The rebirth of metaphysics and relevance of dialectics

Nekrasov Stanislav Nikolaevich Doctor of Philosophy Professor, Department of Culturology and Design, Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin; Chief researcher of Ural State Agrarian University 620002, Russia, Sverdlovskaya oblast', g. Ekaterinburg, ul. Mira, 19, of. I-314 nekrasov-ural@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

In contrast to the fee-paying schools of the ancient sophists, Aristotle created his own school, in which he taught how to fight against lies: after all, if you can't talk about things by bringing things themselves, then you have to name things and talk about names, that is, look for the truth. The great thinker reveals the objective difficulties of cognition and the reasons for the possible manipulation of words, concepts and meanings, which modern sophists also do. The philosopher emphasized the position of the knowledgeable, which consists in the search for truth, however, he noted the difference between the knowledgeable and the sophist in terms of goals and objectives in a dispute, that is, in research. The sophists of antiquity gave their examples to prove their theories, and Aristotle, with his logic, exposed these sophistic examples, which are actively used by modern sophists. Since sophists consciously substituted concepts, confused correct judgments with false ones and incorrectly built their conclusions, Aristotle considered it the duty of a scientist to develop a doctrine on the correct use of concepts, judgments and conclusions. In the struggle against sophists substituting concepts, Aristotle developed rules for defining concepts: each concept must be defined in such a way that the defined concept finds its own sign of genus and its own sign of species difference. And this scientific method of definition survived until the twentieth century – up to Lenin's definition of matter.

As a result, a line of unified scientific knowledge of the truth emerged, objectively going from Aristotle to F. Bacon, then to G. Hegel and K. Marx, then V.I. Lenin. This line of struggle for science against scholasticism and metaphysics arises objectively and independently of the consciousness of certain thinkers and their attitude towards their own predecessors. Today, history once again raises the question of the clarity and scientific thinking of mankind, which is moving into a new technological order and overcoming violent capitalist globalization. This means that the role of philosophy is changing, which can no longer engage in postmodern games, but should serve humanity uniting on new foundations in the search for truth and justice. We are talking about the relevance of dialectical materialistic philosophy and epistemology.

 The emergence in philosophy of the line of the unified scientific cause of the knowledge of truth

In his work "On the Question of dialectics", V.I. Lenin, at the moment of comprehending the emerging imperialism on the eve of the First World War, wrote: "Marx's Capital first analyzes the simplest, most ordinary, basic, most mass-like, most commonplace, occurring billions of times, attitude of bourgeois (commodity) society: the exchange of goods. The analysis reveals in this simplest phenomenon (in this "cell" of bourgeois society) the contradictions (respectful germs of all contradictions) of modern society". He concluded that all other contradictions are deduced from the simple, and therefore "This should also be the method of presenting (respectful study) dialectics in general (for Marx's dialectics of bourgeois society is only a special case of dialectics). To start with the simplest, ordinary, mass-type, etc., with the offer of any: the leaves of the tree are green; Ivan is a man; A bug is a dog, etc. Already here (as Hegel ingeniously noted) there is a dialectic: a separate letter" ^{[1, p. 318]}. And since objectively every common thing is a particle or a side, the essence of the individual, then there are elements, the beginnings of the concept of necessity, the objective connection of nature, that is, the possibility of cognition of objective regularity arises, but the inventions of sophists at all times concentrate on working with judgments and speculate on a wrong understanding of the connection between the general and the individual. Over and over again, sophistry piles up the "speculative construction" as idealism forms an abstraction of a separately existing "fruit in general". Aristotle did not see a "house in general" along with visible houses.

This is exactly what Alexander the Great's teacher drew attention to, because judgments are thoughts in which something is asserted or denied. These are elementary forms of human thinking in which we find affirmations and negations of signs of objects. From the position of Protagoras in the exposition of Sextus Empiricus, "man is the measure of all things: existing, that they exist, and non-existent, that they do not exist" ^{[2, p. 316]}. It turned out that he "said that all products of the imagination and all opinions are true and that truth belongs to what is relative, due to the fact that everything that appeared or presented itself to someone exists directly in relation to him" ^{[2, p. 317]}.

In fact, as Aristotle showed, this is by no means the case. There are true judgments and there are false ones. If we take the same contradictory judgments, then one of them is bound to be false, not true. And this is the law of contradiction, which indicates that two opposite judgments cannot be true at the same time. But here there is a strict law of the excluded third: either yes or no, the third is not given. In formal logic, this is exactly the way F. showed in Anti-During. Engels: "to put dilemmas on the horns" means to choose in a biblical way - either yes or no. G. Hegel, as an outstanding representative of dialectical logic, which directly contradicts the formalism of Aristotle and the universalism of formal logic, allowed to fully move on to mastering the dialectical method of thinking.

Real life really does not fit into the metaphysical formula of folk fortune-telling on chamomile "loves-dislikes - spits - kisses - presses to the heart - sends to hell", etc. ^[3]. And F. Engels points out: "For the metaphysician, things and their mental reflections, concepts, are separate, unchangeable, frozen, once for all given objects, subject to investigation one after the other and one independently of the other. He thinks in continuous, non–mediated opposites; his speech consists of: "yes, yes, no, no; what is beyond that is from the evil one." For him, a thing either exists or does not exist, and in the same way a thing cannot be itself and at the same time different… The metaphysical way of understanding, although it is legitimate and even necessary in certain areas, more or less extensive, depending on the nature of the subject, sooner or later reaches the limit beyond which it becomes one-sided, limited, abstract and gets entangled in insoluble contradictions, because it does not see their mutual connection behind individual things behind their existence, their emergence and disappearance, because of their rest, he forgets their movement, does not see the forest behind the trees" ^{[4, p. 21]}. 

It is necessary to fight against lies, and not to teach for a fee how to lie better in order to be believed. Many of the most diverse and private judgments are found in modern life. But you need to know the main thing: not everything in judgments is true, as the sophists thought and tried to prove, because there are many lies in judgments. And the main first sign of the presence of a lie is the existence of directly opposite judgments.

To get acquainted with judgments, it is enough to know their main types and how Aristotle already used contradictory judgments in the struggle against modern sophists and sophistry. These judgments fix stable objects, but not the processes themselves – this is the limitation of formal logic when dialectical logic is required.

Aristotle posed the question of how to get the particular from the general, and gave the answer in his logic, revealing the laws of correct deduction. But he assumed that general knowledge was already in the mind. F. Bacon corrected this mistake of Aristotle and developed the theory of scientific induction as a way to obtain general knowledge based on practical experience, and not only the work of slaves, with whom the ideologist of slavery Aristotle dealt. F. Bacon began with a critique of consciousness and developed the doctrine of four types of idols or erroneous opinions obtained from the mind, and not from experience with the help of the mind. F. Bacon distinguished between practical sensory experience and superficial sensory experience. The science of logic, built on the basis of practical sensory experience, should provide a more correct theory for correct thinking than logic, built on the basis of superficial sensory experience. Aristotle's attitude of "telling the truth and exposing a liar" can be called a principle for someone who always opposes lies. F. Bacon considered it his duty to formulate the principles of the search for truth for a new logic - the principles of scientific induction. It turns out that the recognition of social principles comes from science, which requires a position of practice and asserts that action is the main principle of scientific induction.

Metaphysics should have died long ago

Under the conditions of the development of science in a capitalist society, metaphysics should have died two centuries ago, which F. justified. Engels in the pamphlet "Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German Philosophy", speaking about the need for formal logical thinking for a certain stage of historical development and the old natural science: "The old method of research and thinking, which Hegel calls "metaphysical", which dealt mainly with objects as something complete and unchangeable and the remnants of which They are still firmly in their heads, they had a great historical justification at the time. It was necessary to examine the objects before it was possible to start researching the processes. You must first know what this subject is so that you can deal with the changes that are happening to it. This was exactly the case in the natural sciences" ^{[5, p. 303]}. However, metaphysics escaped from the historical press of outdated natural science knowledge and was revived in the social sciences, as a result of which they were instantly outdated. And in this sphere of comprehension of social matter as an objective reality, the formal logic of Aristotle, for all its correctness, does not save from sophistry.

The statement that "all people are mortal," and Kai is a man, means, as it was written in old logic textbooks, Kai is mortal. In The Death of Ivan Ilyich by L.N. Tolstoy, those circumstances are recorded when logic comes into conflict with life and psychology: "Ivan Ilyich saw that he was dying, and was in constant despair. In the depths of his soul, Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying, but not only was he not used to it, but he simply did not understand, could not understand it in any way. The example of the syllogism that he studied in Kieseweter's logic: Kai is a man, people are mortal, therefore Kai is mortal, seemed to him throughout his life correct only in relation to Kai, but not to him in any way… And Kai is definitely mortal, and it's right for him to die, but for me, Vanya, Ivan Ilyich, with all my feelings and thoughts, this is another matter for me. And it can't be that I should be dying. That would be too terrible."^[6]

If we return to the primary source of sophistry - relativism and subjective idealism, we will see that Protagoras introduced the principle of relativity into pedagogy, law and logic of cognition. The idea is that every person has their own truth and that truth should be associated with a person. The judge says: "You're a criminal," and the criminal says, "No, I'm innocent." From the point of view of the idea of the theory of relativity of truths, both turn out to be right and the right of the offspring of the slave-owning class to escape punishment is justified for a fee.

The philosopher Gorgias, a pupil of Protagoras, developed the sophistic doctrine, proving that the point of view of the majority is higher than the point of view of the minority. Today, everyone knows who blew up the Nord Streams, but they are silent. Or another example - you see an object, but most people do not see this object and it does not exist for them. This is about the case that children, like mature adults, do not know and do not understand what money and wages are, but they only see colored pieces of paper and hear about wages. They do not understand that money is the universal equivalent, wages are the monetary value of your labor force.

Now in the West, officially at the government level, they say that Nazism does not exist, and that it does not exist in Ukraine. So in this logical perspective, based on the opinions of most people, we have the right to say that this object does not exist, even if we see people tattooed with swastikas and zigging at demonstrations shouting "Heil". But if someone says that from his point of view Nazism exists, then this someone is a dangerous revisionist, reconsidering the opinion of the majority.

In this society, a revisionist who denies the Holocaust or the NKVD shooting of Polish officers in Katyn is subject to imprisonment. Anyone who claims something not too dangerous, but at odds with the opinion of the majority, must recognize this discovered object as unknowable. This is the situation with UFOs and the constant waves of UFO mania that arise in Western society at a time when it is necessary to divert the attention of the masses from the economic crisis, the danger of World War and the situation of workers.

Why is it that the masses are subject to insane beliefs, and individuals have a different independent and balanced position? Yes, because these critically thinking individuals learn something alone in proud solitude, and the masses of a totalitarian class society are fooled - they will not know and will not know, because they have neither the time, nor the desire, nor the knowledge. They will not be able to understand the society in which they live, just as guppy fish with a short memory are not able to understand the structure and source of water in an aquarium.

If, under these conditions, someone insists and claims that the object exists and is knowable, then no one will be convinced anyway, because this object is abstract and the power of abstract thinking is required to understand it. Because it is believed that in society all people understand the world in different ways and they simply will not understand a Protestant due to the lack of historical training, economic justification and class blindness. And you can't convey your truth to others, and no one has the right to talk about it: it's better to talk about a neutral weather topic at corporate parties.

Thus, the problem of accurate knowledge has been extremely confusing since antiquity and thus justified the possibility of creating arbitrariness. The result is a liberal impossibility of knowing and expecting that we can come to something in between. This is expressed in the "song of fools" by B.S. Okudzhava: "Anton Palych Chekhov once noticed That a smart person likes to study, and a fool likes to teach... It is profitable to be a fool, but I really don't want to. The smart ones really want it to end in a beating... nature has insidious prophecies on her lips. But maybe someday we will come to the average" ^[7].

The average is the main opinion, the guiding opinion, as it is now understood in the rainbow multi–gendered West. Already a student of Protagoras and Gorgias, Frazimachus, a junior sophist, argued in his fee-paying school that one should choose the main opinion from many opinions. St. Petersburg professor of logic I.V. Nikolaev writes about Frazimakh's destructive position for thinking: "The main opinion is the boss, sir, the head. The one who has more rights is right. We must obey the opinions of our superiors. Bosses make laws, everyone must obey them. And those who do not obey are subject to punishment. Thus, the point of view of dishonesty and violence received a theoretical justification from the sophists. But such a point of view violated the principles of universal morality and elementary logic. The sophistic justification of the arbitrariness of everyone and the arbitrariness of superiors was, first of all, incompatible with the ideas of reasonable farming and social progress. Logic as a science was required to speak out against the justification of arbitrariness among sophists - against lies and the justification of the rights to lies. The need for correct thinking in the framework of the education of well-mannered citizens was the third reason for the emergence of logic as a science" ^{[8, p. 32]}.

And what were the first two reasons for the emergence of logic named by the author? This is free time, which appeared on the basis of the economics of slavery, which was the first reason for the emergence of all sciences and the science of logic, in particular. But there was also a political reason for logical thinking – the system of slavery required the training of managers, and these three reasons should be agreed with if we stand on the position of a materialistic understanding of history.

The revived sophistry of the new century

Who will be prepared by the revived sophistry of the new century? Today, it is being revived as "fake news", "deep fake", that is, as a manipulative practice and technology for managing the masses of consumers of the bankrupt middle class. It turned out that capitalism especially needs sophistry in the context of the digital transformation of the state, when it is possible to erase history and make changes to documents, correct people's memory, change the labeling of products, including ideological ones, create entire institutions of national memory on the basis of state financing and social rating and rebuild any ideological apparatus of the state.

The sophistic substitution of concepts is becoming a common place and a battlefield in the hybrid war of the new century. Thus, the leadership of the European Commission, represented by Chairman Ursula von der Leyen, reports on the atomic bombing of Japan and the possibility of Russia using atomic weapons again. In this substitution of meanings, it is not noted that Russia of the new democratic choice has existed as a separate state since 1991, and the Soviet Union did not have nuclear weapons in 1945, when the bombs were detonated.

In fact, it was not directly stated that Russia bombed Japan: "In the original, her words about Russia sound like this: "especially at a time when Russia threatens to use nuclear weapons once again." Probably, the head of the European Commission made a reservation or did not specify what he meant by the possibility of re-using nuclear weapons after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" ^[9]. However, the sophistry of the West was followed by our formal and logical attack: "The representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, accused the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, of lying. She, making a speech during the presentation of the Atlantic Council awards, allegedly blamed the tragedy of Hiroshima on Russia" ^[9].

Let's look at the statement of the former US Secretary of State H. Clinton, who accuses Russia of expanding NATO, emphasizing that every country has the right to its own truth and its choice in favor of NATO. The Russian side's response was instantaneous: "Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is trying to substitute concepts when she accuses Russia and Vladimir Putin of expanding NATO, said presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov. "Mrs. Clinton is known in our country for her attempts to turn everything upside down and replace concepts," he noted. So, the official recalled how the former head of the State Department presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a button on which "overload" was written instead of the word "reset". "It is clear that this was probably not a deliberate mistake, although it is very telling in itself."^[10] 

The overload of consciousness presupposes its reboot, which makes all points of view true and legitimate. But let us clarify that Protagoras said exactly the same thing, insisting that everyone has their own truth and the right to a point of view, since man is the measure of all things. The random sophistic evasions of the past, which were an incident in the twentieth century, cannot be compared with the systematic production of sophistic conclusions.

We mean the accidental formation of such false transformed knowledge, which arises when combining different questions and different answers into one answer as a sophistic conclusion. Let's recall the questions to the novice politician V.V. Zhirinovsky, which came from different sides, to which he gave different answers, but they were connected together in the public consciousness. It turned out to be funny, and became a persistent meme that was used for many years against the leader of a political party. It was not the content of the synthesized response that was important, but the method of response itself, which was considered a sophistic subterfuge and a lie.

As V.V. Zhirinovsky himself told the author as a confidant in the 2008 presidential elections, one journalist on the left asked him - "Who is your mother by nationality?", and the journalist on the right simultaneously asked - "Who is your father by profession?". When answering the question about parents immediately at the Round Table on June 10, 1991, it turned out: "My mother is Russian, my father is a lawyer." As a result, V.V. Zhirinovsky was called "the son of a lawyer by nationality" and accused of lying and hiding his origin in a sophistic way.

Many years later, a successful politician wept at his father's grave in Israel, and the moment of truth came in a paradoxical form that no sophistry could have foreseen, since the dialectic of history made its conclusion about the migrations of peoples after World War II: "The Russian politician said that, contrary to popular opinion, his father, Wolf Edelstein, was not a lawyer by profession, but a businessman and agronomist with a diploma from the University of Grenoble (France), from which he graduated in 1932. "Today in Russia, all the peasants of Russia can vote for me, because I am not the son of a lawyer, as journalists mocked me, but I am the son of an agronomist and a businessman. And my uncle, my father's brother, was also involved in land law," Zhirinovsky said."^[11]

Conclusion

In the new century, accusations of lies and falsification of concepts look old-fashioned against the background of systematic lies by politicians and diplomats of the collective West. The current controversy over the threat of a new world war reveals a lot of sophistic thinking techniques, which indicates the need to stop sophistry and speculation on issues vital to humanity. And artificial intelligence will not save us, because any of its programs already give evasive answers like a story about the nature of Crimea to the questions: "Whose Crimea is it?", "Who is Bandera?" Anyone can try to ask AI networks (artificial intelligence) other questions, which until recently we received unambiguous answers in textbooks and the media in a country with a single state ideology.

The situation with argumentation in the field of journalism, current international relations and domestic politics, the advent of postmodernism and metaphysics in Western philosophy show the need to apply the achievements of Aristotelianism and historical materialism as methods of knowing the truth and more broadly as ways to debunk the sophistic positions of opponents. It is advisable for supporters of defending a scientific worldview in the field of knowledge of the laws of history and the development of public relations in the interests of united humanity to proceed to an outright attempt to revive and apply in modern philosophical discourse the teachings of the classics of world philosophy – Aristotle, F. Bacon, G. Hegel, the founders of Marxism-Leninism.