Are there aspects of human intelligence that artificial intelligence cannot emulate? Harry Collins uses a distinction between tacit aspects of knowing, which cannot be digitized, and explicit aspects, which can be, to formulate an answer to this question. He postulates three purported areas of the tacit and argues that only “collective tacit knowing” cannot be adequately digitized. I argue, first, that Collins’s approach rests upon problematic Cartesian assumptions—particularly his claim that animal knowing is strictly deterministic and, thus, radically different from (...) human knowing. I offer evidence that human linguistic intelligence depends upon embodied forms of animal intelligence. Second, I suggest the development of deep-learning algorithms means that Collins’s mimesis assumption is no longer appropriate; equivalent accomplishment of goals is what counts. However, persons must realize and integrate many goals and also deal with failures; a general-purpose AI capable of integrating all the needs and goals of human existence resists development. Third, I explain how Michael Polanyi’s understanding of tacit knowing, quite different than Collins’s concept of the tacit, exemplifies features that are missing in contemporary AI. I make use of evolutionary theory, studies of animal intelligence, biological insights, individual construction of meaning, and notions of human responsibility to argue for the existence of three categories that distinguish human from artificial intelligence. (shrink)

This essay examines Michael Polanyi’s notion of tacit knowing and seeks to clarify and elaborate upon its claims. Tacit knowing, which is conscious although inarticulate, must be distinguished from tacit processes, which are largely unconscious. Schematization is explored as a primary tacit process that humans share with all animals. This tacit process organizes and secures, in long-term memory, information of interest provided by receptors and those learned skifls conducive to survival. Human empirical knowing integrates schematized subsidiaries info articulate explicitness through (...) culturally-embedded symbols evoked in terms of felt fittingness. (shrink)

Stephen Turner explores the social dimensions of practices, probing to see if the notion of a shared practice can be understood as a cause or mechanism whereby knowledge arises and is used. When he concludes that practices are not some mysterious collective object but are best explained as individual habits, he thereby rejects an attenuated notion of practice and replaces it with a needlessly atomistic notion in which habits carry the full burden of explanation. Turner makes use of aspects of (...) Polanyi’s thought, but this article suggests ways in which a fuller appropriation of Polanyian insights can salvage a social, telic notion of practices that illuminates human behavior. (shrink)

In a recent article “From Epistemology to Ontology,” Tihamer Margitay argues that Polanyi fails to establish the necessary correlation he claims between the two levels involved in tacit knowing and corresponding ontological levels. I argue that Margitay correctly shows that such a correspondence does not hold in all cases, but I also point out problems in Margitay’s interpretation of Polanyi and suggest additional bases for ontological claims that go beyond Margitay’s analysis.

Inappropriately reductive or deterministic appropriations of science haunt Philip Clayton’s otherwise instructive appropriation of Michael Polanyi’s thought for theological and ethical reflection. The work at hand utilizes contemporary complexity theory to augment Polanyi’s notions of emergence and hierarchy and to provide a vision within which moral responsibility and theological inquiry make sense. It sets forth types and orders of emergence that bypass untenable notions of causality, reducibility, and determinism.

The other articles in this issue plus other recent articles on Polanyi’s ethics have helped clarify Polanyi’s distinctive contribution to ethical theory. This article seeks to integrate these insights with Polanyi’s somewhat diffuse treatment of ethics by suggesting what features would be included in a distinctively Polanyian moral point of view. Grounded in psychological satisfactions, social dynamics, and values and ideals regarded as real, Polanyian ethics incorporates features of deontological, utilitarian, and virtue ethics and would support a practice of moral (...) discovery. (shrink)

Ultimately Michael Polanyi moved from theorizing about reality in terms of three overlapping frameworks of analysis (personal knowing, evolution/ecology, and tacit knowing) to a yet more comprehensive framework of interpretation: meaning construction. An analysis of the dimensions of embodied, symbol drenched meaning construction suggests that the modernist tendency to tether reality to epistemological analysis be replaced by an exploration of three interpenetrating ontological regions: experiences of existential meaning, cultural forms of meaning, and external reality. In support of this view, I (...) make reference to earlier expressions of my work, utilize illustrations from philosophical history, and address comments from my critics. (shrink)

Religious naturalism takes very seriously the meanings inherent in both a scientific understanding of the world and a religious orientation to life well lived. It rejects—as implausible and incompatible with science— the supernaturalism that has dominated Western religious traditions. But can one or more of the varieties of religious naturalism satisfy the fundamental religious needs or yearnings for meaning that have typically been responded to within supernaturalistic worldviews? A challenge facing all types of religious naturalism, if any are to take (...) hold, is to engage these religiously colored needs and yearnings with coherence and integrity.Religious belief and practice typically seem to have more to do with .. (shrink)

In what manner can philosophy best face world problems? I argue that philosophy's most important contribution to problem solving is not analysis and clarification but synoptic in nature. Relying upon the power of reflection and the scope of imagination as linked to a patient attempt to understand many disciplines, the philosopher ideally seeks to comprehend problems in their many-dimensioned complexity. The disciplines of ecology, evolution, and ethics are especially fruitful in guiding the philosopher seeking to assess the relative worth of (...) things in their emergent inter-relationships. - In the body of the paper I attempt an outline of the outstanding human caused harms, injustices, and instabilities resulting in pain and suffering today. World philosophy today seems sufficiently pluralistic, comprehensive and free of unduly constraining orthodoxies that it can again play a significant role not only in conceptualizing problems but in articulating solutions. Broad visions comparable to Plato's as set forth in the Republic can again be ventured. We need to seek out ways to place into power a council of international philosopher kings and queens offering effective solutions beyond the dictates of partisanship and ideology. I conclude by suggesting five principles that international philosopher kings and queens might be expected to rely upon to bring about a more just global society. (shrink)

Although there are distinctly American artists-Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Grandma Moses, Thomas Hart Benton, and Andy Warhol, for example-very little attention has been devoted to formulating any distinctively American characteristics of aesthetic judgment and practice. This volume takes a step in this direction, presenting an introductory essay on the possibility of such a distinctly American tradition, and a collection of essays exploring particular examples from a variety of angles. Some of the essays in this collection extend pragmatist and process insights (...) about the important place aesthetics has in molding and assessing experience. Other essays examine the place of American aesthetics in relation to such particular forms of art as painting, literature, music, and film. Three essays attend to the aesthetic aspects of a flourishing life. In each of the essays, American aesthetics is understood to arise out of deeply felt personal, historical, and cultural backgrounds. Consequently, not only are such relatively abstract notions as harmony, fit, elegance, proportion, and the like involved in aesthetic judgment, but also religious, political, and social factors become embroiled in aesthetic discernment. Thus the ongoing pattern of American aesthetics is shown to be distinguishable from such other varieties of aesthetic thought as analytic aesthetics, New Criticism, and postmodern approaches to aesthetics. (shrink)

Joseph Bracken proposes to modify Whitehead’s tendency to see the comprehensive entities of everyday life as but aggregations of actual occasions. While there are resources in Polanyi’s notion of an emergent cosmos to counter Whitehead’s atomism and reductionism, Bracken’s use of Polanyi’s theory of a morphogenetic field as a corrective is argued to be only partially successful. Bracken must explain how morphogenetic fields evolve and arise. This step would require replacing Whiteheadian reductionism with a principle of ontological parity that honors (...) the reality of interaction between entities and the integration of their operational principles within basic ontological levels and setting forth principles of emergence to explain how these levels and fields arise. (shrink)

This brief essay introduces five articles that explore the relationship between the philosophy of Michael Polanyi and several other philosophers and that suggest ways that Polanyi’s post-critical thought might be enriched by their philosophical insights.

What is the nature and scope of aesthetic sensibility and thought? Answers to this question have varied greatly over the centuries. In recent decades, however, there have been few attempts to describe the nature and scope of aesthetics within the ambiance of a far-reaching context that takes account of contemporary developments in relevant disciplines. My intention in this essay is to sketch out the contours of such a comprehensive theory.Toward that end I will first offer a brief impressionistic account of (...) the varied ways aesthetic qualities of experience have been treated during the unfolding of Western thought. In Plato's Symposium, the loving attention devoted to facets of beauty interprets them as but varied... (shrink)

This essay critically discusses books not previously reviewed in Tradition and Discovery yet making significant use of Michael Polanyi’s thought. These works suggest Polanyi’s thought continues to play an importanf, if limited, role in contemporary scholarship.

This article is intended to advance a comprehensive understanding of knowing and meaning that is sensitive to biological and psychological evidence as well as to ethical and religious concerns. It proceeds by integrating Michael Polanyi’s theories of the evolutionary emergence of centered beings, tacit knowing, and the from-[via]-to structure of consciousness with a revised version of Susanne Langer’s theory of symbolization. The revision stresses the importance of signals in all human and other animal attunement to reality and argues for dividing (...) Langer’s notion of presentational symbolism into a component shared by the more developed animals and one unique to humans. It details autonomic, receptor, learned tacit, and conceptual contributions to personal meaning. (shrink)

Inappropriately reductive or deterministic appropriations of science haunt Philip Clayton’s otherwise instructive appropriation of Michael Polanyi’s thought for theological and ethical reflection. The work at hand utilizes contemporary complexity theory to augment Polanyi’s notions of emergence and hierarchy and to provide a vision within which moral responsibility and theological inquiry make sense. It sets forth types and orders of emergence that bypass untenable notions of causality, reducibility, and determinism.