How can we distinguish between knowledge, belief and opinion?

The TOK prompt that I have selected is "How can we distinguish between knowledge, belief and opinion?". The objects that I have selected are a picture of The World Book Encyclopedia, a picture of the can of tomato soup that was thrown at the Van Gogh painting "Sunflowers", and a Tweet about unpopular opinions.

This object is an image of The World Book Encyclopedia, an encyclopedia published in 1979 by World Book-Childcraft International, Inc.¹, that I have seen in some libraries, but also on Amazon. This object has been chosen to represent knowledge, which, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is defined as "understanding of or information about a subject that you get by experience or study, either known by one person or by people generally".²

The reasons for which I am using this object to symbolise knowledge are that it has been written using verified sources of information (making it a reputable and authoritative source itself), it is based on definitive and proven facts, as opposed to simply abstract thoughts or ideas, it has been written to be intentionally unbiased, it is not emotionally bound, subjective to one person or group, and, due to its objective and fact-based nature, the degree of which it is subject to change is very low (compared to belief and opinion).

The link between this object and the prompt is that this object distinctly serves as a physical embodiment of knowledge only, not belief or opinion. Furthermore, the contribution to the prompt's answer that this object gives is that knowledge can be distinguished from belief and opinion not only by its factual and definitive character, and reliance on verified, reputable, and authoritative sources (to be written in the first place), but also its low likelihood of requiring major edits, and its quality of being free from emotional influence or bias.

This object is an image of the can of soup that the two Just Stop Oil protesters threw at the Van Gogh painting "Sunflowers" on the 14^th of October 2022 at The National Gallery in London, UK.³ This object has been chosen to represent belief, which, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is "the feeling of being certain that something exists or is true".⁴

The reasons for which I am using this object to symbolise belief are that the thrower's principal motive for performing the act was her strong beliefs regarding oil's negative impacts on climate change (and therefore demonstrated these by throwing this object at the oil painting), the context / event in which this object was used was highly emotional (as opposed to how The World Book Encyclopedia would typically be used), and the basis for the use of this object was not fully proven or based off concrete / definitive evidence, even though there may be some knowledge-based evidence. However, it is my view that the primary motivation was belief-based, instead of knowledge or opinion-based. In addition, the beliefs held by the thrower and her acquaintance are subjective but are indeed shared but many other people (then again, many disagree), similarly to other types of beliefs, namely religion. Also, these beliefs are subject to change, and the degree of susceptibility to change here is undeniably greater than knowledge, but less so than opinion.

This object links to the prompt as this object was used in a specific real-world time, place, and context in order to prominently bring attention to the beliefs held by the thrower and others worldwide. It contributes to the prompt's answer by distinguishing it from knowledge and opinion in the sense that while beliefs are not objective, nor are they based on specific, concrete evidence, they are shared, people feel strongly / emotionally attached to them, and they are somewhat susceptible to change, contrasting with knowledge and opinion.

This object is the tweet written by trash jones (@jzux) made on the 2^nd of November 2022, at 14:06, asking readers to post their unpopular opinions.⁵ This object has been selected to represent opinion, which, according to the Oxford Languages dictionary, is defined as "a view or judgement formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge"⁶.

The reasons for which I am using this object to represent opinion are that it specifically mentions opinions several times, but more significantly, it shows that opinions are not based on definitive facts (subjective rather than objective and evidenced by the lack of explanation), and thus can be interesting, random, and unpredictable, for example the given example of thinking that "golden retrievers are annoying" is an opinion that I have never heard before, nor do I agree or understand, however, due to it being an opinion, it is not confined to a binary true / false evaluation, and anyone is entitled to validly hold it. This emphasises the key roles that personal experience and individual uniquity hold in the formation of opinions, rather than facts and statistics (contrasting with knowledge). This is taken further by the authors willingness to read more (as he or she is asking readers to post theirs too), as it demonstrates a desire for diversity and variation (unlike beliefs, which are typically meant to be shared), via the endless possibilities that peoples' "unpopular opinions" can be. Another distinct characteristic of opinions is how, whilst not explicitly demonstrated in this object, they are the most susceptible to change out of knowledge, belief, and opinion (due to their highly personal and emotionally-bound essence, much unlike knowledge).

This object links to the prompt by it demonstrating opinions' endless range of possibilities, lack of fact-basis, and freedom from binary evaluation.

Amazon. (n.d.). The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume 9 (Volume 9, H). Retrieved from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/World-Book-Encyclopedia-Book-Childcraft-International/dp/B0013JSVUI

Cambridge Dictionary. (n.d.). Belief. Retrieved from Cambridge Dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/belief

Cambridge Dictionary. (n.d.). Encyclopedia. Retrieved from Cambridge Dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/encyclopedia

Cambridge Dictionary. (n.d.). Knowledge. Retrieved from Cambridge Dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/knowledge

Capoot, A. (2022, October 15). Oil protesters appear in court after throwing soup at Van Gogh painting. Retrieved from CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/15/oil-protesters-appear-in-court-threw-soup-van-gogh-painting.html

Indiana University. (2012, June 19). The World Book Encyclopedia. Retrieved from Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20120619073314/http://www.indiana.edu/~librcs d/libguide/ency/12.html

Jones, T. (2022, November 2). Trash Jones on Twitter: "what is your most benign unpopular opinion? I don't mean like "the earth is flat" type of unpopular opinion, I mean like "I think golden retrievers are annoying" unpopular opinion". Retrieved from Twitter: https://twitter.com/jzux/status/1587808463597588482?lang=en

Oxford Languages. (n.d.). Opinion - Google Search. Retrieved from Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=opinion