“There are two main trunks of human knowledge, growing, perhaps, from one common, but unknown to us root, namely sensibility and reason: through sensibility, objects are given to us, but through reason they are thought.” I. Kant
Knowledge is not limited to the sphere of science, every form public consciousness: science, philosophy, mythology, politics, religion, etc. - have their own specific forms of knowledge, but unlike all the diverse forms of knowledge, scientific knowledge is the process of obtaining objective, true knowledge aimed at reflecting the laws of reality. Scientific knowledge has a threefold task and is associated with the description, explanation and prediction of processes and phenomena of reality.
There are also forms of knowledge that have a conceptual, symbolic or artistic basis. In the history of culture, diverse forms of knowledge that differ from the classical scientific model and standard are classified as extra-scientific knowledge: parascientific, pseudoscientific, quasi-scientific, anti-scientific, pseudoscientific, everyday practical, personal, “folk science”. Since the diverse set of extra-rational knowledge does not lend itself to strict and exhaustive classification, there is a division of the corresponding cognitive technologies into three types: paranormal knowledge, pseudoscience and deviant science.
The initial structure of Cognition is represented by the subject-object relationship, where the question of the possibility of an adequate reproduction by the subject of the essential characteristics of an object (the problem of truth) is the central theme of epistemology (theory of Cognition). Depending on the solution to this issue, philosophy distinguishes the positions of cognitive optimism, skepticism and agnosticism.
In Book VI of the Republic, Plato divides everything accessible to knowledge into two types: comprehended by sensation and cognizable by the mind. The relationship between the spheres of the sensed and the intelligible also determines the relationship between different cognitive abilities: sensations allow us to understand (albeit unreliably) the world of things, reason allows us to see the truth.
What is felt is again divided into two types - the objects themselves and their shadows and images. Faith (πίστις) correlates with the first kind, and likeness (εἰκασία) with the second. By faith we mean the ability to have direct experience. Taken together, these abilities constitute opinion (δόξα). Opinion is not knowledge in the true sense of the word, since it concerns changeable objects, as well as their images. The sphere of the intelligible is also divided into two types - these are the ideas of things and their intelligible similarities. Ideas do not need any prerequisites for their knowledge, representing eternal and unchanging entities accessible only to reason (νόησις). The second type includes mathematical objects. According to Plato's thought, mathematicians only “dream” existence, since they use inferential concepts that require a system of axioms that are accepted without proof. The ability to produce such concepts is understanding (διάνοια). Reason and understanding together constitute thinking, and only it is capable of cognizing the essence. Plato introduces the following proportion: as essence is related to becoming, so thinking is related to opinion; and knowledge is related to faith and reasoning is related to assimilation.
Particularly famous in the theory of knowledge is Plato’s allegory “Myth of the Cave” (or “Parable of the Cave”).
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Epistemological understanding of consciousness.
Clarification of the nature of the relationship between consciousness and its opposite, matter, is the epistemological aspect of the essence of consciousness.
In this aspect consciousness - it is a subjective ideal image of objective reality; the inherent human ability to purposefully and generally reproduce reality in an ideal form. This means that in the epistemological sense, matter and consciousness are mutually exclusive and oppose each other.
Ontological understanding of consciousness.
Consciousness is a property of matter organized in a special way, which arose as a result of the development of the property of reflection, as its highest form. And in this sense, consciousness is material.
Conditions for the emergence of consciousness:
1. Consciousness is a product of social development, for only in contact with other people, carriers of the culture of a given society, does a person become the owner of consciousness.
2. The presence of articulate speech in a person is the most important condition emergence of consciousness.
3. The formation of consciousness would be impossible without a person’s transition from adaptation to labor activity, because only in it does a person move to the highest level of reflection and communicate through speech.
Structure of consciousness
The spiritual world of man (consciousness in in a broad sense) includes the superconscious, conscious and unconscious.
Consciousness from the point of view of the “structure” of a person’s inner spiritual world, it has a number of fundamental distinctive qualities.
Consciousness (in the narrow sense) there is a special area of subjective reality, characteristic only of a social person and controlled by him, existing in the form of ideal images, the content of which is knowledge, will, emotions, norms of value and projects.
Intelligence is a carrier, a form of existence of consciousness.
Knowledge- this is a set of information, the result of the cognition process. It is the main form of existence of consciousness. Knowledge combined with faith leads to conviction. Faith- this is the ability of human consciousness to recognize the truth of something, despite the lack of knowledge and evidence.
However, L. Wittgenstein believed that the existence of faith in knowledge is not caused by the absence or lack of information. If knowledge receives its status as a result of logical design, verification of its reliability, and only in this capacity does it acquire cognitive and social significance, then faith is rooted in practice, is based on sociocultural, communicative testing, social sanction and the general significance of what they believe in. And only then may the need for reflection and criticism of faith arise.
Knowledge based on common sense and everyday experience of people is ordinary, and based on a systematic, purposeful, abstract-logical search for truth - theoretical. Theoretical knowledge can be philosophical, scientific, parascientific.
Emotions and feelings constitute a vast sphere of consciousness associated with a person’s direct relationship with events in the form of experiences.
The properties of consciousness are activity And selectivity.
Unconscious- this is an area in which a person does not give himself an account of the content and nature of the mental processes occurring there, does not control mental processes and phenomena. The unconscious includes the superconscious, subconscious and the mental component of human instinctive activity.
S. Freud was the first to substantiate the analysis of dreams as a way of penetrating the unconscious.
Superconscious(creative intuition) is a certain component of spiritual creativity, which is not controlled by consciousness and leads to the development of innovations and hypotheses.
Subconscious includes mental processes that were once conscious, but brought to the point of automatism, ceased to need control, continuing to function, while helping a person live and work without unnecessary mental overload, conflicts with other people and himself.
Functions of consciousness:1. Cognitive, enabling a person to obtain true knowledge about the phenomena and processes of reality;
2. Estimated, allowing a person, on the basis of what is perceived and known, to develop an evaluative attitude towards him, and later - values;
3. Regulatory, promoting the creation of certain rules, norms of behavior for a person or group of people;
4. Goal setting, making it possible to formulate the goals of theoretical and practical activity, as well as ways to achieve them;
5. Prognostic, problem solving foreseeing the future of objects of knowledge, as well as the results of one’s own actions and activities in general;
6. Communicative, allowing people to communicate.
7. Self-awareness. Consciousness has the ability to be directed towards itself. Hence, self-awareness is a person’s awareness of himself - his thoughts, feelings, motives, actions, etc. Developed self-awareness is the basis for successful self-education, self-improvement of the individual, and achievement of the goals set by a person.
Introspection- this is a person’s analysis of his own activities and phenomena of consciousness.
Theory of knowledgeDeals with the problem of cognition, its capabilities and patterns theory of knowledge or epistemology(from the Greek gnosis - knowledge, and logos - teaching), which is one of the branches of philosophy.
Cognition- This such a person’s attitude towards the world, as a result of which a person receives new knowledge about it. This is the process of gaining knowledge.
The nature of knowledge
The possibility of knowledge lies in such a universal property of matter as property of reflection. This possibility turns into reality as a result of a complex and long process of the emergence and development of human consciousness, capable of adequately reflecting the objective world and identifying its patterns.
An image of the object being studied is formed in the consciousness of the cognizing subject. Its ideal character cannot be fully understood if we remain within the framework of considering only the structure of intracerebral, neurodynamic processes. The social nature of human practical activity is the specific factor that brings to life the ideal, the mental of the highest “post-animal” order. Scientists have long established that the higher a creature has climbed the ladder of evolution, the less the forms of its life activity are determined in advance by the structure of the nerve nodes, the more “degrees of freedom” the organism acquires in terms of individual intravital adaptive activity. And man, as the highest stage of this evolution, can exist no other way than through the use of cognition as a social form of reflection; being an intermediate link in his social activities.
Reflection Process:
1. What is reflected is primary, and its reflection, that is, the image, is secondary. The relationship between the object of knowledge and the image is the relationship between the original and the “virtual” copy. Our knowledge is like a photograph of reality, but an ideal one, devoid of any substance.
2. Human consciousness, reflecting the objective world, is capable of giving correct ideas about it.
3. The image is subjective in form and medium, but objective in content. The subjectivity of the image is due to the fact that it is a product of complex physiological and mental processes, and objectivity is due to the content of the cognizable object. It should, however, be borne in mind that subjective moments (searches, reflections, fantasies, etc.) can penetrate into the objective content of the epistemological image, which can lead to subjectivism in cognition.
4. Reflection is not passive contemplation, but an active creative process of knowledge formation based on the practical interaction of the subject of knowledge and its object. The activity of the subject is manifested, firstly, in a gradual penetration into the essence of the cognizable object and, secondly, in the so-called “advanced reflection”, that is, a person’s ability to foresee the results of his activity, to “construct” in his mind images of the intended result of the activity.
Subject and object of knowledge:
Subject of knowledge is a producer of knowledge actively carrying out cognitive activity. The subject of cognition is, first of all, the individual. It is she who is directly endowed with the ability to know. But the subject of cognition can also be a collective, a social group, as well as society as a whole.
Object of knowledge- this is what the cognitive activity of the subject is aimed at, a fragment of existence that finds itself in the field of vision of his cognitive thought. Objects of knowledge are divided into:
Primary, that is, fragments of natural and social reality;
Secondary - various manifestations of the spiritual world of people;
Tertiary - your own spiritual world.
The problem of the cognizability of the world.
In the answers of philosophers to the question: is the world knowable? Two main positions can be distinguished. One of them (epistemological optimists) recognize the fundamental knowability of the world, while others narrow the possibility of knowledge or deny it altogether. This is the essence of the teaching agnosticism(Greek, not, gnosis - knowledge), which can appear in various forms.
One of the first was skepticism philosophers ancient world(Pyron, Aenesidemus, etc.). They argued that all knowledge must be questioned. This position played a positive role in the fight against various kinds of dogmas.
An extreme form of skepticism was born in the 18th century in the reasoning of the English philosopher D. Hume, who generally denied the question of the existence of the objective world, since, in his opinion, human consciousness cannot go beyond the limits of subjective sensations, and, therefore, cannot cognize the world. Another form of agnosticism is somewhat softened - the dualistic position of I. Kant, according to which the real existence of the world of things was recognized, but the possibility of their comprehensive knowledge was denied. Man, according to I. Kant, can cognize the phenomena of the objective world only to certain limits; he is not given the opportunity to penetrate into their essence (“the thing in itself”).
In modern conditions, agnosticism most often appears in the form relativism And irrationalism. If the first exaggerates, absolutizes the relativity of our knowledge, declares any scientific theories to be conditional and relative, then the second belittles the role of reason in science, claims that the world is by its nature irrational, and therefore unknowable.
Agnosticism in knowledge is due to reasons of epistemological and social order. TO epistemological reasons include:
The complexity and inconsistency of any object of knowledge, the incomplete coincidence of phenomenon and essence;
A certain limitation and inconsistency of the process of cognition itself (errors of sensory perception, the possibility of misconceptions, incomplete knowledge, etc.);
Misunderstanding of the dialectics of the objective world and its knowledge, fallacy of methodological positions (subjectivism, metaphysics).
Social the reason is the position of certain social forces interested in the loss of epistemological optimism by the broad masses in order to make them stupid and excluded from social life.
HUMAN COGNITIVE ABILITIES
General laws of the cognition process:1. A pattern showing the fundamental stages of cognition: movement from living contemplation to abstract(in this sense, rationally - abstract) thinking and from it to practice.“Living contemplation” is the direct active interaction of the subject with the object of knowledge, where the predominant role is played by the sensory reflection of reality. “Abstract thinking” operates with concepts, judgments and conclusions, without completely throwing out the forms of sensory knowledge. At this stage, the hidden essence of the object is comprehended. The results of cognition are verified in practice, which ultimately confirms or refutes the correctness of the sensory and logical reflection of the object.
2. A pattern showing the universal orientation of cognition: movement from phenomenon to essence and back. A person constantly goes deeper into an object, moving from an essence of the “first order” to an essence of the “second”, “third”, etc. order, new and new internal and external connections and relationships are revealed.
3. A pattern showing universal ways of knowing: movement from direct contemplation to rational thinking and from it to reason. Direct contemplation is the perception of the world with the help of an undifferentiated unity of feelings and thinking, in which a superficial reflection of the phenomena of reality occurs without clarifying their internal relationships. Reason is abstract thinking both in form (abstraction of thought) and in content (incomplete) that reduces reality either to one of the formal opposites, or to a quantitative description of phenomena and external connections between them. Reason is a dialectical way of thinking, in the process of which the superficiality of direct contemplation and the one-sidedness of reason are overcome and a synthetic mental-concrete picture of a holistic, but at the same time diverse existence is created.
4. A pattern characterizing the dialectics of cognition: movement through the unity and struggle of the two sides of cognition - reflection and understanding.
Understanding - special side and the element of consciousness (in a broad sense), the function and method of scientific knowledge (in a narrow sense), which consists in identifying the essence of objects, their meaning and significance, and in their interpretation.
Understanding is a “decoding” of scientific and everyday meanings; it is directly aimed not at the object of knowledge itself, but at the form of reflection of the object in knowledge. Reflection is impossible without prior understanding, since the subject imposes its own semantic context on reality, understands it in a certain way, and fills it with meaning.
Understanding turns into a process of connecting ideas, establishing relationships between them, bringing them to a holistic, systemic form.
Understanding includes:
1. Psychophysiological perception of a physical sign (word, color, spatial form). 2. Recognizing him (as familiar and unfamiliar). Understanding its repeatable (general) meaning in language. 3. Understanding its meaning in a given context (immediate and more distant). 4. Active-dialogical understanding (dispute-agreement). Inclusion in a dialogic context.
If understanding dominates the social sciences, then explanation - in natural sciences.
Explanation understood as a set of techniques that help to establish the reliability of judgments regarding some unclear, confusing matter or with the goal of causing a clearer, distinct idea of a more or less well-known phenomenon. This is the ability of a subject to convey his understanding of an object to others.
Any explanation must contain two parts, differing in their functions: explanand - what is to be explained is the linguistic representation of the object being explained, and explanans- a set of explanatory provisions. At the same time, it should be emphasized that it is real objects that are explained, and not the provisions about them, and the explanatory are provisions about real objects, and not the objects themselves.
Techniques of explanation there can be comparison, description, analogy, difference, indication of reasons, composition the simplest model etc.
Forms of knowledge:sensual, rational, intuitive.
Sensory cognition: This is the direct interaction of subject and object, the reflection of objects and processes with the help of the senses, as a result of which a person receives primary knowledge about the object.
Simple forms of sensory cognition are sensations, perceptions and ideas.
Feel- this is the initial, initial form of cognition, which carries out a direct connection with the world, the transformation of a physiological process into a mental one, into a fact of consciousness and the emergence ideal image reflected object. Sensations (touch, smell, vision, hearing, taste) reflect only individual aspects of an object and do not provide a holistic picture of it.
Perception- it is a complex of several sensations; the process of constructing holistic images of objects and their relationships that currently act on the senses.
Performance- this is the reproduction, with the help of memory and imagination, of perceptions already existing in the past personal and social experience. Representation serves as a link between sensory and rational knowledge.
There are two kinds of sensory forms: the first kind or individual sensations, perceptions and representations of the surrounding reality and the second kind, that is, the sensations of words, drawings, photographs, samples, clips, projections and other means developed by mankind, to convey the content of sensations and perceptions of many, many acting people.
Rational cognition (thinking): it is a form of knowledge, in
in the process of which a person receives secondary (inferential) knowledge, using not direct contact with objects and phenomena, but a mediating intermediate connection in the form of abstract forms.
Rational cognition is carried out in three simple forms: concept, judgment and inference and complex (higher) forms of thinking: topics, problems, hypotheses, theories, sciences, etc.
Concept - this is the original form of rational knowledge, logical form thinking, which reflects the essential properties and relationships of an object.
Judgment -This is a thought in which something is affirmed or denied regarding objects or phenomena.
Inference- This a form of thinking through which new ones are derived from several interrelated judgments.
Types of thinking:
I. The first, original type of thinking, inherent in both primitive people and the child, is mythopoetic thinking. Truth in the mythopoetic style of thinking is comprehensive - everything is true, but nothing is false.
Laws of mythopoetic logic:
1. Law of Metamorphosis which says that everything ideal can be material and, vice versa; that any means or substance can be converted by the will of God into any other.
2.Law of absolute achieving the goal, which determines the absoluteness of overcoming an obstacle or solving a task given to the hero (completing the impossible, achieving the unattainable, realizing the impracticable).
3. The law of space-time arbitrariness, which states that space and time can be compressed or stretched, or completely absent without correlation with the material and spiritual object itself.
4. The law of false reason which states that a valid deductive argument rests on a foregone conclusion or tacit assumption that does not require proof.
II. In close unity with mythopoetic thinking coexists emotional thinking(the so-called “female logic”). What is considered true here is what is pleasant.
III. In adults, relapses of mythopoetic and emotional styles of thinking from the point of view of cognition of the surrounding world create very serious obstacles for him, because they wean him from searching for the true causes and patterns of events. Therefore, it was quite natural to move to the next type of thinking - formal-logical. The formula of truth here is this: either “yes” or “no,” and there is no third option.
IV. In contrast to the formal-logical type of thinking, the essence of which is consistency in form or or,dialectical type, on the contrary, the main focus is on the contradiction in the form and-and. Consistency is a manifestation of statics, and contradiction is a manifestation of the dynamics of material reality.
Laws of dialectical logic:
1. Consideration of the subject in all its connections and relationships, that is, systematically;
2. Consideration of the subject in movement and development;
3. The bifurcation of the one into opposites;
4. Consideration of the development of the subject through an understanding of the mutual transition of quantitative and qualitative changes.
5. Denial as the transition of an object from one state to another;
6. The law of unity of the historical and logical (the stages of development of thoughts about the subject must correspond to the stages in the history of the displayed subject);
7. The law of unity of analysis and synthesis (analysis must be synthetic - reflecting the connections of the stages and the process of forming a whole from elements - a system from parts).
8. The law of the unity of deduction and induction (the construction of a system of concepts from concepts must be based on comprehensive experimental data);
9. The law of the unity of abstraction and concretization (from one-sided knowledge a comprehensive, internally connected, concrete knowledge should be formed).
Intuition: it is a direct, sudden, unconscious acquisition of knowledge. It belongs to the supraconscious region of the spiritual world of man.
Types of intuition:
1. Sensual (instant feeling).
2. Rational (instant solution to logical problems).
3. Eidic, as a synthesis of sensual and rational intuition.
THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH
True - this is an adequate reflection of an object by a cognizing subject, the correspondence of the content of our knowledge with objective reality to this reality itself. This is correct knowledge about the subject.
Alternative approaches to understanding truth:
Objective idealists They believe that truth is the correspondence of an object to the idea that precedes it, constitutes its basis, its essence. And since the idea exists objectively, then truth is ultimately objective in the literal sense of the word, that is, it exists outside the knowing subject.
Subjective idealists completely deny any objectivity of truth, claim that truth is either the correspondence of our knowledge to our subjective feelings (the position of solipsism), or the interconnectedness and mutual consistency of assumptions according to the rules of formal logic (the position of some neopositivists), or what is generally accepted by the scientific community .
Properties of truth:
Firstly, truth is a dialectical unity of objective and subjective, that is, it is objective in content and subjective in form.
Secondly, truth, being the result of the process of logical reflection, acts as a process of constant deepening of the knowing subject into the essence of the object being studied.
Third, truth is the dialectical unity of the absolute and the relative.
Absolute truth - this is a complete, accurate, exhaustive meaning about the object of cognition, which cannot be refuted in the process of cognition. It means:
1) Complete, exhaustive meaning about the world as a whole and in this sense absolute truth is unattainable;
2) Accurate, complete knowledge about any aspects, properties, relationships, fragments of the objective world. In this meaning, absolute truth is completely achievable at each specific stage of the process of cognition and is inviolable in its “coordinate system”, in a certain time, place and relationship. When these conditions change, absolute truth can move into the category of relative truths.
Under relative true correct, but somewhat incomplete, incomplete, approximate knowledge is understood. This is knowledge of a subject within historically determined limits. Any objectively true knowledge in a specific expression is relative truth, since it incompletely and inaccurately reflects the complex connections and relationships of the object of knowledge. At the same time, it contains a moment, a side of absolute truth, because the individual aspects, properties and connections of this object are accurately and exhaustively reflected. Thus, from an infinite sum of relative truths, absolute truth gradually emerges.
The dialectical understanding of the relationship between absolute and relative truth warns against relativism and dogmatism - equally erroneous, one-sided ways of thinking and acting.
Relativism asserts that all knowledge is relative in nature and thereby denies the possibility of knowing the absolute truth.
Dogmatism, on the contrary, it absolutizes knowledge as once and for all data, without recognizing in them the presence of moments of relative truth.
Fourthly, there are no truths in general, regardless of place, time, object and subject of knowledge; truth is always concrete. What is absolutely true in one respect can be relatively true in another, and vice versa. The specificity of truth is determined by the nature of the object and the conditions of its functioning, the historical framework within which this object retains its inherent qualitative certainty.
Fifthly, truth has its own criteria.
Sensualists believe that the criterion of truth is the direct evidence of the senses.
One part of neopositivists develops the theory of verification, that is, the reduction of any scientific position to the simplest statements, confirmed by evidence from the senses, while the other argues that the criterion of truth is logic, that is, the consistency of one thought with another.
What can be taken as a criterion of truth? On the one hand, it should not be located either within the framework of the subject (for this is fraught with subjectivism) or within the framework of the object, because truth is knowledge about itself. On the other hand, the criterion must be closely related to them.
The phenomenon that meets these conditions is practice.
Practice- This purposeful, objective, transformative activities of people. It is not reduced to the personal experience of the individual, but is the material activity of people in all its volume (production, consumer, economic, scientific, artistic, etc.) and historical development. It is the historicity and variability of practice that determines its relative nature: at each specific stage of cognition, it has limited capabilities that do not allow testing all the acquired knowledge.
Practice is, although decisive, not the only criterion for the truth of knowledge. These also include mathematical And logical ways of obtaining knowledge, especially in areas inaccessible to practical testing.
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
Scientific knowledge - This is a type and level of knowledge aimed at producing true knowledge about reality, the discovery of objective laws based on a generalization of real facts. It rises above ordinary cognition, that is, spontaneous cognition associated with the life activity of people and perceiving reality at the level of phenomenon.
Epistemology - This is the doctrine of scientific knowledge.
Features of scientific knowledge:
Firstly, its main task is to discover and explain the objective laws of reality - natural, social and thinking. Hence the focus of research on the general, essential properties of an object and their expression in a system of abstraction.
Secondly, the immediate goal and highest value of scientific knowledge is objective truth, comprehended primarily by rational means and methods.
Third, to a greater extent than other types of knowledge, it is oriented towards being embodied in practice.
Fourthly, science has developed a special language, characterized by the accuracy of the use of terms, symbols, and diagrams.
Fifthly, Scientific knowledge is a complex process of reproduction of knowledge that forms an integral, developing system of concepts, theories, hypotheses, and laws.
At sixth, Scientific knowledge is characterized by both strict evidence, validity of the results obtained, reliability of conclusions, and the presence of hypotheses, conjectures, and assumptions.
Seventh, scientific knowledge requires and resorts to special tools (means) of knowledge: scientific equipment, measuring instruments, devices.
Eighth, scientific knowledge is characterized by processuality. In its development, it goes through two main stages: empirical and theoretical, which are closely related to each other.
Ninth, the field of scientific knowledge consists of verifiable and systematized information about various phenomena being.
Levels of scientific knowledge:Empirical level cognition is a direct experimental, mostly inductive, study of an object. It includes obtaining the necessary initial facts - data about individual aspects and connections of the object, understanding and describing the data obtained in the language of science, and their primary systematization. Cognition at this stage still remains at the level of phenomenon, but the prerequisites for penetrating the essence of the object have already been created.
Theoretical level characterized by deep penetration into the essence of the object being studied, not only identifying, but also explaining the patterns of its development and functioning, constructing a theoretical model of the object and its in-depth analysis.
Forms of scientific knowledge:scientific fact, scientific problem, scientific hypothesis, proof, scientific theory, paradigm, unified scientific picture of the world.
Scientific fact - this is the initial form of scientific knowledge, in which primary knowledge about an object is recorded; it is a reflection in the consciousness of the subject of a fact of reality. In this case, a scientific fact is only one that can be verified and described in scientific terms.
Scientific problem - it is a contradiction between new facts and existing theoretical knowledge. A scientific problem can also be defined as a kind of knowledge about ignorance, since it arises when the cognizing subject realizes the incompleteness of a particular knowledge about an object and sets the goal of eliminating this gap. The problem includes the problematic issue, the project for solving the problem and its content.
Scientific hypothesis - This is a scientifically based assumption that explains certain parameters of the object being studied and does not contradict known scientific facts. It must satisfactorily explain the object being studied, be verifiable in principle, and answer the questions posed by the scientific problem.
In addition, the main content of the hypothesis should not contradict the laws established in a given system of knowledge. The assumptions that make up the content of the hypothesis must be sufficient so that with their help it is possible to explain all the facts about which the hypothesis is put forward. The assumptions of the hypothesis should not be logically contradictory.
The development of new hypotheses in science is associated with the need for a new vision of the problem and the emergence of problematic situations.
Proof - this is a confirmation of the hypothesis.
Types of evidence:
Practice serving as direct confirmation
Indirect theoretical proof, including confirmation by arguments indicating facts and laws (inductive path), derivation of a hypothesis from other, more general and already proven provisions (deductive path), comparison, analogy, modeling, etc.
The proven hypothesis serves as the basis for constructing a scientific theory.
Scientific theory - this is a form of reliable scientific knowledge about a certain set of objects, which is a system of interconnected statements and evidence and contains methods for explaining, transforming and predicting phenomena of a given object area. In theory, in the form of principles and laws, knowledge about the essential connections that determine the emergence and existence of certain objects is expressed. The main cognitive functions of the theory are: synthesizing, explanatory, methodological, predictive and practical.
All theories develop within certain paradigms.
Paradigm - it is a special way of organizing knowledge and seeing the world, influencing the direction of further research. Paradigm
can be compared to an optical device through which we look at a particular phenomenon.
Many theories are constantly being synthesized into a unified scientific picture of the world, that is, a holistic system of ideas about the general principles and laws of the structure of being.
Methods of scientific knowledge:Method(from Greek Metodos - path to something) - it is a way of activity in any form.
The method includes techniques that ensure the achievement of goals, regulate human activity and general principles, from which these techniques arise. Methods of cognitive activity form the direction of cognition at a particular stage, the order of cognitive procedures. In their content, the methods are objective, since they are ultimately determined by the nature of the object and the laws of its functioning.
Scientific method - This is a set of rules, techniques and principles that ensure the logical cognition of an object and the receipt of reliable knowledge.
Classification of methods of scientific knowledge can be done for various reasons:
First reason. Based on their nature and role in cognition, they distinguish methods - techniques, which consist of specific rules, techniques and algorithms of action (observation, experiment, etc.) and methods-approaches, which indicate the direction and general method of research (system analysis, functional analysis, diachronic method, etc.).
Second reason. By functional purpose highlight:
a) universal human methods of thinking (analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization, induction, deduction, etc.);
b) empirical methods (observation, experiment, survey, measurement);
c) theoretical level methods (modelling, thought experiment, analogy, mathematical methods, philosophical methods, induction and deduction).
Third base is the degree of generality. Here the methods are divided into:
a) philosophical methods (dialectical, formal - logical, intuitive, phenomenological, hermeneutic);
b) general scientific methods, that is, methods that guide the course of knowledge in many sciences, but unlike philosophical methods, each general scientific method (observation, experiment, analysis, synthesis, modeling, etc.) solves its own problem, characteristic only for it ;
V) special methods.
Some methods of scientific knowledge:
Observation - this is a purposeful, organized perception of objects and phenomena to collect facts.
Experiment - is an artificial recreation of a cognizable object under controlled and controlled conditions.
Formalization is a reflection of the acquired knowledge in an unambiguous formalized language.
Axiomatic method - this is a way of constructing a scientific theory when it is based on certain axioms, from which all other provisions are logically deduced.
Hypothetico-deductive method - creation of a system of deductively interconnected hypotheses, from which explanations are ultimately derived scientific facts.
Inductive methods for establishing the causal relationship of phenomena:
similarity method: if two or more cases of the phenomenon being studied have only one previous common circumstance, then this circumstance in which they are similar to each other is probably the cause of the phenomenon being sought;
difference method: if the case in which the phenomenon we are interested in occurs and the case in which it does not occur are similar in everything, with the exception of one circumstance, then this is the only circumstance in which they differ from each other, and is probably the cause of the desired phenomenon;
accompanying change method: if the occurrence or change of a previous phenomenon each time causes the occurrence or change of another phenomenon accompanying it, then the first of them is probably the cause of the second;
residual method: If it is established that the cause of part of a complex phenomenon is not caused by known previous circumstances, except for one of them, then we can assume that this only circumstance is the cause of the part of the phenomenon under study that interests us.
Universal methods of thinking:
- Comparison- establishing the similarities and differences between objects of reality (for example, we compare the characteristics of two engines);
- Analysis- mental dissection of an object as a whole
(we break down each engine into its component characteristics);
- Synthesis- mental unification into a single whole of the elements identified as a result of the analysis (mentally we combine the best characteristics and elements of both engines in one - virtual);
- Abstraction- highlighting some features of an object and distracting from others (for example, we study only the design of the engine and temporarily do not take into account its content and functioning);
- Induction- movement of thought from the particular to the general, from individual data to more general provisions, and ultimately to the essence (we take into account all cases of failure of an engine of this type and, based on this, come to conclusions about the prospects for its further operation);
- Deduction- movement of thought from the general to the specific (based on general patterns engine performance, we make predictions about the further functioning of a particular engine);
- Modeling- construction of a mental object (model) similar to the real one, the study of which will allow one to obtain the information necessary for understanding the real object (creating a model of a more advanced engine);
- Analogy- conclusion about the similarity of objects in some properties, based on similarity in other characteristics (conclusion about engine breakdown based on a characteristic knock);
- Generalization- combining individual objects into a certain concept (for example, creating the concept “engine”).
The science:- This is a form of spiritual and practical activity of people aimed at achieving objectively true knowledge and its systematization.
Scientific complexes:
A)Natural science is a system of disciplines whose object is nature, that is, a part of existence that exists according to laws not created by human activity.
b)Social science- this is a system of sciences about society, that is, a part of existence that is constantly recreated in the activities of people. Social science includes social sciences (sociology, economic theory, demography, history, etc.) and humanities that study the values of society (ethics, aesthetics, religious studies, philosophy, legal sciences, etc.)
V)Technical science- these are sciences that study the laws and specifics of the creation and functioning of complex technical systems.
G)Anthropological Sciences- this is a set of sciences about man in all his integrity: physical anthropology, philosophical anthropology, medicine, pedagogy, psychology, etc.
In addition, sciences are divided into fundamental, theoretical and applied, which are directly related to industrial practice.
Scientific criteria: universality, systematization, relative consistency, relative simplicity (a good theory is one that explains the widest range of phenomena, based on a minimum number of scientific principles), explanatory potential, presence of predictive power, completeness for a given level of knowledge.
Scientific truth is characterized by objectivity, evidence, systematicity (orderliness based on certain principles), and verifiability.
Models of science development:
theory of reproduction (proliferation) of P. Feyerabend, which asserts the chaotic origin of concepts, T. Kuhn's paradigm, conventionalism of A. Poincaré, psychophysics of E. Mach, personal knowledge of M. Polanyi, evolutionary epistemology of S. Toulmin, scientific research program by I. Lakatos, thematic analysis of science by J. Holton.
K. Popper, considering knowledge in two aspects: statics and dynamics, developed the concept of the growth of scientific knowledge. In his opinion, growth of scientific knowledge - this is the repeated overthrow of scientific theories and their replacement with better and more perfect ones. The position of T. Kuhn is radically different from this approach. His model includes two main stages: the stage of “normal science” (the dominance of one or another paradigm) and the stage of the “scientific revolution” (the collapse of the old paradigm and the establishment of a new one).
Global scientific revolution - this is a change in general scientific picture world, accompanied by changes in the ideals, norms and philosophical foundations of science.
Within the framework of classical natural science, two revolutions are distinguished. First associated with the formation of classical natural science in the 17th century. Second revolution dates back to the end of the 18th century early XIX V. and marks the transition to disciplinary organized science. Third The global scientific revolution covers the period from the end of the 19th to the mid-20th century. and is associated with the formation of non-classical natural science. At the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century. new radical changes are taking place in the foundations of science, which can be characterized as fourth global revolution. In the course of it, a new post-non-classical science is born.
Three revolutions (out of four) led to the establishment of new types of scientific rationality:
1. Classic type of scientific rationality(XVIII–XIX centuries). At this time, the following ideas about science were established: the value of objective universal true knowledge appeared, science was considered as a reliable and absolutely rational enterprise, with the help of which all problems of mankind can be solved, natural scientific knowledge was considered the highest achievement, the object and subject of scientific research were presented in rigid terms epistemological confrontation, the explanation was interpreted as a search for mechanical causes and substances. In classical science it was believed that only laws of the dynamic type could be genuine laws.
2. Non-classical type of scientific rationality(XX century). Its features: the coexistence of alternative concepts, the complication of scientific ideas about the world, the assumption of probabilistic, discrete, paradoxical phenomena, reliance on the irreducible presence of the subject in the processes being studied, the assumption of the absence of an unambiguous connection between theory and reality; science begins to determine the development of technology.
3. Post-non-classical type of scientific rationality(end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century). It is characterized by an understanding of the extreme complexity of the processes under study, the emergence of a value-based perspective on the study of problems, and a high degree of use of interdisciplinary approaches.
Science and Society:
Science is closely interconnected with the development of society. This is manifested primarily in the fact that it is ultimately determined, conditioned by social practice and its needs. However, with every decade the reverse influence of science on society increases. The connection and interaction of science, technology and production is becoming increasingly stronger - science is turning into a direct productive force of society. How is it shown?
Firstly, Science is now overtaking the development of technology and is becoming the leading force in the progress of material production.
Secondly, Science permeates all spheres of public life.
Third, Science is increasingly focused not only on technology, but also on man himself, the development of his creative abilities, culture of thinking, and the creation of material and spiritual prerequisites for his holistic development.
Fourthly, the development of science leads to the emergence of parascientific knowledge. This is a collective name for ideological and hypothetical concepts and teachings characterized by an anti-scientist orientation. The term "parascience" refers to statements or theories that deviate to a greater or lesser extent from the standards of science and contain both fundamentally erroneous and possibly true propositions. Concepts most often attributed to parascience: outdated scientific concepts such as alchemy, astrology, etc., which have played a certain role historical role in the development of modern science; ethnoscience and other “traditional”, but to a certain extent, teachings that are opposed to modern science; sports, family, culinary, labor, etc. “sciences”, which are examples of systematization of practical experience and applied knowledge, but do not correspond to the definition of science as such.
Approaches to assessing the role of science in the modern world. First approach - scientism asserts that with the help of natural and technical scientific knowledge it is possible to solve all social problems
Second approach - antiscientism, based negative consequences Scientific and technological revolution rejects science and technology, considering them forces hostile to the true essence of man. Socio-historical practice shows that it is equally wrong to exorbitantly absolutize science and to underestimate it.
Functions of modern science:
1. Cognitive;
2. Cultural and ideological (providing for society scientific worldview);
3. Function of direct productive force;
4. Function of social power (scientific knowledge and methods are widely used in solving all problems of society).
Patterns of development of science: continuity, a complex combination of processes of differentiation and integration of scientific disciplines, deepening and expansion of the processes of mathematization and computerization, theorization and dialectization of modern scientific knowledge, alternation of relatively calm periods of development and periods of “sharp change” ( scientific revolutions) laws and principles.
The formation of modern NCM is largely associated with discoveries in quantum physics.
Science and technologyTechnique in the broad sense of the word - it is an artifact, that is, everything artificially created. Artifacts are: material and ideal.
Technique in the narrow sense of the word - this is a set of material, energy and information devices and means created by society to carry out its activities.
The basis for the philosophical analysis of technology was the ancient Greek concept of “techne”, which meant skill, art, and the ability to create something from natural material.
M. Heidegger believed that technology is a person’s way of being, a way of self-regulation. J. Habermas believed that technology unites everything “material” that opposes the world of ideas. O. Toffler substantiated the wave-like nature of the development of technology and its impact on society.
The way technology manifests itself is technology. If what a person influences with is technology, then how he influences is technology.
Technosphere- this is a special part of the Earth’s shell, which is a synthesis of artificial and natural, created by society to satisfy its needs.
Classification of equipment:
By type of activity distinguished: material and production, transport and communications, scientific research, the learning process, medical, sports, household, military.
By type of natural process used There are mechanical, electronic, nuclear, laser and other types of equipment.
By level of structural complexity The following historical forms of technology arose: guns(manual labor, mental labor and human activity), cars And machine guns. The sequence of these forms of technology, in general, corresponds to the historical stages of the development of technology itself.
Trends in technology development at the present stage:
The size of many technical means is constantly growing. So, an excavator bucket in 1930 had a volume of 4 cubic meters, and now it is 170 cubic meters. Transport planes already carry 500 or more passengers, and so on.
A tendency of the opposite nature has emerged, towards a reduction in the size of equipment. For example, the creation of microminiature personal computers, tape recorders without cassettes, etc. has already become a reality.
Increasingly, technical innovations are achieved through the application scientific knowledge. A striking example of this is space technology, which has become the embodiment of scientific developments of more than two dozen natural and technical sciences. Discoveries in scientific creativity give impetus to technical creativity with its characteristic inventions. The fusion of science and technology into a single system that has radically changed the life of man, society, and the biosphere is called scientific and technological revolution(NTR).
There is an increasingly intensive merging of technical means into complex systems and complexes: factories, power plants, communication systems, ships, etc. The prevalence and scale of these complexes allows us to speak about the existence of a technosphere on our planet.
The information field is becoming an important and constantly growing area of application of modern technology.
Informatization - is the process of production, storage and dissemination of information in society.
Historical forms of informatization: colloquial speech; writing; typography; electrical - electronic reproductive devices (radio, telephone, television, etc.); Computers (computers).
The widespread use of computers marked a special stage of informatization. Unlike physical resources, information as a resource has a unique property - when used, it does not shrink, but, on the contrary, expands. The inexhaustibility of information resources sharply accelerates the technological cycle “knowledge - production - knowledge”, causing an avalanche-like growth in the number of people involved in the process of obtaining, formalizing and processing knowledge (in the USA, 77% of employees are involved in the field information activities and services), has an impact on the prevalence of mass media systems and the manipulation public opinion. Based on these circumstances, many scientists and philosophers (D. Bell, T. Stoneier, Y. Masuda) proclaimed the onset of the information society.
Signs of the information society:
Free access for anyone anywhere, at any time to any information;
The production of information in this society must be carried out in the volumes necessary to ensure the life of the individual and society in all its parts and directions;
Science should occupy a special place in the production of information;
Accelerated automation and operation;
Priority development of the sphere of information activities and services.
Undoubtedly, the information society brings certain advantages and benefits. However, one cannot fail to note its problems: computer theft, the possibility of an information-based computer war, the possibility of establishing an information dictatorship and terror of provider organizations, etc.
Human attitude towards technology:
On the one hand, facts and ideas of mistrust and hostility to technology. In Ancient China, some Taoist sages denied technology, motivating their actions by the fact that when using technology you become dependent on it, you lose freedom of action and you yourself become a mechanism. In the 30s of the twentieth century, O. Spengler, in his book “Man and Technology,” argued that man became a slave to machines and would be driven to death by them.
At the same time, the apparent indispensability of technology in all spheres of human existence sometimes gives rise to an unbridled apology for technology, a kind of ideology of technicalism. How is it shown? Firstly. In exaggerating the role and importance of technology in human life and, secondly, in transferring the characteristics inherent in machines to humanity and personality. Supporters of technocracy see the prospects for progress in the concentration of political power in the hands of the technical intelligentsia.
Consequences of the influence of technology on humans:
Beneficial component includes the following:
the widespread use of technology has contributed to an almost doubling of the average human life expectancy;
technology freed man from constraining circumstances and increased his free time;
new information technology has qualitatively expanded the scope and forms of human intellectual activity;
technology has brought progress to the educational process; technology has increased the efficiency of human activity in various spheres of society.
Negative the impact of technology on humans and society is as follows: some of its types of technology pose a danger to the life and health of people, threats have increased environmental disaster, the number of occupational diseases has increased;
a person, becoming a particle of some kind technical system, is deprived of its creative essence; an increasing amount of information causes a decreasing trend in the share of knowledge that one person is able to possess;
the technique can be used as effective remedy suppression, total control and manipulation of personality;
The impact of technology on the human psyche is enormous, both through virtual reality and through the replacement of the “symbol-image” chain with another “image-image”, which leads to a halt in the development of figurative and abstract thinking, as well as the appearance of neuroses and mental illnesses.
Engineer(from French and Latin means “creator”, “creator”, “inventor” in a broad sense) is a person who mentally creates a technical object and controls the process of its production and operation. Engineering activities - This is the activity of mentally creating a technical object and managing the process of its production and operation. Engineering activity emerged from technical activity in the 18th century during the Industrial Revolution.
Cognition is one of the types of human activity, one of the ways of spiritual and practical exploration of the world by man. Distinguish knowledge And cognition. If knowledge is an adequate representation of people about reality, then cognition is a way of obtaining knowledge. Since primitive times, man, in the struggle for survival, has been forced to obtain the most complete and accurate understanding of the world around him, the properties of things and their relationships. The quality of knowledge about reality directly influenced the level of human protection from the adverse effects of natural forces.
As the sociocultural forms of human existence became more complex, people's consciousness developed and the means of understanding the world improved. Already at the Neolithic stage (8th-4th millennium BC), the main types of knowledge took shape: everyday, religious-mythological, artistic (aesthetic), scientific, philosophical. If in the Ancient world these types of knowledge existed, as a rule, together, overlapping one another, then later (starting from the Renaissance) they noticeably differentiated.
At the level of everyday knowledge, obvious, elementary truths are comprehended (for example: power presupposes submission, law is the regulation of human behavior, etc.). One should not think that ordinary knowledge of political and legal phenomena was characteristic of people only in the early stages of historical development, in the pre-scientific era. For a person of modern culture, everyday cognition is also an integral element of the cognition process, creating an empirical basis for higher forms of cognition.
Religious and mythological knowledge was mainly characteristic of ancient peoples. At the same time, both mythology and religion, giving their own, often mystified, explanation of political and legal phenomena, sought to identify the rational component in them, to find logic and meaning in them. The picture of the world, built on the basis of religious and mythological knowledge, often gave people fairly accurate guidelines for political behavior.
Art provides a person (both in ancient times and now) additional opportunity with the help of specific images of literary, musical, architectural works, it is better to understand the specifics of the world of politics and law. For example, the works of O. de Balzac, C. Dickens, L.N. Tolstoy, F. Kafka are able to say more about the soullessness of the state machine than individual theoretical articles.
Science is the most important type of cognitive activity aimed at developing objective, systematically organized and substantiated knowledge about the world. Thanks to science, humanity was able to develop productive forces to gigantic proportions, creating on this basis a high level of material well-being. Scientific knowledge is characterized by the desire to obtain extremely accurate, objective knowledge about the properties of things (especially for the natural and technical sciences).
Philosophy -- special kind knowledge, within the framework of which the search for the ultimate semantic, value and logical foundations of things is carried out.
The question of the features of philosophical knowledge is directly related to understanding the essence of philosophy, the reasons, place and time of its appearance. Despite all the debatability of this topic, there are a number of provisions on which there is relative agreement.
Philosophy appears at that stage of people’s development when they develop self-awareness, the need to understand themselves as an autonomous being and their place in the world. At a certain stage of development, a person begins to distinguish himself from the world of things, realizing his special significance and role. As a thinking subject, he opposes himself to the world as a cognizable object, which gives rise to the so-called subject-object relations. The basis of conscious opposition of oneself to the world is the ethical need of a person to understand himself and his place in the world. Better than others, I. Kant formulated this moral search in the form of four questions that a person has always asked and will always ask himself: 1) what can I know? 2) what should I do? 3) what can I hope for? 4) what is a person? Ultimately, the content of all world philosophy is the result of a never-ending attempt to provide answers to these “eternal” questions. They are called “eternal” or “damned” because a person, by virtue of his moral nature, is doomed to put them before himself, but, unfortunately, without any special prospects for their final resolution. Someone may object that not all world philosophy is subordinate to ethics; for example, ontology or philosophy of nature are not directly connected with it. However, these sections of philosophical knowledge also have a worldview aspect, since their consideration helps to clarify the main philosophical question about the purpose of man and his place in the world.
“The intensity of the creative search for philosophical thought,” V.S. correctly notes. Shvyrev, - is associated primarily with the desire to theoretically comprehend the problem of the relationship between man and the world, man’s “inclusion” in the world, to develop such a holistic understanding of the world that would make it possible to include man in it and, on the contrary, to consider man from the point of view of the universe as a whole , understand its place and purpose in the natural and social world. The main problem here is that a person acts not just as a part of the world among other things, but as a being of a special kind, going beyond the world of objects, possessing mental and spiritual life, capable of manifesting an active attitude towards the world in consciousness and in practice. Compared to other forms of worldview, this problem in philosophy is theoretically sharpened, stands out most clearly, forming the basis of all philosophical reflections on the relationship between subject and object, spiritual and material, consciousness and being, freedom and necessity, etc. The “unity of opposites” laid down in the very essence of philosophical thought, associated with the need to “include” man and the world and at the same time consider his special place in the world, defines the deep dialectic philosophical consciousness» Shvyrev V.S. Philosophy // Philosophical Dictionary / ed. I.T. Frolova. M., 2001. P. 602..
So, the essence of philosophical knowledge is that it is aimed at identifying the meaning and goals of human existence, i.e. ideological character. The basis of philosophical knowledge is the persistent motive of self-determination of man as a rational and moral being. The result of such self-determination is the formation of a semantic picture of the world, through the prism of which a person perceives reality and himself in it. The specificity of philosophical consciousness and knowledge is most clearly manifested in critical epochs in human history, when habitual forms of life collapse and society faces the problem of choosing new value guidelines. Thus, the birth of philosophy in Ancient Greece associated with the “great cultural revolution” of the 10th-5th centuries. BC, - when polis democracy opened the way to free discussion of social and spiritual problems 2. The philosophy of Socrates, Plato or Aristotle can be seen as an attempt to propose a new model of man's relationship with the world (natural and social).
Philosophy is often called a rational-theoretical form of worldview. This means that a person, trying to understand the meaningful problems of his life, turns not to the postulates of myth or religion, but to the arguments of reason. The logic of their own thoughts forced people to come to conclusions that often contradicted the religious and mythological picture of the world, traditions and customs. From the very beginning, philosophical knowledge meant freedom and creativity, not associated with pre-established truths. Philosophy has become a manifestation of independent thinking and independent behavior, forming a sense of responsibility in a person. Freedom of philosophical thought often brought with it a critical revision of established views on nature and society, which made philosophy and philosophers a noticeable social force (Pythagorean Union, Sophists). The execution of Socrates is an example of the influence of philosophy on the conservative life of the ancient Greeks, who sought to protect themselves from dubious values and ideas.
Philosophy as a sphere of free discussion of ideas often becomes a form of self-awareness of one or another historical era. Philosophical knowledge, generalizing the achievements of different areas of culture, tries to bring them to a certain common denominator, to express them in universal categories. The historically specific culture of a particular people, its way of life and forms of life receive an extremely broad and generalized assessment in philosophy. In philosophy, as a form of self-awareness, a value ideal of society is formed, which can be conservative, reactionary or revolutionary, orienting society towards progressive development or stagnation. Thus, in the philosophy of the Enlightenment of the 17th-18th centuries. the social ideal of the bourgeoisie was formulated, which determined the forms of economic, political, religious, scientific and cultural life of Western countries for centuries to come. A market economy and the rule of law, ideological and religious pluralism, a focus on science as the productive force of society, social optimism and faith in a better future for humanity—these are the basic values put forward by European rationalism.
Another example of philosophical reflection - Russia second half of the 19th century- the beginning of the 20th century, when several socio-political projects were intensively discussed: conservative-soilism, socialist, liberal-Western. All three projects reflected the deep needs of the Russian people, which paradoxically melted into Soviet statehood. The practice of “real socialism” in the USSR became the implementation of several vectors of Russian national identity and sense of justice: 1) the medieval imperial idea of “Moscow - the Third Rome”, 2) the peasant ideal of egalitarian socialism, 3) the desire (even if external) for rapprochement with Europe (ideas of popular sovereignty, parliamentarism, elections, etc.). The collapse of the USSR occurred not so much as a result of economic stagnation or the dissident movement for human rights (largely inspired by Western intelligence services and generally alien to the country's population), but because the idea Soviet power has exhausted itself. Self-awareness of society in the late 1980s - early 1990s. recorded not just the loss of basic Soviet values, but the collapse of the entire value system of coordinates. In subsequent years, the philosophical reflection of the post-Soviet intellectual elite of Russia invariably demonstrated a state of confusion, loss of guidelines and vital energy.
The features of philosophical knowledge are clearly visible against the background of other types of knowledge. As noted above, philosophy as an independent branch of knowledge appears in Antiquity and takes shape in modern times. At the same time, even in the 20th century. philosophy often includes non-philosophical components: science, aesthetics, religion. Thus, European philosophy of the 17th-18th centuries, in the era of rapid development of natural science and mathematics, sought to be similar in appearance and content to science. The vocabulary of philosophical texts is replete with the words “axiom”, “theorem”, “law”, the authors strive for maximum formalization, accuracy and rigor of their theses, definitions and conclusions. In the XIX--XX centuries. the idea of the scientific nature of philosophy reaches its culmination in positivism and directions close to it, where philosophy was declared the synthesis of all sciences, and all metaphysics (knowledge of the supernatural foundations of the world) were fantasies of an idle mind.
European and Russian cultures have produced many works of art imbued with philosophical ideas. Dramas by W. Shakespeare, poetry by I.V. Eete, D.N.G. Byron, F.I. Tyutchev, novels by F.M. Dostoevsky and L.N. Tolstoy, operas by R. Wagner, paintings by S. Dali, films by I. Bergman or A.A. Tarkovsky's works represent not just aesthetic phenomena, but often detailed philosophical concepts. For Russia XIX- the beginning of the 20th century, when, it would seem, professional philosophy was already fully on its feet, outstanding philosophical ideas were often expressed in artistic form. For example, for the philosophical understanding of Russian history and Russian legal consciousness, the novels of F.M. Dostoevsky gave more than the texts of professional philosophers.
The unity of philosophy and religion also has a long and strong tradition. The philosophical component among theologians is commonplace. A huge body of literature has been accumulated, where philosophical problems are posed and discussed in the context of any religious dogma (Thomas Aquinas, J. Maritain, V.S. Solovyov, N. Berdyaev, S.L. Frank, etc.).
Science, aesthetics and religion acquire a philosophical aspect when they include a worldview component expressed in a rational-theoretical form. Without this component, any of the named elements of culture appears to us exclusively from the functional side: science produces knowledge, art gives pleasure, religion makes it possible to worship. Philosophy in this case disappears.
Philosophical understanding of the state and law also always presupposes an ideological, life-meaning aspect. A variety of aspects of political and legal reality can be subject to philosophical analysis (ontology, epistemology, axiology, praxeology, aesthetics, logic of law), but all of them must be subordinated to the main thing - the question of the meaning of human existence. Forgetting this main, final goal of any philosophical research can significantly impoverish or even distort our understanding of the state and law.
The need for knowledge is one of the essential characteristics of a person. The entire history of mankind can be presented as an accelerating process of development, expansion, and refinement of knowledge - from technologies for processing stone tools and making fire to methods for obtaining and using information on a computer network. Modern stage development of society is usually seen as a transition from industrial society(based on the production of goods) to a post-industrial, or information society (based on the production and distribution of knowledge) In the information society, the value of knowledge and methods of obtaining it is constantly increasing: every day there will be thousands of new books and computer sites in the world, and the share of digitized information is calculated in terabytes. In such conditions, problems of cognition become increasingly important. To the greatest extent general issues knowledge is developed by a section of philosophy, which is called epistemology (from the Greek gnosis - knowledge + logos - teaching), or the theory of knowledge.
Cognition overall - creative human activity aimed at obtaining reliable knowledge about the world.
Often, knowledge requires a person to be convinced that it is right and to have special courage: many scientists went to prison and to the stake for their ideas. Based on all of the above, we come to the conclusion that knowledge has social nature: it is determined by the internal needs of society, goals, values, and beliefs of people.
Since cognition will be an activity, it has common features with other types of activity - work, learning, play, communication, etc. Therefore, in cognition it is possible to identify elements characteristic of any type of activity - need, motive, goal, means, result.
Cognitive need will be one of the most important human needs in the structure and is expressed in curiosity, the desire for understanding, spiritual quests, etc. The desire for the unknown, attempts to explain the incomprehensible are a necessary element of human life.
Motives of knowledge varied and traditionally practical: we try to learn something about an object in order to understand how it can be used or how to use it more effectively. But the motives can also be theoretical: a person often derives pleasure simply from solving a confusing intellectual problem or discovering something new.
The purpose of knowledge is obtaining reliable knowledge about the objects under study, phenomena, and the world as a whole. Ultimately, cognitive activity is aimed at achieving truth. Truth in the classical sense is the knowledge of the reality of reality itself.
Means of knowledge in science are called research methods. These include observation, measurement, experiment, comparison, analysis, etc. (they will be discussed in detail below)
Actions in the process of cognition are also diverse. For example, in scientific knowledge the following sequence of actions is accepted: putting forward a problem, setting a hypothesis, choosing methods, studying the problem, developing a theory.
Result of knowledge- actual knowledge about the subject: its external and internal characteristics, properties, elements, connections, historical development, etc. Let us note that sometimes you can achieve results without setting yourself conscious goals of searching for truth. Knowledge can be a by-product of other activities. The material was published on http://site
For example, ideas about properties different materials can be obtained in the process of work or play. Therefore, we can say that cognitive activity is intertwined with all other forms of activity. The material was published on http://site
In the system of diverse forms of a person’s relationship to the world, an important place is occupied by knowledge or acquisition of knowledge about the world around a person, its nature and structure, patterns of development, as well as about the person himself and human society.
Cognition— ϶ᴛᴏ the process of a person acquiring new knowledge, the discovery of something previously unknown.
The effectiveness of cognition is achieved primarily by the active role of man in this process, which necessitates its philosophical consideration. In other words, we're talking about about clarifying the prerequisites and circumstances, conditions for moving towards the truth, mastering the necessary methods and concepts for this. Philosophical problems knowledge constitutes the subject of the theory of knowledge, or epistemology. “ Epistemology” - a word of Greek origin (gnosis - knowledge and logos - word, teaching) Let us note that the theory of knowledge answers the questions of what knowledge is, what are its main forms, what are the patterns of transition from ignorance to knowledge, what is the subject and object of knowledge, what is the structure of the cognitive process, what truth is and what its criterion is, as well as many others. The term “theory of knowledge” was introduced into philosophy by the Scottish philosopher J. Ferrier in 1854. Improving the means of knowledge - an integral part of history of human activity. The material was published on http://site
Many philosophers of the past turned to the development of questions of knowledge, and it is not by chance that this problem comes to the fore and becomes decisive in the development of philosophical thought. At first, knowledge appears in naive, sometimes very primitive forms, i.e. exists as ordinary knowledge. Its function has not lost its significance to this day. In the course of the development of human practice, improving the skills and abilities of people in comprehending the real world, science becomes the most important means of not only knowledge, but also material production. The principles of scientific knowledge will emerge, which formed the basis for the formation and organization of scientific thinking.
In this case, general philosophical principles are identified that apply both to the world as a whole and to the sphere of knowledge (the relationship of human knowledge to the world), the principles of special scientific thinking and the principles of special scientific theories. It is important to note that one of the most powerful factors transforming the life of society in the 20th century. became science (more about science as a form of social consciousness will be discussed in topic 5) This, in turn, turned it itself into an object of careful and scrupulous study. A wide front of research developed, in the center of which was the cognitive activity of man and society. The psychology of scientific creativity, the logic of science, the sociology of science, the history of science, and finally, science studies - this is an extremely short list of special disciplines that study various branches and forms of knowledge. Philosophy did not stand aside either, forming a broad sphere called the philosophy of science (including a number of subsections: philosophy of biology, philosophy of physics, philosophy of mathematics)
If we consider the process of scientific knowledge as a whole as a systemic formation, then as its elements, first of all, we should highlight the subject and object of knowledge.
Subject of knowledge— ϶ᴛᴏ the bearer of objective-practical activity and cognition, the source of cognitive activity aimed at the subject of cognition.
The subject of cognition can be both an individual (individual) and various social groups (society as a whole). In the case when the subject of cognition is an individual, then his self-awareness (the experience of his own “I”) is determined by the entire world of culture created over the course of human history. Successful cognitive activity can be carried out provided that the subject plays an active role in the cognitive process.
Object of knowledge- ϶ᴛᴏ that which opposes the subject, towards which his practical and cognitive activity is directed.
An object is not identical to objective reality, matter. The object of cognition can be both material formations (chemical elements, physical bodies, living organisms) and social phenomena (society, relationships between people, their behavior and activities). The results of cognition (results of an experiment, scientific theories, science in general) can also become an object knowledge. Based on all of the above, we come to the conclusion that objects, phenomena, processes that exist independently of a person, which are mastered either in the course of practical activity or in the course of cognition, become objects. For this reason, it is clear that the concepts of object and subject are different from each other. An object is exclusively one side of an object, to which the attention of any science is directed.
In addition to the object in scientific knowledge, they often distinguish item- part of an object, which is specially isolated by cognitive means. For example, the object of all humanities will be man, but the cognitive means of psychology are aimed at the spiritual world of man, archeology - at his origin, cultural studies - at culture, ethnography - at the morals and customs of mankind. Accordingly, the subject of these sciences is the spiritual world, origin, culture, etc.
The concept of an object is wider in scope than the concept of an object. Since the emergence of philosophy, the problem of the relationship of the subject to the object, as the relationship of the knower to the knowable, has always been in the center of attention of philosophers. The explanation of the reasons and nature of this relationship has undergone a complex evolution, going from the extreme opposition of subjective authenticity, self-awareness of the subject and the world of objective reality (Descartes), to the identification of a complex dialectical relationship between the subject and the object in the course of cognitive activity. The material was published on http://site
The subject himself and his activities can be correctly understood only taking into account specific socio-cultural and historical conditions, taking into account the indirectness of the subject’s relations with other subjects. Scientific knowledge presupposes not only a conscious relationship of the subject to an object, but also a conscious relationship of the subject to himself (reflection)
From the concepts of “subject” and “object” the terms “subjective” and “objective” are derived.
Subjectively everything related to the subject, person, i.e. his will, desires, aspirations, preferences, feelings and emotions, etc. Based on all of the above, we come to the conclusion that subjectivity is a characteristic inner world a person or the personal impact that consciousness has on our relationship with the world. A subjective attitude towards something is traditionally a matter of taste and different people may be different. Subjectivity is more about opinions than knowledge, although personal knowledge will be subjective due to the fact that it belongs to a person’s consciousness, and not to the surrounding world.
Objectively everything that does not depend on consciousness, will, desires. For example, objective facts or their reflections will be the rotation of the Earth around the Sun, the confluence of the Volga into the Caspian Sea, the statements “Socrates is a man,” “F.M. Dostoevsky is a Russian writer,” etc.; they do not depend on our personal desires: the Earth will not stop its rotation, the Volga will not turn back, and Socrates will not become a Russian writer.
Of course, knowledge cannot be completely “purified” from a person. Cognition is influenced by social relations, culture, and era.
The great German philosopher Kant, listing the main themes of philosophical reflection, put in first place the question: what can I know? In fact, a person’s solution to other philosophical and life problems for himself - what is the meaning of life, how to live and act in the world, what one can count on and hope for, etc. - largely depends on what exactly a person knows about the world, about yourself, about other people, about society. Therefore, the problem of human cognitive capabilities is as ancient as philosophy itself. When, for example, the ancient sage Socrates said: “I know that I know nothing,” he, in fact, answered (albeit in a peculiar way) exactly this question mentioned above.
The problem of the possibility, methods and ways of knowing the world constitutes the content of a special section of philosophical knowledge - epistemology(from Greek gnosis - knowledge and logos– doctrine), or philosophical theory of knowledge. It strives to identify the general and necessary properties and patterns of any cognitive process, to form a holistic idea about it. It is clear that for this, epistemology must explore the most different types of knowledge - starting from the ordinary, everyday and ending with the most complex forms of mystical and scientific knowledge. True, historically it turned out that epistemology was primarily interested in scientific knowledge, which was considered the standard for other types of cognitive activity. However, over time, the area of interest of epistemology is constantly expanding due to the turn of philosophy to the analysis of extra-scientific ways of knowing.
In the history of culture, various philosophical theories of knowledge have existed and exist, but all of them, in one way or another, proceed from some general postulates (axioms) that explain why human knowledge is generally possible. The most important of them can be considered the following.
1. Cognition is the process of a person acquiring knowledge about the real world and about himself as a part of it. Knowledge at the same time, they are interpreted as relatively correct information about reality. Erroneous information is considered misconceptions, and the lack of reliable knowledge about something is ignorance. In this sense, knowledge is nothing more than the movement from ignorance to knowledge, overcoming errors, achieving more and more accurate and complete information about the world. (“You should love knowledge more than ignorance,” advised the ancient Greek philosopher Cleobulus.)
2. Cognition is rooted in the very essence of life, inherent in one form or another to all living beings (“...from an amoeba to Einstein there is only one step,” joked the 20th century philosopher. K. Popper), contributes to their survival in the world. It is obvious that even the simplest creature - the same amoeba - would not adapt to environment, if it had not learned in the course of evolution to somehow recognize the phenomena of its life world and respond to them. The task of survival has always been relevant for a person “lost in the dark forest of world life. In order to live and develop, a person must cognitively navigate the world reality, which is advancing on him from all sides.” Knowledge, therefore, is a necessary attribute of human existence, a natural condition of human existence, and knowledge about the world constitutes the most important life value for him.
3. Cognition is possible because both the cognizable world and the person cognizing it have the necessary properties for this. Of course, the world itself is indifferent to human cognitive interests, but it seems to allow one to know itself. Such mercy of nature lies in the fact that in it there is an orderliness of phenomena, their necessary, general and natural properties. Such organization of the world contributes to its detection. And, on the contrary, it is easy to imagine that an absolutely chaotic, daily and unpredictably changing world would not give a person any opportunity for his knowledge: the mind could not cling to something stable and regular.
At the same time, knowledge of the world is also possible because man himself has certain prerequisites and abilities given to him by nature and developed in the process of biological and sociocultural evolution - consciousness, language, the power of abstract thinking, creative activity, practical skills and abilities, etc. All this allows a person, like a “predatory epistemological subject,” to successfully “pounce” on the knowable world and absorb, master it with the help of cognition.
The core of all epistemological problems is the question of the knowability of the world – can a person, in principle, obtain reliable knowledge about any subject and phenomenon of reality? In the history of philosophy you can find different answers to this question, but they can be combined into two main options - optimistic and pessimistic. Epistemological optimism believes that the boundaries of knowledge do not exist, that all phenomena of reality are accessible to the human mind (for example, Marxist philosophy and classical science take these positions). This point of view is largely confirmed by human creative activity: successful practical remaking of the world would be impossible if we were not able to recognize the laws of the existence and functioning of things. For example, would a chemist be able to synthesize a new substance if his knowledge of the composition and structure of the desired compound diverged from its actual structure?
Epistemological pessimism always limits a person’s cognitive capabilities in one way or another. It manifests itself to one degree or another in various philosophical movements, but the main ones can be considered agnosticism and skepticism. Agnosticism(from Greek agnostos- unknowable) is a concept that denies the knowability of everything that cannot be represented in the direct experience of man - God, substance, law, etc. The theoretical foundations of agnosticism were laid by Kant in his doctrine of the “thing in itself.” All things in the world really exist, he believed, but their hidden essence (which is not given to us in experience) is unknowable. In other words, a person can know a thing only as it appears to him in his cognitive experience, but he is fundamentally unable to know it as it is “in itself,” regardless of our knowledge.
Skepticism(from Greek skeptikos- considering) is a movement whose supporters (ancient skeptics, Hume, etc.) doubt the possibility of reliable knowledge of the world. Thus, the ancient Greek skeptics Pyrrho, Agrippa and others formulated 15 epistemological arguments (tropes). They quite convincingly proved the relativity of our knowledge of things due to their constant variability. For example, one argument says that the same things cause different people not the same representations - then what kind of representation can be considered reliable?
It should be recognized that there are some grounds for pessimistic conclusions in epistemology. Indeed, a person always deals not only with knowledge, but also with ignorance, and its boundaries expand along with the growth of our knowledge. According to Popper, we must proceed from two theses: “we know quite a lot” and “our ignorance is unlimited.” A person’s confidence in his cognitive capabilities should not lead him to a state of “epistemological delight.” A dose of healthy skepticism should sober us up and promote a critical assessment of our own knowledge. And yet, in everyday life and activity, each of us must be an epistemological optimist - we can obtain reliable knowledge about the world, which also has great practical significance. The very life of mankind, all its practical activities testify to the real possibility of genuine knowledge of the world and, as a consequence, to its transformation by man.
