Abstract
Cognitivism is known as a reductionist methodological principle according to which the consciousness, soul and psyche are revealed as a whole and in all its manifestations can be reduced to knowledge and learning. In the humanities studies cognitivist approach introduces itself in the usage of epistemological concepts for the formulation and solution of values (ethical, aesthetic, pragmatic, and others.) Cognitivism has left a sufficient impact on the entire history of humanities and philosophy, since it has been lived as a dominant thought, despite his criticism of many prominent analytic philosophers who call themselves as non-cognitivism scholars. Their debates will be revealed in this paper. This paper considers the terms of wishful thinking and possible ways to circumvent these issues. Basically, the work is based on the works of Kieran Setiya and other sources.
Cognitivism is a special direction in science, where the object of study is set within the human mind, thinking of those mental processes and conditions that are associated with it. This is the science of knowledge and cognition, perception of the world in the course of human activity. Cognitivism has followed an enormous tradition, which began far in ancient times. It is well known that the human intellect, the laws of thought have long been engaged in logic, philosophy, physiology and psychology. So, in philosophy there is a whole section of epistemology, which deals with the theory of knowledge. However, in the framework of cognitive science, old questions were heard in a new way. For example, it was found that the different nature of reality (things, phenomena, events) makes them different display in consciousness: one presented in the form of visual images, while others - in the form of naive concepts, and others - in the form of characters already in the 20s and 30s of XX century.
It was the beginning of a study analyzing the characteristics of thinking and perception in various African cultures, Polynesian, Latin America and Europe. One of the major methodological difficulties in the way of theoretical generalization of empirical data in these studies was in an ambiguous understanding of the nature of thought itself. In particular, Levy-Bruhl has not specifically considered the question of the definition of thinking. Only from the context of his work can be identified, that thinking in its developed form, serves primarily as the ability to correct, in accordance with the laws of logic, to build arguments about the causal nature of the world in view of real natural and physical (as opposed to supernatural) forces . Types of culture that do not have this level of thinking were considered by Levy-Bruhl as steps towards the development of thinking.
The analytical ethics or metaethics, used to name the notion of cognitivism as a point of view that the moral (assessment and mandatory) statements are ordinary cognitive judgments, which could be called as acceptable ones for verification and have truth value. Since moral statements are not directly obvious, proponents often make the reservation of cognitivism: hence, moral values and imperatives themselves do not describe any moral facts, but they can be reduced to such descriptions. In fact, the latter can be properly interpreted and reformulated by replacing identical meaning of cognitive judgments. For example, by saying that the act is morally good is not a statement of the presence in the act of some specific properties of the "goodness", but this statement still has its referent - namely, those properties act that cause the speaker's moral approval.
Modern cognitivism is a special case of a more general methodological position, which has developed long before the advent of analytic ethics and traced most clearly in philosophy of modern times (from Descartes to Kant). This position does not usually reflect on it by the media, manifested in the reduction of consciousness (mind, psyche) to the knowledge in the interpretation of all spiritual intentions, including the goals, interests, standards, assessment, motivation and so on.
As a cognitive phenomena that can be understood in terms of a particular epistemological theory. Accordingly, various ethical, aesthetic, legal, political and other valuable teaching and concepts were treated as empirical or theoretical, a priori or a posteriori, rationalist or irrationalist, etc. Cognitivism is obviously opposed by nonkognitivizm, where the latter has conceptually talenits shape only in the middle of 20th century (also within the framework of analytical ethics). This concept stands for a special, non-cognitive status of the moral statements, with full or partial application to them epistemological schemes and approaches. Non cognitivism has crucially developed in recent years and as a general methodological concept opposes the broad interpretation of cognitivism.
What are the reasons of such a wide criticism of cognitivism? First of all, it is essential to develop the critical analysis of the cognitivist error, which is known as wishful thinking. It is deeply rooted in the history of humanitarian and philosophical thought, and is crucially important for the debates between cognitivism and non cognitivism. The essence of this cognitivist error lays in the fact of making epistemological categories and schemes to describe and explain everything, including even non-cognitive aspect. That is the reason of those debates.
The point is that this issue could be called as both philosophical and psychological one, since the subject of spiritual activity was determined as a whole as knowledge, ideal products of this activity are demonstrated by the realizations and objectification of knowledge. Consequently, it is fair to consume that value problems were posed and solved according to the same patterns and the same methods as the cognition of the problem. Even though the cognition is the activity of knowing, and despite the fact that today cognitivism dominates in philosophy and psychology, it apparently has more opponents rather than adherents. Hence, it is fair to assume that cognitivists have bumped with a trouble of wishful thinking, where the process of knowing starts to get equal to both reality and nonsense. This reminds the famous Thomas theorem: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences. In short, this means that humans define and respond to situations as a result of their own experiences and thereby create the consequences that they expect” ("Thomas' Theorem Definition | Psychology Glossary | Alleydog.Com").
It was already noticed that the cognitivism and non cognitivism are considered to be as two poles apart. Why does this occur? It was already mentioned that cognitivist thoughts has made a couple of mistakes, where the false presumptions could be made. However, it is essential to add more details in order to differ those two methods. Non cognitivists, which is actually a part of neo-positivist schools, was looking for confirmation of his theoretical positions, mainly in the way of usage of logical-linguistic analysis of the moral values texts and statements. In contrast, cognitivists were usually referring to the moralistic argument: if people accept the idea of non-cognitive value judgments, they would lose the possibility to distinguish reality from imaginary, black from white and so on. “Rejecting the idea that intention constitutively involves a cognitive commitment for which one has insufficient evidence allows us to avoid the problem of making intending into wishful thinking.” (Paul)
Criticism of the cognitivist approach in philosophy comes from the supporters of L. Wittgenstein. In their view, the cognitivist approach is comparable to the human approach, looking for lost keys under the lamppost, not because a person dropped it there, but because there is light. Non cognitivists treat the cognitivist approach as an attempt to understand the problem of consciousness, by means of language of natural sciences. The basic idea of non cognitivism as the antireductionist principle is that "the spirit is not divisible by the knowledge without reserve"; in other words, the mental is not reducible to the cognitive knowledge and the knowledge constitute only a part (albeit significant) that particular reality, which in different philosophical and scientific texts indicated by the words and phrases "spirit", "subjectivity", "inner peace", "perfect "," psyche "and others. noncognitive" remnant "are those mental phenomena that are either not intended for representing the function (ie, they are not ideal models of existing or imaginary objects), or not reduced to the specified function. In the first case it is about the so-called affective-cognitive mental phenomena - experiences, motivations, aspirations, volitional efforts, etc .; in the second - a more complex spiritual formation: interests, goals, plans, value orientations, and other realities within the subject area of many philosophical and scientific disciplines (philosophy of mind, axiology, ethics, social psychology, sociology, linguistics, etc.).
Philosophers, who called themselves as non cognitivist scholars believed that the mental includes both cognitive and non cognitive phenomena. The cognitive aspects, according to them, are not understood, such as rational or information constructs. A so called symptom of cognition was seen in the truth, which is a symbol of the nature of mental phenomena. Therefore, if a certain phenomenon can be spoken into true and false parts, if it can be verbalized and expressed in the sentence, it belongs to the class of cognitive phenomena. Moreover, if some spiritual phenomenon does not meet these requirements, it should be recognized as non-cognitive. In addition, the emotions, according to some analysts, should be called as emotivism. Apparently, “Emotivism claims that moral judgements express the feeling or attitude of approval or disapproval. To say that ‘Murder is wrong’ is to express one’s disapproval of murder. Ethical language is ‘emotive’. So, in one sense, emotivism claims that morality is ‘subjective’” (Lacewing 1).
Works Cited
Lacewing, Michael. N.p., 2016. Web. 9 Mar. 2016.
Paul, Sarah K. "Intention, Belief, And Wishful Thinking: Setiya On “Practical Knowledge”*". Ethics 119.3 (2009): 546-557. Web.
Setiya, Kieran. "Practical Knowledge*". Ethics 118.3 (2008): 388-409. Web.
"Thomas' Theorem Definition | Psychology Glossary | Alleydog.Com". Alleydog.com.
N.p., 2016. Web. 8 Mar. 2016.
van Roojen, Mark. "Moral Cognitivism Vs. Non-Cognitivism". Plato.stanford.edu. N.p.,
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