Gadamer, Polanyi and relativism (A recent presentation)

Michael Dummet (plagiarising Kant) calls it “the scandal of philosophy,” that philosophy has no systematic methodology, while Richard Bernstein says the following:

Hovering in the background of this pursuit [of turning philosophy into a rigorous science] is what might be called ‘the Cartesian Anxiety’—the fear or apprehension that if there are no … basic constraints, no foundations, no determinate ‘rules of the game’, then we are confronted with intellectual and moral chaos where anything goes. 

Today I want to consider two thinkers who have overcome their Cartesian anxiety, but who emphatically do not believe that anything goes. The question I am working on in my doctoral studies is whether they are successful in holding on to a sensible notion of truth without either falling backwards into Cartesian neurosis or tripping over their own feet into the relativist puddle.

It is an interesting accident of history that in the space of a couple of years in the mid 20th century, two of the most significant critiques of the Enlightenment dream of certain knowledge and neutral objectivity were published. Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge in 1958 and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method in 1960. Yet apparently neither author was significantly influenced by the other.

For Polanyi, once one of the world’s leading physical chemists, the focus of his attention is the knowledge that comes from the natural sciences, while for Gadamer the project is about human understanding, the object of which ranges from history and texts to art and music.

Today I will explore some parallels between Polanyi’s epistemology and Gadamerian hermeneutics, focussing particularly on aspects relevant to the charges of relativism levelled against them.

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Tacitus' project

Tacitus’ research starts with the philosopher Richard Rorty, an advocate of relativism. Rorty believes that knowledge is culturally constructed rather than universally true. (Is that true? Really?)

Tacitus disagrees with Rorty. Tacitus thinks that science, as well as other disciplines such as theology, morality and aesthetics, can all make truth claims. But no claims to truth escape the fact that we are always and inevitably caught up in the very world that we want to know about.

The implication of this is that all knowing is a circular process—an interpretive process. But it’s not a vicious circle. If you enjoy the technical jargon, Tacitus' research is largely about hermeneutics.

Tacitus is attracted by the Continental philosophical tradition which challenges the error of seeing and talking about the world in terms of distinct subjects and objects. The problem with that idea is that it assumes we can separate ourselves from ‘the world’.

Tacitus is also attracted to analyses of science that question the ideals of certainty and proof. These ideals don’t hold philosophical water and they lead to a view that only science is on about truth.

But Tacitus is not a relativist about scientific knowledge. For example, Tacitus believes there is good reason to think that human activity causes climate change. But that doesn’t mean we can expect final proof or certainty in the matter.

So, in the face of Rorty's relativism, Tacitus wants to say that in both science and 'non-science', we arrive at knowledge in a similar way, a hermeneutic way. And part of that knowledge lies beyond explicit explanation. It is tacit knowledge. For an example of tacit knowledge, just think of how you recognized your mother’s face long before you could talk.

You may have heard echoes above of the voices of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Michael Polanyi. Tacitus is pretty keen on them. Gadamer was a philosopher who wrote about truth in the human sciences. Polanyi was a scientist who turned to philosophy of science because he was concerned about the way so called scientific knowledge was misunderstood.

Do Gadamer and Polanyi have the resources to take on Rorty? If we go on feeding Tacitus honey sandwiches for the next year or two then he/she will finish his/her research and we might know the answer.