The ideological foundations of technological singularity. Boris Shulitski
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dialectical method of knowledge
The universality of the dialectic theory of development has recently caused great debates, and in the course of criticism of the recent past, dialectics in all its variants is often rejected as “the ideological support of totalitarianism”. They avoid dialectic, guided by very superficial considerations: the collapse of the social system, which, as it seemed, was constructed on the foundations of materialistic dialectics; failure to build a system of categories of dialectics suitable for any material; unpromising controversy about the relationship between formal-logical and dialectical contradictions; scandalous condemnation from the standpoint of dialectical materialism of the most outstanding achievements of modern scientific knowledge (31, 33).
K. Popper, for example, believes that “Hegel and his school put forward a theory that exaggerates the significance of dialectics and is threateningly deceptive” (5, 127). One can hardly take seriously the criticism of dialectics by K. Popper, because it is aimed at the most primitive ideas about dialectics that have taken place in Russian philosophy and are associated with an understanding of the contradictions in formal logic and dialectics. A number of researchers (for example, V. Sadovsky, V. Smirnov, and others) do not accept dialectics because “dialectics in Hegelian (and, therefore, in Marxist) understanding forms the basis of the ideology of both fascist and Soviet totalitarianism” (5, 139). This is similar to the absurd rejection, for example, of the theory of
atomic physics only because it is the basis of destructive nuclear weapons.
It must be admitted that the baselines of the “professional dialecticians” themselves in Soviet philosophy also contributed to the rejection of dialectics. Unfortunately, serious and honest supporters of the dialectics tradition, who sought to rely on the experience of the history of philosophy, primarily on the German classics, failed to adequately modernize the dialectic and demonstrate its constructive potential for the philosophical and scientific thought of our time (5, 152). However, this does not diminish the significance of dialectics as a phenomenon of philosophical culture. According to B. S. Bibler, – dialectics is “the most characteristic offspring of philosophical logic – especially that of the modern age” (5, 171). “It is wrong to disregard the dialectical tradition in philosophy — said B.S. Shvyrev, – it is necessary to clearly identify its real semantic content, which has not lost its constructive significance in our days” (5, 158). At present, in modern Western philosophy, there is a new interest in dialectics, and “well-known experts in symbolic logic are discussing the possibility of creating systems of dialectical logic” (5, 118). A number of research schools are solving the problem not only of rehabilitation, but also of the further development and improvement of the theory of dialectics (39, 130).
Despite numerous and fruitless discussions, the dialectics in rather vigorous and quite correct way, without references to Kant, Hegel or Marx, is mastered by modern natural scientists. Whatever branch of knowledge we take, dialectic situations are found everywhere, more precisely, movements towards dialectics, that is, towards acquiring a holistic vision of the object of knowledge. First of all, this refers to the branches of modern scientific knowledge, where contradictions in the dialectical sense are presented in the most obvious way: a view in the biological theory of evolution, exploited by the methodologists of science in the branch of special scientific knowledge; set, topos in mathematics; phoneme in linguistics; socio-economic formation in historical knowledge, etc. (32, 50). It is exactly the dialectical contrariety to create the implications, which allow things to enter the historical process. All the sciences, that are on the evolutionary path, finally come to the conclusion on the necessity of the dialectically contrary characteristics of the evolving object (31, 32). According to the Nobel laureate I. Prigogine, the time of the science of Galileo, Newton, Kant is over, and the time of the science of Hegel, Darwin and, especially, Marx begins (31, 45).
Thus, it can be stated the following: dialectics, dialectical logic is one of the most significant achievements of philosophy for all the time of its existence, is “the central element of philosophy”. The attention of philosophy to dialectics as a universal logic of thinking is especially evident in periods when philosophical reflection on thinking reaches an extremely developed form: it was so in antiquity, in the era of German classics, in Marxism. During these periods, among all the forms and methods of human attitude to being, thinking that was considered to be the most important, and dialectical logic is today the most profound system of thinking (39, 77). The idea of dialectics is the core of modern scientific thinking.
At the beginning of the third millennium, ideas, forming the viewpoint, undergo a profound transformation of their foundations. It is connected with the consequences of the scientific and technological revolution, with the informational “explosion”, with the rapid development of the IT industry and the technology of artificial intelligence (mechanical intelligence), as well as the imminent and frightening technological singularity. Our crisis time is one of those periods when the ideological rethinking of the evolutionary paradigm is required, which is possible only with the involvement of the deepest system of human thinking today – the dialectical method of scientific knowledge.
1.4 Axiom of the dialectic universality
Based on all mentioned above in the previous sections, it can be claimed that dialectics is a universalinherent characteristic of actual reality. Accordingly, the basic evolutionary mechanism for structuring the surrounding world must have a dialectical character. Indeed, the roots of dialectics are in objective reality, in the surrounding real world (“dialectics is an objective situation, an objective rhythm of a thing”). Let’s recall Hegel: “All the things in existence hide within themselves a dialectic process that turns out to be a truly all-pervading method of substance. Everything lives dialectically… The dialectic process determines the fate of all reality” (21, 119).
Further, the dialectic is peculiar to not only objective, but also subjective reality. Thinking in its form is subjective, however, dialectic patterns are also characteristic of thinking. This is because logical forms of thinking (philosophical categories) are nothing more than appropriately rethought and transformed objective relations of things. Philosophical categories, by definition, are the essence of the expression and reflection of the laws of the objective surrounding world; these are definitions of the “objective world” expressing “essential in things”. In their interrelation, philosophical categories form a system of objectively reproducing the interdependence of things, nature, and “the universal ways of the relation of man to the world”. The forms of interrelation of thoughts in thinking are correct only if they are an adequate reflection of objectively existing forms of interconnection between objects, phenomena, reflected in these thoughts (3).
Thus, all the above mentioned gives us reason to suggest the following as the first basic axiom of a hypothetical energoinformational picture of the world:
Dialectics is a universal inherent basic property of actual reality
(the axiom of the dialectics universality)
As a consequence, the basic evolutionary mechanism for structuring actual reality must have a dialectical character. The concept of actual reality combines both objective and subjective reality.
As part of the axiomatic approach, the axiom of universality of the dialectics is taken as one of the starting points for further general scientific constructions and does not require a detailed substantiation of its truth. The truth criterion of it will be the practice, the correctness of the theory conclusions, built based on this axiom, the real processes of the surrounding world, its heuristic and prognostic abilities to serve as a matrix of scientific search for fundamentally new properties, phenomena, processes, theories and applied innovative technologies.
1.5 Structure as philosophical category
Philosophical