Michael Polanyi criticized the neo‐Darwinian synthesis on two grounds: that accidental hereditary changes bringing adaptive advantages cannot account for the rise of discontinuous new species, and that a Ideological ordering principle is needed to explain evolutionary advance. I commend the previous articles by John Apczynski and Richard Gelwick and also argue, more strongly than they, that Polanyi's critique of evolutionary theory is flawed. It relies on an inappropriate notion of progress and untenable analogies from the human process of scientific discovery (...) and the fact that in physical systems minimal potential energy is most stable. Yet within a life of commitment to transcendent values humans can directly experience purpose and meaning, and in developing this notion Polanyi makes his greatest contribution to teleology. (shrink)

This commentary is divided into two parts. The first considers a possible role for Gray's predictor plus comparator mechanism in human episodic recognition memory. It draws on the computational specifications of recognition outlined in Humphreys et al. to demonstrate how the logically necessary components of recognition tasks might be mapped onto the mechanism. The second part demonstrates how the mechanism outlined by Gray might be implicated in a form of imitative learning suitable for the acquisition of complex tasks.

Gray mistakenly thinks I have rejected the sort of theoretical enterprise he is undertaking, because, according to him, I think that "more data" is all that is needed to resolve all the issues. Not at all. My stalking horse was the bizarre (often pathetic) claim that no amount of empirical, "third-person point-of-view" science (data plus theory) could ever reduce the residue of mystery about consciousness to zero. This "New Mysterianism" (Flanagan, 1991) is one that he should want to combat as (...) vigorously as I have done. (shrink)

Robust theories concerning the connection between consciousness and brain function should derive not only from empirical evidence but also from a well grounded inind-body ontology. In the case of the comparator hypothesis, Gray develops his ideas relying extensively on empirical evidence, but he bounces irresolutely among logically incompatible metaphysical theses which, in turn, leads him to excessively skeptical conclusions concerning the naturalization of consciousness.

Summary Pluralism and monism are the two current views concerning scientific research and language understanding. Between them there is a third, intermediate, view. We take a procedural methodology of science as exemplified in the work of L. Tondl, and procedural linguistics , as exemplified in the work of B. Harrison, to be representative of this third possibility. Procedures are cognitive, linguistic, and physical processes which, through their hierarchical interconnections can generate fruitful mechanisms . These mechanisms are sensitive to context and (...) operate in heuristic and algorithmic ways. Their similar logical structure points towards a profound unified basis for scientific and linguistic activities, thus providing an interesting bridge between what is achieved by a little child talking to his parents, and a creative scientist struggling to interpret the results of his experiments. (shrink)

Segmentalized consciousness in schizophrenia reflects a loss of the normal Gestalt organization and contextualization of perception. Grays model explains such segmentalization in terms of septohippocampal dysfunction, which is consistent with known neuropsychological impairment in schizophrenia. However, other considerations suggest that everyday perception and its failure in schizophrenia also involve prefrontal executive mechanisms, which are only minimally elaborated by Gray.

This article draws on the conclusion of the Commission on the Humanities in The Humanities in American Life that the aim of a liberal arts education is to foster critical reasoning through the use of language or discourse. This paper maintains that the critical method is in itself insufficient to achieve its purpose. Its failure is in its exclusion of feeling and of silence from the thinking process. Hence, the ultimate object of my analysis is to correct and to complement (...) the critical method with the aesthetic method of teaching the humanities. Central to the aesthetic method is art as a means to cultivate contemplative and creative skills. The essay brings out and examines the value of art as voices of silence in Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Dionysius, Bonaventure, Maurice Merleau‐Ponty and Paul Gauguin, and pays particular attention to the diaries of Eugène Delacroix. In the course of doing so, I shall be trying to make clear that art teaches us how to listen and how to encounter ourselves totally and completely. It goes on to suggest several pedagogical principles or consequences that flow from this aesthetic pedagogy. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present re-enactment interviewing and to propose that it can be used to reveal tacit caring knowledge. This approach generates knowledge not readily attainable by other research methods, which we demonstrate by analysing the epistemological and methodological underpinnings of re-enactment interviewing. We also give examples from a study where re-enactment was used. As tacit knowledge is often characteristic of care, re-enactment interviewing has the potential to engage the informant in a holistic mode and thereby (...) reveal wisdom of the body. When the care provider recalls an event, the details are articulated, which contributes to in-depth data, which subsequently serves as a basis for trustworthy analysis. (shrink)

The medical humanities are often implemented in the undergraduate medicine curriculum through injection of discrete option courses as compensation for an overdose of science. The medical humanities may be reformulated as process and perspective, rather than content, where the curriculum is viewed as an aesthetic text and learning as aesthetic and ethical identity formation. This article suggests that a “humanities” perspective may be inherent to the life sciences required for study of medicine. The medical humanities emerge as a revelation of (...) value inherent to an aesthetic medicine taught and learned imaginatively. (shrink)

In forms of physical recreation associated with ‘wilderness experiences’, such as backcountry hiking or mountain climbing, technology is omnipresent. As a result, some may wonder whether genuine wilderness experiences are possible. In this essay, I argue that wilderness experiences are possible and that they can be enhanced through games. That is, I contend there are often physically challenging aspects to wilderness experiences that certain games can help to promote. This analysis will stress the fact that Bernard Suits delineated two comparable (...) but distinct ways to engage in games. Following Suits’s logic, I explain how ‘literal skills’ like walking or climbing can function as the ‘constitutive skills’ of games. I then consider how games predicated on ‘literal skills’ can help promote the meanings available in wilderness experiences. (shrink)

. Because of similarities between some implications of Michael Polanyi's theory of personal knowledge and intelligent design, claims have been made that his theory provides support to the project of intelligent design. This essay contends that, when Polanyi's reflections on a Ideological framework for contextualizing evolutionary biology are properly understood as a heuristic vision, his position contrasts sharply with the empirical claims made on behalf of intelligent design.

The process of reflection is analysed into three components ‐an ego‐driven purpose, a restructuring capability, and a transforming perspective. Different types of reflection are argued to be instances of cognitive restructuring determined by purpose and by context. Procedures for resolving contradictions in the literature concerning ways in which ‘reflective teaching’ can be fostered are also suggested. It is argued that adopting any single model of ‘reflective practice’ can be unnecessarily restrictive given the ubiquity of the reflective process. Finally, the danger (...) of claiming too much for a ‘reflective practitioner’ model is set beside clear benefits gained from promoting it. (shrink)

Embodied knowledge in chronic illness and injury When people experience chronic illness or serious injury, changes occur not just within their physical bodies but also in their embodiments, that is, how they view the world through their bodies. For such patients, dualistic (mind–body) notions of the body as object and the mind as subject can devalue experiences that are necessary for healing and for managing everyday problems related to their illness or injury. Nurses need to be able to guide people (...) with illness or injury to new levels of wellness, but may lack appropriate theoretical conceptualizations. Philosophies that underlie embodied knowledge — in particular, philosophies of Merleau‐Ponty and Polanyi — were explored yielding two new ways to understand the body. The body as ‘silent partner’ fosters an appreciation of the body's own subjectivity that can be enhanced in nursing care through sensitivity, listening, and creative coaching. Nurses can assist their patients to identify new and positive understandings of what their bodies mean to them after bodily changes. The body as ‘informant’ holds much promise for solving some of the everyday problems that people with chronic illness or injury experience. By using phenomenological and other naturalistic methods, researchers and patients can find clues to solving such problems, clues that are known through daily living but hidden beneath conscious awareness. As a result, some of the practical know‐how of the body as ‘informant’ can be transformed into testable nursing interventions. (shrink)

This commentary elaborates on Gray's conclusion that his neurophysiological model of consciousness might explain how consciousness arises from the brain, but does not address how consciousness evolved, affects behaviour or confers survival value. The commentary argues that such limitations apply to all neurophysiological or other third-person perspective models. To approach such questions the first-person nature of consciousness needs to be taken seriously in combination with third-person models of the brain.

On the basis of neuropsychological evidence, it is clear that attention should be given a role in any model of consciousness. What is known about the many instances of dissociation between explicit and implicit knowledge after brain damage suggests that conscious experience might not be linked to a restricted area of the brain. Even if it were true that there is a single brain area devoted to consciousness, the subicular area would seem to be an unlikely possibility.

An active role for conscious processes in the production of behaviour is proposed, involving top level controls in a hierarchy of behavioural control. It is suggested that by inhibiting or sensitizing lower levels in the hierarchy conscious processes can play a role in the organization of ongoing behaviour. Conscious control can be more or less evident, according to prevailing circumstances.

Gray extrapolates from circuit models of psychopathology to propose neural substrates for the contents of consciousness. I raise three concerns: knowledge of synaptic arrangements may be inadequate to fully support his model; latent inhibition deficits in schizophrenia, a focus of this and related models, are complex and deserve replication; and this conjecture omits discussion of the neuropsychological basis for the contents of the unconscious.

. Several contemporary writers have found certain correlations between Taoism and modern philosophy of science to be particularly noteworthy because of their usefulness for interpreting world views, implicit or explicit, in each. However, the recent project in science and epistemology–the work of Michael Polanyi–which is probably most fruitfully resonant with Taoism has not yet been explored in that connection. The purpose of the present article is to begin that exploration. The essay provides a preliminary sketch of certain key moments in (...) Polanyi's thought and then turns attention to the Taoist themes of Tao, wu‐wei, and tz'u as these illuminate and are illuminated by the Polanyian post‐critical epistemology. (shrink)

Gray unwisely melds together two distinguishable contributions of consciousness: one to epistemology, the other to evolution. He also renders consciousness needlessly invisible behaviorally.

In Gray's conjecture, mismatches in the subicular comparator and matches have equal prominence in consciousness. In rival cognitive views novelty and difficulty especially elicit more conscious modes of cognition and higher levels of self-regulation. The mismatch between Gray's conjecture and these views is discussed.

Gray's comparator model fails to provide an adequate explanation of consciousness for two reasons. First, it is based on a narrow definition of consciousness that excludes basic phenomenology and active functions of consciousness. Second, match/mismatch decisions can be made without producing an experience of consciousness. The model thus violates the sufficiency criterion.

The communicative aspects of the contents of consciousness are analyzed in the framework of a neural network model of animal communication. We discuss some issues raised by Gray, such as the control of the contents of consciousness, the adaptive value of consciousness, conscious and unconscious behaviors, and the nature of a model's consciousness.

The 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis sponsored both an International Congress of Arts and Sciences aimed at unity of knowledge and an anthropology exhibit of diverse peoples. Jointly these represented a quest for unifying knowledge in a diverse world that was fractured by isolated specializations and segregated peoples. In historical perspective, the Congress's quest for knowledge is overshadowed by Ota Benga who was part of the anthropology exhibit. The 1904 World's Fair can be viewed as a Euro-American ritual, a (...) global pilgrimage, which sought to celebrate the advances and resolve the challenges of modernity and human diversity. Three years later Afropentecostalism dealt with these same issues with different methods and rituals. This ritual system became the most culturally diverse and fastest growing religious movement of the twentieth century. I suggest that the anthropological method of Frank Hamilton Cushing, the postcritical epistemology of Michael Polanyi, and the Afropente-costal ritual movement initiated by William J. Seymour are all attempts to develop a postmodern epistemology that is simultaneously constructive, focused on discerning reality, and broad enough to allow for human consciousness and diverse human communities. I explore this confluence of scientific and participatory epistemology through six theses. (shrink)

Well-known critics of AI such as Hubert Dreyfus and Michael Polanyi tend to confuse cybernetics with AI. Such a confusion is quite misleading and should not be overlooked. In the first place, cybernetics is not vulnerable to criticism of AI as cognitivistic and behaviouristic. In the second place, AI researchers are recommended to consider the cybernetics approach as a way of overcoming the limitations of cognitivism and behaviourism.

In this commentary, I point out some weaknesses in Gray's target article and, in the light of that discussion, I attempt to delineate the kinds of problem a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness faces on its way to a scientific understanding of subjective experience.

Although Freud launches a devastating critique of religion, he makes significant contributions to religious maturity. On the “manifest” level, he attacks religion as illusion; on the “latent” level, however, he is preoccupied with religion as mystery deep in the psyche. This difference is between religion as “critical” or as “postcritical” (Polanyi)—as dualistically split from, or emergent within, the psyche. Postcritical religion appears in Freud as mystery, unity, feeling, meaning, and creative agency. We see why, for Freud, the mother as matrix (...) keeps disappearing and what religious maturity is for “honest smallholders on this earth” who live within matrix as mystery. (shrink)

Gray, like other recent authors, seeks a scientific approach to consciousness, but fails to provide a biologically convincing description, partly because he implicitly bases his model on a computationalist foundation that embeds the contents of thought in irreducible symbolic representations. When patterns of neural activity instantiating conscious thought are shorn of homuncular observers, it appears most likely that these patterns and the circuitry that compares them with memories and plans should be found distributed over large regions of neocortex.

Half a century after Michael Polanyi conceptualised ‘the tacit component’ in personal knowing, management studies has reinvented ‘tacit knowledge’—albeit in ways that squander the advantages of Polanyi’s insights and ignore his faith in ‘spiritual reality’. While tacit knowing challenged the absurdities of sheer objectivity, expressed in a ‘perfect language’, it fused rational knowing, based on personal experience, with mystical speculation about an un-experienced ‘external reality’. Faith alone saved Polanyi’s model from solipsism. But Ernst von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism provides scope to (...) rethink personal tacit knowing with regard to ‘other people’ and the intersubjectively viable construction of ‘experiential reality’. By separating tacit knowing from Polanyi’s metaphysical realism and drawing on Benedict Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined communities’, it is possible to conceptualise ‘imagined institutions’ as the tacit dimension of power that shapes human interaction. Whereas Douglass North claimed institutions could be reduced to rules, imagined institutions are known in ways we cannot tell. (shrink)

If sensations were behaviorally conceived, as they should be, as complex functional patterns of interaction between overt behavior and the environment, there would be no point in searching for them as instantaneous psychic elements within the brain or as internal products of the brain.

This article uses tagmemic theory as a semiotic framework to analyze symbolic logic. It attends particularly to the issue of context for meaning and the role of personal observer/participants. It focuses on formal languages, which employ no ordinary words and from one point of view have “no meaning.” Attention to the context and the theorists who deploy these languages shows that formal languages have meanings at a higher level, colored by the purposes of the analysts. In fact, there is an (...) indefinitely ascending hierarchy of theories of theories, each of which analyzes and evaluates the theories at a lower level. By analogy with Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theory, no level of the hierarchy can capture within formalism everything in a sufficiently complex system. The personal analysts always have to make judgments about how a formalized system is analogous to the world outside the system. Arguments in analytic philosophy can be useful in clarification, but neither clarification of terms nor clarification of the structure of arguments can eliminate the need for personal judgment. (shrink)

In his recent work, ‘Sport, Aesthetic Experience, and Art as the Ideal Embodied Metaphor’, Tim L. Elcombe explores links between sport and art from a pragmatically informed conception of aesthetic experience. However, Elcombe's work does not highlight the role of the imagination in the interpretation of the aesthetic something Michael Polanyi claims to be the ‘cornerstone of aesthetic theory’. With the backdrop of an increased interest in the aesthetics, phenomenology, and epistemology of sport, this discussion essay seeks to defend the (...) usefulness and value of definitional demarcation debates between sport and art, to use Polanyi’s distinctions among technical, scientific and artistic problems to support the claim that sport is not art, and to offer an account of how sport contributes in its own way to human flourishing and why it is no less valuable experientially than art. (shrink)

Umerez’s analysis made me aware of the fundamental differences in the culture of physics and molecular biology and the culture of semiotics from which the new field of biosemiotics arose. These cultures also view histories differently. Considering the evolutionary span and the many hierarchical levels of organization that their models must cover, models at different levels will require different observables and different meanings for common words, like symbol, interpretation, and language. These models as well as their histories should be viewed (...) as complementary rather than competitive. The relation of genetic language and human language is the central issue. They are separated by 4 billion years and require entirely different models. Nevertheless, these languages have in common a unique unlimited expressive power that allows open-ended evolution and creative thought. Understanding the nature of this expressive power and how it arises remains a basic unsolved problem of biosemiotics. (shrink)

The necessary but not sufficient conditions for biological informational concepts like signs, symbols, memories, instructions, and messages are (1) an object or referent that the information is about, (2) a physical embodiment or vehicle that stands for what the information is about (the object), and (3) an interpreter or agent that separates the referent information from the vehicle’s material structure, and that establishes the stands-for relation. This separation is named the epistemic cut, and explaining clearly how the stands-for relation is (...) realized is named the symbol-matter problem. (4) A necessary physical condition is that all informational vehicles are material boundary conditions or constraints acting on the lawful dynamics of local systems. It is useful to define a dependency hierarchy of information types: (1) syntactic information (i.e., communication theory), (2) heritable information acquired by variation and natural selection, (3) non-heritable learned or creative information, and (4) measured physical information in the context of natural laws. High information storage capacity is most reliably implemented by discrete linear sequences of non-dynamic vehicles, while the execution of information for control and construction is a non-holonomic dynamic process. The first epistemic cut occurs in self-replication. The first interpretation of base sequence information is by protein folding; the last interpretation of base sequence information is by natural selection. Evolution has evolved senses and nervous systems that acquire non-heritable information, and only very recently after billions of years, the competence for human language. Genetic and human languages are the only known complete general purpose languages. They have fundamental properties in common, but are entirely different in their acquisition, storage and interpretation. (shrink)

Gray hypothesizes that the contents of consciousness correspond to the outputs of a subicular (hippocampal/temporal lobe) comparator that compares the current state of the organism's perceptual world with a predicted state. I argue that Gray has identified a key contributing system to conscious awareness, but that his model is inadequate for explaining how conscious contents are generated in the brain. An alternative model is offered.

Gray's neuropsychological model of consciousness uses a hierarchical feedback loop framework that has been extensively discussed by many others in psychology. This commentary therefore urges Gray to integrate with, or at least acknowledge previous models. It also points out flaws in his feedback model and suggests directions for further theoretical work.

The essay defends praying with images against those who claim this type of prayer is objectionable. The hermeneutical defence consists of three arguments. First I observe that people relate to ordinary photos in ways that cannot be explained in terms of the image's sign-value alone. Second, I develop an account of praying with images as a form of symbolic practice. Finally, in order to bolster my account, I compare icons with a particular class of symbolic objects, viz. relics. The general (...) idea I put forward is that icons have to be understood as expressions of the reality they represent, and not simply as accurate or inaccurate visual representations of that reality. Icons are not created by human hands; instead, the hand of the painter is the instrumental cause of God's self-expression, via the painter, on the canvas. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on the central role faith plays in the thought of Polanyi and Voegelin. I begin by indicating how both find the modern conception of scientific knowing seriously wanting. What Polanyi terms "objectivism" and Voegelin calls "scientism" is the modern tendency to reduce knowledge to only that which can be scientifically demonstrated. This errant view of knowledge does not occur in a vacuum, though, and both men draw a connection between this and the political pathologies of (...) the twentieth century. I then show the complementary ways in which these two thinkers believe recovery is possible: an epistemological solution encompassed in Polanyi's personal knowledge and an ontological reorientation that is the core of Voegelin's insistence that we must recover an awareness of human participation in transcendent reality. (shrink)

The comparator model is insufficient for three reasons. First, consciousness is involved in the process of comparison as well as in the output. Second, we still do not have enough neurophysiological information to match the events of consciousness, although such knowledge is growing. Third, the anatomical localisation proposed can be damaged bilaterally but consciousness will persist.

In this paper, we outline a framework for understanding the different kinds of knowledge required for medical practice and use this framework to show how scientism undermines aspects of this knowledge. The framework is based on Michael Polanyi’s claim that knowledge is primarily the product of the contemplations and convictions of persons and yet at the same time carries a sense of universality because it grasps at reality. Building on Polanyi’s ideas, we propose that knowledge can be described along two (...) intersecting “dimensions”: the tacit–explicit and the particular–general. These dimensions supersede the familiar “objective−subjective” dichotomy, as they more accurately describe the relationship between medical science and medical practice. Scientism, we argue, excludes tacit and particular knowledge and thereby distorts “clinical reality” and impairs medical practice and medical ethics. (shrink)

To avoid teleological interpretations, it is important to make a distinction between functions and uses of consciousness, and to address questions concerning the consequences of consciousness. Assumptions about the phylogenetic distribution of consciousness are examined. It is concluded that there is some value in identifying consciousness an exclusively human attribute.

Gray's integration of the different levels of description and explanation in his theory is problematic: The introduction of consciousness into his theorising consists of the mind-brain identity assumption, which tells us nothing new. There need not be correlations between levels of description. Gray's account does not extend beyond “brute” correlation. Integration must be achieved in a principled, mutually constraining way.

Edward R. Murrow has often been mentioned as the model CBS newsman, a combination of integrity, common sense, sound news judgment, and good writing and delivery skills. Perhaps these qualities emerged from something beyond mere educational and technical competence; perhaps he had a ?theory?;, a larger view of the world and how things operate, or should operate. Murrow's early life is explored as origin of his theory and applications of his construct of ethics and integrity are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and defend a broad biologically informed internalist position. This internalism is pluralistic because it more explicitly identifies the range of ‘best light’ sporting practices than previous internalist literature. As such, it may help to solve a long-standing debate between broad internalists or interpretivists, as they are also called, and conventionalists. I present six models of sport that reflect different normative stances on testing and contesting acts. Each one is grounded in what I (...) claim to be an element of our more or less durable, but not metaphysically fixed, human nature. I conclude with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of my models, relationships among and between them, and implications for practice. (shrink)

Zero-sum aspects of sport have generated a number of ethical concerns and a similar number of defenses or apologetics. The trick has been to find a middle position that neither overly gentrifies sport nor inappropriately emphasizes the significance of winning and losing. One such position would have us focus on the process of trying to win over the fact of having one. It would also ameliorate any harms associated with defeat by pointing out that benefits like achievement, excellence, and moral (...) development are available to winner and loser alike. Relying on the notion of ‘frame’ introduced by Polanyi, I argue that this approach underplays the poignant drama of sport (including the sting of defeat) and thus, seeks redemption at too high a cost. I argue for a version of red-blooded competition that is justified more by transcendence than mitigation, more by a willingness to play again tomorrow than civility during any single contest. I analyze sport in terms of its receptivity to such repetition and find that epistemological uncertainty, enhanced by the presence of chance in sport, renders repeat engagements both sensible and attractive. I conclude that sport verdicts, unlike outcomes in war, business, and love, do not settle things. Rather they invite both winner and loser alike to ‘play again tomorrow’. (shrink)