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LiveWire / Teen Forums / The Intellectual Forum / Viewing Topic

Interpretation

Replies: 6 — Last Post Jan. 21, 2007 7:37pm by obvious child

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Choice

Votes

Percent

It depends on objective parameters

25%

It is purely subjective

25%

It is purely relative

16%

It is meaningless

33%

Vote Now!

12 Votes Cast

( m16 )

Wealthy Hobo
Patron

Do the heuristics of a given text (and consequently, the text's interpretation) depend on outside, objective parameters informed by reasoned logic? Or are they purely speculative, subjective, and relative to the circumstances of the text's formation, and also dependent upon personal opinion and biases?

(Note: the text in question can be secular, religious, philosophical, or scientific in nature.)

And for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about: Heuristic

soundfly

Executive

Ok, complicated thought process for some of us. I think I just used heuristics to figure out what you were asking. As for my answer, I would say all of the above, depending on the particular text and the reader's mood. I also have no idea what I'm talking about, so that might not even make sense.

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Leparsdon

Dairy Product Addict

I believe that it is subjective. and just what text are you referring to here, because I think that the question you posed doesn't really clarify that much

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( m16 )

Wealthy Hobo
Patron

It can be any text you want: a novel, article, treatise, sermon, etc.

What I am asking is this: Is there truly an objective means and method to looking at a composed text? Are there truly objective guidelines and logic for doing so? Or is it dependent on the internal conditions of the text itself?

You could construe this as my taking the relativism vs. absolutism (note: the philosophical version, not the political version) debate to a literary level.

exceedinglyrare

Delicate Thing
Patron

I tend to think it ends up being purely subjective, largely because as much as you know about a certain text--the time in which it was written, the author, the context--you still bring your own biasees to the interpretation. That's really the beauty of words.

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( m16 )

Wealthy Hobo
Patron

My deepest apologies, I think I had the wrong word for it; the correct one is hermeneutics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutics

obvious child

Guru
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Yes and No (like everything else).

Scientific papers have a clear, organized and obvious way of approaching their meaning, their standards and their methods.

Poetry on the other hand does not and can often be read in a variety of fashions and result in the same conclusion about what the poem means. What may work for one perosn often does not for another, Emily Dickinson's work for example is a good example of this.

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