»The Earth Is Flat«
by Sune Selsbæk-Reitz

»[...] Flatness was intuitive. It matched what you saw. What you felt. What you could prove with your own two eyes.

And that’s the thing. Most people didn’t believe the Earth was flat because they were stupid. They believed it because it looked right.«

And so does AI to many people.

Only downside is that it was published on LinkedIn (walled garden) and Substack (Andreessen Horowitz) ...

#AI #Hermeneutics #Promptism

https://open.substack.com/pub/deontologicaldesign/p/the-earth-is-flat

"We should practice close reading because it is good to read for truth and beauty, and even better without the pressure to instrumentalize this goal for economic ends—a criterion, even a paragon, of human flourishing at least since Aristotle, and one that becomes more difficult for students to recognize with each passing year."

#literature #hermeneutics #literacy

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/close-reading-john-guillory/

Perhaps the hard problem of consciousness stems from an inability to recognize the mind as being made of permanent symbolic arrangements.

https://a.co/d/f4E16Br

#Mind #Hermeneutics #AIConsciousnessDebate

Perhaps the hard problem of consciousness stems from an inability to recognize the mind as being made of permanent symbolic arrangements.

https://a.co/d/f4E16Br

Leftists Are Now In Love with Jesus - The American Vision https://buff.ly/4rYaUzr #Christianity #economics #socialism #hermeneutics #FlawedThinking #philosophy #apologetics

Philosophers, literary scholars & others skilled in #hermeneutics & similar techniques: where can I find a good, open-source introduction to hermeneutics of suspicion?
My dodgy brain is not at its best today and everything I find that looks useful is paywalled.
#philosophy

I maintain that the most interesting epoch of Christianity was during the first 3 centuries and then it proceeded to get co-opted by power, and everything - EVERYTHING - went downhill from there.

#theology #hermeneutics #Christianity
https://masto.ai/@GhostOnTheHalfShell/114236614646398161

The Creepy Weirdos have practiced wicked #hermeneutics and #transmogrification of Proverbs 29:18 to be interpreted as: “the vision is for people to perish”.
https://beige.party/@theynege/114014658321984874

"Hey fam! So like, Nathan had to tell King David some MAJOR tea. He said 'Listen up! God picked YOU to be king, rescued you from all that drama, and gave you everything. But you went and did him dirty after all that? Not cool, bestie, not cool.' "

2 Samuel 12:7, my favorite line of scripture in the KJV Bible

Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 6
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01/13/interpreter-and-interpretant-selection-6-a/

Inquiry and Induction —

To understand the bearing of inductive reasoning on the closing phases of inquiry there are a couple of observations we should make.

• Smaller inquiries are typically woven into larger inquiries, whether the whole pattern of inquiry is carried on by a single agent or by a complex community.

• There are several ways particular instances of inquiry are related to ongoing inquiries at larger scales. Three modes of interaction between component inquiries and compound inquiries may be described under the headings of Learning, Transfer, and Testing of Rules.

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Interpretation #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics
#JohnDewey #Inquiry #Abduction #Deduction #Induction
#Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #Reflection

Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 5
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01/11/interpreter-and-interpretant-selection-5-a/

Inquiry and Inference —

If we follow Dewey's “Sign of Rain” story far enough to consider the import of thought for action, we realize the subsequent conduct of the interpreter, progressing up through the natural conclusion of the episode — the quickening steps, the seeking of shelter in time to escape the rain — all those acts amount to a series of further interpretants for the initially recognized signs of rain and the first impressions of the actual case. Just as critical reflection develops the positive and negative signs which gather about an idea, pragmatic interpretation explores the consequential and contrasting actions which give effective and testable meaning to a person's belief in it.

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Interpretation #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics
#JohnDewey #Inquiry #Abduction #Deduction #Induction
#Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #Reflection

Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 4
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01/09/interpreter-and-interpretant-selection-4-a/

Interpretation and Inquiry —

To illustrate the role of sign relations in inquiry we begin with Dewey's elegant and simple example of reflective thinking in everyday life.

❝A man is walking on a warm day. The sky was clear the last time he observed it; but presently he notes, while occupied primarily with other things, that the air is cooler. It occurs to him that it is probably going to rain; looking up, he sees a dark cloud between him and the sun, and he then quickens his steps. What, if anything, in such a situation can be called thought? Neither the act of walking nor the noting of the cold is a thought. Walking is one direction of activity; looking and noting are other modes of activity. The likelihood that it will rain is, however, something suggested. The pedestrian feels the cold; he thinks of clouds and a coming shower.❞ (John Dewey, How We Think, 6–7).

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Cybersemiotics #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics #Hermenaut
#JohnDewey #HowWeThink #Inquiry #Abduction #Deduction #Induction
#Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #Reflection #Interpretation

Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 3
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01/08/interpreter-and-interpretant-selection-3-a/

The following selection from Peirce's “Lowell Lectures on the Logic of Science” (1866) lays out in detail his “metaphorical argument” for the relationship between interpreters and interpretant signs.

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Cybersemiotics #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics #Hermenaut
#Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #SopToCerberus #Interpretation

Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01/07/interpreter-and-interpretant-selection-2-a/

A idea of what Peirce means by an Interpretant and the part it plays in a triadic sign relation is given by the following passage.

❝It is clearly indispensable to start with an accurate and broad analysis of the nature of a Sign. I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former. My insertion of “upon a person” is a sop to Cerberus, because I despair of making my own broader conception understood.❞ (Peirce 1908, Selected Writings, p. 404).

According to his custom of clarifying ideas in terms of their effects, Peirce tells us what a sign is in terms of what it does, the effect it brings to bear on a “person”. That effect he calls the interpretant of the sign. And what of that person? Peirce finesses that question for the moment, resorting to a “Sop to Cerberus”, in other words, a rhetorical gambit used to side‑step a persistent difficulty of exposition. In doing so, Peirce invokes the hypostatic abstraction of a “person” who conducts the movement of signs and embodies the ongoing process of semiosis.

Reference —

Peirce, C.S. (1908), “Letters to Lady Welby”, Chapter 24, pp. 380–432 in Charles S. Peirce : Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance), Edited with Introduction and Notes by Philip P. Wiener, Dover Publications, New York, NY, 1966.

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #Semiosis #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Cybersemiotics #Interpreter #Interpretant #Hermeneutics #Hermenaut
#Abstraction #HypostaticAbstraction #Interpretation

Interpreter and Interpretant • Selection 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/01/06/interpreter-and-interpretant-selection-1-a/

Questions about the relationship between “interpreters” and “interpretants” in Peircean semiotics have broken out again. To put the matter as pointedly as possible — because I know someone or other is bound to — “In a theory of three‑place relations among objects, signs, and interpretant signs, where indeed is there any place for the interpretive agent?”

By way of getting my feet on the ground with the issue I'll do what always helped me before and review a small set of basic texts. Here is the first.

Figure 1. The Sign Relation in Aristotle
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/awbrey-awbrey-1995-e280a2-figure-1.png

❝Words spoken are symbols or signs (symbola) of affections or impressions (pathemata) of the soul (psyche); written words are the signs of words spoken. As writing, so also is speech not the same for all races of men. But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are primarily signs (semeia), are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects (pragmata) of which those affections are representations or likenesses, images, copies (homoiomata).❞ (Aristotle, De Interp. i. 16a4).

References —

Aristotle, “On Interpretation” (De Interp.), Harold P. Cooke (trans.), pp. 111–179 in Aristotle, Volume 1, Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann, London, UK, 1938.

Awbrey, J.L., and Awbrey, S.M. (1995), “Interpretation as Action : The Risk of Inquiry”, Inquiry : Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 15(1), 40–52.
• https://web.archive.org/web/20001210162300/http://chss.montclair.edu/inquiry/fall95/awbrey.html
• https://www.pdcnet.org/inquiryct/content/inquiryct_1995_0015_0001_0040_0052
• https://www.academia.edu/1266493/Interpretation_as_Action_The_Risk_of_Inquiry
• https://www.academia.edu/57812482/Interpretation_as_Action_The_Risk_of_Inquiry

#Peirce #Logic #Semiotics #SignRelations #TriadicRelations
#Aristotle #Hermeneutics #Interpretation #Interpretant