Slavophile "Ontologism" Re-visited

There is what I would term a "deep structural" similarity that obtains between the Slavophile emphasis upon "that realm of interior, pre-conscious, instinctual access to truth called 'intuition' or, in religious experience, 'faith' ... not faith in the sense of belief in clearly defined dogmas or propositions, but a kind of knowledge which precedes any abstract thought or 'reason'" [See Russian Philosophy, vol. 1, edited by James M. Edie, James P. Scanlon, and Mary-Barbara Zeldin; with the collaboration of George L. Kline, Chicago: Quadrangle Books (1965), 161-162] and, say, Sherman Jackson's notion of "Black Religion" as "a spontaneous folk orientation" upon which one constructs the architecture of a religious tradition and that serves to ground and inform an individual's understanding and expression of that tradition (in Jackson's case, Sunnism--see Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican, Oxford, 2005: 31-32).

Both point to what philosopher Michael Polanyi referred to as the "tacit dimension" of human cognition [See Michael Polanyi's books Personal Knowledge, The Tacit Dimension, and Meaning (co-written with Harry Prosch), all published by the University of Chicago Press]. Frustrated by the "failure of the positivist movement in the philosophy of science," Polanyi attempted to work out a "stable alternative" to Positivism's "ideal of objectivity" [Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, Chicago (1966), 25].

For Polanyi, all knowledge is "personal," which is to say (somewhat crudely) that the element of human subjectivity cannot be eliminated from human cognition--nor should it be. For if there were no subjective element in human cognition, there would be no genuine interest in anyone obtaining new information about the world. The desire to know engenders acts of self-assertion: an exploration of experienced phenomena in an effort to account for them in some way:

The sight of a solid object indicates that it has both another side and a hidden interior, which we could explore; the sight of another person points at unlimited hidden workings of his mind and body. Perception has this inexhaustible profundity, because what we perceive is an aspect of reality, and aspects of reality are clues to boundless undisclosed, and perhaps yet unthinkable, experiences [ibid, 68].

Or so we presume. This presumption constitutes what Polanyi called "the metaphysical grounds which underlie all our knowledge of the external world" [ibid].

We must be careful here and not mistake metaphysical propositions for indicative postulates. Since Plato (or perhaps Parmenides), it seems, we have been confused about the grammar of our articulate traffic with the world. Metaphysical propositions are not indicative postulates but subordinate clauses expressed in the subjunctive mood. Metaphysical speculation is a form of inquiry into possibility or potentiality. It inspires scientific exploration but is not, itself, scientific exploration, nor may it be permitted to substitute for scientific exploration.

That said, we must be equally mindful that we do not attempt to eliminate our embodied subjectivities (i.e., our personality, our humanity) from our science. This is the nature of the Cartesian error that has impoverished our thinking for the last 500 years.

Linguistic confusion and an over-zealous ascetic reductionism are the tragic hallmarks of Western rationalism--the "fly-bottle" that Tolstoy's disciple, Ludwig Wittgenstein, aimed to help us escape from. We have yet to find our way.

Polanyi's notion of "personal knowledge" and H. Gene Blocker's article "The Truth About Fictional Entities", The Philosophical Quarterly (Vol. 24, No. 94, January 1974, pp. 27-36) suggest fruitful approaches for making our escape--on Blocker, see the post of 02-12-12 (below).

Tacit thought "forms an indispensable part of all knowledge," therefore, "the process of formalizing all knowledge to the exclusion of any tacit knowing is self-defeating" [Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, 20].

But what is it that we "know" tacitly? Polanyi writes: "Our believing is conditioned at its source by our belonging. And this reliance on the cultural machinery of our society continues through life" [Personal Knowledge, 322]. Such "accidents of personal existence" may have the effect of reducing "all our convictions to the mere products of a particular location and interest." However, they may also serve as "concrete opportunities for exercising ... personal responsibility" towards the claims we take to be both justified and true [ibid].

Polanyi regards the latter approach as one's epistemological "calling." It is a calling to make tacit knowledge explicit and, in the event, achieve epistemological candor--such as the kind modeled for us by Sherman Jackson and the Slavophiles.