Conventionalism and the research potential of semantics

This article analyzes some approaches to the phenomenon of understanding and the role of language in this matter; one of the possible reconstructions of the thesis about the absence of semantics in natural language is proposed on the basis of the well-known position of L. Wittgenstein’s late philosophy that the meaning of a word is its use; As a result of some reconstructions, it was established that the a priori of meaning, being an absolutely necessary condition for one or another judgment, presents semantics in a new aspect of vision: the possibility of constructing new schemes and relations between different (sometimes multilevel) segments of reality, etc., are determined by syntactic and pragmatic structures, to the creation of which the mental space is directly related. In addition, the paper analyzes the thesis about the key role of metaphor (the approach to the metaphor is based on the concept of J. Lakoff, presented by him in his work “Women, Fire and Dangerous Things”) in the process of creating new knowledge in the context of the approach: the meaning of a word is its use. This became possible on the basis of the analysis of the functioning of terminology in the language of science and the connection of the latter with natural language: the mechanism for creating analogies, images, etc. ensures the formation of a certain logic of the language, going beyond which for the subject of knowledge would guarantee the absolute impossibility of understanding. The main object of research in this article is the a priori meaning. The working hypothesis of this research boils down to the following: the missing semantics, formed by the syntactic structure of the language and corresponding to the logic of the language, constitutes new schemes of understanding, both scientific and ordinary. The purpose of this work is to substantiate the fact that one of the arguments in favor of the reality of the missing semantics is the phenomenon of metaphor. The article uses the following research methods: the method of epistemological explication and the method of cognitive analysis. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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