Language as a theoretical reality: application of Edmund Husserl's distinguishing between the empirical and the theoretical for formal tautology analysis

The paper proposes the analysis of a formally tautological construction "thought is investigated by thought", which is considered as a closed microsemiosis module. The complex analysis method includes the following constituents: distinguishing between the theoretical and the empirical performed by E. Husserl in the first volume of his Logical Investigations; phenomenological empathy on the judgment level; Yu. Lotman's semiotic conception of information preservation and generation in symmetric and asymmetric structures. Methodological dichotomy between subject and object may be rehabilitated through observing the tautological judgment in both static and dynamic modes. It allows to treat the synchronization process of the thought subject and the judgment subject as a distinction criterion for analytic and synthetic reasoning. There is a description suggested, when the statement about false distinguishing between analytic and synthetic reasoning could be possible (Quine, particularly). During the delimitation of theoretical and empirical consideration levels of the same judgment, concepts of pseudo-analytical and quasi-synthetic judgments have been introduced. It is described how language assumes the function of the thought theory. The thought "stops" itself inside language, whereas facts of language organize themselves on the basis of "pure logic" and grammar contrary to their intrinsic spontaneity. In such a condition, language may be regarded as a theoretical system, which connects two separated empirical realities opposed to language: thought formalized by language and objects described by language. In this case, language acquires analytic, static and symmetric properties and may be identified as the border between knowledge and belief, which was mentioned by I. Kant. Disturbance of this border induces the metastable theoretic reality that is identified as ideology. Ideology generates its own additional empiric reality, discourse. Discourse is described by means of the concept "thinking language". The extent is shown to which the conditions of evidence could be provided inside discourse. The concept of ideology is explicated as a product of "false consciousness" which may be observed as a relatively stable structure, but it should be interpreted according to Leo Tolstoy, not Marxism. The results of the analysis allow working out a new approach to phenomenological clarification of the concept system including four elements: theory, language, ideology and discourse. This develops the critique of empiricism and linguistic turn philosophy, demonstrates the inner logic of post-Kantian European philosophy. An example of such critique is an analysis of Kant's and Husserl's contribution to the preparation of the linguistic turn.

Keywords

Authors

References