How can we justify beliefs?
People believe we can justify beliefs in the following ways:
Quantity and quality of evidence
Anything that is believed based on evidence and seen at first sight and which you can be fairly sure about is something which you can be justified in believing. A number of things could be counted as “good evidence” and be taken seriously, e.g. eveidence like DNA samples and tests in a court of law. In different circumstances this evidence may not be adequate but the requirements that we would expect before a claim is justified is what is important, this point of quality and quantity of evidence is an obvious point to make but is undeniable and important.
Predictive and explanatory power
Justification of beliefs may have been made but the different degrees that the justification has been met have to be taken into account too. You may believe in a belief but this may be justified to certain degrees. A highly justified belief however, may also not be true and fail to be knowledge and a true belief you hold with insufficient justification may be true but not may be knowledge. True belief and knowledge do not have to necessarily coincide. This leads on to believe that belief allows us to makje predictions about very day events or explain certain phenomena. E.g. if I say that I have been painting my room red you would probably expect to see some red paint on me
