But they can have purposes, because people can have purposes for them. I came [to personal essays] through the route of, if you want to call it intellection or a kind of interpretive [genre]. Not only all my physical movements but even my conscious reasoning and resulting decision, in fact even my own belief as to what I was doing, might be the same whether I was just jogging or was actually running away. After the Basic Content Questions, we will now formulate Interpretive Questions.These questions are also raised in the four topic areas Characters, Settings, Actions and Objects. “Monolith” vs. “Megalith”: What’s The Difference? But we can start with an example. In his routine, Griffith describes the actions of the players as if he doesn�t know that they are playing football, but he knows they are doing something. If the purpose of the action is what determines whether an interpretation is correct, we can see at least one reason why interpretations are indeterminate. On such a view both characterizations of what is going on are equally mistaken. The answer to that question, I think, is to be found in the same thing that makes one interpretation correct and another one mistaken. And given the sort of state it is, there has to be an element of self-awareness involved. Free literature, library facilities, and interpretive services are also available at the museum. Purposes involve indeterminacy in at least three ways. I was mistaken in thinking she wanted to leave. If in the course of a football game these exact circumstances obtain for some running back and yet he moves to the left, your theory will be refuted, or at least have significant evidence against it. We understand purposiveness, acquire the very idea so to speak, from the fact that we are ourselves purposive agents. But he is mistaken, even though he is correct about all the facts about my leg movements, speed, direction, and so on. The football itself for example, doesn�t even get mentioned. 1. In particular doing something intentionally is not like this. Or they might hit it with a tire and change course slightly. It is actually having that purpose. It is that sense of this term that I will say involves giving an interpretation and that this paper will explore. The interpretive paradigm focuses on studying mainly social phenomena, or that have been caused by human beings. How can that be? Not all mental states have their content exhausted in being �about� something else in the way beliefs and desires are about something else. So not all intentional actions are done for reasons. (The term interpretive services includes interpretive talks, guided hikes, classroom presentations, brochures, museum exhibits, films, website, etc.) The idea is that once the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms are understood, the much cruder �folk� theoretical concepts such as purpose and intention used in commonsense explanations of action will be seen to have been illusory. Having a purpose, acting with some purpose, is itself a �state� of an agent, frequently perfectly conscious, different from merely attributing such a state to someone, even oneself. So consider the difference between two theories supposed to describe the motion of some object through space. Like theory B in the radar example, it will need some revision. It seems to me to be true, but if there are actions of which it is not true, then obviously what I say here won�t apply to them. In particular it cannot be found in any of the causal relations included in those underlying facts. Of course it will always be possible to add a new feature to theory B, an �epicycle� for instance in which the alleged bird flutters into just that position, which adjusts it to the new observation. In this they seem sharply different from other sorts of commonsense explanations of events, as well as from the sorts of explanations found in sciences such as physics and chemistry, all of which are causal, and of course not teleological. I am running away from those bad guys. Attaching relevant meanings to places and things is a fundamental human trait. But within limits, it probably doesn�t matter what color the rock is. Akrasia and self deception are always possible. This of course was famously questioned by Wittgenstein and his followers. It follows that just having a purpose includes, typically at least, awareness of that purpose, automatically so to speak, without the need for further interpretation and without anything analogous to �observation�. But the predictions the two theories make about where the object will be observed apply to all possible observations, not just the ones already made. Then the whole thing was repeated. The difference between the two interpretations is not �causal� in this way since each interpretation might supervene on exactly the same set of underlying facts, including facts about the causal connections among the various events involved, such as the muscle contractions in my legs that propel me to the left rather than the right when I arrive at that fork in the road. He would have misinterpreted what he saw. But that doesn�t seem at all plausible if, as I am claiming, exactly the same thing applies to football games. The judge has been inconsistent. In the football example the indeterminacy arises from the fact that the events being interpreted involve groups of people and numerous choices on the part of those involved. Interpretive Exercises. The possibility of weakness and self-deception shows that both the correct and incorrect interpretation of what the agent is really doing are consistent with any explicit reasoning or choice the agent makes. We notice markings indicating that the radar has detected something, but we don�t know what. We should distinguish between saying that some concept �applies to� some data and saying that a concept is �based on� certain data. But there are often numerous possibilities and for the most part the choice of one of these rather than another is not something one does for a reason, like the choice to turn left rather than right. Maybe it is a weather balloon, maybe a rocket, maybe only a bird flying in front of the radar. If this purposive activity, trying to figure out the purposes of the motions and sounds she is making, isn�t something the content of which is available to her just by having it then presumably yet another observational level will be needed to try to figure out the purpose of this one. In this paper I will argue that what I will call �interpretative explanations� are both central to explanations of human action and irreducibly different in form from other commonsense explanations of events, as well as from explanations found in paradigm �hard� sciences such as physics. To take the earlier example, one might signal one�s boredom by means of rolling one�s eyes back. Of course while much of each interpretation will involve assigning different intentional states to the people involved, there will also be other intentional states of the various agents that are the same in each of the two interpretations, such as beliefs about the color of the grass. An interpretive essay is an essay that provides an analysis of another piece of writing. If that sounds mysterious, think of how many open choices there are for those participating in either a football game or a debate tournament. It crosses a ditch (via a culvert) as soon as it leaves the road and then immediately makes a left turn downhill. To serve its purpose of course it must have some color, for instance. To do that is to give what I am calling an interpretative explanation. Similarly for size and shape. When a new observation is made, say by making another pass with our radar, the position of the object is consistent with the predictions of theory R but not those of theory B. Interpretation definition is - the act or the result of interpreting : explanation. Otherwise, if �purpose� were a purely third person, explanatory concept the content of which was unavailable to whomever actually had the purpose just in virtue of having it, while we could interpret or think about our actions, it is hard to see how we could actually perform actions. How do we know that there is any such thing as a electron? And they respond by calling forth the interpretive genius of their conductor. This claim presupposes that these concepts, like that of an electron, are not only applicable to the phenomena with which they deal but also that they are based on these phenomena in the sense that we have no further reason to think the things they refer to actually exist beyond that provided by whatever evidence supports the theories in which they appear. Human actions are events that have purposes supplied by the agents of the actions. There are a few things to notice here before explaining how indeterminacy enters into this story. This is not just comical; it is incoherent. Without the intentional and purposive concepts, the outer space visitor of course losses badly. Research papers are source-based explanations of a topic, event, or phenomenon. � � � � 8 � , � Z � > > " ` ` ` A A A � � � � � � � , R b � � . Rather than pursuing this issue now, however, I will start by assuming the reality of the mistake satirized by Griffith, where the form of the mistake seems to be that the observer misinterprets the actions she is observing while realizing that they are indeed intentional actions. A claim that one set of properties supervenes on another set is merely a claim about a certain relation between those sets of properties. If that happens, then whatever exactly these facts turn out to be, they are consistent with both interpretations. But for these two interpretations it is hard to see how the ranges of indeterminacy could overlap. An explanation for each UFO sighting was easily found. Once we are out the door though she is incensed; she was having a great time. I suggest that it is because, unlike our two theories of the moving object, neither of the two interpretations of the events on the football field is completely determinate with respect to the underlying facts on which it is based. Whether the team on offense calls a running play or a pass play, whether the player with the ball cuts to the left or the right, whether the defense rushes all its linebackers or drops them back in pass coverage, it is still a football game between two specific teams, etc. On exactly these grounds, I want to claim that so far as the relation of supervenience goes someone can without logical or nomological error deny, for instance, that what she is observing is a football game and yet accept all the underlying facts on which its being a football game supervene. She suspends judgment as to whether the complex organisms she encounters on this planet have any intentional states, including any aims or purposes. (euphemistic) An excuse, apologetic justification not based on enough evidence. So I am assuming that the two competing interpretations are consistent with, and intended to be based on, exactly the same set of �underlying� facts, events, states of the players, etc. This rock has a purpose. There are some choices one makes, and sometimes in fact must make, where one doesn�t oneself think one has a reason to choose one way rather than another. So, while coherent, this form of solipsism would seem to be profoundly unempirical. of or relating to those arts that require an intermediary, as a performer, for realization, as in music or theater. But then I was so impressed by the unique and interpretive ideas people were able to come up with. Whether the quarterback decides to run or throw the ball, whether the receiver gets tackled or manages to score, it is still a football game. We have two completely different interpretations of exactly the same set of underlying facts. Even if that were true I can�t see that it affects the argument I want to make, but in any case it is not true. “Affect” vs. “Effect”: Use The Correct Word Every Time. But we are not dealing with two (correctly interpreted) sets of events here, only one set, interpreted in two different ways, one of which is mistaken. But the causal interactions between the events involving the participants will be the same under each interpretation. The purpose of the rock is to keep people who are backing out of the driveway from accidentally going off into the ditch. The resulting, adjusted theory (B2) will once again be consistent with all the observations yet made but it will have the same fate as B when yet another observation is made. Rather I did not see what I thought I did. signage that helps to create a narrative that acts to generate a positive user experience (UX ). Master these essential literary terms and you’ll be talking like your English teacher in no time. So in that respect these two theories are analogous to our football v. ritualized debate interpretations of what is happening on that football field. The most straightforward way to draw this distinction is by saying that the first sort of error involves misattributing at least one intentional state, such as my wife meaning something by rolling her eyes, while the second sort need not. What are the positive aspects of this situation? Or we might in that case end up saying that there turned out to be several different sorts of electrons, perhaps, or that, besides electrons, there were other particles that were previously thought to be electrons but were not. Many of the so-called �basic actions� by which one performs the (less basic) actions which one performs for reasons are still intentional actions. A term introduced by Fish to refer to both writers and readers of particular genres of texts (but which can be used more widely to refer to those who share any code). Even for that rock, its purpose might be achieved in more than one way. I can see no reason for going left rather than right or vice versa. This is, or at least seems to be, a coherent position. ), URL = . These last two points together give us at least the basic elements of an answer to the question of what makes an interpretation, an assignment of purposes, correct. 2. If she is making an error, which in this case she is, it need not be that error. Our outer space visitor, who never attributes any intentional states to the objects she observes on this backward planet, might still make no mistakes of the second sort. The judge hearing our cases is mistaken about one case and since the facts of our two cases are the same what makes the one ruling mistaken and the other one correct cannot be a mistake about any of those facts. Use these interpretive questions as starting points to inspire a few tailored questions that guide the group to a consensus. Rocks can�t have functions of that sort, not being organisms or parts of organisms. When I �learn from my own case� that, say, my purpose in running down the street is to get away from those bad guys, does that mean that I somehow �observe� myself internally and then on some grounds or other attribute such a purpose to myself, more or less in the same way someone else who is observing or thinking about me might? But it would be a mistake to think that indeterminacy only arises where the events being interpreted involve groups of people. Suppose we are technicians looking through the records of radar scans taken on some remote island, covering some part of the sky for the last few minutes. Interpretive Exercise s Submitted by: 7 October Word Count 000 BIB230A-ON25 Fall Interpreting the Bible Re: Grasping Godâs Word Textbook, Chapter 9: WORD STUDIES Assignment 9-2, Pp. Suppose that the observer is unaware not just that it is a game that is being played but even that the organisms she is watching are performing any intentional actions at all. Learn more. See for instance Simon Blackburn, �Moral Realism� in Morality and Moral Reasoning ed. For example, the purpose of that rock is to keep people from going into the ditch when backing out of Steve�s driveway. In particular it may not be found in some causal connection which one interpretation uses or presupposes and the other does not. Yes, that was interpretive dance accompanying those Oscar-nominated film scores. There are two things to notice about this position. Some have held that the supervenience of the moral on the non-moral, and the resulting possibility of such disagreements in moral evaluations, argues for non-cognitivism about the ascriptions of moral concepts. If all the relevant facts are the same in both cases then either both of us have been unfair to our student or neither has been. Suppose Andy Griffith sees me running, turning left at the fork in the road, and interprets what he sees as just another jogger, out to get some exercise. At first we have recorded only a relatively small number of observations of whatever this object is, four or five. The radar is part of an environmental monitoring program and our job is to check these records. expense. In the case satirized by Griffith the observer sees that he is observing people who are performing intentional actions. It would be better to say that an interpretation specifies a range of possible facts, with things inside that range consistent with the interpretation, things outside inconsistent with it. They supervene on the underlying facts but they allow ranges of facts, rather than specifying specific underlying facts at every point, as determinate theories do. The social norms applied there are accepted by the teachers and students as such (normative one), and the research in this case is a great source of knowledge considering the whole society. But that doesn�t mean she needs to suspend judgment about whether she herself has goals or intentional states, and she needn�t suspend judgment about this even if she goes on to accept the version of solipsism that actually denies there are any other minds than her own. only is explanation a subcategory of understanding, but also explanation itself is simultaneously causal and interpretive in an interesting and underexplored way. The title of Griffith�s piece was �What It Was, Was Football�. It is indeed applicable to behavior but it is not based on behavior. And my claim is that, given all this, since the elements of both interpretations will be claimed to supervene on exactly the same set of underlying facts, the difference between the correct interpretation and the incorrect one cannot be found in those underlying facts. J. Casey, Methuen, London, 1973, reprinted in his Essays In Quasi-Realism, New York, Oxford University Press, 1993. What Is an Interpretive Essay? Its purpose could still be to keep people from driving into the ditch. An eliminativist will have to hold that observing oneself no more reveals, or provides grounds for hypothesizing, purposes or intentions than observing others does. It may be easiest to see this, and to see that having further open choices is not essential, if we shift for a moment from actions that have purposes to objects that do. At those places where a choice is possible for someone, each interpretation allows alternatives, each of which is consistent with the interpretation. So the form of solipsism that holds that I know from my own case that I myself have purposes, intentional states and the like, but I don�t know whether anyone else has such states, cannot be allowed by eliminativists of the sort mentioned at the beginning of this paper. I am just going to assume here that at least sometimes all the non-interpretative mistakes can be eliminated by adjusting the alternative story. Of course these events really are complex interactions of some of the local fauna. Examples of Interpretive statement in a sentence Interpretive statement: The nursing profession is based on advocating for patients and families in order to help facilitate the healing process; NSNA serves as an advocate for nursing students by representing them as one united voice. Dennett imagines a �predicting contest� between a human using the ordinary, purposive interpretations and an outer space alien such as the one imagined above who knows all the underlying physically described facts but uses no purposive or intentional concepts. Interpretive sociology makes a distinction on the basis of meaning- relatedness. But we can start with an example. Explanations of actions in terms of the agent�s reasons do not cover everything agents do intentionally. It says nothing about why this relation holds. But the point is that the various beliefs, actions, and thoughts ascribed to the players, coaches and officials by each of these two interpretations will be claimed to supervene on the same set of underlying facts, which will include only movements, sounds, and the like. It was not that I misinterpreted what I saw. Notice however that this tells us nothing about whether what you and I have done is actually unfair. Purposes, I am claiming, explain actions but always involve indeterminacy. At the same time, both theories R and B will of course be �under-determined by the data� which supports them. First, there are plenty of features of that rock that have nothing directly to do with its purpose of keeping people from driving into that ditch when backing out of Steve�s driveway. Clearly in this situation turning left is something I do intentionally but it seems false to say that I have a reason for doing it. Describe 2020 In Just One Word? Since both these theories are consistent with all the observations of this object that we have when we start trying to figure out what it is, there is no evidence from these observations that supports theory R over theory B, or vice versa. The answer is that electrons are hypothesized by empirically very well established physical theory. An eliminativist will have to hold that the form of solipsism we are considering here is in fact not coherent since it doesn�t apply neurophysiological explanations to everyone it should apply to, oneself as well as others. Both the theories of the object moving in front of the radar and the interpretations of the events on the football field are under-determined by the data that supports them. The elements of both interpretations are claimed to supervene on exactly the same set of facts, which include exactly the same causal interactions between the same events, etc. Even if all my movements, even all my thoughts, would be the same whether I were merely out jogging or trying to escape some bad guys, the point of what I am doing would be quite different in the two cases. But, third, the fact that something has a purpose in no way insures that this purpose will actually be achieved, or even that it can be. And then it too will have been refuted, or at least it is no longer consistent with the observations. That is what I am assuming to happen between the football and ritualized debate interpretations of the events Griffith witnessed. So �having a purpose� is not a theoretical concept, like �electron�, that depends for its use (and one might say, existence) completely on some explanatory theory. Suppose I am at what seems to me a very boring party. There are four primary branches of philosophy, epistemology, ethics, logic and metaphysics. They specify the goals, purposes or points of the things we do. Each leaves lots of possibilities open, even for the underlying facts relevant to the interpretation. Descriptive and interpretive approaches to qualitative research Robert Elliott and Ladislav Timulak Qualitative research methods today are a diverse set, encompassing approaches such as empirical phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, protocol analysis and dis-course analysis. If it is coherent to suppose that one might oneself be the only purposive agent in existence, then the concept of a purposive agent is not dependent on having a place in theories explaining the behavior of other people. The thought would seem to have to be that one knows directly from one�s own case what e.g. It will help to contrast the interpretative explanations we are discussing with a situation where it is not so, that is, where a different explanatory theory requires some difference in the facts on which it is based. What I mean by an âinterpretative explanationâ will be brought out in the course of the discussion. The fate imagined here for the notion of an electron is in essence the fate predicted by eliminative materialism for all intentionalistic and purposive concepts. Before we get into the how, we have to figure out the what. An interpretive mistake of this sort will at least involve misattributions of some intentional states to the people on the field. 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