Образ человека будущего, Том 7
Шрифт:
Some issues from this problem could be illustrated by famous William Isaac Thomas
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theorem: "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences" [Thomas, 1928]. These consequences are real because men act according to their definition of situation: their belief motivates them and push them to make real things that were unreal before. Reality of mind becomes real materially due to human activity. This is the way of design of future human nature on the basis of future human image.
In analytic philosophy, we also can find theoretical field where the creative force of human activity is conceptualized - the performative acts. John Austin [Austin, 2006] and John R. Searle [Searle, 2010] worked out this concept, but performative acts allows to explain a significance of language in its factual state - not its evolution. Therefore, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy we can find the judgment: "John Austin is considered by many to be the creator of the school of analytical jurisprudence, as well as, more specifically, the approach to law known as "legal positivism"" [Bix, 2014]. Searle investigated the phenomenon of intentionality [Searle, 1983], but his understanding of construction of social reality with help of language [Searle, 1995] was more the elaboration of language as reality of mind, than methodology of real changes as result of changes in mind. At least in one point the theory of performative acts is useful: in its accent on imperative mode of counterfactual judgment.
The significance of the counterfactual conditional judgments does not lay in their explanatory potential, but in their participation in creative activity. Such creative activity has a crucial role in ethical judgments and in moral evolution.
What conclusion should be done to study the ethical aspects of university education? First of all, it should be noted that in addition to recognition of academic values counterfactuality it should be considered also other values of university education according to the model of counterfactuality. Academic values should be deprived of a significant part of their idealization - in a real education; these values acquire regulatory, not absolute sense. If we consider the academic values as a complete and self-sufficient ideal, we will find some of their characteristics as a kind of symbolic system that has some value aspect too. If you turn to academic values in the structure of value orientations of several university communities - they become variability. Professors and students, administration and other university communities interpret academic values differently. Moreover, this variability has a character that looks deviant only in a version of absolute status of these values and academic norms. If the version of each academic values considered as self-sufficient in its counterfactuality subsystem of values, then we will get a pluralistic vision of academic values in which different versions of their interpretation are partially complementary, but may partially contradict one another. So, counterfactual academic values may be supplemented by other counterfactual university values, such as institutional. Thus, for each university the honoring of its Alma mater is counterfactual value that can be differently interpreted by professors and students, but they all have to recognize it as Alma mater anyway - while representatives of other universities have no such obligation to value outlying for them university.
Counterfactuality, as noted above, can have different directions and different levels of modalities - both for different communities within the university and for different universities. We have doubt that one can speak about counterfactuality of the position of those individuals who are involved in the functioning of universities. It is quite another thing to individualize values already recognized as factual. Just this kind of values, in our opinion, is always individual. However, this individualization of factual values is only possible within framework specified by counterfactual values. This does not mean that factual values could not go beyond this framework, but it clearly indicates that these values do not significant for
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university - yet or already, or it is unlikely that they could acquire this status.
In this case, the university ethical values appear as counterfactual set of counterfactual and factual ethical values of various university communities. It is possible that such a set emerged largely spontaneous - on the condition of subordination of factual values to counterfactual one. However, the better is the functioning of the university as a social institution, the more clearly it defines its own symbolic system, the more perfectly it is adjusted its organizational structure - the more likely that in this university counterfactual values of different communities will be characterized by convergence, which in particular can become normative expression - from codes of ethics to the original charters of rights.
These documents should not only outline a common vision of certain range of ethical values but should also provide value-ethical means to achieve the educational goals. At a high stages of its evolution the counterfactual character of university ethical values becomes obvious even despite its usual latent functioning - not only as counterfactual goals, but also as correlated with them counterfactual means to achieve them. In the field of university education, as in any other area one should to avoid mistakenly understanding of Niccolo Machiavelli"s doctrine [Machiavelli, 1996]. According to this misunderstanding only goals have the counterfactual nature and means are always only actual, that is - arbitrary. Classical ethical axiom is that one cannot achieve ethical goals with help of unethical means - therefore means (as goals) should be defined counterfactually, and for successful application of this means should share the counterfactuality of goals. Then actually used goals and means would not fall out of the system of ethical conduct too, so such counterfactually legitimated factual goals and means would provide higher education system and would contribute each particular university to achieve the overall efficiency of its goals.
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