The distinction between knowledge and belief is one of the most fundamental of e pistemological theory.

In everyday life this distinction is often blurred. It is one of the tas ks of the philosopher to clearly distinguish between knowledge and belief. For as we shall see, claiming to know something to be true is very different to claiming to believe something is true. The classical definition of knowledge states that A knows that p if only the fol lowing three conditions are satisfied: a) the truth condition ie. P is true b) the belief condition ie. A believes that p c) the evidence conditions ie. A has sufficient evidence for p In short knowledge is justified true belief. We see from this definition that be lief is one part of the process of a successful knowledge claim and cannot by itself be equated with it, or in philosophical terminology, belief is one of the necessary conditions for knowledge but is not a sufficient condition. There are no conditions set to believing something because beliefs can be true o r false - the most fantastic things can be believed. Knowledge on the other hand must by (clas sical) definition be necessarily true otherwise it would not be considered as such:There can be no su ch thing as false knowledge by this reckoning. To know something to be true means that one has ruled out all the possibilities of being wrong, (a tall order which the sceptic will use to attack the idea that knowledge with certainty is possible). Hence the need for strict test of all three conditions. No two conditions will s uffice for a successful knowledge claim. For example,if A claims that he will win the competition he has just entered,and it so happens that he does,he cannot then claim to have known that he would win bec ause he had no evidence supporting his claim to know. His claim was based on a 'feeling' or a b elief which just happened to be true. This touches upon two matters, firstly the nature of the ju stification process itself and secondly its relationship to truth. The truth condition is a consequent of providing sufficient evidence for p , hen ce making it redundant or just a corollary of c) and perhaps not deserving of a condition sta tus and introducing it may produce a certain circularity - knowledge requires the truth condition to be satisfied and the truth condition is produced by the accumulation of sufficient evidence and this evidence itself will rely on the truth condition. Although there are many theories as to the best methodology to judge the success of a

knowledge claim, at the least we could agree that providing commonly verifiable evidence is an important component in knowledge production, the scientific process being an exa mple of the importance of such a method. However in other disciplines or subject matters (fo r example the self, is self-knowledge possible?) such a method of discovering the truth may be much less straightforward or even may not be possible at all, therefore making the justifi cation process much more problematic. However making the distinction between knowing and believing is of fundamental importance; we are often tempted to claim to know that p when we are only entitled to believ e that p. To give a example of this dichotomy: A claims to know that the Sun will rise the next day. Some may argue that he is wrong in making such a claim. He is basing his claim on an assumption about a future event which of coarse he cannot know. And despite the very strong evidence which will corroborated by science and in particular, the predictability promised in proven scientific theories, the future is an unknown and therefore cannot be known in the strict philosophic al sense. Belief can take many forms,such as an assumption, a 'feeling', a hope or an int uition. Only any proposition that has undergone the test of the three conditions (according to th e classical standard)

can be given the status of knowledge. It has been drawn out of the private realm and placed surefootedly in the public realm of universal accessibility. It is not only in philosophy and science that it is important to resist the con ceptual blurring of belief and knowledge. In many areas of everyday life such as in the media, the d istinction between that which is belief and that which is knowledge is often not maintained (someti mes deliberately,sometimes due to the inherent ambiguity of much of language or thro ugh a lack of understanding).In philosophical reasoning the conceptual distinctions and relati onships associated with knowledge (truth, justification and belief in our case) need to be scrutini zed and clarified in order to free the philosophers enquiry of any confusion that may vitiate an unde rstanding of what knowledge actually is.