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SEMANTIC ANALYSIS: METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS

Mental Map as a Method of Objectivization of Subject Reality

 

Semantic analysis reveals the manner in which objects appear for the subject on the mental map.

 

The mental map stands out as a concept of conditions under which a requirement can be reached and realized as a result of subjective activity within the framework of specific subjective reality. The conditions are represented on the mental map as means for realization of requirements or objects. These conditions are reached by means of actions (activity).

 

An element integral to scientific analysis is an adequate/complete representation of any type of object by means of describing our subjective world in the manner natural for our mentality in a certain conceptual system. Language is a tool common for such a description to all sciences (the second signal system). Since description of an object of any nature in the sign system is abstract and independent of its origin, there should exist ways of analysis of any type of objects universal for all branches of science. The differences between the humanities and sciences in this sense are nothing but imaginary. In both cases it is not the world itself that is studied, but its mental representation or the "mental map".

 

"Inadequacy" of theories in humanities is not simply the effect of incomplete description of their objects. For object definition to be adequate it is necessary to give 3 characteristics that would determine its properties, their intensity and rigidity. The humanities are usually restricted to stating the first (sometimes, second) component, but they never take rigidity into account.

 

Subject representation on the mental map is only possible in the shape of an individual, that is the frame of reference – a definite set of properties possessing sufficient stability in time (temperament, character, personality, habitudes etc.) Possible reference systems can be interpreted as specific conditions compatible with other frames of reference and giving rise to different interpretations of subject reality. Other "subjects" in this respect are other probable mental systems. Conditions for subjectness in this case are essentially an attribute of "personification", animation of the mind, and the possibilities of constructing a mental map under these conditions. Subjects printed on the mental map are appearing as a result of some conventional attribution as acknowledgement of the possibility of constructing another mental map on terms equal to this conventional object. That mental map would correspond to a certain new subjective reality.

 

The mental map is actually the subject's representation of the "outside world", and it is formed on the basis of components independent of him in the general stream of his sensations.  The immediate stable experience of a complex of these sensations establishes the correlation between the subject and the object on the mental map. That is the objective part of our experience, because it has no immediate links to the subject's will. Those combinations of sensations that are immediately linked to his volition functions are attributed by the subject to himself and defined as the subjective component of his reality.  The complex of sensations not immediately linked to an act of volition would be interpreted as external in relation to the subject world, associated with the source of these sensations and correlated with an "outside" object of a new "outside" object reality. Thus we appear to be bounded by the cocoon of sensations that we take for markers of our contact with the "outside world" as a source of these sensations.   Independence of certain classes of sensations of the subject's will leads to the formation of an image of their source - the outside world and creation of the objectivity concept, i.e. independence of this source of the subject.

 

The adequacy of a mental model of the world (mental map) depends on how well we can orient in it, how successfully we have been adapted to this "source" (medium, environment etc.). That means, how effectively we are able to satisfy our needs.

 

Therefore, Semantic Analysis must present an actual reconstruction of the mental map and reveal objective principles that determine the behavior of a specific subject.

 

So, within the given paradigm we are not dealing with understanding of "outside" object reality, but with its construction. In our opinion, principles of mental map construction as structuring of subject reality possess more of an instrumental than philosophical sense.

 

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