I'm sorry if you took what I was saying as patronizing; I apologize.

Are we really talking about knowledge when we are talking about anything empirical? I don't think so. It's all subject to induction, which is always at most probable.

My point about anecdotes as "evidence" was not to suggest that they were knowledge but to say that anecdotes can be evidence of something, perhaps not sufficient evidence, but evidence nevertheless. When someone has an experience of racism, their report of it is evidence. Whether that evidence adds up to anything is for further exploration.

However, in no case is the result of the testing knowledge. It's strong or weak, probable or improbable.

That's what I'll throw out there to start this discussion. I don't think there's a stark line between the anecdote and the repeatable experiment, and the meaningfulness of either depend upon a context. If I'm talking about the number of elk in Yellowstone, and I go out and say, "Wow, I just didn't see many this year." That's worthless to answering the question. However, if someone isn't hired for a job because of reasons of race, their telling of that story is directly relevant to that. As instances of racism are sufficient for there to be a problem of racism, we don't need to know whether racism is a general pattern to know that it's a problem. The specific instances are enough. There, the anecdote is relevant. In neither case is the end result concrete knowledge. There's always a chance of being wrong, a chance of falsification, and knowledge is certain if it's anything at all. The end result of evidence isn't knowledge but probability. Evidence is meaningful when relevant. That's how it's used in a court of law, and the threshold of its importance isn't knowledge but probability. Quantifiable and repeatable things are more reliably probable, and that's why science can be quite useful to us. However, that's not the end all and be all of evidence; the end isn't knowledge (though we use the word "know" loosely; I certainly have even within this discussion).

I've laid some of my epistemological cards on the table. I think you have a high burden to show why anecodtes aren't evidence and why the scientific method is necessary to have a conversation of racism in the parks. What might it produce that makes all other discussion moot until it happens? I think science has a far more important role - to provide us with a diversity of colorful metaphors to flavor our discussion.

As for taking things personally, I think you've missed my point. He certainly was talking directly about things you have said; it's not the same thing as to attack you personally. There's a world of difference. Are we identical with the statements we make? He was picking on what you said, which presumably speaks to an idea that you or others may hold. You happened to say it, but that's not a personal attack. It's an attack on the ideas you've shared, which you have no ownership over. That's another reason that anecdotes are potentially useful to us for discussion. Like anything that's communicated, they are able to be taken by someone else and considered in a different light. The aim isn't to repeat so much as to analyze, synthesize, and therefore understand. That is, what does a proposition speak to, and what doesn't it speak to?

But, we should slow this down, perhaps. What do you take knowledge to be? Why? And, how do you know? I have one hunch. I have a hunch that your answer won't be something we could empirically verify.

For those who don't want this to drift far from the subject, think of this claim. Our problems in the parks aren't problems of science so much as they are problems coming to grips with the values we presume to know. Just as racists once presumed to know their superiority; we presume a lot of values that science doesn't shed any new light on. Those are questions of knowledge; they are not questions of empiricism. The questions are fueled by our experience and are not prejudiced simply toward the measurable variety. That's all I'm saying.

Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World