Chapter 4: A Materialist Hermeneutics of Culture: Etics and Ethics

The theories of the above philosophers were not derived through empirically based methodologies, nor were they open to falsification. Hence the call (answered in this chapter) for a new materialist hermeneutic of culture in the form of critiques that (1) use logico-empirical, inductive-deductive, quantifiable public procedures that are testable through replication by independent observers, (2) eschew deductive reasoning from a priori principles in the Kantian or Rawlsian traditions, (3), seek solutions based on extant social conditions and provide epistemically reliable explanations and solutions, (4) explain infrastructural and structural arrangements at the micro and macro levels, whether configured nationally or globally, (5) explain empirically the linkages between infrastructure and structure at the micro and macro levels, (6) explain the causal chain between infrastructure and structure as well as their social consequences, (7) enable proposals for structural and infrastructural reform, (8) provide critiques of methodologies that are epistemically flawed, and (9) provide macro-level critiques of archetypes explaining the key infrastructural and structural underpinnings of such archetypes in empirical contexts, (10) enable social science research strategies to remedy social pathologies.