Recent arguments for relativist semantic theories have centered on the phenomenon of “faultless disagreement.” This paper offers independent motivation for such theories, based on the interpretation of predicates of personal taste in certain attitude contexts and presuppositional constructions. It is argued that the correct interpretation falls out naturally from a relativist theory, but requir...

With their focus on documents, interpretation and intersubjectivity, Web 2.0 technologies have surprising analogies with philosophical hermeneutics, including the theory of text interpretation. Philosophical hermeneutics was generalised from Biblical hermeneutics by Dilthey in the 19th century and chosen as an alternative to positivism as a foundation for the epistemology and methodology of the...

The widespread use of faith-based and traditional healing for mental disorders within African contexts is well known. However, normative responses tend to fall two camps: on one hand, those oriented towards the biomedical model psychiatry stress abuses superstition such healing, whilst critics adopting a more ‘local’ perspective have fundamentally challenged universalist claims diagnostic categ...

To tackle the evolution challenges of adaptive systems, this paper argues on the necessity of hermeneutic approaches that help to avoid too early elimination of design alternatives. This visionary paper proposes the Hermeneutics Framework, which computationally integrates a design rationale management system, an auto-adaptive control system and a reflective and modular event-driven language run...

The debate over language and thought has traditionally been framed by two opposing stances: „universalist‟ and „relativist‟. The universalist view holds that language is shaped by universals of human cognition; on this view, languages make semantic distinctions drawn from a limited palette of universally available options – and when languages do differ semantically, those linguistic differences...

Discussions of the theoretical foundations of artiicial intelligence increasingly refer to hermeneutics, a branch of continental European philosophy concerned with human understanding and the interpretation of written texts. Dreyfus and Wino-grad draw heavily on hermeneutics to question the feasibility of AI and cognitive science. But, hermeneutics also ooers insights that may contribute to the...