How is reality reflected in feelings and what? is it different from reflection in cognitive processes?

1. In the process of cognition, two sides are quite clearly visible - sensory reflection and rational cognition. The process of cognition, as a rule, has as its starting point the reflection of reality with the help of human senses. It is through the senses that we receive everything primary information about objects and phenomena of the external world. Sensory reflection appears in three main forms: in the form of sensations, perceptions and ideas. What does each of these shapes represent?

Sensations are sensory images of individual properties of objects. We feel colors, sounds, smells, have taste, tactile sensations, etc. Sensations, as L. Feuerbach noted, are a subjective image of the objective world. This image is objective in content, it adequately reflects the properties of the object, but is subjective in form, depending on the characteristics of the physiology of a person’s sense organs, the physiology of his higher nervous activity, and even, as shown above, from his life experience.

It’s a different matter, if sensations are images, then they cannot but have a certain similarity with the reflected properties, then they can and should act and act as the initial cell of the cognitive process. perception.

Finally, the highest form of sensory reflection is representation - figurative knowledge about objects not directly perceived by us, reproduced from memory.

Rational knowledge is ultimately based on the material that the senses give us. Finally, regulation of objective activity is ensured primarily with the help of sensory images. This characteristic can be supplemented by the fact that the advantages of sensory reflection include its imagery, as well as the immediate reality of its images and their brightness.

At the same time, the autonomy of the two sides of cognition is only relative: feeling, sensing, we already theorize, reflect, and, while thinking, do not break away completely from sensory images, we rely on them. And yet, what do we mean by thinking? Thinking is an active, purposeful, indirect, generalized and abstract reflection of the essential properties and relationships of the external world, and at the same time the process of creating new ideas.

Now let us turn to the characteristics of the basic forms of thinking. These forms are familiar to each of us, and although we use them all the time, probably not everyone will be able to name them right away. It is a concept, a judgment and an inference. Let's open the brackets in their content. A concept is a form of thinking that reflects the general and essential properties, connections and relationships of objects and phenomena. Concepts are denoted by a word or group of words. There are ordinary and scientific concepts. Concepts are both the result of the work of thought and, at the same time, means of thinking. But we do not operate with individual concepts, but with concepts in their connection with each other, reflecting the connection of things. In other words, we judge things. Judgment is a form of thought in which, through the connection of concepts, something is affirmed or denied about the subject of thought. A judgment is usually expressed in the form of a sentence. In this case, the connection of concepts in a judgment must correspond to the connection of things. Finally, inference is a form of movement of thought in which from one or more propositions, called premises, a new proposition, called a conclusion or consequence, is derived. Inferences are divided into two main classes: inductive, which are derivations general position from a number of particular facts, and deductive, in which particular, less general ones are derived from some general position.

1. Epistemology as a branch of philosophy, main epistemological problems and concepts. Agnosticism and its assessment. The concepts of “knowledge” and “understanding”.

2. Basic forms of cognitive activity: sensory, rational, intuitive. Features of philosophical knowledge, the concept of reflection.

3. The concept of truth. The question of the objectivity of truth in philosophy, the dialectic of the relative and the absolute, the abstract and the concrete in truth. The problem of the basic criteria of truth.

4. Concepts of truth in philosophy.

Basic Concepts: Cognition, epistemology, method, methodology, technique, object, subject and subject of knowledge, sensation, perception, representation, concept, judgment, inference, reflection and self-reflection, practice, objective, absolute and relative truth; correspondent, pragmatic, coherent and other theories of truth; knowledge.

Science, empirical, theoretical level, observation, measurement, comparison, experiment, analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, abstraction, modeling, system analysis, idealization, idea, hypothesis, theory, concept.

XX century led to an increase in the scale of cognitive activity, the transfer of knowledge production to an information technology basis, and the widespread use of computers as a means of obtaining new knowledge. A pattern of social evolution is the rapid development of science in relation to all other processes. public life.

Modern philosophy proceeds from the fact that rational comprehension of the world is a necessary and determining condition for the purposeful positive activity of man and society. The world is knowable, and knowledge in various forms is the process of enriching a person with new knowledge, which can be defined as a set of ideas about the world, theoretical mastery of its objects, their ideal form.

A person’s cognitive attitude to reality is a necessary element of the entire system of his relations.
to the world. Cognition is considered as a socio-historical process of human activity, the content of which is the reflection of objective reality in his consciousness. The end result of such activity is always new knowledge about the world.

In its turn, knowledge is a collection of information about the world, the properties of objects, patterns of processes and phenomena, as well as the rules for using it for decision-making.

“The main conclusion to which philosophical thought, and above all the philosophy of science, has come today concerns the nature of knowledge as such. In contrast to the recent era of “the dominance of the scientific worldview,” there is now an awareness that man and society have different types of knowledge. Science does not have a monopoly on reliable knowledge about the world and man, and especially about God as “a hypothesis that it does not need.” Because modern science, as a rule, practices only one, special way of understanding reality: it studies objective, “external” laws that, as it believes, determine the existence of nature, man and society. That is, modern science is, in principle, alienated from the inner life world of an individual person with his spiritual quests and moral problems. It is for this reason that science methodologically ignores God.

Religion, on the contrary, is concerned with man, his spiritual world, and therefore perceives the universe itself not as an impersonal cosmos, but as a person’s living space, like that “dwelling” or “home” that is given to man by God. “For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)"

Understanding- the correct perception or interpretation of any event, phenomenon, fact, accepted in a certain social community.

Problems of understanding were first raised in the philosophy of neo-Kantianism, in modern philosophy they are dealt with by hermeneutics.

Objects of understanding speakers:

a) information, information, knowledge about the environment or inner world subject - the meaning of objects;

b) the meaning conveyed by information - a set of meanings.

* The branch of philosophy that studies the problems of the nature and possibilities of knowledge, the relationship of knowledge to reality, within the framework of which the general prerequisites of knowledge are explored, the conditions for its reliability and truth are identified, is called epistemology.

Basic principles of epistemology the following:

· identity of thinking and being (the principle of the cognizability of the world);

· dialectical nature of the cognition process;

· social practice (the basis of knowledge, driving force, criterion of truth, purpose of knowledge).

Main sections of epistemology:

· the doctrine of reflection;

· the doctrine of the origin and development of knowledge;

· the doctrine of practice as the basis of knowledge;

· the doctrine of truth and the criteria for its reliability;

· the doctrine of the methods and forms in which it is carried out cognitive activity person, society.

Human cognition objective reality happens in various types and certain forms (see Table 4.1).

All these types of cognitive activity are closely interrelated.

Due to the fact that cognitive activity is a continuous process, in the history of philosophy the question of what is the “object” and “subject” of knowledge has been constantly posed and considered in different ways.

In a broad sense, "subject" scientific knowledge is society, and the “object” is the whole the world, but only within the boundaries within which society, a group of people, a person interacts with it. Thus, the process of acquiring knowledge is the result of the interaction of subject and object, and therefore our knowledge always contains two moments, its two components: subjective form (subjective moment) and objective content.

Table 4.1

The peculiarity of the interaction between subject and object in cognitive activity is manifested, first of all, in social cognition, where the object and subject of cognition coincide. Society knows itself. As a result, social cognition itself has its own character traits: 1) social laws are mainly statistical and probabilistic in nature. This is due to the fact that society as an object of knowledge for science is a system of laws, and social laws are the result of human activity, therefore they are always fundamentally statistical; 2) the basis of social cognition is the study public relations. Any society is divided into two components: a material basis and a spiritual one - consciousness, and accordingly, two significantly different types of laws function: the laws of material life and the laws of social consciousness; 3) social life itself changes relatively quickly, so its development occurs on the basis mainly relative truths. This means that at each level of human development there is its own understanding of what is happening, its own approach to values, to theories, to methods used in knowledge, etc. Finally, fourthly, social knowledge is always connected with the interests of people.

Cognition – highest form reflections. Revealing the laws of reality, it recreates objects and phenomena in an ideal form in all the diversity of their properties. This turns out to be possible because human cognitive activity is based on his objective-sensual, material, practical activities. A person cannot know anything about objects and phenomena of the external world without the material that he receives from the senses, therefore sensory knowledge is a necessary condition and an integral aspect of cognition in general.

Sensory cognition includes three main forms of reflection:

sensation perception representation

Feeling– this is a subjective image of objective reality, it is always one-aspect. Perception- this is already a holistic image of an object, a combination of sensations, thanks to which the object is perceived as something whole. Performance how the sensory reflection of an object allows us to reproduce it mentally when it is not in front of us. Because of this, not all perceived properties are reflected in the representation, but only the most important in some respect, thereby reproducing something generalized and typical.

The specificity of sensory cognition lies in the fact that it is formed as a result of direct interaction with the outside world.

Abstract thinking- the second integral part of the process of human cognition.

The second integral part of the process of human cognition is abstract thinking, which is carried out in the forms of concepts, judgments and inferences. The concept as a reflection of the essential properties of the objects under study, due to its iconic form, does not have clarity, combining abstract signs of things (for example, “elementary particle” in physics; “species” - in biology; “product” - in political economy, etc. .). A certain connection of concepts represents a judgment. Since the essence of abstract thinking is to establish connections and relationships, the content of concepts can be revealed only through the establishment of connections and relationships between them (for example, “the speed of light does not depend on the speed of the light source,” “the content modern era is the formation of information civilization”, etc.). Inference is the process of obtaining new judgments based on existing ones, which is achieved by applying the laws of logic.

High quality specificity abstract thinking is that it is mediated, i.e. connected with the reflected reality only through sensory forms, which serve as its initial content.

In its form, abstract thinking is qualitatively different from sensory cognition in that it exists in the form of sign systems or language, which are the material form of the process of logical thinking.

The transition from the sensory level of cognition to the logical one is accomplished through operations abstraction, generalization and idealization.

When abstracting, any one property of an object is isolated from a whole set of properties. Based on generalization, this isolated property extends to many other things that we may never have seen. Idealization is logical operation, which determines the limit of a particular property. For example, when we say: “period”, “absolutely” black body", "incompressible fluid", etc., then we consider some property as absolute. The specificity of abstract thinking is that by using these operations a sensory image is transformed, and the results of the transformation are then connected by a sign form. IN modern conditions In connection with the sharp increase in the volume of scientific knowledge, there is an urgent need to develop special problems related to the content and forms of abstract thinking.

To consider issues related to creativity, it is necessary to define the concept of creativity.

Creativity– a special type of general abilities. The impetus for identifying this type of ability was information about the lack of connection between traditional intelligence tests and the success of solving problems. problem situations. It was recognized that the latter depends on the ability to use information given in tasks in different ways at a fast pace. This ability was called creativity and began to be studied independently of intelligence - as an ability that reflects an individual’s ability to create new concepts and develop new skills. Creativity is associated with creative achievements personality.

Creation- process human activity, creating qualitatively new material and spiritual values, a kind of human ability to create from the material provided by reality new reality, satisfying diverse social needs.

Reflection– a term meaning reflection, as well as the study of a cognitive act. The term “reflect” means turning consciousness towards oneself, reflecting on one’s mental state.

The central question of the theory of knowledge is the question of the relationship of our knowledge to the objective world. This issue is discussed in theories of truth. Truth is the correspondence, adequacy of our knowledge to the content of the object of knowledge. This correspondence has the following main characteristics:

1) the objectivity of truth as such a part of knowledge, the content of which does not depend on us. It exists because the material world that is reflected in it is objective, and reflection presupposes similarity to the original. That is why there is a moment in cognition that does not depend on our consciousness, but is entirely determined by the influence of the external world on it. This content of our knowledge, independent of us, is objective truth;

2) in its form, truth is always subjective, since consciousness always participates in the interaction of object and subject, determining the form of perception. At the sensory stage of cognition, this form is determined by the prehistory of man and the characteristics of biochemical and physiological processes. At the level of abstract thinking, subjectivity manifests itself depending on what sign systems we use and under what conditions we conduct cognition;

3) the absoluteness of truth as that part of knowledge that cannot be refuted further development cognitive activity. Such truth exists only as the limit to which our knowledge strives;

4) the relativity of truth as approximate knowledge that is true only under certain conditions. Knowledge is relative because the world has infinite complexity and is in continuous development, while at each level of knowledge we are dealing with its finite forms.

In the theory of truth especially important has a question about the criteria that allow one to establish truth. The main criterion of truth is practice.

For materialism, practice is a purposeful, sensory-objective activity of human society, aimed at transforming objective reality. Its content is work. It exists in three main forms: as industrial, socio-political activity and scientific experiment. The main form of practice is production, since it determines the content of all its other forms.

In modern analytical philosophy there are several theories of truth.

1. Correspondence theory of truth .

The basic idea of ​​correspondent truth is deceptively simple: a sentence is true if it corresponds to the facts (or reality).

This theory must, first of all, determine what the truth of empirical or observational sentences consists of, i.e. associated with experience and not deducible from other propositions - but, on the contrary, those that themselves are basic for further knowledge. According to this theory, a statement is true if there is something due to which it is true - something that corresponds in reality to what is stated.

Classic attempts to explain the concept of correspondent truth quickly ran into insurmountable difficulties. If a sentence is true in virtue of its correspondence with a fact, then we need an explanation of this “correspondence” and these “facts.”

2. Deflationary theory of truth - a family of theories united by statements that statements declaring the truth of a certain statement do not impart the property of truth to such a statement, i.e. actually explains truth as a semantic concept.

Disquotation theory - the theory of “unquotation” - was developed by Willard Quine on the basis of the semantic concept of Alfred Tarski. Quine interprets Tarski's paradigm "The sentence 'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white" as using the truth predicate as a tool for removing quotation marks from a sentence, and moving from talking about words to talking about snow.

3. Pragmatist theory of truth .

In the classical pragmatism of C.S. Peirce and his followers, the idea is recognized as the bearer of truth - a term freely used by these philosophers to designate opinions, beliefs, statements and similar entities.

The idea here is a tool with a specific function: a true idea is one that performs its function, a false idea is one that does not. The universality of truth lies precisely in its universal attainability: give any person enough information and the opportunity to reflect sufficiently on any question and the result will be that he will reach a certain conclusion - the same one that any other consciousness will reach.

The difficulty in both understanding and criticizing the pragmatic theory of truth is to identify this multifaceted concept of the functioning or working of an idea.

Truth from a pragmatic point of view, in fact, can be an agreement between an idea and reality; in this interpretation, an idea is a mental image that literally copies some signs of the world. However, the disadvantage of this definition for pragmatists was its apparent inability to fully capture all the different kinds of things that we say and think, which the pragmatists called ideas. The pragmatist definition of ideas is functional, not essential.

4. Revision theory of truth is designed to analyze paradoxes such as the liar's paradox (“What I say now is false”), which show that the assumptions common sense regarding the truth may be inconsistent and contradictory.

5. Relativistic theory of truth .

Here, the condition for the truth of ideas is the premise of conventionality (compliance with traditions, conventionality) of meanings. However, a fundamental objection arises here, namely that such an approach reduces the cognitive value of our statements and reduces the knowability of the world.

6. Coherence theory of truth characteristic of the great rationalistic systems of metaphysics - Leibniz, Spinoza, Fichte, Hegel.

According to this theory, the measure of the truth of a statement is determined by its role and place in some conceptual system: the more connected or consistent our statements are with each other, the more true they are: the truth of any true statement consists in its coherence with some specific set of statements.

The theory of knowledge reveals the patterns and ways of the dialectical process of reflecting the world in human consciousness. It formulates general principles and theoretical principles that describe and explain this process. In this regard, at the present stage social development Issues of the methodology of scientific knowledge, improving the forms and methods of knowledge are acquiring paramount importance.

A person is in constant interaction with environment. Numerous objects and phenomena of reality affect his senses and, reflected by his brain in the form of sensations, ideas, thoughts, feelings, aspirations, cause a response - certain human actions. This is a reflection of reality by the human brain in the form of various psychic phenomena there is the subjective world of man, which is a reflection, an image of the objective world that exists outside of us and independently of our consciousness. “Things exist outside of us,” wrote V.I. Lenin. “Our perceptions and ideas are their images.”

Images of things- it is like a copy of them, an image of objects, similar to the displayed objects and phenomena, but not the objects or phenomena themselves.

The starting moment reflections of reality are Feel. They are a reflection of individual properties, objects and phenomena of the material world that act directly on the senses (sensation of color, sound, smell, etc.). In perception, objects and phenomena are reflected in the diversity of their properties. When examining an object, we see not just its color, shape and size separately from each other, but we perceive it as a whole (house, table, pencil, etc.).

Images of objects and phenomena can be reproduced after the action of stimuli in the form of ideas, that is, images of previously perceived objects or phenomena.

Sensations, perceptions and ideas are visual images of objects. This is a sensory reflection of reality. It gives knowledge about the external, directly perceived properties of objects and their external connections with each other.

Not all properties of objects and not all objects are directly perceived. For example, we do not directly see atoms or hear ultrasounds, although their existence is reliably known. In these cases, knowledge is achieved indirectly - through comparisons, generalizations, inferences, in carrying out which, a person proceeds, however, from what is given to him directly in sensations and perceptions. Such an indirect and generalized reflection of reality is called thinking.

Thinking is inextricably linked with language and is carried out with the help of language. A word, a language, is a sound, material shell of thought, outside of which thought does not exist at all.

Feeling and thinking - inextricable links in a single process of reflecting reality. The starting point is sensory, visual knowledge of objects and phenomena of reality. But, sensing, perceiving or visually imagining something, a person always in one way or another analyzes, combines, generalizes, i.e. thinks what is given in sensations and perceptions.

Feelings, perceptions, ideas, thoughts - all this cognitive processes, cognitive side reflections of reality.

The reflection of reality by the brain is not limited to the cognitive activity of people. The outside world is reflected in a person’s head not only in the form of visual images of objects or thoughts about them, but also in the form of one or another attitude towards objects and phenomena of reality. We always relate in one way or another to what affects us, and our particular attitude towards it is determined both by the characteristics of the influencing objects and phenomena themselves, and by all our previous experience, the characteristics of our personality. Depending on the characteristics of what affects us, and the characteristics of our personality, formed under the influence of previous influences of objects and phenomena of reality, we experience certain needs and interests, feelings and desires, and carry out volitional actions. All this again various shapes reflections of objects and phenomena of reality. All these are responses to the action of objects and phenomena of the objective world, to those features that are characteristic of them.

All personality traits are a reflection of reality, primarily the abilities and character of a person, which are formed under the influence of living conditions, depending on the circumstances in which human activity takes place.

All these different forms of reflection real world are inextricably linked. Feelings and desires always depend on what is known in objects and phenomena, what qualities, properties, and features we highlight. At the same time, knowledge of objective reality, in turn, itself depends on our needs and interests, on the feelings and desires we experience, on volitional actions, on the character traits that have developed in us, on all personality traits.

Reflection of reality occurs in the process of human activity: a person reflects the world, influencing it, performing certain actions, operating with things. Practice, the activities of people, is the source of knowledge of objects and phenomena of reality and one or another attitude towards them. A person does not passively reflect reality, he is an active figure in the world around him. In the process of labor, carrying out practical activities, he changes and transforms the environment in the interests of satisfying constantly growing social and personal needs. In the process of labor, Marx points out, man not only “changes the form of what is given by nature: in what is given by nature, he at the same time realizes his conscious goal, which, like a law, determines the method and character of his actions and to which he must subdue
YOUR WILL."

The presence of conscious goals in a person as an active figure plays a crucial role in reflecting objective reality, making its reflection purposeful and consciously selective. From all the diversity of what surrounds him, from all the circumstances of life, a person first of all singles out what has special meaning for him, what meets the conscious goals and objectives of his activity, the needs of social life realized by him and his personal needs.

Practical activity, operating with things, significantly expands a person’s cognitive capabilities, clarifies his knowledge, enriches it. At the same time, practice is also a criterion for the correctness or incorrectness of a reflection of reality. By acting on the images that arise in us, we check whether they are correct or incorrect.

Being an active figure, a person accumulates life experience , and this plays an important role in reflecting objective reality. People's experiences vary; it depends on the natural and social conditions in which a person lives, on the conditions of education and training, professional activity, from the influence of surrounding people, from all the diverse social impacts to which a person is exposed. All this significantly influences its reflection of objective reality.

Being an active figure in socio-historical development, a person in the process of activity changes not only the external, natural and social environment, but also his own physical and spiritual nature, the mental make-up of his personality. In the process of activity, not only do a person’s sensations and perceptions become more and more subtle and accurate, observation, thinking, and imagination develop, but his feelings are also formed, strong-willed qualities, skills and habits, develop’ abilities, arises ear for music, artistic taste, interests and inclinations are awakened, character is formed.

Thus, objective, external influences, being the initial and determining factors in a person’s reflection of the real world, determine and causally determine all human mental activity, all personality traits, but not directly, not automatically, but through human interaction with objective reality in the process of activity aimed at changing the environment, and depending on the place certain environmental conditions occupy in his life and activities. This is precisely what explains that the same general external conditions, the same external environment have different effects on different people, as well as on the same person in different periods his life. It also follows from this that the external conditions of life never fatally predetermine the future mental development person.

Man's reflection of reality is an inextricable unity objective and subjective. It is objective in content, since it is a reflection of external things and phenomena and is determined by external influences. It is objective also because it is a real nervous process and is expressed in various external actions and human behavior. But it is subjective because it is always a reflection of the real world a certain person, the subject, is always refracted through the accumulated personal experience, through all personality traits.

From all that has been said, the enormous vital role mental activity person. As a reflection of objective reality, it is a necessary condition for a person’s influence on the world, for him to change reality. By orienting people in the objective world, mental activity gives them the opportunity to remake the environment affecting them. A person changes reality in accordance with how he reflects it. There can be no human activity outside the reflection of reality. “Even for eating and drinking,” says Engels, a person is taken under the influence of those reflected in
his head experiences sensations of hunger and thirst, and stops eating and drinking because a feeling of satiety is reflected in his head.”

This vital role of mental activity is due to the fact that the psyche is a true reflection of objective reality. It correctly orients a person in the surrounding world, and it is thanks to this that science arises, art and technology are created as a tool for a person’s higher orientation in the surrounding reality and transforming it in the interests of humanity.

1. Subjects and objects of knowledge

COGNITION is a socio-historical process of human activity, which is aimed at reflecting objective reality in human consciousness, “the eternal, endless approach of thinking to the object. The question of the essence of knowledge is inextricably linked with the solution of the main question of philosophy. Idealism absolutizes individual moments of the process of cognition, separates it from the object, turns the development of knowledge into something independent, and some idealists see in it the cause and source of the development of the subject. Materialism considers cognition as a process of approximately correct reflection of reality in the human mind. However, pre-Marxist materialism did not see the complexity of knowledge; from its point of view, knowledge is not a process, not an activity, but a dead, mirror image, passive contemplation (Contemplation).

Cognition goes from the analysis of a phenomenon to the analysis of an essence, from a first-order essence to a second-order essence, from the study of an object to the study of a system of relationships between objects. By revealing the laws of reality, knowledge recreates in ideal form natural objects in their comprehensive richness and diversity. This turns out to be possible only because human cognitive activity is based on his objective-sensual, material, practical activity.

Objects of the external world become objects of knowledge, since they are involved in the orbit of human activity and are subject to active influence from humans; only thanks to this their properties are discovered and revealed.

Consequently, the needs of practical activity determine the direction of development of knowledge and confront it with actual problems, which need to be resolved, determine the pace of development of certain sciences. Material production provides technical tools and scientific equipment for solving cognitive problems. In turn, cognitive activity, embodied in technology, becomes a direct productive force. In its development, cognition goes through a number of stages, which differ from each other in the degree of reflection of the objective world.

Dialectics is characteristic of all human knowledge; dialectics, logic and theory of knowledge are in inextricable unity. The basis of this unity is the correct reflection of the dialectics of the objective world in the logic of thinking and in knowledge. The theory of knowledge, in its origin and content, has special objects and areas of research. Dialectics as a science covers the development of the objective world and the process of thinking as a whole. In relation to the laws and forms of thinking, dialectics acts as logic, and in relation to the knowledge of the world, dialectics acts as a theory of knowledge. Only the so-called subjective dialectics coincides with logic and the theory of knowledge, that is, the dialectics of thinking and the dialectics of the process of cognition, the reflection of the world in human consciousness.

In the process of sensory cognition big role sensations play. Sensation gives us knowledge about individual properties and aspects of objects and phenomena. Sensations are images of moving matter, subjective images of the objective world. Sensations are objective in their origin, in content, but subjective in form. They exist in the human mind, in the subject’s head. The subjective form of reflection of things is manifested in the fact that different people experience these things differently. Sensations never fully reflect the object itself, since the number of connections and relationships of the object is infinite, and the nature and completeness of sensory reflection is limited. The degree of completeness of reflection different people It can be different, depending on the practical activities of people, their profession, education, degree of attention, state of health, etc. Being copies of things, sensations do not coincide with the things themselves. Only subjective idealists speak about the identity of things and sensations. From their point of view, things seem to dissolve in sensations, turning into combinations of sensations. The absurdity of the philosophy of subjective idealists lies in the fact that people, as complexes of sensations, with the help of complexes of sensations (sense organs and the brain) should cognize other complexes of sensations, i.e. objects.

Our sensations cannot be identified with things, nor can they be metaphysically broken apart, as do proponents of the theory of symbols. Images and copies of things cannot be considered as conventional signs, symbols or hieroglyphs, which supposedly have nothing in common with the things themselves. The creator of the theory of symbols or hieroglyphs was the German scientist Helmholtz, who believed that sensation and representation are not images of things and processes of nature, but are only symbols and signs.

But sensations are not generated by the senses, as the “physiological” idealists thought, but are a reflection of a copy of the external world. Sensations are, as is known, the transformation of the energy of external stimulation into a fact of consciousness. The theory of symbols leads to a retreat from materialism in the theory of knowledge, introducing distrust in the testimony of our senses. An image can never be equal to a model, but it is not identical to a conventional sign. “An image,” wrote Ulyanov (Lenin), a prominent Russian philosopher, “necessarily and inevitably presupposes the objective reality of what is “displayed.” “Conventional sign,” symbol, hieroglyph are concepts that introduce a completely unnecessary element of agnosticism.”

Pedagogy - education, “these are phenomena of reality that determine the development of the human individual in the process of purposeful activity of society” (108, p. 75). The subject of pedagogy is “education as a real holistic pedagogical process, purposefully organized in special social institutions(family, educational and cultural institutions)" (108 ...

They turn out to be indispensable where the senses are powerless in comprehending the causes and conditions of the emergence of any object or phenomenon, in understanding its essence, forms of existence, patterns of its development, etc. 4. Methods of scientific knowledge. 4.1. The concept of method and methodology. Classification of methods of scientific knowledge. The concept of method (from the Greek word “methodos” - the path to something) ...

The term “object of knowledge” to emphasize the non-trivial nature of the formation of an object of science. The subject of knowledge represents a certain slice or aspect of an object involved in the sphere of scientific analysis. The object of knowledge enters science through the object of knowledge. We can also say that the subject of knowledge is a projection of the selected object onto specific research tasks. II Knowledge...

An experiment is closely related to a problem, which has its own theoretical and empirical foundations, and to the hypothesis it is being undertaken to test. IN methodological literature analysis is defined as a method of scientific knowledge, consisting of dividing an object into its component parts and studying them separately. Synthesis is the reverse operation - combining parts into a whole and studying...

WINGS OF ABSTRACT

This time the debate will not be between the Philosopher and the Skeptic, but within the philosophical camp.

At one of the philosophy departments, after classes, Associate Professor N. gloomily expressed his dissatisfaction with the students.

They are original. This Fedorov finds a hook for every word. I say: “Abstraction approximately reflects objective reality.” And he: “What exactly does abstraction actually reflect?”

Fedorov is a smart guy,” objected the young candidate of sciences K. “And it’s time for us to abandon this naive view that any statement must be compared with reality as true or false.” There are simply conditional assumptions that turn out to be effective or ineffective in solving various problems.

Give up these positivist things,” said N. “So the theory of reflection can be declared naive.”

Is it possible, while remaining in the position of the Marxist theory of reflection, to still answer Fedorov clearly and convincingly? - Professor D. entered the conversation, who was ready to hit one point in any dispute until he dotted all the i's. - According to the theory of reflection, any knowledge is a reflection of real reality, and only by comparing it with reality can we decide whether it is true or false. Let's take any abstraction, any knowledge in which the scientist is distracted from some features of reality, for some reason does not take these features into account. Let it be a material point, an ideal gas, an absolutely elastic particle, etc. Let us not approximately, but absolutely precisely indicate what they actually reflect. Let us be consistent materialists: consciousness is always a reflection of existence.

N. But you're simplifying it. Dialectical materialism does not say that any knowledge is a mirror copy of the world. Abstraction is a reflection of the world in principle, in tendency, approximately.

D. The whole conversation started with your failure to explain to the student what it means to “approximately reflect.” Where is the line between approximate truth and error? The concept of a “material point” is a distraction, an abstraction from the size and shape of a real body and takes into account only its mass. But why is it possible in some cases to neglect certain properties of things and consider an “approximate” abstraction to be generally correct? But in other cases this cannot be done. Try, say, in the concept of “man” to abstract from his ability to produce tools of labor, or in the concept of “imperialism” - from the fact of the dominance of monopolies, and you will get false concepts, “empty abstractions”, as Lenin said. Why?

TO. On the one hand, I agree with N. To demand in every case that the concept is completely similar to reality is, really, the 18th century. On the other hand, N. is inconsistent when talking about some kind of approximate similarity. The strength of the concept of a material point, for example, is not at all that it reflects such a property of real bodies as having mass. Quite the opposite: precisely because this concept works effectively in science, because the creative activity of the human mind has invented a mental construct that is simpler than reality, in which only one property is clearly fixed, and others (the size and shape of bodies) are eliminated. In reality, bodies without size and shape do not exist. So what kind of correspondence can we talk about? Don't be dogmatic, colleagues.

D. Of course, abstractions, or, as they sometimes say, ideal objects of science, are simpler than real things, and therefore they are clearer, clearer than vague everyday ideas. But we should not forget the words of Louis de Broglie, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, said on this occasion: “All these idealizations are less applicable to reality, the more perfect they are. Without a penchant for paradoxes, one can assert, contrary to Descartes, that there is nothing more deceptive than a clear and distinct idea.” The cyberneticist L. Brillouin also speaks about this: “However, a scientist should never confuse the actual external world with the physical model of this world he invented. He is happy and proud if he fully understands all the features of his model, but this does not mean that he really knows much about the external world around him.”

N. These statements by scientists only confirm the complexity, the depth of the dialectical process of knowledge. Truth is a process!

D. But where is this process directed? Don't you notice the paradox: the more developed science, the greater specific gravity have various idealizations in it; therefore, the degree of idealization, the degree of abstraction reflects the level of development of science; at the same time, the greater the degree of idealization, the more knowledge moves away from reality; therefore, the further science goes, the further it goes from reality. This contradiction can perhaps be called the main paradox of the theory of abstraction.

N. Don’t forget Lenin’s wonderful words: “...to retreat in order to jump more accurately.”

D. I remember these words. But you must, firstly, explain why such a retreat is needed, and, secondly, indicate clear criteria that make it possible not to confuse a justified deviation from reality in the process of abstraction with a false separation from it.

TO. The ultimate success of scientific knowledge is such a criterion.

D. End justifies the means?

TO. That's it. The most seemingly artificial constructions, unlike reality modern science, connecting with each other, ultimately provide such knowledge that successfully guides our actions. Einstein himself was forced to admit: “If you do not sin against reason, you cannot come to anything at all.”

N. Reason cannot be fit into any canons at all. He is in eternal change, his relationship with reality is always fluid, mobile, flexible.

D. Dear colleagues, your ideas about the process of abstraction remind me of alchemy: take something unknown and get gold. In N. this alchemy is poetic; the demand for strict certainty seems to him blasphemous, insulting dialectical reason. K. has business alchemy, he firmly knows the formula of the mixture and strives to “get the job done” without bothering himself with “pseudo-questions” about why he does it this way and not otherwise. But alchemy doesn't satisfy me. I want to have, firstly, accurate knowledge, and secondly, the answer must be accurate not only to the question “how to know?”, but also to the question “why is it necessary to know in this way?”

TO. Excessive precision is scholastic.

N. And metaphysical!

D. And yet I will allow myself to precisely formulate the question about the nature of abstraction. Let us denote complete compliance with reality by one, and complete non-compliance with reality by zero. The more an abstraction is removed from reality, the fewer properties of real things are reflected in it, the closer it is, therefore, to zero. How is it possible, moving piece by piece towards zero, then suddenly synthesize these fragments approaching zero into something whole approaching one? Wouldn’t the “enlightened” man in the street, who is inclined to call “too abstract” and “out of touch with life,” turn out to be right then, everything that goes even slightly beyond the scope of his experience and his idea of ​​“reality”?

The dispute described reflects very real points of view. I interrupted his presentation right where I was decisive question, which we now have to figure out.

Is it worth it? Isn't such a question a highly specialized one, of interest only to meticulous philosophers?

Let us give several examples as an answer to this doubt. You have to prepare a report, answer an exam, write an article, and talk coherently about some events. In any of these cases, you need to highlight something important, and distract from something, abstract yourself. If you know how to do this, then the result of your work will be clear, consistent, and there will be nothing superfluous in it. The process of abstraction can be likened to the work of a sculptor carving a statue from marble. And as Norbert Wiener noted, “Michelangelo's work is the work of a critic. He simply knocked off the extra marble from the statue that was hiding it. Thus, at the level of the highest creativity, the process of creation is nothing less than the deepest criticism.”

What if you are not Michelangelo and you don’t have a genius instinct that allows you to accurately identify what is superfluous? Then I sympathize with the audience listening to your report, the teacher forced to take an exam from you, the interlocutor searching in vain for a thread in the maze of your incoherent story.

Man, don't knowledgeable of principles correct abstraction, either uncritically lumps everything into one pile (if only more), or sweeps everything away, bringing criticism to nihilistic criticism.

The ability to abstract is necessary both when distributing your time and when highlighting the main tasks in your activity (not just discarding an undesirable activity, but justifiably distracting yourself from the unimportant). The skills of correct abstraction become especially necessary in scientific research.

Scientists who do not have sufficient such skills are prone to two extremes. Some categorically declare: “Let’s digress,” while others awkwardly drag out: “How is it possible, after all, everything in the world is connected...” In this regard, let us consider the example of measuring the development of science, already mentioned in the previous chapter. Is it possible to ignore the content of scientific publications and measure the progress of science only by their number? The reader will remember that the answer to this question was negative.

But what does such a measurement reflect?

It reflects the growth in the amount of scientific information and is acceptable in cases where it is the number of messages transmitted, and not their content, that matters. Thus, for a telegraph operator or a typesetter, the content of a book is completely indifferent: the most trivial sentence and a brilliant idea can consist of the same number of characters. Consequently, when planning the workload of a printing house, the number of publications is an important indicator, but when assessing the progress of science as a whole, it is rather a distracting factor that can veil the true state of affairs.

From this example it is clear that although everything is connected, it is not in all respects. The typesetter's workload does not depend on educational value text, and therefore, when determining this load, one can abstract from the quality and cannot abstract from the number of publications typed. And when evaluating the work of a researcher, one cannot abstract from the quality of his work and praise only for the quantity of it.

Thus, if abstraction is correct, then we resort to it not simply because “it’s more convenient,” but because it helps us more accurately understand reality and the world. Let us turn again to the concept of “material point”. This abstraction is quite legitimate when we observe, for example, the dependence of the period of oscillation of a load suspended on a spring on its mass and independence from its size and shape. Consequently, the latter can be objectively neglected and an object that has mass but lacks extension can be considered a material point. This idealization in different cases both feasible and impossible. We, of course, cannot “generally” reduce the dimensions to zero physical body. But when the behavior of a body does not depend on its size, they are objectively equal to zero. And they are not equal to zero in other (though more familiar to us!) respects.

So, one can be distracted and abstracted from those features from which, in this respect, the phenomenon being studied turns out to be independent. The objective relationships of the things themselves are reflected in abstraction and give it wings. And the creative activity of the mind does not manifest itself at all in the declarative statement “let’s get distracted,” but in the ability to see the objective foundations of abstraction, those relationships in which an object turns out to be independent of other objects with which it is usually associated.

Meanwhile, the idea of ​​abstraction as a violent and artificial dissection of reality is very deeply rooted. “In search of a way out, I consider all phenomena as independent of each other and try to forcibly dismember them. Then I consider them as correlates, and then they are again united into a single vital whole,” said Goethe.

A deceptive impression! If you forcibly dismember a machine, not to mention a living organism, then it will no longer be possible to restore it from disparate parts into a “single vital whole.” The researcher involuntarily considers the details of the whole, first as independent, and then as dependent on each other. He sees different relationships these details to each other: the relation of independence (and the existence of these relations makes abstraction possible) and the relation of dependence (and in these relations the abstraction will be false, “empty”).

At correct understanding objective foundations of abstraction, many reproaches directed at it turn out to be unfounded.

Is abstraction divorced from life?.. Exactly to the extent that different phenomena do not objectively influence each other.

Does it not fully reflect reality?.. Total reflection reality is only the limit towards which knowledge endlessly strives. Abstraction reflects individual parts of reality quite fully - exactly as much as is necessary to solve the corresponding problem.

If, for example, you measure the width of a table in order to know whether it will fit through a door, then the measurement is usually carried out to the nearest centimeter. This measurement can be refined down to the millimicron, but in this particular situation there is no need for this, and our abstraction from the “actual dimensions” of the table, of course, is not a “separation from life” and provides quite sufficient accuracy.

What, therefore, do philosophical theses provide? For example, such as “everything is connected, everything depends on each other, but not in general, but in certain respects; in other respects, everything is not connected, isolated from each other”?

This position allows us to realize the need for such an important technique of cognition as abstraction. It shows what an abstraction represents and how to avoid erroneous abstractions.

Knowledge of the laws of special sciences (for example, the laws of physics) controls the creation of machines. Knowledge of the principles of philosophy governs human cognition and activity itself.

Whether this is less important - judge for yourself.