Voprosy Filosofii i Psikhologii

17-28

Authors: Sergey A. Lebedev

This article discusses the problem of induction, which was first formulated in the 18th century by the English philosopher D. Hume. Hume came to the conclusion that reliance on inductive inferences has no rational basis and is rather a matter of habit as one’s psychological ability. Since then, the issue of the possibility (impossibility) of purely rational justification of induction has gained a fundamental significance for philosophy and especially the philosophy and methodology of science. From a negative solution to the problem of induction there necessarily follows the inference that scientific cognition is not a purely rational process. The history of the philosophy and methodology of science has seen numerous attempts to rationally justify induction, but all of them have proven untenable. The article analyzes the major approaches to solving the problem of induction undertaken in the philosophy of science in the 20th century: 1) deductive or “metaphysical”, 2) pragmatic, 3) conventionalist, 4) inductive/analytical, 5) linguistic. As a result of the analysis, the author draws the following conclusion: Hume was right. The use of inductive inferences in cognition, including in science, cannot be substantiated purely rationally. The author proposes a new solution to the problem of induction, which is founded on the following principles: 1) the need for getting out of the domain of thinking and logic, in providing a rationale for the use of induction, and getting into the domain of practical objectives and grounds of scientific cognition, 2) the need to construe the process of scientific cognition per se (scientific thinking, in particular) as social processes whose subject is the disciplinary scientific community. The use of the inductive method in scientific cognition is grounded not in the subject’s purely rational activity but its rational/volitional activity. The outcome of this kind of activity by the scientific community is its consensual cognitive decisions.

36-46

Authors: Victor A. Svetlov

In the article the new interpretation of dialectics and dialectic contradiction compatible to laws of formal logic and possessing big explanatory and predictive force is offered. Dialectics is considered as the part of unified theory of conflict analysis and resolution which is responsible for the initial cause of development of any system. The dialectic contradiction is defined as union of the complementary relations and as a general pattern of development. It is proved Contrary to a popular belief it is proved that the dialectic contradiction makes only part of the general class of the contradictions peculiar to systems.