Ontological modeling of the psychological field of a play
Authors: Khairulin Oleh 
Published: December 2023

The problems of checking and experimental verification for new knowledge remain relevant since foundation and development of scientific psychology. Historical evidence of this is the long and permanent methodological disagreements between the leading psychological branches (such as behaviorism, psychoanalysis, gestalt psychology, psychosynthesis, activity psychology, cognitive psychology, psychophysiology, coaching) and most other psychological branches. The absence of a methodological architectonics universal for psychology, an optimal design of checking and experimental verification for new scientific knowledge causes deserved criticism and comments on the objectivity of psychological research. The problems of checking and verifying new psychological knowledge are primarily associated with the dominance of the laboratory-experimental method in science; presumption of a causal model of scientific rationality; neglect of the possibilities of the intelligible multidisciplinary mode for scientific objectivism; perceived as secondary potentials and advantages of postnonclassical scientific rationality as well as factors of volatility of changes in social experience, features of the post-industrial (information) society and postmodern reality. The expressive features of the psychological research for actual objects of scientific knowledge are related to the fact that the most complex objects are phenomena that in the scientific sense are of fundamental importance as cultural universals, objects of the intelligible reality of eternal entities (Aristotle, Averoes (Ibn Rushd), I. Kant, J.-F. Herbart , E. Husserl, etc.). For example: communication, labor, socialization, intersubjectiveness, power, emergentness, creativity, collective knowledge, love, civilization, game, synchrony, moral act, disposition, social value, group reflection, collective unconscious, command spirit, attractiveness, trust, discourse, narrative and other. Also, these objects have an important region-generative value (E. Huserl), expressive epistemological (M. Foucault), cultural-historical (L. Vygotsky) and diachronic (F. de Saussure) aspects of scientific knowledge. The gnoseological content and volume, other features of cultural universals, similar to the games phenomenon, objectively complicate the content and choice of scientific research criteria, the standards for the representativeness of the empirical sample, the content, order and protocols of valid data correlation. Under such conditions, the presumption and dominance of the classical naturalistic experimental method (natural or laboratory experiment) is a untrustworthy and conditionally reliable methodological basis. The presented objective problems of modern systems of empirical verification for the results of psychological research, in particular, the problems of the game, require the search for more reliable foundations for the methodological program of verification for scientific knowledge. Important aspects of such a search are also the need to take into account the characteristics of the post-industrial (information) society and postmodern reality in psychological cognition, to use the advantages of postnonclassical scientific rationality. The important scientific contribution is the universality of such a program in relation to promising psychological research, as well as, if necessary, to the revision of existing scientific knowledge. The implementation of such tasks (on the example of the reconstruction for the games psychological field) makes it possible to use the status and role of a psychological tool for a methodological facility, which is ontological designing (the names “formal ontologization” and “ontological engineering” are used synonymously). In the circumstances of psychological research, ontological designing is a specially organized intelligible descriptive method for experimental verification of the results of psychological research. The product of applying the methodology of ontological designing in the circumstances of the games psychological research is the formation of an epistemological intelligible substrate – a descriptive cognitive field of the scientific object “game” with a verification function for this field. Because of the formation for a games psychological research on the basis of ontological designing and the universal norms of the categorical matrix for modern socio-humanitarian theory (the levels of “concrete”, “single”, “special”, “general” and “universal”), epistemic, hermeneutic heredity of psychological knowledge, rational empiricism is also possible. In the framework of the our research, ontological designing is: a) the psychological method of descriptive reconstruction of scientific knowledge; b) a facility of verifying the results of a psychological research for the scientific object “game”; c) a productive program for completing the games psychological research as a universal, a fundamental polyphenomenon that has a distinct non-spatial and timeless socio-psychological genesis, a complex structure and functionalism; d) the thinking style of a modern scientist for a socio-humanitarian profile in the circumstances of fleeting changes in empirical material; e) a facility for creating an architectonic intelligible model-matrix of a cognitively full-weighted, harmoniously structured, optimally exhaustive, logically balanced, hermeneutical coherent, epistemically relevant, constructively understandable games psychological field. The scientific basis for the methodological modernization of the norms for verifying the results of the games psychological research based on ontological designing is the approaches that implement the program of philosophical apriorism and logicism, the methodological positions of analytical philosophy, postnonclassical-oriented principles, approaches, facilities, tools and standards of psychological knowledge. The ontological model of the games psychological field includes five levels for scientific empirical conceptualization: 1) the level of the concrete, one-time empirical natural science fact of the hic et nunc game (a naturalistic empirical fact established “here and now” through the latest, fresh natural or laboratory experiment); 2) the level of the single, separate games manifestations in its epistemic, cultural-historical empiricism (the experience of empirical facts “here and now” – experiment, the results of past naturalistic facts available to the researcher); 3) the level of the distinctive, special explications of the games invariants, depending on the different ontogenetic conditions of such a manifestation (age dependencies; features of human development, stages of his socialization, social and professional self-realization, etc.); 4) the level of the general, common attributes and modes of the games explications, present in each fact of the entire play-based empiricism of the current and previous cultural-historical range accessible to the researcher; 5) the level of the universal – the level of attributes of the games phenomenon, which do not depend on existential, primarily chronological, spatial, situational prerequisites and are inherent in any, even imaginary, simulated, probable the games manifestation. Such foundations make it possible to synchronize the diachronic and synchronous aspects of the historical-rational process of the scientific knowledge for the game in a general research program. The formalized structural composition and regularities of construction of the ontological model of the subject games area is based on an established set of entities connected by various relationships (thesaurus, term/concept, attribute of a concept, relation of concepts, class/set of terms/concepts, axioms/rules/constraints of concepts and their relations, instance, etc.). On the range of research conceptualization, according to the levels of the categorical matrix, such an designing order is optimally suitable for creating an architectonic intelligible model-matrix of the psychological field of the Game.