Cognitive Hermeneutics

The intersection of hermeneutics and cognitive science: the study of how interpretation is grounded in human cognitive architecture—perception, memory, attention, emotion, and reasoning. Cognitive hermeneutics asks: What cognitive processes enable us to interpret texts, utterances, and signs? How do schemas, frames, and mental models shape understanding? How does the brain handle ambiguity, metaphor, and narrative? It bridges the humanities and the sciences, using experimental methods to test hermeneutic claims and using hermeneutic insights to enrich cognitive models. Cognitive hermeneutics reveals that interpretation is not a vague, mystical act but a set of learnable, improvable cognitive skills.

Example: “Her cognitive hermeneutics experiment showed that readers primed with a specific emotion interpreted the same ambiguous sentence as either hopeful or ominous—demonstrating that interpretation is not just textual but embodied.”

Cognitive Hermeneutics by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal April 22, 2026