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- According to a second conception, a subject's belief is certain just in case it could not have been mistaken —i.e., false (see, e.g., Lewis 1929). Alternatively, the subject's belief is certain when it is guaranteed to be true. This is what Roderick Firth calls the “truth-evaluating” sense of certainty (1967, pp. 7-8).
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Feb 2, 2008 · First published Sat Feb 2, 2008; substantive revision Mon Feb 21, 2022. Certainty, or the attempt to obtain certainty, has played a central role in the history of philosophy. Some philosophers have taken the kind of certainty characteristic of mathematical knowledge to be the goal at which philosophy should aim.
Feb 2, 2008 · This is what Firth calls the “warrant-evaluating” sense of certainty (1967, pp. 8-12). Thus, Bertrand Russell says that “A proposition is certain when it has the highest degree of credibility, either intrinsically or as a result of argument” (1948, p. 396).
In Moore’s approach, epistemic certainty is identified with knowledge. Nevertheless, Moore himself acknowledges that one may want to draw a distinction between knowledge and certainty (see also Firth 1967: 10, Miller 1978: 46n3, Lehrer, 1974, Stanley 2008).
THE ANATOMY OF CERTAINTY. IT IS no exaggeration to say that almost all the traditional problems of epistemology can be construed so that they depend for their solution on decisions about the relationship between knowledge and certainty. Some philosophers have maintained, for example, that certainty is the criterion that makes statements about ...
The Anatomy of Certainty. R. Firth. Published 1967. Philosophy. The Philosophical Review. IT IS no exaggeration to say that almost all the traditional problems of epistemology can be construed so that they depend for their solution on decisions about the relationship between knowledge and certainty.
Epistemology - Belief, Justification, Rationality: Philosophers have disagreed sharply about the complex relationship between the concepts of knowledge and certainty. Are they the same? If not, how do they differ? Is it possible for someone to know that p without being certain that p, or to be certain that p without knowing that p?
May 24, 2017 · Introduction. No single concept or kind of state underlies all the ordinary uses of the term certain and its cognates. First, we can distinguish between absolute and relative certainty. When we ask whether someone is “certain” that p, we seem to use the term as an absolute, admitting of no degrees, like flat —nothing is only somewhat flat.
