A subject in philosophy is a certain unit that carries within itself actions, consciousness and cognitive activity, on which it exerts influence, performing any actions. It can be either one person or a group of individuals, up to the whole of humanity as a whole. The concept of the subject in philosophy is impossible without some definitions.
Theory of knowledge
There is a certain hierarchy of human needs, where the need for knowledge is far from last. Throughout the history of mankind, it develops, expanding its knowledge and boundaries. Human technology and skills have made a tremendous leap from manufacturing tools from stone and mining fire to working on the Internet and creating the World Wide Web.
One of the main subjects of history in philosophy is society. Its development is considered at this stage as a transition from an industrial society, the basis of which was the production of material goods, to an information based on the production of knowledge.
A striking feature of post-industrial society is the constant increase in the value and method of obtaining knowledge. Every day, humanity produces books, creates information resources, makes a contribution to technological progress and science, digitizes information.
In the philosophy of science, the subject of knowledge is a very important element. The science of knowledge is called epistemology.
Cognition is a person’s creative activity aimed at obtaining reliable information about the world.
For a long time, success in gaining knowledge depended, first of all, on personal conviction in one's own rightness. People defended their beliefs in prisons and scaffolds, until the last without abandoning their teachings. This fact speaks about the social nature of knowledge: it is a reflection of the internal needs of society, its beliefs and values.
Activities related to cognition
The process of cognition is a combination of certain types of activities. Among them are processes such as:
- Work.
- Training.
- Communication.
- The game.
Need for knowledge
It is expressed in the inquisitiveness of the mind and attempts to know the world around it. This also includes spiritual searches, the desire to know the unknown, to explain the incomprehensible.
Motives
The motives of knowledge can be divided into practical and conditional. We are talking about practical ones if cognition is aimed at studying a subject with a view to its further productive use. Theoretical motives are realized at the moment when a person solves some complicated task, getting pleasure from it.
goal
One of the goals of cognition is obtaining reliable knowledge about the world, objects and phenomena. But the main goal of cognition is to obtain the truth in which the acquired knowledge corresponds to reality.
Funds
The methods of cognition can be different: empirical and theoretical. The main ones are observation, measurement, analysis, comparison, experiment, etc.
Actions
The process of cognition consists of a sequence of specific actions that are different for each method and type of cognition. The choice of one or another action depends on many factors.
Result
The result is the totality of all acquired knowledge about the subject. Interestingly, this or that discovery is not always the result of setting a specific goal. Sometimes it is the result of some other actions.
Score
The result is successful only if it is true. It is the ratio of the result of cognition and the facts known earlier, or those that will become clear in the future, that is an indicator of the effectiveness of the process of cognition.
Subject of knowledge
The subject in philosophy is, first of all, the subject of cognition, a person endowed with consciousness, included in the system of sociocultural relations, whose activity is aimed at understanding the secrets of the object opposed to it.
The subject learns himself through his own discoveries. Conventionally, our knowledge has two levels: consciousness and self-awareness. Consciousness allows us to understand what exactly we are dealing with, what we see in front of us, describes the obvious properties of an object or event. Self-consciousness, on the other hand, describes emotions and value judgments associated with this subject or phenomenon. Both of these sides of consciousness always go side by side, but are never perceived equally and in full force due to its narrowness. Sometimes a person clearly sees an object, can describe its shape, consistency, color, size, etc., and sometimes he can more accurately express only his feelings about this object.
Cognition, as a rule, begins with a person’s sensation, not of himself, but of the surrounding world, and these sensations are directly related to bodily experience. Studying these or those bodies, we, first of all, select those which are directly connected with us. In a way, they seem to us the only ones, never leaving us, unlike other bodies. We feel everything that happens to this body.
So, for example, the contact of this body with something outsider is felt by us not only visually, but also at the level of feelings. Any changes regarding this subject are reflected in our life as pleasant or unpleasant events for us. We can also realize our desires through these bodies. Wanting to bring something closer to ourselves, we bring it closer to the body, while wanting to distance it, we move it away. As a result, one gets the feeling that we are one, all his actions are our actions, his movements are our movements, his sensations are our sensations. This stage of self-knowledge teaches us to identify caring for ourselves with caring for our body.
The ability of distraction develops in us a little later, gradually. Gradually, we learn to separate the mental gaze from the images that external sensory reality creates, focusing our attention on the phenomena of our inner, spiritual world. At this stage, we find a huge variety of thoughts, feelings and desires.
Thus, in the philosophy of consciousness, the subject is something obvious, it is the essence of man and is expressed in phenomena directly perceived by man, but hidden from prying eyes. It is perceived as an external object, which sometimes is a resistance to the human will.
Subject Concepts
The concepts of the subject in philosophy are some varieties of the interpretation of this concept. There are several of them. Let's consider this question in more detail.
Psychological (isolated) subject
This concept completely identifies the subject with the human individual, who carries out the cognitive process. This concept is closest to modern realistic experience and is most common today. According to her, the cognizer is only a passive recorder of external influences that reflect the object with one degree or another degree of adequacy. This approach does not take into account the active and constructive nature of the subject’s behavior - the fact that the latter is able not only to reflect, but also to form the object of knowledge. It is very important to understand the relationship between the subject and the object of knowledge in philosophy.
Transcendental subject
This concept speaks of the existence of the so-called invariant (cognitive) nucleus in each individual. This core ensures the unity of knowledge in different eras and cultures. The identification of this moment is a very important stage of all theoretical and cognitive activity. For the first time, such an interpretation of the subject in the philosophy of science was given by Immanuel Kant.
Collective subject
According to this concept, the subject is realized through the joint efforts of many individual psychological subjects. It is quite autonomous and cannot be reduced to the totality of individual subjects. A vivid example of such a subject is a research group, the professional community and the entire human society as a whole.
