Contributions to Hermeneutics

Volume 4

Series editors Jeffery Malpas, University of Tasmania, Tasmania, Australia Claude Romano, Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, France

Editorial board Jean Grondin, University of Montréal, Canada Robert Dostal, Bryn Mawr College, USA Andrew Bowie, Royal Holloway, UK Françoise Dastur, Nice, France Kevin Hart, University of Virginia, USA David Tracy, University of Chicago, USA Jean-Claude Gens, University of Bourgogne, France Richard Kearney, Boston College, USA Gianni Vattimo, University of Turin, Italy Carmine di Martino, University of Milan, Italy Luis Umbellino, University of Coimbra, Portugal Kwok-Ying Lau, Chinese University of Hong Kong, HK Marc-Antoine Vallée, Fonds Ricoeur, Paris, France Gonçalo Marcelo, University of Lisbon, Portugal Csaba Olay, University of Budapest, Hungary Patricio Mena-Malet, University Alberto Hurtado, Santiago, Chile Andrea Bellantone, Catholic Institute of Toulouse, France Hans-Helmuth Gander, University of Freiburg, Germany Gaetano Chiurazzi, University of Turin, Italy Anibal Fornari, Catholic University of Santa Fe, Argentina Hermeneutics is one of the main traditions within recent and contemporary European philosophy, and yet, as a distinctive mode of philosophising, it has often received much less attention than other similar traditions such as phenomenology, deconstruction or even critical theory. This series aims to rectify this relative neglect and to reaffi rm the character of hermeneutics as a cohesive, distinctive, and rigorous stream within contemporary philosophy. The series will encourage works that focus on the history of hermeneutics prior to the twentieth century, that take up fi gures from the classical twentieth-century hermeneutic canon (including Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur, but also such as Strauss, Pareyson, Taylor and Rorty), that engage with key hermeneutic questions and themes (especially those relating to language, history, aesthetics, and truth), that explore the cross-cultural relevance and spread of hermeneutic concerns, and that also address hermeneutics in its interconnection with, and involvement in, other disciplines from architecture to theology. A key task of the series will be to bring into English the work of hermeneutic scholars working outside of the English-speaking world, while also demonstrating the relevance of hermeneutics to key contemporary debates. Since hermeneutics can itself be seen to stand between, and often to overlap with, many different contemporary philosophical traditions, the series will also aim at stimulating and supporting philosophical dialogue through hermeneutical engagement. Contributions to Hermeneutics aims to draw together the diverse fi eld of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics through a series of volumes that will give an increased focus to hermeneutics as a discipline while also refl ecting the interdisciplinary and truly international scope of hermeneutic inquiry. The series will encourage works that focus on both contemporary hermeneutics as well as its history, on specifi c hermeneutic themes and areas of inquiry (including theological and religious hermeneutics), and on hermeneutic dialogue across cultures and disciplines.All books to be published in this Series will be fully peer-reviewed before fi nal acceptance.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13358 Dimitri Ginev

Hermeneutic Realism

Reality Within Scientifi c Inquiry Dimitri Ginev Department of Philosophy University of Sofi a Sofi a , Bulgaria

ISSN 2509-6087 ISSN 2509-6095 (electronic) Contributions to Hermeneutics ISBN 978-3-319-39287-5 ISBN 978-3-319-39289-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39289-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016942044

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

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Pref ace

Recent developments in the realism debate are by and large characterized by a shift from the subject-object model of thinking to a paradigm informed by the primacy of the interpretive constitution of meaning. Putting the constitution of meaning fi rst seriously revises standard realism but does not imply antirealism. This book is grounded on the premise that the facticity of scientifi c inquiry is that kind of inter- pretive constitution of meaning which enables one to develop the position of herme- neutic realism. Actually, the book defends a stronger thesis: It is diffi cult to imagine a successful version of realism that does not include an interpretive theory of scien- tifi c inquiry. The facticity of scientifi c inquiry brings to the fore that mode of reali- ty’s being which affords the formulation and the advocacy of hermeneutic realism. I have organized Hermeneutic Realism: Reality Within Scientifi c Inquiry in four chapters. Each chapter is based on properly specifi ed tenets of hermeneutic phe- nomenology. The Introductory Chapter discusses the unity of meaningful articula- tion and objectifi cation in the scientifi c disclosing of reality. In encroaching on a historical excursus, chapter “ The Production of Objectifi ed Factuality Within the Facticity of Scientifi c Inquiry ” resumes the Fleckian strategy of asking about the genealogy of scientifi c facts. My focus here is on a hermeneutic recasting of princi- pal issues in the realism debate. Chapter “Meaningful Articulation and Objectifi cation of Reality in Scientifi c Inquiry ” addresses the interpretive fore-structuring of objec- tifi ed factuality within the facticity of inquiry, thereby adumbrating a program for a philosophy of science pertinent to hermeneutic realism. The whole study is guided by the claim that the articulation of meaning and the procedural objectifi cation within the facticity of inquiry manage to “textualize” the domains of reality dis- closed by scientifi c practices. The prominent role that the concepts of “textualizing” and “text” play in the study is summarized and additionally analyzed in the Concluding Chapter. In the name of honest advertising, I should state my location on the map of the complicated area abandoned by both philosophy of science and philosophical hermeneutics. I feel most at home in the tradition of the hermeneutics of scientifi c research as it is typically represented by the studies of Joseph Kockelmans and Patrick Heelan . Belonging to this tradition, I am dissatisfi ed with the objectivist

vii viii Preface portrayal of science depicted both in philosophical hermeneutics and the analytical tradition. At the same time, my roots are in a kind of strongly internalist philosophy of science, and I would identify myself as a convinced opponent of any form of external criticism of science. It is my contention that only a kind of hermeneutic philosophy can abolish the wrong metaphysical identifi cation of science with epis- temological objectivism , thereby developing a consistent advocacy for science’s intrinsic interpretivism. This philosophy effects an internal criticism that differs on principle from the reconstructive-explicative-normative criticism put forward by the analytic tradition. The interpretive philosopher of science tries to reactualize forgotten or ignored possibilities for doing research. Her internal criticism should take the form of “dialogical participation” in an ongoing process of inquiry – a par- ticipation that resembles the activity of the art critic as an irreplaceable fi gure of artistic life at large. This kind of criticism is intimately related to an essential aspect of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, scrutinized in Truth and Method under the heading of application. “Applying the text to be understood” unveils new pos- sibilities in the interpreter’s present situation. Application as the third element – along with understanding and interpretation – is the source of a possible criticism in one’s hermeneutic situation. Application is critical because it creatively transforms the meaning understood and interpreted. For Gadamer , understanding and interpret- ing the meaning of a text in a new and different way in every concrete situation is application. The demand of “redefi ning the hermeneutics of the human sciences in terms of legal and theological hermeneutics” is subjected to the aim of integrating application in human-scientifi c interpretation (Gadamer 1989, 309). From the per- spective of hermeneutic realism, application is a re-contextualization in the process of inquiry. In stating this, I would like to embark on some further parallels with philosophical hermeneutics that will be exploited in the subsequent chapters. The interrelatedness of discursive and non-discursive practices builds a medium where agents and entities ready-to-hand manifest their original belonging together. This medium does not preexist what is disclosed and constituted within it. The inter- relatedness of practices has the character of a medium to the extent to which it dis- closes reality and constitutes meaning. The medium is part of the meaningful reality disclosed within it. For Gadamer , the linguistic medium presents itself (sich darstellt) as a fi nite process ( endliches Geschehen). Being interested in “the coming into lan- guage of a totality of meaning,” he contrasts the fi nitude of this process to the infi nite mediation of concepts (Gadamer 1989, 469). In this study, I will argue that the medium of interrelated practices is characterized by horizonal-processual infi nity and contextual fi nitude. The medium is constantly open to new contextual disclo- sures of reality and always relatively enclosed in particular contexts. Thus, the hori- zon of contextual disclosures is infi nite, but each of them is accomplished within a relatively enclosed (fi nite) context. Gadamer makes the case that – by taking into consideration the fi niteness of human life – the coming into meaning points to a “universal ontological structure.” The ubiquity of understanding generated within the linguistic medium reveals this structure, which makes language “Being that can be understood.” This is Gadamer’s formula for “the universal aspect of hermeneutics.” In light of the fi nite-infi nite character of the interrelatedness of practices as a medium, I will claim that the disclosing of reality and the constitution of meaning Preface ix within this medium point to a continuous fore-structuring of the cognitive structures necessary for having objectifi cation. The interrelatedness of practices projects its own potentiality-for-being upon the possibilities for contextual constitution of meaning. This posit does not contradict the linguistic accent of philosophical herme- neutics. Gadamer tells us that language as being that can be understood also includes the “language of nature.” He is aware that this claim resonates with the early mod- ern understanding of scientifi c inquiry as a way of reading the Book of Nature – the book written in the language of mathematics and readable through experiments. One is not far from this understanding if one goes on to assume that the interrelated- ness of scientifi c practices points to a synergy of readable technologies. What is read by means of these technologies is the “language of nature.” Yet – in contrast to legal, theological, and philological hermeneutics – there is no written book and grammatically structured language in scientifi c inquiry before deploying readable technologies. (There are written texts in scientifi c education and scientifi c commu- nication that are always available before one starts teaching a class or writing a paper. But the educational and the communicational hermeneutics of science are – if not completely, at least essentially – irrelevant to this study). Reading experiments, calibrated instruments, measurements, data models, computer simulations, con- cepts, theoretical models, etc., within the contextually fi nite and horizonally infi nite medium of interrelated practices is tantamount to writing or better to “textualizing.” Furthermore, it is a reading process that not only constitutes meaning but also con- stantly disseminates and deconstructs what is constituted. Textualizing through sci- entifi c practices qua readable technologies is an interpretive process that cannot be covered by Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics . The position of hermeneutic realism I am going to develop in this study is congru- ent with Gadamer’s accent on language in another respect. According to him, to “come into language does not mean that a second being is acquired” (Gadamer 1989, 470). Insisting on language as self-interpretive being does not imply a duplication of meaningful reality. By the same token, the hermeneutic realist argues that what becomes disclosed and “textualized” through readable technologies is not detached or extracted from reality. The very process of reading, articulating, and objectifying – as well as the hermeneutic situation in which the process is set up – belongs to reality. That which comes into the medium of scientifi c practices is not something that is pre-given before this medium. The way in which Gadamer’s philosophical herme- neutics universalizes the intrinsic interpretativity of language crucially depends on the thesis that the hermeneutic experience is available only to a “fi nite mind,” for it is not able to develop out of itself the totality of meaning. In other words, this experi- ence is available to a mind that cannot be conceived in “the perfect contemplation of itself.” The present study extends this thesis as follows: The hermeneutic experience of scientifi c inquiry presupposes the fi niteness of existence in the sense that both the absolute meaning of reality and the objectivity of reality are available only to an “infi nite mind” or to God’s eye point of view. The fi nite mind is doomed to investi- gate reality by being involved in the way in which the meaningful articulation within interrelated scientifi c practices fore-structures the objectifi cation of reality. Practical fore-structuring of the cognitive structures of objectifi cation is the distinctive feature of the hermeneutic experience in scientifi c inquiry. x Preface

Gadamer operates with the concept of play when analyzing what is “self- presented in the hermeneutic experience.” The present study makes use of a similar concept of interplay when analyzing what is disclosed, articulated, and objectifi ed by means of the phron ēsis of inquiry. I attach much importance to this concept as well as to the concept of entanglement when the hermeneutic truth of what is achieved in the facticity of inquiry is at issue. Paraphrasing a postulate of Truth and Method , the participants in the process of inquiry who understand what is contextu- ally articulated in their practices are “drawn into events” through which meaning asserts itself. However, again, philosophical hermeneutics deals with forms of play that take place in understanding texts already created. Indeed, the effective-historical existence of such texts in the traditions in which they are constituted (and reconsti- tuted through their interpretive receptions) is an inextricable dimension of Gadamer’s doctrine of hermeneutic truth. I am not saying that philosophical herme- neutics could be reduced to a kind of cognitive hermeneutics devoted to the “proce- dures of understanding.” Gadamer’s criticisms of conceptions suggested by authors like Emilio Betti and Eric Donald Hirsch provide suffi cient arguments against such a reduction. Nonetheless, because he excludes the experience of objectifying inquiry from the scope of hermeneutic experience, there is no room for treating (what I will call) “textualizing” in his philosophical hermeneutics . Without addressing the forms of textualizing through readable technologies – so the basic argument of this book goes – it would be impossible to have a hermeneutic phenomenology of what scien- tifi c practices meaningfully constitute. My personal road to hermeneutic realism has abounded in incidents and acci- dents. Many years ago, when I started my career in pharmacobiochemistry, I became a junior fellow of a research team conducting experimental studies on the antiar- rhythmic effects of alkaloid sparteine. Initially, my activities were related only to pharmacognosy – extracting this alkaloid from shrubs which are endogenous to the Balkan Peninsula. But later I had to participate in pharmacological experiments with animals. I quit this job immediately. It was clear to me that as a strong vegetar- ian and ardent follower of Arne Næss’s deep ecology, I would not have a future in research activities related to clinical experiments with animals. Unfortunately, I did not fi nd another opportunity to continue my carrier in biochemistry – the discipline I loved so much. I left the laboratory forever to become a philosopher. Yet this reori- entation turned out to be initially unsuccessful. I met unsurmountable diffi culties in accepting the views that prevailed at that time. It was the time of a pursuit of realism after the image of the “mirror of nature” was defi nitely discredited. It was also a period of the growing disappointment, on the part of philosophers of science, over the doctrine that scientifi c theories are linguistic entities formalizable in predicate logic and that they contain (along with the vocabulary of logic) primitive theoretical terms whose meanings are to be gained by means of implicit defi nitions. According to this doctrine, the fi xed logical structure of a scientifi c theory is to be supplied by a set of “correspondence rules” that enable a partial empirical interpretation of theo- retical terms. Philosophers of science were prone to embrace structural views about scientifi c theorizing. Models, symmetries, and invariances became magic words. Preface xi

Representation in the formal sense (and as associated with formal reduction) gained the status of a central issue. Reality became more or less a prisoner of formal seman- tics. Many philosophers of science of my generation – inspired also by the easy passage from formal theories of measurement to formal semantics – believed that there is no scientifi c representation of reality without the isomorphism of models, the assumption being that reality is given to us through the models of a theory, and any model is isomorphic to a group of transformations under which theory’s equa- tions are invariant. I sincerely tried to make sense of these “structural representa- tions.” But I was convinced that what scientifi c inquiry discloses cannot be represented/reduced by means of representation theorems stipulating the relations among the semantic models of a theory. It was my teacher and friend, Azarya Polikarov (1921–2000), who drew my attention to the loss of reality within the holist-semantic approaches to scientifi c theorizing. For him, the “question of real- ity” was a question which cannot be posed and answered through logical and/or semantic analysis. Reality shows itself when one is employing heuristic practices and devices in scientifi c inquiry. (Polikarov was one of the pioneers of applying heuristic methods of AI to the theory of scientifi c inquiry.) His “ heuristic realism ” is still a great achievement of the nonanalytical philosophy of science. My fi rst reorientation – from science to analysis of science in terms of discrete models – ended up in a mistrust toward the analytical philosophy of science. I was at peace with myself only after my second reorientation – this time from norma- tively codifi ed “rational reconstruction” to linguistic hermeneutics . In the early 1980s, I came upon the two classical versions of this hermeneutics, suggested respectively by Georg Misch and Hans Lipps . Two lessons I took from these phi- losophers paved my way to hermeneutic realism: First, hermeneutics has an essen- tial ontological dimension, but it ought not to be regarded as post-philosophical thinking of the meaning of being, and second, hermeneutics is not to be disentan- gled from the existential situations of choosing possibilities. Both classical versions of linguistic hermeneutics were developed (in the 1920s) at once under the infl u- ence of Heidegger’s branch of phenomenology and in opposition to the radical ontological turn in hermeneutics. My orientation to a theory of interpretation that deals more with practices and meaningful articulation than with the meaning of being has convinced me that the very idea for a philosophy of science external to science-in-the-making is wrong. In a quasi-Quinean manner, I began to look for a hermeneutic philosophy continuous with science’s interpretive internalism . What follows is the outcome of this long-standing quest. I would like to express my deep gratitude to the anonymous referees for their valuable comments on the initial version of my book. Most of all, I want to thank Professor Jeff Malpas for his encouraging and inspirational suggestions. I would also like to thank Hemalatha Gunasekaran and Werner Hermens for their support, cooperation, and editorial advice. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Ms Torrey Adams for improving the manuscript stylistically.

Sofi a, Bulgaria Dimitri Ginev

Contents

Introductory Chapter: On the Very Idea of Hermeneutic Realism ...... 1 1 The Kind of Hermeneutics in Hermeneutic Realism ...... 1 2 Basic Concepts and Conceptual Figures of Hermeneutic Realism ...... 13 3 Hermeneutic Realism and Interpretive Internalism ...... 21 4 Scientifi c Inquiry from the Viewpoint of Hermeneutic Realism ...... 38 5 From Practices to “Texts” ...... 56 The Production of Objectified Factuality Within the Facticity of Scientific Inquiry ...... 63 1 The Practice Turn in Science Studies ...... 63 2 Hermeneutic Realism as a Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science ...... 76 3 The Empirical in the Interspace Between Epistemology and Hermeneutics ...... 93 3.1 Do Scientifi c Facts Have Genesis and Development in the Facticity of Inquiry? ...... 93 3.2 Steps Beyond the Normative Codifi cation of Objectifi ed Factuality ...... 97 3.3 The Facticity of Scientifi c Inquiry and Ludwik Fleck’s “Cognitive Stylistics” ...... 104 3.4 Facticity and Factuality, and the Realism Debate ...... 124 3.5 A Heideggerian Epilogue and the Roots of Double Hermeneutics in the Hermeneutics of Facticity ...... 138 Intermediate Reflections: Reflexivity in Scientific Inquiry and Empirical Ontologies of Hybrid Objects ...... 157 1 Non-empirical Assumptions in the Radical Empiricization of Ontology ...... 157 2 Ontological Difference and Empirical Ontologies ...... 168 3 Concluding Remarks ...... 173

xiii xiv Contents

Meaningful Articulation and Objectification of Reality in Scientific Inquiry ...... 181 1 Prelude ...... 181 2 Contextures-of-Equipment and Contexts of Inquiry ...... 190 2.1 A Scientifi c Practice from Within and Without ...... 190 2.2 Semiosis Through Reading-and-Representation ...... 199 3 Hermeneutic Circles of Articulation and Objectifi cation in Scientifi c Research ...... 209 4 The Absent Presence of Science’s Theoretical Objects ...... 227 5 The Object-Structure Distinction in a Hermeneutic Key ...... 240 6 A Preliminary Concept of “Text” ...... 247 Concluding Chapter: “Texts”, Relevant Contexts, and Textualizing ...... 253

References ...... 271

Name Index ...... 283

Subject Index ...... 289