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3.4. The Notions of Reliability and Validity in the Hermeneutic Sciences
We
shall recapitulate the central notions briefly here to take up in a
meaningful way how the notions of reliability and validity can be
interpreted in terms of the essences of hermeneutic sciences. In all
hermeneutic sciences we have
TEXTS that are double structured -
with Surface Structure and Deep Structure in which some features of the
Surface Structure has to be accessed ontogenitically in certain way so
that onto-enigmas are allowed to emerge.
We also have:
a
set of onto-pretaions (or utties) that we now see as activities that
would disclose the presence of an element in the Deep Structure that
would count as the Agentive Cause of that which is seen as an
onto-enigma. The enigma is solved by sighting this Deep Structure
element that in fact enpresents the hermeneutic problematic.
This results:
in
the production of METATEXTS and along with it an elevated position to
the asserter and who compels a pedagogic situation to emerge among a
community of investigators. The metatexts embody LUMENS which are also
sought by other hermeneutic researchers.
These are elements in
relation to which the notions of reliability and validity have to be
worked out. As we have already noted earlier, there are no instruments
as such in the hermeneutic sciences and hence the instrumental senses of
these notions are quite inappropriate here.
In relation to the
central notion of TEXT in the hermeneutic sciences, it makes sense to
talk of its reliability but not of validity. A TEXT is only something
that is procured without any pre-judgements about its truth
possibilities and hence beyond the reach of such notions as validity and
so forth.
The TEXT can be reliable or not so, not in the instrumental sense but in the sense that:
a)
it is attained or procured without doing any violence to its natural
emergence, i.e. procured within the phenomenological attitude of
letting-it-to-be, of constraining oneself from intruding into emergence
of events and distorting it, and
b) it is procured with
sufficient richness of textual structure so that it facilitates the
accessing of certain Surface Structure features that serve as the LOCUS
for the EMERGENCE of the onto-enigma that becomes the hermeneutic
problem. For example, a transcript of an interaction that does not
accurately capture, say the pauses and their duration may not be
reliable in relation to noting some onto-enigmas and solving them
.
A text obtained intrusively or manipulatively is not reliable because
it is DISTORTED and presents a false `picture’ of the situation. Such
texts may mislead the nature of the inquiry, a researcher may chase
after ghosts instead of truths. Imaginary and misplaced inquiries may be
taken up resulting in discovering things that are inauthentic.
Now
in relation to the onto-pretations, we cannot talk about either their
reliability (as of the instruments in the positive sciences) and
validity (as of the accuracy of the instrumental measurements) but
instead only their EFFICIENCY. An onto-pretive movement is efficient, in
the sense that it in fact locates the causally linked elements in the
Deep Structure of the text and thereby eliminate the onto-enigma that
necessitates it in the first place. They may be practical maneuvers (as
in medical dissection) or mental acts as in the analysis of
discourses, drawings and so forth. Whatever they are they issue forth in
the production of METATEXTS the quality of which allows us to evaluate
as to the efficiency or otherwise of the onto-pretations.
Where
the METATEXTS are mediocre (note: not easy to define mediocrity), we can
surmise the ontopretations and hence LUMENS attained are superficial,
lacking in penetration depth and so forth. Some mainly impressionistic
accounts and narratives are such metatexts. A metatext of outstanding
merits (e.g. Being and Time of Heidegger, the Civajnaana Bootam of
Meykandar etc) is recognized as having analytical acumen, immense depth
and hence the exercise of onto-pretations that access very deep
structures of the texts. The deeper the reach of the ontopretations the
more valuable the METATEXT produced.
Now while the TEXTS are
reliable or not so, the onto-pretations efficient or not so, the
METATEXT as a whole in addition to being used for an indirect
assessments of the onto-pretations, can rightly be said to be VALID or
not so. It makes immense sense to talk of validity of a METATEXT. For
the METATEXTS make claims about TRUTH and thereby invite judgements on
the part of other researchers in the community. A valid text must
describe only truths and avoid falsities and a metatext, as it is an
assertion arising out of seeing Deep Structure elements that are there
in TEXTS remaining however hidden or covered-up, what it claims are
TRUTHS.
The notion of TRUTH here is quite different from an
account of it in the positive sciences and elsewhere. A TRUTH is that
which illuminates and hence a piramai, as the Nyaya philosophers in
India would describe it, a LUMEN or lumen naturale of the medieval
philosophers that illuminates the researcher, destroys a darkness in his
understanding. It is also NOT a fanciful construction, an imaginative
concoction of the researcher but rather something there in the TEXT
though not in Surface Structure but in the Deep Structure and hence not
visible for the ordinary seeing.
Hence we can say that a METATEXT is valid provided:
a)
it articulates only the elements of Deep Structure that are accessed
and are in fact accessible by any other through an ontological
investigations of some features of the Surface Structure of the text in
question, and
b) avoids the articulation of something spurious, something not substantiable from the TEXT itself.
These
qualities come to prevail only when after constituting the onto-enigma,
the researcher keeps in SIGHT that enigma resolutely and unfailingly in
mind and moves ontopretively to the deeper and deeper layers and
uncovers the Agentive Causes that would eliminate the enigma, make him
understand the problem. Where the ontological GAZE ceases to be kept
firmly, the ontopretations allowed to falter, waver and so forth, we may
not have METATEXTS, that are valid. The extraneous elements that may
thwart genuine ontopretations may be collective prejudices, personal
biases, falling prey to fashions, unhealthy social pressures, fear of
slander, of public wrath, of departing from tradition and so forth that
Tolkappiyar calls vinai - the binding chains of REASON, of rational
inquiry. The game one plays in the exercise of ontopretations that
result in valid metatexts is almost a war, a war against the factors
that may interfere and destroy the resoluteness with which one has to
push the ontological inquiry to its finish.
Valid
metatexts, it should also be noted, are also significant cultural
achievements, the deeper the TRUTHS the more significant it being. In
articulating deep seated truths, in circulating them linguistically, the
language that accommodates it also becomes thereby enriched. Valid
metatexts, in other words , add to the repertoire of TRUTHS that a
language community as a whole possesses and thereby become culturally
richer. The metatexts in this way interacts with tradition; reforms it,
enriches it, making its texture more differentiated and penetrative. The
tradition thus viewed becomes the repository of valid metatextual
contributions, the foundation of culture. It is here that we have some
resemblance with what Gadamer has called `fusion of horizons,’ the
effectivity of history and TRADITION as authoritative in relation to the
hermeneutic problems. Knowledge or what we have called here LUMENS are
also understood as phronetic- practical wisdom of a sort.
At
this juncture, it should be noted that Civajnaana Bootam is not simply
one of these metatexts, even a profound kind but something that while
accommodating them also goes beyond them and by virtue of which it is
Universal Metatext of a kind and because of which it is a text in
Metaphysica Universalis. The metatexts are productions of hermeneutic
sciences and there can be any number of them. But that which
accommodates both the ontical and ontological, the positivistic as well
as the hermeneutic expressions of sciences and which tries to understand
and explain both cannot be either ontical alone or ontological alone.
It is beyond both and since it seeks to understand both it is
appropriately not just a metatext but rather a Universal Metatext.
Since this issue is immensely relevant to understand Civajnaana Bootam, we shall attend to it briefly in the next section.