V. Rosekis, E. Filonova  

  How does social conscious relate to the facts
which lye beyond existing paradigms?  


      It's not a secret for science, that social conscious of the
human civilization defends itself from the facts which don't  fit
in the  frames  of  existing  world  view  ideas  and  scientific
concepts.  The transformation of scientific paradigms  was  fully
and  presented  by  T.Koun  ("The   structure    of    scientific
revolutions", M., 1975).  The example  of  science  in  the  USSR
vividly illustrates the problems of studying  the  approaches  to
new phenomena and facts - at the end of 80-s - beginning of  90-s
of the past century the whole range of  works  was  dedicated  to
this topic in periodicals  and  methodological  digests.  We  are
interested in a wider setting of this problem: to be  precise  in
what way a typological approach to the unknown, unfamiliar  facts
forms the very cognitive structure of social conscious. Following
that, we could raise an issue  about  the  necessity  of  such  a
cognitive methodology, which could allow us to rather impartially
perceive phenomenological material, that doesn't fit  in  already
existing structures.  The attitude of a regular individual to the
unknown  is  the  phenomenon  of  the  perception,    based    on
authoritarian trust.  This notion is rather vague and we wouldn't
want to define it more clearly, so we could speak more about  the
essence rather than the formal side of the phenomenon itself.
      It looks like an average  Mr.  Smith  might  not  know  the
mechanism of the refrigerator  or  a  TV,  which  daily  produces
important for its owner images.  An average Mr. Smith knows  that
somewhere there is Mr.  Smith -the constructor,  Mr.  Smith  -the
technician and similar people who created  this  phenomenon,  the
initial Mr.  Smith himself could  be  a  specialist  in  his  own
sphere.  There is a  rather  objective  informational  dependence
between them all, which  bases  on  this  functional  element  of
conscious-authoritarian trust.  And each  Mr.  Smith,  without  a
thought is positive about  the  reality  of  this  all,  that  is
directly related to all Mr. Smiths -the specialists.
      If each of these Mr. Smiths sees with his own eyes a "space
ship", a UFO which is the subject of all social  talks  and  even
writes about this case to a newspaper - subsequently it will turn
out that our hero will not  only  be  unsure  in  the  origin  of
unidentified fact, but even after  getting  the  opinion  of  Mr.
Smith whom he trusts can doubt his own perception - even  to  the
extent of doubting his own psychological  and  mental  integrity.
And there is no need to prove - the psychologists have  performed
these experiments a lot of times and they  proved,  that  if  one
strange unexplainable fact had  a  small  meaning  or,  say,  was
labeled as a regular thing, this fact would  not  be  taken  into
consideration by regular conscious. It will be "non-existent". In
science this fact might be wholly reinterpreted in the  framework
of existing paradigms, religion will be adjusting it  to  dogmas;
art would use it according to some certain methods of the feature
creativity - digesting it as the result  of  imagination.  "Don't
believe your eyes" or "this can't be because this can never be" -
these are the results of processed information about  such  facts
in the framework  of  existing  views.  And  this  happens  until
science would explain it in an authorized way or  religion  would
bring out a new revelation...  The inertness of social  conscious
is so strong  that  the  theory  of  relativity  was  exposed  to
"burning" discussions and arguments (far from professional),  the
first Christians were crucified, and Van Gouge couldn't sell  his
single painting and so on.  What are the grounds,  principles  of
such an attitude towards the world - not more and not less?
      By posing this question we  need  to  make  a  step  aside.
According to what principles would we provide the answer to  this
question? - Logic,  coming  out  of  some  particular  system  of
authoritarian trust. Each approach - scientific, religious, and
creative - has some  certain  canons,  which  in  regular  social
conscious boils down to the very trust. And by methodological way
in this phenomenon of  trust  we  could  see  only  the  simplest
components: dogmas, postulates,  axioms,  initial  ideas,  rules,
styles, which are perceived by the structure of  facts  (a  myth,
scientific contents in a certain field, states of the art, simply
obvious and having some living sense objects - a fridge, a TV,  a
hammer, a computer, an authority (the messiah, the creator of the
style, a specialist).  Let's note that social conscious  to  some
certain degree is filled with the perceived structure  of  facts,
in  general  representing  dogmas  and  using  the  services   of
authorities.
      Of course, our pattern is very superficial,  but  from  the
principle point of view we could accept  only  that.  We  proceed
from the assumption that these components would be sufficient for
building a cognitive structure.  There  will  be  naturally  some
searching vectors out of  which  the  development  of  each  such
structure occurs. Let's try to draw what comes out of it.
1. Science. In science the axioms, postulates or initial ideas are the centers of crystallization of some certain research (as a rule there are some exceptions). These ideas form the theoretical core, and are performed by theoretics: this is the fundament of science. Along the different sides from this fundament there grow conclusions, consequences, which produce either new initial ideas or simply practical results. It is clear that such structure will be fractal to some certain degree - i.e. on the basis of more fundamental parts there appear private and applied spheres of science similar to them. The personalities of authorities don't have any practical meaning here, it is vice versa the authority of the person, formed on the basis of the made discovery. The forming of the new almost always proceeds from existing initial ideas, dogmas; resulting to the inertness of the science structure- sometimes it can be very pathological. Searching factors embrace new fields in the sphere of the unknown, adjusting it to the well-known amount of knowledge by direct connections or by creating some new concepts which don't contradict in principle to the existing ones. Branches of the structure appear and in the structure may stay lacunas. When there are too of these lacunas in some particular field, the structure of perceived factors becomes unstable, openly contradicting to the fundamental principles. And the "iceberg" might overturn - the transformation of paradigms occurs, which often destroys the part of the mass and rebuilds the structure.
The fact which don't fit in the structure in any way may stay tangled up with logical connections for a long time till the new, fundamental theory, surrounded by authorities is built, proving its connections with the old ones; until then these facts will not be trusted neither by science nor by regular people, oriented to this part of public conscious. UFO will be unidentified. However, they are not necessarily unidentified. To keep the "building" safe, ( we can also refer to it as an "iceberg"), the representatives of science (usually hard core or "generals") classify particular facts or the argument about words and definitions; attempts to rebuild the structure without changing its fundament take place. This way the mechanisms of defending this organism appear. 2. Religion In religion the first place belongs to the authority - the messiah, the prophet, who created the system of dogmas on the whole world. In its turn, the structure of perceived facts is built inside assigned ideas and myths. It is noticeable that so subsequences might stay without any facts for a long period of time; other facts will exist because they were assigned in the zone of authority (miracles) but something might not be embraced from the very beginning (initially). As we all know religion has been fighting with these sorts of heresies "coming from nature" - however after that it acts inconsistently, which seems to be interpreting the dogmas, i.e. never rebuilding the whole integral system. The schism in religious public conscious as contradictory as it may seem is not connected with perceived facts - it is connected only with the interpretations of the dogmas, i.e. these are heresies which found their fundament and authority but i a different plane of its relation to it.
Searching vectors of religious conscious come from the units and stems of dogmas, lately more and more often coming out of borders of existing perceived facts (this happens for the most different reasons) and expanding dogma structure similar to the first one ( i.e. the factorization goes in the direction of enlargement). It makes sense to note, that besides, this pure type of public cognitive structure, (which regular conscious often uses) claims for some science-like structure - which is the phenomenon of ideology. The ideology might have the hypertrophied or collective figure of authority and it doesn't have an integral mythology; ideology even more than religion is targeted at emotions (similar to art), at a consumer (it is typical for scientific products), as well as it uses science like proofs, which subsequently works like dogmas. In this sense of ideology (don't confuse it with political determination which is not a cognitive structure!) with its claims for the cognitive character are ephemeral and not stable. They are conjunctions of cognitive and managing mechanisms of public conscious. 3. Art If religion considers cognition as a solved issue, the art sort of doesn't claim to the research functions at least in the objective world. Let's note that art doesn't go through the crises of the fundament, dogmas, and styles. The style might be forgotten or outdated or extinct and exhausted. The style can serve the mass market and turn out to be not needed with the new perception o reality. Here the fundament is the perceived structure - works of art, which assign the perception of the environment very often through the principle similar to its own. And the initial one is the authority - the authority that hasn't just opened the new principle of perception, but the authority that is recognized for some particular reasons or a person with a very strong PR campaign. The initial state of the subjective perception very often allows to choose more new surfaces of the style and to form one and the same actual structure with absolutely different points of view. How does this reflect on the regular conscious? It gives namely subjective principles of life order to the prerogative of the art: the peculiarities of culture, technical and ritual decor (here art in some sense merges with science and religion, sort of creating their regular environment), the types of leisure, ways of spending time for public etc. New incredible facts, according to the previous ideas and notions, are applied in the range of types and styles of art, even separate new directions start to appear (for example science fiction) - but regular conscious clearly separates these forms of perceived structures from purely scientific to the canonically religious ones. A very interesting effect turns up: with its primary nature of the authority, which states always a well-known fact, that its' opinion is subjective, art not only forms a subjective environment, but also gains as the result of it any impressions which don't fit in existing paradigms of positive thinking and also conserves outdated paradigms if they have any esthetic value (for example myths and fairy tales which served before as religious principles which reflected ideas of the reality).
Art doesn't have problems of self-defense and restructuring - it gives right for the regular perception to those who were able to prove the meaning of their subjective perception (it occurs with establishing of each style). However, actually it i the regular perception which has to seek defense from art, even rarely - when the art's free principles affect the person's perception of the world. The typical example in this regard is the influence of romanticism on the regular mentality of Smiths' psychology, the spreading of agnostic ideas in a very well performed form on the character of the world view (H.L. Borges demonstrated it very vividly in his works). Having its own labiality it also prepares a psychological breakthrough in the perception of the new: on its basis regular conscious realizes far countries and somehow prepares for perceiving aliens from space. Have we touched all cognitive structures? Concerning regular conscious - we have considered all of them, of course there is philosophy, which doesn't come directly neither to positive science nor religion and as a very reputable person from the philosophical circle once put it, and philosophy is the "feature where abstractions play the roles of the main heroes". There are also esoteric sciences. However, these cognitive structures in its specifics are not typical for the regular conscious. Taking some intermediate place in every-day reality, philosophy and mysticism are exaggerated up to the forms of science or religion and sometimes (let's remember Borges once more) art. Having made a survey we realize that principally new unknown unexplainable facts like the same UFOs and even necessary new approaches to the research inaccessible phenomenon (bio-energetics, time, gravitation), stay unexplainable namely due to th reasons of inflexibility of already existing structures of perception, which are considered objective - or due to unserious attitude the subjective ones. The same scientists-authorities - having already become as such - are raised and educated in the inert structure of regular social conscious and perception, absorbing its languages and logic. And to destroy the system or restructure it without having to destroy it, is impossible - we can state with some regret that the new approach to new unexplainable facts will stay to the TV specialists on the level of regular listening up. But maybe there is an alternative of forming some sort of structure of perceived facts? Maybe a cognitive approach can exist, maybe it bases not on static elements of the structure but on its logical connections and searching vectors? Can there b such a system of views, reasonable even on the regular level, which could allow the movement of the elements and their connections inside the system without refuting them and not bringing them down to the subjective ness? Taking into account the factors of performed analyses, let's note that this possibility is utopist. However, according to the range of old historic and futurological concepts in accent times, a similar methodological system (though only within th chosen circle) existed - metaphysics, which combined a religious view of the world and almost scientific and research approach and influence on the symbols and styles in art as well. By the way, the fundaments of math, medicine and psychology take direct roots from the system of ancient metaphysics. And only later on (rather long ago it was Aristotle who gave it the very name) "metaphysics" became just a variety of philosophy leading to its redefining into a static and dogmatic form (Hegel's). That's why we have to leave this not-quite-bad-in-general term to history and start working with requirements for the methodological structure as such. The scheme of sought for methodology looks like a network, in which accumulated by mankind structures of facts with their dogmatic "frameworks" and authorities, historical achievements of whose in cognition of truth are not detracted and even can gain a new meaning, are preserved and rather freely transform and interrelate - because a view from the outside is possible. And this view, regardless whose one it is, can fully claim for objectivity - the objectivity in searching and not in static sense. It would have been more correct to compare this system (if it functions and constantly moves even from the actively showed regular interest or doubt) not to "network" but to some aqua environment, in which those structures, sticking out their tentacles and pretending to be stones crawling back and forth, would be able to "swim", even unsurely.
Let's pay attention that in this suggested system there is some framework of Meta postulates, on and through which searching vectors glide. This framework is like force fields which create stability and ground for particular estimates, hypothesis concepts, and assumptions so that gelatinization wouldn't happen. And one more thing: it is obvious that to "smiw" and flexibly re-adjust we need additional degrees of freedom, increasing of the number of homogeneous dimensions of the search surface. That's why "metacognitive" methodology must be really multi dimensional and allow regular conscious to take a look at the interested subject not just from the view points of science, religion, art but from some syncretic, multi target side. When will the creation of similar methodology become possible? We think (of course without proof - the question is - from which point shall we prove it?), that social conscious could be able to do this too - only some integrating factors are lacking, the facts which are habitually expected from the authorities. Of course, all common inertness of regular world views especially in the educational field and media sort of stands in the way. The incognizable is being restructured, interpreted, somewhat increasing well-known structures, and reality stays uncognized. At this pessimistic note we would conclude all our thoughts to avoid getting deeper into the fields of a fantastic character.