Background:In research on co-creation in nursing, a caring manner can be used to create opportunities whereby the patient’s quality of life can be increased in palliative home care. This can be described as an ethical cornerstone and the goal of palliative care. To promote quality of life, nurses must be sensitive to patients’ and their relatives’ needs in care encounters. Co-creation can be defined as the joint creation of vital goals for patients through the process of shared knowledge between nurses, (...) patients and their relatives.Aim:The aim of this study was to explore nurses’ experiences of caring encounters and co-creation in palliative home care from an ethical perspective.Research design, participants, and research context:A hermeneutical approach was used. The material consisted of texts from interviews with 12 nurses in a home care context. The method was inspired by thematic analysis.Ethical considerations:Informed consent was sought from the participants regarding study participation and the storage and handling of data for research purposes.Findings:An overall theme, a main theme and four sub-themes emerged. Through ethical sensitivity and perceptivity, nurses can balance their actions in the moment and change their nursing care actions according to the patient’s wishes through co-creation in encounters. Here the time is crucial, as the time needed is unique to each patient.Discussion:The themes together can be considered prerequisites for good palliative home care. If nurses fail to be sensitive and perceptive in encounters with dying patients, good palliative home care cannot be achieved. Ethical sensitivity and perceptiveness can also be considered a part of nurses’ ethical competence.Conclusion:Patients’ dignity can be preserved through ethical sensitivity and perceptiveness, which is fundamental for good palliative care. Co-creation from patients’ perspectives should be the focus of future research. (shrink)

In this article I propose that a postphenomenological approach to science and technology can open new analytical understandings of how material artifacts, embodiment and social agency co-produce learned perceptions of objects. In particle physics, physicists work in huge groups of scientists from many cultural backgrounds. Communication to some extent depends on material hermeneutics of flowcharts, models and other visual presentations. As it appears in an examination of physicists’ scrutiny of visual renderings of different parts of a detector, perceptions vary (...) in relation to social and bodily experiences. Vision in physics has seemingly allowed an objective perception at a convenient distance of the body. This article challenges this view and proposes that the variations can be analysed as cultural at two echelons with the help of a postphenomenological approach combined with cultural psychological theory of artifacts. A third echelon presumably constitutes the phenomenological limit to culture in science. Even this last resort of subjectivity can be embraced by a postphenomenological approach. The process of culturalization in physics can be defined as a process of situating knowledge in a body whose continuous learning of micro-and macro perceptions makes scientific renderings unstable. Taken together postphenomenology, following the distinctions between body one and body two, and combined with cultural psychological learning theory, enables new insight into what constitutes culture in science. (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)

Philosophers and theologians from around the world and throughout history have grappled with such fundamental issues as the nature of the world and man's relation to it, as well as the optimal forms of human perception, language and behaviour. Yet it has always been difficult to compare the works of thinkers from different eras and cultures. In this work of systematic philosophy, David Dilworth places the major texts of ancient and modern, and Western and Oriental philosphy and religion into (...) one comparative framework. His study reveals affinities between thinkers who lived centuries and continents apart and produces numerous insights by bringing together the greatest philosophical texts into a single scheme. (shrink)

This richly textured book bridges analytic and hermeneutic and phenomenological philosophy of science. It features unique resources for students of the philosophy and history of quantum mechanics and the Copenhagen Interpretation, cognitive theory and the psychology of perception, the history and philosophy of art, and the pragmatic and historical relationships between religion and science.

This paper offers an analysis of Edward Schillebeeckx’s insights on different perceptions of revelation as related to concepts like salvation, God, church, human experience and creation in the work Jesus in Our Western Culture. The incentive of Schillebeeckx’s hermeneutical method in nowadays Western phenomenology, upon which God “breathed his breath of life”, triggered our interest in meanings which Schillebeeckx ascribes to human history as the realm of God’s work for the benefit of men and women. This meaning is suggested in (...) the very beginning of the book by its original Dutch title If Politics is not Everything. As stated in this work’s introduction, Schillebeeckx’s main theme is the origin of salvation in the humanum, from the Abba experience to nowadays revelatory events. Our attempt is to see how Schillebeeckx’s humanum, which is the embodiment of human experience of consciousness, becomes relevant for the Christian doctrines and why Schillebeeckx reckons that bringing them together would impact both his worldview and Western culture. (shrink)

Interpreting Visual Culture brings together the writings of some of the leading experts in art history, philosophy, sociology and cultural studies to look at the role of perception and the "visual" in our understanding of the contemporary human condition. Ranging from an analysis of the role of vision in current critical discourse to a discussion of specific examples taken from the visual arts, ethics and sociology, this collection presents the latest material on the interpretation of the visual in modern (...) culture. Topics covered include: the hermeneutics of seeing, the visual rhetoric of modernity, the drawings of Bonnard, recent feminist art, practices and perceptions in art and ethics. Divided into three main sections, each beginning with an introductory chapter outlining the main topics under discussion, comprehensive and engaging, Interpreting Visual Culture will be essential reading for students of sociology, cultural studies and art history. (shrink)

The question standing in the backgrounds of this paper is what kind of hermeneutics can emerge on basis of philosophy of life. To answer it, the theories of German philosophers Georg Misch and Josef Koenig have been analyzed. The first developed hermeneutical logics, which is based on identification the notions ‘life’ and ‘articulation’ ). Three aspects –life as logical category, life as hermeneutical category, and the discoursive forms of self-representation of life- extracted from Misch’s theory seem to be relevant (...) for further development of hermeneutics. Koenig carries forward this research program, but focuses on the linguistic structures of human perception experience and drafts a kind of analytical hermeneutics. The remarkable part of both conceptions is that they pose it logical heterogenity of theoretical and practical discourses. These differences are relevant for rethinking of such epistemological phenomenon, such as ‘meaning’, ‘concept’, ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’. According to these positions, hermeneutics can be a homogenous theory of interpretation or understanding, but on the contrary the different logical areas of hermeneutics must be constituted. Thus, hermeneutics can be interpreted as an alternative to the traditional, i.e., epistemological approach, to the theory of knowledge, on the one hand, and to analytical philosophy of language on the other. (shrink)

This article develops a framework for analysing how digital software and models become mediums for creative imagination in architectural design. To understand the hermeneutics of these relationships, we develop key concepts from Material Engagement Theory (MET) and Postphenomenology (PP). To push these frameworks into the realm of digital design, we develop the concept of Digital Materiality. Digital Materiality describes the way successive layers of mathematics, code, and software come to mediate enactive perception, and the possibilities of creative material (...) engagement actualised in work with software. Just as molecular materials come to transform action with material objects, so digital materiality comes to enable and transform creative practices with computers. Digital architectural design form a new space for ongoing enactive discovery and creativity through manipulation of digital models and their underlying software environments. By shifting relationships within their digital models, architects can direct their attention, intention, and imagination towards widely different aspects of the model. Here, creative imagination becomes a fundamentally situated activity where mind emerges through dynamic interaction between a variety of embodied, material, and cultural domains. (shrink)

The clinical encounter begins with presentation of an illness experience; but throughout that encounter, something else is constructed from it – a symptom. The symptom is a particular interpretation of that experience, useful for certain purposes in particular contexts. The hermeneutics of medicine – the study of the interpretation of human experience in medical terms – has largely taken the process of symptom-construction to be transparent, focussing instead on how constellations of symptoms are interpreted as representative of particular conditions. (...) This paper examines the hermeneutical activity of symptom-construction more closely. I propose a fourfold account of the clinical function of symptoms: as theoretical entities; as tools for communication; as guides to palliative intervention; and as candidates for medical explanation or intervention. I also highlight roles they might play in illness experience. I use this framework to discuss four potential failures of symptom-interpretation: failure of symptom-type and symptom-token recognition; loss of the complete picture of illness experience through overwhelming emphasis on its symptomatic interpretation; and intersubjective feedback effects of symptom description altering the ill person’s own perceptions of their phenomenal experience. I conclude with some suggestions of potential remedies for failures in the process of symptom-construction. (shrink)

Hermeneutics and Deconstruction provides an assessment of two dominant modes of thinking and writing in continental philosophy today. It addresses central issues in the theory of interpretation and in the strategies of textual reading. Placed in the context of contemporary philosophical practice, this volume raises the question of the “end” of philosophy and offers different ways of understanding how the question of “closure” in philosophy can itself open up a whole range of philosophical activities. Special attention is given to (...) the practice of interpretation in the areas of science, perception, and literature, and to the dimensions of hermeneutic understanding with respect to being, life, and the world. An investigation of how history is interpreted and read as a text provides access to one of the significant differences between hermeneutic understanding and deconstructionist practice. A section is devoted to the controversy concerning the value and the achievement of deconstruction. The writings of Heidegger and Derrida are juxtaposed and examined. And the volume concludes with several indications of new directions in continental philosophy and various versions of what a post-Derridean reading might entail. (shrink)

00 Drawing on the phenomenological tradition in the philosophy of science and philosophy of nature, Patrick Heelan concludes that perception is a cognitive, ...

For philosophical hermeneutics as Hans‐Georg Gadamer conceived it, art plays an essential role. If hermeneutics and aesthetics are as strictly opposed as Gadamer suggests, the “abstraction” performed by aesthetic consciousness must be an abstraction from the truth of art. As the result of such an abstraction, the aesthetic view of art is secondary; it must be conceived of as nonoriginal experience of art, which, derivative as it is supposed to be, is only possible on the basis of original (...) experience, as an abstraction from it. Aesthetic objects are essentially correlated to perception, the word for which in Ancient Greek is ‘aesthesis’. But aesthetic objects cannot be coextensive with everything perceptible; otherwise, the term “aesthetic” could not be used significantly in respect to artworks. Being perceptibly present, artworks present phenomenal structures of meaning, texts in textures, which must not be directly applied to the factual world or identified with its “essence”. (shrink)

Lonergan writes both of a foundation for human knowing as well as of a functional specialty he termed ‘foundations’. Neither of these is the same as ‘foundation’ as the term is used by nonfoundationalists. Lack of clarity and differentiation regarding what is meant by ‘foundationalism’ sometimes informs the perception that Lonergan is a foundationalist. The burden of this essay is to show that Lonergan's philosophical and theological thought, as well as his use of the term ‘foundations’, fall awkwardly, if (...) at all, under anti-foundationalist strictures. There is a need to clarify and differentiate a range of terms and concepts in this regard. Lonergan shares with anti-foundationalists the rejection of ocular metaphors and other naïve approaches to human knowing. Lonergan's own search for ‘foundations’, which I argue is critical for a world Church consciousness and meets the Rahner-test for a world Church, is part of an overall project to situate knowing within identifiable, recurring patterns in the operations of human consciousness. (shrink)

1施莱尔玛赫 contribution to the development施莱尔玛赫for hermeneutics in the development of Historically hermeneutics In order to make a decisive turn when he made ​​the future "general hermeneutics" , hermeneutics will be applied to all text interpretation. When the traditional hermeneutics contains In order to understand, description and application,施莱尔玛赫the attention is hermeneutics as "the art of understanding." 施莱尔玛赫also introduced the interpretation of psychology, can penetrate the text by means of its author's individuality and flexibility soul. He (...) wanted to become a systematic hermeneutics, and criticism of previous hermeneutics is "the rules of the merger," and the lack of coherence. Wu Ning speaking, they deal with different issues is a combination of methods. 施莱尔玛赫hermeneutics points to avoid misunderstanding of the text. This part is up to the final discussion of施莱尔玛赫criticism of the United States. 2. Dilthey contribution to the philosophical hermeneutics of Dilthey on施莱尔玛赫In order to write the thesis, including In order to Protestant hermeneutics history, from the Reformation to the future as a second reference books. He was a learned scholar and has been on many topics regardless above. For our purposes, Dilthey is a philosopher with a passion for life, he was placed In order to humanities and social sciences and natural sciences in an established full equality of points, by the foundation on the hermeneutics In order to develop a basic methodology. But in the science competition, he was seeking "Allgemeingultigkeit", a universal validity, to do so In order to give him too much towards the foundation to the scientific methods of thought. He is still a major development of the character of philosophical hermeneutics. 3 Heidegger before and on philosophical hermeneutics, "and there is time" contribution to the development of philosophical hermeneutics is the decisive shift in Heidegger, born with the future, there are original philosopher The early works. He Freiburg Hu plugs Seoul assistant, and in the phenomenological Hu stopper Seoul In order to create a useful set up beyond the traditional methods of philosophy, but he is still too dependent on science Hu stopper Marco effectiveness. Part I: description of the evolution of the early Heidegger: "ontology - the fact of hermeneutics," the book published after the death of Heidegger was published in 1999, English translation, Heidegger in this series by the fact that the ontology of hermeneutics In order to give us a hermeneutic understanding of his meaning. In order to avoid the traditional hermeneutics of his meaning, In order to return to the ancient hope臘hermeneueinc and hermeneia idiom. He attempts to go beyond the limits of contemporary objects, through the period of return to the ancient hope臘general language idioms. Hermeneutic encounter with the interpretation of Homer's description of the mouth, publish, translate and interpret. His description of historical hermeneutics in the pull-down maps and sub ​​Lane Park after a groundbreaking Aristotle hope臘idioms in the loss of richness and decline. But the hermeneutics of Heidegger speaking the method is close to something, such as early speech hermeneutics In order to approach closer to the truth of it is understandable the former interpretation of this domain as there face life. For this last hermeneutics as the method of self-understanding, but in a letter to his students Engelbert Kerbs letter, Heidegger also emphasizes the history In order to recognize the character. Us from our understanding of historical context, our understanding of the structure is formed by shaping the concept of history and even our language. In Dilthey's hermeneutics, he also stressed that understanding the historical basis. From Dilthey to Heidegger this view. Heidegger in his speech defines hermeneutics as "the fact of participation, close, and descriptions of the same interrogation methods." Hermeneutics is the interpretation of not only understanding knowledge as a negative process, but active participation, interrogation and close. Fact of itself is interpreted, it is through understanding the questions and answers something. Heidegger back to the necessary conditions for our understanding of factors, understanding of "the former structure." He describes some part of the former, is awareness and understanding of nature, we understand something "to" something, and we understand it in a specific historical context. Further more, we expect to understand it in the presence of a sight, not a determining sexual arousal by the sight, by the basic problems of the future horizon, it is "the possibility of there," the sight, for there is a special special possible time horizon. These early works of Heidegger has been found there the possibility of meaning. We all都leadership to a new concept of the humanities. In addition, as a rational animal, as Aristotle said sub-Lane, who is of a future there may not be included, including the timing of there. People are looking to understand their own there. Instructions to Heidegger, hermeneutics offers a new concept for the person's point of view. Part II: there and time hermeneutics is first mentioned in the "there and the time," Section VII, Heidegger phenomenology has been interpreted as if it is. In order that he found "the meaning of phenomenological description as a way to rely on hermeneutics, phenomenology of this and some of the logos have hermeneuein the characteristics of this phenomenology is to use some basic meaning of the word hermeneutics, it indicates the work In order to interpret . "In the second sense, Heidegger found in hermeneutics裡are there for the meaning of this method of exposing the shield. The third meaning is the interpretation of this promising continuous manner so that its future is possible, it's future there. Section 31 of hermeneutics is important, because there is some understanding that is. Understanding the process is the center of human existence, in Section 32 entitled "interpretation and understanding," understanding the interpretation built on. Visit the world around it and understand things as this or that, always never as pure consciousness. As Heidegger said, "always had to watch as the ability to understand and interpret", in other words, there is no precedence in the interpretation of pure consciousness, there is always ask questions and interpretation of the visual field. Section 44, regardless Heidegger also true about management, in its modern form as a true statement, is always carried a deeper understanding and interpretation of the export process. But the really right is defined as the management there has been an associate of knot, so it access to basic ontology of sight. It is obvious that there's open, this hole is to guide him toward the police point of view of the artistic part of the next lecture will be discussed. This lecture primarily presents the two early works of Heidegger in which hermeneutics plays a definitive role. As background, the contributions of Schleiermacher and Dilthey are presented briefly before going into Heidegger's contribution. Ⅰ. Schleiermacher's Contribution to the Development of a Philosophical Hermeneutics Schleiermacher made a decisive turn in the history of hermeneutics when he proposed a "Universal Hermeneutics," a hermeneutics that would apply to all kinds of text interpretation. While traditional hermeneutics included moments of understanding, explication and application, Schleiermacher focused on hermeneutics as the "art of understanding . "Schleiermacher also introduced psychological interpretation whereby one tried to penetrate the individuality and soul of the author of a text. He wanted hermeneutics to be systematic, and he criticized previous hermeneutics for being only an" amalgam of rules "and lacking systematic coherence. Rather , they were methods for dealing with an array of different kinds of problems. Schleiermacher's hermeneutics was directed at avoiding misunderstanding of the text. At the end of this section Gadamer's criticisms of Schleiermacher will be discussed. Ⅱ. Dilthey's Contribution to Philosophical Hermeneutics Dilthey wrote his dissertation on Schleiermacher and included a history of Protestant hermeneutics since the Reformation as a second companion volume. He was a broadly educated professor and wrote on many topics. For our purposes, Dilthey was a life-philosopher with a passion for placing the Humanities and Social Sciences on an equal footing with the Natural Sciences by developing a basic methodology for them based on hermeneutics. But in competing with the sciences, he sought an "Allgemeingultigkeit," a universal validity, and in doing so he tended to give too much ground to the way of thinking in the sciences. Still, he is a major figure in the development of philosophical hermeneutics. Ⅲ. The Contribution of Martin Heidegger to Philosophical Hermeneutics before and in Being and Time The decisive turn in the development of a philosophical hermeneutics came in the early writings of Martin Heidegger, a radical and original philosopher. He was in Freiburg an assistant to Husserl and found in Husserl's phenomenology a useful way of overcoming traditional philosophy, but he still found Husserl too preoccupied with scientific validity. Part Ⅰ: Heidegger's Early Lectures: Ontology-the Hermeneutics of Facticity A posthumously published and translated set of Heidegger's lectures on ontology in terms of a hermeneutics of facticity gives us a sense of his understanding of hermeneutics. He bypassed the traditional sense of hermeneutics and went back to the Greek usage of hermeneuein and hermeneia. He attempted to overcome the limitations of modern objectivity by returning to the usages current in ordinary language in ancient Greece. There hermeneutics meant orally interpreting Homer, announcing, translating, and explaining. His account of the history of hermeneutics after Plato and Aristotle is a history of decline and loss of the richness found in Greek usage. But hermeneutics for Heidegger meant a means of access to something, and in these early lectures hermeneutics became an interpretive means of access to facticity, to the realm of pre-interpretive understanding as Dasein faces life. Ultimately hermeneutics became a means for the self-understanding for Dasein. But in a letter to his student, Engelbert Krebs, Heidegger also emphasizes the historical character of cognition. We understand from our situation in history, and our understanding is structured by historically shaped concepts and even our language. Dilthey, too, emphasized the historical matrix for understanding in his hermeneutics, and Heidegger took this up from Dilthey. Heidegger defined hermeneutics in the opening lines of the lectures as "the unified manner of the engaging, approaching, accessing, interrogating, and explication of facticity." Hermeneutics as interpretation is not just understanding as a passive process of cognition but an active engaging, interrogating, and accessing. Facticity itself is interpretive in that it sees what something is through question and answer. Heidegger is stepping back into the factors that precondition our understanding, the "forestructure" of understanding. This forehaving, he says, belongs to the very nature of knowing and understanding. We see something "as "something, and we see it in a specific historical situation. Furthermore, we see it in an existential horizon of expectation, a horizon haunted by uncertainty, by the" fundamental questionability of the future, that is of "possible being," of what is possible for this particular being at this particular time and place. Already in these early works Heidegger finds in the sense of what is possible being, a sense of "ontic questionability, care, restlessness, anxiety, temporality." All of this leads to a new conception of humanity. Instead of being an animal endowed with reason, as in Aristotle, a human being is a being with a possible future, a being with temporality. Humans are beings seeking to know themselves. Hermeneutics, Heidegger says, offers the standpoint for a new conception of the human being. Part Ⅱ: Being and Time The first mention of hermeneutics is in section 7 of Being and Time, where Heidegger is already interpreting phenomenology as letting what is show itself. He finds that " the meaning of phenomenological description as a method lies in interpretation. The logos of the phenomenology of Dasein has the character of hermēneúein. The phenomenology of Dasein is a hermeneutic in the original signification of the word, where it designates the work of interpreting. "In a second sense, Heidegger finds in hermeneutics a means of uncovering the meaning of being for Dasein. And the third sense is the interpretation Dasein as continually making its future possibilities, its future being. Section 31 is important to hermeneutics because there the being of Dasein is said to be understanding. Understanding is the central process of an existing human being. In section 32, titled "Understanding and Interpretation," interpretation builds on understanding. It looks around at the surrounding world and sees things as this or that, always already , never as pure perception. As Heidegger puts it, "The seeing of this sight is always already understanding and interpreting." In other words, there is no pure perception prior to interpretation; there is always the horizon of questioning and interpreting. In section 44, Heidegger argues that truth, too, in its modern forms as statements which are true, is derivative from the deeper processes of understanding and interpreting that are always already going on. But when truth is rightfully defined in connection with being, then it moves into the horizon of fundamental ontology. It is the disclosure of being. This insight is part of what leads him to his view of art, which we will discuss in the next lectur. (shrink)

The consequences of hermeneutics for education are profound and far‐reaching. While the philosophy of education was never a major preoccupation of Hans‐Georg Gadamer's, his writings on Bildung and dialogue, in particular, contain implications for what happens, or might happen, in classrooms. After discussing these two themes, this chapter offers a few reflections on some obstacles to education as hermeneutics conceives of it which are plainly visible in the university of today. The concept of Bildung fell into some disrepute (...) in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries owing to its association in many minds with elitism. Much of the current vocabulary of educational theory and psychology, which is often difficult to distinguish from the economic, has an inveterate tendency to produce a quality of educational experience that closely compares to that of a rat in a maze, as Ivan Illich perceptively described in Deschooling Society. (shrink)

What is the relation between material hermeneutics, bodies, perception and materials? In this article, I shall argue cultural learning processes tie them together. Three aspects of learning can be identified in cultural learning processes. First, all learning is tied to cultural practices. Second, all learning in cultural practice entangle humans’ ability to recognize a material world conceptually, and finally the boundaries of objects, the object we perceive, are set by shifting material-conceptual entanglements. All these aspects are important for (...) material hermeneutics in a technoculture. Postphenomenology has expanded the connection between hermeneutics and phenomenology by focusing on studies of how perception, bodies, materials, the sensual realm and hermeneutics are entwined when we perceive the world through technologies. Following Don Ihde, hermeneutics expands beyond interpretation of texts in the humanities. We can interpret materials as for instance animal bones to make new sense of the Bible. New technologies have expanded material hermeneutics, when we can ‘look’ into bodies and ‘perceive’ below surfaces. Interpretation via such tools in a technoculture, both limit and extend our hermeneutic horizons in the humanities as well as in the natural sciences. Furthermore, from the perspective of cultural learning processes, material hermeneutics in the human and natural sciences depend on more than mediating instruments. Material hermeneutics also involve the material cultural environments of scientific apparatuses and the scientists’ processes of learning in cultural practice. This changes the focus from relations in postphenomenology to processes of relations. (shrink)

Using the methods of hermeneutic phenomenology, and against the background of the principle that the real is what is or can be given in a public way in perception as a state of the World, and of the thesis established elsewhere that acts of perception are always epistemic, contextual, and hermeneutical, the writer proposes that objects of scientific observation are perceptual objects, states of the World described by theoretical scientific terms and, therefore, real. This thesis of Hermeneutical Realism (...) is proved by showing how the response of a standard instrument is 'read' as if it were a 'text'. Conclusions are then drawn about a number of topics, including Scientific Realism, Conventionalism, and Cultural Relativism. (shrink)

The post-modern represents a cultural break from the modern. The culture of postmodernity is conditional by information. Meanwhile, postmodernism provides an immanent critique of enlightenment. The focal point of philosophy then is how to communicate and to understand. The Confucian concepts of "Jen" (real humanity), "Tao" (the way), "Huseh" (learning, "chih" (understand), "hsing" (actions) are ground for communication and understanding. "Jen" as real humanity provides a process ontology which makes an open hermeneutical process possible. Through reflection and critique on pre-understanding (...) and prejudice, a condition for communication and understanding is provided. In this sense, Confucianism is relevant to the postmodern problems. (shrink)

Embodied cognition is an interpretative—or hermeneutical—cognition inherent in motor-sensory perception intrinsically informed by biological and sociocultural memory, a cognition embedded in the organism as well as the socio-cultural environment interacting with it (Ward et al. TOPOI 36:365–375, 2017), of which technologies are a part. Yet, smart machines are advancing on human abilities to perceive and interpret concerning the accuracy, quantity, and quality of the data processed. Machines process and categorize images, perform classification tasks, they calculate and perform pattern analysis, (...) all machine learning processes are task-specific. Machine learning processes resemble human interpretative processes; however, these are two very different ways of “dealing with something,” although both can be said to be hermeneutical, one enactive, the other material; the first is a meaning-generating interpretative process, the second a statistics-based information output. The information extracted from all the data fed into the computer is the end-product of machine learning, whereas human interpretative enactments are continuous and necessary for any application of the information output. (shrink)

An error that medicine has long shared is to attribute to a desire or an effect of the mother’s imagination during gestation, the deformities, growths or spots that a child bears at birth. The imagination would be capable of imprinting external modifications on a matter and would have an impact on the perceptions and sensory development of the fetus. Returning briefly to the genealogy and posterity of the topos, this article focuses on the successes and refutations of the Malebranchist paradigm (...) in the 18th century, through a corpus of medical popularization texts where the debates oppose the supporters of the imagination for whom emotion alters the organs of the fetus and the detractors of this thesis who only see it as prejudice. Mechanistic systems had in common that they avoided the soul to explain life. Although each era has its hermeneutic system of representations, and that medicine—closely dependent on the philosophical and moral conceptions of its time—is also a cultural production, it is nevertheless not uninteresting to question on the fortune of a motive and the scientific topicality of the question. What does the baby perceive in utero? Does he feel his mother’s pain? If so, what is the biological impact? To what extent can the maternal imagination and experience mark the child’s body? Informed by functional imaging technologies, recent research returns to the symbiotic link of mother-fetus interactions. Convergences appear between this 18th century and our 21st century. In no case did we want to contrast today’s scientists who are firmly in touch with reality and their predecessors who are prey to imagination. Science, whatever the era, always feeds on imagination. (shrink)

Companies are increasingly engaging in corporate activism, defined as taking a public stance on controversial sociopolitical issues. Whereas prior research focuses on consumers’ brand perceptions, attitudes, and purchase behavior, we identify a novel consumer response to activism, unethical consumer behavior. Unethical behavior, such as lying or cheating a company, is prevalent and costly. Across five studies, we show that the effect of corporate activism on unethical behavior is moderated by consumers’ political ideology and mediated by desire for punishment. When the (...) company’s activism stand is [incongruent/congruent] with the consumer’s political ideology, consumers experience [increased/decreased] desire to punish the company, thereby [increasing/decreasing] unethical behavior toward the company. More importantly, we identify two moderators of this process. The effect is attenuated when the company’s current stance is inconsistent with its political reputation and when the immorality of the unethical behavior is high. (shrink)

In this paper, I will present an argument against Husserl’s analysis of picture consciousness. Husserl’s analysis of picture consciousness (as it can be found primarily in the recently translated volume Husserliana 23) moves from a theory of depiction in general to a theory of perceptual imagination. Though, I think that Husserl’s thesis that picture consciousness is different from depictive and linguistic consciousness is legitimate, and that Husserl’s phenomenology avoids the errors of linguistic theories, such as Goodman’s, I submit that his (...) overall theory is unacceptable, especially when it is applied to works of art. Regarding art, the main problem of Husserl’s theory is the assumption that pictures are constituted primarily as a conflict between perception/physical picture thing and imagination/picture object. Against this mentalist claim, I maintain, from a hermeneutic point of view, that pictures are the result of perceptual formations [Bildungen]. I then claim that Husserl’s theory fails, since it does not take into account what I call “plastic perception” [Bildliches Sehen], which plays a prominent role not only within the German tradition of art education but also within German art itself. In this connection, “plastic thinking” [Bildliches Denken] was prominent especially in Klee, in Kandinsky, and in Beuys, as well as in the overall doctrine of the Bauhaus. Ultimately, I argue that Husserl’s notion of picture consciousness and general perceptive imaginary consciousness must be replaced with a more dynamic model of the perception of pictures and art work that takes into account (a) the constructive and plastic moment, (b) the social dimension and (c) the genetic dimension of what it means to see something in something (Wollheim). (shrink)

This article presents an argument for the use of interpretative hermeneutic phenomenology as an insightful and innovative methodology for research in early childhood education. In providing guidance for the use of this methodology, this article will focus on a doctoral study investigating preschool teachers’ experiences of engagement with a continuing professional development (CPD) programme aimed to inform their pedagogical practice. The CPD programme focused on promoting and supporting inclusive pedagogy, practice and culture in the early education setting. The research study (...) considered the phenomenon of engagement with the programme on participants’ perceptions and practices of inclusion with the emphasis on their “lived experience” working in practice with young children. Findings from the research, validated by the philosophical principles of Heidegger, illustrate the importance of consideration of participants’ individual contextual realities when addressing teacher education through acknowledgment of other perspectives that influence the effectiveness of the learning experience. The professional identity of the early years’ educator and societal perception of this role is presented as having a direct influence on participants’ engagement with the CPD programme. Interpretive phenomenology and the hermeneutic principles underpinning this approach are presented here as central to understanding the professional role and the subsequent development of effective teacher education in the early years. (shrink)

Why a hermeneutical philosophy of the natural sciences? It is necessary to address the philosophic crisis of realism vs relativism in the natural sciences. This crisis is seen as a part of the cultural crisis that Husserl and Heidegger identified and attributed to the hegemonic role of theoretical and calculative thought in Western societies. The role of theory is addressed using the hermeneutical circle to probe the origin of theoretic meaning in scientific cultural praxes. This is studied in Galileo's discovery (...) of the phases of Venus; the practice of measurement; the different theories and practices of space perception; the historicality and temporality of scientific research communities which ground paradigm change; and the process of discovery. The paper draws particularly from the work of Heidegger. Though envisaging all science and scholarship, the highlighted theme is research in the natural sciences. (shrink)

We examined nurses’ perceptions of the ethical climate of their workplace and the relationships among the perceptions, medical error experience and intent to leave through a cross-sectional survey of 1826 nurses in 33 Korean public hospitals. Ethical climate was measured using the Hospital Ethical Climate Survey. Although the sampled nurses perceived their workplace ethical climate positively, 19% reported making at least one medical error during the previous year, and 25% intended to leave their jobs in the near future. Controlling for (...) individual and organizational characteristics, we found that nurses with a more positive perception of the ‘patient’ dimension of ethical climate were less likely to have made medical errors. Nurses with a more positive perception of the ‘patient’, ‘manager’, ‘hospital’ and ‘physician’ dimensions of ethical climate were less likely to leave their current job. Enhancing workplace ethical climate could reduce medical errors and improve nurses’ retention in public hospitals. (shrink)

Hunger is both a natural and social phenomenon. On one hand, it is a natural, biological state that affects everyone, everywhere, in every historical time. On the other hand, our perceptions, attitudes, and experiences of hunger are far from uniform. We think about it differently in different contexts and settings depending on its causes and consequences. The same event—the same pangs, emptiness, and lack of energy associated with the desire for food—takes on different meanings depending on who is hungry, when, (...) where, and why. That is to say, it is a matter of interpretation like any other human affair. However, just because it is open to interpretation does not mean that all opinions are equally valid, or that there is nothing objectively true about it. On the contrary, there is a good deal of agreement about what hunger is and where it comes from. Both the biological and socio-economic causes are well-researched, albeit far from settled. Yet, hunger is a surprisingly elastic concept that covers a number of different experiences. Consequently, different practical, moral, and political responses might be appropriate depending on how it’s interpreted. The four main classes of hunger are: involuntary, voluntary, scientific, and political. Each has its particular actors, explanations, and outcomes; each takes place in different social and historical setting; and each has its own solutions beyond simply putting food into empty stomachs. After briefly examining the relevance of hermeneutics for understanding the variety of hungers, this paper will analyze several different forms and changing definitions of it. Although the meaning of hunger may be indeterminate and solutions to it debatable, we can always explain ourselves and understand conflicting interpretations. (shrink)

I would like to introduce the notion of machine hermeneutics in this paper. The notion refers to hermeneutical activity performed by machines. Machines are now capable of making the very interpretive tasks, using artificial intelligence algorithms based on the technology of machine learning that used to be the exclusive domain of human beings. In making this claim, I am not talking about possible conscious machines of the future, but those existing here and now. With facial recognition algorithms, for example, (...) machines are now performing routinely what must be regarded as hermeneutical analyses with astounding accuracy and power. Thus, machine hermeneutics supplements Don Ihde’s notion of material hermeneutics. In the latter, it is still human beings who do the interpretation, through the lenses provided the natural sciences; in this case, the natural sciences, or the technology afforded by the sciences, intervene between the human being and the world. In machine hermeneutics, on the contrary, the intervening comes in two layers. On the one hand, there is the usual intervention that Ihde talks about, but on the other, the artificial intelligence algorithm performs its own kind of intervention and interpretation, presenting an already interpreted result to the human beings, who then perceive it through the aid of the usual intervention such as the normal eyeglasses. Then the paper discusses the problem of how to justify the kind of perception that undergoes this process. In what sense can it be said that the algorithm is performing the right action, i.e., one such that the process comes up with a right picture of the world? I contend that this does not merely consist of technical excellence for the technology involved, but also ethical excellence. The two cannot be considered one apart from the other. (shrink)

It is conventionally accepted that while Western philosophy has “being” as a central topic, Eastern thoughts focused only on “nothing”. I will challenge this perception by retrieving the original meaning of the Chinese existential word 存 cun, which can provide a hitherto neglected affective aspect of being, which in the West is also mentioned by only a handful of philosophers, including Heidegger’s famous discussion of Sorge. I will utilize Heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology on cun by looking into the present state (...) of cun’s usage, comparing to its original meaning, and proposing a new way forward. Cun and its compound form cunzai is used to translate “being” in modern East Asian languages. However, recently Chinese philosophers began to question the appropriateness of using cunzai for this role. I will go back to the original meaning of cun as care with both lexicographical and orthographical evidence, comparing its antonym pairing to that of the other East Asian existential words such as 是 shi and 有 you, and trace its changes in meaning. In the last section I will propose possible changes to our dealing with our own existence when we retrieve the original affective aspect of cun, with its coherence of care and existence, through the philosophical use of cun in Mencius. (shrink)

L' art de la collection est une traduction libre de l'ars coniecturalis, le nouveau paradigme que le Cusain propose et met en oeuvre dans son livre, le De Coniecturis (1441-1445).

The official Afrikaans Bible translations, published in 1933/1953, 1983 and 2020, influenced Reformed theology, sociopolitical perceptions and the role of the church in society. These issues bled through in the translations via the hermeneutical scope of the different eras. This study focuses on the influence of the hermeneutic foundations of the translators on the content, style and linguistic choices in these translations. The differences between the translations are quite obvious to the reader and a reflection of the fact that different (...) translation strategies were followed. There were vastly different sociopolitical and religious contexts prevailing during the different translation projects. Not only did the sociohistorical setting in South Africa undergo dramatic changes, but internationally there were historic events, such as the two World Wars, the rise and fall of communism, globalisation and the rapid development of technology and the Internet. No official hermeneutic strategies were documented or self-reflectively employed by the translators of the Afrikaans Bibles and therefore this study will approach the hermeneutics of the translations from a descriptive point of view. Sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts together with developments in theological reflection will provide the background for understanding the prevailing hermeneutics of the translations.Contribution: A new Afrikaans Bible was released in 2020, and a need arose to put the Afrikaans translations in applicable hermeneutical contexts. This discussion provides insights into the hermeneutical backgrounds of the three official Afrikaans translations. This contributes to the knowledge base of Afrikaans Bible translations and provides new insights into the hermeneutics of these translations. (shrink)

A preference method probed infants` perception of object motion on an inclined plane. Infants viewed videotaped events in which a ball rolled downward (or upward) while speeding up (or slowing down). Then infants were tested with events in which the ball moved in the opposite direction with appropriate or inappropriate acceleration. Infants aged 7 months, but not 5 months, looked longer at the test event with inappropriate acceleration, suggesting emerging sensitivity to gravity. A further study tested whether infants appreciate (...) that a stationary object released on an incline moves downward rather than upward; findings again were positive at 7 months and negative at 5 months. A final study provided evidence, nevertheless, that 5-monthold infants discriminate downward from upward motion and relate downward motion in videotaped events to downward motion in live events. Sensitivity to certain effects of gravity appears to develop in infancy. (shrink)

The philosophical concept of anxiety, which is usually associated with Kierkegaard and Heidegger's existential philosophy, seems to be an underestimated notion in Paul Ricoeur's phenomenological hermeneutics, while its role is important - anxiety appears to serve as the grounding for hope in his hermeneutics of self. The article aims to show how the anxiety is explained in Ricoeur's philosophy through attention and recognition, and how the anxiety is reflected in the narrative forms, or descriptions of vivencia. These descriptions (...) may be seen as the verbal explanation of the so-called affective niche or affective scaffolding, which is a form of cultural adaptation, attempting to interpret and comprehend one's state of mind and way of the perception of the world as such in the given moment. The research and further dialogue based on these narrations may become an important source to recover from anxiety disorder, by discovering its existential meaning and, at the same time, accepting personal responsibility for it. Ricoeur's phenomenological hermeneutics made an important theoretical contribution in understanding the essential aspects of anxiety and hope; but it also developed prolific methods of interpretation, that could be practically applied in health care and psychotherapy; these can be shown on the example of the psychotherapeutic method of the usage of so-called 'anxiety protocols', which aim to arrange the hermeneutical co-research to help patient/client to recognize and overcome its anxiety disorders. (shrink)

The author proposes the thesis that all perception, including observation in natural science, is hermeneutical as well as causal; that is, the perceiver (or observer) learns to 'read' instrumental or other perceptual stimuli as one learns to read a text. This hermeneutical aspect at the heart of natural science is located where it might be least expected, within acts of scientific observation. In relation to the history of science, the question is addressed to what extent the hermeneutical component within (...) scientific observation opens natural science to the charge of reflecting merely cultural values, and of providing merely a culturally acceptable reading of the "Book of Nature", rather than, as the author states, one stating universal antecedent conditions of possibility of cultural activity itself. (shrink)

We routinely need to process the identity of many faces around us, and how the brain achieves this is still the subject of much research in cognitive neuroscience. To date, insights on face identity processing have come from both healthy and clinical populations. However, in order to directly compare results across and within participant groups, and across different studies, it is crucial that a standard task is utilised which includes different exemplars (for example, non-face stimuli along with faces), is memory-neutral, (...) and taps into identity recognition across orientation and across viewpoint change. The goal of this study was to test a previously behaviourally tested, optimised face and object identity matching design in a healthy control sample whilst being scanned using fMRI. Specifically, we investigated categorical, orientation, and category-specific orientation effects while participants were focused on identity processing of simultaneously presented exemplar stimuli. Alongside observing category and orientation specific effects in a distributed set of brain regions, we also saw an interaction between stimulus category and orientation in the bilateral fusiform gyrus and bilateral middle occipital gyrus. Generally these clusters showed the pattern of a heightened response to inverted, as opposed to upright faces; and to upright, as opposed to inverted shoes. These results are discussed in relation to previous studies and to potential future research within prosopagnosic individuals. (shrink)

Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.