The Epistemological Value of Assurance in Comparison to Certainty, Conventional Knowledge and Suspicion

The analysis of epistemological value of ‘assurance’ is one of the most applicable discussions in epistemology. The solution to this issue is dependent upon the relationship between assurance and other grades of knowledge. The present article is seeking to give a new attitude about the validity of assurance, and has been organized in two general sections. In the first section, we refer to works written by philosophers, theologians and theoreticians in religious laws to compare assurance, knowledge and suspicion, and explain that assurance is joined to normal knowledge. In the second section, various views on criterion of assurance are evaluated, and it is clarified that assurance is not like suspicion which is invalid and needing to be validated; rather, it is valid just as normal knowledge. The research method in this study is documentary-analytical.