Curiosity about what surrounds us, attempts to understand how the universe works, as well as a desire to penetrate the unknown world of the other world, have always been a sign of the human mind. When people feel, experience, or observe something that is happening to others, they assimilate and consolidate it, wanting not only to correctly understand what the state of affairs is, but also whether it is possible to comprehend the truth. Cognition in philosophy is one of the most interesting questions, because philosophy is trying to rationalize and explain the diverse processes that occur in the human brain and are aimed at obtaining knowledge.
The process of cognition is more complicated than simply the accumulation of knowledge - it is creative, cultural and social; It involves not only rational, but intuitive and sensory mechanisms of thinking. That is why cognition in philosophy is a special problem, which deals with a special theoretical section called epistemology or epistemology. The beginning of epistemology as a special branch of philosophy was laid by the Scot Ferrier in the 19th century. This philosophical discipline studies both the methods and principles of obtaining knowledge, as well as what cognition is, what it has to do with the real world, whether it has boundaries, and also what are the relationships between what is known and those who know. There are many different theories of knowledge that criticize each other and offer numerous concepts about what knowledge is true and reliable, what are its types and why we are generally able to know the world and ourselves.
In short, philosophers in the field are concerned with understanding why knowledge exists; how can we determine that this is precisely knowledge that has certainty and truth, and not superficial judgment (or opinion), or even delusion; how this knowledge develops, and also what are the methods of cognition themselves. In philosophy, throughout its history, the question has been extremely acute about the meaning of the acquisition of knowledge for man and humanity, whether it brings happiness or sorrow. But be that as it may, in the life of modern society, the acquisition of new knowledge has acquired such significance that the current stage of development of this society is often called the informational one, especially since it is the informational space that has united humanity.
Cognition in philosophy looks like a process that has a social, value nature. History tells us that people were ready not only to acquire new knowledge, but also to uphold it, despite the fact that very often they had to, and now have to, pay with their lives, freedom, separation from relatives. Since this is a process, it is similar to other types of activities studied in philosophy and, like them, is determined by needs (desire to understand, explain), motives (practical or purely intellectual), goals (gaining knowledge, comprehension of the truth), means (such as observation, analysis, experiment, logic, intuition and so on) and the results.
One of the main problems that philosophical thought is interested in is how cognition develops. Philosophy initially established that the first type of knowledge was naive, ordinary knowledge, which over time, in the process of development of culture, improved, giving rise to the emergence of theoretical principles of scientific knowledge and thinking. At the same time, philosophy distinguishes between the principles and methods of philosophical knowledge proper and the study of specific scientific knowledge (philosophy of science).
Philosophers also thought about what role the cognizing subject plays in the process of cognition. Cognition in philosophy is not only the study of things and processes surrounding a person or occurring in him independently, but also his spiritual life. Knowing, a person not only realizes that he is studying something external, but also that this study affects himself. In addition, especially in the field of humanitarian cognition, the state of the knowing subject, his values and beliefs can influence the results of cognition. Assessing this complex problem, philosophers of different directions came to completely opposite conclusions. For example, positivists reproached humanitarian knowledge for the lack of objectivity, and representatives of philosophical hermeneutics, on the contrary, considered subjectivity to be a specific feature of humanitarian knowledge, which, therefore, is closer to immediacy, and, thus, to truth.
