Thursday, July 19, 2018

True Beliefs and Justified Beliefs

In philosophy, a distinction is made between true beliefs and justified beliefs. 

If you believe something that happens to be true, but can't justify why you believe in that particular proposition, that is considered a true belief. To give a somewhat silly example, imagine that you have just bought a scratch-off lottery card that you believe will contain a winning number. If that card happens to be a winning card, then your belief turned out to be true. 

On the other hand, if you have a justifiable reason to believe something, even if that thing turns out to be not true, then you have a justified belief. Imagine that your housemate comes home every day around 5:00 PM. If you hear someone at the front door at 5:01 PM (you are in a different room so you can't actually see who it is), you might justifiably believe that person to be your housemate when, in reality, it is a delivery person. Your belief, though false, was justified.

Why is this distinction important? To be considered knowledge, you need a justified true belief. Therefore, a scientific approach is one that builds on justified beliefs, ideally proving them true or false through experimentation and investigation. 

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