Variety of cognitive practices in the educational space of modern Ukrainian society

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Ternopil Ivan National Technical University

Variety of cognitive practices in the educational space of modern Ukrainian society

Anatolii Dovhan, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, Professor Ukrainian Studies and Philosophy Department

Olga Perenchuk, Senior lecturer of the Ukrainian and Foreign languages Department

Ternopil, Ukraine

Анотація

Палітра пізнавальних практик в освітньому просторі сучасного українського суспільства

Анатолій Довгань, доктор філософських наук, професор кафедри українознавства і філософії, Тернопільський національний технічний університет імені І.Пулюя (Тернопіль, Україна)

Ольга Перенчук, старший викладач кафедри української та іноземних мов, Тернопільський національний технічний університет імені І.Пулюя (Тернопіль, Україна)

У статті дається спроба аналізу прояву постмодерністських ідей пізнавального оптимізму в освітянських практиках сучасного українського суспільства. Звертається увага на те, що гносеологічна парадигма продукування соціальної дифузії в людських взаєминах веде до руйнації стереотипів повсякденності буття пересічного громадянина, світогляд якого сформований історичними традиціями національних відносин.

Новизна сучасної ситуації повсякденного життя українського суспільства в тому, що дезорганізується його соціальна структура, виникають нові соціальні суб'єкти, неоднорідність поглядів яких формує складну мозаїку буденності освіти. Повсякденна свідомість індивіда, стиснута реальними фактами життя, змушена шукати практичний вихід із суперечливих ситуацій, проживаючи і переживаючи їх у свій, обраний ним спосіб. Тому пізнавальна функція його волі отримала поштовх подальшого розгортання варіацій свого втілення в освітніх практиках. Плюралізм думок призвів до суттєвих змін у можливостях інформаційної поведінки особи. У такому багатогранному і багатому змістом освітянському середовищі інформації (не завжди соціально якісному в ціннісному вимірі) свобода волі виявляє себе односторонньо, однолінійно, цілеспрямовано на максималізацію численності не завжди достатньо змістовних повідомлень, монологів, діалогів навіть у навчально-виховному процесі ЗВО.

Ключові слова: постмодернізм, освітянський оптимізм, соціальна дифузія, ірраціональне, повсякденність, свобода волі, деконструкція, пізнавальна практика, психолого-педагогічна ситуація.

Abstract

An attempt to analyze the manifestation of some postmodern ideas of cognitive optimism in educational practices of modern Ukrainian society has been made in the article under discussion. The focus has been made on the fact, that the gnoseological paradigm of social diffusion producing in human relations can cause the destruction of everyday life stereotypes of an ordinary citizen whose outlook was influenced by the historic traditions of national relationships.

The novelty of the present state of Ukrainian society's everyday life is that its social structure has been disorganized, and new social subjects have appeared whose heterogeneous outlooks form complex mosaics of the education routine. The everyday consciousness of an individuum pressed by real-life facts has to find a practical way out of the conflicting situations, experiencing them in their own way chosen by them. Thus, the cognitive function of his will has been promoted to introduce other variations in educational practices. Pluralism of thoughts has caused some essential changes in the possibilities of the information behavior of a person. In such a versatile and content-rich information pedagogical environment (not always socially high-quality as for values), the will freedom has been recognized as a unilateral and purposeful tool to maximize the amount of not always enough meaningful messages, monologues, and dialogues even in the teaching-educational process of higher educational establishments.

Keywords: postmodernism, educational optimism, social diffusion, irrational, routine, freedom of will, deconstruction, cognitive practice, psychological-pedagogical experience.

Introduction

Formulation of the problem. Postmodernism, demonstrating itself as a denial of modern philosophy thought, due to the development of various cognitive practices in educational projects of world transformation, has provided the establishment of a new gnoseological paradigm in the XXI century on the basis of searching for humans some irrational elements sense of being realization by an ordinary citizen of the world.

Postmodernism is based on the opposition to the modern era dominating principle of scientific rationality of social life organization that is nowadays endeavored and has always been aspired by the majority of people irrespective of their belonging to a certain nation, people, nationality, or state. The above-mentioned paradigm of social diffusion production in human relations results in the deconstruction of everyday life stereotypes of an ordinary citizen whose outlook is formed by historical traditions of national relationships. Nevertheless, society can't exist in the state of its stable constant deconstruction due to the production of the principle of social diffusion. Society strives to support itself in a dynamic balance of a need to be constantly updated and the necessity of its own constant stability in the forms, ways, technologies, and types of public life organization. So, the methodological completeness of postmodern practices organization of human cognitive activity has been partially compensated by the turn to the basic principles of rationality and irrationality interaction in cognitive educational practice of human life transformation. At present, the problem of subordination of these sources (rationality and irrationality) is very important for society in the practice of ordinary educational everyday life of a certain person (student), a social group, a civil society, or a state.

Postmodern orientations of social development were considered by H. Marcuse, K. Hirz, J. Ortega y Gasset, A. Toynbee, Miguel de Unamuno, F. Fukuyama, and others.

The purpose of the research. 1. Reveal the peculiarities of implementation in Ukraine the conception of European educational space regarding the Bologna paradigm of relationships «student-lecturer» organization in higher educational establishments.

2. Prove the role of a student's and a lecturer's personal will in the implementation of efficient methods of educational process carrying out aimed at the development of necessary competencies in a future professional worker of the society.

3. Draw the attention of the scientists to the manifestations of voluntarism of cognitive freedom of will of the participants of the psychological-pedagogical situation in higher educational establishments.

Research methods: The theoretical-methodological basis of the study under discussion is the papers of Ukrainian representatives of philosophical thought in the field of education (Andrushchenko V., Kremen V., Lyakh V., Petrushenko V., and others).

The author of the study has used a personalistic method as a basic one within the process of research procedures carried out to make the understanding content of the concept of “a variety of cognitive practices” deeper in the modern educational process. Application of the hermeneutic method of psychological-pedagogical situation cognition has facilitated the content load of scientific texts of monologue and dialogue polemic presentation of philosophers' considerations on the Ukrainian educational environment transformation into the European socio-cultural space.

The author of the paper under discussion has followed the methodological law to minimize the use of interpretation literature to preserve his own thoughts on the investigated problem as much as possible. The methodological basis of the study under discussion is also the principles of objectivity, critical analysis development, the union of history and logic, and others.

Results of the research

Some philosophy theories have appeared within the postmodern orientation of human being understanding which demonstrates the very rationalism of world attitude as a dominating principle of the human world existence. It will be enough to refer to the paper of H. Marcuse «One-dimensional man», where the idea of globalism with its rationalized worldview-philosophy paradigm of world reconstruction has been certified. And here a collision occurs - on the one hand, postmodernism denies any rationality in human life, and, on the other hand, it applies constantly and with acceleration the abilities of the intellectual mind (as simply humans have no other mind) to show the realities of everyday life, to improve this life and to deny the mind itself. In this way, postmodernism has positioned itself on the history podium as the only true worldview-cognitive, and practically transformative paradigm of human existence.

Such a model of societal transformation has been successfully implemented nowadays in different geopolitical projects of educational transformation of the world. Putting forward the concept of civil freedom by the postmodern philosopher even in its irrational forms from the philosophical interest periphery into the main purpose of the education space contributes to the further development of those forces which demonstrate the absence of any tradition of worldview. Here, a famous American anthropologist K. Hirz was right when he emphasized: «If the word “mind” is removed, then the words «belief», « hope», and «mercy», as well as «reason», «force» and «leaning», «motive», «role» and «culture» will disappear together with it (Kremen, p.71, 2009). The above-mentioned J. Ortega y Gasset, in whose philosophy we do not notice any sympathy for the ideas of rational thinking dominance, emphasized, that skepticism, reduced to the denial of any other gnoseological theory, is a self-killing theory (Geertz Clifford, p.326, 2001). In everyday life as a being, one can be very active externally, but this activity is always specified outside, but not inside, so, in the end, this absurd activity of everyday life existence can't produce anything unique and new - in this way, a famous Ukrainian philosopher N. Khamitov describes our everyday life (Feyerabend, p.124, p.145, 1997). In our opinion, similar considerations demonstrate only one of the versions of human existence sense in general, and the process of social updating regarding its content democratization. The routine subjective flow of cognitive events is filled with dichotomy “optimism-pessimism” as the forms of subjective relationship of the system “a human-world”. Life cycles of everyday life cognitive optimism in different social-educational systems acquire some historical divergence in their manifestation.

The novelty of the present state of Ukrainian society's everyday life lies in the fact that its social structure is disorganized, and new social subjects appear whose heterogeneous points of view create a complex variety of routine life. Everyday life routine consciousness of an individuum, pressed by real-life facts, has to seek a practical way out of the conflicting situations, experiencing them in his own way, chosen by him. Thus, everyday life cognitive optimism is, first of all, anything that can be clearly seen by an ordinary individuum but can't be in most cases explained by him. Everyday cognitive optimism, as well as pessimism, of such a historical subject, is not presented as enormous civilization projects, programs, or doctrines of social change of the existing generally accepted order. In this case, educational optimism manifests itself every day in different educational-cognitive situations in students' and lecturers' life. “The essence of any educational psychological-pedagogical situation in the study process of a higher educational establishment is in the available conflicts, their development, and solution” (Dovgan and Turevich, p.3, 2018). To continue the topic we are discussing, we will consider only “cognitive practices” of an educational psychological-pedagogical situation manifestation, and their modern modifications in the educational space of human will freedom manifestation (a student and a lecturer-pedagogue). postmodern ukrainian society pluralism

As subjective thinking is a characteristic feature of human cognitive activity, and the objective understanding of things is its essence (Hegel), we can't leave the boundaries of this activity and exist without it because it manifests itself as a relationship. To comprehend or understand any relationship between things or living beings, especially between people, it is necessary, first of all, to focus on a certain object, and separate it (relationship) mentally from the correspondent set of available variety of relationships. This human thought concentration is an act of will. Though, the act of will is unable to exceed its necessity in cognition development due to its accidental manifestation. The role of the will of a student in cognition is not in the random choice of a subject of knowledge, but in the fact that his will proves the subjective desire to know these or those important aspects of educational reality. Any human's strong-willed decision is characterized by not only his personal ideas but “universal”, i.e. general concepts. Thanks to his strong will, a man can subordinate to the higher moral idea not only his sensitive inclinations, but all his desires, select from the list of possible actions the specified one that corresponds to the accepted principle of cognitive activity oriented at the comprehension of the truth. The ability of such choice is immediately connected with the freedom of the subject will manifestation to any cognitive activity. Aristotle argued, that for reasonable cognition one should have a strong and persistent will. It acts easily by means of the choice of subjects of cognitive attention and ways of acting. As a human has not only his mind but heart passions as well, he can be satisfied by both his mind commands and soul passions too, he prefers the last ones but not his mind, i.e. smaller or lower benefit, than greater or higher one, and this is the essence of his freedom and responsibility. Thus, according to Aristotle, caused by the mind and heart passion, the freedom of will is only a manifestation of imperfect human nature.

Strong will pushes the mind's power to an unknown truth and further, and further. Although, will can never be satisfied with the achievements, i.e. the completed act of cognition. As the will of cognition, in J. Bruno's opinion, has its own purpose, specified by the source of human life and the world's integrity - God. According to R. Descartes, cognition activity is manifested not only through the dialectics of doubt-confidence, but by the freedom of choice as well. A man is free not only when his unawareness of truth and kindness makes him indifferent. A man can show his freedom in cognition mostly in cases when clear and definite cognition of a subject encourages him to a new search. For R. Descartes, the biggest and the most important human perfectness is not his ability to express cognitive doubtfulness but the ability of his will - the subject of cognition- not to jump to conclusions regarding the truth people do not know exactly. This ability of the human will makes it possible for a person to repeat the information he needs to remember many times, and as a result, to recollect something, and in this way acquire a habit of not making mistakes, which is very important for modern students.

Therefore, for a cognizing subject, according to R. Descartes's considerations, not the very fact of doubt is important but the ability of will to form and use the cognitive experience of doubt in further cognition of the truth.

A prominent philosopher G. Leibniz through the existence of freedom demonstrated step-by-step progressive liberation of the universe from passive, inertia, mechanistic necessity toward the unlimited manifestation of freedom of human cognitive search up to the achievement of perfect knowledge embodied in God. For G. Leibniz the principle of freedom is also important in his theory of cognition, as it enables people to manifest their will freely and unlimitedly regarding the human cognitive ability as absolute freedom of their attitude to the world and themselves. A French philosopher-theologist of the same historical period N. Malebranche considered the regulatory, determining role of the human will as the reason for the unstable cognitive ability of the mind. Human actions are controlled by the will, it draws the cognitive attention of a person to such subjects which are chosen by him/her and which he/she likes most of all. The will is in conflict with the mind that is sometimes focused on eternal, abstract truth, but the will itself always encourages us to seek the things which attract the will and are able to satisfy its wishes and make it happy. Nevertheless, the fancy will can't stop, it either dies away or flashes more and more and makes the mind satisfy those wishes of the will which are evidence of well-being. So, the human mind is a subordinate essence dominated by sensualism. The very sensual cognition itself can't give true knowledge. In this way, N. Malebranche closed the circle of human cognitive possibilities to substantiate the main thesis of his philosophical conception of truth - a man with all her/his cognitive potential is unable to comprehend the truth by the means which were produced by mankind and which were formed in the human abilities at the sensual and rational levels of cognition.

Here, the question arises: why Europe is our ideal in education? We see, that Europe itself intensively seeks new worldviews and cognitive guidelines for its future existence. Nevertheless, European civilization proposes to us new everyday standards of living which are not very similar to its own, those, produced for it by itself, and which are different from our former ones regarding their value, those we have refused from.

Everything that can't be reduced to an everyday empire is gradually becoming unacceptable in Ukrainian culture. Later I. Kant paid attention to the fact, that philosophy was used in the wrong way when it was applied to violate the principles of a healthy mind (Kant, 1964). In conventional national cognitive educational practices, the exchange of dialogues, dialectic communication “lecturer-student”, and “teacher-pupil” for a lecturer's monologue, which becomes only a retranslator of knowledge collected by mankind, is currently taking place. Due to the conventional technical means of information transfer alive verbal communication is being transformed into a formalized system of a student's, pupil's, and listener's intellectual response to the lecturer's actions in the form of tests according to one of the laws of formal logic, i.e. by the principle of one of the oppositions of the iconic dichotomy of “yes-no” type in the single right answer option. Besides, at the same time the so-called conception of a «trajectory of free subject choice by a student» is being produced. The above-mentioned scheme of study has some benefits, though, in our opinion, but they can't be obtained in mass-organized higher education. Moreover, not all European countries consider such innovative educational technologies as beneficial.

According to K. Jaspers, different dimensions of the concept of “communication” correspond to different levels of consciousness and the ways of their carriers' attitudes to the world and themselves. Thus, the philosopher many times underlines the communication world's “existing being” discomfort caused by the impossibility of consensus between carriers of different cognitive discourses (Khamitov, 2002). In the modern world of clogging of the information field, and communication channels, an ordinary fact of spiritual life is often true but simultaneously optional, the same frequently repeated event of “information-knowledge”. Qualitative and quantitative (technically) growth of signal systems has made the transfer of an information message not necessarily immediately connected with the satisfaction of necessary life needs. Human will has obtained practically unregulated by nothing and nobody freedom of its manifestation not only in passive processing of the obtained information as a consumer but in the manifestation of its activity as knowledge transfermastering. Thus, the gnoseological function of will has got a boost for further development of its implementation variations, in cognitive educational practices, in particular. Pluralism of thoughts has led to some essential changes in the possibilities of the information behavior of a person. In such a versatile and content-rich information pedagogical environment (not always socially high-quality as for values), the freedom of the will have been recognized as a unilateral and purposeful tool to maximize the amount of not always enough meaningful messages, monologues, and dialogues even in the teaching- educational process of higher educational establishments. European science, European type of organization, and European worldview have contributed to formal rationality transforming it from the aid into the purpose. Even students' environment, characterized by correspondent intellectual-creative abilities of the world understanding in its ontological essence, is proposed the practice of interpretation, for example, of a text as only knowledge carrier, but not the very knowledge, its semantic load, content, symbol, but a form sign, and not more, and it is not actual any longer, in their opinion. The study is still conducted according to the principle of transfer of ready knowledge, and experience owned by society, when a student is given some ready answers to the unknown questions for him. “A meeting of generations” is taking place, when they address each other, the meeting where the cultural memory is being transformed. Though such reconstruction, for example, the subject of philosophy, can step by step lead the society to the change in thinking logic, the transformation of mono social understanding of the world into the pluralism of autonomous relative to one another cognitive practices whose criteria encourage to understand the world as a conglomerate of relative pieces of truth, each of them has its own information field of its existence within a specific time period. We can see, that the principle of a text deconstruction (Derrida) has left the boundaries of its own status, specified by itself and its functional essence. The principle has passed from the text reconstruction to the deconstruction of real empirical relationships, among which the cognitive relationship «man-world» takes a leading place. Arguing against any methodological compulsion of mono-cognitive practice (P. Feyerabend) Toynbee Arnold, 1995), substituting it with the pluralism of cognitive innovative technologies, the society itself generates «anarchism» and «voluntarism», particularly, in the educational sector of production of knowledge, ideas, and principles of the relationship «man-world». The heredity pattern of cognitive practices, formed on the intellectual level of human mind manifestation, is broken. The study is conducted according to the principle of transfer of ready knowledge, and experience owned by society, when a student is given some ready answers to the unknown questions for him. The situation is similar to the age of eclecticism of competing philosophy schools, currents, and directions development in the ancient culture of the Hellenistic period at the end of the IV - ІІ century B.C.

Conclusions and prospects of further research

In the contemporary Ukrainian educational environment, the compilability of the educational practices already existing in the Western European problem field as the only true and acceptable ones is mostly taking place with simultaneous attempts of refusal from the achievements of Ukrainian educational thought of the ХІХ- XX centuries. The society information field humanization is being observed where the opportunities are broadened concerning the “freedom of will” of each individuum and a student, in particular.

Taking into account all the above-mentioned, the next task of high school pedagogics is as follows: continue forming the new philosophy of education methodology regarding contemporary European democratic values taking into consideration the emotion-sensory component of the Ukrainian mentality and its introduction into the teaching-educational process of higher educational establishments.

References

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