CAN A HUMAN BE RATIONAL?

1941 publication

I used to think of myself as a Rationalist; and a Rationalist, I suppose, is one who wishes people to be rational. But rationality is under a lot of hard attack these days, so it's hard to know what is meant when one talks about rationality, or in cases where the meaning is clear, the question arises as to whether a person can be rational. The question of the definition of rationality has two sides - theoretical and practical: "what is a rational opinion?" and “what is rational behavior?” Pragmatism emphasizes the irrationality of opinion, while psychoanalysis emphasizes the irrationality of behavior. Both theories have led many people to believe that there is no such thing as an ideal of rationality to which opinion and behavior can generally conform. It seems to follow from this that if you and I stick to different points view, it is useless to appeal to the argument or decision of an impartial person; we have no choice but to bring the dispute to an end by means of rhetoric, advertising or war, in accordance with the degree of our financial or military force. I am convinced that such a view is very dangerous and fatal for civilization in the future. I will therefore try to show that the ideal of rationality remains untouched by the ideas which are regarded as fatal to that ideal, and that it retains all the importance it has had hitherto when considered as the guiding principle of thought and life.

Let's start with rationality in opinion: I define it simply as the habit of taking all relevant evidence into account when forming a particular opinion. Where certainty is unattainable, the rational man will give highest value the most probable opinion, while at the same time keeping others with sensible probability in mind as a hypothesis that future evidence may confirm as preferable. This, of course, assumes that in many cases facts and probabilities can be established by an objective method, such as a method that will lead any two attentive people to the same result. This is often questioned. Many say that the only function of the intellect is to contribute to the satisfaction of individual desires and needs. The Committee for the Publication of Textbooks "Plebs" in "Fundamentals of Psychology" writes: “The intellect is, first of all, an instrument of partiality. Its function is to ensure that those actions that are beneficial to the individual or the human race are to be carried out and those that are less beneficial are to be prohibited.” (Italics in the original.)

“Marxist faith is completely different from religious faith; the latter is based only on desire and tradition; the first is based on scientific analysis objective reality». This seems to contradict what they say about the intellect, unless they really mean that the intellect did not take part in their conversion to the Marxist faith. In any case, since they recognize that it is possible " scientific analysis objective reality,” they must admit that it is possible to have opinions that are rational in an objective sense.

More erudite authors, those who defend an irrationalist point of view, such as pragmatist philosophers, are not so easily refuted. They argue that there is no such thing as an objective fact that our opinions must conform to if they are to be held to be true. For them, opinions are only tools in the struggle for existence, and those that help a person to survive will be called "true". This view prevailed in Japan in the 6th century. n. when Buddhism first reached this country. The government, doubting the truth of the new religion, ordered one of the courtiers to accept it experimentally; if he succeeds more than the rest, the religion will be accepted as universal. This method (modified for our time) is advocated by pragmatists in relation to all religious disputes; but I have yet to hear anyone say that he has converted to the Jewish faith, although it seems to lead to prosperity faster than any other.

Despite this definition of "truth," Everyday life pragmatism is always guided by quite different principles for the less subtle questions that arise in practical affairs. A pragmatist juror in the case of a murder will think about what happened in the same way as any other person; whereas, if he had adhered to his principles, he would have had to decide whom it would be more advantageous to hang. This person, by definition, will be guilty of murder, since the belief in his guilt will be more useful, and therefore more "true" than the belief in the guilt of any other person. Such practical pragmatism is sometimes encountered, I fear; I've heard of "frauds" in America and Russia that match this description. But in such cases, everything is done to hide this fact, and if these efforts fail, then a scandal occurs. This cover-up shows that even the police believe in objective truth in a forensic investigation. It is this kind of objective truth—very mundane and prosaic—that scientists seek to find. It is this kind of truth that people also seek to find in religion as long as they hope to find it. Only when people give up hope of proving that religion is the truth in literally, they go to work to prove that this is "truth" in some newfangled sense. It can be openly stated that irrationalism, i.e. disbelief in objective facts, almost always grows out of a desire to prove something for which there is no supporting evidence, or to deny something that is well confirmed. But the belief in objective facts always remains with regard to particular practical matters, such as investments or the hiring of servants. And if indeed it were possible to test the truth of our beliefs everywhere, it would be a test in all areas, leading to agnosticism wherever it was carried out.

The above considerations are, of course, quite inadequate in relation to the topic. The solution to the problem of the objectivity of fact is hampered by the vague reasoning of philosophers, which I will try to analyze further in a more radical way. Now I must assume that there are facts, that some facts are knowable, and about some other facts a degree of probability can be established in relation to facts that can be known. However, our beliefs often contradict fact; even when we only believe that something is probable based on the relevant evidence, it may be that we should consider it improbable on the basis of the same evidence. Therefore, the theoretical part of rationality consists in substantiating our beliefs rather on relevant evidence than on desires, prejudices, traditions. Thus, either an impartial person or a scientist will be rational.

Some think that psychoanalysis has shown the impossibility of rational belief by revealing the strange and almost insane origin of many people's fondly cherished beliefs. I have great respect for psychoanalysis, and I believe that it can be extremely useful. But public opinion has lost sight of the purpose that was the main inspiration for Freud and his followers. Their method is originally therapeutic, it is a way to treat hysteria and various types of insanity. During the war, psychoanalysis proved to be one of the most important ways treatment of neuroses received in the war. Rivers's book, Instinct and the Unconscious, which is largely based on the experience of treating shell-shocked patients, gives brilliant analysis painful manifestations of fear, when this fear cannot be directly indulged. These manifestations are, of course, mostly non-intellectual; They include different kinds paralysis, all types of apparently physical illnesses. But in this article we will not discuss this; Let's focus on intellectual deviations. It has been found that many hallucinations of lunatics are the result of instinctive obstructions and can be cured by purely psychic means, for example by bringing to the patient's consciousness facts which have been repressed in his memory. This kind of treatment, and the outlook which inspires it, presupposes an ideal of sanity from which the patient has deviated and to which he must be brought back by the realization of all relevant facts, including those which he most desires to forget. This is in direct opposition to those lazy concessions to irrationality which are sometimes incited by those who know only that psychoanalysis has shown the predominance of irrational belief, and who forget or ignore that its aim is to weaken this predominance. certain method medical treatment. A very similar method can cure the irrationality of those who are not considered insane, provided they are treated by a specialist who is free from their delusions. Presidents, Cabinet of Ministers and Prominent figures, however, rarely fulfill this condition and therefore remain untreated.

So far, we have considered only the theoretical side of rationality. The practical side, to which we now turn, is more complex. Differences of opinion on practical matters stem from two sources: first, the differences between the desires of the disputants; secondly, differences in their assessments of the means of realizing their desires. The second-class differences are actually theoretical and only indirectly practical. For example, some authoritative people argue that the first line of our defense should be completed from battleships, others - from airplanes. There is no difference here as to the proposed purpose, namely national security, the difference is only in the means. The reasoning, therefore, can be constructed in a purely scientific way, since the disagreement that gives rise to the dispute concerns only facts present or future, certain or probable. In all these cases the type of rationality which I have called theoretical applies, although the practical question is at stake.

However, in such cases there are complications that are very important for practice. A person who wants to act in a certain way will convince himself that by acting in this way he achieves some goal that he considers good, even if if he did not have such a desire, he would see no reason for such a belief. . And he will judge facts and possibilities in a slightly different way than a person with opposite desires. Gamblers are known to have an irrational belief in systems that will eventually should lead them to win. People interested in politics convince themselves that the leaders of their party will never be guilty of fraudulent tricks practiced by other politicians. The man who loves to govern thinks it is good for the population to be treated like a flock of sheep; a man who likes tobacco says that it calms the nerves; a man who loves alcohol says that it stimulates wit. Addictions caused by such causes falsify human judgments about reality in a way that is very difficult to avoid. Even Research Article on the effect of alcohol on nervous system will generally betray the author, on the basis of internal logic, as to whether he is a teetotaller; in any case he will tend to see the facts in a light that justifies his own practice. In politics and religion, such considerations become very important.

Most people think that in forming their political opinions they are guided by the desire for the public good; but nine times out of ten Political Views a person can be predicted based on his lifestyle. This leads some people to the conviction, and many to the conviction, which is expressed in practical actions, that in such cases it is impossible to be objective and that only a "tug of war" between classes with opposing interests is possible.

However, it is in such cases that psychoanalysis is partly useful, since it makes people aware of interests that have hitherto been unconscious. It provides methods for self-observation, i.e., the ability to see ourselves from the outside, and the basis for the assumption that this view of ourselves from the outside is less unfair than we are inclined to think. Combined with the teaching of the scientific worldview, this method can, if widely taught, enable people to become infinitely more rational than they are at present about their beliefs about reality and about the possible consequences of any proposed action. And if people are united in their views on these issues, the differences that remain can almost certainly be resolved amicably.

There remains, however, a question that cannot be solved purely intellectual methods. The desires of one person cannot be completely harmonized with the desires of another. Two competitors on the stock exchange may be in complete agreement about the consequences of one action or another, but this will not bring about harmony in practice, since each wants to get rich at the expense of the other. Even here, however, rationality can prevent much of harmful effects, which are otherwise realized. We call a man irrational when he acts out of passion, when he cuts off his nose to disfigure his face. He is irrational because he forgets that by indulging the desire that he happened to experience most strongly at this moment, he will interfere with the fulfillment of other desires that will later be more important to him. If people were rational, they would maintain a more correct view of their own interest than they do now; and if all people proceeded from conscious self-interest, the world would be a paradise compared to what it is now, I do not say that there is nothing better than self-interest as a motive for action; but I maintain that self-interest, like altruism, is better when it is realized than when it is not. In a well-ordered society, a person is very rarely interested in doing anything too harmful to others. The less rational a person is, the more often he does not understand how much what offends others offends him too, because hatred and envy blind him. Therefore, although I am not saying that conscious self-interest is the highest morality, I am saying that if it becomes universal, it makes the world immeasurably better than it is.

Rationality in practice can be defined as the habit of remembering and considering all our respective desires, and not just what happens to be the strongest at the moment. As with rationality in opinions, this is a matter of degree. Undoubtedly, complete rationality is an unattainable ideal, but as we continue to classify some people as crazy, it is clear that we think of some people as more rational than others. I believe that all lasting progress in the world consists in an increase in rationality, both practical and theoretical. To preach an altruistic morality seems to me to be something useless, because it will appeal only to those who already have altruistic desires. But preaching rationality is something else, because rationality helps us become aware of our own desires in general, whatever they may be. A man is rational in the proportion in which his intellect shapes and controls his desires. I believe that the control of our actions by the intellect is, in the final analysis, the most important thing that makes it possible. public life as science increases the number of means at our disposal to harm each other. Education, the press, politics, religion - in a word, all the great forces of the world - today are on the side of irrationality; they are in the hands of men who flatter His Majesty the People To confuse them. The remedy lies not in any heroic deed, but in the efforts of individuals towards a more sane and balanced view of our relations with our neighbors and the world. It is to an ever more widespread intelligence that we must turn to solve all the problems that our world suffers from.

INTRODUCTION

In the 90s, in an attempt to inculcate market behavior in Russians, they were urged to abandon the use of summer cottages as subsidiary farms. A simple calculation showed that it is unprofitable for the urban population to spend time and effort on growing vegetables and fruits with their own hands, it is much more profitable to spend this time on additional earnings and buy everything in the store. Dacha subsidiary farming is unprofitable from the point of view of pure economic calculation. But most Russians do not stop it.

Dozens can be given similar examples, as from real life, as well as from experimental situations. People do not always perform economically significant actions as rational egoists.

Of course, the above examples also have their own unconditional logic - within a small team it is extremely unprofitable (and psychologically unpleasant) to be a competing egoist, no one will simply do business with you, and a summer cottage that has been unprofitable for 20 years in a row can literally save a life in a situation of food shortages and a sudden economic crisis. Such decisions are influenced not only by cold selfish calculation, but also by emotions, cultural and moral attitudes, psychological features thinking. Moreover, if the mechanisms for making the most profitable decision are widely studied, for example, in game theory, and the psychological specifics of thinking and the role of "irrational", emotional components in this are seriously studied by psychology, the role of cultural and moral attitudes of people in economic actions, despite the obviousness, the subject of such a serious study is not to this day.

CHAPTER 1. THE ECONOMIC MAN AND RATIONAL BEHAVIOR

1.1 Economic man

An amazing but indisputable fact: from the time of Adam Smith to this day, in most economic theories and mathematical models, despite their extreme complexity today, an extremely primitive “model of a person”, known as Homo, acts as a subject that makes economic decisions. Economicus.

"Economicus" has four main qualities:

1. He operates in a competitive market, which implies his minimal relationship with other economic people. "Others" are competitors.

2. Economic man is rational in terms of decision-making mechanisms. He is capable of setting a goal, consistently achieving it, calculating costs in choosing the means of such an achievement.

3. Economic man has complete information about the situation in which he acts.

4. Economic man is selfish, that is, he seeks to maximize his own benefit.

It is these assumptions that lead to the fact that economic behavior is considered as a field free from everything "human". As if doing business, playing on the stock exchange, working and making purchases are not the same people who are driven by very different motives - there is the desire to be safe, and vanity, and excitement, and the need for love and respect, and envy, and struggle for world peace - but some abstract robots. And most importantly, as if in their actions these people are not at all guided by their ideas about what is good and what is bad.

You don't need to have any special knowledge to see the obvious "attractiveness" of each item. People rarely act egoistically individually. Even the most cruel and cold-blooded person divides people into friends and foes, applying absolutely different rules. And any action "in the interests of the group" already differs from the pure competition of everyone with everyone. Point 2 about the rationality of all actions is refuted by the entire history of mankind, which is full of fatal miscalculations that cost the lives of millions of people. Even the most experienced military strategists and statesmen constantly make mistakes both in setting goals and in the methods of achieving them. What to say about ordinary people or average businessmen.

The argument about the completeness of information is generally the most odious. A person almost never owns the fullness of information about what is happening around. That is why the mechanisms of our psyche and thinking do not act like a computer, but are able to work in situations of high uncertainty, using the so-called heuristic strategies. Far from being always correct and logical, and not guaranteeing error-freeness, they, nevertheless, allow a person to draw conclusions, generalize and predict where any computer would fail due to insufficient initial data. And if we talk about the situation of awareness in purely economic situations - whether it is a stock market game or corporate intrigues, then the opportunities for access to information for large and ordinary players are simply incomparable, and access to "insider" information is therefore a key resource in these situations.

Maximizing personal gain is also not the only common strategy, not only among people, but also in wildlife. Although we are accustomed to using the expression "like in the jungle" as a synonym for a ruthless struggle for survival, scientists have long known many examples when altruistic strategies are used by specific animals for this very survival of a pack or species. There is no need even to refer to examples among the higher animals, it is enough to look at any anthill. Geneticists are coming to more and more interesting conclusions about the nature of the "altruistic genes" that are responsible for cooperative strategies in animals.

1.2 Theories of economic behavior

To better understand where it came from economics all this modern entertaining mechanics" instead of holistic view about man, we need to look at when the first theories of economic behavior arose. From the 18th century, the ideas of progress and enlightenment began to conquer the minds of Europeans. Against the backdrop of mysticism and superstition, the ideas of the triumph of reason and the materiality of the world, which can be studied to the end with a compass, microscope and test tube, are exciting and promising. Man is a complex mechanical device that can only feel and think. The soul is “a term devoid of content, behind which no idea is hidden, and which a sound mind can use only to clothe that part of our body that thinks,” writes the philosopher and physician Julien de La Mettrie, who perpetuated the idea of ​​“man-machine” in the eponymous work of 1748. It is not fashionable to be an idealist, it is fashionable to regard a person as a being guided by natural instincts, the desire for profit and pleasure and the fear of deprivation and grief.

People are just as rational and selfish in the writings of most theorists of economic thought in the 18th and 19th centuries. In Adam Smith, autonomous individuals are driven by two natural motives: self-interest and the propensity to exchange. In John Stuart Mill, people are led by the desire for wealth, and at the same time an aversion to work and an unwillingness to put off for tomorrow what can be used today. Jeremy Bentham considered a person capable of arithmetic operations to obtain maximum happiness and wrote: “Nature has placed a person under the power of two sovereign masters: suffering and joy. They indicate what we will do today, and they determine what we will do tomorrow. As a measure of truth and lies, so the chains of cause and effect rest at their throne." Leon Walras saw man as a utility maximizer based on rational behavior. In the 20th century, on the basis of these ideas, game theory has already grown - a branch of mathematics that studies optimal strategies in processes where several participants are fighting for the realization of their interests.

It should be noted that the understanding of the limitations of the idea of ​​a person in the economy as a mechanistic rational subject existed in the past. Even the classic John Mill still acknowledged the influence national characteristics on the economic man and wrote that in the countries of continental Europe "people are content with smaller monetary profits, not so dear to them in comparison with their peace and their pleasure." In the writings of a representative of the German historical school of economic theories XIX century B. Hildebrandt, man "as a social being, is primarily a product of civilization and history. His needs, education and attitude to material values, as well as to people, never remain the same, but geographically and historically constantly change and develop together in all the learning of mankind." Thornstein Veblen believed that people in economic actions are not driven by rational calculation at all, but by the desire to increase social status, far from always rational, and depending on the cultural and historical context in which this happens. Veblen, in a sense, can be considered the ancestor of the current theories of prestige consumption in marketing.

However, supporters of "anthropocentric economics" have always remained in the minority, and in public consciousness the idea that the economy is a field in which main motive people and organizations - maximizing their profits, regardless of what kind of people and organizations they are, in which country they are located and what worldviews they share.

1.3 Rational economic behavior

Even if not to refute abstract theories, then at least it became possible to ask them a lot of unpleasant questions with the accumulation of experimental experience in psychology. The mechanisms described in game theory are not always implemented in real life. life situations.

First, rational decision-making is strongly impeded by the very structure of the human psyche. So, back in the 60s, psychologists discovered evidence of a surprisingly powerful influence of situations on people's actions, the "fly and elephant" effect, where the fly is a rational motive and the reasons for an act or decision, and the elephant is a momentary situation. We are all familiar with this effect. In one of Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes, the great detective explains to Watson why he did not add to the list of suspects a lady who was obviously very nervous when answering his questions - she simply did not have a powdered nose. The most insignificant detail, said "at hand", the intonation of the interlocutor, a sudden change of mood can often influence a person's behavior, outweighing all rational and long-thought-out arguments. When explaining their actions, people also often do not analyze at all, but try to find explanations that they and others will like, and even when analyzing, they tend to take into account precisely those arguments that confirm their initial position, consider more likely events that they themselves personally met.

The volume of accumulated data on such "deviations" from "normality" eventually became impossible to ignore. The fly of irrelevant errors has turned into an elephant - unyielding simple explanations real person, and in 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to economist Daniel Kahneman for showing that "human decisions naturally deviate from the standard model." Kahneman wrote that "in the process of making a decision, subjects ignore the most basic principles and rules that underlie rational choice theory." Instead of calculating their profit, people simply follow habits and traditions, ignoring probabilistic cranes, choose reliable tits in their hands, underestimate the possibility of a negative outcome in "familiar" situations ("professional mistake"), they are ready to take risks, as a rule, only in order to avoid trouble and not to win.

Can you remember famous stories about the reckless behavior of Russian merchants. Everyone knows the stories about the shocking enlightened Europeans smoking from hundred rubles. And here is another eloquent example of "irrationality" - the legend of how the Moscow Mental hospital No. 1 im. N. A. Alekseeva (known as "Kanatchikov's dacha"). In 1894, funds were raised for the construction on the initiative of the mayor of Moscow, N.A. Alekseev. One of the rich merchants said to Alekseev: "Bow at my feet in front of everyone, and I will give a million to the hospital." Alekseev bowed, and the hospital was built. And how many millions are being spent today in order to amuse self-esteem, and not at all rationally increase capital? It seems that just all the modern marketing technologies of the consumer society with its image goods and prestigious consumption refute the existence of Homo Economicus. On the contrary, the "human", playing on irrational desires and aspirations, has become a key commodity in consumer markets.

1.4 Collective interest

It is curious that even within the framework of the most formal-logical theory of games it is possible to refute the thesis about the rationality of egoistic individualism.

One of the most famous in game theory is the Prisoner's Dilemma. Figuratively, its essence can be described as follows: - the police catches two criminals, A and B, for a minor offense. There is reason to believe that in reality these are gang members guilty of more serious crimes, but there is no evidence. If one prisoner testifies against another, and he remains silent, then the first is released for helping the investigation, and the second receives the maximum term of imprisonment (10 years). If both remain silent, they are sentenced to a minimum term of 6 months. If both testify against each other, they get 2 years each. Each prisoner chooses whether to remain silent or testify against the other. However, neither of them knows exactly what the other will do. In this game, if the player only cares about himself, it is more profitable to always betray, but if the players have a common interest, then it is more profitable for them to cooperate.

A successful strategy in this game was considered "an eye for an eye" (tit-for-tat) - not to betray the first, but then always answer the opponent in the same way, if he betrayed - betray, if he is "friends" - "friends". But it turned out that this is beneficial only when everyone plays for himself. Otherwise more successful is the cooperative strategy presented in 2004 at the 20th anniversary of the repeated prisoner's dilemma competition by a team from the University of Southampton from England. It relies on the interaction between programs to get the maximum score for one of them. The university put up 60 programs for the championship, which recognized each other by a series of actions in the first 5-10 moves, after which they began to "play giveaway" - one program always cooperated, and the other betrayed, which gave maximum points to the traitor. If the program understood that the opponent was not from Southampton, it would continue to betray him all the time in order to minimize the opponent's result. As a result, the programs of the University of Southampton took the first three places in the competition.

Thus, a formal proof was obtained that, in the presence of a collective interest, an integrated strategy based on both competition and cooperation, as well as the principle of separation of "friends and foes", that is, cooperation with "friends" and competition with "strangers" has advantages. compared to purely competitive strategies.

CONCLUSION

Why do these theories matter to us at all? Is it all the same what ideas were shared by the figures of the era of "cars and steam", and what beautiful constructions mathematicians build when describing abstract players-competitors? Unfortunately, theorists are to blame for launching "viruses" of supposedly simple ideas into people's everyday consciousness. You don't have to read Adam Smith to know that "business is business." However, while talking about the fact that only the personal good is the way to the common good, the adherents of these theories forget that super-goals can be achieved only as a result of cooperation and readiness to work not only for personal benefit. You cannot fly into space, study the ocean and look for cures for cancer based only on momentary profits. Moreover, it is even harmful, as it can lead to economic shocks and changes in established markets in the long run.

Another sad consequence of such ideas is the atomization of society. Because it is possible to compete rationally and ruthlessly only with "strangers", because even criminals do not treat "our own" like that. "Economic man" is the more successful, the fewer around him those whom he looks at as people, and not as abstract competitors. That is why clans and nepotism flourish in our country - albeit in such primitive forms, but still people prefer to be together with someone. Small team or group common interests, is a serious obstacle to the ideas of universal competition, "the war of all against all."

But it's not just the limitations of economic man's theories. The idea of ​​the immorality of economic activity, of bracketing everything except profit and rational calculation, is much more dangerous than it seems at first glance. Hypocrisy, deceit and small betrayals that happen daily in large corporations, because, as you know, they make money here, and do not do charity work. "Hack" instead of culture. Why are you so poor if you are so smart. Getting used to this reality, it is easy to justify everything with some abstract rules of the market, where there is no place for thinking about what is good and what is bad.

True, history knows at least one example of where you can go along this road. When Hannah Arendt arrived in Jerusalem in 1961 for the trial of the main perpetrator of the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann, she was struck by the ordinariness and ordinariness of this man and his arguments, subsequently calling her book about this "The Banality of Evil." Unlike theory, in life, indifferent decisions - because "it's accepted", "it's just a job" and "we are not like that - life is like that" - lead not only to abstract personal gain, but to quite real troubles. And treating other people simply as a means to "win" is the main trouble of the whole modern economy.

"People can pursue their own interests without fear that it will harm society, not only because of the restrictions prescribed by law, but also because they themselves are products of restrictions arising from morality, religion, customs and education." And this is not a quote from some utopian philosopher, but the words of the founder of the market economy, Adam Smith. His followers discarded such ideas about moral and educated entrepreneurs from their theories as unnecessary. As Milton Friedman stated succinctly and clearly two centuries later, the firm's sole duty to society is profit maximization. Russians know firsthand how not enlightened entrepreneurs, but real "economists" behave in real life. Moreover, in the market they are fighting among themselves in the struggle for the wallets of consumers; not only competing entrepreneurs are fighting among themselves. Here is a recent example from this series. Workers at a locomotive depot in Moscow got into a lethal brawl with their potential competitors who were heading to the depot to get jobs for less pay. As a result, four people were injured. Competition at its finest.

These theories still tell us about their dead mechanical models, although the very everyday practice of modern economics proves that the ideas about a person that confused and amazed the imagination of ladies at the balls of the gallant age, to put it mildly, are somewhat outdated. Isn't it time to follow the advice of the aforementioned La Mettrie: "A wise man should dare to speak the truth in the interests of a small circle of people who are willing and able to think. For it is just as impossible for others who are slaves of prejudice of their own free will to comprehend the truth, as it is for frogs to learn to fly"?

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Irrational behavior is inherent in many personalities. What is this character trait? Why do people allow themselves such behavior? only permission, personal permission to not pay attention to circumstances when making decisions, not to think about their consequences?

Basic concept

Irrational - from a philosophical point of view, it is especially moralizing, denying the human principle, as opposed to the sound functioning of the mind in comprehending the world. It admits the existence of areas of the worldview, incomprehensible to the mind, but completely acceptable because of such qualities as intuition, feeling, faith. Therefore, it characterizes the special nature of reality. Its tendencies were studied to some extent by such philosophers as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Delta, Bergson.

Characteristics of the irrational

Irrational is a pattern of behavior inherent in free people who can afford not to think about the consequences. This mode of action is one which implies the impossibility of understanding reality in scientific ways. As the representatives of this doctrine explain, reality and its individual derivatives, such as life and psychological processes, are not amenable to generally accepted laws. Such a state can be subject only to the elite, for example, the geniuses of art or some kind of superman. According to the theses of this doctrine, an irrational person is an individual who, violating all previously approved laws, is able to understand the basic laws of being with the help of subjective thinking.

Impact of illogical behavior on scientific research

Irrational is not scientific or without a logical approach. Philosophical teachings in this area are divided into such areas as intuition, psychology, contemplation of something super-real, as well as the appearance of inexplicable, but subjective experiences in a person. All these facts served as the reason for a repeated and deeper consideration of this phenomenon. First of all, researchers human psychology, which at one time was deprived of close and thorough study.

Many early experiments were not accepted due to lack of evidence of a clear manifestation of irrational behavior among employees not only scientific centers but also among the representatives of rational thinking. But many serious theoretical problems that arose later forced scientists in the field of man to return to the study of illogical human activity.

Unfathomable actions

Irrational behavior is an action aimed at obtaining a result without premeditated actions and evaluation. This behavior has no preconceived options development of a situation, question or task. Usually it is associated with the spontaneous manifestation of feelings, emotions that irritate or, on the contrary, sharply calm thoughts that arise as a result of a spiritual impulse.

Usually such people are able to see reality beyond its logical explanation and with the advantage of some arguments over others. They are guided by actions without pre-prepared algorithms of actions, called "life instructions". Most often, such behavior is based on the belief of the person himself in good result of the work performed, with a complete practical lack of understanding of how the required result was achieved. Sometimes people have only one explanation - the favor of fate.

It can often be seen that irrational thinking saves a person from destructive criticism of his own actions and deeds. It brings to the fore the idea that the individual has already encountered such a problem and once again solved it with the help of the acquired experience. Although the problem arose for the first time, and its solution was spontaneous and not realized. This is due to the fact that a person is looking for answers in his subconscious on a sensitive as well as intuitive level, and already in the process of solving the problem he copes with it.

Irrational thinking hinders or helps to live?

Growing up every day, a person thinks more and more stereotypically. An irrational expression is the speech of a child. Only a kid can afford to think in such a way, relying on the knowledge laid down in him since childhood, and then reinforced all the time, and added new ones received later.

In reflections and conclusions, as in all other global laws of this world, the rule of conservation of energy applies. Thinking according to a stereotyped scheme is often beneficial: less effort and the necessary time are spent. And it’s good if the knowledge gained in childhood is correct, then the person solves the task the right way. But if the knowledge is irrational, then the person is less fortunate. The main factors why such thoughts hinder correct thinking are:

• they are spontaneous;
• lead a person away from his main activity;
• often work in unnecessary situations;
• cause anxiety and irritability.

The sooner a person gets rid of illogicality in his thinking and actions, the sooner negative events will stop happening in his life, the psyche will be strengthened, and functional activity will improve. Irrational is wrong for a sane person.

It seems legitimate to general division of personality types into RATIONAL and IRRATIONAL, suggested by Jung.

So Thinking and Emotional personality types are based on Consciousness - a command module that "works" according to certain algorithm consistent with the existing world order. It is the work of the Consciousness that ensures the constant maintenance of a person “within the limits of what is permitted”. Belonging to one of these types says that the implementation of the plan given by the DP, when forming and changing the FP, in the world we perceive, does not violate the control algorithm inherent in consciousness human body. Those. the conditions for applying the existing algorithm also include incoming changes to the information that is “hardwired” in it (concrete consciousness). More precisely, the possibility of processing these changes, within the framework of the existing algorithm, exists.

These types are referred to Rational - based on certain principles that do not change throughout the life of a given person, and to a large extent, correspond to the existing world order, within the limits of their possible awareness.

Rationalism is an understanding and comprehension of both what happened and what is to come, although to varying degrees in various people- the ability to "see" and analyze life path. A rational approach to the environment and oneself consists in “working” with objects, which can also be ideas borrowed from outside. Consciousness builds objects, including ideas existing in society, into a certain picture, reflecting some integrity corresponding to the structure of a particular consciousness, i.e. in a given coordinate system. At the same time, the orientation of consciousness to the environment places the perceiving subject itself in it. The focus on one's own inner essence, on the contrary, adjusts the surrounding objects to the subject perceiving them, including its ideological orientation. But, in both cases, to some extent, a complete picture is created, like a frame or a cast from what is happening. This is a certain static in the assessment of what is happening, since the change of objects or the subject "must correspond" to the existing algorithm in a given coordinate system.

Consciousness can rely on both intellectual and emotional areas that "work" in parallel and sequentially, at the same time. The sequence reflects the interchange of signals, with qualitatively different parameters - from the field of thinking and intellect, and from the field of feeling and emotions. Thus, inferences are formed, as logically developing realizations of something (with the leading role of the intellect), and judgments, as evaluative categories of realized realizations in comparison with the already known (with the leading role of feeling).

Intuitiveand sensing personality types are more susceptible to changes depending on newly incoming information, i.e. there is an “exit” beyond the boundaries of the possibility to use the currently existing algorithm of the Consciousness of a given person. In the Consciousness there is a restructuring and a search for a new optimal algorithm, which takes into account these changes, i.e. the algorithm changes in accordance with the new boundary conditions (in the case of intuitive perception) and there is a redistribution in terms of significance in the incoming information (with the leading role of sensations). These types are referred to Irrational - who are in constant search for principles that most fully correspond to the current world order for this specific person, and the immutability of the algorithm of the work of the Consciousness is possible only with a sufficiently high stability in the surrounding world and internal state human body.

Irrationalism is, first of all, a change in the principles of "foresight" of what is happening and "feeling" of the future, developed to varying degrees by different people. But the common unifying factor is the prevalence of the parameters of personal life processes over the parameters of the forms of specific objects or the subject itself. Those. consciousness works with objects in a given sequence. And the characteristics of the process in which this or that object appears are decisive for the perception of the object's parameters. For the sensing type, the determining factor is the process of changes in the physical parameters of the subject and the surrounding world, while for the intuitive type, this is the process of changing consciousness, i.e. changes (usually inaccessible to personal perception) of the parameters of "reading" from what is happening. It is for a better understanding within the framework of a given process that the coordinate system is very mobile, just like the algorithm of the "work" of consciousness. Consciousness is focused on the processes of interaction between objects and the processes of vital activity of a particular perceiving subject.

The changes that occur with the intuitive type are associated with the "setting" of the process of changing the structure of the personality's consciousness and the corresponding algorithm, to ensure a balanced existence of this personality "in tomorrow".

Changes of the sensing type are based on the “adjustment” of the algorithm to the “tomorrow” development of processes in around the world, with the same purpose.

The spheres of manifestation of processes that reflect the sequence of formation and development of a particular personality, and the areas of its interaction with the environment, form additional differences that exist between people.

The rational type of personality can be compared with a ship anchored at the bottom, and the Irrational type can be compared with a floating one. Hence, the methods of maneuvering when changing "weather" conditions are different for them. Moreover, both one and the other may be, to a greater or lesser extent, reasonable or not reasonable.

In terms of theory and practice

- rational, more abstract in its theorizing (and in order to ensure the essential unity of this process, fixation of the coordinate system is required, to which abstractions are "attached");

The irrational one is more specific and practically directed (it uses the selection of a coordinate system in which, in its opinion, the essential unity is not violated and is most clearly for perception)

From the standpoint of rationalism, the behavior of an irrationalist is second-class rationality, leading him into critical situations. Conversely, the irrationalist does not understand how any "reasonable" ideas can be put above the really perceived. Relationships of these two types are usually built on the basis of transferring a personal projection onto a partner, which becomes a source of misunderstandings and resentments in personal relationships during further communication, and the reason for the impossibility of reaching consensus in society.

In general, the rational type is based on the analysis and synthesis of incoming information with subsequent forecasting of events, and the irrational type is based on a premonition and predeterminedness of what is happening. Pure "rationals" and "irrationals" do not exist in nature - this is only a characteristic of the prevailing tendency inherent in a particular person.

In the social orientation, the object-subject division is also essential, which characterizes what role - leading or driven - is characteristic of a particular individual in society.

The series of programs "Finding Meanings".
Issue #112.

Stepan Sulakshin: Good afternoon friends! Let me congratulate you on the May holidays, on the Great Victory Day, and move on to our new working semester together with you. Today, as planned, we bring up for discussion, for understanding the meaning of the term, category, the concept of "rational". This is an interesting example, because it allows us to see the classical polyfunctionality of humanitarian terms, when there are semantic loads of the same word that are equivalent for different contexts. Vardan Ernestovich Baghdasaryan starts.

Vardan Baghdasaryan: Exist various forms knowledge and thinking. There is rational thinking, when a person draws some knowledge from his everyday experience. There is artistic, imaginative, largely intuitive thinking, there is religious knowledge, and finally, there is rational thinking, and it is basically logical. Rational thinking builds, in particular, the phenomenon of scientific knowledge.

For those who are engaged developmental psychology and physiology, age evolution, it is well known when, at what stages, what component of human thinking needs to be developed. This is visually effective thinking, it arises in a person at an early age, and then thinking is already visually figurative.

It is no coincidence that methodologists say that for certain age categories it is necessary to introduce illustrative material. It is effective in high school, he is well received for the presentation of the material, since it correlates well with developmental psychology. And finally, abstract thinking, which needs to be accentuated in high school, in higher educational institutions, when thinking is already built on logic, when schemes, models are already offered for schoolchildren, students, and students, and this component is developing with emphasis.

In the same way, you can look at the history of mankind, because evolution is well written before the formation of man, anthropogenesis before the formation of civilization. But after all, with the formation of civilization, with the formation of states, evolution did not stop, it does not stop today.

But why did the West initially begin to prevail over other cultures in geopolitical, geo-economic rivalry? And here, trying to answer this question, we just come to the phenomenon of the rational. Rational, logical thinking, with which the West came out, on the basis of which science and technology could develop, correct management technologies were built, and gave the West a historical advantage.

The famous French philosopher and anthropologist Lucien Levy-Bruhl in his writings spoke of the so-called pre-logical thinking in relation to archaic communities. The thinking of modern man is basically logical. The left hemisphere of the human brain is responsible for logic, and Levy-Bruhl wrote that modern man has a more developed left hemisphere.

The people of archaic communities perceived the world differently. Here, to a greater extent, intuition played a role, a projection onto some mystical components, and so on. The perception of the world, reality was significantly different from the perception of the world modern man. Then there is an evolutionary phase - the development of the left hemisphere consciousness, which is not sufficiently described in textbooks on anthropogenesis. And just the historical breakthrough of the West, what is called the period of modernity, was associated with the formation of rational thinking.

If we talk about the success of the Soviet Union, we can recall how much attention was paid to the scientific, logical component.

And when they try to say that the Soviet Union won at the expense of something else, and that the logic of rational thinking did not play a significant role, this is fundamentally wrong, since it was the cult of science and scientificity that was very important in the era of the Soviet breakthrough.

Today's breakthrough, which is being undertaken by China and India, can be traced even in various school and student Olympiads - the Chinese and Indians win these Olympiads. But we traditionally perceive China, and India, and the East as a whole in some kind of intuitive and mystical way, and the significance of the rational factor for them today is unprincipled.

So, we have determined that the historical success of the West, the genesis of the rise of Western civilization is associated with the factor of rationality.

But now the period of attack on the rational begins, an attempt to disavow the very fact of the rational from various positions. The phenomenon of cognitive weapons is not only a phenomenon modern world, it was formed earlier, and the first opposition - the rational is opposed to the spiritual. rational person- this is supposedly a person who thinks in terms of economic pragmatism in the spirit of Adam Smith, and a spiritual person is something else. Hence this fundamental substitution, which was presented.

It is clear that the rational does not contradict the spiritual. We can remember many thinkers, religious theologians, who built rational systems. As a result, a substitution was formed: on the one hand, a rationalist, a bourgeois, on the other, a spiritually centric person, and the religious tradition, mysticism was, as it were, in such a dichotomy. The Slavophiles thought: “We do not need logic, a logocentric system in which the West develops. Let's live on the basis of feelings, mysticism, intuition, something else. Our strength is in faith, but not in logic.”

And this is the fundamental change. It seems to be, yes, an appeal to the Russian-centric factor, but at the same time a fundamentally erroneous path - the path of archaization, the rejection of that force and component that, indeed, could play an important role in both geo-economic and geopolitical confrontation.

The second trend that arose in the late XIX - early XX centuries, associated primarily with the names of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, is a challenge to rationality - the will, the will to live. Will is opposed as a kind of intuitive psychoenergetic principle, it is opposed to "ration". That is, if you discard the "ration", you can go to intuition.

Nietzsche wrote: "One more generation of people who read, and the ability to create will end." Again, a false opposition of will and "ration". All this relied on undermining a factor that played a fundamental role.

The next attempt to undermine is Freud and the trend associated with him. Let's analyze. There is a subconscious, and logic is unimportant, “ration” is unimportant. Everything is formed in the subconscious, and the conscious sphere is just a sublimation of some instincts. The logical, rational "reasonable man" dehumanizes and turns into a certain set of analyzed complexes.

Next comes the direction of postmodernity. It is difficult to interpret it differently than a certain project. One of the main figures of postmodern discourse is Foucault. Let me remind you that his key study is the “psychiatric hospital phenomenon”. The mental hospital client was initially perceived as something anomalous.

Today, in modern big discourse, what was considered abnormal ceases to be such, and here it is - the ongoing substitution. There is no logic, everyone has their own logic. The mental hospital becomes normative in the interpretation of postmodernity and Foucault. Why all this, where does it all lead?

To answer this question, I will refer to the experience of the school. In fact, what is the USE system today? Thanks to this system, a person unlearns to think logically, rationally. It would seem that the volume of classes that falls on schoolchildren is very large, but at the same time, due to the fact that at school they do not teach cause-and-effect relationships, they do not teach thinking in a rational way, through a large amount of unrelated knowledge, this is rational, "ratio", is undermined. As a result, a school graduate, despite the large amount of workload that falls on him, turns out to be less capable of logical, abstract, rational thinking.

What is all this for, what is it connected with, is there any design in it? Indeed, the evolution of man was associated, among other things, with the development of his intellectual and rational abilities. And now a project is being fixed - a project of dehumanizing a person in order to deprive him of a reasonable beginning, to repress this reasonable beginning.

It is clear that if the rational is suppressed, and the intuitive, instinctive prevails, it will no longer be a person in the true sense of the word, it will be a herd, and this herd will be much easier to manage. That is why the question of the rational, of "ratio" goes, in fact, to the question of the evolution of mankind.

Vladimir Leksin: Vardan Ernestovich spoke in detail and in detail about evolution and various kinds of zigzags in the understanding of the word “rationality” and everything connected with it, but I will try to dwell on some definitional points, which is very important right now.

A few years ago, a very good Moscow publishing house published an amazing two-volume book called Rationality at the Crossroads. Now this theme - the theme of the crossroads - is being actively developed in many political, cultural, philosophical works, both Western and Eastern. This topic is developing especially actively in China, and in our domestic works, this crossroads becomes, as it were, main theme discussion, moving away from what is reason, reason, rationality, and so on. But this is important enough.

Rationalism is a philosophical and ideological attitude to the fact that all the true foundations of being, our behavior, knowledge, ideas about the world are based only on reason. And here comes an amazing philosophical, political science and at the same time physiological definition of "reason", which arose from theological studies.

In The City of God, Augustine said very clearly that religion must be freed from everything that cannot be the subject of a rational explanation, and this will be rational. That is, this theological rationality, as a liberation from everything that excludes explanation from the point of view of reason, is a very serious moment.

In the same work, Augustine began to oppose reason to reason as the lowest level of knowledge. Reason is a kind of mental activity that is associated with the isolation and fixation of certain abstractions, that is, some initially conceptual provisions that only allow one to compose complete true knowledge about the subject.

This tradition has come down to Kant. Kant said that one's own mind is the desire to master the subject of thinking through certain rules. That is, the mind operates in a system of habitual rules, ideas, and here any flight of thought, any deepest descents into the depths of the subject become impossible. And it is possible that what he called this the lowest level of reason, the lowest level of knowledge, is very important for us. I think that we now live more in the world of the mind than in the world of the mind.

Kant wrote that the mind rises above the sensual, above the emotions, above something random, and he tries to discover the truth, first of all, in the facts. He wrote two very famous books– “Kritik der Reinen Vernunft” and “Kritik der praktischen Vernunft”. The second book is devoted specifically to practical reason, and it is considered the most widely read of all Kant's books.

Kant's book on practical reason answers the most important question, our center asks the same question - what should I do? What should I do from the point of view of the main values ​​of the modern world, meaning a system of knowledge about what is good and what is bad. Here deontology is one of the main foundations of this case. With Kant, this goes through 2-3 pages in this famous book of his. It would seem that this is the simplest idea, but for us it is now very important.

It must be said that the ideas of the highest reasonableness of everything that happens are ideas mainly of the 17th-18th centuries. Almost all of them were built on the works of the famous philosophers Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz, who were then considered almost the gurus of the intellectual world.

At the same time, the fundamental basis of classical rationalism was formed - the achievement of absolute unchanging truth, which has universal significance. This is the Leibniz formula. This is such a very short definition of the concept of "rationality", but it is very significant. I must say that a huge number of misconceptions are due to the fact that people were guided by this very principle, but this is another question and a separate topic for reasoning - where does the mind lead us, and even more - where does the mind lead us.

Let me return to what I started with, that the theme of rationality is now heard in most cultural, socio-philosophical, philosophical-anthropological, and political studies. There is a tendency to evaluate, for example, the development of a culture by the extent to which it has a sign of rationality with the addition or, conversely, the decrease of the rational. They begin to assess the degree of democratization of society by how reasonably people approach everything. By the way, one of the indicators of the so-called democratization scale is the level of civilization, the effectiveness of social institutions, and here the criterion of this very rationality is important. Pay attention, I said how reasonable, and not rationally, people approach everything.

Here we need to remember both our recent history and what we all see now. This morning in EuroNews the topic of Ukraine was again heard, where it was said that the West is acting rationally in relation to all this, it is acting “wisely”, as it should. And indeed it is.

I remembered how, in 1944, the commander-in-chief of all military and not only military operations in the Soviet Union, Stalin, appreciated the activities of Churchill, who said that until the last button was sewn to the uniform of an English soldier, he would not cross the English Channel . So, Stalin said: "Well, well, this is rational." This is such a dichotomy of what is smart and really rational, correct, and what actually follows from this, and this makes up a giant gap, both mental and logical - whatever.

I will give a short excerpt from this two-volume book, I really liked this idea. Absolutely amazing person, one of the most famous researchers of the historical-philosophical and philosophical-anthropological world thought, who is now no longer alive, said that now there are calls to return rationality, largely lost in technogenic civilization, to return rationality and the role of the most important cultural value, to turn again to reason as that highest human ability that allows us to understand semantic connection not only human actions and spiritual movements, but also the phenomena of nature, taken in their integrity, in unity, in their living connection with the political life of the state.

This is very important - to return the fullness of rationality, which has gone to the level of some technical methods. And absolutely biological ideas that everything that is beneficial to someone is reasonable, probably, this is a very good call. Thank you.

Stepan Sulakshin: Thanks, Vladimir Nikolaevich. Today we have a very interesting conversation. Of course, I must join in, support all those illustrations, genesis pictures that allow us to approach the semantic content of the term "rational" given by my colleagues.

It is very interesting to reflect again on how we ourselves, in what efforts, by what methods, in what information-content fields we are looking for these very meanings. Obviously, we turn to dictionaries - encyclopedic, specialized, philosophical, and so on. Obviously, we are sorting through the connotational pictures known from the literature associated with the use of this term with its sometimes complex life, gaining a collection of manifestations of the existence of this term in space human activity and human consciousness. We analyze our own experience. Different terms have their own corner of life, a piece of the space of being.

Most often, in our dictionary and the future dictionary, which we will definitely publish, we are looking for current political, socially relevant terms, but they always, and sometimes to a very large extent, penetrate, live and cling to the usual routine household sphere in the life of any person.

There are some border semantic zones where this term either looks in, then takes root there, or even lives on an equal footing. There are terms that go into purely specialized, professional fields of use, and there are terms that can live, as it were, the life of semantic polygamists.

Today's term belongs to the second type. Of course, to a large extent, the main burden is connected with the opposition or designation of specificity. human being as not only a biological being, with emotions, with feelings, with instinctive unconscious circuits of reaction of activity, but also with activity based on consciousness, on reason. And this is the first most important semantic load, the concept, this is connotation, linking, illustrating, some specific disclosure of the most important property of a person, his consciousness and his rationality.

Rational means pertaining to reason, based on reason, on logic as specific and unique way implementation of the process of reasonableness, reflexive, with feedback, attitude to the surrounding universe and obtaining information, processing, using it and implementing it in the active-activity load of a person.

Here the subtlety is that in biological nature, animals seem to also have a goal, like a person, the goal is to live, but in unreasonable nature an animal never sets this goal, does not correct it and does not activate its activity to achieve it. This feature is inherent only in a person who is rational, that is, expedient. But a person is not just in line with the goal, as an animal is in line with the goal of living, and all his instincts are designed for this, the person himself sets the goal.

Sometimes there is a very difficult challenge. I will continue the example that Vladimir Nikolayevich gave. While Churchill was sewing buttons to the uniforms of soldiers, delaying the entry of the second front into the Second World War, our people fought and made sacrifices.

And there were moments when the Supreme High Command set the task of liberating or capturing such and such a city by significant dates - for example, by the celebration of the anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, by some other dates, but what is the rationality in this? It would seem that military operations, appointments, orders should proceed from the criteria of minimizing losses, maximum effect, proper coordination along the front line, and so on.

Many historians, and even more publicists, blame Stalin for the military, even civilizational, I would say, manner of waging war, which was characteristic of the Soviet Union in terms of excessive losses. In Berlin, representatives of our embassy also told me that it is difficult to imagine the last 300 meters of the war - to the Reichstag, and why it was necessary to raise our infantry ranks to full height under dagger fire, where they died by the thousands, when it was possible to starve them, bomb them and etc.

So, the question is: what is rational and what is not? Could the Soviet Union have won that war if it had acted according to Churchill's rules, and only according to these rules, if this rationality, the Prussian military calculation, had been used without the rise of the human spirit, completely irrational behavior, when they threw themselves at the embrasures with their own breasts?

Therefore, there is a semantic load that has not been fully thought out here, that the human mind and the human spirit belong to different spaces of the semantic load. Perhaps this irrationality from the point of view of simple, logical, primitive constructions is the human belonging and rationality of a higher spirally ascending type of intelligence.

I will say something paradoxically wonderful. Outside rationality, routine, simple, mathematically verified, rationality arises more high order based on sacrifice higher meanings than just the existence of one's own mortal body or that very "second-class" rationality, namely: rationality, prudence, prudence, frugality, and so on.

Therefore, look, there is a theoretical semantic load of this category - reasonable, logically verified, calculated, but at the same time there is an independently existing ontological platform for the existence of the term - it is expedient, diligent, economical. By the way, it intersects with a household platform.

But there is another amusing multiplication of semantic platforms - this is a mathematical platform. The fact is that rational is a number, just special type numbers. It is defined as a fraction - m/n, where m and n are integers.

That is, rational numbers in mathematics are called integers or fractional integer fractions, and irrational - numbers that are in the interval.

Why was this invented, for whom is it important at all, who uses it in their lives or in humanitarian applications? Nobody, anywhere and for no reason. But there is a rational number. This once again illustrates the significant need, very scrupulously and carefully for oneself, for dialogue, for scientific research, for scientific presentation, to load the term in your context with an exact meaning that helps you understand yourself, understand the universe, and so that your neighbor understands you.

Here was an illustration today, very, in my opinion, classical, methodologically and methodically interesting. Thanks for our conversation today. For the next exercise, we take out the word, which is now probably one of the most frequently used in socio-political discourse and vocabulary - "referendum". All the best.