Epistemology and questions

In the comments, Vladimir graciously replied to my ambivalence about his post on God and Authority. And I hit an epistemology discussion. Here goes:

When you approach a question...such as "what method of government results in the greatest likelihood of the best outcomes over time for the weakest citizens" (Formalism, Rawls, Aretae in 1 question)...it turns out that what most folks think of as one question is not. It's actually several. Though I'll admit that fewer than 1 in 20 in the US would answer other than "democracy"

1. Does the question make sense? Do green dreams sleep furiously? I'm personally with the positivists and Rand here...if you can't reduce what you're talking about to stuff you can touch/see/experience, then at BEST you can't talk coherently about it, and at worst, you don't know what you're talking about.
   
2. Is the question well-enough specified to have an answer? What do we mean by weakest citizens, and best outcomes? How much time? Are we asking about now, or 100 years ago? Those are nowhere near as clearly defined as we would like to think those are. Usually answers to this are assumed so as to bolster whatever case the arguer is making.
3. Can we answer this question at all? Does some set of theoretical experiments over infinite time give us an answer to the question? Or will no set of theoretical experiments ever give us an answer? If no set of experiments can give us an answer, one must become suspicious of the question as being unanswerable.
   
4. Is the answer accessible to us somehow? Does some set of practical experiments give us the capability to find out. How many grains of sand sit on Pismo Beach at 2:45 pm on Monday afternoon is unknowable. Sure, we can estimate...and even get within a factor of 10...but that's about it.
5. With empiricism accepted, what does reason demand we believe?
6. What ought we to believe, based on the expected outcomes of our belief, and our ethics?
7. What is it beautiful to believe? Surprisingly large amounts of Math are done this way.
8. What does our clan demand we believe? Monkeybrains FTW.
9. How much do we trust our answer?
10. How much should we trust our answer according to the god who is Bayes.
    
11. What answer should we act on (I believe that between X,Y,and Z, X is 60% likely to be true, but has mild consequences...and Y is 10% likely to be true, but has catastrophic consequences if true, and not acted on)? Poorly phrased, for my poker-playing friends, but it'll do.
    
12. What's the answer as understood by a lay-person, assuming all the prior problems are cleared up.
    

Try these questions with the question: What method of government, from above.
Try again, with I'm playing online $1/$2 NLHE on Stars with a short stack, was folded to on the button, minraised with trash, and was reraised 3BB by the new guy in the big blind with a 200BB stack. The flop is rainbow trash, I now have middle pair, and minraised again into a pot-sized reraise. What does he have?
Try again, with Does God Exist?

I claim primarily that the answers to these questions do not always align...and most especially, the answers to 5 and 12 are not obviously connected.