Socio-philosophical interpretation of conditionality as a universal category

Khomich Natalia Viktorovna PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Sociology and History, Irkutsk State Agrarian University named after Alexander Alexandrovich Yezhevsky 664038, Russia, Irkutskaya oblast', pos. Molodezhnyi, ul. Molodezhnyi, 1, of. 1 pn-ma@mail.ru

Relevance and subject of the study. With the development of the Internet and active communication in social networks, the phenomenon of conditionality is changing both meaningfully and categorically. It is an undoubted fact that "the information environment ... has a transformative effect on culture as a whole, moving its phenomena into the cyberinformation space" ^{[6, p.34]}. It is obvious that conditionality is manifested now at all levels of social relations, and in the process of personal actualization. Conventions and social myths have so penetrated into society, have become familiar and natural, that in the present and future we should definitely take into account the conditional nature of any social phenomena. The function of conditionality in the modern world can be described in the following two directions:

– the imposition of conditionality on reality (the meeting of the conditional and the real in the information and social space, that is, in ethical discourse – the primary convention);

– conventionality as a projection of an alternative social space constructed by images is a secondary conventionality.

Conventions play a dual role in real life: they dictate known values that further determine human actions, and, in turn, are a reflection of certain value attitudes. Conventions are inherently linked to universal, national, and individual values. Values in the modern world are losing their status of absoluteness, often unshakable values are understood as conditional, subjective things set by a social text. "Today's realities show the fragility of values, the incommensurability of the values of the "original" and the "layout": a bitter consciousness of loss is born, the new becomes commonplace" ^{[9, p. 297]}. Being the point of the report, values generate completely different information spaces: absolute values are represented in the cyber environment and directly in society by calculating real reality on a conditional projection, and relative, secondary, create an illusory, invented living space in the information flow. "Values are phenomena arbitrarily projected by man, with the help of which our consciousness comprehends life and establishes the truth" ^{[1, p. 565]}. Any action performed by a person has a meaningful interpretation only in relation to a certain value system, in the context of which it is possible to justify standards of behavior and motivation of actions.

The nature and content of conditional means that design the artistically valuable or alternative depends on the values chosen by a person. Absolute values, which are not culturally conditioned, and therefore independent of a person, are usually archetypal and harmonious in any social representation, while relative values are contained in individual things and completely depend on the conventions of their configurations and characteristics. Kepler argued that all people, including the uneducated, and even animals are able to understand harmony, since it is archetypal and is a prototype of the universe ^{[10, p. 137]}. The manifestation of the absolute, its concretization in the social and cybernetic space is always conditioned by given or assumed conventions. "The absolute contains all absolute qualities in a complete, perfect way, but needs what it does not have, i.e., novelty ^{[4, p. 125]}. Accordingly, the absolute is untouchable and unshakable in its perfection, but variable in its conditional manifestations.

The phenomenon of conditionality in its meaningful definition invariably collides with the category of relativity, since both of these concepts are based on a relationship to absolute world constants – values. Conventionality and relativity are overlapping concepts, because they act as a prism for considering absolute universal values and are a scale for determining human qualities, feelings and thoughts. The absolute always seeks to express itself through the relative, just as the real, physically tangible, tries to be presented by conventional means in the sensual and spiritual world. But there are significant differences in the philosophical interpretation of the relative and the conditional, which can be identified only by deriving a comprehensive philosophical definition of the phenomenon of conditionality and substantiating its terminological mode.

The novelty of the research. The status of convention as such has not yet been determined, since so far this concept has been considered synonymous with "artistic fiction" in art, and in the socio-cultural environment as a kind of agreement. In addition, conventionality in the philosophical aspect is studied relatively little and there is no unambiguous definition of the concept of conventionality. It should be said that the uncertainty and vagueness of a large number of terms is one of the urgent problems of philosophy. The conceptual and categorical apparatus requires a more detailed consideration of the content, status and scope of hotel phenomena. In our opinion, the concept of fixing the status of a conditional is not entirely correct, since this phenomenon denotes a process, a mechanism for transforming the real into an artificially semiotic one, and the concept in science is more stated as a general idea about an object or object containing a set of systemically interrelated features. Despite the fact that sometimes a concept can be both concrete and abstract, as in the case of conventionality, it still claims to be more general and categorical.

Categories reflect the most essential features, properties, connections, certain aggregates of objects in the real world, this is a generalized form of knowledge. If concepts characterize individual species, then categories reflect the general properties of all objects of the genus. The limit of the category is that its content cannot be exhaustively expressed in separate scientific definitions. The content expressed by categories is included in the species concept, but is not limited to generic, i.e. categorical, content.

The types and levels of categories differ in their degree of generality. The higher levels are philosophical categories – form, content, part, etc., and private scientific ones are more specific and somewhat limited, for example, purely literary, psychological or sociological. The phenomenon of conditionality is close in meaning to the philosophical category of relativity, but there are a number of significant differences that do not allow us to replace the conditional with the relative.

The main large-scale promising issues of the study of conditionality as an integral philosophical category are:

– definition of the main substantive features of the category conditionality.

– derivation of the typology of conditionality;

– differentiation of primary and secondary conventions in the communication process;

– the designation of methods and mechanisms for creating the conditional in the collective and individual picture of the world, as well as the identity and difference of the concepts of conditional and conventionality.

– consideration of the place of convention in the system of philosophical categories, the definition of its identical or secondary importance in relation to the main philosophical universals in this article.

Tasks and methods of research. As part of the development of the theory of conditionality, specifically in this article we set ourselves two tasks:

1. To derive a universal definition of conditionality and determine its content relevant to the modern socio-cultural picture of the world.

The problem is solved by analyzing the currently existing definitions of conditionality, represented by the conceptual apparatus of several scientific disciplines. The synthesis method is also used, which helps to derive a succinct definition of conditionality in the light of the philosophical interpretation of the category.

2. To determine the status of conditionality in the philosophical worldview. To identify the difference between the category of relativity, already firmly established in philosophy, and the category of conditionality. At this stage, the use of comparative typological and semantic research methods becomes productive, as well as the historical method is partially used to understand the category of relativity.

Solution of the problem 1. We can talk about the universality of the concept of conditionality, since it is included in the terminological apparatus of many, often even non-natural sciences. In computer science, conditionality defines the mechanisms of transition from one command to another. The key here is the presence of a certain condition when executing various kinds of commands. If the condition is justified, then the action is not interrupted and the development process continues, and in this case they speak about the truth of the condition. In addition, fulfilling the condition significantly speeds up the process and allows you to jump over the chain of coherent gradation actions. If the condition is false, then the action continues in a slow but faithful sequential pattern. Thus, the convention allows you to coordinate the relationships defined by the processor flags ^{[3, p. 152]}, and its main function is defined as coordinating.

In biology, conditionality is a quality that determines the mandatory presence of a condition for the formation of a certain experience, which arises through a temporary connection between an external stimulus and the reaction of a living organism and is called a reflex. Here, convention plays a decisive role in the development of unconscious actions for self-preservation ^{[5, p. 6]}. In mathematics, any graphical designation of a real object can be called a convention, here the key condition for the appearance of a convention is the presence of an imaginary model. In the newest philosophical dictionary of Sagatovsky V. N., conditionality is interpreted as an assumption, assumption or agreement, recognition "a priori" of the general acceptance of symbols and signs about giving a certain name to an object ^[11]. In psychology, conventionality is defined as a personal characteristic expressed in the tendency to adhere to social postulates and dogmas ^[13]. In a sociological context, the phenomenon of conditionality can be considered as an indicator of a sign of reflection, indicating the non-identity of the image and its object, as well as one of the essential properties of art, emphasizing the difference between an artistic work and the reality reproduced in it ^[14]. According to the Concise Literary Encyclopedia, secondary conventionality is "an image that differs from life–like, a way of creating such images. The explanatory dictionary of the Russian language interprets convention in its most philistine perception: a generally accepted, albeit unnecessary, useless system of rules, a norm of behavior ^[15].

V. Dmitriev also considers a violation of the logic of reality, any deformation of its objects as an indicator of conditionality [p. 54], and A. Mikhailova defines secondary conditionality as "the re-creation of forms seen in life into aesthetic forms, where the selection and reformation of objects of reality achieve a special goal." In such a re-creation, the researcher sees "an opportunity to directly experience that common, essential thing that does not have an adequate sensual appearance in life" ^{[7, 188]}. Conventionality is always recreated with the help of images, it invariably fits into the scale of the beautiful–the terrible. "The main aesthetic function of convention is to expand the boundaries of reality and build a person's own model of the world through an individual figurative language" ^{[12, 188]}.

So, summing up all the above definitions and interpretations of conditionality, we can identify the mandatory elements characteristic of the phenomenon of conditionality:

– the presence of the original object and the projection plane to which this object can be transferred;

– the mandatory presence of a condition, that is, restrictions on the display of this object on the projection plane;

– the obligation to repeat this condition;

– the use of a number of semiotic means to construct a conditional projection of an object.

But such, at first glance, an exhaustive definition of conditionality does not go beyond the established framework of understanding it as a way of displaying the world around the subject and the individual. In the 21st century, due to the rapid development of information technologies and the forced transition to remote channels of personal and professional communication, a new type of thinking is being formed, significantly different from the previous period. The development of the virtual environment already places conditionality in the category of actual categories of being, fills it with new content, where it becomes not a means of projecting social phenomena of reality, but the goal of human existence as such. Within the framework of a new worldview paradigm, the theory of conditionality requires rethinking from the point of view of its universal nature and role in the design of the existential picture of the world. Therefore, we see it necessary to add one more characteristic to the philosophical idea of conditionality: the need to see the difference between the depicted and the depicted, which is one of the indicators of the intellectual and social adequacy of participants in the communicative and social process.

So, in philosophical understanding, conventionality as a way of displaying and transforming reality is the original property of any phenomenon, manifested in the discrepancy between the existential and socially conditioned picture of the world and represented by symbols and signs. Conventionality is always characterized by the limitations of the recreated content, at the same time accepted as absolute information. As a cognitive unit, it indicates the distance between reality and reflection in individual or collective consciousness, the understanding of the existence of which can be considered as a sign of an adequate perception of the surrounding world.

In the presented definition, conditionality is interpreted as a phenomenon, but such a definition of conditionality as a property seems to us rather narrow, since it is not identical to the idea and is not commensurate with the phenomenon. This is no longer just the result of "sensual contemplation", but a mechanism that regulates the emergence of patterns and connections, a way of modeling and reflecting on one's own life, which is at the same time a means of cognition and transformation of reality. Therefore, in this article we have attempted to consider conditionality precisely as a universal philosophical category.

Solution to problem 2. Stating conditionality as a category, we come across the concept of relative, which already exists in classical philosophy and in dichotomy with the category of the absolute, capable of explaining the essence of the phenomena of transformation of the real world into an illusory world, existing only as a result of an agreement in the minds of people. In our opinion, the proof of the non–identity and non-interchangeability of these concepts as ways of explaining cause-and-effect relationships, changes taking place in the world and the nature of man's attitude to the world dictates the need for another category capable of explaining the motives and patterns of the creation of secondary illusory worlds.

D. V. Pivovarov analyzes the category of relative in great detail in the article "Absolute and relative: categorical analysis". Relative, relative (from Latin. Relativus") is defined by the scientist as being assigned to a certain place, changeable, conditional, dependent on the absolute. "An attitude is a condition for revealing and realizing the properties hidden in the things involved" ^{[8, 107]}. In the analysis of the relative and the absolute, emphasis is placed on comparing the two mandatory qualities of the relative – visibility and appearance. Through the prism of ontology, visibility is considered as a kind of tracing paper of visibility. The existence of visibility becomes possible only as a result of the projection of the rational onto the sensual, where, as a result, a set of interpretative elements forms a sensual image of the object, which, in turn, builds a system of concepts. Appearance, unlike visibility, is defined as a subjective, sensually grounded model of the absolute – distorted appearance, an unreasonable view of things characterized by its superficiality. However, appearances can also be justified when certain conditions of our observations do not allow us to determine the original truth of the visible. In the case of our biased perception of reality and inability to adequately analyze reality, the appearance becomes an illusion, taking us into a non-existent secondary world. Visibility, in turn, is a philosophical category introduced by Hegel to denote the transmission of the absolute through the relative, visibility is a reflection of the absolute, logically secondary and less powerful. Being and essence are in such a unity in which each has an appearance in the other. Appearance, according to Hegel, is objective and the opposite of subjective appearance.

Questions of appearance have been of interest to thinkers since ancient times. For example, in Indian philosophy, in Indian philosophy, the material world appears as an illusion of authenticity, the thought of Brahma distorted by human feelings. Parmenides considers going beyond the real, self-reflection and enlightenment to be a necessary action to overcome appearances. Einstein argued that it is impossible to determine the nature of the relative and give it an unambiguous definition, since in this case it would have to rely on at least one approved and proven concept, which is also impossible. In our case, this is the concept of the absolute.

The appearance is not independent and insignificant, filmed in itself. Aristotle interprets the relative as secondary, depending on the specific material characteristics of objects and directly related to them. Medieval philosophical thought juxtaposes the dichotomy of the absolute and the relative with the heavenly divine kingdom and earthly, mundane existence. The criterion for separating the absolute and the relative is the ratio "self-other-self-other". Materialistic dialectics generally denies the absolute in its purest form, treats it only as part of the relative, since every matter is inherently relative due to its movement, unconditionality and changeability. In modern philosophical discourse, the absolute is defined as an established infinity, incomprehensible by the possibilities of the human mind, autonomous and eternal, and most importantly, the opposite of the world of relationships. That is, the absolute is so realized and self-sufficient that its entry into any relationship does not change its exceptional nature.

The relative, like the conditional, always appears between two opposite categories. In philosophy, it can be a whole and a part, necessary and accidental, symmetry and asymmetry. The absolute and the relative relate to each other as true and false, eternal and temporary, unconditional and conditional. The relative always depends on circumstances and conditions, it is not stable and requires a certain system of reporting and evaluation, its role is to characterize phenomena in their connection and interaction with others.

The results of the study. The identity of the concepts relative and conditional is obvious, however, when talking about conditionality, we primarily highlight its functional significance and a certain modality. The main difference between the conditional and the relative is in its social nature. The category of the relative explains by itself the evolutionarily developed social, moral and metaphysical world, and the ideological category of conditionality itself contributes to the creation of new worlds in accordance with the ever-growing desires of modern consumer society, which are mostly conditional, therefore we can talk about the separation of the conditional from the category of the relative only with the appearance of such characteristics of society as political ideology and consumer desires that defy rational explanation.

Let's outline some specific points that allow us to distinguish conditionality into a separate universal worldview category:

– conditionality is not static and does not explain the mutual relations of eternal world substances, it is a modal category, therefore it is initially subjective and always material and socially conditioned;

– differentiates and integrates two opposite objects: an object or phenomenon and its symbolic projection on a conditional plane;

– conventionality is specifically expressed using various visual and linguistic signs, it models the representation of the real world: metaphors, grotesque, allegories, allegories, irony, sarcasm, symbols, etc.;

– the purpose of convention is to experience something sensually new and its meaning is inexplicable without a social context;

– convention is dynamic, has a polar basis and acts as an integration mechanism between the main philosophical categories: space and time, absoluteness and relativity, truth and falsehood, essence and phenomenon, cause and effect, necessity and chance, form and content, good and evil, nature and man;

– it is always reproducible, because it has a human nature, was created by man and is always limited by the framework of some mythologeme;

– the relativity of conditional conditionality is obvious, but unconditional conditionality is fixed sensually, at the subconscious level, therefore it does not lend itself to logical explanation and as a result already has a certain status of absoluteness. The transition from conditional to unconditional conditionality is called the process of "absolutization", that is, its result is the interpretation of the relative as the absolute;

– the role of conditionality is not only explanatory, but motivational and pragmatic, since it acts as a mechanism for organizing the human mental and behavioral system;

– unlike the relative category, it can be quantified using a coefficient, depending on its belonging to the primary or secondary degree of embodiment. The coefficient of conditionality is inversely proportional to the coefficient of critical thinking.

– while the relative expands a person's sensual and physical freedom, conditionality restricts it by virtue of its legal, social and ethical regulatory function.

The conclusions of the study. So, we come from the concept of conditionality to the category of conditionality, justifying some points that allow us to attribute conditionality to a number of categorical terms. The main evidentiary feature of conditionality as a category is its ability to reflect the laws of society and thinking. Initially appearing only as a result of some kind of agreement, conditionality after time passes into the category of unconditional categories and begins to exist independently of the will of people, regulating their behavior and consciousness, determining interests, motives and aspirations to satisfy their desires, increase their self-esteem and become a full-fledged accepted member of society. The formation of conventionality as a category occurred as a result of historical social practice, which has always manifested itself in human society as a phenomenon, and only with the development of the cyberinformation space became the bearer of a certain socio–genetic and cognitive experience of mankind.

Conditionality as a universal category is based on causal and spatio-temporal relations, which determine its creative role in building a parallel unreal picture of the world. The commonality of convention with the related concept of the relative lies in the potential of both to reflect the phenomena of objective reality, however, relativity is a metaphysical category, and convention is social and cultural. The artificial nature of convention gives it a high coefficient of subjectivity and pragmatism. Along with the explanatory potential, conditionality has a pronounced creative function. The original conventions, which have historically become unconditional and natural, often define only ethical norms and can be defined as a manifestation of the primary convention, identical to the category of relativity. The categorical manifestation of conditionality consists, first of all, in designing a motivic-figurative conditional world as an alternative or substitute for the real one.

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