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Draft copy; not for quotation.

Comments, corrections, suggestions, additions, etc. most welcome: please send to
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Interpretation in Art and the Human and Natural Sciences1

(or humanities, human and social sciences and natural sciences)

Peter Machamer and Michael Silberstein

Copyright @ Peter Machamer

I. What is interpretation? Introductory remarks

Interpreting "things" is an activity that people (and maybe some animals) engage in.
Sometimes we call this activity of interpreting trying to understand. In some circles, it is called
the search for meaning. What result is the interpretation or the understanding that comes from
the activity? Some might say we have found out what it means, or have constructed a meaning.
The word "interpretation" itself carries an ambiguity between the process of interpreting,
the activity, and the product, an interpretation that results from that process. However, since the
activity, typically, is undertaken with the goal of producing the product the process and the
product are inextricably linked. Still it is good to keep these different meanings in mind for
their conflation may cause confusion in some circumstances. Not everything we may say about
the act makes sense when said about the product (and conversely).
What kind of activity is interpreting? What do we expect as a result of an act of
interpretation? What kinds of things do we interpret? Intuitively one might say that interpreting
something is trying to make sense or trying to understand of that thing2. This intuition then
leaves us the job of trying to interpret understand or making sense. Making sense is an
interesting metaphor that may well have its roots in the belief that experiences that are tied
closely to the senses are more intelligible than those that are more distant. Sense experience is,
on this view, supposed to underlie (stand under), and somehow be the basis for justifying, our
state of having come an understanding. This view is often identified as some form of
empiricism, yet even Medieval scholastics had similar doctrines. Thomas Aquinas (Summa)
said "There is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses." On such an etymological
(and justificatory) view, nonsense would be the result one gets when trying to interpret
something that cannot be tied or attached somehow to sensible experience, when one somehow
departs too far from sense perception or sense experience. This connection to the senses is
interesting both in the cases of art and science, for both of these practices are supposed to be
connected with sense experience, though in different ways. We'll return to these differences
later.
But notice above, we explicated "tied to the senses" by using the word "intelligible".
Making something intelligible is just making sense of it, though the concept of intelligible
allows one to deal with more abstract things, things father from the senses, without negative
connotation. This distance from the senses is sometimes necessary, for in the course of this
essay there will be discussion of interpreting sensible things but also musings upon interpreting
mathematics and philosophy. I take it that prima facie these latter are as far removed from the
sensible realm as can be. So it is that one may ponder the various interpretations of justice as
fairness or right action or the change in the style and substance of physics when in the 18th
century it moves from geometry to algebra. These are pretty abstract. So maybe "intelligible"
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(or "intelligibility") is a better word to describe the goal of giving an interpretation. Intelligible,
though less common, is clearly semantically tied to understanding, and understanding, in turn, is
tied to knowing. Both understanding and knowing are much discussed
philosophical/psychological concepts. Understanding etymologically refers to what "stands
under' and so supports or justifies one's knowledge; and knowledge, in traditional epistemology,
has as one of its conditions, that the belief is justified. So both of these concepts, understanding
and knowing, take us back to conditions of justification. Intelligible at least avoids implications
that there is some further basis or foundation that is necessary.
Yet intelligibility does get us somewhere. Most times when we interpret we are trying to
achieve some cognitive or, note the addition, some experiential, state. The cognitive dimension
is captured by the phrase "making something intelligible". This is what allied interpreting with
other cognitive goals such as making sense, explaining, understanding and knowing. So to
interpret something may be, at least in part or on some occasions, to find an explanation for some
aspect of that thing; e.g. how it is coherent, it its into some structured whole. To interpret some
person's action, very often, is to find an explanation for it, and so to find out why it occurred
given the context and background of the person acting.
Similarly, interpreting has often been spoken about in terms of ways of knowing. One
interprets a poem, a social structure or a physical event and thereby gains knowledge of what has
been interpreted. However, some people think that in each type of case (the art, the human
science or the physical science) that the kind of knowledge gained is different. Or to put it more
congenially, the ways of knowing in these cases are not always the same. There are obvious
differences among the practices involved in the different domains of knowing, but exactly how
these differences relate to different ways of knowing needs to be explored at some length.
Also importantly, the word "know", if this is the result of interpreting, needs to be used in
a way that allows for more or less. You and I may both know about jealousy, but you having
read and studied Freud may well know more than I. While I having experienced painful
jealousy during many of my relationships know it differently and in some way more deeply than
you who have never been jealous. We must eschew the typical epistemologist's use of "know"
where one either does or does not know. Knowledge, in this sense, is not all or nothing. It is
more like understanding and it comes in different degrees.
We will argue later that a part of all interpretation contains a cognitive component, an
analytic activity, which regardless of domain or subject matter, looks for important similarities
and differences by comparison with the thing being interpreted. Differences need to be
remarked among objects or events in a domain, or among those in different domains. Often the
most fruitful comparisons are to clear exemplars or prototypes of the domain. So, for a
cinematic example, what I say about The Killing will be different from what I say about Eyes
Wide Shut, even though both belong to the domain of film, the same genre film noir, and were
made by the same director Stanley Kubrick. Or take an example from physics, Paul Anderson
compared tracks made by particles in a bubble chamber as part of his strategy for discovering the
neutrino. [ref] It is noting these differences that allows us to better understand by way of
comparison.
However, none of these concepts, intelligible, knowledge, understanding , or making
sense, when seen as the only goal for interpretation will do, for, as we shall see at some length,
the goals that people have when they give interpretations are many and varied. Many of them
are not even clearly cognitive or epistemic. For example, one can interpret a musical
performance or a professor's remarks solely for the social purpose of impressing one's friends.
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Further, these cognitive aspects of interpretation do not exhaust the features of the interpreting
activity nor are they sufficient to explain all the aspects of what it is that is produced, the
resulting interpretation. This is just to say that what we are talking about here is not only an
intellectual activity.
Not all human activities have an interpretive component. But there are many that do,
and sometimes in surprising or unexpected ways. One goal in making love to another person is to
lose one's sense of self and turn off any intellective reflection so that one may just experience the
bodily sensations themselves. Don't think, feel it can be very good advice. Yet such an action
does reflect how the lover has learned to make love. And, for good lovers, interpretative
cognition was needed to refine performance and to come to know how and when to move one's
body. Good lovers are made, not born. Of course, feeling and acting, in a deeper sense, are
never completely divorced from cognition (nor, we hasten to add, is cognition from feeling.)
Interpretation also centrally involves ways of doing, ways of acting. This has two
aspects: first the activity of interpreting, of producing the interpretation, as an activity has non-
cognitive or practical aspects. In this sense often the interpretation-product itself exhibits
aspects of the act of interpreting; second, most often the interpretation, the act and the product,
has important action or behavioral consequences. Interpretations lead to doing things
differently, and doing includes perceiving, e. g. as in the love case above or as in learning how to
feel or see properly. [Hercule Poirot quote, Agatha Christie, ABC Murders]
Some things we will call an interpretation of an object even though there is no clear
independent act of interpreting, nor any identifiable conscious procedure that the interpreter may
recognize as an act of interpreting. When one sees a grape colored Volkswagen Bug (Beetle) in
front of you, and recognize it as a VW Beetle, it is not clear that you are interpreting (in any
conscious sense.) Nor more so, when you see your friend at close range, and recognize her.
The interpretation in these cases, as in the examples in the last paragraph, came in the learning --
the discriminations and differential actions that were acquired by practice-- that now constitute
how your seeing proceeds at this point. Many people, e.g. Wittgenstein, Hanson, etc., restrict
the use of "interpretation" to talk about episodes when one is presented with an object that is
puzzling, or complex or whose “meaning” is not straightforward, and one consciously sets out to
figure out what it is. Similarly, some people, J.J. Gibson and the direct perception theorists,
refuse the word interpretation to perception that is 'direct' and immediate. Whatever may have
happened the past, they say, is not part of what is happening now. Again they focus on the
interpretation as conscious or on some internal analytical process that occurrently goes on. This
conscious puzzling through or occurrent mental processing is a good and proper use, but our use
will be broader and more inclusive. Where there may be unclarities we will talk about "active
interpretation".
One reason for this broader use, that we will explore at greater length later, is that if we
take a longer time scaled view, children are puzzled by many things that they later come to
understand. Similarly, many things are complex to them that will be thought simple later in
their lives. So maybe in that sense, even things we do not consciously interpret now, were
interpreted earlier in our life histories. But to say we once consciously interpreted is not to say
we now do so.
Further, even with children's learning “interpretation” is not always an accurate word.
Many of the things we have learned do not seem to be things we have interpreted, even at an
earlier time. We learn as young children to see pictures and photographs as three dimensional
objects, but have we interpreted something, the data of sense, in order to learn this? There was
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no conscious learning process in such cases, and there was no data of sense given to us first. So
one ought not talk about interpretation in such cases.
By "interpretation" in the cognitive sense discussed so far, we mean that certain cognitive
strategies are followed, whether or not we are conscious of them. In fact many of the same
processes are involved now as were involved when we first learned, and it is these that constitute
the interpreting. It seems a matter of indifference whether one is conscious of them. There are
some important differences as to what one may do when conscious of something or when one
entertains it in imagination. In such cases the object being interpreted remains in front of the
'mind's eye', and can be referred to and re-inspected. There are some difficulties with the exact
nature of such conscious or imaginary objects, and we will discuss some of these later.

What interpretation is not.

Interpretation is often contrasted with explanation. In the hermeneutic tradition
(Gadamer and originally Wilhelm Dilthey) hermeneutics or interpretation is thought to be key to
the human sciences, while explanation is reserved for what happens in natural science. Often,
this distinction is explicated further by claiming natural science explains by using laws, while
this cannot be what happens in other areas, for there are no such laws. Often upholders of this
distinction provide additional suggestions concerning proper methods in each of these domains.
The human sciences, it is said, rely on some sort of individual understanding (verstehen) of
concrete particular instances which contrasts with the universalist "scientific" methods of
empirical inquiry. We take this to be an unhelpful dichotomy.
There is a distinction somewhat useful between Henri Bergson's two ways of knowing,
by acquaintance and by description. He said there are two ways to learn about the streets of
Paris. One is to walk about them and learn them by experiencing the "lay of the land'. The other
way is to study a map and internalize it, so that one may follow it in one's head ("Essay on
Metaphysics"). There are probably more than these ways to learn streets. We knew person
once who had learned some of the streets of London by reading the novels of Charles Dickens,
who gave most accurate descriptions. This is not the same distinction that was later used by
Bertrand Russell (and Gustav Bergmann, et al.), who made it into a bad epistemic distinction.
In what follows it will be argued that many of these traditional distinctions are bogus.
These positions, we will argue, misrepresent the natural sciences and how they work and the
human sciences and how they work. It is only by a stultified view of disciplines that these
claims for different types of inquiry get off the ground. One might begin to appreciate the
problems with this view by pointing out that in biology, a quite respectable natural science, there
are no clear instances of mechanistic, causal laws (as traditionally described.) This would be a
step towards undercutting this mistaken characterization of natural science. On the other side,
one could begin to show that explaining how a person keeps promises, and why this is useful
social institution, is like explaining how Baroque painters innovated new ways of using hard
curved lines, and why this was an effective change against the classical forms. Both of these
examples could then be shown to be similar to what is involved when explaining some
phenomenon by using a particular scientific theory, say using a certain form of neo-Darwinian
evolution to explain how human sight became limited to the "visible spectrum" as opposed to
vision in some other animals. But rather than arguing directly against this tradition, we hope to
elaborate a theory that will show the similarities among interpreting and explaining in natural
science, in human science and in the arts. Understanding this theory will then allow for
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understanding how the human intellectual operation of explaining and interpreting are similar,
despite important differences in types of subject matter in the various domains.
Yet, we also hope to show how these positions that advocate the sui generis nature of the
human sciences have found something neglected by the more natural scientific types. What
they focus on is the experiential, ineliminable subjective element that is crucial for understanding
human action. But we must wait until later to spell this out.

II. Domains of Interpretation

Interpretation is always of something, the object of the interpretation. Objects of
particular interpretations may be almost any kind of thing. It could be some sight that arouses
interest, hearing of an event, reading about an experiment, even watching a spider mend of
broken web. There is probably nothing that in certain circumstances could not be interpreted.
This suggests that even "object" may be too rigid a term for describing what may be interpreted.
We also, for example interpret our feeling; was it love or only lust that I felt last night? It
sometimes is most important to come to understand the answers to such questions. Making this
even more complex is the fact that objects of interpretation may include events or processes. A
broader, less substantive term for what interpretation is about might be "phenomenon". Such
objects or phenomena of interpretation may be quite complex and extend over considerable
time,, e.g. why did the American Revolution occur; how did the dinosaurs die? Still we cannot
talk only about particular objects, events or phenomena except as examples. There are too
many. Fortunately, objects of interpretation (or phenomena) break into classes or kinds, that
often share some certain characteristics. The kinds or classes to avoid confusion I shall call
domains or sometimes fields. (Cf. Shapere, Darden, Maul and Darden)
A first approximation is to break objects or phenomena into separate domains or fields by
academic discipline. These are not historically fixed, exclusive or exhaustive. They will
provide some starting point, however. Here is one such list:
Natural science, e.g., natural phenomena, e.g. optical phenomena, electricity, matter
theory, chemical bonding phenomena,
Psychological science, or more broadly, cognitive science, e.g. human problem solving,
visual processing, emotional responses, etc.
Social science (or human science), e.g. human actions, social institutions, cultural
practices
Humanities, e.g. humanly constructed objects, texts, historical narratives
Arts, e.g. painting, films, musical performances, novels, plays

There is an important distinction needs to be drawn within each domain. Who does the
interpreting? So the two possibilities are: (1) Interpretation as involved with those who do natural
science, psychological or social or humanities, (the producers or practitioners of the domain) and
(2) interpretation as it is involved in those who respond to the products made by those who
produce or practice in that domain (the audience. Spectators, evaluators, or consumers). Of
course, some persons may do both roles at once.
Interpretation is involved in both processes, though often in different ways and with different
goals.
Another important way of dividing domains is by the typical or paradigmatic purpose for
which interpretations are given in each domain. [After Aristotle]. These are not exclusive nor
exhaustive.
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Purpose 1: Theoretical: providing explanation, or finding mechanisms.

Purpose 2: Practical: inculcating ways of acting, or of experiencing.
Purpose 3: Productive: producing a product; e.g. the scientific paper, the critical review, the
peer group review, the artifact.
Yet another overlapping way of distinguishing domains is by types of product produced in
doing the interpreting: The scientific theory, the particular way of acting, the critical essay, or
the painting.
This last tripartite distinction does not always pick out domains or phenomena that are separate
from one another. A scientific experiment, for example, most often involves using a number of
scientific theories, acting to set up and run the experiment, and hopefully, results in the
production of data that may then be used to test one of the theories used.

Chapter II. A Potpourri Examples for the Disciplines

Before going further in explicating and explaining this view of interpretation, we think it might
be worthwhile to briefly describe some examples. It is our hope that the details provided will be
sufficient for the reader to understand the example when it is referred to later and used in the
course of illustrating some particular point. Of course, in some examples we can only provide
part of the relevant phenomena for demonstrating how it should work. For example, with music
we cannot provide in this text the sounds to hear, nor the original of the colors or brush textures
for paintings, nor all the details of the scientific or social cases we will describe. In each case,
the interested reader will have to go further, and gather further and sensory relevant for
information for her or himself.
A. The Natural Sciences: Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Biology , Neuroscience
1. Galileo and the sunspots
Optical foreshortening and irregular pathways objection to Scheiner's taking the sun spots as
planets. Insert Galileo's drawings of the sun spots.
2. Interpreting physical theory example
3. How Chemical Bonding works
mechanisms for understanding how 'things' hold together
4. L(ong) T(erm) P(otentiation) and memory.
the search for mechanisms; what really is a phenomenon?

B. The Human sciences including Cognitive science

5. How to catch a fly ball?
Problem solving in the environment: The visual and proprioceptive system acting together;
looming objects and centering behavior; the body and the visual field.
6. human jealousy
understanding human behavior, by categorization and analysis. Differentiate from envy. Freud's
internalist psychical analysis and its relations to external objects: 3 persons, envy, self pity, grief,
narcissism [acceptability as a conventional element]
7. How to understand lust and/or anger?
Tell a story of lust? Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
sexual desire as motivating; teleology and experience
phenomenology, valence, causes response to perceived injustice, typical behaviors

C. The social sciences

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8. Legal systems
as social institutions as causal; the driving laws "rules of the road"
9. Historical example, the 'invention' of privacy in the 17th Century
10. Another culture's practices, e.g. female clitorectomy. marriage practices

D. The Arts
11. Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
genre analysis as film noir
compare to John Huston's Maltese Falcon (1941); Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1943),
Kubrick's The Killing (1956)
12. Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (Louvre)
scientifically interpreting the enigmatic smile; reference to article?
13. Franz Schubert's Trio in E-flat major, Op. 100, D829; II. Andante con molto
film and music; use in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, seduction scene
14. The Beatle's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1966?)
cultural context of music
15. Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, various singers' interpretations
e.g., Leonard Cohen, Various positions (1964), Jeff Buckeley, Grace (1994) , Bob Dylan, from
the movie, Shrek.
16. Cooking and tasting
the senses and practice; how to make a tasty vegetable dish
Greens, peppers and tomatoes

1/2 Tablespoon olive oil

1/2 lb. (or so?) Kale, washed and de-stemmed; green leaf part only, torn into mediums sized
pieces; It is hard to buy kale by the pound. It is usually sold by the bunch, and the bunches vary
in size. What one wants to end up with is 2-3 handfuls of de-stemmed kale per person.
Usually one bunch may serve 3-4 people.

1/8 cup of Balsamic vinegar

1/2 Tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
1 red bell pepper, seeded and sliced into strips 3/4" by 1/4"
2 Jalepeno peppers, seeded and sliced in strips, 1/4" by 1/4"
2 large or 3 medium tomatoes, seeded, diced
1/8 cup of Balsamic vinegar

I one medium frying pan, saute' over medium heat garlic, and all peppers in 1/2 tablespoon of
olive oil, for about 5 minutes. After 3 minutes sprinkle with Balsamic vinegar. Add tomatoes,
mix in; and then take off the heat until ready for the next step.

In a large frying pan over high heat, heat oil until quite hot. Toss in shredded kale, and stir
around constantly until all the kale has had contact with the oil and begun to wilt. (about 5
minutes). Turn down heat. Add content of other pan (garlic, peppers and tomatoes) to kale, stir
thoroughly and heat through. (about 3 minutes) at last minute sprinkle with remaining
balsamic. And remove to warm serving dish.
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Sprinkle with a little olive oil, and serve immediately.

III. Components of an Interpretation

It will be useful at this point to outline our analysis of what an interpretation is. The components
or parts of an interpretation are here identified analytically. What this means is that we, for our
purposes of understanding, may separate and discuss each of these parts, but they will not always
be so identifiable in nature. They are not usually identifiable because they are not distinct
temporal episodes even when we consciously interpret something. Further, they are not distinct
events in that they interact with one another, and sometimes one part comprises some of the
content of another parts or is part of another part. Worse yet, all of these component have
subparts of different entities and activities, and one component may include another as a subpart.
But despite such problems, we believe laying out the ground will be useful for understanding
what an interpretation is
Interpretation is taken here in its fundamental sense as the act of interpreting, not merely
the product. As we said above, interpreting is cognitive act. A complete and total
interpretation contains, implicitly or explicitly, the following components:
(1) an object (what is interpreted)
Objects of interpretation belong to domains. Objects of interpretation are not just entities, but
also activities and may be particular or general, concrete or abstract.
(2) an interpreter (who does the interpreting)
The interpreter is usually an individual person, but the concept may be extended to include some
animals or to group activities or even to social institutions.
(3) a purpose (the reason or cause for engaging in the act of interpretation)
This is a clearly teleological component that is specified in terms of purposes, goals and desires
of the interpreter. A person's purpose provides the reasons or causes why an interpretation is
being given. The interpreter need not be aware of what her purpose is. The purpose is the goal
which the end-product (the interpretation) is supposed to satisfy or fulfill.

(4) Prior experiences and learning of the interpreter; Background knowledge, beliefs,
practices and experiences.
Episodes in the interpreter's personal history play a role in selecting what interpretations are
sought and how those interpretations are given. The also function to direct the interpreter's
intention, ort the select the goal she is pursuing when giving the interpretation. To be effective
these life episodes must bring about changes in the person. Many episodes in our lives, even
ones that may register with us for a short while, very soon 'evaporate' and leave us basically
unchanged. However, many others do not and remain, in some form, in us after the event has
passed. Those changes in our mind and/or central nervous system that remain are often called
background knowledge and past experiences. They are the various forms in which memories are
made part of us. Relevant aspects of experience include the things a person has learned, what she
has come to believe, how he has been trained to act, and how which and in what ways
experiences and emotions make a difference. As noted, these changes constitute one's various
forms of memory.

(5) a method (a procedure that is used in performing an interpretation)

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Every interpretation may be represented in terms of the above analytic components and the links
that tie these together. This means there are state-like or stage-like components that may be
identified as parts of the interpretation, and there is a strategy or a systematized procedure by
which these are accomplished. Such strategies or procedures are learned and constitute the
method utilized in interpreting. Such a method is not always explicit or conscious to the
interpreter, nor need the interpreter be able to reflect on the act of interpreting. In addition, there
is not always any chronological separation among the stages or parts.

(6) a context (the social or environmental conditions that obtain when the interpretation is
given)
This is the environment, physical and social, in which the act of interpreting occurs. It includes
the physical, social and cultural conditions in which the act is performed, but it also may include
the histories of what typically is done in such condition

(7) a product (what the act of interpreting produces)

Interpretations come to an end, as do all overt acts. The end state is the product of the act. The
product may be concrete as is a painting or research paper or it may be abstract, as a degree of
understanding or an experience.

(8) Criteria of success (satisfaction conditions that determine the degree of success or failure of
the act of interpretation or the product of interpretation)
Since performing interpretations is a learned ability, the performance and/or the product must be
able to be evaluated as to its success or failure relative to the goal of the interpretation. What is
learned, and how it is accessed and used are all subject to critical evaluation. This is to say
interpreting is a normative activity. Such norms must be articulated. Many disputes about
interpretation actually turn out to be disputes about the adequacy or reliability of what is
produced. There exist criteria, albeit often implicit, for whether or not learning has taken place
adequately or correctly. These normative criteria are not absolute. Yet, they are not person
relative. They are subject to historical change. They may be justified, though not with any
certainty.

Further elaboration and discussion of components

1. First the object of interpretation is not always an object in any usual sense. Objects of
interpretation may be sensory experiences (listening to an opera), long lasting events (the Thirty
Years War of the 17th century), or a brief episode (a kind word from someone you respect). Of
course, the object may also be an object (Picasso's painting, Girl Before Mirror) or an event
(John Coltrane's performance of "My Favorite Things" at the New York Club, The Five Spot, in
December 1963. The object also might may be a representation of an event (like the vinyl
record or the CD I have of another performance of Coltrane doing "My Favorite Things", or the
postcard of I have of Picasso's painting. Or it maybe more abstract, like the song, from The
Sound of Music, "My Favorite Things" which has various instantiations of the song, Julie
Andrews singing it on the Broadway stage or as she recorded in the film version, or Coltrane's
'hot' jazz rendition. These are all the same object. So what is the proper object of interpretation
may be complicated and confusing, unless one is careful. Usually however, context will help us
to be clear about that to which we are referring. But not always. Many of us have had the
experience of a conversation about a person, say John, that went on for some time only to
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discover at the end we had been speaking about different persons. You had been talking about
John Doe and I about John Smith. It is this kind of mis-identified, mistaken reference that many
comedies of manners use to such great effect. (E.g.? "Importance of being Ernest" "School for
Wives") But lest the problem of what is the proper object seem too much a problem, it should
be noted that we do find out (or could have that a mistake had been made.
These objects, in their manifold forms, are the phenomena that are addressed in an
interpretation. An object of interpretation, or phenomenon, typically has associated with it both
demonstrative and descriptive practices. There are specific procedures used to pick out, select,
attend to, or identify the object or activity that is the subject of the interpretation. These are the
demonstrative practices connected with that objector objects of that type. Demonstrative
practices are ways of showing to oneself and others what the object is. Perhaps the most obvious
such practice is pointing. When I point at this man, Fred, I direct your attention to him as an
object. If he notices me pointing then he also knows he is being picked out. This is probably
why your mother told you never to point (at people) for by pointing you pick the person out and
may thereby embarrass him and/or yourself.
Being able to pick out the object of interpretation is a necessary condition for
interpreting. Perhaps even more important for thinking about interpretation is how one
perceives, attends to, or selects an object affects the outcome of the interpretation. No one can
expect you to identify the emotion of disgust or a Volkswagen if you have not somehow before
experienced and remembered those objects, and done so in a certain way. We must make
distinctions among the ways we pick out objects. The most brute and crude, but necessary, way
is by somehow (usually perceptually) discriminating it from its background or from other
objects. Such perceptual discriminations are required to isolate the object from other things
with which is might be confused. Another terminology that makes the same point is that one
must be able to distinguish the signal from the noise. This not always easy, as anyone who tried
to listen to a radio in loud traffic may attest. I called it brute and crude only because this is what
animals must do also. Animals have the ability to discriminate, either by inheritance or by
learning. We humans must learn to discriminate too. It takes some training for a person to
learn to pick out the acidic content in a red wine, and more training to learn to discriminate
tannin content. Still more detail and work is needed to learn about these two combine, with
other physical features of the wine, to provide information about how long it will be until that
wine is at its peak (when it will be developed so that it will taste best). We'll return to this wine
theme again later.
Beyond mere discrimination there are the processes of identification and recognition.
Briefly, identification consists in being able to know that a discriminated object is the same one
as you had seen before. You may not know what it is, or anything about it, but you may see it as
the same as before. we will not spend time discussing this aspect, for while it is necessary for
many kinds of knowledge, it will not play a large explanatory role in our discussions of
interpretation and cognition. Recognition, however is most important,
Objects must be conceptualized or categorized before one may think of them as being of
a kind. This mental action maybe thought of as placing a discriminated object into a category or
bringing it under a concept. Another way to think of this is fitting a representation of a
perceived object into a mental network (where the network is the concept). This recognition
process, however described, need not be chronologically separate from the discrimination, so we
are not talking about a temporal causal sequence of events here. These are analytic distinctions
that are useful for us to understand the cognitive components involved is interpretation. A
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person may have a non categorical or non conceptual experience of something. But in this case
there is no kind of experience it is; it’s just a something that happens to me in which a
discrimination occurred. Its' a something is happening to me but I know not what. Usually,
such an occurrence is a first time experience, one such that s person does not know what to think.
From descriptions from friends and in novels, I think that maybe the first orgasm of a naïve
young person is sometimes an example of non conceptualized experience.
Objects of interpretation have properties (or attributes) that belong to them. They often do
things or have activities that characterize them, and they have important relations to other
objects. People, and some other animals, mentally group objects by virtue of the properties,
activities or relations by which they may be compared among each other. Very often the group
is formed by the aspects which the particular objects have in common, but not always. Some
categories are only formed from overlapping properties and have, what has been called, an "open
texture". (e.g., Wittgenstein's example of game, 1953).
Structures formed by these properties, activities and relations are the concepts,
categories or classifications which the objects “fall under”. If we were to think about categories
in similar linguistic terms, categories would be the nouns and predicates which are true of
objects, and the objects are similar to each other in the respect that they are all described by (at
least some of) the same terms. In this way, categories or concepts are like general terms. But let
us not be mislead by this linguistic analogy. Many of our categories or concepts do have
linguistic correlates (or associated verbal terms), but it is not clear that they all must. Indeed, as
we shall argue below, there are some domains of experience (perhaps smell is the best example)
where it is not clear that there are terms to describe the objects of experience, yet we do wish to
say they are conceptualized (albeit, non-linguistically). Most all of can recognize the smell of a
fresh orange, but our words fail us when we try to describe that smell except by comparison or
analogy.
Placing an object into a structured mental network that has been previously accepted,
subsuming an object under a concept, gives that object a coherence within the network which is
an accepted schema or memory structure. The concept by virtue of the connections within the
network licenses inferences along the lines of connection. So, to use an old example (from
Collins and Quillian) the concept Bird is connected tightly to wing and less tightly to fly (since
ostrichs are birds that do not fly.) So one may infer from the categorization it's a bird to it has
wings. This is obviously not a deductive inference, for some birds may have lost their wings.
One could also infer it can fly, and this is even more defeasible or subject to error. Many
philosophers hold that these inferences only may exist among propositions, which are linguistic
sentence-like structures which represent or express concepts. The scope of such inferences that a
particular individual can make or the extent and correctness of the person's network is one aspect
of the depth of understanding the person has of the concept. Notice here there is some ambiguity,
for the word "concept" is used to discuss both bird itself and the network in which bird functions.
Further discussion of conceptual schemes, inferences (and expectations) will be given when we
discuss prior learning and memory below.
Understanding by developing conceptual schemes, also involves having an explanation.
An explanation is like a map locating an object in a conceptual space (Wittgenstein 1953;
Toulmin 1953). As noted above, part of the conceptual space is specified by the network of
legitimate inferences from the concept. In addition to inferences, the concept also legitimates
certain actions or practices. Some of these actions are related to actions used to identify instances
of the concept and to applying it in various situations.
 12

In many cases we explain, or come to understand, what is produced by finding the

mechanism by which something works. Showing how the phenomenon is produced is showing
how it fits a mechanism schema that has been used to understand other things and by showing
how the phenomenon relates or compares to other objects and activities. In the sciences trying
to fit phenomena under laws is one way of classifying. But trying to understand the
mechanisms by which things work in terms of known entities or activities is broader.
In the arts, one often classifies or categorizes objects by genre (from genus or kind), by
style, by schools, by artist (author composer, director, etc.), or by intended audience (family
movies, teen movies, girlie flicks, etc.) Such categorization leads to inferences about what
expects from such kinds of things. Initial categorization of an object as being of a kind
provides guidance for what to do or look for next. "Guiding concept". (see Thom)
E.g. identifying a film as being a film noir means look for dark streets, a "hero" caught up in
events not quite of his own making, etc. So categorization or schematization also provides
instructions about how to act (and think) with regard to the object. The network specifies what
to expect. Categorization or schematization are the forms that our memory and knowledge take.
So the place to elaborate this point is when discussing the interpreter and his or her background
knowledge.
What categories a group or culture has, they have for some reason. What similarities are
important to these people such that the object will be categorized in one way and not another?
Importance is relative to what the categorization is going to be used for or what one expects to
find out, know or understand; these expectations are “somehow tied to causal experience.”
One way of coming to understand something is to categorize it and to make inferences or direct
actions in accord with that categorization.
Concepts have an historical, changeable character. That is, their content and applications
may change over evolutionary time, over historic time, over a person's life time.
Concepts also may vary among different species, different cultures, and different
individuals.
We may summarize the practical side of dealing with an object of interpretation by
discussing how one goes about a formal analysis of the object of interpretation.
Of course, one first needs to identify the object that is to be analyzed. One then needs a
selection principle to select ‘compositional elements” of the object, i.e., those elements,
properties, or aspects which need to be picked out as being necessary or useful for the analysis,
given its purpose.
Two selection procedures, with a variant, suggest themselves:
a) Top down.
Assign object to a category or genre. Get list of criteria or defining traits of the category or
genre. Select those elements of the object that correspond to the criteria or traits.
b) Bottom Up.
Select another object that is at least prima facie similar to the one you wish to analyze. Do a
trait by trait (element by element) comparison. Note which elements are to some degree similar
(which is clue to genre’s definitional traits or criteria), and where differences lie (which is a clue
to where one might be better or worse than the other). If it turns out that the second object chosen
is not really of the same kind, falls under the same category or genre, then this exercise has less
definitive results.
Or, assign object to category or genre. Select another object known to be from that category or
genre. In best case, this second object will be one that is taken (by people, by experts, by you?)
 13

to be good example of its kind. Do an element by element comparison of the two objects,
seeing where and how they are to some degree the same and where they differ.
Now that one has the elements identified, we need a way to think compositionally how they
fit together. Elements usually are formed in to compositional hierarchies. Sometimes, they are
merelogical part whole relations, e.g., an arm is part of a body. Often composition relations
they are more complex, e.g. balanced., sexy male body, good resolution, etc.
Certain elements seem to be basic or fundamental to kinds of objects, not as categorical
or genres in the sense above, by as disciplinary or traditional artistic types. Some examples
would be color and form are basic to painting; form and texture are basic to sculpture; viscosity,
dryness and fruit intensity and flavors are basic to wines.

2. The interpreter (2) may either (a) producer, (artist or scientist) person constructing the
phenomena, or (b) audience who observes or evaluates the product or the process of the
producer.
The producer is the person who makes or creates some object or event. It maybe a
physicist developing a theory or trying to establish a mechanism. It maybe an artist making a
painting. Perhaps more clearly, an historian who is writing about court life and rules of
conduct in the Renaissance is interpreting his data from texts. This distinction requires us to say
that interpretation is going on when a producer creates or does some piece of science or art.
Interpretation here again is a function of what the producer has learned, both declaratively and
procedurally for these are partial determinants and/or constraints on the selections made. What
the producer selects for inclusion and exclusion in what he produces is determined by her
background knowledge and prior experiences.
The other kind of interpretation is more common to most of us. We look at or apprehend
the products produced by others. We are spectators, or the audience, for what others have
created. In the acts of looking and hearing we interpret, consciously or unconsciously, what it is
that we are perceiving. As audience, one might try to understand a given scientific theory or
ascertain if it has implications for what ought to be public policy (say, about environmental
controls.) Or a person might attempt to figure out what another person's (or one's own) action
means.
It is of interest that we are all producers and audiences, and often both at the same time.
We might try to understand an action we did some days or ago or at the time we are doing it.

3. The purpose or goal (3) of the interpretation. Many and varied.

Scientists may do science in order to win a Nobel prize, to make her father happy, out of
curiosity about the world,
Evaluate scientific peers for your own gain, or prestige, or to ensure credibility of the field, as
social obligation as a member of the editorial board
Do social science or psychology : e.g., to laugh at the poor primitives,
to have scintillating vicarious or real experiences (a sense of adventure)
To understand human actions,
to act better socially
To help patients to experience emotions more clearly
to understand oneself better
One may read and critically evaluate social and psychological science in order to be a
responsible peer reviewer for submitted journal articles, to help better train oneself to
 14

therapeutically help others, to gain knowledge, to get grants by emulating the competition, for
prurient interests
Artists produce art for money, for fame, to "act out" their own psychological (pathological)
problems, because they're obsessed, because it's fun to play with nudes
The audience may go to art for social status, for self improvement, for escapism, for vicarious
living, to view respectable pornography
Obviously these are only a few motives. There are myriad more. But there seems to
be some belief that each one of these disciplines normatively ought to be done for one exemplary
reason. So it is thought the scientist ought to do his science to gain knowledge of the
phenomena of nature; or to provide explanations of the phenomena of nature.
The audience of science is expected to learn science in order to better understand the
world; and to learn science for the practical goal of being educated citizens who will help make
informed decisions in the democratic decision making processes, many of which a based or
claim to be based on scientific evidence. They will also, as citizens, be informed or be capable
of becoming informed sufficiently to criticize such decisions that are made.
The psychologist or social scientist ought to be gaining similar kinds knowledge but
about the psychological and social worlds. Yet, here there is a proviso, in some psychological
and social sciences one is also expected to aid people or help to provide real-life solutions. So
clinical psychologists, some economists, some sociologists are expected to change the way
people and institutions behave. The have a practical purpose in addition to their theoretical one.
The assumption often is that theoretical wisdom will aid in pursuing the practical goal.
The audience of social science is supposed to learn better how to understand their fellow
humans and their social institutions. This both with regard to gaining knowledge and
understanding which is taken as an epistemic good, and with regard to greater tolerance of
differences among behaviors and customs. There is also the practical goal of evaluating and
helping to make decisions or critically assess social policy.
So far the social and psychological science mirrors the natural sciences. But there are no
physicist practitioners, but maybe engineers fill that practical role.
But when we get to the humanities and arts things change. It becomes hard to say what
knowledge comes from reading poetry seriously or from listening to music. But this is because
we state the goal wrongly. The normative goal of reading poetry or listening to music is to give
oneself an experience that for some reason one ought to have.
Interestingly most artists do not have as a goal to give their audience an experience,
though some do. Normatively artists express themselves in their medium of choice in order to
somehow articulate their own personal experiences. Where the art is good it rises above this
individualistic goal, and becomes a way for other to experience things they otherwise would not.
Cf. Kant's universal in the subjective.
So doing science is for the sake of understanding, for coming to know how the world
works.
Doing art is for the sake of having experiences. Experiences may teach us something, but
they need not. Sometimes it’s quite enough to just wallow in them, and enjoy them as they take
us over.
It is not often noted that the social and psychological sciences, often also, have an
experiential dimension that I failed to discuss above. Sometimes, we want to learn about people
and cultures so that we may change our experiences. One reason we want to learn about love
 15

and the bodily places of love is so that we may become better lovers and have better experiences
while making love. We want to learn about jealousy in order to avoid experiencing its excesses.
Social and psychological science has an ineliminable experiential dimension, both in its
learning and in its application. You must learn about the law not just by reading the cases and
looking at flow charts of the system, you must experience it at work to understand it in its
application. You must know what people in the law grip of the law experience if you want to
change it in order for them to have better experiences.
4. Prior learning, encoding in memory
What and how we interpret is a function of our prior learning (of many kinds) and what we have
represented (in various forms) in memory. Philosophers often talk glibly about background
knowledge and beliefs. In more recent times, they have also talked about practices, having
realized that not all that affects us or that we effect is due to propositional modes of
representation.
Knowing implies learning, learning implies memory; memory is of different kinds
WAYS OF KNOWING: memory as structural changes resulting from interpreting;
types of memory:
declarative--linguistic, conceptual,
spatial
procedural or skills: motor, sensori-motor, attentional, perceptual
Established categorical schemata
History and contemporary social cultural milieu
Expectations brought
Criteria of success (8) are social, normative standards that have become established in a
group or culture by training in a tradition or sometimes by 'experts'. The tradition is
paradigmatically carried on the 'experts' in the field. (see Hume) The way in which the experts
reach their decisions as to the success of interpretations or product production are the
prototypical standards for the rest of the people. Yet experts may differ. The criteria used by
experts change of over time. Different experts with different training may have different criteria
at the same time. Nonetheless, the experts, at any given time, are the starting point for one to
learn about such criteria and the training ground for learning to apply such criteria in order to test
if they are being applied correctly (see Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics).
Sometimes it is said that one ought to judge a work of art or any produced object by
whether or not it succeeds in fulfilling the artist's intention. Certainly when we use words like
"sincerity" or "authenticity" as affirmative evaluations of a work, we are appealing at least
implicitly to the producer's intention. In some cases, as in the performing art's we need not only
assess the original artists' intention but also the performing artist's intention, and these may differ.
A modern adaptation of Hamlet, in 1950s dress and with the language modified in a way to make
it more intelligible to modern English speakers (as Kenneth Branaugh sometimes does), is
clearly not being faithful to the Shakespeare's intention. For Shakespeare lived in the late 16 th
and early 17th century, a different historical epoch, and could have thought of no such things.
But the more general questions concerns producer's intentions in general. In the 1950s there
were group of literature critics (W.K. Wimsatt, The Well Wrought Urn and the new critics) who
claimed the artist's intention were never relevant to assessing a work. The main reason for this
is that another person, in this case the spectator or assessor, can never be sure of what a different
person's intentions are. The old philosophical slogan for this view was "a person can never
know the mind of another". There were papers written on "other minds' by J.L. Austin and John
 16

Wisdom in the 50s. Now what is strange about this problem is ambiguous truistic yet obtuse
character. Certainly it is truism that we cannot 'know' the mind of someone else in that it is not
our mind; yet we do know lots about what are on the minds of other people.
Another aspect of the other minds problem is the other periods problem. In this form a
person living at some time, can never really know what a person living at some earlier time
(some earlier historical period) thought. This, of course, just falls out as an instance of the other
minds problem, but let's look at a different and more important motivation. The reason why we
cannot know about historical persons is that we are a product of our own times and our own
historical environment, and since the but attribution of intention or beliefs to a person at an
earlier time must reflect our own beliefs at this time, we can never be sure what the earlier
person was thinking. This is the anachronism or Whig history problem. The problem was seen
in literature as well as history, but turned into a virtue by T.S. Eliot, [The Sacred Grove?] who
called it the objective correlative, and said this is the only way we could make works from an
earlier period relevant to ourselves at a later period, i.e., by reinterpreting them in our own way
that reflected out own understanding and pre-dispositions. Despite these philosophical and
historical worries, most people today think we can, to some degree, ascertain and correctly
ascribe the intentions of other people and even come to know some of the thoughts that were had
by those persons in the past. Such knowledge is an empirical, if you like scientific inquiry,
based on data and so might come out wrong or with incorrect attributions. And while we can
never be certain, we may be sure enough for our scholarly and interpretive purposes. While we
may never be completely non anachronistic, for that would mean that we would have to have
been born and lived in another time, we can know something about the past. To some degree we
can ignore our own contemporary prejudices or, at least, get some distance from them, and by
learning more about our topic, we may come to be able to think more like those people who did
live in the past. Such research is not easy, but, to some degree, it can be done.
But why would we wish to know about an originator's intention? And how will it aid us
in our interpretation? First, let's turn the anachronistic argument above, on its head. Since the
product that the historical person produced is a reflection of that person and his historical
environment, the product itself constitutes an historical "text" which may use to glean some
information about the person and his environment. Put another way, any product in some ways
must represent its producer and the environment that that producer is in. The product literally
contains information about its origins. An old vase or a skirt will have certain shape, color and
style to it, and those properties may provide information about the origin of the object. There is
nothing mysterious about this. A woman I know easily identifies, usually to within 3 years, the
date that a film was made in by virtue of the clothes and hairstyles of the women in the film.
Connoisseurs are able to date and place of origin of a vase from its visible properties. They may
seek further confirmation or support from other dating and locating techniques.
5. Evaluations and Values in Interpretation.
Normative criteria represent accepted group or personal values. Normative criteria for success,
and the ways in which we apply these criteria, are always, at least implicitly comparative.
There are no absolutes, relative rankings. Another way to think about this is that there is no
(absolute) best, only 'betters' and 'worses'.

6. Justifying interpretations by Reason Giving [RG]

Basic form of reason giving is:
[RG] (1) x has the property P because (2) x is Q.
 17

(2), x is Q, is the reason why (1), x has the property P, is true, or the reason why P is true of x.
So we need to look at what type of claim is (1), and then at how (2) relates to (1). Prima facie,
statements like (1) look like categorical or attributive claims. This according to our theory
means they have associated criteria, so then a reason might well be construed as a claim
implying that certain of the criteria for something’s being P is satisfied.
So if P is film noir, we could say Kubricks' film, Eyes Wide Shut, is a film noir. This would be a
claim of the form (1). Our (2) must provide a reason (or some reasons) for the truth of this
claim. So we would point to the alienation, shadowy lighting, dark street shots (pans) in the film
(as examples of Q). The reasons would be said to support the claim or provide evidence for the
claim. The reason why citing alienation, shadowy lighting and dark streets is evidence for a
film's being a noir-type is because there are accepted criteria for a film's being of the genre noir,
and these properties are among them. Now it is possible to dispute the adequacy or aptness of
these criteria, and sometimes it may be good to do so, but we'll deal with this later. At this point
we are assuming that there are standards which tell us what are the criteria, and the reason is
good reason because it shows those standards are adhered to.
A reason is given for some assertion or claim (usually expressed in the form of
proposition or statement). Reason giving is a linguistic activity. (Cf. Sellars, McDowell and
Brandom). But being linguistic, one can always worry about the clarity of what is put into the
schema. So first, one must ascertain if the claim is clear and unambiguous. As we saw with
“This is good” (see Lycan and Machamer), “good” is not specified fully enough, does not carry
enough information, for us to provide reasons as to why it maybe good or not. The criteria for
some things being good as not specifiable as such. Things are good in too many quite different
ways; so just saying good is too vacuous. We need further specification. Now what is claimed
will presuppose many things. Claims often presuppose what the claimer (person claiming)
thinks is important, or reflects this or her valuation of what are the important aspects of the
property being claimed. What someone holds to be important, implicitly or explicitly, is the
set of criteria they believe makes for a thing's being good (of its kind). Such claims may also
presuppose values taken from culture or gender biases. Many men seem to value extreme
thinness in women, and so would cite this as reason for a woman's being good looking.
Often claims are not put in the form of assertions or statements, but posed as questions.
So “x has P” may be phrased “Does x have P?” or “Is x, P?” And questions, of course, carry
presuppositions too. So the point is the presuppositions to an assertion or question may well
have to be elucidated and made explicit before one, knows what is really being attributed or
claimed, or what may be used as a reason. Making clear presuppositions is often a tricky
business. But it is important. Sometimes, in some philosophers, presuppositions are called
background beliefs or background theories.
We have discussed some of the relevant aspects of these when we discussed categorization and
background in the interpretation section. Thais, they play a role in why people categorize things
in certain ways (rather than others).
Besides looking at the claim (1) made, for which a reason will be given, we must also
look at the reason (2), and most importantly at the connection between the reason and the claim.
Generally, as we said, the reason often provides a specification of the fact that satisfies the
accepted criteria. Yet people sometimes have widely varying criteria. Some people give as a
reason for acting in a certain way that the position of the planets makes that action desirable.
Thus, astrological beliefs provides the criteria by which a rationale is provided for a certain
action. I knew a businessman who always consulted his Rabbi for Talmudic guidance before
 18

closing a business deal, and this guidance figured into the rationale he gave for acting in the way
he did. Numerologists find syntactic affinities to be persuasive and a rationale for action.
Recall the old children’s game of counting letters in your name and of the boy (it was usually
girls who played this game) you ‘loved’ to find out if you were sympathetic and would
eventually wed. So the connection between the reason and the claim is provided by some
background theory, or set of beliefs that gives the linkage.
It is often assumed that the link between reason and claim must be or ought to be
provided by some rational theory. For, it is said, reason giving is the epitome of rational
discourse. So, it would seem that only rational theories ought to be allowed to enter into our
reason giving. This stance raises many problems. Not the least of which are: what is a
rational theory? How can one tell rational from non-rational theories? And what status does a
normative claim “the reason ought to be backed by rational theory” have, and how is it
grounded?
I am afraid at this point we must leave these questions until later.

Reference List (partial):

Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica

Anderson, Paul "The Neutrino"
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics
Brandom, RobertChristie, Agatha, ABC Murders
Darden
Darden and Maull
Dilthey, Wilhelm
Eliot, T.S. The Sacred Grove
Gadamer, Hans Georg
Gibson, J. (1966). The senses considered as perceptual systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Gibson, J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Hanson, Norwood Russell, Patterns of Discovery 1958
Hume, David "On the Standard of Taste"
Kant, Immanueal, Critique of judgement
Lycan, William and Peter Machamer, "A Theory of Critical Reasons" (with William Lycan), in
B.R. Tilghman, ed., Language and Aesthetics, Kansas State University Press, 1971, pp. 87-
112. Reprinted in Sclafani, Richard
Machamer, Peter "The Meaning of Metaphor" Blick und Bild, Schriften der Academie du Midi, Bd.III,
eds. Tilghman Borshe, Johann Kruzer, & Christain Strub, Munchen: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 1998,
247-263.
Machamer, Peter "The Nature of Metaphor and Scientific Descriptions" in Fernand Hallyn, ed.
Metaphors and Analogies in Science, Kluwer, 2000, pp. 35-52
Machamer, Peter and Lisa Osbeck "Perception, Conception, and the Limits of the Direct
Theory", The Philosophy of Marjorie Grene, The Library of Living Philosophers XXIX, edited
by Randall E. Auxier and Lewis Edwin Hahn, Open Court 2002, pp. 129-146.
McDowell, John
Sellars, Wilfrid
Shapere, Dudley
Thom, Making Sense
 19

Toulmin, Stephen, Philosophy of Science, 1953

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations 1953
1
Thanks to Jeanne Blackburn for work on jealousy, Tara Hofkens for comments on the interpretation
schema. Discussions with Stacey Steggert gave overall synoptic help, especially on discussions about
evaluation and objectivity. Good discussions arose from my lecture at Bogazici University in Istanbul,
from Gurol Irzik, Ilhan Iman, Berna , and Ferda Keshkin. Students from a number of years of my
Aesthetics and Science classes have aided much in my thinking about what went into this manuscript.
2
Thom, Making Sense is a good introductory text. He stresses the idea of making sense, but does not go very far in what
the result of making sense comes to, though he some interesting discussions about how to go about doing so.