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GliderGuider

(21,088 posts)
4. To a first approximation, all knowledge is based on belief.
Thu Mar 12, 2015, 07:42 PM
Mar 2015

How do we know what we know? Often it's simply because someone in whom we have reposed trust has told us so, whether directly or indirectly. As you say, "the question "how do you know" invites an unbounded infinity of answers" - which, if you dig deep enough, all turn out to be based on fundamentally unproveable beliefs - like "there is an external, objective universe that is separate from me."

Which doesn't mean that such belief-based "knowledge" is useless - far from it, it's all we have. But we shouldn't forget that if one of those fundamental beliefs turns out to be erroneous, the rest of the edifice collapses. So how high up the pyramid of knowledge do the beliefs extend? For most of us, I would claim that they go all the way to the tip.

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