Abstract

I assume there is no point in speaking of objective interpretation without explaining what it is about the nature of things that fits them for interpretation and how we may be said to know that particular interpretations do indeed fit interpretable things objectively. On that assumption I provide an argument, largely in accord with post‐Kantian themes, to show that a relativistic account of interpretation is not likely to be ruled out by any objectivism or by any exceptionless rule of bivalence. I offer arguments to distinguish between, and account for, what I call interpretation in the “constituting” sense, which bears on the constructed nature of perception and the distinction between description and interpretation, and interpretation in the “ampliative” sense, which bears primarily on the distinctive properties of intrinsically interpretable things. By this strategy I show the sense in which the interpretation of physical phenomena under explanatory conditions invites epistemological forms of incommensurabilism and the Intentional properties of cultural phenomena provide metaphysical grounds for viable forms of relativistic interpretation