Proceedings of the First Conference of the International Society for Hermeneutics and Science.

My aim in what follows is to contribute to recent discussions concerning the place of phenomenology within the tradition of transcendental philosophy. Very broadly, the issue here is whether phenomenology aspires to provide transcendental results, and if so, whether it can hope meet those aspirations. This is a large and many-faceted question; my aim here is to explore one rather narrow slice of it. I shall for the most part confine my attention to the version of the phenomenological enterprise found (...) in Division I of Being and Time. And I shall concern myself not with the full range of questions raised by the idea of a transcendental inquiry but rather myopically with a set of questions concerning the distinctive logical modality of purported transcendental results. This modality can be identified in various ways, but we can see it at work in the oft-repeated thought that transcendental philosophy aims to identify the conditions on the possibility of certain facts or features of our experience. If A is a condition on the possibility of B, then it would seem that A must obtain, given the actuality of B. We might accordingly frame the issue as a question about the modality of necessity in the context of Heideggerian phenomenology. Even so narrowed, the issues here are still pretty large and thorny. I don’t pretend here to be able to resolve them; my hope is that I can at least sharpen the questions and perhaps thereby render them more tractable. In pursuing these issues I shall pay particular attention to a recent illuminating analysis proposed and elaborated by Taylor Carman. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that developments in transhumanist technologies may have upon human cultures, and to do so by exploring a potential debate between Habermas and the transhumanists. Transhumanists, such as Nick Bostrom, typically see the potential in genetic and other technologies for positively expanding and transcending human nature. In contrast, Habermas is a representative of those who are fearful of this technology, suggesting that it will compound the deleterious effects of the colonisation of (...) the lifeworld, further constraining human autonomy and undermining the meaningfulness of the lifeworld by expanding the technological control and manipulation of humanity. It will be argued that these opposed positions are grounded in fundamentally different understandings of the consequences of scientific and technological advance. On one level, the transhumanists remain confident that the lifeworld has within it the resources necessary to find meaning and purpose in a society deeply infused by genetic technology. Habermas disagrees. On another level, the difference is articulated by Horkheimer and Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, primarily by challenging what may be understood as a Baconian faith in science as a project for the domination of nature. While the transhumanists broadly embrace this faith, Habermas returns to something akin to Horkheimer and Adorno’s pessimistic scepticism. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to characterize hermeneutic philosophy in a manner that differs from the usual attempts at defining this philosophical direction, especially in German philosophy, that is by referencing traditional hermeneutics. I would like to propose expounding its characteristics not in a historical, but theoretical manner. This task involves analysing the place of hermeneutic philosophy among other tendencies in contemporary philosophy as well as showcasing the advantages of its way of philosophizing. The article does not (...) discuss issues related to this philosophy such as its limitations and unilaterality. (shrink)

The paper provides an overview of the hermeneutic and phenomenological context from which the idea of a “constitutional analysis” of science originated. It analyzes why the approach to “hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research” requires to transcend the distinction between the context of justification and the context of discovery. By incorporating this approach into an integral “postmetaphysical philosophy of science”, I argue that one can avoid the radical empiricism of recent science studies, while also preventing the analysis of science's (...) discursive practices from collapsing into the frames of radical anti-epistemological critique mandated by some hermeneutic philosophers. (shrink)

Recent advances in natural language generation (NLG), such as public accessibility to ChatGPT, have sparked polarised debates about the societal impact of this technology. Popular discourse tends towards either overoptimistic hype that touts the radically transformative potentials of these systems or pessimistic critique of their technical limitations and general ‘stupidity’. Surprisingly, these debates have largely overlooked the exegetical capacities of these systems, which for many users seem to be producing meaningful texts. In this paper, we take an interdisciplinary approach that (...) combines hermeneutics—the study of meaning and interpretation—with prompt engineering—task descriptions embedded in input to NLG systems—to study the extent to which a specific NLG system, ChatGPT, produces texts of hermeneutic value. We design prompts with the goal of optimising hermeneuticity rather than mere factual accuracy, and apply them in four different use cases combining humans and ChatGPT as readers and writers. In most cases, ChatGPT produces readable texts that respond clearly to our requests. However, increasing the specificity of prompts’ task descriptions leads to texts with intensified neutrality, indicating that ChatGPT’s optimisation for factual accuracy may actually be detrimental to the hermeneuticity of its output. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers—analytic as well as continental—tend to feel uneasy about Ernst Tugendhat, who, though he positions himself in the analytic field, poses questions in the Heideggerian style. Tugendhat was one of Martin Heidegger's last pupils and his least obedient, pursuing a new and controversial critical technique. Tugendhat took Heidegger's destruction of Being as presence and developed it in analytic philosophy, more specifically in semantics. Only formal semantics, according to Tugendhat, could answer the questions left open by Heidegger. Yet in doing (...) this, Tugendhat discovered the latent "hermeneutic nature of analytic philosophy"—its post-metaphysical dimension—in which "there are no facts, but only true propositions." What Tugendhat seeks to answer is this: What is the meaning of thought following the linguistic turn? Because of the rift between analytic and continental philosophers, very few studies have been written on Tugendhat, and he has been omitted altogether from several histories of philosophy. Now that these two schools have begun to reconcile, Tugendhat has become an example of a philosopher who, in the words of Richard Rorty, "built bridges between continents and between centuries." Tugendhat is known more for his philosophical turn than for his phenomenological studies or for his position within analytic philosophy, and this creates some confusion regarding his philosophical propensities. Is Tugendhat analytic or continental? Is he a follower of Wittgenstein or Heidegger? Does he belong in the culture of analysis or in that of tradition? Santiago Zabala presents Tugendhat as an example of merged horizons, promoting a philosophical historiography that is concerned more with dialogue and less with classification. In doing so, he places us squarely within a dialogic culture of the future and proves that any such labels impoverish philosophical research. (shrink)

This article questions whether the ‘problem’ of trans issues lies more in the binary, patriarchal structures of our society than it does in our bodies. I utilize Marcella Althaus-Reid’s ‘Hermeneutic of Mutilation’, arguing that, much as ‘to give hospitality to our own fragmentations may require sometimes acts of transformations’, we must not support the heteropatriarchal pattern and system as it attempts to normalize, police, control or punish the ‘deviant’ bodies of transgender individuals, from ‘wrong’ and ‘less than’ into ‘right’ (...) and ‘cured’. As postmodern deconstruction has informed and influenced our thinking around identity, the modern, biological approach to sex/gender has been profoundly challenged. I will make a parallel between current debates around trans issues and disability, body and liberation theology; if disability only ‘becomes’ a disability when the able-bodied majority designates it as ‘other’, are trans folk being similarly ‘othered’, as their different bodies, perspectives or identities challenge the fearful, defended mind-sets of society? Should we continue to prioritize ‘fixing’ trans bodies, in order to have them fit more neatly within that society? Or, should we challenge the patriarchal, heteronormative moulds of a culture that would rather trans individuals ‘accept’ their ‘wrongness’ and take steps to ‘correct’ that wrongness? This is not to say that trans+ individuals should not continue to make exactly the same medical/surgical choices as are currently the norm and even to choose modes of gender expression that are binary or ‘traditional’, should that be their desire and choice. Rather, this is an appeal for all of us to challenge a society that deems some bodies ‘right’ and others as ‘wrong’, and expects such painful conformity. (shrink)

800x600 Normal 0 21 false false false RO X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabel Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of hermeneutic phenomenology in Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy. A major thesis of this study is that Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic phenomenology is never freed from religious insights. If in a text like “Hermeneutics and existence”, written in (...) 1965, one finds, for the first time, “hermeneutic phenomenology” as an elaborated concept with a specific purpose and a specific area of problems to be solved, ten years later, in “Phenomenology and Hermeneutics” (1975), the aim, the problems and even the method change. This study will argue that hermeneutic phenomenology is deeply rooted into the problem of evil. In other words, hermeneutic phenomenology emerges in the early works of Ricoeur as a “tool” for the perpetual problem of evil, even if, later, hermeneutic phenomenology loses its binds with the problem it emerged from and it becomes a landmark for Ricoeurian thought. Moreover, the paper also argues that Ricoeur develops “hermeneutic phenomenology” in order to find a philosophical method for approaching the religious discourse.  . (shrink)

The current challenges of implementing responsible innovation can in part be traced back to the assumptions behind the ways of thinking that ground the different pre-existing theories and approaches that are shared under the RI-umbrella. Achieving the ideals of RI, therefore not only requires a shift on an operational and systemic level but also at the paradigm-level. In order to develop a deeper understanding of this paradigm shift, this paper analyses the paradigm-level assumptions that are being brought forward by the (...) different conceptualizations of RI. To this purpose it deploys a pragmatic stance on paradigms that allows discerning ontological and axiological elements shared by the RI community and an accompanying critical hermeneutic research approach that enables the profiling of paradigmatic beliefs and assumptions of accounts of RI. The research surfaces the distance of four salient RI accounts from the currently dominant techno-economic innovation paradigm RI seeks to shift. With this, our contribution helps to raise the self-awareness of the RI community about their presuppositions and the paradigm level barriers and enablers to reaching the RI ideal. This insight is needed for a successful transition to responsible research and innovation practices. (shrink)

This volume of new essays by an international group of scholars examines the response of Hans-Georg Gadamer to Plato, especially to the Philebus. The book studies Gadamer's interpretative approach to the dialogues and unwritten doctrines of Plato. It also shows how, for Gadamer, reading Plato was intimately interconnected with formulating his own philosophical views. The volume also brings out how Gadamer influenced Donald Davidson in his reading of Plato and his philosophical thought. The volume thus explores a fascinating case-study of (...) the creative reception of Plato by two major twentieth-century philosophers, Gadamer and Davidson, while also clarifying Gadamer's relationship to Heidegger. It will be of interest to scholars and students of Plato, especially on the Philebus, and also to scholars of twentieth-century thought. (shrink)

In Durkheim’s central methodological argument for the theoretical autonomy of sociology, the delimitation of the subject matter of that discipline amounts to revealing the sui generis status of sociological facts. The latter are not reducible to material things, but they have to be methodologically approached as scientific facts whose reality is independent of the observer’s subjective experience. The sociological facts reside in the trans-individual conceptual frameworks of individual action. These are frameworks which transcend individual representations, motives, and interests. By implication, (...) the empirical character of theoretical sociology hinges on.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HERMENEUTIC OF AQUINAS'S TEXTS: NOTES ON THE INDEX THOMISTICUS PAOLO GurnTTI Universita Cattolica Augustinianum Milan, Italy I. Introduction: First Impressions of the Index Thomisticus UPON ENTERING an excellent library of philosophy, one cannot help but notice the 56 volumes of the Inde:c Thomisticus.1 Anyone with a scholarly interest in Saint 1 Index Thomisticus: Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Operum omnium Indices et concordantiae... (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1974-1980). Reference to this work (...) in notes takes the form: IT [section]-[vol.], [p.]. References to Aquinas's works will follow the conventions established by Busa in the Index Thomisticus (e.g., STl=Summa theologiae, prima pars) and unless otherwise indicated are from the same texts processed in the Index Thomisticus. References to Roberto Busa's works will have the following abbreviations: Clavis Indicis Thomistici: Clavis Indicis Thomistici (Stuttgart: FrommannHoltzboog, 1979). Fond. informatica linguistica: Fondamenti di informatica linguistica (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1987), (contains a bibliography of Busa's works through 1987). Per San Tommaso 'ratio seminalis ': "Per San Tommaso 'ratio seminalis' significa 'codice genetico '. Problemi e metodi di lessicologia e lessicografia tomistiche," in Atti dell'VIII congresso tomistico internazionale (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1981), vol. 1. L'Index Thomisticus: "L'Index Thomisticus," in Stitdi medievali, III serie, XXI, I, 1980. Informatica e filologia: " Informatica e nuova filologia," in G. Savoca ed., Lessicologia, filologia e critica (Florence: Olschki, 1986), pp. 17-25. L'originalite linguistique: "L'originalite linguistique de S. Thomas d'Aquin," in Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Bulletin du Cange), Tome XLIV-XLV, fascicule double, 1985, pp. 65-90. ORDO dans les ouevres: "ORDO dans les ouevres de St. Thomas d'Aquin," in M. Fattori and M. Bianchi, eds., ORDO II Colloquia internazionale del Lessico Intellettuale Europeo (Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo e Bizzarri, 1979), pp. 59-184. Voces REALIS-REALITER: "Voces REALIS-REALITER in S. Thoma Aq. Cum appendice de voce 'resrei," in M. Fattori and M. Bianchi eds., RES. III Colloquia internazionale del Lessico intellettuale Europea (Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1982), pp. 104667 668 PAOLO GUIETTI Thomas Aquinas will be drawn to employ the Index Thomisticus as a powerful concordance. But any reasonable scholar can recognize the disproportion between a desirable concordance and this hyperbolic system of about 70,000 pages. The Index Thomisticus is the second largest written work of this century, surpassed only by the Enrcyclopedia Britannica. The Index Thomisticus is a mountain of pages that classifies with a precision never before realized everything that came from Aquinas's pen in twenty-five years.2 Is it not awkwardly disproportionate and too pedantically analytical for scholarly research? Moreover, what would Aquinas think if, in a return to this life, he could see the electronic digestion of his work? A neoscholastic Jesuit who devoted thirty-four years of his life to chopping and classifying even the most insignificant things, like " et " and " est," could seem to St. Thomas a modern computernut, i.e., a person who has lost his good sense in front of a screen.3 Everyone understands the usefulness of a concordance; even St. Thomas wanted and used concordances.4 But the Index Thomis136. De voce SPIRITUS: "De voce SPIRITUS in operibus S. Thomae Aquinatis," in M. Fattori and M. Bianchi, eds., SPIRITUS. IV Colloquia lnternazionale del Lessico Intellettuale Europeo (Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1983), pp. 191-222. Thomistische H ermeneutik: " Das Problem der thomistischen Hermeneutik nach der Veroeffentlichung des Index Thomisticus," in A. Zimmermann, ed., ~Miscellanea Medievalia, Bd 19: Thomas von Aquin (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), pp. 359-364. L'Indez Thomisticus per la filoso fia: " L'Index Thomisticus per la filosofia e la teologia," in Teologia 5, 1980, pp. 258-265. Il logos Principia di dialogo: "Il logos principio di ogni dialogo tra persone secondo San Tommaso,'' in Portare Cristo all'Uomo. Congresso del Ventennio dal Concilio Vaticano II (Vatican City: Urbaniana University Press, 1985), pp. 577-584. 2 I. e., 8,767,854 words. The lnde:i: Thomisticus classifies everything St. Thomas has probably written, everything St. Thomas erased (Autographi deleta: Inde:i: Thomisticus: 006 ADL) and even works of other chosen authors for comparison with St. Thomas. a Roberto Busa, S.J., was born in Vicenza, Italy in 1913... (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to defend Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics against what I call the radical hermeneutic critique, specifically the critique developed in Robert Bernasconi’s article “’You Don’t Know What I’m Talking About’: Alterity and the Hermeneutic Ideal” (1995). Key to this critique is the claim that Gadamer’s account does not rise to the ethical task of embracing the alterity of the Other, but instead reduces it to a projection of one’s self. The implication is therefore that Gadamer’s (...) philosophical hermeneutics has to be rejected on ethical grounds, as it does not appreciate but assimilates the alterity of the Other. In contrast to this radical hermeneutic critique, I argue that Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics can accommodate an Other that is not assimilated but appreciated, on the condition that the unique status of a dialogue with the Other as a person is no longer neglected, as Gadamer does, but instead truly distinguished from a dialogue with the Other as a text. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to present the understanding of architecture within the field of hermeneutic philosophy by describing the ideas of three great hermeneutic philosophers: Heidegger, Gadamer and Vattimo, who approach architecture from the ontological and aesthetic point of view. Heidegger interprets architecture as a fundamental trait of existence; Gadamer values it as the artistic form par excellence, with the form surpassed by the contents, too; and Vattimo discusses three possible ways of perceiving architecture in the (...) postmodern society, related to simultaneity, simulacra and the question of ornamentality. (shrink)

In this article, an attempt is made to analyse important implications of the hermeneutic approach in qualitative studies. The article discusses the hermeneutic circle with regard to reasoning contexts, on which the researcher's interpretation is based. Problems in connection with achievement of ‘proper’ understanding in an interpretative process are discussed in light of Gadamer's hermeneutic philosophy. Some features of qualitative studies are addressed. This is concerned with arguments in the presentation of findings in qualitative studies using the (...) hermeneutic approach. The essence of the article is there are grounds for reasonable understanding, even though it cannot be absolute in the hermeneutic. (shrink)

In his Notes on Philosophy , which he began writing in 1796, Friedrich Schlegel asserts that ‘The fact that one person understands the other is philosophically incomprehensible, but it is certainly magical.’ In the interim a large amount of philosophical effort has been expended on trying to refute Schlegel's first claim. The fact is, though, that what Michael Dummett calls a ‘fullblooded theory of meaning’ is now looking less and less like a really feasible philosophical enterprise, so Schlegel may have (...) actually been right. Dummett maintains that a ‘full-blooded theory of meaning’ ‘must give an explicit account, not only of what anyone must know in order to know the meaning of any given expression, but of what constitutes having such knowledge’. However, as I shall try to show via aspects of the hermeneutic tradition, it is precisely this way of talking about meaning and understanding that renders them incomprehensible. The differences between approaching the issue of understanding from the hermeneutic tradition and approaching it from the analytical tradition can, I want to suggest, tell us something important about the state of philosophy today. My aim is eventually to suggest that we need to understand the analytical version of the ‘linguistic turn’ in modern philosophy as a perhaps rather questionable aspect of a much more important ‘hermeneutic turn’, whose implications are now becoming apparent in more and more diverse areas of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Schutzian Phenomenology and Hermeneutic Traditions links Alfred Schutz to the larger hermeneutic tradition in Continental thought, illuminating the deep affinity between Schutzian phenomenology and hermeneutics. The essays collected here explore a broad spectrum of Schutzian themes and concerns, from Schutz’s concrete affinities to hermeneutic traditions, his interpretationism and the pragmatist nature of Schutz’s thought, to questions concerning the role of the media and music in our understanding of the life-world and intersubjectivity. The essays go on to explore (...) the practical applicability of Schutz’s thoughts on questions regarding economics, literature, ethics and the limits of human understanding. Given its emphasis on the application of Schutzian ideas and concepts, this book willbe of special interest to a wide range of readers in the social sciences and humanities, who are interested in the application of phenomenology to social, political, and cultural phenomena. (shrink)

The most prevalent approach to understanding recreation experiences in resource management has been a motivational research program that views satisfaction as an appropriate indicator of experience quality. This research explores a different approach to studying the quality of recreation experiences. Rather than viewing recreation experiences as a linear sequence of events beginning with expectations and ending with outcomes that are then cognitively compared to determine experience quality, this alternative approach views recreation as an emergent experience motivated by the not very (...) well-defined goal of acquiring stories that ultimately enrich one's life. Further, it assumes that the nature of human experience is best characterized by situated freedom in which the environment sets boundaries that constrain the nature of the experience, but that within those boundaries recreationists are free to experience the world in unique and variable ways. Therefore this alternative approach seeks a more context specific description of the setting/experience relationship that is intended to complement more general management frameworks (e.g., the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum) developed in conjunction with the motivational research program. (shrink)

Between 1933 and 1939 Alexandre Kojève gave his series of celebrated lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. Importantly, Kojève claimed to be reading Hegel in the wake of a philosopher whom he considered to be, along with Marx, the only important philosopher since Hegel - Martin Heidegger, whose Being and Time had appeared in 1927. Indeed, Kojève went so far as to claim that Hegel’s Phenomenology “would probably never have been understood (...) if Heidegger had not published his book”. (shrink)

There are two attitudes regarding the historical situation of understanding commonly held today. On the one hand, we believe that we only achieve a real, worthwhile understanding of a topic when our thinking manages to break free from the dogmas of the past. We believe that this transcendence of the historical situation of thought is both possible and desirable. We applaud those whose thought appears to us to proceed unhinged by traditional dogmas, whether those dogmas be old habits of scientific (...) thought or traditional ideas about social life. We celebrate as epistemic heroes those who discover their own way of thinking. On the other hand, many are quick to accept as a general rule that one’s understanding is inevitably bound to one’s particular historical and cultural situation. Nobody understands things in a historical vacuum. Accordingly, we believe that there is no transcending the historicity of the understanding and thus no epistemic heroes to applaud. This chapter examines Gadamer's argument in “The Elevation of the Historicity of Understanding" (a central section in "Truth and Method") as a critique of both of these alternatives -- alternatives that can be traced back to the historical epochs of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. I argue that, for Gadamer, both of these historical models of understanding misconstrue the way that understanding is grounded in historical consciousness. (shrink)

Abstract“Patient-centred care” is the recent response to the malaise produced in the field of health care from the point of view both of a technical mentality and the paternalistic model. The interest in the story-telling approach shown by both the humanities and the social sciences has favoured a “narrative turn” in medicine too, where the new ethics of therapeutic relationship consider the hermeneutic method a means by which to integrate evidence and subjectivity, scientific data and patient experience. The aim (...) of this paper is to show how Ricoeur’s theory of “threefold mimesis” makes a conceptual contribution to the use of narrative interviews in nursing and also be successfully transferred into and applied in the field of healthcare in general. First, the paper examines how this narrative approach might open up new possibilities for the acquisition of in-depth knowledge of patients’ life experiences, a condition indispensable for the improvement of the quality of care. Secondly, it highlights how this Ricoeurian method seems capable of provide an opportunity for healthcare professionals to review their own understanding of the caregiver-patient therapeutic relationship, beginning with their confrontation with the patient’s world as revealed by the narrative they provide. (shrink)

Children are the great omission in theology. The objective of the article is to show that there is a growing realisation of this reality. More than that, there are attempts afoot to salvage the situation by factoring children more and more into theological writing, not in an objectified manner, but as serious agents of theology and, in the case of this article, as agents of mission. A few examples to this effect are shown in the article. The main thrust of (...) the study, however, is to raise the hypothetical question of whether children have not become an important and indispensable theological hermeneutic themselves. The serious question is raised of whether children if, taken seriously in church and theology are not forcing a new epistemological break or a new way of believing and of theologising on the world of mission. A somewhat tentative and hypothetical conclusion is arrived at, which suggests that indeed there is a new rupture occurring in terms of how we know what we know in church and theology. (shrink)