Problems and Concepts of Philosophy and Philosophy of Science: the Phenomenon of Contextuality

This article refers to the analysis of a ratio of science and culture in the context of the new European philosophy. Science as a sociocultural phenomenon always had a special place in culture. Rapid development of science within the last two centuries naturally forces philosophy to look for new approaches to understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge and scientific activity. The understanding of transition from the accentuated search of invariant structures of knowledge to the research of contextuality of cognitive actions can be one of the ways of approaching the solution to this problem. Generalizing this guideline, it seems possible to apply it to the understanding of historical experience of philosophy of science. The author's view of category of contextuality which is closely connected with the concepts of text, language and semantics is presented in the article. Proceeding from the basic interrelation between the concepts of "text" and "context", the author carries out the analysis of the capacity of language to state scientific and philosophical conclusions. Analyzing the text as the sequence of language symbols, and proceeding from the idea that the language sign is the unity of what is meant and what is meaning, the author highlights three main types of ratios: meant and meant, meant and meaning and meaning and meaning. Semantics in this context appears to be the science capable to identify the meanings of language signs. The text as a number of the interrelated language signs thus begins to perform the function of a context in relation to them. Proceeding from such understanding of contextuality the natural conclusion about a possibility to understand philosophy as the process of self-determination of a person and society in the modern world by means of reason, that is with the help of science, is drawn. Thus in human culture the archetype of objectivity assuming the possibility of a positive knowledge of this world is formed. However, in the end of the article it is also noted that centuries-old philosophical understanding of thinking as the tool of knowledge naturally revealed contradictions in cognitive abilities of a person that, in turn led to the formation of an archetype of subjectivity.