From joe at breskin.com  Thu May  7 05:36:24 2009
From: joe at breskin.com (joe breskin)
Date: Thu, 7 May 2009 02:36:24 -0700
Subject: [Psgc4coop] I am not merely pulling this epistemology stuff out of
	my back pocket ...
Message-ID: <E6B67AE4AA3F49BFBF12DA3EA18CD0BF@littlejoe>

from	joe breskin <joe.breskin at gmail.com>
to	Briar Kolp <briar at ptfoodcoop.coop>,
Dorn Campbell <dornorma at cablespeed.com>,
pogo here <herepog2 at gmail.com>,
Steve Moore <sgmoore at att.net>,
Susan Langlois <sslanglois at gmail.com>,
Ruth Apter <twowetdogs at rockisland.com>,
coopboard at olympus.net


date	Thu, May 7, 2009 at 2:31 AM
subject	I am not merely pulling this epistemology stuff out of my back pocket ...
mailed-by	gmail.com
2:31 AM (2 minutes ago)
	
The following observation and pair of references below are offered in DIRECT response to the discussions that occurred at the Board Meeting Tuesday night. If there is any honest desire on the part of Board Members and staff to reach agreement, then it is both timely and necessary that we get the discussion focused on measurable facts on which we can agree.  

This requires both measurement and method. Areas that can only be addressed as "differing opinions" are almost certainly irrelevant to the discussions we are supposed to be having, since agreement on purely subjective matters is both an exercise in futility and a logical impossibility. In fact, one of the more popular definitions of insanity involves practicing the same ritual again and again, expecting wildly different results.

That is why the POGO Committee, in developing its proposal, focused its effort on objective, measurable criteria for performance evaluation, and why management MUST provide measurement-based performance information, if they hope to satisfy both the Board's and their own needs for strategic (forward-looking) and corrective (backward-looking) actions in the future.

=================  POSTULATE #1 ================

 It does not follow that every item which we confidently accept as physical knowledge has actually been certified by the Court; our confidence is that it would be certified by the Court if it were submitted.

But it does follow that every item of physical knowledge is of a form which might be submitted to the Court.

It must be such that we can specify (although it may be impracticable to carry out) an observational procedure which would decide whether it is true or not. 

Clearly a statement cannot be tested by observation unless it is an assertion about the results of observation.

Every item of physical knowledge must therefore be an assertion of what has been or would be the result of carrying out a specified observational procedure.

------ Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington,

Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, OM (28 December 1882 ? 22 November 1944) was Plumian Professor of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge. He was arguably the most important astrophysicist of the early 20th century, and was also a successful populariser. He became world-famous in 1919, when his observations of the bending of starlight near the eclipsed sun proved the correctness of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_Stanley_Eddington



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology

Epistemology (from Greek ???????? - episteme-, "knowledge, science" + ?????, "logos") or theory of knowledge is the branch ofphilosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge.[1] It addresses the questions:

? What is knowledge?

? How is knowledge acquired?

? What do people know?

? How do we know what we know?

? Why do we know what we know?

Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief, and justification. It also deals with the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims.