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Faith and knowledge

שו”תCategory: generalFaith and knowledge
asked 4 years ago

In the SD
Hello Rabbi,
I wanted to ask what the difference is between faith and knowledge? And if they are similar, then why is a belief that is seemingly very reasonable not always perceived as knowledge?
For example, when there is a lottery and I have one ticket against a million tickets, my chance of winning is negligible, but it still doesn’t say that I know I won’t win. But for example, I just believe and expect it.


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מיכי Staff answered 4 years ago
Just semantics. Many philosophers deal with this, and just pepper it with no flavor. It’s the same thing. See a bit about this in column 228.

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ק replied 4 years ago

Thank you very much, I read there, it is indeed interesting, but it seems that it is there that you seemingly agree with their theory, that the difference between pure belief and knowledge depends on the sensitivity of the claim, for example whether there is a counter-claim for it. But here, you claim that there is no difference between the things.
Also, if belief and knowledge are indeed the same thing, why can't you say about the lottery ticket that you know you won't win? (That's where you accepted this assumption).

מיכי Staff replied 4 years ago

I can definitely say that I know I won't win. Although there is a tiny chance that I will, there is always a small chance of error. There is another problem with the ticket, as there will obviously be one buyer whose information will be wrong (since one does win). I still don't see a significant difference.

Narali wrote there that it is quite a convention that one cannot say “know” about this:
“I can say “I assume he didn't win”, or “I believe he didn't win” and so on. But it is not correct in such a situation to say “I know he didn't win”.
For example, even if you never found out which ticket was the winning one, according to what you said there there is still a problem in saying know. You can only say that I know that the probability of this is small.. or it is likely that I won't win, but I don't know.

Furthermore, if people know that they won't win, then how do they fill out the lottery? Rather, people do expect to win. They just believe that the chance that they will win is low.

So why did you abandon the division of philosophers' chatter between “know” and ”belief”? Just because you didn't find a division, you decided that we should abandon this intuition anyway? But why don't you make an excuse, in your own way, in the column there, that there is a possibility that this intuition is an epistemic intuition (a.k.a. legal intuition). Even if we don't know how to base it on a specific terminology.

מיכי replied 4 years ago

The blood disputes are philosophical-legal gibberish. They have nothing to do with reality. Whether you use the term "knows" or not, it's semantics.

הפוסק האחרון replied 4 years ago

There is a difference between knowledge and knowing. I assume you mean knowing.

Knowledge cannot be expressed in words, it does not deal with external facts but with internal facts that are directly related to the person's consciousness, that is, with experience. For example, a person knows that he experiences the color orange while looking at something orange.

Belief is simply a certain emotion (a feeling of being sure of something) that is linked to external facts that are in your worldview (knowledge).

תודה replied 4 years ago

Why is it semantics, after all, the person who plays the lottery will not say that he knows that he will not win. But let's just assume that it is likely that he will not win, but does not know.
Isn't the rabbi an essentialist regarding the meaning of concepts?.. Simply, according to what I read by chance, the author largely assumed that all philosophers agree that knowledge is not belief, and one of the evidences for this is the lottery parable. And the second is in the case where there is justified belief but does not lead to knowledge due to an error or something like that. But the problem is that he did not really give an explanation why beliefs of type A would be called knowledge and type B would not. Except that "that's how it is." Or it fits with intuition. Therefore, in any case, it is surprising that the rabbi argues that there is really no difference and that this is semantics.

מיכי Staff replied 4 years ago

When I say I believe in God, I mean that I know that there is a God. Just like I know that there is a law of gravity. Call both faith if you want, call both knowledge if you want. Both are generalizations based on observations of the world.

ק replied 4 years ago

Hahaha, Rabbi,
When philosophers talked about sentences that contradict reality, they didn't talk about sentences that contradict examples. (countexamples)

I thought I'd make the excuse that most people really distinguish between faith and knowledge as the common saying goes - “Faith in God is faith! Not knowledge!”. But then Max’ claims that in order to know, you need faith on a stronger level. And if that's the case, then really if God were the lottery ticket (fine tuning) then they would say they know that he exists. And the idea with the law of gravity too.

But it's impossible to avoid that there is something intuitive that really distinguishes between the two concepts. And you see this in particular with regard to error, for example, I was sure I knew, but I didn't. As opposed to I believed that so and so, but I was wrong.

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