The belief that there are universal laws, can they be merely believed? And if you believe them, musn’t you also believe that your belief is not a belief?
Consider:
1) The next statement is true
2) The previous statement is merely a belief
The confusion above makes it clear that the difference between belief and universal truth is not always well defined.
Why should it be that “perception must be understood in terms of knowledge?” Why should it be that, since most people don’t believe that belief and knowledge are the same, it is likely that belief and knowledge are different? Could it be that this belief in knowledge as different from belief is exactly what enforces ignorance? It is dogma that blinds us from the malleability of reality, and what allows others, who supposedly know more or understand more than us, to dominate us.
A claim to know a place is ordinarily a claim to knowledge how (see Ryle), to an ability to find one’s way about in it.” Vol. 3 Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1967 p 347 What kind of knowledge is knowing when? When in the past is remembered, when in the future is prophetic, and when in the present is all kind of knowledge at once, whatever crosses one’s mind or is evident to the senses. Since the only real knowledge is knowledge in the present, knowledge of time is a synthesis of all other knowledge.
I’ll give the last word to Hume.
“…Descartes, who held that assent is a matter of will that can be freely given or withheld, and Hume, who represented us as largely passive in belief, which he conceived as a feeling that we find ourselves with and must put up with whether we like it or not, much as we find ourselves equipped with desires and aversions.”p351 Vol. 3 Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1967
“On Hume’s side is the fact that it seems no more possible to resolve to believe something one actually does not believe than it is to increase one’s height or eradicate one’s distaste for endives by a simple effort of will. What one can do is to fortify or undermine one’s belief in a proposition indirectly by voluntarily concentrating one’s attention on the evidence for or against it.”p352 Vol. 3 Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1967
