ABSTRACT

Ruptash O.V. Heuristic Potential of the Concept of Meaning in Paradigms of the Human Sciences. – Manuscript.

Thesis for a Doctor degree in Philosophy іn speciality 09.00.09 – Philosophy of Science. – H. S. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. – Kyiv, 2015.

The thesis is devoted to the close scrutiny of the concept of meaning and its explications in paradigms of knowledge in the human sciences potential. It is argued that the definition of meaning and clarifying of its characteristics is disposed between the two main poles of being – the Existent, that is a boundary of the scientifically specific meaning, and the Ought-to-Be – a boundary of an absolute sense. They determine a variety of approaches and interpretations of both philosophical and scientific modes. The principle aspects of the study of the meaning (ontological, anthropological, epistemological, and axiological) within the philosophy of science are defined.

A conceptual base of the research of meaning is revealed in the core streams of philosophical and methodological approaches to the humanities (hermeneutics, phenomenology, structuralism and post-structuralism) and also in various versions of the positivist methodology. They maintain logical, semantic, linguistic, psychological, social, historical, cultural, symbolic, and cognitive researches of the phenomenon of meaning in the human sciences. It is argued that the specificity of human sciences cognition is laid in the process of reflection, that is methodologically organized understanding and interpretation (hermeneutics, phenomenology) on a par with construction and deconstruction (structuralism, post-structuralism) of the investigated objects.

The author proposes to distinguish paradigms as theories in the human sciences and two leading pattern-paradigms: the paradigm of the humanities and the paradigm of the natural sciences which is partially used in the humanities. The differences between the natural sciences paradigms (focused on description) and the human sciences paradigms (focused on evaluation) are analyzed in the process of scientific problems study.

A concept of the human sciences paradigm is defined. It is a set of features of the established and proven in scientific practice samples of human-scientific knowledge built on a broad outlook foundation of human understanding of self and his/her activity in the world, and specifying spiritual and meaningful, along with human-commensurable dimensions of the subject research area.

A great attention is paid to the importance of transition from classical science to post-non-classical science by means of meaningful transformations of paradigms. The classical science ideal is value-neutral science. It does not put the question about the meaning of life and avoids the axiological perspective. Nowadays the reorientation of research to the value and meaningful determination of scientific knowledge is revealed. It is argued that the methodological synthesis is based not only on the necessity to “tighten” the humanities to the level of natural sciences due to the imitation of their research procedures and principles. Moreover, it is also grounded on the reverse process – recognition of speculative designs and models as the core elements of research as well as observation and experiment.

The methodological attitudes of axiological potentialism have been developed within the scope of which the meaning is interpreted as an actualized potential of human interaction with the world in the dialogue of the Self and the Other, in the connection of the Immanent and the Transcendent, the Real and the Potential, the Existent and the Ideal in accordance with the principle characteristics of human sciences knowledge. Such spiritual coordinates as intellectual the True and the False, moral the Good and the Evil, and aesthetic the Beautiful and the Ugly are assumed as the basis of humanization of scientific and technical knowledge in this context. It is proved that the concept of meaning serves as the integrative and communicative link of scientific, religious, artistic and common knowledge components of the modern world view. Current trends in the application of advanced technologies within the process of human development and education have been widely investigated.

Keywords: knowledge, meaning, methodology, paradigm, sense, the human sciences, philosophy of science.