Written on June 21st, 2008 by Oliver Kim
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Categories: All Articles, Ways of Knowing
Plato defined knowledge as “Justified true belief”. For a person to know something he/she has to believe it, has to be able to justify it and it has to be true. This is explained here.
The tree criteria needed for a person to know something are:
- Lack of justification: “I know that aliens exist” – there is no way that you can provide a justification for this claim. Therefore you can not know it.
- Lack of belief: “I know that the world is round but I don’t believe it.” – this is a contradictory statement. For you to know something you have to believe in it. But not every belief is knowledge!
- Lack of truth: I know that a circle has 3 corners. – You can not know things that are evidently not true.
Four possible ways to justify one’s belief are:
- Memory
- Authority
- Logics
- Empirical evidence