Re: [UUPoly-L] Epistemology and Polyamory

[deafraven@aol.com]

Don't ask me how but this got me to thinking that there's a weaknness to every method of investigation for example I would think that science would me limited to underestanding love in the sense it could only measure physical traits, descrine and explain possible behavior and other outside and possibly pyschological guesswork but bottom line I guess is we all come to decide what love or any abstract emotion by how we interpret and apply it to our lives, not just on what people think. Hmmm?
------Original Message------
From: Wishful Thinking
Sender: uupoly-l-bounces+deafraven=aol.com@uupa.org
To: UUPoly List
ReplyTo: UUPoly List
Sent: Sep 29, 2008 8:16 AM
Subject: Re: [UUPoly-L] Epistemology and Polyamory


> Statistical is useful for establishing a proposition, but anecdotal is only good for countering/weakening an absolutist proposition.I disagree. Anecdotal evidence, combined with "hunches", becomes the fertile ground from which new hypothesis, theories, and paradigms spring. I believe that at the onset of "scientific" discovery you find the same epistemological foundation (anecdotal evidence and hunches) that you find in most other traditions. (I say most because one might argue, for example, that certain religious knowledge is founded on revelation and hence falls into a different epistemological foundation.) It is what you do with that anecdotal evidence and hunches, how you warrant it and how you subsequently employ it, that distinguishes science from other traditions.
 
Here is my take on why this is so important in the context of poly. I doubt we can scientifically prove the efficacy or value of poly (or mono or other life and love styles). Its value to us grows out of our experiences in the context of it as a way of living/loving as evidenced by the amount of our conversations on this list that are anecdotal and not further warranted. So suppose that statistically someone "proved" that mono was a "superior" model for relationships ... would you suddenly switch to mono? In the alternative, do I need for science to find the poly gene for me to be OK with being poly? Poly, to me, is about the touch of skin on skins, soul on souls, the feel of three loving people (or more or less ... whatever) under the same roof, the textures and the weaves of love. 
 
I suppose I am a relativist in that in the context of poly I turn to phenomenological and existential epistemologies while turning without problem to science, "magickal thinking", revelation, aesthetics, poststructuralism, postmodernism, and feminism (as well as to "blends" of these epistemologies) in other aspects of my life.
 
Best - Wishful
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