K. Harries

Bio: K. Harries is an academic researcher from Yale University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Coherence theory of truth & Poetry. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 3 publications receiving 90 citations.

Validity in Dialogic Encounters With Hermeneutic Truths

Abstract: Hermeneutic theories of interpretation are at the core of qualitative methodologies and can be identified as belonging to either epistemological or ontological philosophical orientations. Concerns about validity in qualitative research have mainly been shaped by epistemological questions. What differentiates philosophical hermeneutics, an ontological perspective, from traditional hermeneutics is its radical departure from finding a “technique” of interpretation to proposing a hermeneutic ontology, where the hermeneutic task of understanding is thought to be our very way of being in the world. Unlike traditional interpretive approaches which often seek to maximize validity by eliciting a respondent’s account of an experience in a way that closely corresponds to that experience, philosophical hermeneutical approaches assert that the meaning of the experience is uniquely configured in the dialogic encounter itself. Dialogue is thought to offer a hermeneutic valence for people’s engagement with understanding ...

Astrology and truth: a context in contemporary epistemology

Abstract: This thesis discusses and gives philosophical context to claims regarding the truth-status of astrology – specifically, horoscopic astrology. These truth-claims, and reasons for them, are sourced from advocates and critics of astrology and are taken from extant literature and interviews recorded for the thesis. The three major theories of truth from contemporary Western epistemology are the primary structure used to establish philosophical context. These are: the correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic theories. Some alternatives are discussed in the process of evaluating the adequacy of the three theories. No estimation of astrology’s truth-status was found which could not be articulated by reference to the three. From this follows the working assumption that the three theories of truth suffice as a system of analysis with which to define and elucidate the issues that have arisen when astrology’s truth-status has been considered. A feature of recent discourse regarding astrology has been the argument that it should be considered a form of divination rather than as a potential science. The two accounts that embody these approaches – astrology-as-divination, and astrology-as-science – are central throughout the thesis. William James’s philosophy is discussed as a congenial context for astrology-as-divination. This includes his understanding of the pragmatic theory of truth and other elements, such as radical empiricism, which comprise his pluralist pantheistic philosophy. Compelling reasons from numerous commentators are presented according to which astrology should be judged not true. These generally presuppose that contemporary scientific modes of analysis suffice for such an evaluation. A case could be built upon James’s philosophy under which the individual would have a right to believe in astrology as a source of truth – albeit, this would not be the intersubjective or scientifically-validated truth which critics typically insist upon.

TRUE: Re-evaluating Factual Consistency Evaluation

Abstract: Grounded text generation systems often generate text that contains factual inconsistencies, hindering their real-world applicability. Automatic factual consistency evaluation may help alleviate this limitation by accelerating evaluation cycles, filtering inconsistent outputs and augmenting training data. While attracting increasing attention, such evaluation metrics are usually developed and evaluated in silo for a single task or dataset, slowing their adoption. Moreover, previous meta-evaluation protocols focused on system-level correlations with human annotations, which leave the example-level accuracy of such metrics unclear.In this work, we introduce TRUE: a comprehensive study of factual consistency metrics on a standardized collection of existing texts from diverse tasks, manually annotated for factual consistency. Our standardization enables an example-level meta-evaluation protocol that is more actionable and interpretable than previously reported correlations, yielding clearer quality measures. Across diverse state-of-the-art metrics and 11 datasets we find that large-scale NLI and question generation-and-answering-based approaches achieve strong and complementary results. We recommend those methods as a starting point for model and metric developers, and hope TRUE will foster progress towards even better methods.

Heidegger’s conception of freedom 1927-1930: guilt, transcendence, truth

Abstract: This thesis investigates Heidegger’s concept of freedom between 1927 and 1930. In it, I argue that Heidegger advocates a radical reinvention of the positive concept of freedom in confrontation with Immanuel Kant and Henri Bergson. I also argue, against the grain of recent literature, that this conception remains the same as it is found in Being and Time and in the key texts concerning freedom from the period immediately after its publication: ‘The Essence of Ground’ [WG], Metaphysical Foundations of Logic [GA26], The Essence of Human Freedom [GA31], and ‘On the Essence of Truth’ [WW]. In Chapter 1, I interpret the argument of the lecture course The Essence of Human Freedom as Heidegger’s attempt to dismiss the question of the freedom of the will. In doing so, I argue, he critically repeats the arguments that Bergson provides in Time and Free Will. In Chapter 2, I turn to Being and Time to follow the thread of Heidegger’s argument, leading to the claim that Dasein is fundamentally free but, as inauthentic, also typically unfree. In Chapter 3 I investigate this apparent paradox further, showing that Heidegger, without using the term, is advocating a positive, rather than a negative, conception of unfreedom in evaluating inauthentic Dasein as unfree. In Chapter 4, I show how this positive conception also arrives as a critical confrontation with Kant and Bergson, where authenticity is conceived as Dasein’s being-its-self in an ontological sense. In Chapter 5, I build on the above to demonstrate that the arguments in Being and Time concerning guilt, the arguments in WG and GA26 concerning transcendence, and the arguments in WW concerning truth all complement each other in a single concept of freedom: Dasein’s being its self by choosing to be the ground of its world, rather than fleeing from this existential responsibility.