‘Justified true belief’ was Plato’s attempt to bring rigour to his claim to know something. Briefly explain what he meant by ‘justified true belief’ and, more importantly, attempt to relate it to your own ways-of-knowing and your personal conviction of what it is to know something.Plato founded an academy almost two and a half thousand years ago that was concerned with validating its knowledge in the areas of science, mathematics and philosophy. On what grounds can we be certain that we really know something? This was the question addressed by Plato himself and the students of the academy. Plato’s answer was that knowledge must be certain Knowledge. Certain Knowledge must be believable, true and justified.This is the basis of ‘justified true belief’. So for a piece of knowledge to be valid according to Plato’s ‘justified true belief’ theory you must be able to believe the statement, your belief has to be true and your belief must be justified. An example of this is to take the statement that ‘all living things are made of cells’. For this statement to be true it must pass three tests, firstly you must believe that all living things are made of cells. All living things must be made of cells if you know one that is not then your belief is not true which it must be. Finally, you must have justification for the statement that you know all living things are made of cells. What are the ways for me to know something keeping in mind Plato’s ‘justified true belief’ theory? There are a number of ways of knowing something such as empirically, by authority, by memory, instinctively, through practice, through acquaintance, through introspection, by empathy, by faith and through the conscience. These are all the different ways of knowing something. Some of these are easier for us to accept than others because some of them concern knowledge that is true ...
