• Judaka
    1.7k
    Philosophers desire to know the truth, they create arguments based on the truth and ignore this fundamental aspect to any understanding, interpretative relevance. It's understandable that most people ignore it because of most debates about focusing on what the truth actually is and it's rarely easy to come to an agreement. I do not believe that the focus for interpretative relevance should be just on debates or conversations but also as a tool for pragmatic introspection and so I'll also talk about that.

    To explain what interpretative relevance is, we need to explore the reality of what it means to understand something and the role of the truth in that process. We take anything, this thing is likely to have many things which can be said about it which are all factually true, interpretatively true or true assessments according to our values. These truths are not necessarily important but become important to people as a result of individuals finding them important.

    Imagine an interview for a job, we know many things about the applicant which are definitely true, probably true and might be true. What attributes are we looking for in the applicant? What factors could worsen our views about the applicant? How meaningful is it to our overall assessment of the applicant that they have particular things about them that we've already determined are good or bad. How probable is it that they are something until we take that seriously as a meaningful consideration?

    The applicant might be a woman, there are many statistical truths about women, many biases both good and bad that we might have, things about women we know to be true but all of these things are only probabilistically true at best about our applicant. The applicant might also seem trustworthy, that's our interpretation of certain aspects about her but how relevant is it that she might be trustworthy, what does that mean to us? That's interpretative relevance. It's true that our applicant has all of these things about her which are true but which of them is important and which of these truths are we going to use disproportionately to evaluate our applicant?

    My goal here is not to talk specifically about something like this, interpretative truths is another thread. Think about a country, an ethnicity, a religion, our opinions about anyone or anything can be characterised not just by our values and what we know to be true but what we're specifically focusing on to draw information from and critique. Self-esteem, the ego and similar personal attitudes are profoundly impacted by interpretative relevance. Even if our values, our interpretations and the truth didn't change, the prioritised truths which have interpretative relevance determine the perspective.

    I would like to discuss whether people feel they are factoring in an analysis of interpretative relevance in determining the correct view of something. I personally feel like I struggle to make debates about the interpretative relevance of something, once people have heard I think they're points are valid, they don't see any reason to change anything. I meet many who think that shifting interpretative relevance of things is the same as running away from the truth. What do you think the correct approach to interpretative relevance should be and how important do you think it is that we follow that approach?
  • Artemis
    1.9k
    The applicant might be a woman, there are many statistical truths about women, many biases both good and bad that we might have, things about women we know to be true but all of these things are only probabilistically true at best about our applicant.Judaka

    https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/

    "An employer may not base hiring decisions on stereotypes and assumptions about a person's race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information."
  • James Statter
    54
    well for me to answer this forum post i would have to study for a month. It would be wise for me just to keep my mouth shut.
  • Judaka
    1.7k

    Fair point but objectively speaking, those things are interpretatively relevant to people in ways which are going to affect hiring decisions regardless. I did suggest that we do something which is illegal and probably unethical and it didn't really cross my mind so fair call out. I often focus on things like gender and age to add to my understanding about people, I suppose I mightn't fare well as an ethical or I suppose law-abiding employer.
  • I like sushi
    4.3k
    I spend months on a painting, hours upon hours, sleepless nights, neglect personal relationships, etc.,. It’s finally complete so I put it in a frame to display and invite people to look at it and give me feedback.

    Most of them spend more time talking about the frame rather than addressing the painting. It is not that the frame isn’t important it’s just that people have a tendency to apply themselves to the easiest task at hand rather than challenge themselves.
  • Artemis
    1.9k
    I often focus on things like gender and age to add to my understanding about people, I suppose I mightn't fare well as an ethical or I suppose law-abiding employerJudaka

    To be fair, I think most (actually, probably all if you exclude children and people with Williams syndrome, etc.) exhibit a host of implicit and explicit biases.

    I think as far as that example goes, we should analyze why and how we make these assessments, but not endorse them.

    Are there any other examples you can give of what you mean by interpretive relevance?
  • Fooloso4
    5.4k
    Philosophers desire to know the truth, they create arguments based on the truth and ignore this fundamental aspect to any understanding, interpretative relevance.Judaka

    Certainly not philosophers concerned with hermeneutics and the interpretation of texts.There is a extensive and active literature on these issues.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k


    Here's a challenge for you. State a thesis, and what you want to ask about it if you want to ask something, in not more than 50 words.
  • Judaka
    1.7k

    Sure, interpretative relevance is a bias, I think that's fair to say. Simply put, interpretative relevance refers to whether a piece of information is being used to understand what something means or not. Essentially anything that has many truths about it will not have those truths proportionally represented interpretatively but quite the opposite. Interpretations are arguments and only a handful of them can be used in creating our overall sentiment if it's to be coherent.

    I could give any number of examples, I'll talk about general sentiment towards overweight people. What I notice is that talking about plumpness in people is that I have no idea what it's going to focus on. Lack of self-control, lack of activity, lack of knowledge, lack of time, laziness, fat acceptance, body positivity. All kinds of directions. Where we started tells me a lot about how the individual probably feels about overweight people. Interpretative relevance isn't always a choice, why did people focus on what they did? I don't know.

    The ego is another big one, how to feel about yourself, loser or rockstar, what are you going to look at? Are you trying to construct an argument for or against yourself? Surely, there are good things you could focus on and bad things, there's no way we can know whether someone will feel good about themselves just based on looking at what they've got. Many more examples, I'll probably discuss a few more of them in other threads later on.


    Ah of course, my writing makes it seem like I'm arguing against all philosophers or something, I just meant in general. As a side note, I consider any poster on a philosophy forum a philosopher.


    Information, interpretation and values must be (and are) applied disproportionately to reach a position. What the truth is and its application in our understanding varies based on components we chose to employ. Application of this understanding allows for a new way of interpreting our views, the views of others and what the truth really is.

    I guess my time's up, you can discuss whatever you want, I welcome any direction on the topic.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    Information, interpretation and values must be (and are) applied disproportionately to reach a position.Judaka

    What would it amount to to apply them proportionately, first off?
  • Judaka
    1.7k

    Well, that would require consistent ratios of relevance and importance of each individual piece of information, interpretation and value in each potential context, with all being included. That could create a proportional representation in a single entity but someone/something else with different ratios (assuming same inputs) would still consider different things to be interpretatively relevant and of course, for humans, there would be different inputs and by inputs I mean information, interpretation and values.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k


    In other words, how would it make sense to quantify such things in the first place?
  • Judaka
    1.7k

    It wouldn't. There is no good way to do it nor any good reason to try. It just means that in our universe of plausible and valid facts, interpretations and values, only some of them are used as premises in our arguments about meaning, characterisation, categorisation and so on. Sometimes the process of prioritising elements, including or excluding them and their role in the overall argument is calculated and sometimes it isn't.

    The result either way is that even if there are no disagreements about what the facts are, each argument utilising exactly the same interpretations and utilising the same values without any difference to be found anywhere in any of these things, we can still reach different positions. Given that what determines what is interpretatively relevant is not necessarily decided by any of these things.
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