Fleeting thoughts: Experimental philosophy as interpretation: Philosophical and hermeneutical ‘understanding’ versus mathematical interpretation

A few preliminary notes:

Experimental philosophy as applied philosophy might be seen as the application of formalized and fundamental, philosophical structures to theoretical or practical area(s) or problem(s). That approach would be comparable with both mathematical conception of interpretation and philosophical and hermeneutical ‘understanding’.

A formal and logical viewpoint to that comparison would be the following:

1 The interpretation of a structure is adding potentially infinitely many dimensions (properties or relations) to a finite intension isomorphic to the mathematical structure at issue.

2 The philosophical and hermeneutical ‘understanding’ complements the above linear representation to a ‘hermeneutical circle’ by the “feedback” from the interpretation to the structure: This would mean formally, in the above terms that an infinite intension has substituted the finite one, i.e. the mathematical structure.

3 The infinite intension is naturally understood in hermeneutics as a finite ‘text’, which is however linked unlimitedly to its contexts or to a potentially infinite series of contexts.

Thesis:

Experimental philosophy as applied philosophy might be both ‘understood’ and formalized as a kind of generalization of the mathematical concept of interpretation where the finite intension is generalized to the infinite one.

A few comments of the thesis:

1 Its essence consists in involving the concept of infinity utilized in the foundation of mathematics in set theory for defining the experimental as applied philosophy.

2 Thus the concept of philosophical experiment is both ‘understood’ and interpreted formally as an interpretation in a hermeneutic sense

A few main arguments for the thesis:

1 Experimental philosophy should be both related to experimental science and distinguished from it: Indeed, the philosophical experiment is seen as a special and generalizing kind of experiment including the immediate feedback from the results to the experimental setting. The classical experiment is the particular case where that feedback is zero.

2 Furthermore, experimental philosophy should be both related to philosophical tradition and distinguished from it: Indeed, philosophy is among humanities at least after Socrates and Plato, after whom the problem of reality is inherently linked to the problem of human being. Sharing that, experimental philosophy transfers the experimental approach to reality into the human being ‘understood’ therefore as a special kind, namely unrepeatable experiment, though.

3 The application itself of philosophy should be seen as a philosophical experiment where the human and subjective influence is essential and even crucial for that application and experiment: Indeed, the essence of philosophical experiment is the option for anything to be measured by the unit of the unique human presence in the world as a “measure of all things”.

4 The application of philosophy being an experiment cannot be reduced to a finite algorithm and therefor automatized. The human and subjective participation should be presupposed as always different and thus unique.

5 Nevertheless, infinity utilized both in mathematics and in philosophy can create a bridge for conceptual transfer between philosophical and hermeneutic understanding and mathematical interpretation into a philosophical and mathematical theory of interpretation.