According to Plato, knowledge is justified true belief, and this was also the view of many philosophers until recently. But in the light of modern evolutionary and biological theory, we now know this is only part of the story. We are born with innate knowledge, whereas we are not born with innate beliefs. A newborn baby knows how to breathe and suckle, but it does not have religious, or any other, beliefs.
Knowledge is a store of information proven useful for a capacity to act. Some knowledge is innate, but most is gained by interaction with the world. For the simplest kind of agents, like insects or robots, all their knowledge is built into their structure. Large molecular machines, like the ribosomes in our cells, ‘know’ how to make proteins because their complex shapes have evolved to possess this potential. A thermocouple ‘knows’ what temperature corresponds to the closure of a switch because its designer made it in such a way that the switch will close when a certain temperature is reached.
The store of knowledge with which we are born does not enable us to cope with all the problems the world poses. As we interact with the world and with society, we have to generate new knowledge by learning. Knowledge is achieved through an accumulated and refined experience. Beliefs are intentional mental states, meaning that they are about the world. Belief tells us how the world might be. Our actions are driven by knowledge and beliefs.
Knowledge is a store of information proven useful for a capacity to act. Some knowledge is innate, but most is gained by interaction with the world. For the simplest kind of agents, like insects or robots, all their knowledge is built into their structure. Large molecular machines, like the ribosomes in our cells, ‘know’ how to make proteins because their complex shapes have evolved to possess this potential. A thermocouple ‘knows’ what temperature corresponds to the closure of a switch because its designer made it in such a way that the switch will close when a certain temperature is reached.
The store of knowledge with which we are born does not enable us to cope with all the problems the world poses. As we interact with the world and with society, we have to generate new knowledge by learning. Knowledge is achieved through an accumulated and refined experience. Beliefs are intentional mental states, meaning that they are about the world. Belief tells us how the world might be. Our actions are driven by knowledge and beliefs.
The ability to form beliefs and test them in action is essential to our survival in an ever-changing world, and the development of this ability was a crucial step in our evolution. The flexibility and robustness of intentional action has an immense evolutionary advantage over purely innate, fixed-representation-based activity such as is manifested as instinct. It allows the manipulation and examination of possible options before a final determination of action.
Only explicit, language-based knowledge can be easily transmitted via books and machines. But much of our knowledge is tacit; it is not expressible in language. This was memorably expressed by Michael Polanyi when he said, “We know more than we can tell.” This is true not only for innate knowledge, but also for those internalized skills which come from observing and copying others. Furthermore, much of our knowledge is difficult to access at will, and may require group interaction (brainstorming) to surface. Accessing and validating human knowledge will remain a difficult process.
Knowledge and Belief are mental phenomena, which are notoriously resistant to simplistic physical explanations. The difficulty stems from their immaterial nature. They can be correlated with physical events, but correlation is not explanation. Description, however, is a much more modest goal than explanation.
Author and Credits: Sir Alistair MacFarlane 2013
Edited for easy understanding.