The Importance of Disctinction Between Knowledge and...

The Importance of Disctinction Between Knowledge and Belief in Philosophy To try and decipher the distinction between knowledge and belief we must first understand what the meaning of Philosophy is. In its simplest definition it translates to â€Å"the love of wisdom† taken from the Greek word â€Å"philo† which means love and â€Å"sophia† meaning wisdom. Philosophers love to know the truth about the general principles of the world and they pursue the truth in these. Through the ages many philosophers have been on a personal quest to discover the principles of the universe and explain what is meant by knowledge and belief. An opinion, statement or teaching can be a belief and to believe means to regard or†¦show more content†¦John Locke (1632-1674) another, empiricist, believed that at birth a mind is like a blank page and we obtain knowledge through our senses. He broke this down in to two types, sensation which he defined as input from the senses such as smell, taste and sight and secondly, reflection, which were the different operations of the mind such as thinking and believing. Some would say that Empiricists views of how we attain knowledge through senses could be misleading since our senses can deceive us. For example, you see someone walking down the street and think it is your friend and wave only to discover it was someone entirely different. We believed our senses but they were mistaken. Where rationalists differ is that they believe knowledge is derived from our reasoning and thoughts. In 1912, Bertram Russell (1872-1970) wrote Problems in Philosophy, in which he states ‘is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?’ At first this question may not seem so difficult to answer but in reality it is probably one of the hardest. Russell believed that if he were sitting at a chair behind a desk with paper and books on it that any other normal person who came in to the room would see the same chair, desk, paper and books as him. However, in reality each person is seeing through his own eyes and therefore the interpretations may