As the Sturm und Drang about the (apparently forged) Jesus’ Wife Fragment waxes and wanes (the Sturm waxes, the Drang wanes?), my predictably eccentric interest concerns the role of evidence and of non-evidential factors in shaping positive or negative assessments of the fragment. Let’s start again by noticing that, even at its very earliest plausible…
All posts in April 2014
Pervasive Latent Criteria
Summing up from last time: “meant” and “means” aren’t distinct from one another in the way that the standard account presupposes; and, there is no theoretical account to be adduced which will arbitrate how to apply a posited meaning. (This paragraph doesn’t count against me.) Absent a subsistent “meaning” that provides a polestar for interpretive…
Spring Evening Class
Classroom View It may be difficult to concentrate tonight.
Meant, Means, Application
For the purposes of my developing this argument, let’s take my expression-apprehension model of interpretation as read. On this account, now, we can explain a great many problems that the standard “subsistent meaning” account generates. For instance, the standard account gets into great headaches about “the difference between what it meant and what it means…
Images Of The Week
Write What You Read, on Flickr The late Bartlet Feeney, on Flickr The late Bartlet Feeney Looking North, from the Cornmarket, on Flickr Easter Monday, on Flickr Easter Sunday Solemn Morning Prayer
What It All Means
To sum up from the past eight paragraphs, or so: Most of the problems in hermeneutics can be addressed most productively by regarding the problem as in interplay of expression and inference. A canvas by Monet entails one particular sort of expression; an installation by Tracey Emin is another sort of expression; Nigel Hess’s theme…
Busy Day
No blog.
High Five
Adding words to our account of the communicative landscape does not fundamentally change what we’ve observed about inference and communication. Just as I make inferential estimates of what time in the morning it is (speaking of which, I need to find my sleep mask soon), or from my beloved wife’s mimed gestures when babies are…
The Flesh Is Weak
This evening, Margaret and I were dining on a sumptuous feast of leftovers, including some fried aubergine with garlic — friend aubergine and garlic that had made the most of its time in the refrigerator. And it had gathered its forces into one concentrated clump of pungency. One clump, hiding in the rice at the…
Adding Words
You have graciously borne with me in considering communication by wordless inference, in both non-intentional (“natural”) and intentional (“conscious animal life”) circumstances. I used inverted commas in my parenthetical characterisations because I’d like to allow for non-intentional inference in circumstances that aren’t simply “natural”, and because I want to be careful about what I say…
Not That ‘Happy’
Well-intentioned vicar Dick Keith of St Eormengyth’s Church in the Isle of Thanet generated concern and dismay at the Easter service this morning. The priest — perhaps inspired by the BBC television series ‘Rev’, and apparently hoping to piggy-back on the viral success of clergy seen singing reformulated pop songs and dancing at weddings —…
Busy Holy Saturday
I know, I missed Maundy Thursday, and now I’m taking this feeble way out of posting today as well. I spent all day today working on a sermon, all the time that I wasn’t praying or rehearsing. But at least I remembered to post an apology.