Knowledge, Belief, and Evidence

This is the second video in my series on Critical Thinking. In this short video, I discuss belief and evidence and how they relate to knowledge (justified true belief).

Other videos in this series include:
1.0 An Introduction to Critical Thinking - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oefmPtsV_w4

3.0 Looking for Truth in Personal Experience - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHizTm1a-qg

Sources:
Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn. "How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age" (Chapter 5 "Knowledge, Belief, and Evidence")

Category:

Education

Tags:

• critical
• thinking
• knowledge
• belief
• evidence
• epistemology
• philosophy
• atheist
• agnostic
• free
• thinker
• open
• minded

[TheElitePowerThatBe]

defending appeal to authority as justificaion for doubt? youre out of your mind.

[crazypills2]

@TheElitePowerThatBe "defending appeal to authority as justificaion for doubt?"

I don't defend appeals to authority. Instead, I give greater weight to the opinion of an expert in the area in which he/she is an expert.

[gustjorodedheo]

I'm not quite sure how to exactly say that someone is an expert. Usually, it's someone who has studied an area of knowledge for years, and is highly qualified. There are those, though, who haven't really worked to become qualified, or did so to promote their own aims. Also, no one is 100% error free and can have false beliefs. So, how are we to be sure that the experts are 100% right, 100% of the time?

[crazypills2]

gustjorodedheo,

You can't know for sure that someone is 100% correct. However, peer-review is what keeps science honest. A hypothesis developed and tested by one scientist will later be tested and confirmed by others. If an expert has a different opinion than most of his/her peers, there is more reason to doubt him/her.

[branchingvine]

Ultimately "Truth" is not out there somewhere...but inside of you. Even if the truth were out there somewhere, none of us could understand it as such until it sank into us and we came to see it as the truth it is. Until that happens we would never preceive it as the truth. So, all truth ultimately is preceived within. Isn't it strange that we are taught to regard "experts" and to search for truth outside ourselves, to look everywhere for it but the one place it registers....WITHIN!!!

[0UvaProductionz0]

i disliked this video because i thought the other one must feel alone :)

[TheTruthgeneral]

If you are attentive to what I am stating it should become evident that we cannot begin to deal with the nature of knowledge without some basic knowledge itself as I said earlier one has to have justification for one to KNOW that the proposition is true for your alleged definition of knowledge so a logical question is how do we know what we know which would deal with the nature of proper justification as once more knowledge is properly justified belief .

[TheTruthgeneral]

First and foremost Knowledge is nothing but awareness it is consciousness of some state of affairs.Now concerning your treatment of knowledge I will affirm that knowledge is properly justified belief not justified true belief.As if justification does not lead to certainty then one really can not know that a proposition is true for example, so "justified true belief" is meaningless.A belief must be true for it to be judged as knowledge and proper justification is the only means to know that.

[tdcnetwork]

I know that this video is a load of bullocks.

[Youngl3lood]

Knowledge puffs up, love enlightens, Faith is divine, knowledge contradicts itself.

[MJRockX]

Expert opinion, especially when it comes to politics; monitory and physcial policy has been historically wrong the vase majority of the time. THat is to say wrong to the average working class hero.