no knowledge! — Chet Hawkins

The T in JTB is kinda awkward. If someone says they believe something, they're already saying they think it's true. If someone says they're justified in believing something, they're saying they think it's true, and their thought is justified.

If the T in JTB is *required* before something can be knowledge, then we're left in this kind of weird limbo where we can say we "know" things, but if we're not 100% certain, we can't KNOW we know them -- and even if we ARE 100% certain, people can presumably be wrong about things they feel 100% certain about, so even with 100% certainty, you don't always "know" the things you say you know. Sometimes you say you know something, and you're wrong. You don't know it.

People don't communicate -truth itself-, they communicate their beliefs about the things they think are true.

"JTB" is antiquated. Much more cogent:

"belief"
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-foundational/

"knowledge"
https://iep.utm.edu/karl-popper-critical-ratiotionalism/

It can't go unnoticed how various people "know" things that contradict what other people "know" as well. — flannel jesus

It also can't get noticed that some things we consider - pretty much regardless of group - that we know now, we later realize we were wrong about, and this includes in the history of science.

The T in JTB is kinda awkward. If someone says they believe something, they're already saying they think it's true. — flannel jesus

I think better would be: not demonstrated false - by some well justified argument. JNFB

We use 'know' in different contexts than we use 'believe', so by that simple fact knowledge is not just belief — whether those two actually exist and are not confusions of the mind is another topic. Though I am not a fan of threads where people are put on the spot without their consent.

I think there is a valid distinction between knowledge and belief, — Janus

The former is a subset of the latter. Different people/groups have different reasons for saying this batch of beliefs over here, they've got promise or they sure seem to be working so far or they fit X and Y really well and those over there don't fit it so well and those over there we can't make sense of to even tell.

You only know stuff that's true. — Banno

Then can one know whether one knows things, given potential revision.

We have our rigorous criteria, decide we know X. But later we may realize errors or get new data and then we know X is false. Did we falsely think we knew before?

And if we didn't know before, then our knowledge now might not be knowledge. So, is it ok to say we know, knowing we may in fact not know?

So, is it ok to say we know, knowing we may in fact not know? — Bylaw

this is poetic

May we say we know, knowing we may not know?

Knowledge consists of truths or not-yet-falsified claims the statuses of which are independent of dis/belief. — 180 Proof

I'm down with the first part, but I'm not sure what you mean by the second part.
And, of course, things that get falsified might end up later being resurrected.

To understand an idea, look at how the word is used.

People say "I know" to signal agreement. To know is to agree.
People say "I know" to signal acceptance" To know is to accept.
People say "I know" to express conviction. To know is to devote yourself to an idea.
People say "I know" to rebuke falsehoods. To know is to undermine what is seen as untrue.
People say "I know I should..." to signal acceptance of a necessity while suspending acting upon it. To know is to entertain as an abstraction.
People say "I know" to signal that an adequate justification is believed to exist for a belief or practice. To say one knows is to say one is justified.

Knowledge, then, is multifaceted. Since to agree, to accept and to devote have different truth conditions - or none at all, like a devotion. One can say one knows in different senses. Knowledge isn't one kind of thing, and an item of knowledge need not be a statement. And knowing as conviction may not be itemizable at all.

:up:

My first thoughts as well. "I know no one can know," seems to fall into the same bucket as "it is absolutely true that there are no absolutes," etc.

In particular, there is the problem that, if there is no access to "reality," then presumably there is no reason to set up a knowledge/belief, reality/appearance distinction in the first place. But claims that beliefs are "merely appearance," presuppose such a distinction.