DOCSLIB.ORG

THE STRUCTURE of KNOWING Existential Trust As an Epistemologica! Category

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
THE STRUCTURE of KNOWING Existential Trust As an Epistemologica! Category HILDUR KALMAN THE STRUCTURE OF KNOWING Existential Trust as an Epistemologica! Category SWEDISH SCIENCE PRESS, UPPSALA. SWEDEN HILDUR, KALMAN THE STRUCTURE OIF KNOWING Existential Trust As an Epistemologica! Category Umeå, 1999 Institutionen för filosofi och lingvistik Umeå universitet 901 87 Umeå Akademisk avhandling som med vederbörligt tillstånd av rektorsämbetet vid Umeå universitet för avläggande av filosofie doktorsexamen offentligen försvaras i Hörsal G, Humanisthuset fredagen den 26 februari 1999 kl. 10.15 ISBN 91-7191-579-6 ISSN 0345-0155 Hildur Kalman The Structure of Knowing: Existential Trust As an Epistemologica! Category Department of Philosophy and Linguistics, Umeå University Umeå 1998, xii + 2 03 pp. Monograph Acta Universitatis Umensis, Umeå Studies in the Humanities 145 ISSN 0345-0155 ISBN 91-7191-579-6 Distributed by Swedish Science Press, Box 118, S-751 04 Uppsala, Sweden ABSTRACT This thesis investigates the structure of knowing, and it argues that existential trust is an epistemological category. The aim of the dissertation is to develop a view according to which all human activity is seen as an activity of a lived body, and in which the understanding of the structure of such activity is regarded as central for the solution even of epistemological problems. This view is not rooted in any one philosophical tradition, but circles around activity of the lived body. It connects thinkers who in other respects belong to different "isms" in philosophy. Central to the dissertation are Aristotle, Dewey, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, Ryle, Anscombe, Polanyi, and Grene. Michael Polanyi's concept of tacit knowledge, and connected concepts like attend to, attend from, and subsidiary awareness, are presented. Different kinds of subsidiary awareness, not noted by Polanyi, are distinguished. It is also argued that Polanyi has not seen all the implicatons of his view that instruments can be interiorized and be part of the lived body. Conversely, parts of the normally lived body can be exteriorized. Nor has Polanyi seen that one has subsidiary awareness of oneself as a certain kind ofperson. This fact, in turn, is shown to have implications for the way we constitute ourselves as agents. Since we are engendered agents, we always attend from gender. In the last decade, the concept of trust has definitely entered epistemology. Mostly, it has been in terms of trusting testimony and/or testifier. This thesis wants to deepen that account. There is a more fundamental kind of trust, namely trust in oneself and trust in the world. It is called existential trust, and it is of epistemological importance, too. Existential trust, it is claimed, is necessary in all acts of knowing. Probably, this fact is hard to discover without having recourse to a distinction like that between attending from and attending to. Existential trust is shown in the way we attend from something. Observation and thinking are central epistemological categories, of course, but they should be supplemented by trust. Without trust they cannot perform any epistemological work. Linguistically, 'to know' is a state verb. Superficially, it describes only a state, not an activity. This fact, however, does not contradict the view of knowledge put forward in the dissertation. To know is to have a disposition to perform successfully either some kind of action (= knowing how), or to perform some kind of true assertive speech act (= knowing that). Basically, knowing is an activity. Keywords: lived body, knowing, existential trust, tacit knowing, Polanyi, subsidiary awareness, experience, gender, epistemology, from-to structure, agency. THE STRUCTURE OF KNOWING ACTA UNIVERSITATIS UMENSIS Umeå Studies in the Humanities 145 THE STRUCTURE OF KNOWING Existential Trust As ail Epistemologica! Category HILDUR KALMAN SWEDISH SCIENCE PRESS © Hildur Kalman Series Editor: Per Råberg Faculty of Arts Umeå University S- 901 87 Umeå Cover picture: Schack matt, by Birthe Wesselhöft Distributed by Swedish Science Press Box 118 S-751 04 Uppsala, Sweden Printed in Sweden by Eländers Gotab, Stockholm, 1999 ISSN 0345-0155 ISBN 91-7191-579-6 This is the war of the words, the worst war ever This is the war over who names what and who listens to whom and who says what in which voice who is heeded and who is ignored who interrupts and who listens. Aristotle says that slaves talk indirectly; they circle around the question, and take a long time to come to the point. That's how slaves talk; But you know, you have a servant problem these days: we're insolent and poorly trained in matters of deference and genuflection, and all too likely to talk back. In the Great War of Words for Control of the Naming of Reality we have a bad attitude we're reckless and we're rude, we name things better left unsaid we show things you see in your mind's eye but think we don't know you see we show you things you shut out of your mind's eye as nonexistent, like us, for example. From The Great War for Control of Reality: (Her Voice) by Adrian Piper To my children Teitur and Thor, without whom not Hildur Kalman The Structure of Knowing: Existential Trust As an Epistemological Category Department of Philosophy and Linguistics, Umeå university Umeå 1998, xii + 20 3 pp. Monograph Acta Universitatis Umensis, Umeå Studies in the Humanities 145 ISSN 0345-0155 ISBN 91-7191-579-6 Distributed by Swedish Science Press, Box 118, S-751 04 Uppsala, Sweden ABSTRACT This thesis investigates the structure of knowing, and it argues that existential trust is an epistemological category. The aim of the dissertation is to develop a view according to which all human activity is seen as an activity of a lived body, and in which the understanding of the structure of such activity is regarded as central for the solution even of epistemological problems. This view is not rooted in any one philosophical tradition, but circles around activity of the lived body. It connects thinkers who in other respects belong to different "isms" in philosophy. Central to the dissertation are Aristotle, Dewey, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, Ryle, Anscombe, Polanyi, and Grene. Michael Polanyi's concept of tacit knowledge, and connected concepts like attend to, attend from, and subsidiary awareness, are presented. Different kinds of subsidiary awareness, not noted by Polanyi, are distinguished. It is als o argued that Polanyi has not seen all the implicatons of his view that instruments can be interiorized and be part of the lived body. Conversely, parts of the normally lived body can be exteriorized. Nor has Polanyi seen that one has subsidiary awareness of oneself as a certain kind of person. This fact, in turn, is shown to have implications for the way we constitute ourselves as agents. Since we are engendered agents, we always attend from gender. In the last decade, the concept of trust has definitely entered epistemology. Mostly, it has been in terms of trusting testimony and/or testifier. This thesis wants to deepen that account. There is a more fundamental kind of trust, namely trust in oneself and trust in the world. It is called existential trust, and it is of epistemological importance, too. Existential trust, it is claimed, is necessary in all acts of knowing. Probably, this fact is hard to discover without having recourse to a distinction like that between attending from and attending to. Existential trust is shown in the way we attend from something. Observation and thinking are central epistemological categories, of course, but they should be supplemented by trust. Without trust they cannot perform any epistemological work. Linguistically, 'to know' is a state verb. Superficially, it describes only a state, not an activity. This fact, however, does not contradict the view of knowledge put forward in the dissertation. To know is to have a disposition to perform successfully either some kind of action (= knowing how), or to perform some kind of true assertive speech act (= knowing that). Basically, knowing is an activity. Keywords: lived body, knowing, existential trust, tacit knowing, Polanyi, subsidiary awareness, experience, gender, epistemology, from-to structure, agency. vii Table of contents Table of contents vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Epistemologica! questions 2 Epistemology as explanation of episteme 3 Aristotelian praxis 5 Theoria as a form of praxis 9 Practical knowledge as paradigm knowledge 16 A pragmatic approach to epistemology 18 The knower and the known 25 Epistemology or psychology? 27 Focus on knowing 28 Philosophy and the body 32 Chapter 2: Tacit knowing 34 The structure of tacit knowing 36 Knowing that and knowing what 37 Tacit knowing 38 The structure and shaping of experience 40 Boundaries of the self 41 The self in growth 44 Problematizing the structural relation of tacit knowing 44 Problematizing subsidiary awareness 45 Different kinds of subsidiary awareness 48 Conclusions on subsidiary awareness 53 Attention 54 Summing up 55 Chapter 3: The epistemic conditions 57 Knowers in epistemological communities 58 Communal knowing 59 Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft 62 "Figures of thought" 66 Conclusions on knowers in epistemological communities 69 Language, meaning and making sense 70 Language 72 Observations as theory-laden 82 The corporeal in forms of life 86 Experience 86 Conclusions on language, meaning and making sense 92 The lived body 93 viii Knowing ourselves in action 93 Intentional action 95 Gendered knowing 100 The indeterminate borders of the lived body 102 Semantic aspects of the lived body 109 Selves
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Xerox University Microfilms
    INFORMATION TO USERS This malarial was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. The following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or patterns which may appear on this reproduction. 1. The sign or "target" for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is "Missing Page(s)". If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting thru an image and duplicating adjacent pages to insure you complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a large round black mark, it is an indication that the photographer suspected that the copy may have moved during exposure and thus cause a blurred image. You will find a good image of the page in the adjacent frame. 3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., was part of the material being photographed the photographer followed a definite method in "sectioning" the material. It is customary to begin photoing at the upper left hand corner of a large sheet and to continue photoing from left to right in equal sections with a small overlap. If necessary, sectioning is continued again - beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete. 4. The majority of users indicate that the textual content is of greatest value, however, a somewhat higher quality reproduction could be made from "photographs" if essential to the understanding of the dissertation.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Download
    Ethics in Progress (ISSN 2084-9257). Vol. 11 (2020). No. 1, Art. #1, pp. 4-19. DOI:10.14746/eip.2020.1.1 Typhus in Buchenwald: Can the Story Be Told? Ilana Löwy (CERMES; Paris; [email protected]) ORCID: 0000-0001-6963-0578 Fleck in Buchenwald In a 1948 Ludwik Fleck published an article “On experiments on human beings” which discussed the regulation of such experiments (Fleck 1948, 1052-1054). He pu- blished this text shortly after testifying at the Nuremberg trial about experiments which involved deliberate infection of healthy people with typhus (Flecks’ testimony at the knowledge of German war research on this disease. He spent the last part of World War I.G. Farben trial in Nuremberg, February 12, 1948/2007). Fleck himself has a first-hand II in Block 50 in the Buchenwald camp, where he and other prisoners produced a typhus vaccine for the German army. Block 50 was in the immediate vicinity of the infamous block 46, where Nazi doctors – the same who were responsible for the vaccine produc- tion – conducted experiments on human beings. “Experiments” may be an inaccurate word. Buchenwald was a criminal endeavor of a criminal state in an insane world whe- re no normal rules applied. The so-called “medical experiments” conducted in Block 46 had very distant relation to medical research, and very strong links with mass murder. On the other hand, the insane world of the concentration camp contained ele- ments which linked it to a more “conventional” science. Nazi doctors who conduc- ted barbarous experiments on prisoners aspired to a conventional professional ca- employed absolutely unacceptable means (read, assassination), but might have still reer.
    [Show full text]
  • Conventions, Styles of Thinking and Relativism
    S t udia Philosophica Wratislaviensia Supplementary Volume, English Edition 2012 KRZYSZTOF SZLACHCIC University of Wrocław Conventions, Styles of Thinking and Relativism. Some Remarks on the Dispute between I. Dąmbska and L. Fleck* Abstract My comments are focused on the debate between Izydora Dąmbska and Ludwik Fleck. In the course of their debate, which took place in the 1930’s, they discussed some basic issues of epistemology, focusing on the problems of the sources of scientific knowledge, objectivity of knowledge, and truth. The aim of the paper is to place their debate in a the historical context and to demonstrate the novelty of Fleck’s arguments, especially in comparison with Thomas S. Kuhn’s later contribution. I also examine the dominant interpretations of Fleck’s theory of knowledge, as well as the reasons for which his philosophical ideas, especially Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache (1935) have fallen into the philosophical obliv- ion. I argue that Fleck’s views, although innovative, were less radical than it is commonly thought. My comments focus on the polemic that ensued in the 1930s between Izydora Dąmbska and Ludwik Fleck. The authors involved in it either directly or indirectly referred to the fundamental questions of the theory of cognition: the question of the sources of scientific knowledge, objectivity of knowledge (its communicabil- ity), relative nature of scientific knowledge, truth. The small total volume of texts which directly referred to the views of the adversaries as well as the place where the dispute occurred (Lvov, a geographically peripheral part of the “civilised world” at the time) could suggest that this was just a minor episode in the history of thought, not worth mentioning.
    [Show full text]
  • Anthropoetics V, 1
    Anthropoetics V, 1 Anthropoetics V, no. 1 Spring / Summer 1999 ISSN 1083-7264 Table of Contents 1. Erik Eisel - "In the Beginning was the Word...": The Question of the Origin of Language in Goethe's Faust 2. William Mishler - The Question of the Origin of Language in René Girard, Eric Gans, and Kenneth Burke 3. Herbert Plutschow - An Anthropological Perspective on the Japanese Tea Ceremony 4. Eric Gans - The Little Bang: The Early Origin of Language 5. Benchmarks Eric Gans / [email protected] Last updated 7/23/99 http://steadr/anthropoetics/0501/ [5/10/2000 10:29:48 AM] Eisel Anthropoetics 5, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1999) "In the Beginning was the Word...": The Question of the Origin of Language in Goethe's Faust Erik M. Eisel Department of Germanic Languages University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles CA 90095-1539 [email protected] Beginning with the Age of Goethe, the history of the question of the origin of language follows from the general questions, "What is man?" "What is culture?" and "What is language?"(1) The Berlin Academy of Sciences conjectured in its Preisfrage of 1769 whether human beings, "abandoned to their natural faculties," are capable of inventing language. In response, the first sentence of Johann Gottfried Herder's winning "Essay on the Origin of Language" gives the starting point for new anthropological thinking in the eighteenth century, changing the history of this question: "Already as an animal the human being has language."(2) As Helmut Mueller-Sievers, the author of Self-Generation: Biology, Philosophy, and Literature Around 1800, points out, Herder's rhetorical procedure is an attempt to deny both empirical and divine origins of language while unifying his philosophical project within the domain of language: The quest for a satisfactory explanation for the origin and status of language at the end of the eighteenth century is, historically and structurally, related to the debate about the origin of living beings.
    [Show full text]
  • Michael Polanyi and the History of Science
    Michael Polanyi and the History of Science Gerald Holton © 1992 Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Professor of History of Science Jefferson Physical Laboratory, Harvard University Cambridge, MA 02l38 Editor’s Note: The following article was developed from Professor Holton’s invited keynote address at the Polanyi centennial conference at Harvard Divinity School, February 28, l992. ABSTRACT This essay is a study of Polanyi’s career as scientist and philosopher from the point of view of the history of science, starting with the first step in his academic career helped by an intervention of Albert Einstein. Polanyi’s ideas are better understood if placed against the background of then-fashionable philosophical movements, including logical positivism, and his disagreement with Bukharin in 1935. The essay studies the sources and ambitions of Polanyi’s notion of the tacit dimension, his attitude to evolution and “emergence,” and his contribution to the search for the origins of Einstein’s Relativity Theory. His success in the last of these is shown to be an exemplar of Polanyi’s own philosophy. Biographical Background I have been asked to talk about Michael Polanyi’s career as a scientist and philosopher from the point of view of history of science, and also his contribution to the history of science. But in order to arrive at my conclusions, I shall have to make some excursions also into other fields, such as the branches of politics and epistemology that were fashionable during his career. For it is fair to say that Polanyi, or as he was named at his birth in March l89l in Budapest, Mihaly Polanyi, was a unique person in the history of science, not least in the spectrum of his interests.
    [Show full text]
  • Michael Polanyi and the Society of Explorers
    MICHAEL POLANYI AND THE SOCIETY OF EXPLORERS Colin Cordner Keywords: Republic of Science, Society of Explorers, political science, political philoso- phy, conviviality, spontaneous order, emergence, tradition, reform, authority, economy ABSTRACT1 For Polanyi, the Society of Explorers (SoE) describes the ideal form of a free society. He does not, however, provide us with a thick description of such a society. This essay attempts to do so by bringing together his later social and political thoughts with those set forth in his discussion of “Conviviality.” Introduction The purpose of this essay will be to flesh-out Polanyi’s thoughts on the Society of Explorers (SoE) as the ideal form of a free society, thoughts which he developed out of the concrete exemplar of the Republic of Science (RoS). I perceive that this exercise is necessary for two reasons. Firstly, while suggestive, Polanyi was not thor- ough in extrapolating the implications of his own political studies. Secondly, while Polanyi spends much time in his writings correcting misunderstandings of science and scientific practice, he does not always explicitly fold those corrections into his writings on the SoE. Consequently, we are left with a haze hovering between us and a definite apprehension of the SoE. In this essay, I argue it is consistent with Polanyi’s thoughts to say that a free soci- ety, at its best, is a SoE. As such, it exemplifies, from its lowest to its highest layers, the dynamic, spontaneous order which is practiced within the RoS. At its uppermost layer, the noosphere (which signifies a society’s heritage of the mind), and the cultural institutions of the SoE’s borders expand beyond those of the RoS in order to include the Tradition & Discovery: The Journal of the Polanyi Society 45:3 © 2019 by the Polanyi Society 45 broader plurality of humanity’s highest pursuits and endeavours.
    [Show full text]
  • The Ideas of Ludwik Fleck and Their Application to the Eukaryotic Cell
    The Ideas of Ludwik Fleck and Their Application to the Eukaryotic Cell Cycle, the Restriction Point, and G1-phase Control Stephen Cooper Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan Medical School Ann Arbor Michigan 48109-0620 e-mail: [email protected] Abstract The ideas of Ludwik Fleck (1896-1961) analyzing the conservative nature of scientific ideas are discussed and applied to the proposed G1-phase restriction point as a regulatory element of the mammalian cell cycle. Fleck proposed that ideas become fixed and difficult to change because criticisms of current and dominant models are either ignored or turned to support of the current model. The idea of a thought-collective leading to the stability of ideas is a central theme of the ideas of Ludwik Fleck. 1 Evidence conforms to conceptions just as often as conceptions conform to evidence. Ludwik Fleck, 1935 Introduction The continuum model of eukaryotic cell-cycle control is now almost 25 years old (1,2). This alternative view was actually generated a number of years earlier based on studies of the bacterial cell cycle (3). Since its first proposal, the continuum model has not made much headway against what may be called the G1-phase control model of the cell cycle, a model that is current, dominant, and accepted by a broad consensus of researchers in the field of eukaryotic cell-cycle studies. It is important to understand how the G1-phase control model has remained so dominant despite the success of the alternative continuum model view of the cell cycle in explaining myriad published experimental results on the cell cycle.
    [Show full text]
  • TOTE Criticism: Speech Communication: Unions
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 199 609 CS 205 688 TITLE Rhetoric and Public Address: Abstracts of Doctoral Dissertations Pliblished in "Dissertation Abstracts International," January through June 1980 (Vol. (10 Nos. 7 through 12). INSTITUTION ERIC Clearinghouse.on Reading and Communication Skills, Urbana, Ill. 0_ PUB DATE 80 TOTE 13p.: Pages may be marginally legible. EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage). DESCRIPTORS Annotated Bibliographies,: Churches; *Communication Research: Connected Discourse; Content Analysis; *Discourse Analysis: *Doctoral Dissertations: Organizational Communication: *Persuasive Discourse: Political Science; Politics; *Public Speaking: Religibus Organizations: *Rhetoric; *Rhetorical Criticism: Speech Communication: Unions; Womens Studies ABSTRACT This collection of abstracts is-part of a continuing . 'series'providing information on recent doctorgl dissertations.The'20 titles deal with-A variety oftopics, including the following: (1) the campaign communication during the Carter-Pordtelevision debates: (2) apprehensiveness and performance inpublic speaking; (3)a history and criticism 9f-the Vietnam antivar;movement:((4). a case study of institutional rhetoric and radical :Change (thecontemporary Roman Catholic Church in America):(5) synthesizing methodologies' used,:in the study of political communication during the 1976United States presidential election campaign:(6) the audience effects of (7) rhetorical vision and black social reality: 4 apoliogetic discourse: (8),a case study of organizational apologia. (theAmerican Federation of Labor, 1945-1956): and rhetorical analysesof the speeches/discourses of (9) Dorothy bay for the Catholic Worker movement, (10) British Conservative Party leader MargaretThatcher., (11) Charles Betts Galloway,(12) Carl Schurz,(13) Cleveland mayoral Candidate Arnold Pinkney,(14) Richard Nixon on Vietnam, (15) United States Senator Wayne Morse on Vietnam, (16) Supreme Court Justice Wilgam 0. Douglas on the First Amendment, (17)'U.
    [Show full text]
  • Two Sociologies of Knowledge. L. Fleck—T
    Stefan Symotiuk (Lublin) TWO SOCIOLOGIES OF KNOWLEDGE. L. FLECK — T. BILIKIEWICZ CONTROVERSY Tadeusz Bilikiewicz, a scholar now somewhat forgotten, was in the 1930s active as an sociologist of knowledge. In 1931 he published a book entitled Jan Jonston, 1603—1677, Żywot i działalność lekarska (His Life and Medical Activity), Warsaw 1931, and a year later Die Embryologie im Zeitalter des Barock und des Rococo, Leipzig 1932. He was also author of many articles, still to be properly investigated. His theory of knowledge he himself called 'perspectivism'. In the Summer issue of the journal 'Przegląd Współczesny' of 1939, an argument was published between Fleck and Bilikiewicz which was overlooked by those concerned because of the outbreak of war, and which has not been taken note of by the bibliographies of Fleck's work. Yet this is an extremely interesting polemic, considering that Bilikie- wicz was an exponent of 'the naive epistemology' seeing the relation between subject and object as being of a 'reflective' nature and accepting only the 'heuristic' influence of environment upon science. He flatly rejected Fleck's conceptions describing it as subjective idealism, agno- sticism, relativism. My intention here is to recall briefly that polemic. I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE DISPUTE L. Fleck began to be interested in epistemology soon after his stay in Vienna when he published his Zur Krise der 'Wirklichkeit'i. Still he main phase of his work was in 1935 when his book appeared together 1 'Die Naturwissenschaften' Vol. 17:1929, 23, p. 425—430. 570 S. Symotiuk with a series of articles in Polish and foreign journals.
    [Show full text]
  • The Five Key Terms of Dramatism
    INTRODUCTION: THE FIVE KEY TERMS OF DRAMATISM WHAT is involved, when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it? An answer to that question is the subject of this book. The book is concerned with the basic forms of thought which, in ac- cordance with the nature of the world as all men necessarily experience it, are exemplified in the attributing of motives. These forms of thought can be embodied profoundly or trivially, truthfully or falsely. They are equally present in systematically elaborated metaphysical structures, in legal judgments, in poetry and fiction, in political and scientific works, in news and in bits of gossip offered at random. We shall use five terms as generating principle of our investigation. They are: Act, Scene, Agent, Agency, Purpose. In a rounded state- ment about motives, you must have some word that names the act (names what took place, in thought or deed), and another that names the scene (the background of the act, the situation in which it oc- curred) ; also, you must indicate what person or kind of person {agent) performed the act, what means or instruments he used {agency), and the purpose. Men may violently disagree about the purposes behind a given act, or about the character of the person who did it, or how he did it, or in what kind of situation he acted; or they may even insist upon totally different words to name the act itself. But be that as it may, any complete statement about motives will offer some kind of an- swers to these five questions: what was done (act), when or where it was done (scene), who did it (agent), how he did it (agency), and why (purpose).
    [Show full text]
  • Copyright by Arthur Alvin Vanderveen, Jr. 2002
    Copyright by Arthur Alvin VanderVeen, Jr. 2002 The Dissertation Committee for Arthur Alvin VanderVeen, Jr. certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Other Minds, Other Worlds: Pragmatism, Hermeneutics, and Constructive Modernism, 1890-1942 Committee: _________________________________ Warwick Wadlington, Co-Supervisor _________________________________ Phillip Barrish, Co-Supervisor _________________________________ Katherine Arens _________________________________ Evan Carton _________________________________ Brian Bremen Other Minds, Other Worlds: Pragmatism, Hermeneutics, and Constructive Modernism, 1890-1942 by Arthur Alvin VanderVeen Jr., B.A., M.Div., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2002 “The more we see, the more we think; while the more we think, the more we see in our immediate experience, and the greater grows the detail, and the more significant the articulateness of our perception.” William James Acknowledgments For their support, I would like to acknowledge the University of Texas at Austin Graduate School for a University Fellowship, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation for an Ernest Hemingway Research Grant, and the Mellon Foundation for a Summer Seminar Grant. I cannot claim that this support speeded the completion of this project, but it did allow me to pursue my research interests more broadly and deeply than I would otherwise have been able. I extend my sincerest thanks to Warwick Wadlington, whose appreciation for the particularity and fullness of the world has taught me to avoid simple binaries and remain open to the disturbing details that lead to new insights.
    [Show full text]
  • Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy
    PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy by MICHAEL POLANYI London First published 1958 corrected edition 1962 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd © 1958, 1962 Michael Polanyi Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-203-44215-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-75039-X (Adobe e-Reader Format) ISBN 0-415-15149-X (Print Edition) To SIR THOMAS AND LADY TAYLOR PREFACE THIS is primarily an enquiry into the nature and justification of scientific knowledge. But my reconsideration of scientific knowledge leads on to a wide range of questions outside science. I start by rejecting the ideal of scientific detachment. In the exact sciences, this false ideal is perhaps harmless, for it is in fact disregarded there by scientists. But we shall see that it exercises a destructive influence in biology, psychology and sociology, and falsifies our whole outlook far beyond the domain of science. I want to establish an alternative ideal of knowledge, quite generally.
    [Show full text]