On the problem of existence of the modality concept in modern humanitarian and philosophical science
The concepts of modality and modus are polysemantic scientific terms, which corresponds to their inner nature. Concepts of modus and modality are widely used in all the humanities. They are used extensively in psychology, linguistics, jurisprudence, logic, theology, musicology in Russian, English and German literature. It is obvious that by modality for the diversity of meanings in different scientific disciplines some general phenomena are understood, a special type of organization of reality. Nevertheless, attempts to summarize the content of the terms mode and modality in various sciences in order to identify their semantic invariant have not yet been made. This problem is in the purview of philosophy. Analysis of the concepts outlined in the humanities enables us to state a number of laws of their existence. The concepts of modus and modality have specific content within each of the humanities, and these contents are significantly different. Thus, the set of meanings of these concepts looks like a mosaic of unrelated concepts. Within each of the humanities these terms do not have a stable content; their semantic field is extremely wide. Concepts modus and modality in philosophy are not identified. Over the past ten years about thirty theses of candidates and doctors of philosophy have been written, where these concepts are marked in the subject. But only four of them (except relating to the specialty Logic) are a substantial elaboration of these concepts. Most researchers either do refuse to clarify their content, or understand them in the spirit of any other science, mostly philology, logic, or psychology. Very often the concept of modus and modality are replaced in scientific texts with the terms form, aspect, expression, or are thought of as identical to these terms. Their own philosophical meaning, despite the fact that it exists, is usually not observed in todays papers. In this situation, it is natural that philosophical terms synonymous to modus are not understood. As a result, modern philosophy has no idea of the continuity of the tradition of modal thinking. The analysis of articles and theses shows that the methodological potential of the concepts is not yet disclosed because the conception of the nature of modality is not worked out. As a result, the presence of the terms modus and modality in the themes of scientific works, especially philosophical ones, does not specify any methodology with rare exceptions.