[RC] GROCS Part 1: The Knowledge of Reality

[Dr. Ernie Prabhakar]

Hi all,

As I'm continuing to process the Great Libertarian Dispute, I've  
become convinced that the underlying issues are the same ones I  
wrestled with in my Manifesto: The Ground Rules of Civil Society  
(GROCS):

http://www.radicalcentrism.org/manifesto.html

Alas, I must concede that GROCS -- partly due to its extreme brevity  
-- is not the most self-explanatory document. So, I figured this is a  
good time to walk through some of the key points with all of you.   
This isn't completely definitive, but hopefully will at least provide  
a flavor of my thinking.  Let's start with Reality.

Reality ↑
I believe beliefs matter:
    Truth is absolute
       Knowledge is relative
          Value is complex

My first pillar is an attempt to describe the shape of reality, which  
touches on the nature of truth, knowledge, and value.  It provides me  
with a general context for understanding other people's views, which  
in turn is fundamental to my vision of being "radical centrist."

To clarify something we touched on earlier:  radical centrism, in my  
view, is not primarily about the state, or even about politics; that  
apparent bias was an unfortunate side-effect of the way our  
conversation developed.  For me, it started in a quest to understand  
the nature of objective reality, personal character, and human  
community.

In particular, the above characterization of reality informs my  
understanding of knowledge ("epistemology", to use the technical  
term). At the risk of being pedantic, I summarize my epistemology as:

     1. Belief comes from experience interpreted by a character
     2  Knowledge comes from belief articulated in a community
     3.  Experience is comes from knowledge applied to a reality

The key point is that knowledge depends implicitly on the character,  
community, and reality where it was created -- as well as how it is  
interpreted, articulated, and applied. Put another way: everything we  
think we know is embedded in some context, including language.  Just  
because a particular belief is 'true' in our experience doesn't mean  
it remains true when extrapolated indefinitely.  There are no  
Platonic forms we just "know" and can apply indiscriminately without  
risk of error.

That doesn't mean everything is subjective.  For example, the  
statement "A day consists of 24 hours" describes an objective fact,  
but is still context-based with a finite level of accuracy: e.g., it  
assumes we're talking about the earth, calendar not sidereal days,  
ignoring leap seconds, etc.  Thus, I can't tell whether that (or any)  
statement is true or false without knowing both the source (origin)  
and destination (application) contexts.   However, given sufficient  
context, truth (or at least accuracy) *does* become objectively well- 
defined.

To me, that is the essence of both the scientific method and  
philosophical debate:  we all have theories based on certain  
interpretations of certain facts, which we've proven true with X  
level of confidence and Y level of precision in domain Z.   The  
question is whether or how that model can be extrapolated to new  
areas of application -- and how much accuracy and confidence we have  
in the results.

Does that make sense to anyone? Does it appear at all useful?

Thoughts?  Reactions?  Total apathy?  Utter confusion?

Manifestly yours,
-- Ernie P.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
-----------------
Ernest N. Prabhakar, Ph.D. <DrErnie at RadicalCentrism.org>
The mission of www.RadicalCentrism.org is to help individuals,  
communities, and systems become sustainably centered — happy,  
healthy & holy — by being properly rooted in humility, justice & love.

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