Hermeneutics: Applications?

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Skepdick
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Re: Hermeneutics: Applications?

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Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 8:34 am Most hermeneutic thinkers are firm believers in universal reason that allows for translation between all languages and cultures.
In computer science this is what compilers do. Software systems which translate different languages into one, common, language.

In a video Philosophy & Taking Time Seriously Rorty argues that Philosophers still have a role to play in society, but it's not the traditional role they've usually assumed. I think Philosophers (those who understand how the semantic games language games work) are well-suited to play the part of mediators/compilers - translating between people's private languages.

So Philosophy's very function must be the deliberate reification of the Perenial ideal.
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Re: Hermeneutics: Applications?

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Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 8:06 am Concepts are necessary for perception!
Not my perception. That's not how my brain works. I perceive things all the time where I apply no concepts, names, etc. to them--where I have zero thoughts about them, aside for a low-level awareness that that nameless, etc. stuff is present--if you'd call that "thought."
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Re: Hermeneutics: Applications?

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Terrapin Station wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 1:16 pm Not my perception. That's not how my brain works. I perceive things all the time where I apply no concepts, names, etc. to them--where I have zero thoughts about them, aside for a low-level awareness that that nameless, etc. stuff is present--if you'd call that "thought."
You are calling it "perception".
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Re: Hermeneutics: Applications?

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Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Mar 30, 2021 12:05 pm Here is a video on a short Intro to Hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics: A Very Short Introduction
Jens Zimmermann
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wPTV5hyB0Y

Do you agree with the subject of Hermeneutics for philosophical discussions?
Unless you use it to unpack your assumptions, rather than reinforce them it is useless as all it does is send you down in an ever decreasing spiral to the hell of your own misconceptions.
The history of Hermeneutics, has been mostly used in that great time wasting activity biblical interpretation. This is the perfect example of never escaping your prejudices and assumptions.

However in the modern world the "hermeneutic circle" has been modifed and revived in a more useful and tool for self examination and personal skepticism.
Here we can look at the usual suspects such as Heidegger, Gadamer and Derrida.
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Angelo Cannata
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Re: Hermeneutics: Applications?

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In my opinion some ideas shared by most hermeneutic philosophers need to be brought forward, improved or even changed in order to develop all of their potential.

First of all, the idea that we are immersed in our language and culture. I think that this point should be improved in a stronger one, otherwise it becomes easy to disagree with it, for example by thinking about a newborn child, or even a fetus, who has no culture, no language, but is already able to have perceptions: are, for this reason, his perceptions to be considered objective? I think that, rather than referring to culture or language, we would better refer to our brain. No matter how our brain elaborates perceptions; what matters is that it is conditioned by itself. In other words, it is impossible to have perceptions or thoughts without using our brain and, as a consequence, being 100% conditioned by it. The brain in a vat is not just an imaginative idea: it is our permanent daily condition, because the vat of our brain is our brain itself.

Another point is the compromise they make between the concept of our being immersed in concepts, languages and the idea of the existence of an objective reality outside our activity of thinking. Once we realize that we have no way to escape our being immersed in the phisionomy of our brain, its predefined structures, I don’t see the point of still assuming that there’s a reality out there: if we start from the perspective of our being conditioned by the environment of culture, language, DNA, what makes still possible to think about an objective reality? Isn’t this concept as well a result of our being conditioned? Why should the concept of an objective reality be an exception, why should it escape the fact that we are immersed in ourselves and we cannot go outside ourselves?
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Re: Hermeneutics: Applications?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Skepdick wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:30 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 8:06 am they do deny, however, that we can have a meaningful experience without understanding pain or temperature first within a cultural vocabulary by which we make sense of things.

For this reason, hermeneutic thinkers argue that language guides our perception intrinsically.
For them, language includes any images, signs, or symbols by which we understand and communicate our experience of the world.
They believe that our perception of the world and our thought depends on an intricate linguistic web of words and concepts that develop historically over time.
This is equivalent to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
Noted.

The point is the term "language" is not the typical meaning but for the hermeneutical thinkers the term 'language' has very deep implications into one culture, traditions, history, human psychology and I would add, evolutionary baggage.
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Re: Hermeneutics: Applications?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Skepdick wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 10:36 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 8:34 am Most hermeneutic thinkers are firm believers in universal reason that allows for translation between all languages and cultures.
In computer science this is what compilers do. Software systems which translate different languages into one, common, language.

In a video Philosophy & Taking Time Seriously Rorty argues that Philosophers still have a role to play in society, but it's not the traditional role they've usually assumed. I think Philosophers (those who understand how the semantic games language games work) are well-suited to play the part of mediators/compilers - translating between people's private languages.

So Philosophy's very function must be the deliberate reification of the Perenial ideal.
From Rorty's Mirror of Nature, I noted he did not foresee the end of philosophy. His hope was, only Moral Philosophy is to continue in the Conversation, not the traditional or Modern Philosophy.

Nevertheless Rorty did not expect the End of Philosophy, i.e. his various views;
Whichever happens, however, there is no danger of philosophy's "coming to an end."
Religion did not come to an end in the Enlightenment, nor painting in Impressionism.
Even if the period from Plato to Nietzsche is encapsulated and "distanced" in the way Heidegger suggests, and
even if twentieth-century philosophy comes to seem a stage of awkward transitional backing and filling (as sixteenth-century philosophy now seems to us),
there will be something called "philosophy" on the other side of the transition.

For even if problems about representation look as obsolete to our descendants as problems about hylomorphism look to us, people will still read Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger.
What roles these men will play in our descendants' conversation, no one knows.
Whether the distinction between systematic and edifying philosophy will carry over, no one knows either.

Perhaps philosophy will become purely edifying, so that one's self-­identification as a philosopher will be purely in terms of the books one reads and discusses, rather than in terms of the problems one wishes to solve.
Perhaps a new form of systematic philosophy will be found which has nothing whatever to do with epistemology but which nevertheless makes normal philosophical inquiry possible.

These speculations are idle, and nothing I have been saying makes one more plausible than another.

The only point on which I would insist is that
philosophers' moral concern should be with continuing the conversation of the West,
rather than with insisting upon a place for the traditional problems of modern philosophy within that conversation.
Whilst I agree with Rorty in various of his views, I do not agree with him totally.
I have a different view on 'what is philosophy' from that of Rorty's.

In addition, I noted Rorty did not full grasp Kant's philosophy and wrongly put Kant [based on the views of the neo-Kantians] into the same camp [on certain issue re representation] as the classical analytic philosophers.

Point is the majority of neo-Kantians that Rorty critiqued were entrapped by the irresistible illusions that Kant warned about,
Even the wisest of men cannot free himself from them [the illusions].
After long effort he perhaps succeeds in guarding himself against actual error; but he will never be able to free himself from the Illusion, which unceasingly mocks and torments him.
CPR B397
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Hermeneutics: Applications?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Terrapin Station wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 1:16 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 8:06 am Concepts are necessary for perception!
Not my perception. That's not how my brain works. I perceive things all the time where I apply no concepts, names, etc. to them--where I have zero thoughts about them, aside for a low-level awareness that that nameless, etc. stuff is present--if you'd call that "thought."
ditto Skepdick's :!: :?:

You should go back to philosophical kindergarten to start learning 'what is perception'.
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Re: Hermeneutics: Applications?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Sculptor wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 3:53 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Mar 30, 2021 12:05 pm Here is a video on a short Intro to Hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics: A Very Short Introduction
Jens Zimmermann
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wPTV5hyB0Y

Do you agree with the subject of Hermeneutics for philosophical discussions?
Unless you use it to unpack your assumptions, rather than reinforce them it is useless as all it does is send you down in an ever decreasing spiral to the hell of your own misconceptions.
The history of Hermeneutics, has been mostly used in that great time wasting activity biblical interpretation. This is the perfect example of never escaping your prejudices and assumptions.

However in the modern world the "hermeneutic circle" has been modifed and revived in a more useful and tool for self examination and personal skepticism.
Here we can look at the usual suspects such as Heidegger, Gadamer and Derrida.
Why are so jumpy into biblical issues re hermeneutics?

Philosophically, hermeneutics is the Philosophy of INTERPRETATION which can be interpreting anything which extend to the interpretation of reality.

According to Zimmerman, hermeneutics besides interpretation should be extended to 'understanding' i.e. understanding 'understanding'.

As such we should be concerned with the principles related to the Philosophy of INTERPRETATION, thus to a Framework and System of Knowledge of Interpretation.

Once we have established what is 'hermeneutics-proper' :mrgreen: and its generic principles, it is then independent of whoever apply it.
Be it the theologians, the legal, the humanities, sciences, Heidegger, Gadamer or Derrida, the question is, are they applying the generic principles of hermeneutics-proper correctly.

I noted you are totally ignorant of what is 'hermeneutics-proper' which lead to all your interpretation of what is reality as fatuous.
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Re: Hermeneutics: Applications?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Angelo Cannata wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 4:03 pm In my opinion some ideas shared by most hermeneutic philosophers need to be brought forward, improved or even changed in order to develop all of their potential.

First of all, the idea that we are immersed in our language and culture. I think that this point should be improved in a stronger one, otherwise it becomes easy to disagree with it, for example by thinking about a newborn child, or even a fetus, who has no culture, no language, but is already able to have perceptions: are, for this reason, his perceptions to be considered objective? I think that, rather than referring to culture or language, we would better refer to our brain. No matter how our brain elaborates perceptions; what matters is that it is conditioned by itself. In other words, it is impossible to have perceptions or thoughts without using our brain and, as a consequence, being 100% conditioned by it. The brain in a vat is not just an imaginative idea: it is our permanent daily condition, because the vat of our brain is our brain itself.

Another point is the compromise they make between the concept of our being immersed in concepts, languages and the idea of the existence of an objective reality outside our activity of thinking. Once we realize that we have no way to escape our being immersed in the phisionomy of our brain, its predefined structures, I don’t see the point of still assuming that there’s a reality out there: if we start from the perspective of our being conditioned by the environment of culture, language, DNA, what makes still possible to think about an objective reality? Isn’t this concept as well a result of our being conditioned? Why should the concept of an objective reality be an exception, why should it escape the fact that we are immersed in ourselves and we cannot go outside ourselves?
Note the wide range of those attributed with hermeneutics;
  • Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutics
    2 In religious traditions
    2.1 Mesopotamian hermeneutics
    2.2 Islamic hermeneutics
    2.3 Talmudic hermeneutics
    2.4 Vedic hermeneutics
    2.5 Buddhist hermeneutics
    2.6 Biblical hermeneutics
    2.6.1 Literal
    2.6.2 Moral
    2.6.3 Allegorical
    2.6.4 Anagogical
    3 Philosophical hermeneutics
    3.1 Ancient and medieval hermeneutics
    3.2 Modern hermeneutics
    3.2.1 Dilthey (1833–1911)
    3.2.2 Heidegger (1889–1976)
    3.2.3 Gadamer (1900–2002)
    3.2.4 New hermeneutic
    3.2.5 Marxist hermeneutics
    3.2.6 Objective hermeneutics

    Nineteenth- and twentieth-century hermeneutics emerged as a theory of understanding (Verstehen) through the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher (Romantic hermeneutics[20] and methodological hermeneutics),[21] August Böckh (methodological hermeneutics),[22] Wilhelm Dilthey (epistemological hermeneutics),[23] Martin Heidegger (ontological hermeneutics,[24] hermeneutic phenomenology,[25][26][27] and transcendental hermeneutic phenomenology),[28] Hans-Georg Gadamer (ontological hermeneutics),[29] Leo Strauss (Straussian hermeneutics),[30] Paul Ricœur (hermeneutic phenomenology),[31] Walter Benjamin (Marxist hermeneutics),[32] Ernst Bloch (Marxist hermeneutics),[33][32] Jacques Derrida (radical hermeneutics, namely deconstruction),[34][35] Richard Kearney (diacritical hermeneutics), Fredric Jameson (Marxist hermeneutics),[36] and John Thompson (critical hermeneutics).
Re your concern with improvements, who of the above are we to improve upon?

As such, to be effective, we should be concerned with the generic principles related to the Philosophy of INTERPRETATION, thus to a Framework and System of Knowledge [FSK] of Interpretation.

Once we have established what is 'hermeneutics-proper' and its generic principles, it is then independent of whoever apply it.
Be it the theologians, the legal, the humanities, sciences, Heidegger, Gadamer or Derrida, the question is, are they applying the generic principles of hermeneutics-proper correctly.

I think most of the modern dominant hermeneutic philosophers are anti-realists [no independent objective reality], as such they don't compromise between the concept of our being immersed in concepts, languages and the idea of the existence of an objective reality outside our activity of thinking.
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Angelo Cannata
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Re: Hermeneutics: Applications?

Post by Angelo Cannata »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 02, 2021 7:02 am You should go back to philosophical kindergarten to start learning 'what is perception'.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 02, 2021 7:14 am I noted you are totally ignorant of what is 'hermeneutics-proper' which lead to all your interpretation of what is reality as fatuous.
Is this forum moderated by anybody?
Veritas Aequitas, how do you evaluate these words of yours?
Skepdick
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Re: Hermeneutics: Applications?

Post by Skepdick »

Angelo Cannata wrote: Fri Apr 02, 2021 9:42 am Is this forum moderated by anybody?
There are moderators, if that's what you are asking.

Welcome to the mad house.
tillingborn
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Re: Hermeneutics: Applications?

Post by tillingborn »

Skepdick wrote: Fri Apr 02, 2021 10:07 am
Angelo Cannata wrote: Fri Apr 02, 2021 9:42 amIs this forum moderated by anybody?
There are moderators, if that's what you are asking.

Welcome to the mad house.
Good point. I suppose it must be like being religious; I believe they're there, but Oh Mod, why do you allow such suffering?
Skepdick
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Re: Hermeneutics: Applications?

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tillingborn wrote: Fri Apr 02, 2021 10:26 am Good point. I suppose it must be like being religious; I believe they're there, but Oh Mod, why do you allow such suffering?
I guess, you could say, this is precisely why God is a necessary evil.

So we can blame him for being a bunch of screwups.
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Re: Hermeneutics: Applications?

Post by Terrapin Station »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Apr 02, 2021 7:02 am
Terrapin Station wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 1:16 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 8:06 am Concepts are necessary for perception!
Not my perception. That's not how my brain works. I perceive things all the time where I apply no concepts, names, etc. to them--where I have zero thoughts about them, aside for a low-level awareness that that nameless, etc. stuff is present--if you'd call that "thought."
ditto Skepdick's :!: :?:

You should go back to philosophical kindergarten to start learning 'what is perception'.
Standard definition of "perception" - "the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses."
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