Main categories in philosophy. Terms in philosophy

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:43

Thinking by its nature is categorical, but in principle. Otherwise, there would be no progressive movement, progress in cognition. For each new look around revealed completely new objects, unknown, hitherto unseen, and one would have to get acquainted with each tree, each boulder separately, each time “discovering” the same and the same for oneself anew.

"The forest is great and there are many animals in it, but the bear, he is so alone, and it does not matter that different ones run: both large and small, and further north - white." It is precisely such a category as "bear" that prevents the bearish variety from crumbling into separate parts, turning into a huge crowd of various animals.

To embrace with thought, a person can think no more than a dozen objects at the same time. But, turning piles of objects into one, it is possible to operate with huge layers of phenomena: Dagger - Weapon - Steel - Metal - Substance - Matter - Part of existence.

So, generalized categories in philosophy are a tool that allows you to think and act, to navigate the world. At thatAt the same time, categories create for a person, make up the world, as its frame, that is, they are both “the world itself” and a “tool” for actions in it.

Categories "connect" the world, making it consistently and linearly extended. If you remove categories from life, life itself will disappear in the form to which we are accustomed. Existence will remain. For how long?

In an effort to get to the bottom, to get to the essence, to the origins of the world, world formation, various thinkers, different schools came to different concepts of the category in philosophy. And they built their hierarchies in their own way. However, a number of categories were invariably present in any philosophical teachings, and not only in them. (Practically any mythological cycle, any religion begins its narrative from the beginning. And at the beginning of everything there is usually chaos, which is then ordered by some forces.)

These universal categories underlying everything are now called the main philosophical categories, due to the fact that the extremely general categories can no longer be described, defined by anything, since there are no concepts covering them or including them as part. The main categories in philosophy, terms, are inexplicable, undefined concepts. But, oddly enough, to one degree or another industrial and yet understood. And even to some extent interpreted - definite.

Although this is the same as, for example, the concept of "liquid" is defined through coffee.

Existence - non-existence

In philosophy, being is everything that exists. Think, unfoldeven a small fraction of everything that exists is impossible, nevertheless, such a category exists. As a bottomless abyss takes in everything that a thinker does not throw into it: he saw plus he remembered himself plus his thoughts and thoughts of a comrade.

Everything that exists includes both the consciousness of a thinker, who can think, and something that does not exist, and thereby “the act of thinking” to bring into being something new, hitherto absent in being.

However, this “everything that exists” is represented exclusively in consciousness, although it is thought of as a dual command – a part outside and a part inside, in consciousness.

How objective is being in its existence, is there something outside the mind of the thinker?

Is there something that no one has ever thought of? In general, if you remove the “observers”, will there be anything left?

Being in philosophy is everything objectively existing, even that which cannot be thought (imagined), unimaginable and incomprehensible by the mind, plus non-existent, but conceived by someone and thereby brought into being.

Can there be anything other than being? No, it cannot: “to be” refers to being completely, without a trace of exceptions and oppositions.

Despite the fact that there is nothing but being, in philosophy the category of "non-being" exists. And this is not absolute emptiness, not the absence of anything as opposed to being, “nothing” as such is unimaginable and incomprehensible, because as soon as it is presented, thought, understood, it will immediately appear on this side - in being.

The dominant understanding (interpretation) in the minds of people of the main categories inphilosophies, outline, limit, form the world in which they (people) live and act.

The dialectical understanding of the world excluded the ideal principle from the existent, leaving it only (since there is a concept) in consciousness - in subjective reality. That reality, which was “allowed” to exist, received carte blanche for development. As a result, a technological breakthrough. An abundance of super-complex devices, schemes, technologies based on the principles of interaction and transformation of matter, with an almost complete oppression of idealistic ideas.

As the discovery of the conservation law put an end to the development of perpetual motion machine, so the "discovery" of materialistic determinism vetoed the development of ideas that were not invested in its concept. And if the justice of private ideas, scientific theories can be deduced from their correspondence to the general categories of metatheory, then the justice or injustice of the latter cannot be deduced, because there is nowhere.

When you change the world by transforming the "vision" of the main categories in philosophy, more than possible, new, different patterns of interaction between the world and man will appear.

Matter is movement

The only true, perhaps, definition of matter as a category in philosophy is what is given in sensations. Feelings, transmitted thoughts give rise to a reflection of this substance in the mind. It is also assumed that this "something", given in sensations, exists regardless of whether there are sensations (subject) or not. Thus, sensations became both a conductor between thought (consciousness) and objective essence, andan obstacle in the search for it - the true essence of matter. Matter appears before man only in those forms that are accessible to perception, and nothing more. The rest, much, almost everything, is behind the scenes. By creating various theoretical constructs, man is still trying to realize (understand) the essence of matter as such.

A brief history of the transformation of the category of matter in philosophy, these theoretical constructs that reproduce more or less matter:

• Awareness of matter as things. The idea of matter as a variety of manifestations of one basic thing that forms everything material - the root cause of matter.
• Awareness of matter as a property. Here, it is not a structural unit that comes to the fore, but the principles of the relationship of bodies, relatively large parts of matter.

Later, they began to consider not only the linear, spatial relationship of material parts, but also its qualitative change both in the direction of complication - development, and in the opposite direction.

The matter was “fixed” with some inalienable properties – its attributes. They are considered derivatives of matter, generated by it, and without matter, by themselves, do not exist.

One of these properties is movement, not only linear, but, as noted earlier, also qualitative.

The causality of motion is conceived in the discreteness of matter, its fragmentation into parts, which allows these parts to change their relative position.

Matter without its attributes does not exist. That is, in principle, it could exist without them, but it was preciselythis state of affairs.

The absoluteness (continuity) of linear motion seems obvious, since motion is a mutual redistribution in space of parts of matter relative to each other, you can always find at least some particle relative to which others move.

From the properties of motion follow such properties of matter as time and space.

There are two main approaches to categories in philosophy - space and time: substantial and relational.

• Substantial - time and space are objective, just like matter. And they can exist separately both from each other and from matter.
• Relational approach in philosophy - the categories of time and space are only properties of matter. Space is an expression of the extent of matter, and time is a consequence of variability, the movement of matter, as a distinction between its states.

Single - general

These philosophical categories are signs of an object - a unique sign - a single one. Signs are similar, respectively, common. Likewise, the objects themselves, having a unique set of features, are single items, and the presence of similar features makes the items common.

Despite the fact that the categories of the individual and the general are opposed to each other, they are inextricably linked and are both the root cause and the effect in relation to each other.

Thus, the individual is opposed to the general, as distinct from it. At the same time, the general always consists of individu althings that, upon closer examination, will turn out to be single in the totality of their features. This means that the singular follows from the general.

But the general is not taken from nowhere, being made up of single objects, in them it also reveals a similarity - a commonality. Thus the singular becomes the cause of the general.

Essence is a phenomenon

Two sides of one object. What is given to us in sensations, how we perceive an object, is a phenomenon. Its true properties, the basis is the essence. The true properties "manifest" in the phenomenon, but not in full and in a distorted form. It is quite difficult to single out, to know the essence of things, making our way through the mirages of phenomena. Essence and phenomenon are different, opposite sides of the same object. The essence can be called the true meaning of the object, while the phenomenon is its image distorted, but felt, in contrast to the true, but hidden.

In philosophy, there are many approaches to understanding the relationship between essence and phenomenon. For example: an essence is a thing in itself in the objective world, while a phenomenon, in principle, does not objectively exist, but only the “imprint” that the essence of an object left during perception.

Marxist philosophy at the same time asserts that both are an objective characteristic of a thing. And it is only steps in the comprehension of the object - first the phenomenon then the essence.

Content - form

These are categories in philosophy that reflect the organization scheme of things (asarranged) and its composition, what makes up a thing. Otherwise, the content is the internal organization of the subject, and the form is the external content.

Idealistic ideas in philosophy about the categories of form and content: form is an extra-objective essence, in the material world it is expressed by the way the content of specific (existing) manifested things. That is, the leading role is given to the form, as the root cause of the content.

Dialectical materialism considers "form - content" as two sides of the manifestation of matter. The guiding principle is the content - as invariably inherent in a thing/phenomenon. Form is a temporary state of content, manifested here and now, changeable.

Possibility, reality and probability

The event manifested in the objective world, the state of things, is reality. Opportunity is something that can become reality, almost reality, but not taken place.

Probability in these categories is treated as the chances of an opportunity turning into reality.

It is believed that in explicit objects, real, already existing, the possibility exists in a potential, folded form. So reality, existing objects already contain development options, some possibilities, one of which will be realized. In such a dialectical approach, a distinction is made - “may be (happen)” and “cannot be” - something that will never happen, impossibility, i.e. incredible.

Necessary and accidental

Thisepistemological categories reflecting in philosophy the categories of dialectics, knowledge about the causes from which an understandable, predictable development of events results.

Randomness - unintended variants of what happened, because the causes are outside, beyond the known, unknown. In this sense, randomness is not accidental, but not comprehended by reason, that is, the causes are unknown. More precisely, external connections of the object are attributed to the causes of the occurrence of accidents, and they are different and, accordingly, unpredictable (maybe - maybe not).

Besides the dialectical ones, there are other approaches to understanding the categories of "necessary - accidental". From such as: “Everything is determined. Causally" (Democritus, Spinoza, Holbach, etc.), - to: "There are no reasons and necessity at all. What is logical and necessary in relation to the world is the human assessment of what is happening” (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and others).

Cause - effect

These are categories of dependent connection of phenomena. A cause is a phenomenon that influences another phenomenon, either by changing it or even generating it.

One and the same impact (cause) can lead to different consequences, because this connection, the impact does not occur in isolation, but in the environment. And, accordingly, depending on the environment, different consequences may appear. The reverse is also true - different causes can lead to the same effect.

And although the effect can never be the source of the cause, things, the carriers of the effect, can influence the source (cause). In addition, usually the effect itself becomes the cause, already for another phenomenon, and so on, butthis, indirectly, may eventually affect the original source itself, which will now act as a consequence.

Quality, quantity and measure

Discreteness of matter gives rise to such property as movement. Movement, in turn, through forms, manifests a variety of objects, things, but also constantly transforms things, mixing and moving them. There is a need to determine in which case a certain substance is still “still the same object”, and in which it already ceases to be it. A category appears - quality - this is a set of phenomena inherent only to this object, losing which the object ceases to be itself, turning into something else.

Quantity - a characteristic of objects by the intensity of its qualitative properties. Intensity is the correlation of the severity of identical properties in different objects by comparison with the standard. Simply put, measurement.

Measure is the ultimate intensity, that area, within the boundaries of the crust, the intensity of the property does not yet change its quality as a characteristic.

Consciousness

The category of consciousness in philosophy appeared when thinkers opposed thinking (subjective reality) to the outside world. Two really existing, parallel, but interpenetrating worlds were formed - the world of ideas and the world of things. Consciousness, thoughts, forms of objects and many other things that had no place in the physical world were "sent" to exist in the ideal (spiritual) world.

After consciousness settled in the human brain in the form of electrochemicalprocesses, i.e. basically became material, the question arose about the relationship and / or transformation of the material (the brain, as a carrier of thoughts) and the virtual (consciousness), as different from the material.

Emerging concepts suggested:

• Consciousness is a product of the work of the brain, similar to the products of other organs: the heart feeds the body through the blood, the intestines process food, the liver cleanses. The logical consequence was the dependence of the consciousness of the “way of thinking” on the quality of the products (air, food, water) entering the body.
• Consciousness is one of the phenomena of material objects in general (since the brain is their particularity). The consequence is the presence of consciousness in all objects in general.

The categories of dialectics in the philosophy of consciousness determined its subordinate place in relation to matter, as one of its properties arising in the process of development (qualitative change of material objects). The main property of consciousness is reflection, as a re-creation in thoughts of the image (picture) of reality.