Epilogue

robust realism

Charles W. Lowney

pp. 235-270

in: Charles W. Lowney (ed), Charles Taylor, Michael Polanyi and the critique of modernity, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

In Retrieving Realism, Taylor and Dreyfus aim to correct mistaken Modern assumptions, and post-modern reactions to them, in order to retrieve a robust realism about the world for scientific and moral exploration. Their critiques of Modern thought and their bridging of the person to the world have much in common with Polanyi's approach in that they all emphasize tacit body-knowing, background frameworks, and our ability to develop epistemological structures that better and better grasp the world considered independent from us. Dreyfus-Taylor and Polanyi diverge, however, when it comes to choosing a framework from which to understand a robust moral realism. The former endorse a Heideggerian "reveal but conceal" pluralist approach, while a Polanyian view advocates a "progress but with risk" emergentist approach. It is argued that the emergentist approach provides a better defense against deflationary realism and better reconciles apparent contradictions, such as physical causality and free will, engaged contact and progress in knowing reality in-itself, and cultural relativism and objective morality. While a pluralist account has the strength of more clearly endorsing tolerance, it is more vulnerable to an ethical relativism; and while an emergentist view is more clearly at risk of illicit dogmatism, it has the strength of endorsing the search for moral truth that we all can share.

Cited authors

Heidegger Martin