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Measure development and the hermeneutic task

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Abstract

I examine the dynamics of measure development using two case studies: temperature, and health-related quality of life. I argue, following Bas van Fraassen and Leah McClimans that in each case these dynamics have a hermeneutic structure. Measure development is plagued by epistemic circularity, as is the task of interpreting a text, and similar strategies can be used in both measure development and hermeneutics to overcome that circularity. I show that Hans Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics in particular are an effective lens through which to examine the development of the temperature standard as described by Hasok Chang. Despite similar grounding in hermeneutics, I note an important difference between measure development for temperature and for health-related quality of life. Namely, while the meaning of temperature can be standardized, the meaning of health-related quality of life cannot. This standardization of meaning for the temperature concept represents a limit to the analogy with hermeneutics. Finally, I argue that the indeterminacy we find in health-related quality of life measurement is a result not only of analogy with the hermeneutic task, but of full-fledged participation in it.

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Notes

  1. Alexandrova (2017) suggests that any scientifically useful theory of well-being would need to be contextual. She posits a theory of child well-being in her 2017 monograph A Philosophy for the Science of Well-being, but does not offer or recognize a consensus theory of health-related quality of life.

  2. Kuhn (1961) seems to argue the contrary—that we are often unable to make a successful measurement until theory tells us what outcomes to expect. Yet he distinguishes the situation where we are making measurements to justify a theory from the situation where we are still learning what quantity we are measuring. For van Fraassen, these two processes, taking a measurement and learning what we are measuring, are inevitably entangled and form the problem of coordination. I claim that solving this problem is analogous to Gadamer’s hermeneutic task.

  3. Nancy Cartwright and Rosa Runhardt argue that health-related quality of life is a Ballung concept. Ballung concepts—such as poverty, disability, and quality of life—comprise a cluster of meanings, and do not admit of unique measurement values. Instead, they are often best represented by a table of values reflecting their multivocal status (Cartwright and Montuschi 2014).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Leah McClimans, Kareem Khalifa, Anna Alexandrova, Michael Dickson, Hasok Chang, Jae Kennedy, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful commentary on this paper.

Funding

This paper was written with support of the Collaborative on Health Reform and Independent Living Fellowship (CHRIL-F), a postdoctoral training program funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (Grant #90ARCP0001) in the US Department of Health and Human Services. The contents of this article do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR or HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

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Correspondence to Laura M. Cupples.

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Cupples, L.M. Measure development and the hermeneutic task. Synthese 198, 2375–2390 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02213-w

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