Knowing and Believing
When I say I know X, I mean -- and I think most people would agree -- that I have a fair degree of confidence that X is the case and that this conviction is justified.* (It's always fair to ask why someone is confident.) But what does it mean to say, "I believe (in) X"? That seems to be a mushier claim. I'd like to try to sort this out. Let's start by acknowledging that many words have multiple senses. There is no platonic realm where we can look for the true definition of words. Language is a living social institution, and words "move" over time. (I recommend linguist John McWhorter's enjoyable book Words on the Move: Why English Won't - and Can't - Sit Still [Like, Literally] .) From the time of Samuel Johnson, dictionaries were descriptive, not prescriptive. They showed how words were commonly used, but not how they ought to be used. (Of course, if you want to communicate with other people, you'll want to infer prescription fr...