The myth of the given?

My thesis: the world is objectively given but it is not given objectively.

Hence we can have truth without proof; we can live, love and die for causes without the certainty that the sceptic demands.

Michael Polanyi’s tacit hermeneutic philosophy of science—for the layperson!

Recently a friend of mine by the name of skandalon (skandalon.net) gave a talk in the US. Here is the text of his talk.

The abstract for today’s talk makes some wild promises. I’ve promised to talk of Martin Heidegger’s Being-in-the-world and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics as well as making connections between them and Michael Polanyi’s understanding of science. And I’ve promised to do so in a way that is accessible to the layperson. We’ll see how we go!

I have decided that the best way forward is to let you in on a conversation I had recently with a renowned biochemist and Nobel laureate. He’s an Australian acquaintance who likes fishing and hunting crocodiles.

Professor Hermen E. Utic is responsible for a number of significant advances in his field over the last 25 years. And he’s the quintessential Polanyian scientist. He’s engaging to listen to; his eyes light up as he talks of his research; and his passionate commitment to the search for truth is obvious. Professor Utic is convinced that the secret to his success lies in a combination of two things; firstly, his own innate attitudes, abilities and personality; and secondly that he works for a university that values theoretical research and gives him freedom to pursue possibilities where they lead.

Utic enjoyed philosophy in his student years and says he particularly enjoyed the renowned continental philosophers Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. But Professor Utic soon turned to science, somewhat influenced by an Australian philosophical climate, which was not known for its love of continental philosophy.

Given that some of the roots of Utic’s views on science lay with the German philosophers of interpretation, it was there we had to start. My personal experience of trying to read Heidegger and Gadamer decades ago was not pleasant; I particularly found Heidegger convoluted, obscure, and I was not at all convinced he was actually on to something. Talk of ‘Dasein’s Being-in-the-world’ and speaking of ‘language as the house of being’ mystified me.

As one wit said, analytic philosophers typically accuse the continental ones of being insufficiently clear, while the continental philosophers accuse the analytic ones of Being insufficiently. I hope today’s talk is both clear and takes account of Being.

Anyway, I started by asking Professor Utic what it was that he had learned from Heidegger and Gadamer. Here’s some of what he had to say—though I should apologise for the recording quality; he’s a busy man so I had to catch up with him at a cricket match as he was preparing to go in to bat.

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Language and truth

Our choice of language is a matter of life or death because language creates candidates for truth.