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I'm trying to write this in Chinese:

"Knowledge is a subset of true beliefs."

But I can't find a proper word for "beliefs."

Notice that 信仰 is faith. Faith has religious connotations; belief is neutral.

Blaszard
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George Chen
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    信心 is the word you're looking for here, I would translate the above sentence as 知识是真信心的基础 - I switched 'base' or 'basis' in for 'subset' as I don't think subset would translate super clearly into Chinese. – Mou某 Sep 03 '14 at 09:16
  • 信心 is confidence. When I say "my belief is the cat made the noise," I don't mean "I have confidence it was the cat who made the noise." Confidence is more about self-trust. – George Chen Sep 03 '14 at 09:23
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    How about 信念? Anyway I can't understand the meaning of the whole sentence. –  Sep 03 '14 at 09:25
  • 信念 is too religious. One of my beliefs is the ocean is made of water and salt. Can I use 信念 here? – George Chen Sep 03 '14 at 09:30
  • If someone says the morning star and the envening star are two heavenly bodies, then this belief is not true, thus it can't count as knowledge. – George Chen Sep 03 '14 at 09:32
  • 信心 can mean a lot of things one dictionary uses "confidence; faith; belief" to define it. – Mou某 Sep 03 '14 at 09:40
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    @GeorgeChen you seem to have a pretty poor grasp of Chinese - you might want to accept what people tell you instead of fighting it each time. – Mou某 Sep 03 '14 at 09:42
  • Most Chinese words, I'm afraid, won't survive my scrutiny. How much non-sense we've talking everyday! – George Chen Sep 03 '14 at 09:46
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    From the whole sentence's meaning, you might say 知识是正确认知(看法 or 认识 or ...)的一个子集, no need stuck with one word's translation. BTW: According to here, true belief is translated as 真信念. –  Sep 03 '14 at 09:56
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    true belief is a proper noun, so if 真信念 is the most popular translation, It's OK. People will understand it. –  Sep 03 '14 at 10:05
  • Thanks, @songyuanyao. and user3306356. What I'm doing now requires extreme precision. Pardon me for being too picky. You all have a great day! – George Chen Sep 03 '14 at 10:10

2 Answers2

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I would say:

知識是一種信念, 但信念不必是知識.

I thus translate it because of the following reasons.

1) A belief is something that is not tested or proved.

2) Knowledge in natural sciences is something that passes lots of tests. But, it is still to a certain extent a belief; for there is no way to be sure that knowledge in natural sciences will not be disputed by new evidence.

Therefore, knowledge can be viewed as the collection of tested beliefs.

Yes
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If you are referring to the meaning of followed picture, maybe you can say "知识是客观事实和主观认知交集的子集".

enter image description here

dumduke
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  • This seems a pretty boring translation... – dumduke Sep 03 '14 at 09:33
  • You know exactly my context. But the translation is way off. 客观事实 is facts, not truths. 主观认知 if that is belief, that must be newly invented word. – George Chen Sep 03 '14 at 09:37
  • That picture is wrong too. truths is a subset of beliefs, knowledge is a subset of truths. More succinctly, true or false is a property of beliefs and knowledge is a subset of true beliefs. But I'm curious where you get it? – George Chen Sep 03 '14 at 09:41
  • I swear I didn't down vote you, @caffHuang. I appreciate your participation. – George Chen Sep 03 '14 at 09:42
  • The picture came from Wikipedia. I'm not convenient to get the page URL right now. You should can find it easily by querying the sentence you want translate. – dumduke Sep 03 '14 at 10:16
  • I got it. http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%9F%A5%E8%AF%86%E8%AE%BA. Thanks, @caffhuang! – George Chen Sep 03 '14 at 10:18