RE: den.list-d Digest V2003 #48

["Vic Forte" <vic@vicf.com>]

> "Conditional opinions" on any subject can only ever provide us with
> provisional knowledge.  In order to grasp a System of Profound Knowledge,
> absolutes are essential.

Dr Deming taught us to be careful about what we claimed to be facts. "There
is no such thing as a fact concerning an empirical observation." (New
Economics Page 105).

How many times have you sat around a table at a meeting, and listened to
people telling you "the fact is ... " - "in the real world ... " and so on.
On the other side of the table someone else asserts the opposite?

When I do this, I know what I am doing, I am asserting my opinions as though
they were facts. My opinions come from my perceptions, and often these
perceptions are tied up with my history and my world view. I believe that
this is true of people in general.

We see what we see. We should be careful about claiming that we see what
actually is, and someone else does not.

The system of profound knowledge does not seem to me to be a set of
absolutes. It looks more like an evolving system based upon learning. I have
found it to be helped by an atmosphere of enquiry, or exploration rather
than one of advocacy and assertion.

I find it useful in life in my thinking, to allow for change. To place
becoming before being. Once I believed in absolutes. Life taught me
humility.