Belief and knowledge are two important themes in the field of philosophy. Belief represents one of the mental states referred to as propositional attitudes. Therefore, beliefs are simply attitudes of one’s mind. It means that they are psychological stances. One may rightly aver that a belief is a fact of his or her mind. Another vital epistemological concept in philosophy is knowledge. There is a relationship between belief and knowledge in epistemology. This fact comes from the idea that epistemology represents the study of nature as well as the information scope and justified or true belief.

It is important to describe knowledge as the awareness and understanding of specific issues about reality. Therefore, when reason is applied to the reality, knowledge is produced. It is the information or set of ideas gained by a person after a process of reasoning. However, a belief cannot count as knowledge unless it is justified. There are various reasons as to why a belief must be justified for it to count as knowledge.

A belief must be justified for it to count as knowledge. The basic reason for this condition is that knowledge requires some aspects to be fulfilled for it to be produced. These aspects are lacking in a belief. Knowledge has got three essential and satisfactory conditions. A belief only satisfies the three essential and adequate conditions of knowledge when it is justified and true. These three conditions are truth, justification and belief. It can be noted that a belief only satisfies one of the three provided conditions.

For something to count as knowledge, it must be factual and right. False things do not constitute knowledge. True things are real hence makeup knowledge. Something that is false is not linked to the existing reality hence cannot be known. A mere belief may be false or true. Therefore, for a belief to make up knowledge, it must be true. A true belief is linked to the reality. However, a false belief is not in connection with the reality.

There is also the issue of justification. Knowledge is about things that are justified. It implies that there is logic in knowledge. However, a belief may not have any justification. A person may hold propositional attitudes in mind, which are not justified. Such attitudes do not constitute knowledge. However, beliefs or opinions of the mind that have justification make up knowledge. It means they are reasonable and warranted. A belief must fulfill these other two conditions for it to constitute knowledge.

It is important to observe that all beliefs are not developed through reasoning. One feature of knowledge is that it is produced through some reasoning in the mind of a person. There are beliefs, which just pop up without any reasoning. It is only the true and justified beliefs that are products of reasoning hence constitute knowledge.

There is an important rationale for the condition that a belief is justified for it to constitute knowledge. It has been explained in this paper that a belief does not have same characteristics like knowledge. In fact, this paper has shown that a belief is just part of the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge. A belief just satisfies one of the three conditions. There are other characteristics of knowledge such as truth and justification, which are not found in all beliefs. Beliefs may not be justified. In other cases, a belief may be false. Unjustified and false beliefs are disconnected from the reality hence cannot make up knowledge, which is always real.