Our beliefs, and even our knowledge, are not reflections of truth. Due to the nature of the world, our beliefs and knowledge tend to reflect truth, probably because that is a necessary condition for survival. However, I have had many experiences, some quite startling and awe-stricking, in which I have been mistaken about something that I was certain was true belief, knowledge. This proves that knowledge itself is not a true reflection or copy of truth. Knowledge is really just a very intense belief.
Knowledge has the quality that the bearer will be extremely surprised to find that the belief is untrue. Suspicious beliefs lack this quality. This is dependent upon the individual posessing the knowledge and beliefs. For example, athiests treat their beliefs that no god exists as knowledge; and so they would be extremely surprised to find out that god does exist. On the other extreme, devout christians treat their belief in god's existence as knowledge, and so they would be extremely surprised to find out that god does not exist. Both kinds of people can have suspicious beliefs as well. They can be told that the weather will be cold tomorrow, and act upon that belief as truth, but they will not be extremely surprised if it is not cold tomorrow.
My argument about what distinguishes knowledge from belief is very qualitative. I have not provided any metric or measure at which a belief becomes knowledge of a subject. So what, then is the value of this argument? Well, it can help people understand what knowledge is, and thereby help them make decisions, both great and small. But what would be the value of my statements if I had qualititative descriptions of the threshold at which a belief becomes knowledge?
If we could measure the intensity of belief, and we had a device for manipulating that intensity, we could control what an individual believed. This obviously has negative applications, such as deceit and mind-control. But it also has positive applications, such as learning. For instance, we can learn a subject better if we can build the intensity of "correct" beliefs, and decrease the intensity of "incorrect" beliefs.
This isn't a profound finding, in my opinion, but at least I now know a new mantra for teachers: always focus on increasing the intensity of correct beliefs, and decreasing the intensity of incorrect beliefs. If the teacher can do this very efficiently, then the student will learn quickly, and depending on the intensity of the correct beliefs instilled in the student, the student will retain his new knowledge for a long time.
One implication that we have to consider is that if the intensity of a belief is too strong, then it cannot change very easily in order to allow the student to correct their mistakes. In other words, having beliefs that are too strong can be bad because it leads to closed-mindedness.
