Lecture
Cognition, cognizing — the totality of processes, procedures, and methods for acquiring knowledge about the phenomena and regularities of the objective world.
Cognition is the principal subject of epistemology. In establishing the essence of cognition, its forms and principles, the theory of knowledge seeks to answer the question of how knowledge arises and how it relates to reality.
Cognition is studied not only by philosophy. There is a range of other special sciences and scientific disciplines investigating the same subject: cognitive psychology, scientific methodology, the history of science, science studies, the sociology of knowledge, and so on. However, most of these sciences study cognition by considering only its individual aspects. On the whole, cognition remains a special subject of study precisely for philosophy[
Cognition – the principal subject of epistemology, the theory of knowledge, which establishes its essence, principles, and form in order to answer the question of how knowledge is formed and how it relates to reality. Knowledge is the result of cognitive activity. It is necessary for the human being's existence in the world. In other words, cognition is a set of processes, procedures, and methods directed at acquiring knowledge about certain regularities and phenomena occurring in the objective world.
The processes of cognition. Cognition is composed of psychological processes:
The theory of knowledge – epistemology – is based on the fundamental questions concerning the acceptance or rejection of the correspondence between our representation and reality. Adequate reproduction of reality requires orientation in the world. This is the essence of the cognitive relation to reality. It forms the system of the human relation to the world.
Epistemology (the theory of knowledge) is that part of philosophy which studies how we obtain knowledge of various subjects, what the limits of our knowledge are, and how reliable or unreliable human knowledge is.
Questions of epistemology: What can I know? Do there exist indisputable, absolutely reliable grounds or sources of knowledge? Are there limits to cognition? Can we know the states of consciousness of another person? What is truth, and is it attainable in human cognition?
The subject of cognition is the one who carries it out, that is, the creative individual forming new knowledge.
The object of cognition is a fragment of reality that has come into the focus of the researcher's attention.
A distinction is made between ordinary and scientific knowledge. Cognition also differs by its subject matter. Cognition also differs by its subject matter: nature, the human being, society, culture, religion. Empirical cognition.
1) sensation – the reflection in human consciousness of individual aspects and properties of objects, a direct effect on the sense organs;
2) perception – a holistic image of an object, directly given in living contemplation and in the totality of all its aspects, a synthesis of the data of individual sensations;
3) representation – a generalized, sensorily vivid image of an object that acted upon the sense organs in the past but is not perceived at the given moment.
All these capacities are united into a single group called the «capacity for the sensory reflection of reality.» Because of the ambiguity of the word "feeling," it is more correct to divide the sensory into the sensory-emotional and the sensory-sensitive. Theoretical cognition.
Theoretical cognition finds its fullest and most adequate expression in thinking.
Thinking is a process of the generalized and mediated reflection of reality, carried out in the course of practical activity and ensuring the disclosure of its basic lawful connections (on the basis of sensory data) and their expression in a system of abstraction.
Two levels of thinking are distinguished:
1) the understanding [rassudok] – the initial level of thought, at which operation with abstractions takes place within an unchanging scheme, a template; this is the ability to reason consistently and clearly, to construct one's thoughts correctly, to classify precisely, and to systematize facts rigorously;
2) reason [razum] (dialectical thought) – the highest level of theoretical cognition, characterized above all by a creative operation with abstractions and a conscious investigation of their own nature.
Reason and understanding are present both in living contemplation and in abstract thought, at the empirical and theoretical levels of scientific cognition.
Understanding and reason represent a special cross-section of the cognitive process, in which thought bears either a reasoning, orientation-adaptive character, or an understanding, creatively constructive character. Rational (abstract-logical) cognition
Forms of rational, or abstract-logical, cognition: concept, judgment, inference.
A concept is an abstract-logical phenomenon in which a certain generalized meaning is expressed in relation to a class (group) of objects. In the overwhelming majority of cases a concept is expressed in the form of linguistic forms – words.
A judgment is a certain statement about an object, in which something is affirmed or denied.
An inference is a conclusion constructed in the form of a judgment, but more complex in content, resulting from the comprehension of simpler, initial judgments. All laws, as forms of scientific knowledge, are judgments, while theories are already inferences. A great deal in cognition is not expressed in ordered rational and sensory forms, that is, knowledge arises as a result of the activity of other mechanisms. These have come to be called irrational. Such as intuition, insight, the direct discernment of knowledge, and so on. These forms are largely the result of the activity of unconscious components of the psyche.
A certain orderliness and coordination is given to all cognitive capacities in a special, integral form called imagination. Imagination is the subject's capacity to create ideal models in which its interests in relation to the object are most precisely expressed. Intuition.
Intuition is the capacity to apprehend truth by directly discerning it, without logical justification.
Various interpretations of intuition emphasize, in this phenomenon, the general moment of immediacy in the process of cognition, as distinct from, or in opposition to, the mediated character of logical thought.
One of the most important properties of intuition is its immediacy (the absence of reliance on logic), its suddenness, and its unconsciousness.
Agnosticism is the philosophical doctrine according to which the question of the truth of cognition cannot be conclusively resolved, and an objective characterization of the reality surrounding the human being cannot be obtained.
Skepticism is a philosophical movement that puts forward doubt as a principle of thought, in particular doubt as to the reliability of truth. Moderate skepticism confines itself to the cognition of facts, exercising restraint toward all hypotheses and theories.
+Epistemological optimism is a movement in epistemology that insists on the limitless possibilities of human cognitive capacities, holding that there are no fundamental obstacles on the path of a person's cognition of the surrounding world, of the essence of objects, and of himself. Adherents of this movement insist on the existence of objective truth and on the human capacity to attain it.
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