DOI: 10.25136/2409-8728.2023.5.39624

Abstract: Specific character of subject-object relations in humanities is analysed. The article gives the critique of naturalist approaches, which demand to determine social events on the basis of external observational features. It is proved that it is impossible to fix social events without taking into account agents’ motives and without references to the meaning which events has to them. Meaning is the most important concept in humanities, so it is impossible to describe social reality ignoring the world of meanings. Social reality is not independent from our ways of understanding and interpreting meanings. Moreover, our representations of social reality are the most important part of this reality. From the other side, man as a subject of humanities is formed by society and culture which he tries to study. He cannot regard them from outside as an usual external object. We cannot exactly calculate in what degree our thought is determined by socio-cultural factors in order to deactivate those determinations on the way to objective knowledge. Socio-humanitarian knowledge has transcendental status. Discussing how socio-class interests or language effect our knowledge we concern fundamental conditions of cognitive experience as such. Because of that natural sciences’ (technological) model of knowledge cannot be applied in humanities. Here we do not investigate some outer object for the sake of manipulation. We make our self-understanding deeper. Double mutual penetration of subject and object in humanities constitutes its fundamental difference from natural sciences.

DOI: 10.25136/2409-8728.2020.4.32509

Abstract: This article presents a philosophical analysis of the idea and attempts of rational structuring of the language of science and philosophy. This idea was especially popular in philosophy of the Modern Age. The correlation of this idea with the existing features of New European Philosophy is revealed. It is demonstrated that instrumental approach towards language was not accidental: it stemmed from the idea on the sovereignty of mind, which in the XX century was revived in the logical positivism. It was also implemented in practice of modern science since the beginning of scientific revolution of the XVII century. The authors compare the reasoning of the representatives of classical New European Philosophy and representatives of logical positivism with the practice of modern science. Paradoxes of the concept of ideal language are determined. On the one hand, its formation should become a preliminary means for smoothing the path to cognition; while on the other – it is necessary to cognize the world before building it. Moreover, the introduction of ideal language is possible only on the grounds of the natural. Thus, the flaws of the natural should be eliminated with help of the natural. The dependence of rationally structured language from the natural is retained in the language of modern science. Any of its formalizations and terminologizations is partial. The system of meanings of the traditional language remains the basis and background for interpretation of any scientific theories. Natural languages ensure our affiliation to a certain socio-cultural community with the inherent to it ways of interpreting meanings, within the framework of which the value of scientific cognition becomes evident.  

DOI: 10.7256/2454-0757.2018.6.26078

Abstract: This article determines the philosophical aspects of translation, which as demonstrated, relate to the problem of the identity of meaning. This problem has not been successfully resolved in the logical semantics. The author criticizes the “theory of expression”, according to which a thought (meaning) is formed at the pre- and extra-linguistic level, while merely being expressed in the language; as well as the “paradigm of name”: perception that the main function of language expressions is the denotement of a subject, that the world as such divides into the subjects, properties, actions independently of the language. The article analyzes and compares the existed in classical philosophy and present in modern philosophy approaches towards the problems of understanding, meaning of the text, correlation of mind and language. The author advocates the theory that translation always means interpretation. It can be realize at various levels: denotation, connotation, intertextual connections, etc. As the meaning of text generally is a “thing-in-itself”, because the meaning does not exists before and besides its expressions, we cannot compare different translations with a certain absolute standard. Thus, there do not exist the absolute criteria of an unequivocally accurate translation. The interaction of semantic worlds can bring out the new shades of meaning.