Elgin 1/2

I find appealing qualities is all three of the epistemological stances (perfect, imperfect, and pure procedural) and am having a difficult time ascribing exclusively to any one of them.

Perfect procedural epistemology is, from my personal ideological perspective, the most appealing. It has the most stringent requirements for truth, yet is so naive to think itself infallible. I am drawn to its mathematical/logical approach, but since any error is unthinkable(according to Elgin) it ends up dogmatizing, and any error that does result from this process becomes entrenched.

The appealing aspects of imperfect procedural epistemology are its ability to answer difficult questions, and more importantly, the admitted fallibility of the process. Any sort of knowledge obtained through this process is only tentatively believed, and the believer is willing to abandon any belief once a better one presents itself. If only there were some middle way between perfect and imperfect epistemologies!

I do not find pure procedural epistemology particularly appealing, but I do find it necessary. We often come across technological devices we do not fully understand and places we are not familiar with, so we must rely on a manual or set of directions to operate independently. We have faith in the procedure itself, and when it does not produce the expected results, the actor generally assumes that he/she somehow screwed up the procedure.