The greenhouse, the oppressed and the conversation of humankind: fiduciary hermeneutic fallibilism and the pragmatic necessity of realism

The conversation of humankind and the future of the planet depend on an objective realist understanding of truth in science and morality. While Richard Rorty's pragmatist break with post-Cartesian philosophy is sound in part, his utopian agenda for 'the conversation of mankind' is weakened by his 'epistemological behaviorism', which offers no purchase on extra-human reality for universal truth claims. This leaves Rorty committed to an ethnocentric, liberal view promoting 'the best we can be' through persuasion but without an appeal to truth. Michael Polanyi and Hans-Georg Gadamer also turn away from the quest for guaranteed knowledge, but offer a realist alternative.
INTRODUCTION Human-induced climate change and universal human rights are two intimately connected issues that highlight cognitive dissonances in contemporary scientific and moral/theological discourses. How remarkable that in an age of [...]