Categorical matrix of vitacultural methodology: from thought-activity to canon
Authors: Furman Anatoliy 
Published: December 2023

The fundamental methodological development of the categorical matrix as one of the most powerful and the most effective i n s t r u m e n t s of reflexive thought-activity, philosophical and scientific thought-activity and professional methodologization was carried out in the problem field of two oppositely directed and at the same time most promising trends in the methodology development as a newly appeared w o r l d of birth, development and manifestation of hitherto unexplored possibilities of conscious ability and hidden resources of humans pure thinking actualization. The first direction in the formation of this unique world is connected with the emergence of the s p h e r e of professional methodologization as a unique reflexive p r a c t i c e of the methodology itself, the essence of which is in the freedom of thought existence of a person or a group with the forms, methods, means of consciously and self-consciously carried out activity, the second – in the creation of all possible i d e a l s of meta-theorizing and meta-methodologization, where the subject of the last is an a r s e n a l of the latest means and tools of constantly renewed at the “meta-” level of methodological reflection on previously acquired tools of thought-activity. It is argued that the synthesis result of these two trends is the formation of the categorical order of a methodology in its central link – in the innovative form of the categorical m a t r i x, which integrates the essential, worldview universal and culturally significant k n o w l e d g e in mutually complementary unity of the methodology-as-an-action and methodology-as-a-practice. Based on the principles, regularities and standards of the author’s concept of creating a categorical matrix, a thought-reflexive substantiation received the first and the second v e r s i o n s of the philosophically oriented, epistemically integral, actionally organized and canonically perfected vita-cultural methodology as a s t a n d a r d of modern methodology in general in their constructive comparison as stages of the newest evolution of ratio-humanitarian knowledge about the forms, methods, norms, means and tools of professional methodologization. In general, the methodological o p t i c s of the argued typological creation of the named matrix is constructed according to the canons and parameters of post-non-classical scientific rationality and in the form of a five-module set of lenses-instruments of reflexive thought-activity from relatively simple to the most complex at the following levels: specific (quaternary or quintet thought-scheme), individual (the very construction of the matrix in the unity of its clearly classified according to the dialectical categories of the inner part and the outer contour), special (the typological approach in the indivisibility of its concepts, principles, procedures and intellectual tools), general (the sphere of professionally implemented methodologization), universal (vitacultural methodology as the canonical form of methodology in general). T h e f i r s t version of the categorical matrix of the world of methodology and the sphere of methodologization, which was created in early 2012 and first presented to the general public of researchers, has five main a d v a n t a g e s: a) in the harmonized picture of conceptual-categorical means highlights the dialectical complementarity and ontophenomenal unity of methodology and methodologization that enables a high functional self-organization of consciousness of the methodologists’ group in its synergistic existential environment – in reality of pure thinking; b) in the central part of the matrix, by the principle of quintet, arranges five methodological categories in horizontal and vertical, organizing them into separate categorical t a x a, and thus fixes the essential categoric mosaic of the modern methodology; c) successfully names the binary poles of the matrix’s outer contour: “the world of methodology – the sphere of methodologization” and “thinking-activity as the basis of culture – a step-by-step implemented vitacultural methodologization”; d) establishes the latest methodological disciplines – methodosophy, methodologics, methodoengineering – and outlines their subject fields in the text; e) at the intersection of the three fundamentals of the methodology in the lower right corner of the matrix, it places the fourth foundation – philosophical methodologizations and methodology, which at the level of comprehensively significant goes beyond empirics and social experience into conscious acts of the substance existence of pure thinking, the existential c o r r e l a t e of which is a methodological thinking. T h e s e c o n d version of the categorical matrix of vitacultural methodology, which was designed this year, has more extensive and perfect cartography, which primarily from now on concerns the two-axis – semantic and categorical – its outer contour. This newly created matrix has five reflexively reasoned a d v a n t a g e s, which at the same time clearly establish the evolutionary shift in the development of methodological knowledge over the past decade of thinking-deed creativity: 1) fundamental categorical universals, consolidating the self-development unity of the world of the methodology and the sphere of methodologization of the outer contour, received clarifying conceptual-terminological definitions, covering six attributedly inherent features in the general direction of creating a particularly favorable, modular-developmental, space of actualization and existentializing the expanded conscious ability of each participant of problem-conflict communication; 2) the upper and lower poles of the matrix’s outer contour are considered, on the one hand, the methodology as an obligatory component of culture in eight coordinates of worldview here-existence and in its semantic, graphic-schematic, means-instrumental and conceptual-categorical enrichment, on the other – a five-level organization of methodological knowledge (philosophical, general scientific, subject-scientific, subject-thematic and specific-situational methodologies), the operation of which is most fully implemented in the metasystem of vitacultural (canonical) methodologization; 3) the latest methodology, essentially based on philosophical knowledge, one of the most important directions of its development justifies the need for methodological reconstruction of the main problems of philosophy, but from a special, supersubjective, reflexive, point of view: from the completeness of the a d e q u a c y of consciously applied foundations, principles, rules, conceptual resources and categorical means of the complexity or comprehended primacy of a separate fundamental problem; a number of such problems are fixed in the outline of the matrix: “being – consciousness,” “human – world,” “culture – life,” “philosophy – social experience,” “science – art,” “theory – practice,” “consciousness (thinking) – activity,” “thinking – commitment,” “thought – act”; at the same time, super-reflexive transformations in these problematic niches of methodologization should be based on the innovative achievements of advanced methodological training, namely, on the modern achievements of the philosophical methodology, the reflexive-action scenario of metamethodologization has been worked out, the emergence of the metatheory of consciousness, the methodological optics of the post-non-classical type of scientific rationality and on the establishment of professional methodologization as a unique freedom-practice of the methodology itself, as well as compliance with the requirements of the author’s principle of the thinking and performance unity, that received an essential reflection in the concept and categorical concept of “thinking-activity,” containing a set of advantages: enriches the arsenal of categorical means, makes possible the implementation of a cyclic-action approach and the prospects for the implementation of organizational-action games, reorients the intellectual resources of consciousness to the canonical rhythms of methodologization; 4) the methodology in its separate formation now goes to the realisation of exemplary, canonically completed events of its own here-existence, that is, to the construction of the general scheme of the methodological canon and the substantiation of their more or less complete systematics; it is proved that any repeated reflexivity and especially postaction super-reflexivity in a competent methodological performance gravitate to an deed canon, which is a methodological i n v a r i a n t as one of its vitacultural standards, that is differently implemented in objectified products of professional methodologization and pure thinking itself (a vivid example of such a canon is the author’s methodological optics of a five-module set of lenses-tools of this study as an effective thinking-activity); it is argued the intransitive significance of the logical structure of the psychological canon and the premises of the emergence of the V.A. Romenets’ canonical psychology and our experience in carrying out the metatheoretic reconstruction of the subject field of the last; through a chain of generalizations, it is confirmed that the vitacultural methodology, covering transcendent and immanent, noumenal and phenomenal, conscious and active, is a great thinking-act c a n o n, confirming the following preliminary conclusions: a) any canonization as a mandatory procedure is a matter of methodology, b) each philosophically mature, scientifically comprehensive and empirically validated methodology constitutes a great canon, c) from the idea of the methodological canon it is necessary to move to the elaboration of the hierarchical system of such canons as the most perfect organizations of realizing the conscious ability of a person, d) a holistic metasystem of methodology as a canon of a great deed can be obtained only by using all available resources of professional methodologization and at the final stage of its super-reflexive postact, e) the methodological canon in its global dimensions, organizing the interpenetration of methodology and methodologization as two mega-realities, has a hierarchically modular, step-by-step construction (methodological and metamethodological stages of development, three methodological optics of scientific rationality, a set of methodological approaches, five methodological modules, various layers of methodological tools), f) in any case, the methodological canon is a consciously mature, with access to reflection and self-reflection, the source of a standard carried out thinking-activity, an integral engine of the act of full-fledged methodologization; 5) the vitacultural methodology in its canonical provision achieves the complete realisation of the a c t i o n s of thinking-activity, methodological reflection, competent methodologization in their single and exceptional step-by-step, mostly covital, existence as responsible thinking-activity; so the ideal-real, exemplary authentic reality of methodologization appears, which all the time is being created anew in the event e x i s t e n c e of compatible thought communication on the verge of transcendental and immanent, noumenal and phenomenal, spiritual and natural, substantive and random, unknown and understandable, objective and subjective, organized and chaotic, developing and ossified, that is, in the situational flow of the here-existence of the step-by-step-dependent substances of consciousness, thinking, thought according to the canon “here-now-full-always”; in this interpretation, the newly created categorical matrix constitutes one of the most instrumentally perfect methodological canons of the methodology itself, where the act of methodologization unfolds as a component-by-component evolution of a fully realized e v e n t, which covers: p r e-s i t u a t i o n – the experience of transcendence of the thinking person as a base of the co-rhythmic actualization of their intentional fields of consciousness and thinking; s i t u a t i o n – the acting-cyclical creation of the modular-developmental space of team thinking-implementation as a regularly stable restoration of the special problem-communication tension of human essential forces, characterized by common significance, transcendental source, collision, drama; m o t i v a t i o n – overcoming the conflict of problem-situational reality, overcoming the chaos of polymotivation of participants in thought-communication and choosing the general direction of movement-progress forward, which is confirmed in such features of methodologization as the elimination of conflict conditions and the formation of a single goal of further cooperation, the development of synthetic inspiration for joint entry into the substance flows of pure productive thinking and the correlation of the main vector of the polymotivation field with a reflexive ideal of methodological creativity; d e e d a c t i o n – a thinking-active action that significantly disrupts the problem-conflict situation through the creation of favorable conditions for the spontaneous fountain of thoughts, ideas, meanings, and thought-schemes of communicants, but in the self-organizational weaving of the pulsation of the consciousness functionals on the verge of the apogee of ecstatic, self-absorbing, tension of spiritual forces and mental abilities of each, combining four attributive characteristics of methodologization: implementation of the very act-event of thinking-activity, variable-changeable scenario of the course of this step-by-step action in order to obtain the desired products of pure thinking and polyreflexification, achievement of creative ecstasy of the team search for ways and means of solving the worked-out problem, personal growth and enrichment of the transcendental experience of participants; a f t e r a c t i o n – final reflection and the resulting self-reflection of productivity and success of team or individually performed thinking-activity and coverage with an expanded conscious view in a position over k n o w l e d g e of four types: about objects, about the activity itself, reflective and purely personal; at the same time, the incompleteness of the act of methodologization after achieving the goal and solving the dual task of intellectual cooperation has several reasons (ontological inexhaustibility of being, its phenomenal diversity, epistemological infinity of the path to truth, epistemological unlimitedness and relativity of the world, psychological ambivalence of feelings after the commited, the impossibility of creating an absolutely universal methodological optics), while its attributive canon is the implementation of reflexive-action closure of methodological thinking with various reflexive identifications.