Justified true belief is a flawed description of knowledge: belief is not a constituent of knowledge, and the qualifiers 'justified' and 'true' are one or more of impossible, indistinct, and unnecessary. We routinely acquire knowledge via experience before recognizing concise aspects of it that we then invest with belief. Since knowledge can exist prior to belief, knowledge cannot require belief as a component. In a strictly material world, perfect degrees of abstract qualities such as truth and justification are never ...
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Justified true belief is a flawed description of knowledge: belief is not a constituent of knowledge, and the qualifiers 'justified' and 'true' are one or more of impossible, indistinct, and unnecessary. We routinely acquire knowledge via experience before recognizing concise aspects of it that we then invest with belief. Since knowledge can exist prior to belief, knowledge cannot require belief as a component. In a strictly material world, perfect degrees of abstract qualities such as truth and justification are never realized. If ideal truth or ideal justification were accessible to us, each would be sufficient for knowledge, rendering the other unnecessary, unless they are in fact the same thing. It is precisely the impossibility of perfect truth and perfect justification that allows skeptics to attack the possibility of knowledge when its definition requires them. Knowledge is better understood as sufficiently accurate information, the negation of whose meaning cannot be reconciled with our understanding of the world. Skeptics cannot reasonably maintain that our minds do not contain information, or that the accuracy of that information cannot be sufficient for practical, real-world utility. If we cannot accommodate the possible falsity of such information without upsetting our fundamental understandings of the world, then that information ought to be accorded the status of knowledge.
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