12.5 Sophisms as a special form of problem statement

Most often, sophism analysis cannot be completed by disclosing a logical or factual error made in it. This is the easiest part of the case. It is more difficult to understand the problems behind sophism, and thereby uncover the source of bewilderment and anxiety caused by it, and explain what gives it the appearance of convincing reasoning.

In the usual presentation and in special works relating to the development of science, the common place is that all research begins with the formulation of the problem. The sequence "problem - research - solution" is considered to apply to all stages of the development of scientific theories and to all types of human activity. Good, i.e. clear and distinct, the formulation of the problem is considered as an indispensable condition for the success of the forthcoming research or other activity.

All this is true, but only in relation to developed scientific theories and sufficiently stabilized and developed activities. In theories that are in the initial stages of their development and only groping for their basic principles, the nomination and clarification of problems largely coincides and intertwines with the research process itself and cannot be unambiguously separated from it. Similarly in the case of other human activities.

In an environment where the pet is still coherent, unified and accepted by most researchers, a theory that is solid in its core and developed in detail, problems are posed largely in the calculation of future theory. And they are just as vague and uncertain, as are the theoretical constructions and information in which they arise.

This particular form of nomination of problems can be called paradoxical, or sophistic. It is similar in its essence to the way in which the first problems concerning language and logic were raised in Antiquity.

A distinctive feature of sophistry is its duality, the presence, in addition to external, also a certain internal content. In this he is like a symbol and a parable.

Like a parable, outwardly sophistry speaks of well-known things. In this case, the story is usually constructed in such a way that the surface does not attract independent attention in one way or another - most often by contradiction to common sense - hinting at other content lying in the depths. The latter is usually unclear and ambiguous. It contains, in an unfolded form, as if in a germ, a problem that is felt, but cannot be articulated in any way, until sophism is placed in a sufficiently wide and deep context. Only in it does it appear in a relatively distinct form. With the change of context and the consideration of sophism from the point of view of a different theoretical construction, it usually turns out that a completely different problem is hidden in the same sophism.

In Russian fairy tales there is a motif of a very uncertain task. “Go there — I don’t know where, bring this — I don’t know what.” Surprisingly, however, the hero, going "unknown where", finds exactly what is needed. The task that sophism poses is similar to this task, although it is much more definite.

In the parable “Before Parabolas,” F. Kafka writes: “The words of the wise men are like parabolas. When the sage says, "Go there," he does not mean that you must go to the other side. No, he means a certain legendary “There”, something that we do not know, which he himself could not have defined more accurately. ” This is an exact characteristic of sophistry as a type of parable. One can only agree with Kafka that "all these parabolas mean only one thing - the incomprehensible is incomprehensible." The content of sophisms is many-sided and deeper, and it, as experience of their research shows, is quite understandable. In conclusion of the discussion of problems connected with sophisms, it is necessary to emphasize that there can be no talk of rehabilitating or justifying any reasoning that pursues the aim of giving a lie for the truth, using logical or semantic errors.

It is only that the word "sophism" has, in addition to this modern and well-established meaning, another meaning. In this other sense, sophistry is an inevitable form of problem statement at a certain stage in the development of theoretical thinking. Similarly, the very word “sophist” means not only an “intellectual swindler,” but also a philosopher who first thought about the problems of language and logic.

Everything in history repeats itself, appearing for the first time as a tragedy, and in the second - as a farce. Paraphrasing this aphorism, one can say that sophism, which for the first time poses some problem, is, in essence, a tragedy of an insufficiently mature and insufficiently knowing mind, trying to somehow understand what it is not yet able to express even in the form of a question. A sophism veiling a well-known and, perhaps, already solved problem, thus repeating what has already been passed, is, of course, a farce.