Abstract
In “Taking Taniwha seriously,” Justine Kingsbury proposes a way for taniwha pūrākau—traditional narratives about taniwha—to be taken seriously by non-Māori, which is one step towards respecting te ao Māori—the Māori world view. Taniwha are powerful water creatures who act deliberately to protect and sometimes punish humans. So characterised, there is an obvious obstacle to those who wish to respect te ao Māori but who are sceptical about the existence of supernatural entities. Kingsbury proposes a way to take taniwha discourse seriously, but not literally. I agree that her view is realist, and that it overcomes the obstacle noted above. I argue in this paper that her approach ought to be considered an instance of what I call neutral realism, and that when we characterise it this way, we can see precisely how it enables the sort of intercultural respect that she seeks.
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Notes
She may, of course, have other non-linguistic arguments for a particular view of the nature of the truthmakers for M-truths. This is true of Mellor (1981) and other proponents of the new position in the debate about the nature of time, the new B-theory. According to these philosophers, there are good reasons for thinking that time is tenseless, in particular that scientific thinking about time supports this view, and the untenability of the view that time is tensed. What is important, however, is that these reasons are not based on any analysis of tensed language or concepts.
It should be noted that Kingsbury discusses this example in relation to the objection to her view that it should be seen as figuralism about taniwha discourse, an objection that she rebuts. I am not here disputing Kingsbury’s rejection of the claim that her view is an instance of figuralism. Instead, I am using the example she discusses to illustrate what the neutral realist would say about it.
I am grateful to Greg Dawes for bringing this saying to my attention.
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Dyke, H. Taking Taniwha seriously: a neutral realist interpretation of Kingsbury’s approach. AJPH 2, 1 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-022-00056-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-022-00056-w