(2.1) Any statement that contains a truth claim (it says something pertaining to reality) can be evaluated along two axis. The first axis evaluates whether the statement is true or false: whether it corresponds to reality or not. The second axis evaluates justification; whether or not the person making the statement has good reason to believe that the statement is true or not. From this, we can place any statement that makes a truth claim in one of the following four quadrants:
(2.2) It’s easy to see how these categories make sense when we’re talking about empirically verifiable truth statements, such as “There is a chair in my kitchen”. Think about all of the relationships that could exist between that statement and reality.
(2.3) First, I could say “I saw a chair in my kitchen when I left the room 3 minutes ago, I am the only person home right now, I haven’t heard any noises from the kitchen that indicate someone removing the chairs, and in my experience things don’t normally vanish from my kitchen without cause, with the exception of the one coffee travel mug that works without spilling, which seems to constantly disappear from my kitchen.” We can agree that this information would constitute justification for me to believe my statement to be true. If all of this is the case, and the chair does actually still exist in my kitchen, then my statement is in category I – it is true, and I have good reason to believe that it is true.
(2.4) Now suppose that my wife came home from work without my knowledge, went silently into the kitchen, and removed the chair a minute after I left the room. In this case, my statement is in category III – it is false, there is no chair in the kitchen, but I am justified in my belief that the statement is true. All of the statements that justified the belief in the first case still apply, even though the statement is now false.
(2.5) Suppose I said, “This is a brand new house, we’ve never been in the kitchen, nobody has been in the kitchen since it was built, no person has ever moved anything into that room, and the builder told us that the house was completely unfurnished when we bought it.” If all of this is the case, and there is actually no chair in the kitchen, then my initial statement “there is a chair in my kitchen” is now in category IV – my statement is false, and I have no good justification for believing that it is true.
(2.6) Category II is an odd case. Suppose that all of my statements from 2.5 still hold, but that unknown to me, even though the rest of the house is unfurnished, the plumber who finished off the sink brought in a chair to sit on while he worked, and forgot to take it with him. In this case, my statement that there is a chair in the kitchen happens to be true, even though I have no good justification for believing that it is true.