This video is an overview and supplement to Chapter One of David Morrow’s book, Giving Reasons.
In this chapter Morrow discusses facts, opinions, and knowledge.
These are key concepts for philosophy, including our course, so it’s important to get them right, early on.
One important point to start with is this: Fact and Opinion are *not* 2 exclusive categories
that we can divide all claims into.
Exercises asking you to classify claims as either Facts or Opinions are misguided, and here’s why:
Facts are true or false, independently of whether they are known or believed by anyone.
There are facts that no one knows, and that no one believes.
And opinions, or beliefs, are believed or not, independently of whether they are true
or false, justified or unjustified.
Someone’s believing something does not automatically make it true in reality.
So there are at least two different things at work here: Truth (whether something objectively
is the case or is not the case) and Belief (whether something subjectively is believed
or not believed by a certain person).
In fact, there is also a third thing at work, which is Justification (whether a certain
person has good reasons for having a certain belief). I’ll say more about that later.
Let’s consider the possible combinations of Truth and Belief in a 2 by 2 chart.
On the top of this chart is the question of truth, the question of whether a certain claim
is true or false, whether it is the case or is not the case about the real world.
This is an objective question.
On the left side, I've placed the question of belief, the question of whether a certain
claim is believed or not believed by a certain person.
And this is a subjective question.
Looking at combinations, we see in the upper left box that some things that I believe are
actually true, such as mathematical truths.
In the upper right box, some of my beliefs are actually false, such as my belief that
the Redskins would go to the playoffs this year, or my belief right now that the Redskins
will go to the playoffs next year, if it turns out that they actually don't.
In the lower left box are true claims that I do not believe, such as the claim that Donald
Trump will one day be elected President of the United States, which, at one point in
my life, I did not believe was true, but which was in fact true.
And in the lower right box are false claims that I do not believe,
such as the claim that the earth is flat.
With this in mind, we can see that there are more than just 2 choices, fact or opinion.
There are 4 choices: true belief, false belief, true & not believed, and false & not believed.
Obviously, what we want is to have as many of our opinions as possible be in the 1st
and 4th categories: if it is true, we want to believe it, and
if it is false, we want not to believe it.
What about this third category of justification?
Some of our true beliefs (and some of our false beliefs) are justified, and some are not justified.
So, let’s add these as sub-regions of our top row boxes.
The upper left box is divided in half.
The top half contains my true beliefs which are also justified, and the bottom half my
true beliefs which are unjustified, which I don't have good reason for believing,
even though they happen to be true.
In the upper right box I've made a similar division.
Some of my false beliefs are justified.
Even though they happen to be false, I do have good reasons for supposing them to be true.
And some of my false beliefs are unjustified.
I don't have good reasons for believing that they are true.
Now we can define knowledge.
Knowledge is justified true belief.
That is, it is a belief that I have, that is true (it is actually the case), and that
I am justified in believing is true, that I have good reasons for believing.
When we want to gain knowledge, we want to gain justified true beliefs.
We also want to evaluate our current beliefs, to check to see that they are true and justified.
These are two kinds of mental self-examination that we can perform
on our minds and beliefs, using philosophy.
We will talk more about Truth, Belief, and Justification in class.
That’s all for now. Thanks for watching today; goodbye.