This paper explores two important ways in which close reading differs from natural language processing, the use of computer programming to decode, process, and replicate messages within a human language. It does so in order to highlight distinctive features of close reading that are not replicated by natural language processing. The first point of distinction concerns the nature of the meaning generated in each case. While natural language processing proceeds on the principle that a text’s meaning can be deciphered by (...) applying the rules governing the language in which the text is written, close reading is premised on the idea that this meaning lies in the interplay that the text prompts within readers. While the semantic theory of meaning upon which natural language processing programs are based is often taken for granted today, I draw from phenomenological and hermeneutic theories, particularly Wolfgang Iser and Hans-Georg Gadamer, to explain why a different theory of meaning is necessary for understanding the meaning generated by close reading. Second, while natural language processing programs are considered successful when they generate what epistemologists call true beliefs about a text, I argue that close reading aims first and foremost at the development, not of true belief, but of understanding. To develop this distinction, I draw from recent scholarship on the epistemology of education, including work by Duncan Pritchard, to explain how understanding differs from true belief and why attainment of the latter is less educationally significant than the former. (shrink)

Political theorists study the meaning of political feasibility in part to better understand the role of empirical political science in normative political theory. In the conventional understanding, political feasibility refers to the ability of an individual or collective agent to bring about a certain political state of affairs. This way of thinking about political feasibility corresponds with the ordinary language use of the term, but it asks empirical political science to carry the very heavy burden of assessing the likelihood that (...) a plan of action will bring about a particular future state of affairs. In this article I develop a different way to think about political feasibility as part of a conversation about the meaning of the future. Building on Gadamer’s view of historical interpretation, I argue that empirical political science can be understood as creating “history of effects” towards possible futures as a way to enable understanding of future meanings. I use this framework to examine the place of arguments about feasibility in the processes of reason giving that take place in the public sphere. I do so by interpreting the “can” in the principle of “reasons that all can accept” as referring to an interpretive horizon of what can become feasible. (shrink)

The concept of lived-experience is widely used. It is not, however, widely defined. In this paper, I argue that we need to return to the development of the concept in order to see how it is intended to be used. My argument will proceed through three parts: (i) I will give an account of the development of the term in Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), where lived-experience is developed as way to analyze the figures and aims of the German Romantic movement; (ii) (...) building on this, I will argue that lived-experience is an applied hermeneutical strategy that interprets the way in which collective socio-historical contexts frame and coordinate individual temporal, spatial, and psychic being-in-the-world; (iii); finally, I will argue that the poetical-phenomenological source of this development is central to understand applications because it is especially concerned to conveying something of the dynamic and unvivisected reality involved in living in a given context, rather than just explaining sets of facts involved with these contexts. In this last section, I will bring in Frantz Fanon’s use of lived-experience as a paradigm for its application as an applied hermeneutical strategy, and sketch some features that can be learned from it. My overall aim of this paper is that this will clarify the way in which this hermeneutical strategy is a useful one for applied contexts. (shrink)

This paper explores two important ways in which the practice of close reading differs from the technique of natural language processing, the use of computer programming to decode, process, and replicate messages within a human language. It does so in order to highlight distinctive features of close reading that are not replicated by natural language processing. The first point of distinction concerns the nature of the meaning generated in each case. While natural language processing proceeds on the principle that a (...) text’s meaning can be deciphered by applying the rules governing the language in which the text is written, close reading is premised on the idea that this meaning lies in the interplay that the text prompts within readers. While the semantic theory of meaning upon which natural language processing programs are based is often taken for granted today, I draw from phenomenological and hermeneutic theories, particularly Wolfgang Iser and Hans-Georg Gadamer, to explain why a different theory of meaning is necessary for understanding the meaning generated by close reading. Second, while natural language processing programs are considered successful when they generate what epistemologists call true beliefs about a text, I argue that close reading aims first and foremost at the development, not of true belief, but of understanding. To develop this distinction, I draw from recent scholarship on the epistemology of education, including work by Duncan Pritchard, to explain how understanding differs from true belief and why attainment of the latter is less educationally significant than the former. (shrink)