Theory of knowledge as a section of philosophy

• So,    the nature and essence of cognition includes such questions as the object of cognition, the relationship of the subject and the object of cognition, the relation of consciousness and knowledge;

The content of cognition is the dialectic of the process of cognition (sensory and rational, from phenomenon to essence, from the nature of the first order to the essence of the second order, etc., the unity of the concrete and abstract), the determination of the process of cognition by sociocultural factors;

Form of cognition - the logical structure of thinking, the correlation of logical laws and the logical correctness of thinking, the categorical structure of thinking, cognition and language;

Methods of cognition - the relationship between method and theory, method and methodology, classification of methods by degree of subordination and coordination;

Truth, its conditions and criteria - the correlation of truth and knowledge, the relation of absolute and relative truth, the concreteness of truth, the diversity of truths, the criteria of truth;

Forms of existence and development of knowledge - the facts of science, the essence of the problem, the essence of the hypothesis, the principles of proof, the essence of the theory.

The listed problems are exclusively concerned with philosophy. This is explained by the fact that philosophy analyzes the totality of things, reality in all its parts and moments without withdrawal: the material world, ideal phenomena and imaginary objects. Without the theory of knowledge in the broadest sense of the word, this can not be done. Philosophy has developed such means, methods, principles. Private science can not do this because of the limitations of its subject and system of knowledge. Analyzing them, philosophy is based on other philosophical sections: ontology, dialectical and formal logic. She uses the data of anthropology, ethics, culturology, sociology, psychology, pedagogy, physiology, neurophysiology, medicine, etc.

It should be emphasized that the problems of epistemology were formed in the process of developing the needs of society and of science as a whole. Cognition itself and its study is not something unchangeable, once and for all given, but is developing according to certain laws. As we know from the history of philosophy, epistemology has a long history, the origins of which go back to ancient philosophy. Let us recall some points.

In ancient philosophy, especially in Greek, deep ideas were laid on the relationship between the object and the subject, truth and error, the concreteness of truth, the dialectic of the process of cognition, the object of cognition, the structure of human thought.

Antique sophistry (Protagoras, Gorgias) in the theory of knowledge put forward a number of rational moments. These include: a conscious study of thinking in itself; Understanding of its strength, contradictions and typical mistakes; The desire to develop the flexibility of thinking; Emphasizing the active role of the subject in cognition; Analysis of the possibilities of the word, language in the process of cognition; The Sophists posed a problem of truth, analyzed the content of knowledge.

Socrates put forward the dialectical nature of cognition as a co-production of truth in the process of comparing different concepts, concepts, their comparison, dismemberment, definition. At the same time, he stressed the close relationship of knowledge and ethics, the method. The rational content of Plato's philosophy is his dialectic, set out in a dialogical form, that is, dialectic as the art of polemics. He believed that being contains contradictions: it is one and many, eternal and transient, invariable and changeable, resting and moving. Contradiction is a necessary condition for the awakening of the soul to meditation, the most important principle of cognition. Since, according to Plato, any object, any thing in the world "is a movement," then, knowing the world, we should depict all phenomena as processes, that is, in becoming and variability, by necessity, and not by whim and subjective arbitrariness.

Aristotle in the logic he created saw the most important "organon" (instrument, instrument) of cognition. His logic is ambivalent: it initiated a formal approach to the analysis of knowledge, but at the same time Aristotle sought to identify ways to achieve new knowledge that coincides with the object. He tried to bring his logic beyond the purely formal, raised the question of substantive logic, about dialectics. Thus the logic and epistemology of Aristotle is closely connected with the doctrine of being, with the concept of truth, since in logical forms and principles of cognition he saw the forms and laws of being. For the first time in the history of philosophy, he gives a definition of truth.

A major step in the development of the theory of knowledge was made by European philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries. (Philosophers of modern times), in which epistemological problems took center stage. Francis Bacon, the founder of the experimental science of this time, believed that the sciences that study cognition and thinking are the key to all the rest, for they contain "mental tools" that give the mind directions or warn it against delusions ("idols"). In posing the question of a new method, about "another logic," F. Bacon stressed that the new logic - in contrast to a purely formal one - must proceed not only from the nature of the mind, but also from the nature of things, not "invent and invent", but open And express what nature does, that is, be meaningful, objective.

Bacon distinguished the three main ways of knowing: 1) "the way of science" is the derivation of truths from pure consciousness. This path was the main one in scholasticism, which he sharply criticized, noting that the fineness of nature is many times greater than the delicacy of reasoning; 2) the "way of the ant" - narrow empiricism, the collection of disparate facts without their conceptual generalization; 3) "the way of the bee" is the combination of the first two paths, the combination of the abilities of experience and reason, that is, sensual and rational. While advocating this combination, Bacon, however, gave priority to experiential knowledge. He developed the dialectic of the process of cognition.

All the philosophy and epistemology of Rene Descartes is pervaded by the belief in the immensity of the human mind, in the immense power of cognition, thought and conceptual discretion of the essence of things. The beginning of knowledge is in Descartes's doubt. All doubtful, but doubtless the very fact of doubt. For Descartes, doubt is not a fruitless skepticism, but something constructive, universal and universal.

Much attention is paid to the method. With its help, all the generally accepted truths are surrendered to the court of pure reason, their "credentials" are rigorously and ruthlessly checked, the validity of their claims to represent the true truth.

Descartes contrasted his rationalistic method with both the inductive methodology of Bacon, to which he treated with approval, and the traditional, scholastic formal logic, which he sharply criticized. He considered it necessary to purge it of the harmful and unnecessary scholastic accretions and supplement it with what would lead to the discovery of authentic and new truths. This means, above all, intuition.

The productive method of Cartesian philosophy and epistemology is: the formation of the idea of development and the desire to apply this idea as a principle of cognition of nature, the introduction of dialectics into mathematics by means of a variable quantity, an indication of the flexibility of the rules of its cognition method and their relationship to moral norms, and a number of others.

Source used:

• 1.    Hartmann N. The problem of spiritual being. Studies to substantiate the philosophy of history and the sciences of the spirit. Philosophical and historical introduction / / Culturology. XX century. Anthology. - M: Jurist, 1995. - P. 608648

• 2.    Dynnik MA Dialectics of Heraclitus of Ephesus. - M., 1929.

• 3.    Zelkina OS System-structural analysis of the main categories of dialectics. -Saratov, 1970.