Blog Post #3 - Knowledge and Belief

The meanings of the words knowledge and belief intertwine in the sense that we believe what we know, and know what we believe.

That is a simple, yet powerful statement.

When looking at controversial topics, you can gain every bit of knowledge from all sides of the issue, but only one or some stick out because you believe in them.

Knowledge of anything and everything can be gained but beliefs may limit how well we try to keep that knowledge in our minds. Beliefs are strong and could deteriorate us away from true, useful knowledge because of stubborn ideas we may undertake.

Knowledge is accepted by everyone, whereas beliefs are what you hold to be true.

Rhetoric allows us to dig deeper into a topic and explore new perspectives all while gaining knowledge. This is because we engage in research to investigate into other people’s mindsets, beliefs, and their prior knowledge. This exchange develops what we come to know about any given topic making our understanding truly infinite.

Knowledge is both constructed and discovered because we can build on what we already know, and discover new ideas that we can later build onto.

Beliefs can be restricting when trying to gain new insight on a subject. In the book The Curious Researcher, they state that “… many beliefs have some truth to them. Other beliefs, however, may need to be unlearned…”

Plato toyed with this subject during his lifetime as a Greek Philosopher trying to explain what things are and why they are that way. Shown in the table below is Plato’s view on what knowledge and opinion, or belief, means and what they identify with.

Epistemology		Ontology		Source of Being and Intelligibility
Knowledge	Pure reason (grasped mathematically)	The Forms	The Intelligible World	The Good
	Understanding (subsuming the particular under the general)	Concepts
Opinion (conjecture)	Belief, sense experience	Particular sensible objects	The Visible World	The Sun
	Imagination, Hearsay	Images, Shadows, Reflections

Daniel, Stephen H. "Plato Notes." Plato Notes. Texas A&M University, n.d. Web. The graph looks further into the meaning and uses of knowledge and opinion.

Ballenger, Bruce. "Introduction / Rethinking the Research Paper - Learning and Unlearning." The Curious Researcher. 4th ed. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 4. Print. Florida State University.

"Plato Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web.