Scientific discoveries and the emergence of cosmological theories such as the Big Bang Theory and evolution have challenged the Christian doctrine of creation and its reliability on many fronts, because the discoveries appear to contradict the Christian account as to how creation unfolded. Hefner sees the situation as an additional interpretative task to theologians. He, however, posits that scientific discoveries are an opportunity to communicate the Christian message through social and scientific experience to bring meaning to broader society. He (...) expresses the notion that religion will remain relevant only if it measures up to science, because we are in a science and technology era. Hefner, therefore, introduced the concept of created co-creator as a metaphor and analytical tool to explain the meaning and purpose of humans within the biosphere. The concept is characterized by the ability to communicate religion through science and to relate with available models of origin. This work expounds on the concept of created co-creator’s ability to explain human technological trajectory in theology. There is also an effort to establish a relationship between Hefner’s concept and Haraway’s cyborg with an emphasis on the concept’s ability to communicate the Christian doctrine of creation through scientific knowledge and why such an enterprise is useful. (shrink)

Inspired by Louis Althusser’s polemic that Marxism is a science and not a philosophy, we enquire about the nature of this ‘scientificity’ of Marxism. The result is a clarification that Marxism is a social theory within the discourse of hermeneutics. Drawing on William Dilthey’s categorisation of human science as Geisteswissenschaft, which essentially is an interpretive science when differentiated from Naturwissenschaft, we point out that Marxism should be understood and used as a socio-hermeneutic theory. We highlight that (...) at the pinnacle of his intellectual development that resulted in Das Kapital, Marx produced a scientific principle for interpreting historical social formations and the human condition, particularly during the capitalist epoch. The description of the scientific character of this hermeneutic principle, set against what Althusser attempted, and motivated by the quest for a contemporaneous application of Marxist theory, is the mission of our paper. It is a contribution to the Philosophy of Social Science. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore the relations between Schutzian theory and hermeneutics. After presenting the connections between hermeneutic thought and Schutz’s work from a historical point of view, it will argue that despite its significant differences from hermeneutic theory, Schutzian theory can be utilized as a kind of proto-hermeneutics. By now, the heterogeneous movement of the interpretive social sciences has reached an established position, but with their growing reliance on the impulses coming from philosophical (...) class='Hi'>hermeneutics, the latent problem comes to the foreground: the former demand for an action-theoretical grounding has faded away. Currently, action theory itself is no more dominated by the work of interpretively minded authors, but by the theories of rational choice. This results in a false opposition between the explanatory models, which base their arguments on historical, cultural, and linguistic factors, and those, which focus on the plane of the decisions of individuals. Bypassing the objectivism present in both the rational choice approach and hermeneutics, Schutz’s pragmatic theory of the life-world, originating from both interpretive and pragmatic intellectual influences, may be useful to overcome this opposition, and can serve as a proto-hermeneutical point of departure: that is, as a theory which cannot alone take over the duty of hermeneutics, but which can complement hermeneutics on a fundamental level. (shrink)

In this essay, our goal is to discover science in Martin Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics, lecture notes for his 1935 summer semester course, because, after all, his subject is metaphysica generalis, or ontology, and this could be construed as a theory of the human brain. Here, by means of verbatim quotes from his text, we attempt to show that indeed these lectures can be viewed as suggestion for an objective scientific theory of human perception, the human capacity for (...) deciphering phenomena, ie. hermeneutics in its broadest sense. His added notes from the 1953 edition, all of which are comments, not corrections, imply that he never abandoned these thoughts on metaphysics, despite all of his utterances about a need to overcome it, and their popular interpretations to that effect. In his presentation, he further develops the colorful and intuitive style, an hermeneutic language, that he had created in his earlier work Being and Time. Of human existence he speaks in such expressions as being-there -- ``Dasein" -- and being-in-the-world, the latter term no longer explicit in the 1935 lectures. The lectures can be read as a pre-scientific analysis of how man, being-there, perceives his environment, artfully managing to deal with the manifold challenges posed by the phenomenal structures of the universe. Man attentively recognizes and deciphers their pre-linguistic contents and, while trying to make sense of it all, puts into words his awareness. There are numerous passages in Heidegger's work where he in fairly concrete terms provides us with hints for a perceptive science that, as it turns out and is demonstrated below in this essay, can be explained in terms of recent advances in neuroscience. It would be implausible, even unthinkable, unimaginable, for there not to be found essential agreement between on one hand his philosophical insights gained by hermeneutics of Dasein, into how our brain functions to let us know what's happening & on the other hand, scientific discoveries obtained through anatomy, EEG, fMRI, TMS, electrode implants, etc, of brain structures & functions employed in perception of the momentary scene. A nexus between science and philosophy is provided in Heidegger's definitive treatment of the Logos, here interpreted as a structural version of Platonic forms (Burchard, 2014). This allows for neurolinguistic brain functions to serve as meta-context for Heidegger's being-in-the-world. The logical functions of Dasein's anatomical brain are performed by the logos machine, formerly the human soul, using top-down processing based on a global context, the noumenal cosmos which humans maintain internally. Heidegger's 1942/43 winter semester lectures Parmenides extend in unbroken fashion his 1935 work, proving that he never abandoned, as is widely claimed, his metaphysical avenue of thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.4 (2005) 335-342 [Access article in PDF] Psychoanalysis as a Hybrid of Religion and Science Quinton Deeley Keywords Freud, psychoanalysis, religion, science, evolution Introduction De Block's paper, "Freud as an Evolutionary Psychiatrist," discusses Freud's writ-ings—including a recently discovered paper on the evolution of psychopathology—to establish the Freudian "philosophy of man" that human beings are "ill to the core" (i.e., that mental illness is an inevitable (...) byproduct of human psychological processes). This perspective is then used as a basis for proposing a way in which psychoanalysis can be integrated with contemporary evolutionary psychology. However, this undertaking raises fundamental questions about psychoanalysis itself, which are addressed in this commentary. First, to what extent is a systematic theoretical unity imposed on, rather than discovered in, Freud's writings? Also, has De Block succeeded in grounding the Freudian philosophy of man in evolutionary theory, and how is this ambition affected by general questions about the scientific status and evidence for psychoanalytic conceptions? Further, if there is only limited experimental evidence for psychoanalytic concepts, how are claims to knowledge justified in psychoanalytic discourse, and how does this relate to the forms of epistemic justification found in religion and science? Finally, is psychoanalysis closer to religious or scientific discourse, and if it combines features of both, what kind of activity is it? The Exposition of the Freudian Philosophical Project The key claim of De Block's paper is that any evolutionary psychology faithful to Freud's account of human nature must be constrained by a fundamental premise: the psychological organization of human beings is such that "there is a quantitative, but not a structural, difference between psychiatric patients and so-called healthy or normal individuals" (2005, 323). From De Block's perspective, this reflects the Freudian perspective that the normal operation of psychological processes inevitably results in some degree of mental distress: "every repression produces symptoms, every defense mechanism produces more suffering than is strictly necessary" (2005, 321). As a result, "when Freud writes that there is only a gradual difference between neurotics and normals, he does not mean the normals are non-neurotic, but only that they suffer less under their neurosis" (2005, 318). This Freudian perspective is variously summarized throughout the paper; for example, "we think there is only one underlying motive of Freud's research, which [End Page 335] could also function as a cornerstone of a 'Freudian' philosophy. This underlying motive is the intuition that there is no substantial difference between the so-called normal human being and the mentally insane" (2005, 315).De Block's exposition of the Freudian account of human nature also emphasizes the doctrine of psychosexuality: "the Freudian philosophy of man presumes primarily that every human being has to react in some way of another to sexual problems" (2005, 317). One of the problems confronting any expositor of Freud is the fact that his voluminous writings show considerable development in his thought. This heterogeneity raises the question of the extent to which the coherence of Freudian theory as a systematic whole is imposed by expositors, rather than lying in the corpus itself. De Block's approach to this heterogeneity is to extract different kinds of relations between sexuality and psychopathology from Freud's writings (e.g., neurosis and the Oedipal instincts, psychosis and narcissism), and then to argue that they explain Freud's interest in less obviously sexual aspects of mind, behavior, and society. As De Block comments after his exegesis of different connections between sexuality and psychopathology: but probably, he [Freud] only meant that in neurosis, people wrestle first and foremost with love, in perversion with sex and violence, and in psychosis with identity and issues related to identity, such as death and "the meaning of life." At least, such an interpretation can explain why Freud—in some of his works—recognized the importance of problems like aggression, love, and death for the human psyche and human psychopathology...; he nevertheless refused to modify the primacy of sexuality in psychopathology. (2005, X) Whether all of Freud's explanations of psychological phenomena involve... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Jack W. Meiland INTERPRETATION AS A COGNITIVE DISCIPLINE Interpretation is the fundamental method of the humanities. The humanist is concerned first to understand what a text, a speech, a work of art, means; and interpretation has this understanding as its goal. All of the other activities and aims of the humanist depend on interpretation. One cannot properly appreciate a work of art until one grasps what it means. Nor (...) can one appropriately evaluate it until this condition is met. Moreover, the importance of interpretation reaches far beyond the humanities into everyday life, where we interpret what we hear and read in order to grasp meanings. Its importance reaches into the sciences: the social sciences where one must interpret this individual behavior and that institutional practice, and the natural sciences where one must interpret the results of one's experiments. Because interpretation is of such fundamental and pervasive importance in our lives, it is urgent for us to understand what interpretation is and what it should aim at. In this article, I investigate the activity of interpretation by focusing on the interpretation of literary texts and by beginning with the views of E. D. Hirsch, Jr. Eleven years ago, Hirsch published Validity in Interpretation, a book which delves into the nature of interpretation in great detail.1 Richard Palmer has said that Hirsch's book is "the first full-dress treatise in general hermeneutics written in English," and continues, "In the years to come, it will undoubtedly take its place among the significant American works on the theory of interpretation. In a systematic and carefully argued presentation, the book challenges some of the most cherished assumptions that have guided literary interpretation for some four decades."2 1 think that Palmer's prediction has been fulfilled. Hirsch's book remains a decade later one of the very few systematic American works in this field,3 and it has been widely read, much used in university courses, and has significantly influenced thought on its subject. Validity in Interpretation presents a carefully worked-out position buttressed by philosophically-informed 23 24Philosophy and Literature and systematic argumentation in a way which reveals the fundamental questions at issue. Although there have been scattered criticisms of Hirsch's views,4 in my opinion there has not so far appeared the kind of searching critique which this book deserves in view of its attempt to deal with these issues so seriously and at such a fundamental level and in view of the influence which the book has had. The necessity for a critique is now reinforced by the recent publication of another book by Hirsch, The Aims of Interpretation, more than half of which is devoted to a further explication and defense of these same views.5 In undertaking to reply to Hirsch's position, I hope not only to cast doubt on that position but also, and mainly, to provide better foundations for the view which I hold. It is one of the great merits of Hirsch's work that it facilitates that constructive effort by attacking the issues at such a basic level, enabling us to come to grips with them immediately. In what follows, I will describe Hirsch's view, make clear what kind of position he holds, and defend his view against criticisms which I consider misguided. Then we will be in a position to assess his contentions and to defend an alternative theory. Hirsch's view is, briefly, that the interpretation of a literary work should aim at re-creating (or, as he sometimes puts it, "re-cognizing") the meaning which the author of that work intended the work to have. He opposes all views which ignore authorial meaning; views which hold that the meaning of a work may change through the ages, so that the work may have one meaning at one time and another meaning at another time; views which hold that the work may have meaning in virtue of its relation to the interpreter's interests, to the needs and problems of the interpreter's times or the spirit of his age, or in fact to anything except the author's intended meaning.6 The first point that must be... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Hermeneutical Turn in American Critical Theory, 1830–1860M. D. WalhoutLong considered an obscure province of biblical studies, hermeneutics is now familiar territory to American literary critics, along with phenomenology, structuralism, post-structuralism, and the other European theories that have redrawn the map of American criticism in the past twenty-five years. The gradual transformation of hermeneutics into a theory of criticism, and ultimately into a comprehensive (...) class='Hi'>theory of the human sciences, was the work of a series of great German thinkers, including Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. These figures were introduced (or reintroduced) to American critics by E. D. Hirsch, whose Validity in Interpretation (1967) “shattered,” in the words of Richard E. Palmer, “the splendid isolation of American literary criticism from hermeneutics.” Hailing Schleiermacher and Dilthey as the forefathers of “objective interpretation,” Hirsch dismissed Heidegger and Gadamer as prophets of subjectivism. For his part, Palmer strove to vindicate Heidegger and Gadamer as the true heirs of the hermeneutical tradition. Noting the difference between Hirsch’s understanding of hermeneutics and theirs, Palmer concluded,So the hermeneutical debate goes on. On the one side are the defenders of objectivity and validation, who look to hermeneutics as the theoretical source for norms of validation; on the other side are the phenomenologists of the event of understanding, who stress the historical character of this “event,” and consequently the limitations of all claims to “objective knowledge” and “validity.” 1Twenty-five years later this hermeneutical debate is still going on. [End Page 683]What Hirsch and Palmer did not realize is that they were reviving a debate over the nature of interpretation that dated from the late nineteenth century, when American literary criticism was undergoing professionalization. 2 As early as 1885, in the programmatic introduction to his book on Shakespeare as a dramatic artist, Richard G. Moulton had declared, “In the treatment of literature the proposition which seems to stand most in need of assertion at the present moment is, that there is an inductive science of literary criticism.” Moulton proceeded to lay down “a foundation axiom of inductive literary criticism: Interpretation in literature is of the nature of a scientific hypothesis, the truth of which is tested by the degree of completeness with which it explains the details of the literary work as they actually stand.” 3 Thirty years later Moulton repeated this axiom, insisting that “such inductive treatment constitutes the very alphabet of science.” 4 But Moulton’s determination to apply the logic of the natural sciences to the interpretation of literature was not without its critics. In 1900 the German-born philologist Julius Goebel began a valiant, if futile, effort to introduce the hermeneutics of Schleiermacher and Dilthey to his American colleagues. 5 Years later, in an article published in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Goebel drew on Schleiermacher’s Hermeneutik und Kritik (1838) to show “the possibility of attaining exact knowledge in the mental sciences without the aid of the scientific or laboratory methods.” 6 Later still, in an article on Dilthey published in the same journal, Goebel recalled how he had argued in an address to the Modern Language Association that criticism “had lost touch with the contemporary movements emphasizing the independence and importance of the mental sciences. What seemed to me needed above all was a reform of the method of interpretation for which Dilthey had set the example both in principle and practice.” 7 It was not until the late 1960s that Goebel’s project was finally revived.While Goebel may have been the first American literary scholar to use the word “hermeneutics,” the concept of interpretation had long been a part of American critical theory. In fact, what might be called the “hermeneutical turn” in American critical theory occurred well before the era of professionalization. [End Page 684] In order to trace this turn, we must recover the work of the amateur critical theorists of the antebellum era, including such forgotten figures as George Allen and Edwin Percy Whipple. Disciples of the Schlegels and Coleridge, these amateur theorists established the basic premises of the hermeneutical turn: that criticism is a science; that the critic must “reproduce” the author’s creative process; that... (shrink)

A sociological revision of Aron Gurwitsch provides a helpful layered theory of conscious experience as a four-domain structure: _the theme_, _the thematic field_, _the halo_, and _the social horizon_. The social horizon—the totality of the social world that is unknown, vaguely known, taken for granted, or ignored by the subject despite objectively influencing the thoughts and actions of the subject—, helps conceptualize how everyday human–computer interaction (HCI) can obscure social structures. Two examples illustrate the usefulness of this framework: (1) (...) illuminating new forms of social control known as “surveillance capitalism” that influence the other domains of consciousness despite being invisible to the subject and (2) explaining how computer use tends to “hide” the ecological impacts of digital-technological systems from the attention of subjects. A sociological four-domain theory of consciousness supplements ethnomethodological HCI research by preserving the field’s long-standing focus on micro-level interactions and user experience while simultaneously drawing attention to a “commonsense ignorance of social structure”—in this case, the invisibility of the social structures behind personal computer use. Social structure can be reproduced even when actors are unaware of engaging in its reproduction. (shrink)

Over every and each sport event, a dark veil spreads and obfuscates the celebration: doping. Although anti-doping policies have been widely applied, controlling and diminishing this phenomenon has not been achieved yet and the use of doping is commonplace. In this article, I propose the concept of narcissistic civilization as a tool to interpret this phenomenon. I seek for a parallel reading between the Freudian idea of narcissism and its extension to social narcissism by Fromm, together with Heidegger’s analysis of (...) technology, keeping in mind that doping is a technological application. In this way I point out that both theories share a common view in that humans tend to fail in the distinction between the external reality as an object and their own self as the interpreter, that is between the ¨I¨ and the ¨not I¨. By making this fusion of the two theories that originate from different intellectual traditions, I aspire to provide an interpretation tool for the broad use of doping: I conclude that doping can be understood with the assumption of a narcissistic civilization, focused on technology, that calls for the use of PEDs. (shrink)

We present a computer-supported approach for the logical analysis and conceptual explicitation of argumentative discourse. Computational hermeneutics harnesses recent progresses in automated reasoning for higher-order logics and aims at formalizing natural-language argumentative discourse using flexible combinations of expressive non-classical logics. In doing so, it allows us to render explicit the tacit conceptualizations implicit in argumentative discursive practices. Our approach operates on networks of structured arguments and is iterative and two-layered. At one layer we search for logically correct formalizations for (...) each of the individual arguments. At the next layer we select among those correct formalizations the ones which honor the argument’s dialectic role, i.e. attacking or supporting other arguments as intended. We operate at these two layers in parallel and continuously rate sentences’ formalizations by using, primarily, inferential adequacy criteria. An interpretive, logical theory will thus gradually evolve. This theory is composed of meaning postulates serving as explications for concepts playing a role in the analyzed arguments. Such a recursive, iterative approach to interpretation does justice to the inherent circularity of understanding: the whole is understood compositionally on the basis of its parts, while each part is understood only in the context of the whole. We summarily discuss previous work on exemplary applications of human-in-the-loop computational hermeneutics in metaphysical discourse. We also discuss some of the main challenges involved in fully-automating our approach. By sketching some design ideas and reviewing relevant technologies, we argue for the technological feasibility of a highly-automated computational hermeneutics. (shrink)

Introduction. The article raises the problem of eugenics as a direction of scientific thought and practice of improving the human species. The modern advances in reproductive medicine, the development of biology, the emergence of methods for editing the human genome have updated the debate around eugenics. The aim of the work is a comprehensive study of the discourse and practice of eugenics in the period of the 19th — 21st centuries. This aim involves solving a number of tasks: 1) analysis (...) of the historical context and prerequisites for the eugenics emergence; 2) the study of the institutionalization and practical implementation of its ideas in Western countries in the period until the end of World War II; 3) research on the position of eugenics after the war and the transition of discussions to the mainstream of genetics, bioethics, transhumanism; 4) study of the modern discourse of eugenics, ethical issues and the degree of government intervention in population reproduction. Methods. The author uses the historical-retrospective method, which makes it possible to comprehensively consider the context of the emergence and development of eugenics, the comparative method (when comparing the characteristic features of the «old» (authoritarian, forced) and «new» (democratic, based on personal choice) eugenics), the institutional approach ( when identifying the main institutions involved in the development, dissemination, implementation of the ideas of eugenics) and a discursive approach (to study modern discussions about the «new» eugenics and related ethical problems). Scientific novelty of the research. A comprehensive study of eugenics has been carried out, a connection has been established between the «old» and «new» eugenics, and their similarities and differences have been investigated. Results. The need to distinguish eugenics as a theory of human selection and as a practice has been proven, and the latter, depending on the political, cultural and socio-economic situation in the country, can take a variety of forms: from counseling and preventive measures to racial cleansing. It was found that population growth, urbanization, mass migration, instability in society, combined with the ideas of modernism about social order by the forces of science and technology, contributed to the spread of eugenics ideas in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. After the Nuremberg trials, the concept under study temporarily dropped out of scientific discourse. The article examines in detail the socio-economic and other preconditions that contributed to the revival of interest in eugenics in the 60s of XX century and at the present stage. It is shown that today part of the discussion has shifted to the mainstream of genetics, bioethics and transhumanism. Conclusions. It has been established that discussions about eugenics run up against the problem of breeding control, which means that they raise the question of who should perform selection, how, what are its criteria. The ethical aspects of introducing control are complicated by the fact that perceptions of the «norm» and the degree of permitted interference depend on the particular society. (shrink)

Creations of the Mind presents sixteen original essays by theorists from a wide variety of disciplines who have a shared interest in the nature of artifacts and their implications for the human mind. All the papers are written specially for this volume, and they cover a broad range of topics concerned with the metaphysics of artifacts, our concepts of artifacts and the categories that they represent, the emergence of an understanding of artifacts in infants' cognitive development, (...) as well as the evolution of artifacts and the use of tools by non-human animals. This volume will be a fascinating resource for philosophers, cognitive scientists, and psychologists, and the starting point for future research in the study of artifacts and their role in human understanding, development, and behaviour.Contributors: John R. Searle, Richard E. Grandy, Crawford L. Elder, Amie L. Thomasson, Jerrold Levinson, Barbara C. Malt, Steven A. Sloman, Dan Sperber, Hilary Kornblith, Paul Bloom, Bradford Z. Mahon, Alfonso Caramazza, Jean M. Mandler, Deborah Kelemen, Susan Carey, Frank C. Keil, Marissa L. Greif, Rebekkah S. Kerner, James L. Gould, Marc D. Hauser, Laurie R. Santos, Steven Mithen. (shrink)

Postphenomenology and posthermeneutics as initiated by Ihde have made important contributions to conceptualizing understanding human–technology relations. However, their focus on individual perception, artifacts, and static embodiment has its limitations when it comes to understanding the embodied use of technology as involving bodily movement, social, and taking place within, and configuring, a temporal horizon. To account for these dimensions of experience, action, and existence with technology, this paper proposes to use a conceptual framework based on performance metaphors. Drawing on metaphors (...) from three performance arts—dance, theatre, and music—and giving examples from social media and other technologies, it is shown that we can helpfully describe technology use and experience as performance involving movement, sociality, and temporality. Moreover, it is argued that these metaphors can also be used to reformulate the idea that in such uses and experiences, now understood as “technoperformances”, technology is not merely a tool but also takes on a stronger, often non-intended role: not so much as “mediator” but as choreographer, director, and conductor of what we experience and do. Performance metaphors thus allow us to recast the phenomenology and hermeneutics of technology use as moving, social, and temporal—indeed historical—affair in which technologies take on the role of organizer and structurer of our performances, and in which humans are not necessarily the ones who are fully in control of the meanings, experiences, and actions that emerge from our engagement with the world, with technology, and with each other. This promises to give us a more comprehensive view of what it means to live with technology and how our lives are increasingly organized by technology—especially by smart technologies. Finally, it is argued that this has normative implications for an ethics and politics of technology, now understood as an ethics and politics of technoperformances. (shrink)

. Implicit in the cognitive social learning model of personality as articulated by Walter Mischel, Albert Bandura, and others, is an epistemology which emphasizes the activity of the mind in the construction of knowledge. Using Mischel's five person variables as an outline, the epistemic implications of this model of personality are developed and then illustrated by application to William James's typology of the religious personality and to the current debate over hermeneutic and empirical approaches to studying human behavior. This approach (...) explicates the connection between personality characteristics and epistemological approaches in terms of cognitive social learning theory. (shrink)

This paper aims to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue between Ricoeur’s phenomenological- hermeneutical thought and human geography, in particular with respect to the issue of landscape interpretation. The connection draws on the idea that landscapes and lived spaces can be read as texts, not unfamiliar to human geography and semiotics from 1980s onward. In the first part of the paper I will briefly expound some theories of landscape which make use of the metaphors “landscape as cultural image” and “landscape as text” (...) in human and cultural geography. Then, I will discuss the main contribution of Ricoeur to the issue of space. The philosopher already envisioned a possible application of his “threefold mimesis” of Time and Narrative to architectural spaces. In the conclusion, I will propose to rejuvenate the geographical metaphor of “landscape as text” by introducing a possible application of the Ricoeurian notion of “meaningful action as text” to landscape. (shrink)

In his lecture course on Hölderlin's hymn “The Ister,” Heidegger makes a striking claim about translation which implies that the paradigm of translation can never be encapsulated by a passive substitution of one linguistic signifier for another, for what is involved is no less than the stance the translator takes within his original language as unconcealment, and how he ex-sists toward the other language as the site of another revelation. If the human being and Being belong together by the happening (...) of Ereignis in the way beings presence through language, the hermeneutical event of translation as unfolding, not only within history but also toward that which opens up historical understanding, grounds his entire authentic comportment toward this unconcealment. This article will argue that translation provides a useful correlative through which we can understand Ereignis as appropriative event. (shrink)

Cross-cultural understanding stands as one of the great pillars of multicultural education and yet rarely do multiculturalists provide a full account of what it is and how it takes place. This paper will serve as an initial investigation into the complex nature of cross-cultrual understanding. Drawing on the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, I will layout the framework for a theory of understanding and provide a concept of culture that avoids the pitfalls of essentialism and instrumentalism. I will (...) then raise, as the backdrop for my examination, the issue of authenticity in the hip hop world. This will allow me to put these hermeneutic theories to work by illuminating the interpretive process through which a hypothetical middle-aged teacher might go about gaining an apprecitaion for rap music to better understand his suburban students who, for him, embody hip hop culture. This phenomenological account of cross-cultural understanding will in turn raise thought-provoking questions about human agency, translation, and the various implications of cross-cultural understanding in the classroom. (shrink)

The theory of technological mediation aims to take technological artifacts seriously, recognizing the constitutive role they play in how we experience the world, act in it, and how we are constituted as (moral) subjects. Its quest for a compatible ethics has led it to Foucault’s “care of the self,” i.e., a transformation of the self by oneself through self-discipline. In this regard, technologies have been interpreted as power structures to which one can relate through Foucaultian “technologies (...) of the self” or ascetic practices. However, this leaves unexplored how concrete technologies can actuallysupportthe process of self-care. This paper explores this possibility by examining one such technology: a gamified To-Do list app. Doing so, it first shows that despite the apparent straightforwardness of gamification, confrontation and shame play an important role in how the app motivates me to do better. Second, inspired by Ihde’s schema of human-technology relations, it presents different ways in which the app may confront me with myself. Subsequently, it accounts for the motivation and shame that this technologically mediated confrontation with myself invokes through a Levinasian account of ethical subjectivity. In so doing, it also shows how Levinas’ phenomenology implies a responsibility for self-care and how nonhuman, technological others may still call me to responsibility. It concludes with a reflection on the role of gamification in technologically mediated subjectivation and some implications for design. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy of technology, in particular mediation theory, has largely neglected language and has paid little attention to the social-linguistic environment in which technologies are used. In order to reintroduce and strengthen these two missing aspects we turn towards Ricoeur’s narrative theory. We argue that technologies have a narrative capacity: not only do humans make sense of technologies by means of narratives but technologies themselves co-constitute narratives and our understanding of these narratives (...) by configuring characters and events in a meaningful temporal whole. We propose a hermeneutic framework that enables us to categorise and interpret technologies according to two hermeneutic distinctions. Firstly, we consider the extent to which technologies close in on the paradigm of the written text by assessing their capacity to actively configure characters and events into a meaningful whole; thereby introducing a linguistic aspect in the theory of technological mediation. Secondly, we consider the extent to which technologieshave the capacity to abstract from the public narrative time of actual characters and events by constructing quasi-characters and quasi-events, thereby introducing the social in our conception of technological mediation. This leads us to the outlines of a theory of narrative technologies that revolves around four hermeneutic categories. In order to show the merits of this theory, we discuss the categories by analysing paradigmatic examples of narrative technologies: the bridge, the hydroelectric power plant, video games, and electronic money. (shrink)

Nussbaum’s version of the capability approach is not only a helpful approach to development problems but can also be employed as a general ethical-anthropological framework in ‘advanced’ societies. This paper explores its normative force for evaluating information technologies, with a particular focus on the issue of human enhancement. It suggests that the capability approach can be a useful way of to specify a workable and adequate level of analysis in human enhancement discussions, but argues that any interpretation of what (...) these capabilities mean is itself dependent on (interpretations of) the techno-human practices under discussion. This challenges the capability approach’s means-end dualism concerning the relation between on the one hand technology and on the other hand humans and capabilities. It is argued that instead of facing a choice between development and enhancement, we better reflect on how we want to shape human-technological practices, for instance by using the language of capabilities. For this purpose, we have to engage in a cumbersome hermeneutics that interprets dynamic relations between unstable capabilities, technologies, practices, and values. This requires us to modify the capability approach by highlighting and interpreting its interpretative dimension. (shrink)

In Roman Catholic moral theology there is an ongoing debate between the proportionalist or revisionist school and the traditionalist school that has developed what is referred to as the ‘New Natural Law Theory’ or ‘Basic Goods Theory’ . The stakes in this debate have been raised with Pope John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendor on fundamental moral theology that condemned ‘proportionalism’ or ‘teleologism’ as an ethical theory while utilizing many of the ideas, concepts, and terminology of the (...) BGT, thereby implicitly endorsing that ethical theory. While absolute norms and intrinsically evil acts have frequently been the focus of debate between these two schools, what is it that divides them fundamentally, on the level of ethical method? It is the role and function of reason and experience as two sources of moral knowledge, in part, that distinguish these two versions of natural law on the most basic level. While the BGT has a strict hierarchy of the sources of moral knowledge that posits the hierarchical magisterium as the definitive interpreter of reason and experience, revisionists posit a more dialogical relationship between reason, experience, and the magisterium. On certain ethical issues , the experience of the faithful as well as the rational arguments developed by revisionist Catholic moral theologians challenge some of the normative claims of the magisterium. This paper investigates the methodological use of reason and experience in each theory's interpretation of natural law and how and why these two sources of moral knowledge lead to fundamentally divergent normative claims on particular ethical issues. (shrink)

Philosophical and technoculture studies surrounding the existential understanding of the human–technology–world experience have seen a slow but steady increase that makes a turn to material hermeneutics in the second decade of the twenty-first century (Ihde in Postphenomenology: essays in the postmodern context. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1993; Capurro in AI Soc 25(1):35–42, 2010; Romele in Digital hermeneutics: philosophical investigations in new media and technologies. Routledge, Abingdon, 2020; among others). This renewed focus makes sense because human–technology–world experiences need (...) to be interpreted. And many of these are more complicated to study, precisely because technology is at the root of the experiences. One interesting subset of technologies is media technologies, also called digital media, which intertwines the device and the content to mediate together in the world (Irwin in Digital media: human-technology connection. Lexington Books, Lanham, 2016). Visual media technologies and media content, together, through what is called moving image technologies, create virtual role-playing, virtual and augmented reality, video games, and social media focused worlds that have become central experiences in contemporary culture. Just as image-based scientific instruments read the world in different ways, so to do these visual mediated experiences. How might this comingled “reading” of technology explain the digital film language and experience? I contend that understanding the existential “early” film experience helps understand the new age of cinema, with implications for digital media, digital representation of the visual, and technoscience and technoculture studies. The material hermeneutics perspective called postphenomenology is one way to study these visually focused human–technology–world perceptual and interpretive experiences. Don Ihde’s methodological framework (1990, 1993, 1996, 2002, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2019) is both an idea from technoscience studies and a set of nuanced vocabulary that helps to explore and reveal variations, patterns, and trajectories of the whole-body experience of technology. This use case will first explore traditional cinema and then the “new age” term “moving image”, to learn more about this complicated and radically transforming technological experience. Work by Don Ihde and Vivian Sobchack is considered. (shrink)

Historians of technology have provided important accounts of technological innovation, but they rarely employ concepts which permit a rigorous analysis ofinvention as a mental or cognitive process. This article seeks to address this theoretical lacuna by using concepts adapted from cognitive psychology to compare the mental processes of two telephone inventors, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison. Specifically, we suggest that invention may be seen as a process in which inventors combine ideas with objects, or what we call mental models (...) and mechanical representations. The strategies by which inventors generate and manipulate these mental models and mechanical representations are what we refer to as heuristics. Using these concepts to narrate the development of the telephone, this article shows how invention can be interpreted as being much more than simply a mysterious act of individual genius. (shrink)

Biological evolution and technological innovation, while differing in many respects, also share common features. In particular, implementation of a new technology in the market is analogous to the spreading of a new genetic trait in a population. Technological innovation may occur either through the accumulation of quantitative changes, as in the development of the ocean clipper, or it may be initiated by a new combination of features or subsystems, as in the case of steamships. Other examples of the latter type (...) are electric networks that combine the generation, distribution, and use of electricity, and containerized transportation that combines standardized containers, logistics, and ships. Biological evolution proceeds, phenotypically, in many small steps, but at the genetic level novel features may arise not only through the accumulation of many small, common mutational changes, but also when distinct, relatively rare genetic changes are followed by many further mutations. In particular, capabilities of biologically modern man may have been initiated, perhaps some 150 000 years ago, by one or few accidental but distinct combinations of modules and subroutines of gene regulation which are involved in the generation of the neural network in the cerebral cortex. It is even conceivable that it was one primary genetic event that initiated the evolution of biologically modern man, introducing some novel but subtle feature of connectivity into the cerebral cortex which allowed for meta-levels of abstraction and upgraded modes of information processing. This may have set the stage for the evolution of integrated but diverse higher capabilities such as structured language, symbolic thought, strategic thought, and cognition based empathy. (shrink)

A Theory of Interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights provides a philosophically informed study of the methods of interpretation used by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. By drawing on Anglo-Americal legal, political and moral philosophy, the book also aims to provide a normative theory of the foundations of the ECHR rights.

B a c k g r o u n d. The article examines the concept of human rights. This concept in modern philosophical discourse is both vague and imprecise. Although most authors recognize the lack of unanimity in the definition of the concept of human rights, few have tried to find out the reasons for this situation. The purpose of this study is to identify the sources of the problematic definition of the concept of human rights by means of a (...) logical analysis of the concept and to propose ways to overcome the identified difficulties in the interpretation of this concept. M e t h o d s. A philosophical hermeneutic approach combined with a comparative and terminological analysis of the concept of human rights was used in the study. R e s u l t s. Human rights discourse is fundamentally open: it is normatively undetermined, and anyone can join it. It is therefore inevitably polyphonic and multilingual. As a result, this discourse contains very different understandings of the most important thing: what human rights really are. Efforts to find a universal definition of the concept of human rights seem to be an attempt to unite under one roof things that are poorly or not at all combined: different ontological understandings, different scopes of the concept, and different logical characteristics. C o n c l u s i o n s. The difficulty of logical analysis of the concept of human rights, i.e. its assignment to a specific type, and its unambiguous interpretation and definition, is related to: 1) the lack of definition of the limits of scope of the concept of human rights in philosophical discourse and the insufficient definition of the limits of this concept as a legal notion; 2) the need to assess the legitimacy of the retrospective extrapolation of the term ‘human rights' to the entire body of works created before the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which it was not used (in the Ukrainian context, this aspect is not obvious due to historical and linguistic peculiarities); 3) different ontological understanding of human rights by different actors in the discourse that makes it impossible to combine their positions under the same umbrella (e.g. according to one position, human rights are seen as anthropological attributes of a person; according to another, they are norms regulating social relations). The above testifies to the complexity of an unambiguous logical characteristic of the analyzed concept. It seems that thе situation does not allow for a single definition of the concept of "human rights". It is assumed that it is not a single concept, but a plurality of concepts. In this case, the position of the discourse participant in relation to a certain system of criteria and its justification may be a way to overcome the difficulties we have identified. (shrink)

Agricultural technologies are non-neutral and ethical challenges are posed by these technologies themselves. The technologies we use or endorse are embedded with values and norms and reflect the shape of our moral character. They can literally make us better or worse consumers and/or people. Looking back, when the world’s developed nations welcomed and steadily embraced industrialization as the dominant paradigm for agriculture a half century or so ago, they inadvertently championed a philosophy of technology that promotes an (...) insular human-centricism, despite its laudable intent to ensure food security and advance human flourishing. The dominant philosophy of technology has also seeded particular ethical consequences that plague the well-being of human beings, the planet, and farmed animals. After revisiting some fundamental questions regarding the complex ways in which technology as agent shapes our lives and choices and relegates food and farmed constituents into technological artifacts or commodities, I argue that we should accord an environmental virtue ethic of care—understood as caretaking—a central place in developing a more conscientious philosophy of technology that aims at sustainability, fairness, and humaneness in animal agriculture. While technology shapes society, it also is socially shaped and an environmental virtue ethic of care (EVEC) as an alternative design philosophy has the tools to help us take a much overdue inventory of ourselves and our relationships with the nonhuman world. It can help us to expose the ways in which technology hinders critical reflection of its capacity to alter communities and values, to come to terms with why we may be, in general, disengaged from critical ethical analysis of contemporary agriculture and to consider the moral shape and trajectory and the sustainability of our food production systems going into the future. I end by outlining particular virtues associated with the ethic of care discussed here and consider some likely implications for consumers and industry technocrats as they relate to farming animals. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to develop a system of corporate ethics based on an understanding and interpretation of the ethical demand of human beings who are in relation with each other according to Emmanuel Levinas' teachings and the responsibility the human being has to and for herself and others whom she encounters based on Paul Ricoeur's teachings on human action, text and hermeneutics. While the philosophies to which we will be referring may not overtly present a normative (...) ethic, we shall convey them in such a way that is reasonably germane to the development of our system of corporate ethics that would, indeed, demonstrate why (and, perhaps, how in some instances) the human being must act in response to the demand of the other whom she encounters. -/- We must not abandon the discussion as it relates to the economy but rather include it in a broader and more comprehensive dialogue about working to promote, support and protect the human dignity of all people using the advancements of technology to improve the human condition. The broader discussion must include but not be limited to developing a working definition of corporate ethics. To engage in discussions about the economy as an indicator for human success, we must speak openly and honestly about all stakeholders that participate and are affected by the economy. Without forsaking other stakeholders, we find the corporation - the entity whose actions have the farthest reaching and, in some cases, longer lasting impact on the human condition - to be an appropriate point of departure for this endeavor. (shrink)

Introduction. A human and the world are an organically connected part and whole, they are always a single World, and therefore they can only evolve together, in one direction. The human world consists of many interconnected and interdepend- ent parts. If any one of the parts (for example, technology) begins to dominate and claim the sta- tus of the whole, then the problem of violating the optimal ratio in the coexistence and co-evolutionary development of each of the parts, and hence (...) the whole itself, becomes aggravated. Hence, the eco-humanistic problem arises. The purpose of the work is to present the content and substantiate the theoretical and practical significance of eco-humanism as a new humanitar- ian knowledge and methodology for understanding the specifics of the relationship “man — technical and-technological world”. Methods. The author uses the methods of dia- lectics, systemic and synergetic approaches, the project (projective) method, which is implemented in the design and development of a new philo- sophical and scientific discipline of eco-humanism, and ideas of co-evolution. Scientific novelty of the research. The author determines basic foundations of eco-humanism as a new type of humanitarian knowledge; formulates and meaningfully substan- tiates the main principles of eco-humanism as a methodological setting for the ecologization of a person and the world: optimality, coordination and dominance of the whole (integrity) in relation to its parts. Results. Eco-humanistics is defined as a new type of knowledge about a person and a specific setting of his thinking and practical activities, focused on finding ways and means to achieve op- timality in relation to various aspects (for example, technical and anthropological) in a person’s being to ensure the possibility of their fruitful existence, to preserve and reproduce a person (as a unique integrity) and his world (as a universal integrity), in their interconnected and interdependent unity. Conclusions. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that the theoretical development of eco-humanistics will make it possible to study and analyze the phenomena of modern culture in a more multifaceted way, to get a more accurate interpretation of the ways of human existence and eco-cultural practices that provide the effect of the state of the “ecosystem” in situations of any intense socio-cultural transformations. (shrink)

How do artifacts get their functions? It is typically thought that an artifact’s function depends on its maker’s intentions. This chapter argues that this common understanding is fatally flawed. Nor can artifact function be understood in terms of current uses or capacities. Instead, it proposes that we understand artifact function on the etiological model that Ruth Millikan and others have proposed for the biological realm. This model offers a robustly normative conception of function, but it does so naturalistically by (...) employing our best scientific theories, in particular natural selection. To help make this case, it proposes “living artifacts” (organisms designed for human purposes through artificial selection) as a bridge between the artifactual and the biological realms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.1 (2002) 138-146 [Access article in PDF] Understanding Moral Limits in the Duality of Artifacts and NatureA Reply to Critics Eric Katz Ned Hettinger and Wayne Ouderkirk present some cogent criticisms of my ideas in environmental ethics, especially those ideas closely associated with my attacks on the process of ecological restoration. Both trace the source of my alleged problems to a pernicious dualism of (...) nature and humanity that they perceive in my environmental philosophy. In this reply I accept their basic analysis of my work but deny that my overall position leads to the problems they suggest. I explicitly endorse the dualism of human artifacts and natural entities, and I argue that this dualism exists along a spectrum of "more-or-less" natural or artifactual. I claim that this dualism is not pernicious, but on the contrary, it is the first necessary step to understanding the moral limits of human action in the natural world.I begin with a consideration of the formal structure of these critical papers—there is a remarkable formal similarity between these two essays. Each author begins with a brief review of the positive aspects of my position or "theory" in environmental ethics; then there is an analysis of the problems within the position, and the problematic consequences or implications [End Page 138] of my position for environmental policy and environmentalism generally; then there is an attempt to begin a solution to the problems encountered "on my own terms" so to speak—each author points out that within my position there are ideas that could be used to solve the problems uncovered. Thus I am urged to develop specific strands of my own thought—a recommendation that I (logically) cannot avoid.Now on one level this formal structure is commonplace in polite scholarly discourse. Before offering criticisms of an author—especially when he is in the same room—we cite a few positive things about his work, and we end by noting that the position of the author is not completely hopeless. So perhaps the structural similarity between these two papers is not particularly noteworthy. But in this case I think it is. For the structure of the papers points out a distinguishing feature of my work that I recognize: My work is essentially negative and critical. I believe that I am raising problems and provocative questions. My criticisms apply to both traditional ethics (especially as it relates to environmental issues) and to the standard (policy-driven) versions of environmental ethics (especially the anthropocentric and individualistic variations). My criticisms also create questions for mainstream environmental policies—or I so hope, for this is my chief purpose in doing environmental philosophy. Since it is essentially critical, the most one can derive from my work in a positive vein are suggestions or hints for directions in which solutions may be found. I readily admit that I have not followed these paths to work out solutions—at least not yet. Thus in a formal or structural sense I am in substantial agreement with my critics: my essays raise a lot of problems; I do not offer fully worked out solutions; but the seeds of possible solutions may be present in the body of my work.But I have to make one distinction concerning the nature of "problems." Ouderkirk and Hettinger raise two distinct kinds of problems when they interpret my work. First, there are (possibly) internal contradictions in my ideas that make the theory itself incoherent in some mostly formal way. (For example, my argument for the importance of nonanthropocentric value might hide a latent anthropocentrism—Ouderkirk says at one point that I may be letting anthropocentrism in through the back door.) And second, there are (supposedly) problems in my position because my view has serious negative consequences for standard environmental policies. (For example, both Hettinger and Ouderkirk claim that my view of the distinction between artifacts and natural entities makes impossible all restoration [End Page 139] efforts in the natural world.) Does my position lead to unacceptable consequences for standard environmental... (shrink)

This dissertation aims to develop Martin Heidegger's famous analysis of equipment into an ontology of objects. Although numerous commentators have discussed the role of the tool in Heidegger's work, all have interpreted it too narrowly as a question of human practical activity, in connection with a limited range of familiar utensils such as chisels, jackhammers, and saws. Chapter One argues that Heidegger's analysis actually holds good of all possible entities, whether they be "useful" or not. The term 'tool-being' holds good (...) for grains of sand as much as saws, for angels as much as windmills. In truth, all entities are caught up in Heidegger's famous reversal between readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand, a crippling global dualism from which nothing in the cosmos is immune. My related claim is that all of Heidegger's various attempts to discuss any sort of concrete subject matter quickly implode into a sheer repetition of the duel between tool and broken tool. His supposed discussions of "space," "truth," and "time" are nothing more than distracting code words for a repetitive duality that Heidegger tries to escape by means of his abortive project for a 'metontology.' His monotonous appeal to the drama of tool and broken tool is complicated by only one further dualism, one found in his work as early as the 1919 Freiburg course Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie. The interplay of these two principles is what leads Heidegger to his infamous notion of the fourfold , a concept too hastily ridiculed even by many of his admirers. Chapter Two offers a critical engagement with the secondary literature, focusing in particular on the concepts of Dasein, being, time, truth, Ereignis, language, and technology. Chapter Three attempts to develop the implications of this reading of Heidegger for a theory of the structure of objects in general. I argue in conclusion that Heidegger's holistic theory of the world, expressed in even clearer form in the works of Whitehead, leads to just as many perplexities as the substance-based theories of Aristotle and Leibniz. The concept of 'tool-being' requires some sort of compromise position between context and substance. (shrink)

The unprecedented development of medical informatics is constantly transforming the concept of expertise in medical sciences in a way that has far-reaching consequences for both the theory of knowledge and the philosophy of informatics. Deep medicine is based on the assumption that medical diagnosis should take into account the wide array of possible health factors involved in the diagnostic process, such as not only genome analysis alone, but also the metabolome (analysis of all body metabolites important for e.g. (...) drug-drug interactions), microbiome (i.e. analysis of all bodily microorganisms interacting with host cells) or exposome (analysis of all environmental factors triggering potentially harmful cell mutations, such as UV radiation, heavy metals, various carcinogens, etc.). Deep data analysis is of tantamount importance for personalized diagnosis but, at the same time, hardly achievable by a regular human being. However, adequately designed artificial intelligence (e.g. a deep neural network) can undeniably be of great help for finding correlations between symptoms and underlying diseases. Nowadays AI applies to nearly every aspect of medicine, starting from the data analysis of scientific literature, through the diagnostic process, to the act of communication between physicians and their patients. Medical image processing algorithms greatly enhance the chances of successful recognition of melanoma or intestinal polyps. Communication tools designed for physicians use techniques known from social media to provide users with an opportunity to consult the case with colleagues from the same discipline. Natural language processing tools significantly improve doctor-patient communication by the automation of note-taking. Is this enough to support the claim that the non-epistemic competences in medicine are becoming more and more important? Can we attribute expertise only to a person? How is medical informatics changing the way most people usually understand human-computer interactions? (shrink)

Background: Audio-visual teleconsultation is expected to help home-based palliative patients, hospital-based palliative care professionals, and family physicians to jointly design better, pro-active care. Consensual knowledge of the possibilities and limitations of teleconsultation in transmural palliative care is, however, largely lacking.This paper aims at describing elements of both the physical workplace and the cultural-social context of the palliative care practice, which are imperative for the use of teleconsultation technologies. Methods: A semi-structured expert meeting and qualitative, open interviews were deployed to (...) explore professionals’ assumptions and wishes, which are considered to contain latent presumptions about the practice’s physical workplace and latent elements of the cultural-social context, regarding (1) the mediating potential of audio-visual teleconsultation, (2) how the audio-visual teleconsultations will affect medical practice, and (3) the design and usage of the teleconsultation technology. We used a qualitative analysis to investigate how palliative care professionals interpret the teleconsultation package in preparation. The analysis entailed open and axial coding techniques developed in a grounded theory approach. Results: Respondents assume: 1. teleconsultation will hinder physical proximity, thereby compromising anamnesis and diagnosis of new or acutely ill patients as well as “real contact” with the person behind the patient; 2. teleconsultation will help patients becoming more of a pivotal figure in their own care trajectory; 3. they can use teleconsultation to keep a finger on the pulse; 4. teleconsultations have a healing effect of their own due to offered time and digital attention; 5. teleconsultation to open up an additional “gray” network outside the hierarchical structures of the established chain of transmural palliative care. This network could cause bypassing of caregivers and uncertainty about responsibilities; 6. teleconsultations lead to an extended flow of information which helps palliative care professionals to check the stories of patients and medical specialists. Conclusions: Professionals assume teleconsultation co-defines a new patient–professional relationship by extending hospital-based caregivers’ perceptions of as well as attention for their patients. At the cost, however, of clinical and personal connectedness. Secondly, a hermeneutics is needed to carefully interpret teleconsultation images. Thirdly, teleconsultations transform caregiving cultures as formerly separated care domains collide, demanding a redefinition of roles and responsibilities. (shrink)

Analysis of the state and possible options for the development of modern humanities gives the grounds to assert the growing importance of the idea of historicity in culture and philosophy during the 20th and early 21st centuries. In this regard, both the disclosure of the concept of historicity and the substantiation of the significance of the principle of historicity, both for the methodology of historical and philosophical knowledge and for humanitarian knowledge in general become relevant. The author of this article (...) carries out historical and philosophical reconstruction of historical issues in the philosophy of M. Heidegger and reveals the process of converting the idea of historicity into the principle of German existentialism. It is concluded that with the help of historicity M. Heidegger was able to present his own version of phenomenology on an existential basis. Seeing an existential achievement in historicity, M. Heidegger understood by it the direction of existence to the source, tradition, on the basis of this, the intentionality of consciousness was revealed as an essential property of existence: the direction of man as a finite being to its source, which allowed the German philosopher to interpret historicity as a tradition, the existential source of man, and how the temporality of human existence. The author of this article concludes that in the philosophy of M. Heidegger historicity was transformed from an idea into a principle on the basis of which the German philosopher revealed not only the historicity of Dasein, building a fundamental ontology and hermeneutics of factuality, but also tried to solve the problem of the history of being, going beyond the existential philosophy. (shrink)

© 2016 Philosophy Documentation Center. The aim of this article is to argue for an interdisciplinary social theoretical approach to the technicity of human agency. This approach covers the spectrum of individual and social action from a perspective that logically precedes techno-optimism and techno-pessimism, and is intended to be both descriptively and normatively plausible. The study is anchored in a critical reading of Aristotle's thought on techné and phronésis, as his work is the precursor of action theory and phenomenological (...) hermeneutics, the central methodological orientations of this study. The importance of the "disposition formed under the guidance of reason" as the unifying trait of agency is affirmed with, and against, Aristotle. The article advocates reactivating and developing this trait of agency for a descriptive and critical discourse on the technicity of action, providing an outline of how to accomplish this task. The technicity of the individual agent is examined, reflecting on rule-following, the relation between technicity and creativity, and the interpretative moment of technicity. Next, the interwovenness of the skilful body with biological, social and symbolic aspects of human existence and with systems of technical artefacts is clarified. Finally, a case is made for the critical potential of this "technology," reverting to Aristotelian means of normative thought. (shrink)

Paul Ricœur has been one of the most influential and intellectually challenging philosophers of the last century, and his work has contributed to a vast array of fields: studies of language, of history, of ethics and politics. However, he has up until recently only had a minor impact on the philosophy of technology. Interpreting Technology aims to put Ricœur’s work at the centre of contemporary philosophical thinking concerning technology. It investigates his project of critical hermeneutics for rethinking established (...) theories of technology, the growing ethical and political impacts of technologies on the modern lifeworld, and ways of analysing global sociotechnical systems such as the Internet. Ricœur’s philosophy allows us to approach questions such as: how could narrative theory enhance our understanding of technological mediation? How can our technical practices be informed by the ethical aim of living the good life, with and for others, in just institutions? And how does the emerging global media landscape shape our sense of self, and our understanding of history? These questions are more timely than ever, considering the enormous impact technologies have on daily life in the 21st century: on how we shape ourselves with health apps, how we engage with one-another through social media, and how we act politically through digital platforms. (shrink)

IN A recent work I have attempted to show that visual space tends to have a Euclidean geometrical structure only when the environment is filled with a repetitive pattern of regularly faceted objects carpentered to exhibit simple standard Euclidean shapes, and tends to have a hyperbolic structure when vision is deprived of these clues. I conclude that visual perception--and by analogy, all perception--is hermeneutic as well as causal: it responds to structures in the flow of optical energy, but the character (...) of its response is also hermeneutical, that is, it has the capacity to "read" the appropriate structures in the World, and to form perceptual judgments of the World about which these "speak." The clues that are "read" perceptually as giving a Euclidean visual space are engineered objects, such as streets and buildings with repetitive architectural elements. These scientific artifacts of human culture belong to a family of readable technologies central to the phenomenological and existential-hermeneutical analysis of natural science. (shrink)

I propose a reading of Kant’s anthropological project as a theory of integration, emphasizing the role of teleological judgments and explanations plays within it. First, I will take a look at a certain type of teleological knowledge that Kant calls prudence and that consists in finding the appropriate means for an end. Second, I will use this to flesh out my interpretation of Kant’s anthropology as a theory of integration, i.e. as a meta-discipline that strives to unite several (...) distinct disciplines by means of teleological judgments. Third, I will then reconsider what prudence means within this broader, integrative context and, as a consequence, how Kant systematically reframes anthropological prudence in opposition to mere observational physiological knowledge. (shrink)

How can a post-Christian, secular audience understand the devoutly Christian, sacred music of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion? This article addresses this question with reference to the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hans Blumenberg. Their confrontation reveals broad implications for the theory of humanistic interpretation at large. Gadamer celebrates Bach as a ‘classical’ touchstone of Western culture whom we may productively interpret through a ‘fusion of horizons’. Blumenberg, by contrast, cautions that our relation to Bach's Passion is (...) fractured because it is impossible to ‘pace off the horizon’. Blumenberg emphasizes the first-person experience of the diminution of historical meaning, a position this article calls ‘shattered hermeneutics’. The article concludes that Blumenberg's interpretation of Bach and his critique of Gadamer thereby usefully and plausibly deepen and radicalize hermeneutics. (shrink)

Ecology has been used frequently by social scientists as a source of theoretical models, and biological ecologists have often applied their theory to human populations. Several problems have attended these cross-disciplinary enterprises, including inappropriate uses of teleological models and a failure by both biologists and social scientists to understand the theoretical implications of culture and technology for ecological models. Attention to these problems will increase the applicability of ecological theories in the social sciences.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Realism, Universalism, and the Science of the HumanAmanda Anderson (bio)Satya P. Mohanty. Literary Theory and the Claims of History: Postmodernism, Objectivity, Multicultural Politics. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1997.Martha C. Nussbaum. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997.It is arguably a peculiar fact that a book announcing itself as a defense of objectivity and realism would begin by assuring readers of the political (...) efficacy of its theories. After all, the critique of objectivity and realism within progressive cultural criticism of the past several decades has taken for granted that claims to objectivity and realism are suspicious in part because of their pretense to value-neutrality. But Satya P. Mohanty’s ambitious and wide-ranging Literary Theory and the Claims of History joins with other recent attempts to lay claim to a refurbished realism that not only overcomes variously construed limitations of postmodernism but fully answers to the charges leveled against “traditional” objectivity or “naïve” realism [see Alcoff; Livingston]. Such a project can in part be analyzed against a broader critique of postmodernism and poststructuralism advanced through reconsideration of Enlightenment ideals, including, most prominently, the ideals of universalism and its less abstract cousin, cosmopolitanism [see Anderson]. The reconstructions of both universalism and realism have claimed a greater intellectual integrity and coherence than the forms of postmodernism that they challenge and a more promising ethico-political vision, one that more convincingly acknowledges the place and claims of marginalized others. These reconstructive projects thus fundamentally challenge the familiar postmodernist idea that claims to universalism or objectivity themselves enact forms of privilege or exclusion that inherently disable any properly egalitarian or nonviolent relation to others.Mohanty would appear to combine the universalist and realist ambitions, insofar as he asserts a moral position based on Kantian notions of autonomy and dignity at the same time that, in epistemological terms, he elaborates a “postpositivist realist alternative.” Maintaining that the critique of objectivity within postmodernism is propped up by an outdated understanding of scientific method and theory, he argues that the more sophisticated theories within current philosophy of science elaborate epistemological models that are fully compatible with a generalized hermeneutical method, precisely because they acknowledge both the theory-laden nature of all inquiry and the larger social and historical contexts of knowledge and experience. Before elaborating this realist alternative, however, Mohanty situates his project by forwarding a number of critiques of “constructivist postmodernism,” critiques that enable us to better gauge the motivations behind his work. Foregrounded at the start are what Mohanty sees as the [End Page 3] harmful political and ethical consequences of relativism, skepticism, and constructivism. According to Mohanty, while the claims for diversity and difference in the 1960s “had a political edge,” at this historical moment they are used primarily for conservative ends, via a state-sponsored bland multiculturalism that diverts attention from the blunt material issues of race politics [17]. In broader ethico-political terms, moreover, relativist arguments that display skepticism toward the possibilities for rational exchange between variously construed collectivities and cultures lead not to a proper respect for the other but rather to indifference. As Mohanty puts it, to deny the possibility of “general criteria” for “interpretive validity” is “to assert that all spaces are equivalent, that they have equal value, that since the lowest common principle of evaluation is all that I can invoke, I cannot—and consequently need not—think about how your space impinges on mine or how my history is defined together with yours. If that is the case, I may have started by declaring a pious political wish, but I end by denying that I need to take you seriously” [131; Mohanty’s emphasis].Beyond these harmful consequences, however, lies a more fundamental problem. In its monolithic assault on Western Reason and the unified subject of humanism, constructivist postmodernism has deprived itself of any coherent account of human agency and rationality. Without a philosophical anthropology establishing the “capacities, tasks, and limits that might make up a specifically human existence,” Mohanty argues, it becomes impossible to account properly for cultural practices and historical agency, for the self-understanding of cultures and the historical transformations they enact [138... (shrink)

Alan Turing’s 1950 imitation game has been widely understood as a means for testing if an entity is intelligent. Following a series of papers by Diane Proudfoot, I offer a socio-technological interpretation of Turing’s paper and present an alternative way of understanding both the imitation game and Turing’s concept of intelligence. Turing, I claim, saw intelligence as a social concept, meaning that possession of intelligence is a property determined by society’s attitude toward the entity. He realized that as long as (...) human society held a prejudiced attitude toward machinery—seeing machines a priori as mindless objects—machines could not be said to be intelligent, by definition. He also realized, though, that if humans’ a priori, chauvinistic attitude toward machinery changed, the existence of intelligent machines would become logically possible. Turing thought that such a change would eventually occur: He believed that when scientists overcome the technological challenge of constructing sophisticated machines that could imitate human verbal behavior—i.e., do well in the imitation game—humans’ prejudiced attitude toward machinery will have altered in such a way that machines could be said to be intelligent. The imitation game, for Turing, was not an intelligence test, but a technological aspiration whose realization would likely involve a change in society’s attitude toward machines. (shrink)

Charles S. Peirce attempted to develop his semiotic theory of cognitive signs interpretation, which are originated in our basic perceptual operations that quasi-prove the truth of perceptual judgment representing reality. The essential problem was to explain how, by a cognitive interpretation of the sequence of perceptual signs, we can represent external physical reality and reflectively represent our cognitive mind’s operations of signs. With his phaneroscopy introspection, Peirce shows how, without going outside our cognitions, we can represent external reality. Hence (...) Peirce can avoid the Berkeleyian, Humean, and Kantian phenomenologies, as well as the modern analytic philosophy and hermeneutic phenomenology. Peirce showed that with the trio of semiotic interpretation – abductive logic of discovery of hypotheses, deductive logic of necessary inference, and inductive logic of evaluation – we can reach a complete proof of the true representation of reality. This semiotic logic of reasoning is the epistemic logic representing human confrontation in reality, with which we can achieve knowledge and conduct our behavior. However, Peirce did not complete his realistic revolution to eliminate previously accepted nominalistic and idealistic epistemologies of formal logic and pure mathematics. Here, I inquire why Peirce did not complete his historical realist epistemological revolution and following that inquiry I attempt to reconstruct it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Four Philosophical Models of the Relation Between Theory and PracticeEstelle R. JorgensenSince music education straddles theory and practice, my purpose is to sketch the strengths and weaknesses of four philosophical models of the relationship between theory and practice. I demonstrate that none of them suffices when taken alone; each has something to offer and its own detractions. And I conclude with four suggested ways in which (...) the analysis can be helpful to music teachers and those interested in their work.Clarifying what is meant by theory and practice raises a nest of conceptual problems. Concerning theory, it may be tempting to equate the terms "theory" and "philosophy." Among their shared properties, these terms deal with conceptual and abstract entities that, from the Enlightenment at least, have been held to be distinct from the phenomenal world. They also clarify ideas and distinguish one concept from another. Among their different purposes, the object of philosophy is the asking of questions in a search for wisdom or truth whereas theory is formulated for explanatory purposes, especially within the frame of scientific propositions that can be refuted through empirical observations. The tests of philosophy are, therefore, those of symbolic logic evidenced in principles such as [End Page 21] internal consistency, correspondence with evidence (deductive, inductive, or analogical), and coherence within a unity or whole. Although logical criteria may also be important in formulating and testing theory,1 it is tested and refuted primarily through means of qualitative descriptions and quantitative assessments of observable phenomena.Regarding practice, one is also confronted with an ambiguous construct that may be interpreted descriptively (what is done in the phenomenal world or taken to be the general state of affairs) or normatively (what is desirable or ideal). There is also the distinction between the practice of a seasoned performer and practice in the sense of striving towards the mastery of a competent and expert practice. In this regard, Vernon Howard distinguishes between "practice" (or the skills exemplified by proficient or expert performers) and "practise (or acquiring the level of mastery of proficient or expert performance)."2 For him, the ambiguous and paradoxical nature of artistic practice highlights the complexity of degrees of attaining mastery of skills or exemplary practice and the diverse array of skills ranging from habit to critical thinking involved in the practice of any art. Although each practice is distinguished by its own belief systems, rituals, expectations, and commonsense, boundaries between differing practices are sometimes "soft" or fuzzy, as one seeps into another.3 Consequently, it is often difficult to distinguish one from another at the margins where one practice becomes another.DichotomyThe notion of theory and practice as independent or a dichotomous relationship between the phenomenal world on the one hand and the mind and spirit on the other has its roots in the ancient world. For Plato, the world of "appearances," referring to the phenomenal world understood by imagination (eikasia) and belief (pistis), should be distinguished from the higher, abstract "intelligible world" grasped through thinking (dianoia), knowledge (episteme), and intelligence (noesis).4 René Descartes' later bifurcation of the inner and outer worlds and inversion of Platonic values and understandings resulted in the ascendancy of careful and deliberate observation of the phenomenal world over philosophical reflection.5 His ideas helped to set the stage for the Enlightenment and the Industrial, Scientific, and Information Revolutions. Empiricism, science, and technology gradually displaced philosophy as primary ways of knowing the phenomenal world and understanding the nature of mind, human cognition, feeling, and being. Making hard-boundaried distinctions between within and without one's self, the phenomenal world and the world of spiritual things, and theory and practice were important insights. These distinctions provided for limits on the sorts of ways in which truth could be known. Reasoned deliberation [End Page 22] and imaginative thought have particular usefulness in the world of theory while sensory perception and careful observation are especially useful in the phenomenal world of practice. So while the scholar might speculate about phenomena, observational tools are also useful in coming to know and understand them. Reason and observation each have particular strengths, and it ought not be assumed that philosophy or scientific observation... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body by Xing WangWenbin Wang (bio)Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body. By Xing Wang. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Pp. x+ 325. Hardcover €114.00, ISBN 978-90-04-42954-3.Physiognomy (xiangshu 相術) as a technique of fortune-telling via the observation of the body has a long history in China and is still a living tradition. As a part of the traditional Chinese technological repertoire of (...) "Techniques and Methods" (fangshu 方術), records of performing physiognomy date back to the Spring and Autumn period (8th-5th centuries B.C.) (p. 31). According to Lisa Raphals, physiognomy was a crucial part of early Chinese philosophical discussion of the body, cosmology and human existence.1 Yet Wang Xing argues that despite its long history, our knowledge of Chinese physiognomy before the Ming dynasty is rather limited due to the small amount of pre-Ming physiognomy manuscripts still in existence. Chinese physiognomy as we know it today is largely based on its predecessors in late imperial China, and it was during the late Ming that most of the well-known extant physiognomy manuals were produced (p. 34). In contrast, the paucity of academic surveys of Ming physiognomy means that when it comes to scholarly examination of Chinese physiognomic texts and academic representation of physiognomic theories, misinterpretation often occurs. Wang is particularly critical of an early academic work on Chinese physiognomy by American anthropologist William Lessa, who made many dubious and broad assertions about the origin and characteristics of Chinese physiognomy (p. 15).2 In this context, Wang's Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body is the first monograph in the English-speaking world primarily dedicated to the study of Chinese physiognomy in the Ming dynasty, including its social, textual, intellectual and technological history. It is also the first work in English that comprehensively introduces the history of Chinese physiognomy in early to late imperial China.Wang's investigation of this topic is two-fold. On the one hand he tackles physiognomy manuals and records of physiognomy practice from a historical perspective. Wang uses a very famous Ming physiognomic "encyclopedia," The Compendium of Divine Physiognomy (Shenxiang quanbian 神相全編), as the main text in his discussion of physiognomic knowledge, as well as a large amount of anecdotal writings from the Song to Ming periods. On the other hand, Wang consciously draws links between Chinese physiognomic theories and modern Western philosophical and anthropological debates on the body, symbolism and phenomenology. To push forward this conversation, Wang establishes a unique [End Page 1] framework for interpreting the conceptualization of the body, fortune and the cosmos in Ming physiognomic texts: the "homological" body on which time is "spatialized," discussed further below. It is this second facet of the argument that could most intrigue and inspire scholars of Chinese philosophy like myself. As Marta Hanson comments, Wang's work is an excellent example of how Chinese technical as well as cosmological works could problematize and challenge modern Euro-American academic theorizations of Asian culture and how professional sinological study could contribute to salient modern intellectual debates.3 When reading Wang's book, readers should always bear in mind his intention to bring together Ming physiognomic theories with broader contemporary philosophical discourse.Apart from the introduction, there are seven chapters in the book. The first two chapters serve as the historical section of the discussion (although historical analysis is also an indispensable part of later chapters). Chapter 1 provides readers with an overall background to physiognomy in China, especially its categorization as a form of elite knowledge in traditional catalogues, the development of core physiognomic theories and concepts in relation to traditional Chinese cosmology and medical theories, and the textual history of Ming physiognomy manuals. Beyond providing general information, in my view the author here makes three outstanding points: the first is that what we know as Chinese physiognomy is actually not merely a technique of human body divination, but also a method of predicting human future via observing the whole material world. Wang mentions a very important branch of physiognomy in historical catalogues called "physiognomy of things" (xiangwu 相物) (p. 27), in which anything from a horse... (shrink)

PORTER S and O’HALLORAN P. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 18–28 The use and limitation of realistic evaluation as a tool for evidence‐based practice: a critical realist perspectiveIn this paper, we assess realistic evaluation’s articulation with evidence‐based practice (EBP) from the perspective of critical realism. We argue that the adoption by realistic evaluation of a realist causal ontology means that it is better placed to explain complex healthcare interventions than the traditional method used by EBP, the randomized controlled trial (RCT). (...) However, we do not conclude from this that the use of RCTs is without merit, arguing that it is possible to use both methods in combination under the rubric of realist theory. More negatively, we contend that the rejection of critical theory and utopianism by realistic evaluation in favour of the pragmatism of piecemeal social engineering means that it is vulnerable to accusations that it promotes technocratic interpretations of human problems. We conclude that, insofar as realistic evaluation adheres to the ontology of critical realism, it provides a sound contribution to EBP, but insofar as it rejects the critical turn of Bhaskar’s realism, it replicates the technocratic tendencies inherent in EBP. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the on-going debate about self-redescription in the history of African philosophy using the method and theory of redescription. This method and theory of redescription has become the deep concern of not only Western philosophers but of many African philosophers which is markedly present in their agitated pursuits of wisdom. This self-redescription is always resiliently presented in the works of Kwasi Wiredu, Kwame Appiah, Gyekye Kwame, Olusegun Oladipo, Wole Soyinka, Sophie (...) Oluwole, Jim Unah, Martin Heidegger and Maduabuchi Duko;r who is the most recent emergence of the problem of theory and method in African philosophy. So, the general purpose of this paperis to enact the intellectual concern of these self-redescription in the history of African philosophy while the specific purpose is to determine the adequacy of humanism and hermeneutics as concepts covering the self-image of African philosophy. This paper will further show the incoherence and incongruence of humanism and hermeneutics with the concrete self-image of African philosophy by redescribing them in the mould of emerging concepts such as the humanness of Orisa intellectual culture, in particular; and orunmineutics as a general philosophical theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I want to deal with the problem of how to find an adequate context of interpretation for indexical sentences that enables one to account for the intuitive truth-conditional content which some apparently puzzling indexical sentences like “I am not here now” as well as other such sentences contextually have. In this respect, I will pursue a fictionalist line. This line allows for shifts in interpretation contexts and urges that such shifts are governed by pretense, which has to (...) be understood in terms of socially shared make-believe games. By appealing to pretense so conceived, I will show that the fictionalist perspective is halfway between an intentionalist perspective, according to which the above indexical sentences have to be interpreted in a shifted intended context, (this perspective is primarily defined by Predelli 1998, Analysis 58, 107; Mind and Language 13, 400) and a conventionalist perspective, according to which indexical reference shifts in accordance with a conventional setting. (For this perspective, cf. Corazza et al. 2002, Philosophical Studies 107, See also Corazza 2004, Reflecting the Mind: Indexicality and Quasi-Indexicality, Oxford University Press). Finally, I will claim that the fictionalist analysis of cases of non-ordinary uses of indexicals like “here” and “now” can be retained in face of a new alternative analysis of those cases in terms of an ‘unbound anaphora’ – theory (cf. Corazza 2004, Synthese 138, 145). (shrink)