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Content

Introduction

3. Subject and object of knowledge

5. Truth and error

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

All people naturally seek knowledge. Everything that stretches before us and happens in us is known through our sense impressions and reflection, experience and theory. Sensations, perceptions, representation and thinking, the degree of their adequacy to what is known, the delimitation of true knowledge from illusory, truth from error and lies - all this has been carefully studied since ancient times in the context of various problems of philosophy, but above all such a section of it as theory knowledge.

The theory of knowledge and "general metaphysics", which considers the problems of being and consciousness, form the basis of all philosophy. The theory of knowledge is a general theory that explains the very nature of human cognitive activity, in whatever area of ​​science, art or everyday practice it may be carried out.

It is no secret that transformations are taking place in our country that are very important for every citizen, events of historical importance. Therefore, it is necessary to study the problems of human cognitive activity in more depth.

Problems of the theory of knowledge in our time appear in various forms. But there are a number of traditional problems, including truth and error, knowledge and intuition, sensual and rational, etc. They form the foundation, based on which one can comprehend the development of science and technology, the relationship between knowledge and practice, forms and types of human thinking. Some of these problems will be discussed below.

Cognition is very important for a person, because otherwise it would be impossible for the development of man himself, science, technology, and it is not known how far we would have gone from the Stone Age if we did not have the ability to know. But the "excess" of knowledge can also be harmful.

Over the millennia of its development, knowledge has passed a long and thorny path of cognition from primitive and limited to ever deeper and more comprehensive penetration into the essence of the surrounding world. On this path, an innumerable number of facts, properties and laws of nature, social life and man himself were discovered.

1. Knowledge and knowledge. Epistemology

Knowledge is necessary for a person to navigate in the world around him, to explain and predict events, to plan and implement activities, and to develop other new knowledge. Knowledge is the most important means of transforming reality. They are a dynamic, rapidly developing system, the growth of which in modern conditions is ahead of the growth of any other system.

Cognition is a kind of spiritual activity of a person, the process of comprehending the surrounding world. It develops and improves in close connection with social practice.

Knowledge is always an ideal image of reality. know anything - means to have some ideal idea about the subject of interest to us.

Cognition and knowledge differ as a process and a result.

In its essence, knowledge is a reflection of the world in scientific ideas, hypotheses and theories. Its reflection is usually understood as the reproduction of the properties of one object (original) in the properties of another object interacting with it (reflecting system).

Cognition has certain functions:

informative-reflective function;

design and constructive function;

regulatory function.

From the millions of cognitive efforts of individuals, a social - meaningful learning process. In order for individual knowledge to become public, it must go through a kind of “natural selection” (through communication between people, critical assimilation and recognition of this knowledge by societies, etc.). Thus, knowledge - it is a socio-historical, accumulative process of obtaining and improving knowledge about the world in which a person lives.

Knowledge also differs in its subject matter. The knowledge of nature leads to the formation of physics, chemistry, geology, etc., which together constitute natural science.

The knowledge of the person himself and society determines the formation of the humanities and social disciplines. There is also artistic knowledge. Very specific religious knowledge, aimed at understanding the sacraments and dogmas of religion.

In cognition, logical thinking, methods and techniques for the formation of concepts, and the laws of logic play an important role. Also, an increasing role in cognition is played by imagination, attention, memory, ingenuity, emotions, will and other abilities of a person. These abilities are of no small importance in the spheres of philosophical and scientific knowledge.

It should be noted that in the process of cognition, a person uses both feelings and reason, and in close connection between themselves and other human abilities. So, the sense organs supply the human mind with data and facts about the object being known, and the mind generalizes them and draws certain conclusions.

Scientific truth never lies on the surface; moreover, first impressions of an object are known to be deceptive. Cognition is associated with the disclosure of secrets about the object being studied. Behind the obvious, what lies on the surface, science tries to reveal the non-obvious, to explain the laws of functioning of the object under study.

Gnoseology or the theory of knowledge is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge and its possibilities, the relationship of knowledge to reality, and identifies the conditions for the reliability and truth of knowledge. The term "epistemology" comes from the Greek words "gnosis" - knowledge and "logos" - concept, doctrine and means "the concept of knowledge", "the doctrine of knowledge". This doctrine explores the nature of human cognition, the forms and patterns of transition from a superficial idea of ​​things to the comprehension of their essence (true knowledge) and therefore considers the question of the ways of the movement of truth, its criteria. The most burning question for all epistemology is the question of what practical meaning of life has reliable knowledge about the world, about man himself and human society. And, although the term “theory of knowledge” itself was introduced into philosophy relatively recently (in 1854) by the Scottish philosopher J. Ferrer, the doctrine of knowledge has been developed since the time of Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle.

The theory of knowledge studies the universal in human cognitive activity, regardless of what this activity itself is: everyday or specialized, professional, scientific or artistic.

Sometimes in epistemology an additional term “object of knowledge” is introduced to emphasize the non-trivial nature of the formation of the object of science. The subject of knowledge is a certain cut or aspect of the object involved in the sphere scientific analysis. The object of knowledge enters science through the object of knowledge. It can also be said that the object of knowledge - it is a projection of the selected object on specific research tasks.

2. Cognition as a philosophical problem

Mankind has always sought to acquire new knowledge. Mastering the secrets of being is an expression of the highest aspirations of the creative activity of the mind, which is the pride of man and mankind. Knowledge forms a complex system, acting in the form of social memory, its wealth is transferred from generation to generation, from people to people with the help of the mechanism of social heredity, culture. The development of scientific knowledge took place simultaneously with the development of production, with the flourishing of the arts and artistic creativity.

Theory of knowledge is a special study of cognition, which is divided into:

1. To a critique of cognition, starting from the type of cognition that has hitherto existed, in which it critically denies existing knowledge;

2. On the theory of knowledge in the narrow sense, the subject of which is this type of knowledge.

Problems that the theory of knowledge studies:

the nature of knowledge;

possibilities and limits of knowledge;

relation of knowledge and reality;

correlation of subject and object of knowledge;

prerequisites for the cognitive process;

conditions for the reliability of knowledge;

criteria for the truth of knowledge;

forms and levels of knowledge, etc.

The theory of knowledge from the very beginning develops in interaction with science:

Some scientists study objective reality, while others study the very reality of research: this is a vital division of spiritual production;

Some find knowledge, while others find knowledge about knowledge, which is important both for science itself, and for practice, and for developing a holistic worldview.

No matter how much the opinions of philosophers differ regarding the possibility of the origin and development of knowledge, however, everyone is forced to admit that without logical thinking development of knowledge is impossible. Even absolute doubt, which does not allow any knowledge of the truth, tries at least to support this negative result with logical arguments. But thinking alone is still not enough for the fact of cognition to arise; thinking must still have some kind of content, which is given to it in one way or another.

Skepticism does not deny the fundamental cognizability of the world, but expresses doubt about the reliability of knowledge, or doubts the existence of the world itself.

Agnosticism denies the fundamental possibility of knowing the objective world, identifying its laws and comprehending objective truth. The representative of agnosticism was I. Kant.

The theory of knowledge should:

Justify any knowledge, including natural science and philosophy;

Explain the very possibility of such knowledge, its essence, the content of the concept of truth, its criteria.

The theory of knowledge explores the nature of human knowledge, the forms and patterns of transition from a superficial idea of ​​things to the comprehension of their essence, considers the question of ways to achieve truth, its criteria; explores how a person falls into error and how to overcome them.

The main question for epistemology has been and remains the question of what practical, vital meaning has reliable knowledge about the world, about man himself and human society.

3. Subject and object of knowledge

Cognition presupposes the division of the world into an object and a subject. Whatever issues a person decides in his life, theoretical or practical, material or spiritual, personal or social, he must always reckon with reality, with objective circumstances and laws given to him.

The subject of cognition is the one who implements it, i.e. creative personality, forming new knowledge. The subjects of cognition in their totality form the scientific community. It, in turn, historically develops and organizes itself into various social and professional forms.

The subject is a complex hierarchy, the foundation of which is the entire social whole. Ultimately the supreme producer of knowledge and wisdom - all mankind. In his historical development smaller communities are distinguished, which are individual peoples. Each nation, producing norms, ideas and values ​​fixed in its culture, also acts as a special subject of cognitive activity. Bit by bit, from century to century, he accumulates information about natural phenomena, about animals, or, for example, about healing properties plants, the properties of various materials, the manners and customs of various peoples. The true subject of knowledge - this is a living personality with its interests, character traits, temperament, intelligence or stupidity, talent or mediocrity, willpower or lack of will. If the subject of cognition is the scientific community, then it has its own characteristics: interpersonal relationships, dependencies, contradictions, as well as common goals, unity of will and actions, etc. But often under the subject of knowledge everything - they mean some impersonal logical bunch of intellectual activity.

Scientific knowledge presupposes not only a conscious relation of the subject to the object, but also to himself and to his activity.

The object of knowledge is a fragment of reality that has become the focus of the researcher's attention. Simply put, the object of knowledge is what the scientist investigates: an electron, a cell, a family. It can be both phenomena and processes of the objective world, and the subjective world of a person: way of thinking, mental state, public opinion.

It becomes in a certain sense the "property" of the subject, having entered into a subject-object relationship with him. In a word, the object in its relation to the subject - it is no longer just a reality, but to some extent a known reality, i.e. one that has become a fact. From the point of view of cognitive activity, the subject does not exist without the object, and the object does not exist without the subject. By the object of knowledge they mean real fragments of being that are being investigated.

It is known that man is the creator, the subject of history, he himself creates the necessary conditions and prerequisites for his historical existence. Consequently, the object of socio-historical knowledge is not only known, but also created by people: before becoming an object, it must first be created by them. Thus, being the subject of cognition, it turns out to be at the same time its object.

4. Basic concepts and types of knowledge

There are the following types of knowledge:

Worldly knowledge - based on observation and ingenuity, it is better consistent with generally accepted life experience than with abstract scientific constructions, and is empirical in nature. This form of knowledge is based on common sense and everyday consciousness, it is an important orienting basis for the daily behavior of people, their relationship with each other and with nature. Everyday knowledge develops and enriches itself as scientific and artistic knowledge progresses; it is closely related to culture.

scientific knowledge - involves an explanation of the facts, their comprehension in the entire system of concepts of a given science.

The essence of scientific knowledge is:

in understanding reality in its past, present and future;

in a reliable generalization of facts;

· in the fact that behind the accidental it finds the necessary, natural, and on this basis it makes a prediction of various phenomena.

Scientific knowledge covers something relatively simple that can be more or less convincingly proved, strictly generalized, put into the framework of laws, causal explanation, in a word, what fits into the framework accepted in the scientific community.

Artistic knowledge has a certain specificity, the essence of which is a holistic, rather than dissected display of the world and especially a person in the world. Another distinguishing feature of artistic knowledge is the requirement of originality, which is inevitably inherent in creativity.

Majority philosophical systems, formed in modern times, there were two main stages: sensual and rational cognition.

Sense cognition- associated with the functioning of the sense organs, the nervous system, the brain, due to which sensation and perception arise. Sensation can be considered as the simplest and initial element of sensory cognition and human consciousness in general, they give us the first, most elementary form of figurative reflection of an object. An image is an ideal form of displaying an object or phenomenon in their directly observable integral form.

The main elements of sensory activity and sensory cognition are sensation, perception and representation.

Sensation is a reflection of the individual properties of an object or phenomenon. According to the number of sense organs, five main types of sensations are distinguished: visual, sound, tactile, gustatory and olfactory. The most important for a person is the visual modality: more than 80% of sensory information comes through it.

Perception gives a holistic image of a material object given through observation. Perception arises and exists as a form of active synthesis of various manifestations of an object, which is inextricably linked with other acts of cognitive and practical activity that precede this observation. Thanks to the repeated work of the mechanisms of perception, we in our minds, in our memory can retain a holistic image of the object even when the object is not directly given to us.

Representation expresses the image of an object imprinted in memory. It is a reproduction of images of objects that acted on our senses in the past.

Rational knowledge (or abstract thinking) is mediated by knowledge obtained with the help of the senses, and is expressed in basic logical forms: concepts, judgments and conclusions.

A concept is a thought that reflects the general and essential properties of objects, phenomena and processes of reality. Composing a concept of an object, we abstract from all its living details, individual features, from what exactly it differs from other objects, and leave only its general, essential features.

Judgments and inferences are forms of cognition in which and by which we think, establishing certain relationships between concepts and, accordingly, the objects behind them. A judgment is a thought that affirms or denies something about an object or phenomenon. Judgments are fixed in the language with the help of a sentence.

Inference is the conclusion of new knowledge, which implies a clear fixation of the rules. The conclusion must have a proof, in the process of which the legitimacy of the emergence of a new thought is justified with the help of other thoughts.

Inferences are of various types: inductive, deductive and by analogy. In inductive reasoning, thought moves from the singular to the general. Inductive conclusions or inferences are, as a rule, probabilistic in nature, although they cannot be denied practical certainty either.

In deductive reasoning, thought moves from the general to the particular.

An analogy is a conclusion in which, on the basis of the similarity of objects in one respect, a conclusion is made about their similarity in another respect.

intuitive knowledge

intuitive knowledge - it is unconsciously acquired direct knowledge. It occupies an important place in cognition, gives it a new impulse and direction of movement. Intuition (guess) is understood as intellectual intuition, which allows you to penetrate into the essence of things.

Intuition has long been divided into two varieties: sensual and intellectual. Also, intuition can be technical, scientific, everyday, medical, etc., depending on the specification of the subject's activity. One of the most important properties of intuition is its immediacy. It is also characterized by suddenness and unawareness.

Intuitive knowledge is divided into:

On the sensitive (intuition - an instant feeling);

Rational (intellectual intuition);

Eidetic (visual intuition).

5. Truth and error

The problem of truth is the leading one in epistemology. All problems of the theory of knowledge concern either the means and ways of achieving truth or the forms of the existence of truth, the forms of its realization, the structure of cognitive subject-object relations and so on.

In philosophy today, one can indicate the presence of at least the following concepts of truth. All of them have both positive and negative sides:

1) The classical theory of truths. Truth is the correct reflection of an object, a process in individual cognition.

2) The coherent concept considers truth as the correspondence of one knowledge to another.

3) Pragmatic concept. This concept, especially in America, says that the truth is that which is useful to a person.

4) Conventional concept. Truth is what the majority believes.

5) Existentialist concept. A prominent representative of this concept is Heidegger. Truth is freedom. On the one hand, this is a process in which the world opens up to us on the one hand, and on the other hand, a person is free to choose how and in what way one can cognize this world.

6) Non-atomistic concept. He says that the truth is God's revelation.

There are several definitions of truth. Here is a definition of one of them: truth is adequate information about an object, obtained through either sensory or intellectual comprehension, or communication about it and characterized in terms of its reliability. Truth exists as a subjective reality in its information and value aspects. Truth is defined as an adequate reflection of the object by the cognizing subject, reproducing reality as it is in itself, outside and independently of consciousness. The criterion of truth is not found in thinking itself and not in reality taken outside the subject, but lies in practice. knowledge epistemology philosophy

In history philosophical thought existed different understandings truth. An important place in the theory of knowledge is occupied by the forms of truth: relative and absolute.

On each historical stage humanity has a relative truth - approximately adequate, incomplete, misleading knowledge.

Absolute truth is such knowledge that completely exhausts the subject of knowledge and cannot be refuted with the further development of knowledge.

The process of achieving the truth involves the comparison and competition of ideas, scientific discussions, criticism and overcoming of realistic forms of consciousness and social illusions, analysis of the correlation of ideological and scientific-theoretical forms of reflection of social reality.

Delusion is the content of consciousness that does not correspond to reality, but is accepted as true. It reflects objective reality and has a real source. Misconceptions are also due to the relative freedom of choice of ways of cognition, the complexity of the problems being solved, the desire to implement ideas in a situation of incomplete information. A delusion is an unintentional discrepancy between judgments or concepts and an object. The property of unintentionality makes it significantly different from a lie.

A lie is a distortion of the actual state of affairs, with the aim of introducing someone into deception. A lie can be both an invention about what was not, and a conscious concealment of what was. The source of lies can also be logically incorrect thinking. Along with this, both delusion and falsehood are erroneous statements.

Conclusion

Almost all people in their lives in one way or another act as subjects of knowledge. In order for a person to be able to understand the huge amount of information that falls upon him every day, to systematize, generalize and use it in the future, it is desirable for him to know at least the elementary foundations of epistemology. For scientists engaged in scientific research, this should be a mandatory requirement, since they must know the path to true knowledge, distinguish it from false, and so on. I think that epistemology can make life easier for more than one person, because it teaches us to correctly cognize the world around us.

We want to live better, so our mind comprehends the laws of the world not for the sake of mere curiosity, but for the sake of practical transformation of both nature and man with the aim of the most harmonious living order of man in the world.

It is also important that knowledge tends to accumulate and be transferred from one person to another. This enables mankind to develop, to carry out scientific progress. Our ancestors were right, who believed that a father should pass on his skills to his son.

Cognition has two levels: empirical and theoretical. On the first of them, the collection, accumulation and primary processing of data takes place, on the second - their explanation and interpretation. The main methods of the empirical level of knowledge are observation, description, measurement and experiment; theoretical - formalization, axiomatics, systematic approach, etc.

In close connection with knowledge, practice also develops. Practice is material development public man environment, active interaction of man with material systems. Practice has a cognitive side, knowledge has a practical side. Knowledge is human information about the world. To start practical activity, a person needs at least minimal knowledge about the subject being transformed in practice.

Scientific knowledge is very important not so much for the scientist who carries it out, but for society as a whole.

Summarizing the work done, we can say that there are different points of view on the problems discussed above. This is due to the different understanding of these problems by different authors of the literature used.

Thus, the following conclusions can be drawn: Cognition is a socially organized form of a person's spiritual and creative activity, aimed at obtaining and developing reliable knowledge about reality.

Bibliography

1. Alekseev P.V., Panin A.V. Theory of knowledge and dialectics. - M.: Higher school, 2003.

2. Kanke V.A. Fundamentals of Philosophy: Textbook. - M.: Logos; High School, 2001.

3. Lavrinenko V.N., Ratnikova V.P. Philosophy: Textbook for universities. -M.: Ed. - in Unity-Dana, 2010.

4. Mironov V.V. Philosophy: Textbook for universities. - M.: Norma Publishing House, 2005.

5. Mironov V.V., Ivanov A.V. Ontology and theory of knowledge. Textbook. - M.: Gardariki, 2005.

6. Spirkin A.G. Philosophy. - M.: Gardariki, 2000.

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Epistemology- the theory of knowledge, a philosophical discipline that studies the foundations and nature of knowledge, its possibility and conditions of reliability.

Cognition(“on knowledge”, the transition from ignorance to knowledge) is a creative activity of a person and humanity, aimed at obtaining information about the world as a whole and (or at least) about its individual (some) parts (phenomena). Cognition, even if it is not considered reliable (corresponding to reality), is recognized as necessary for practical activity, especially transformative, and therefore developing in close connection with personal and social practice.

Cognition focuses on: 1) solving specific life problems, 2) identifying stable essential connections of the world, 3) accumulating personal spiritual experience, including self-knowledge.

Forms of knowledge:everyday practical, mythological, religious, artistic, philosophical and scientific.

The main theoretical approaches to the cognizability of the world:

1) cognitive optimism, based on the belief in the attainability of the correspondence of knowledge to reality (most philosophers from Plato to Marx);

2) agnosticism (aka "cognitive pessimism”) - the world is unknowable (Hume, Kant and many philosophical schools of our time);

3) skepticism- everything is doubtful, everything should be treated with distrust, irony and self-irony (Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus, Rotri).

The main historical approaches to solving the problem of the cognizability of the world:

1) Ancient philosophers sought to know the universe, considering it to be knowable.

2) In the Middle Ages: knowledge within the framework of faith, the source of truth is the insights sent down by the Lord, but reason was sometimes recognized as a reliable (given by God) means of finding and substantiating truths.

3) In modern times, cognition was mainly reduced to experimentation, careful collection and systematization of facts in order to discover the properties and patterns inherent in all objects or processes of the corresponding kind (kind, type). And for the objectivity (reliability, accuracy) of knowledge, it is enough to get rid of individual and group predilections.

4) Modern non-classical epistemology recognizes knowledge as a product of the interaction of an object and a subject. This product is historically changeable, all truths are relative, and subjective predilections and fictions are irremovable.

That is why today's epistemology studies infinitely diverse forms and methods of interaction between the cognizing subject and the cognized object. Where subjectknowledge - individual or research group (collective). The object of knowledge anything can be (thing, organism, process, interaction, system, thinking) - including the cognizing subjects themselves. The concept of " subject of knowledge" usually means something narrower (specific) than "an object of knowledge" - for example, "a fragment of an object". The "dialectics of the subject and object of cognition" refers to their mutual influences (mutual transitions, mutual reflections).

There are 3 main levels in the structure of the cognitive process:

1) sensory knowledge,

2) rational knowledge,

3) intuition.

These levels interact and condition each other.

Sense cognition characterized by:

Direct reflection (phenomena);

Plurality and specificity;

The surface of understanding.

Its main elements are: partial and varied sensations, holistic perceptions, representation from memory and (or) imagination.

rational cognition is different:

Comprehension of essential properties and laws of reality (noumena);

Reflection of the universal-universal (socially significant) in the form of abstract-ideal concepts (ideas, thoughts);

Mediated by language and cultural tradition.

Its main elements are: general concepts, comparisons, abstractions, generalizations, idealizations, definitions, judgments, inductive and deductive conclusions (conclusions).

Intuition- a mechanism for instantaneous and direct (without logical deductions and proofs) grasping knowledge about an object.

In the history of philosophy, as a rule, one of the sides of knowledge was absolutized: rationalism emphasized the supremacy of reason, empiricism and sensationalism - sensory experience, intuitionism and mysticism - intuition. Modern philosophy advocates a systemic interconnection of all this and much more, as well as relative priorities (for example, reason is more priority in philosophy, feelings in art, intuition in religion).

It occupies a special place. Strictly speaking, human cognition of the surrounding reality itself began to be considered and analyzed by our ancestors long before the moment when philosophy received its scientific justification. Even within the framework of ordinary and mythological worldviews, a person tried to understand how the formation of his ideas and judgments about himself and everything that surrounds him takes place. However, it was within the framework of philosophy that the problem of cognition acquired a truly scientific sound.

Key Aspects

The problem of cognition in philosophy, to which, by the way, a whole section of this science (epistemology) is devoted, has several aspects at once. First, this is the definition of this concept. As with many other phenomena and processes in this scientific discipline, there is no unanimous opinion among scientists about what should be considered knowledge. Most often, this term denotes the process of assimilating information about a person, society and the world around, the ultimate goal of which is truth. Secondly, the problem of cognition in philosophy implies an analysis of the structure of this process. Since ancient times, scientists have identified such varieties of human cognitive activity as sensual, everyday, rational and scientific knowledge.

In addition, some philosophers, trying to show that this phenomenon is more diverse in nature, also single out intuitive and artistic knowledge. The next important component of the problem of cognition in philosophy is the consideration of this process as a system, as a single mechanism, each detail of which performs a specific function peculiar only to it. From this point of view, knowledge is not just a list of certain facts obtained by empirical and logical means, but a complex of interrelated elements that act as social memory, within which the information received is passed on from generation to generation. Finally, the problem of cognition in philosophy is inconceivable without its theoretical understanding. Theory of knowledge is the most important component epistemology, which includes, on the one hand, the basic concepts relating to various approaches to this problem, and on the other hand, the criticism of these concepts, in which scientists consider certain theories from the point of view of newly emerged facts and discovered laws and patterns.

Objects of study

Thus, the problem of knowledge in philosophy has a long and rich history. Considered within the framework of this science, the main aspects of this process are constantly filled with new content and take on a new form.

“There is no such knowledge, there is no such statement that would not include the products of our theories of knowledge,” wrote N. O. Lossky. How to achieve that the results of cognition were more effective? How to avoid mistakes and misconceptions in them?

What is truth? How to check it? Is absolutely objective knowledge possible? These questions concern everyone who is connected with the production and use of knowledge, their general significance for all types of knowledge makes these questions the object of philosophical analysis.

The branch of philosophy that deals with the problems of knowledge is called epistemology.

Basic paradigms of epistemology."What can I know?" The classic of epistemology I. Kant considered this question to be one of the main ones in philosophy. F. Engels included the question of the cognizability of the world in the content of the main question of philosophy. “The question of the relation of thinking to being has another side: how do our thoughts about the world around us relate to this world itself? Is our thinking able to cognize the real world, can we, in our ideas and concepts of the real world, constitute a true reflection of reality?

In philosophy, there are many approaches to solving this issue. Without being able to highlight the features of all these approaches here, let's pay attention to the three most common epistemological traditions: religious, transcendental, and dialectical-materialistic.

Religious doctrine of knowledge. Its supporters claim that a person is able to comprehend the essence of being, but any knowledge of the world is the knowledge of God (Absolute, World Mind, Cosmic consciousness, etc.), they add. For God is the essence of everything. Whether a person studies physics, biology or law, whether he believes in God or not, he will eventually know God. Therefore, the world is cognizable, the comprehension of God is open to everyone, just everyone chooses his own way of knowing it. In Islam, knowledge is valued above prayer, because knowledge brings a person closer to God. The idea of ​​knowledge as knowledge of God is most clearly expressed in neo-Thomism, the official religious philosophy of Catholicism. The principle of harmony of faith and reason, formulated by F. Aquinas, giving priority religious knowledge, requires a respectful attitude to scientific knowledge: after all, they are the result of knowing God by other means invented by man himself.

In the Sufi tradition, knowledge is reduced to self-knowledge, because the essence of everything - God - is present in every person in the form of his soul. This point of view is very close to the epistemology of Plato, whom the Sufis call Aflyatun and consider one of the great teachers of mankind. Plato believed that the world of things around us is a form of realization of the supersensible world of ideas, that is, pure spiritual being. Ideas that exist forever form the basis of things, they are primary. The human soul is also an idea that once existed in a "pure" form in the world of ideas. She met there with other ideas, that is, with the essence of the things around us. Therefore, our soul has information about them, that is, we actually know the most important thing about any object. The only difficulty is to remember what the soul once contemplated in the world of ideas. This difficulty can be overcome if the soul is helped to remember what it once saw. How to do it? You can, for example, ask a person questions, and he will remember what his soul used to know. So, in the Meno dialogue, Socrates offers a boy who has never studied mathematics to solve the problem of doubling the square. The boy, who did not solve the problem right away, solves it by answering questions from Socrates. From this example, Plato draws a fundamental philosophical conclusion that "to seek and to know is precisely to remember."

But it must be borne in mind that in religious concepts of knowledge, knowledge given in revelation (divine knowledge) is always placed above ordinary human knowledge, because the author of the first is God, and the second is only man.

transcendental tradition. The position of the supporters of this trend can be formulated as follows: the world is not cognizable, because any knowledge is an element of human consciousness, and not part of the objective world. Any object of knowledge is presented to us in the form of components of our psyche - sensations, perceptions, emotions, thoughts. It only seems to us that we are talking about an object that exists outside of us. In fact, we do not state the essence of the object, but what arises in our minds when perceiving this object, i.e. information about it. To what extent does this information correspond to the object itself? This cannot be set, as it requires knowing how the object actually looks. But no matter how we strive for this, nothing will work out - each time we will receive only information about the object, obtained at best by other means (sense organs, instruments, from books, etc.). But it will always be only information about the object, not the object itself. Thus, what the world really looks like, we do not know and will never know - because for this you need to refuse to perceive the world as a reality reflected in the mind, that is, to go beyond the limits of your consciousness. This position in philosophy is called agnosticism. A similar argument in favor of the unknowability of the world was inherent in the founders of transcendental philosophy - D. Hume and I. Kant, and later developed by positivists. V. V. Ilyin correctly notes that “strictly speaking, there is no exhaustive logical procedure for establishing the correspondence of knowledge to reality. For this reason, agnosticism is theoretically uncritical and irrefutable.” The author believes that this problem can be removed in the practical sphere. We do not think so: at the level of practice (which itself is built according to logical algorithms!) There is only the possibility of testing some knowledge (for example, theoretical) by others (sensory reflection data, empirical knowledge). However, Kant's thesis that we learn about the objective world only what we put into it (project) remains relevant.

Dialectical-materialistic conception of knowledge.“1) Things exist independently of our consciousness, independently of our sensation, outside of us... 2) There is absolutely no fundamental difference between a phenomenon and a thing-in-itself, and there cannot be. The difference is simply between what is known and what is not yet known, but philosophical fabrications about the special boundaries between the one and the other, about the fact that the thing in itself is “beyond” phenomena (Kant) ... - all this is empty nonsense ... 3) In the theory of knowledge, as in all other areas of science, one should reason dialectically, i.e., not assume our knowledge is ready and unchanged, but analyze how ignorance is knowledge how incomplete, inaccurate knowledge becomes more complete and accurate. These Leninist words express the essence of epistemology dialectical materialism. Proponents of this philosophy believe that the world is knowable. But its essence is revealed to a person not immediately and completely, but gradually. Therefore, knowledge is a gradual approach to absolute truth.

For the development of science ideas materialistic theory knowledge proved to be very fruitful, they formed the basis of many natural science teachings. However, the further development of science required going beyond the traditional materialistic views on the cognitive process. And the stumbling block here was the problem of the objectivity of scientific knowledge, which was noticed even by the classics of transcendental philosophy. Therefore, the science of the XX-XXI centuries. turned out to be more oriented towards the postulates of the transcendental tradition, a vivid expression of which was the positivist-pragmatist philosophy. She brought to the fore the problem of subject-object relations.

Subject and object of knowledge. The problem of the objectivity of knowledge. In any cognitive act, two sides of this process can be distinguished: the subject and the object. Subject of knowledge is the carrier of cognitive activity. It can be an individual, a social group or society as a whole. Often, the subject of knowledge is understood to mean a person in general, that is, a person as a generic being. All this does not contradict the above definition, but when analyzing subject-object relations, it is always useful to find out in which of the indicated meanings the term “subject” is used.

Object of knowledge- this is a part of reality, to which the cognitive activity of the subject is directed. The subject can also become an object of knowledge if it is the subject of study of another subject.

If the object of knowledge can be any material or spiritual phenomenon, then the subject is always a conscious being. The subject cannot be a stone, plant, or animal.

The subject-object problem arises in philosophy because of the existence of the eternal question of knowledge: how to avoid the fallacies associated with subjective factors that penetrate knowledge. Indeed, on the one hand, knowledge is objective, since, depending on the characteristics of the object, it is its reflection. And if the subject does not lie, then he cannot but take into account the objectively existing signs of the phenomenon under study. But, on the other hand, knowledge is subjective, since it is an element of the subject's consciousness and for this reason bears the imprints of the features of this consciousness.

It is understandable that people strive to make all knowledge objective, to cleanse it of subjective stratifications. Some consider it possible and necessary. These include, for example, such an outstanding scientist as A. Einstein. Others believe that the subjective is inseparable from knowledge, all knowledge is the unity of the objective and the subjective. This point of view was held by another famous scientist - W. Heisenberg.

In philosophy, the question of the measure of the objectivity of knowledge often receives a sharper formulation: Does an object exist without a subject? At first glance, this question is naive: well, who will say that if there is no me (subject), then there is no book (object) that I read? G. V. Plekhanov reasoned precisely this way when he criticized the positivists who claimed that there is no object without a subject. Plekhanov wrote that the Earth is an object, but it existed before people (subjects). This means that an object can exist without a subject.

There is a serious flaw in Plekhanov's arguments: he makes a mistake by identifying the concepts of "object" and "objective reality". Objective reality exists and existed before man as a subject. But some part of it (Earth, Sun, etc.) becomes object only when there is a subject interested in it. The subject and the object are correlative concepts, just like the judge and the defendant, the murdered and the murderer, good and evil. If there is no murdered person, then there is no murderer; if the defendants disappear, there will be no judges; if there are no subjects, then there is no point in calling something an object. The illusion of existence before the appearance of the subject (man) of the object (Earth, for example) was unraveled in his time by R. Avenarius, who introduced the concept into his philosophy potential member, i.e., the subject we posit. If, say, we are talking about the Earth as an object that existed before man, then we mentally transfer ourselves to that period when there was no man, but the Earth was. At the same time, a logical construction is involuntarily created, consisting of an object (the Earth of the prehistoric period) and a subject (a person who is now talking about this Earth). Thus, the dichotomy "subject-object" is inseparable.

Thus, the subjective cannot be removed from knowledge. Knowledge is a synthesis of the objective and the subjective. It is objective to the extent that it reflects the situation that exists outside the subject. It is subjective to the extent that it reflects the characteristics of the cognizing subject - his needs, interests, life experience, the specifics of mental, professional, moral and other qualities.

Practice and knowledge. Practice is material human activity. From this definition it follows that working with theoretical objects is not a practice. You can not call the practice and the actions of animals, because practice is a type of activity person. Based on this understanding of practice, one can distinguish three of its main types: material labor, experiment, and socially transforming activity, which is understood as material actions aimed at changing or preserving social systems (the fight against crime, military operations, revolutionary activity and so on.).

What is the relation of practice to human cognitive activity? It turns out that it underlies the formation of the main instrument of human cognition - thinking. “Thought is a practical action transferred to the inner plane, that is, to the sphere of the psyche,” this thesis is the main conclusion internalization theories which aimed to elucidate the nature of thinking. According to this conclusion made by P. Janet, J. Piaget and L. S. Vygotsky and others, practical actions with an object and thoughts about it have the same structure. Therefore, mastering practical actions contributes to the formation of human thinking.

The theory of internalization was the scientific basis for an experiment on the formation of thinking in deaf-blind children, conducted in the Zagorsk boarding school (Sergiev Posad) under the guidance of I. A. Sokolyansky and A. I. Meshcheryakov. This boarding school contains deaf-blind children who are deprived of the opportunity to communicate with the world through sight and hearing. It turned out that these children also lack thinking. The essence of the experiment was as follows: to teach children the maximum possible number of practical actions performed by an ordinary normal child of the appropriate age. They were taught to dress themselves, make their bed, hold a spoon, knife, tools. They were given toys, taught to sculpt, sew, wash floors, iron clothes, etc. It was believed that along with mastering practical skills, children would also master the logical structures contained in them. The results of the experiment were officially announced in 1975, when four subjects were already studying according to a special method in the third year of the psychological faculty of Moscow State University.

The experiment fully confirmed that by mastering practical actions, children simultaneously form their own world of thinking. Practical activity is, as it were, a matrix from which the forms of mental operations are removed. Therefore, practice is primary in relation to human thinking. Thought is practice transferred into the sphere of the psyche, i.e., internalized practical action.

Thus, practice, forming the structure of thinking and scientific theory, acts as foundations of knowledge.

But practice affects the cognitive process in another way - it is purpose of knowledge. Why do we know? Why do new sciences and theories emerge? What explains the prestige of some educational institutions and the lack of prestige of others? It turns out that a lot depends on practice here. F. Engels wrote that mathematics arises from practical the need to measure areas and volumes. He further concludes that the needs of practice move science much faster than dozens of universities.

We give two examples to support this view. After World War II, theoretical physics began to develop rapidly in the USSR. The reason for this was the practical need to create an atomic bomb. Competing in the military field with the United States, the Soviet leadership allocated huge funds for research in the field of atomic physics in order to use the results of these studies in practice.

Started in Russia in the 1990s. the transition to a market economy created a need for qualified financiers, lawyers, and translators. Such a social order caused great competitions for admission to economic, legal educational institutions, institutes and faculties of foreign languages.

So, practice, being the goal of cognition, stimulates the development of a particular science, education, scientific theory, playing a significant role in the process of regulating spiritual production.

Practice is also source of knowledge. This means that a person working with an object practically simultaneously corrects his knowledge about it. The fact is that the object is constantly changing itself, the conditions of its existence, the means of influencing it are changing. All this requires bringing the knowledge about the object into conformity with the object itself. And the source of information in this case is practice. This is especially felt if the knowledge was obtained by operating theoretical objects, for example, in lectures or seminars. For example, the general model of the functioning of a bank, for all its cognitive value for future financiers, is much poorer than the specific work of a particular bank. And a graduate of economic educational institution Newcomers to this bank will have to learn a lot anew, because the original is always different from the theoretical model. Thus, theories change under the influence of practice.

Epistemology also points to another function of practice - to act as criterion of truth. But when analyzing this cognitive function of practice, it must be remembered that practice itself is only means the formation of empirical knowledge, which is necessary to compare the results of theoretical research with it. Practice, therefore, makes it possible to obtain such knowledge about the object, with which one can compare the theoretical idea of ​​it.

The doctrine of truth. The problem of truth is one of the main ones in epistemology. In a number religious teachings Truth is understood as God, the Absolute - the essence underlying everything. The merger of the human soul with the divine is considered as a complete mastery of the truth in yoga, Sufism, Buddhism, Christian mysticism. Plato was close to such an understanding of truth, believing that at the heart of every subject lies a supersensible idea, the knowledge of which means the comprehension of the truth about this subject. IN medieval philosophy Truth was understood as the correspondence of the existence of a thing to its own divine essence. Hegel understood by truth the correspondence of a thing to the concept of it. All these definitions are similar to each other in that they consider truth as something that has ontological foundations. Now this concept of "ontological truth" is being developed by V. S. Khaziev. He notes that there are true things: those that correspond to the human idea embedded in them. “Finite objects, events, phenomena are true if they correspond to their ideas,” the author writes. If the plane does not fly, and bread cannot be eaten, then these things are ontologically false, because do not correspond to their ideas, says V. S. Khaziev.

Aristotle formulated a definition that has become traditional in the theory of knowledge and is now called the classical definition of truth. It can be formulated like this: Truth is knowledge that corresponds to reality. But this widespread definition has one significant drawback: how to determine this correspondence, because any information about reality is given to us in the form knowledge about her. Then, by truth one has to understand knowledge about an object that does not contradict other knowledge about it. For example, if knowledge obtained theoretically is confirmed by the sensory experience of a person, his knowledge obtained through the senses, then this knowledge is the truth. Thus, we arrive at the following definition of truth, which was formulated by supporters of the positivist tradition: Truth is knowledge about an object that is consistent with other knowledge about it.. In the philosophy of science, it was developed by A. Poincaré (1854–1912) and was called conventionalism. It can be seen that it is somewhat broader than the above case of the coincidence of knowledge with human sensory experience. This also implies the “fitting” of new knowledge into the existing system of knowledge about a particular fragment of the world, for example, into a picture of physical or social reality, a mathematical model, etc. It seems that the definition of truth as knowledge consistent with other knowledge is the best of its possible definitions within the framework of scientific thinking.

The opposite of truth is delusion. It must be distinguished from lies. Lie is a deliberate distortion of the truth, and error does not contain such an intention. The erring one considers his knowledge to be true, but the liar does not. Therefore, the opposite of falsehood is truth, not truth. Is it true includes the truth, but is not reduced to it - it also reflects the moral assessment of the one who expresses the truth. A connoisseur of the intricacies of the Russian language V. Dahl wrote that the truth is the truth in deed, in the image, honesty, incorruptibility, justice.

The truth and correctness of knowledge are not identical. Right is a logical characteristic of knowledge, expressing, first of all, its consistency. Knowledge can be correct, but not true, because in addition to compliance with logical norms, it must also correspond to other knowledge, for example, obtained by practical means.

How to distinguish truth from error? The main difficulty in answering this question is the already noted problem of comparing knowledge about an object with the object itself. No matter how hard we try, it turns out to be impossible. Why? The fact is that any information about an object can be given to us only in the form of its reflection by our psyche. If at first we received knowledge about an object from theoretical sources, and then decided to check its correspondence to reality, then the whole procedure of such a check turns out to be an operation of comparing theoretical information about an object with information about it obtained with the help of the senses. We can feel the object, influence it with other objects, measure, observe, ultimately obtaining the so-called empirical (experimental) knowledge about it. If the empirical knowledge obtained does not contradict theoretical knowledge, then the latter is declared true. True, the third type of knowledge, worldview knowledge, always implicitly participates in the procedure for verifying the truth. This knowledge has the character of beliefs, crystallizes throughout life, concentrating in itself the most valuable life experience of the individual. Worldview knowledge participates in the process of cognition from beginning to end: fundamentally influencing the choice of the object of study, it then serves as a permanent matrix with which the results are compared. If theoretical knowledge fits into the field of practical and worldview knowledge, then a person has a feeling of confidence in its truth. Such an idea of ​​the criterion of truth does not contradict the widely held opinion in Russian philosophy and science that knowledge, confirmed in practice, is the truth. This, as can be seen, is about comparing one knowledge with another, obtained empirically.

In fact, the process of verifying the truth is more complex. New theoretical knowledge is usually compared with other theories and existing principles in the field. The same thing happens in the process of obtaining empirical results: the conditions of observation and experiment change, similar situations are considered in other areas of knowledge that arose under different circumstances.

Thus, the criteria for truth are:

a) compliance of knowledge with logical norms;

b) consistency of knowledge with the theories prevailing in this area, the truth of which is not in doubt;

c) correspondence of knowledge to the beliefs of the subject (ideological criterion);

d) consistency of knowledge obtained in a theoretical, speculative way, with knowledge of an empirical nature.

properties of truth. Truth has a number of properties. It is the unity of objective and subjective, absolute and relative, abstract and concrete knowledge.

Objectivity truth expresses its dependence on the object that it reflects. If, for example, K. is ill with tuberculosis and this is reflected in his medical record, then the basis for the appearance of this truth is the object of knowledge itself, i.e., K. suffering from tuberculosis. Without K. suffering from tuberculosis, this truth would not exist. Therefore, sometimes you can hear that the truth is objective, it does not depend on the subject of knowledge. “To be a materialist means to recognize the objective truth revealed to us by the senses. Recognize the objective, i.e. Truth that does not depend on man and humanity means, in one way or another, to recognize absolute truth. But is it? After all, the doctor who diagnosed the patient K. could also make inaccuracies in determining the stage of the course of the disease, the degree of its danger to the patient and others, the means of treatment, etc. And this depends not so much on the patient (object), but on the doctor (subject ), his professionalism, responsibility, conscientiousness. We must not forget that truth is knowledge and is formed in consciousness subject. For this reason, truth cannot be free from the peculiarities of the intellect and other mental qualities of the subject, his life experience. Therefore, every truth is not only objective, but also subjective. It is the unity of the objective and subjective factors of cognition.

From the subjectivity of truth follows the conclusion about its imperfection, incompleteness, inaccuracy. “The incompleteness inherent in any truth partly determines its approximate nature. This is due to the consistency and infinity of the objective world, reflected in knowledge. If the world is a system of interconnected elements, then it follows that any knowledge about the world, abstracted from some of its aspects, will be obviously inaccurate and coarse. Since a person cannot cognize the world without fixing his attention on some of its sides and without being distracted from others, proximity is inherent in the cognitive process itself,” wrote E. M. Chudinov. Indeed, any truth with a deeper and more thorough study of the object can be supplemented, refined, expressed in a more successful form. This property of truth is called relativity.

But in any truth there is a content that is not refuted by further study of the object. For example, if the murder of citizen M. was committed with a firearm by a shot in the head, then any objective investigation of this crime cannot but include this fact in its results. The motives for the murder, the time of death, the place of the crime, etc., can be specified, but the knowledge that M. was shot in the head is unchanging, absolute. The property of truth to contain knowledge, which is not refuted in the process of cognition, is called its absoluteness. “Absolute truth is not an eternal truth that passes unchanged from one level of knowledge to another, but a property of objectively true knowledge, which consists in the fact that such knowledge is never discarded. This kind of knowledge is always a prerequisite for deeper and more fundamental truths. Moreover, it is contained in them in a removed form. Absolute truth is manifested in the growth of knowledge,” notes E. M. Chudinov. True, in philosophy there is another understanding of absolute truth. For example, it is understood as accurate, complete, complete knowledge about the world as a whole. For a person in this case, it exists only potentially in the form of an ideal. If there is a God, then only he possesses such truth.

One of the important properties of truth is its concreteness. Truth is concrete, since it reflects a specific object and is intended to characterize it. It should be remembered that any knowledge, including truth, is born under certain conditions, at a certain time, in a certain space. “Any true knowledge (in science, philosophy, art, etc.) is determined in its content and application by given conditions of place, time, and many other specific circumstances.” It bears the marks this certainty, concreteness. Sometimes people ignore this or do not know about it and begin to apply knowledge that reflects one situation to another, which is significantly different from the first. And they fail. This error is known in logic as "from what is said in a relative sense to what is said in an absolute sense". The statement "The sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 0" is true for all triangles built in Euclidean space. But it is not true for triangles constructed, for example, in a Riemannian space.

The property opposite to concreteness is its abstractness. The abstractness of truth follows from its generalizing nature, its abstraction from unimportant details. Without being abstract, knowledge cannot be universal, applicable in a different setting. For example, knowledge about the principles of operation of an internal combustion engine, used in the automotive industry, can be applied both by workers in an aircraft factory and in the work of a shop that produces lawn mowers. This is due to the fact that specific objects of cognition are not only different, but can be somewhat identical, similar to each other. Therefore, knowledge about them is also identical, they have something in common, corresponding to the nature of a whole class of specific objects. Thus, truth is the unity of concrete and abstract knowledge.

Conclusions:

1. The philosophical doctrine of knowledge is called epistemology. The central issue of epistemology is the problem of the cognizability of the world. There are at least three different answers to this question: a) it is knowable, but all knowledge is knowledge of God (religious approach); b) it is in principle unknowable, since all knowledge is knowledge of the contents of our consciousness about the world, and not the world itself (transcendental idealism); c) it is knowable, but knowledge is a gradual movement from relative to absolute truths (dialectical materialism).

2. The cognitive process has two sides: the subject and the object. The subject of cognition is the bearer of cognitive activity. The object of knowledge is what the cognitive process is aimed at. Since the subject always participates in the production of knowledge, knowledge cannot be absolutely objective.

3. Practice plays a big role in cognition. It participates in the formation of thinking, is the criterion of truth, the source and goal of knowledge.

4. Truth is the correspondence of some knowledge about an object to other knowledge about it. Truth has three properties: a) it is the unity of the objective and the subjective; b) it is the unity of the absolute and the relative; c) it is the unity of the concrete and the abstract.

Cognition- the process of purposeful, active reflection of reality in the mind of a person, due to the socio-historical practice of mankind. It is the subject of research in such a branch of philosophy as the theory of knowledge.

The problem of knowledge: Is the world cognizable in principle - this is the main question of philosophy, which is looking for an answer within the framework of this problem. For philosophy, the question of the nature of knowledge and the forms of its manifestation is fundamental and traditional. The complexity and importance of the problem is due to the fact that cognition reveals the nature of man, and epistemological research is inseparable from anthropological research. The doctrine of knowledge is, in fact, an organic part philosophy about a human.

The problem of knowledge in the history of philosophy is of great importance. The greatest contribution to its study was made by such thinkers as Jung and Kant. In one way or another, any human activity is connected with cognition. It is this ability that has made us who we are today.

Problems of knowledge in philosophy

It is worth starting with the fact that cognition is understood as a purposeful active reflection of the surrounding reality in the human mind. In the course of this process, previously unknown facets of being are revealed, not only the external, but also the internal side of things is subjected to research. The problem of cognition in philosophy is also important for the reason that a person can be not only a subject, but also its object. That is, often people study themselves.

In the process of cognition, certain truths become known. These truths can be available not only to the subject of knowledge, but also to someone else, including subsequent generations. The transfer occurs mainly with the help of various kinds of material carriers. For example, with the help of books.

The problem of cognition in philosophy is based on the fact that a person can cognize the world not only directly, but also indirectly, by studying someone else's works, works, and so on. Education of future generations is an important task of the whole society.

The problem of knowledge in philosophy is considered from different points of view. It is about agnosticism and gnosticism. Gnostics look at knowledge, as well as its future, rather optimistically. They believe that human mind sooner or later he will be ready to know all the truths of this world, which in itself is knowable. There are no limits to the mind. The problem of knowledge in philosophy can be considered from another point of view. It's about agnosticism. Most agnostics are idealists. Their thinking is based on the belief that either the world is too complex and volatile to be known, or that the human mind is weak and limited. This limitation means that many truths will never be revealed. It makes no sense to strive to know everything around, since this is simply impossible.

The science of knowledge itself is called epistemology. For the most part, it is based precisely on the positions of Gnosticism. Her principles are as follows:

Historicism. All phenomena and objects are considered in the context of their formation. As well as immediate occurrence;

creative display activity;

The specifics of truth. The bottom line is that truth can only be sought in specific conditions;

Practices. Practice is the activity that helps a person to change both the world and himself;

Dialectics. We are talking about the use of its categories, laws, and so on.

As already mentioned, in cognition, the subject is a person, that is, a being endowed with sufficient intelligence, capable of mastering and using an arsenal of tools prepared by previous generations. Society as a whole can also be called the subject of cognition. It should be noted that a full-fledged cognitive activity of a person can only be within the framework of society.

The object of knowledge is the world, or rather, that part of it, to which the interest of the knower is directed. Truth is an identical and adequate reflection of the object of knowledge. In the event that the reflection is inadequate, the cognizer will receive not truth, but delusion.

Knowledge itself can be sensual or rational. Sensory cognition is based directly on the senses (sight, touch, and so on), and rational cognition is based on thinking. Sometimes intuitive knowledge is also singled out. They talk about it when it is possible to comprehend the truth at an unconscious level.

Question #25. The problem of truth in philosophy. Basic characteristics of truth. criterion of truth.

When characterizing knowledge, the problem of its truth arises. in epistemology there are several interpretations of truth, for example:

1. Truth is the correspondence of knowledge to reality. Correspondence theory of truth.

2. truth is a property of self-consistency of knowledge - a coherent concept of truth.

3. truth is the usefulness of knowledge, its effectiveness is a pragmatic concept.

4. truth is an agreement a conventionalist concept.

5. Truth is an experimental confirmation of knowledge - a positivist concept.

The concept, according to which truth is the correspondence of knowledge to reality, is called classical. the classic concept ran into a number of problems:

What is the nature of cognizable reality - material or ideal

What is the nature of the correspondence of thoughts to reality: is it simple copying or complex
reality reflection process

Can there be such a content in human ideas that does not depend on the subject, can truth be objective?

Is absolute truth possible or is truth always only relative?
the question of the objectivity of truth is quite complicated, since we know that the content of knowledge depends not only from the object, but also from the subject. the objectivity of the truth is understood taking into account the following points:

1. the primacy of the material, which the object represents, in relation to knowledge as
ideal, in which the material is represented.

2. Truth always refers to a directed relationship between subject and object, from which the object can never be expelled.

3. The subjective moments that are presented in the assessment of truth are not so much the personal qualities of the cognizing subject, but the qualities of the historical collective subject - society. these qualities are already entrenched in a given culture, including in the ways in which subject and object interact. The question of the absoluteness of truth is even more problematic. absolute truth is understood as complete complete knowledge. Is this possible, since truth is determined through the culture of society, depending on the types and modes of activity that always exist in a certain concrete historical form, since truth is always relative, since it exists in relation to that particular mode of activity through which knowledge is formed. therefore, the absoluteness of truth arises only in systems of rigid attachment to the results of cognition of those methods of activity through which they were obtained, for example, in mathematics, formal logic. the use of absolute truths in relation to the external world must be of a very cautious nature: these truths can be applied only where the subject has already done preliminary work to determine clear conditions for fixing the methods for obtaining and applying these truths. the method of application must always be in accordance with the method of obtaining knowledge. why are we so often inclined to attribute the meaning of absolute truth to this or that knowledge, which in fact are not such, the answer is simple: when the methods of obtaining knowledge and the methods of evaluating it for truth coincide, then we characterize this knowledge as true. moreover, if we do not know another alternative and cannot go beyond the accepted model of cognitive activity, then we attach to this knowledge the value of absolute truth. From what has been said, it follows that truth is always concrete, depending on the specific connections and interactions inherent in phenomena, on the conditions, place and time in which they exist and develop. Truth is associated with such a thing as error.

delusion there is an inadvertent inconsistency of judgments or concepts with the object.

causes of delusion are diverse. from an epistemological point of view, it is possible due to the fact that the search for truth is always associated with conjectures and and assumptions: the subject imposes on the area of ​​the unknown his preliminary ideas, based on what is already known. it is not always justified in obtaining new knowledge. in addition, the versatility of the objects of study and their one-sided study lead to confusion.

the assumptions themselves cannot be true or false - some are more reliable, others less. the subject himself, for one reason or another, elevates them to a number of true ones. the role of delusions in cognition is ambiguous. they lead away from the truth, hinder knowledge. but they can also create problem situations that contribute to the further development of knowledge. thus, alchemy, which turned out to be an error on the whole, developed a number of ideas that turned out to be true.

Truth is always the result of comparing an assumption with a certain standard. The criterion of truth is the positive result of such a comparison, if comparison is possible at all. That. that statement, including the alleged one, is true - which gives a positive result of comparing it and what is obtained in reality, and false - negative.

Question number 26 Scientific knowledge, its features. Basic forms and levels of scientific knowledge.

One of the most right ways to make what is happening in the world understandable and open is scientific knowledge .

The very first feature which scientific knowledge possesses is its objectivity. Another difference of scientific knowledge is the orientation of its results into the future.

Scientific and non-scientific knowledge have always been in confrontation and this has determined another feature of scientific knowledge . It must go through these stages. as observation, classification, description, experiment and explanation of the studied natural phenomena. In other species, these stages are not inherent at all, or they are present in them separately.

scientific knowledge and scientific knowledge have two levels: empirical and theoretical.

empirical scientific knowledge consists in the study of facts and laws established by generalizing and systematizing the results that are obtained through observations and experiments.

empirical method revealed, for example, Charles's law on the dependence of gas pressure and its temperature, Gay-Lussac's law on the dependence of gas volume and its temperature, Ohm's law on the dependence of current strength on its voltage and resistance.

And the theoretical scientific knowledge considers natural phenomena more abstractly, because it deals with objects that cannot be observed and studied under ordinary conditions.

This is how they discovered: the law of universal gravitation, the transformation of one type of energy into another and its conservation. This is how electronic and genetic engineering develops. This type of cognition is based on the construction, in close connection with each other, of principles, concepts, theoretical schemes and logical consequences arising from initial statements.

Question #27.The concept of society. The structure of society. The main spheres of society. Basic socio-philosophical concepts of society.

Human life is connected with other people. Even if any manifestation of his life does not directly appear in the form of a collective action performed jointly with other people, it is nevertheless a manifestation and affirmation of his social essence. Only in connections and relationships is a person formed as such. In the broadest sense, society can be defined as a society, a sphere of supraorganic reality. In a narrower sense, society is understood as a socio-cultural reality, since it is formed on the basis of certain historical conditions and cultural characteristics of relations. The specific mode of existence of this reality, in contrast to the natural one, is human activity: everything that is included in activity is public, social. People as subjects and the main components of social life are endowed with consciousness, determine their activities by setting goals and objectives, therefore the complexity of the existence of society lies in the dialectic of the material and ideal, objective and subjective conditions of life, including natural, state
material production, material needs, relationships, etc., on the one hand, and views, ideals, attitudes towards society, the will of people, on the other. The presence of the subjective introduces a special feature into the existence of a social system.

Society can be understood as an association of people created through purposeful and reasonably organized joint activities.

The system-forming basis of society is the connections and relations between people, groups of people in the process of their life activity. But philosophical concept society does not include all the variety of connections, but only permanent, stable and significant relationships, which are called social relations. In this sense, society is a system public relations. Relations arise of a very different nature: material, social in the narrow sense, political, spiritual. Society is an open system. The phenomena and processes occurring in it are built taking into account the conditions in which it occurs and which determine its life. There are natural, economic and cultural conditions, they together create the possibility of the existence and development of society and influence the processes taking place in it. Thus, the biological characteristics of the human body, geographical conditions and demographic processes constitute the necessary basis of social life: they determine its general framework, its possibilities and boundaries. But they do not define it unambiguously and inevitably, society distinguishes itself from nature and has relative independence, at least due to the subjective factor.

The structure of society can be distinguished on various grounds, depending on the carrier of system-forming ties. For example: 1 by type of human activity to meet certain needs

2 by the nature of social relations; 3 in the form of subjects of activity.
Therefore, it is necessary to consider their main provisions in
views on society. M. Weber 1864-1920, a German sociologist, philosopher and historian, engaged in the analysis of the economic life of society, the formation of the material and ideological interests of various social groups and religious consciousness, put forward the idea of ​​understanding sociology. Evaluating, she understands social actions, thereby seeking to explain its cause. The main categories of this concept are behavior, action and social action.

Behavior- general category of activity. It is recognized as an action when and insofar as the actor associates a subjective meaning with it. Social action is when the meaning correlates with the behavior of another person and focuses on him. At the same time, he means the meaning of action subjectively experienced by the acting individual himself. The combination of human actions gives rise to stable semantic connections of behavior.

Weber identifies four types of social action:

Purpose-rational - when objects of the external world and other people are perceived as
conditions or means of action rationally oriented towards achieving one's own goals

Value-rational - is determined by a conscious belief in the value of a certain way of behavior as such, regardless of the final success of the activity

Affective - determined directly by feeling, emotions

Traditional - motivated by learned habit, tradition.

higher order category is a social relation, which is understood as a stable connection of mutually oriented social actions - struggle, hostility, love, friendship, competition, exchange, etc. Social relations, since they are perceived by individuals as mandatory, acquire the status of a legitimate order. In accordance with the division of social actions, four types of legitimate order are distinguished: traditional, affective, value-rational and legal. In his sociology, Weber also developed the doctrine of the ideal type, which was dictated by the need to develop conceptual structures that help the researcher navigate the variety of historical material. In the ideal type, the cultural meaning of a particular phenomenon is fixed, which helps to systematize the empirical material and determine its proximity to the ideal-typical image.
Thus, in Weber, social objects are considered as the results of purposeful and meaningful human behavior or as formed by it. The scheme is as follows: the individual is society. He understands society as a collection of people that does not exist as a reality that is different from individual activity. Therefore, the concept of M. Weber is characterized as the concept of social atomism, or voluntarism. E. Durkeheim 1858-1917 focuses on the social group. The key concepts of his concept of collective consciousness, organic versus mechanical solidarity, etc., derive their meaning from their connection with the idea of ​​the collective nature of social phenomena. In his opinion, stable relationships should be recreated from collective phenomena. Unlike Weber, social objects are seen here as having a life of their own, external and forced upon the individual.

Scheme: society individual. Durkheim understands society as a special collective that forms a non-individual and supra-individual reality. This concept is called subjective.
The theory of K. Marx is characterized as relational, since it understands society not as the sum of individuals or groups, collectives, but the sum of the connections and relations in which these individuals, groups are to each other. Subjects may or may not be aware of such relationships. If, according to Durkheim, stable relations are recreated from collective phenomena, then from the relational point of view, collective phenomena are considered mainly as an expression of stable relations. Society is both a condition, a material cause, and a continuous
reproducible result of human activity. process, i.e.
social life is based on objective laws, its movement is carried out in separate steps - formations. The mode of production strictly determines all other aspects of society, distributes the connection of individuals and groups with the means of production and resources, the functions and roles of these individuals and groups, for example, in the division of labor.