You can be contextually bound to believe something to be true; but, given that it is 'doxa' it's limited to only a contextually bound scope.

can you unpack that more please (if you have time of course).

can you unpack that more please (if you have time of course). — mrnormal5150

@Wayfarer will be able to help more. I don't recall the differences in the validity of differing beliefs according to Plato. I think 'doxa' is what Plato believed to be in the lowest bound of beliefs.

There’s an OK Wikipedia entry on the analogy of the divided line which summarises it. But, yes, ‘doxai’ are beliefs. Also have a peruse of this page - I actually bought that book from Amazon and then got bogged down in the huge number of long footnotes, but the thrust of it is clear enough from that excerpt.

I'm not entirely sure how this lends insight into the question.

I don't think there is anything in Plato that corresponds to "belief" (that is very Christian). Pistis, the lower segment, literally means reliance. We see the ground, and we step, relying on our eyes.

There is a problem here. In the dialogues written by Plato, there is almost no discussion about "mud, hair and stones", things one can point to. So there is a question: How to understand the analogy between seeing things one can point to, pistis, and spontaneous opinions about ordinary matters. For instance, if one is tiered, one is in need of sleep. Nothing else will due there. This is a reliable opinion, wouldn't everyone agree? And yet it is not impossible to imagine a case where someone who was tiered would try at all costs to stay awake, and truly be of the opinion that this sleepiness was a kind of disease, dragging them down to the earth and death. Such a one would stay awake as long as possible, and perhaps even die from lack of sleep.

Knowledge is traditionally, and succinctly defined as "justified, true belief."

You can have an unjustified and untrue belief, like thinking that you can fly if you just think happy thoughts. You have no reason to think you can actually fly, plus you can't actually fly, so it's unjustified and untrue.

You can have an unjustified but true belief, like when you try to guess the sex of someone's unborn child and you happen to be right. You had no way to know that the baby would be x or y, you just got lucky. Your belief may have been true, but it was unjustified and is therefore not knowledge.

You can have a justified but untrue belief, like if you go to a party and your friend says she's going to the same party, and you see someone at the party who looks just like your friend, and you wave, and that person waves back (let's say you never bothered to actually talk to her), then afterwards you'd be justified in believing your friend was at the party. But it may turn out to be untrue and that you were just waving at a stranger look-a-like and your friend was actually at home with the 24-hour bug.

Gettier problems (I love these) explain how you can have a justified and true belief that still is not knowledge. Stanford Encyclopedia lists one such example as:
"Imagine that we are seeking water on a hot day. We suddenly see water, or so we think. In fact, we are not seeing water but a mirage, but when we reach the spot, we are lucky and find water right there under a rock. Can we say that we had genuine knowledge of water? The answer seems to be negative, for we were just lucky. (quoted from Dreyfus 1997: 292)"

So basically, the answer to your question is that these things come in all sorts of combinations.

Not sure that

"traditionally" — NKBJ

is the most felicitous way to describe a formula that goes back only several decades. The problem is this formula is "epistemological" in a naive way, i.e., it doesn't know that epistemology as such is a 19th century invention. It asks, what is the access to reality as such? The older discussion assumes a grounding, when one sees a tree, that's it. No "belief". Seeing is knowing, a certainty. One is in the world. No question about a mad scientist or a dream.

"Is it possible for one to be justified in believing X while X is unjustified? Or does one being justified in believing X entail X is justified?" — mrnormal5150

How can we decide what Justified is saying here? So long as Justified means: Is it a fact?, it speaks in the terms of scientific testing. But if I hold that sleep is a disease, and must be evaded at all costs, I do evade it by dying. The question of Justification then corresponds to what your second statement/sentence seems to say.

Is it possible for one to be justified in believing X while X is unjustified? Or does one being justified in believing X entail X is justified? — mrnormal5150

No and no. See @NKBJ's post on Gettier. But most importantly, injecting psychological condition into knowledge could only result in a blameless error, not justified belief. I hope you see the distinction.

is the most felicitous way to describe a formula that goes back only several decades. The problem is this formula is "epistemological" in a naive way, i.e., it doesn't know that epistemology as such is a 19th century invention. It asks, what is the access to reality as such? The older discussion assumes a grounding, when one sees a tree, that's it. No "belief". Seeing is knowing, a certainty. One is in the world. No question about a mad scientist or a dream — InternetStranger

Drop the 'tude dude.
You're either unaware of, or outright neglecting much of the important history of Western philosophy. Plato was the first to say we don't have direct access to the world as it is. Aristotle talked about Gettier problems (not by that name, but the idea was the same). Descartes questioned our access to truth and reality famously in the 1600's.

But most importantly, you seem to misunderstand what the term "belief" means in this context and why even radical realists use it. Even radical realists realize the tree could be an illusion, or a hallucination, or just a mistake (it could be a shrub cleverly pruned to look like a tree). Because of this, all you can say is that I believe x to be true, and I have enough evidence that my belief probably 99.99999% likely corresponds to reality, therefore I am confident in calling it knowledge.

As a stranger, I should be more anxious not to offend my hosts, but one's manners are fate. Still, I must ask you to consider my own view. My claim is to know everything you have stated, which, you must admit, is all standard text-book issue, plus a considerable deal more, what I know more, I count as the only serious part of the discussion. I find the contemporary text book to be almost nonsense (i.e., it is a kind of powerless puzzle solving), and so I apologize for being unappreciative about your retailing of it here, though I am open to learning. That is hard, though, when the general stock of knowledge is not laid out for everyone to see.

OK. I will prepare to learn, and have my ego descend to Hades. What does Aristotle or Plato say concerning illusion? The only thing that strikes me as close to the modern conversation is the issue in Theaetetus concerning making a mistake in identifying someone, but that is surely not a Transcendental Access issue, e.g., not a matter of

"99.99999% likely corresponds to reality" — NKBJ

, rather, it's a paradox of contradiction concerning knowing and not knowing. Off hand, I would venture to say nothing corresponds to "reality" for the ancients. Because what we mean by reality is quantifiable stuff, Science in the modern sense, which plays only the small role in an abstracted geometry for the Greek. At best, the Greek thinks, the vault of the heavens, is the place of geometrical realities. Never does he find geometry, or "real" knowledge, in things visible to the eyes as do we. The discussion simply moves on a different plane. Knowledge of how to get to Larissa is simple empirical knowing, which was something low but dependable for the Greeks.

"Plato was the first to say we don't have direct access to the world as it is." — NKBJ

Concerning opinions. Not concerning transcendental access. Opinions about behavior of an animal in the world, which had the peculiarity of being a rational animal, i.e., of speaking. It's this rational, ratio, epistime, trait that stands between knowing and not knowing, which is the philosopher as such in Plato's dialogues. The Greeks never dreamed of asking the questions about Transcendental Access. I.e., about what in any given experience is necessary (e.g., as you will know, in Kant, Time and Space). That question came about in a threefold manner, through Galileo overlaying the entirety of nature with geometric solids, through Descartes' consideration of the problems this entailed, and then into our own post-Kantian age where "sense data" is a presupposed notion contrasted with the questions about illusion and so on. There were no "Realists" in ancient Greece. No one thought things seen were "illusions". That things were seen to be kinds of things doesn't mean that. Because the eidos, or idea, the genus, which in Latin is species, is undoubtedly there, nowhere do the ancients doubt the availability of the individual thing. What they are saying is that there is a problem that comes from the fact that we see three oaks, and each is an oak. Three individuals, each thing we can point to, but each somehow "the same". That's the decisive issue for them. It's a vast trek from our questions to theirs, and its easy to superimpose our questions on the them. This historical difficulty constitutes a second Cave.

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I would say there is a problem here with the connotations of the word belief. Also, I don't think anything like the concept of Justification occurs in the Greeks or the middle ages.

I just made a long post. Edited it. And now it is gone?

I answered all that was said, but it was lost, considering all you retailed was from the text book that was already very tedious unpaid work. So, I'll just content myself with pointing out that, unless I am mistaken, the ancients never doubted of something being available that was seen. Plato meant by standing between knowing and not knowing the move from opinion about behavior, to knowledge about behavior. Ratio, the human animals' trait was in question, not the eyes and eras as such. The human was an animal, not a Transcendental Subject seeking access. Nor a being with "sense data", which may or may not be "illusion". The only thing approaching the modern problems, it seems to me, is in the Theaetetus on not recognizing someone, but that is a question of paradox, and it takes a great stretch to understand it in the modern sense. If there is an oak, another, and a third, why are they all "the same"? The idea, genus or species. This is their question. There's never any question approaching Transcendental Access from which the

"99.99999% likely corresponds to reality" — NKBJ

stems. This is because Galileo superimposed the geometric world which the Greeks found only written on the vault of the heavens into the world of the "sense data", then Descartes and the Post-Kantian problems become assumed part of daily thinking.

I went into much more nicety, with greater civility, in the other post, but it has been lost!!! Very tedious...