The Origine of the Thought
Let’s take now into consideration how the philosophy considered the cognitive process in the course of the history. Because it is useful to our aim, we are going to analyze the Herbert Marcuse’s thought12. As Marcuse says, a reality and a thought exit. The thought looks for understanding the reality through the reason: a theoretical and practical reason for the man and for the things. A reason which Marcuse defines subversive because it is able to state the real as rational, as truth.
According to Marcuse, the human project and therefore the social project, above all others, it is the one to get the truth; the truth saves the reality by destruction. “If the man learns to see and to know what the reality is, he will act/behave in accordance with the truth. The epistemology/ontology is in itself an ethic and the ethic ontology”. Marcuse, like us, he deals with the cognitive process, but not with the same terms.
What matters for us and we want to highlight it is the fact that Marcuse defines logic the process through which the objects can be understood by man. He does not consider the logic like a special discipline of the philosophy, but like the appropriate way to get the real as rational.
We name this process the passage from objective to subjective; that is: to make the external world subjective through motor experience in order to develop the logical thinking.
The classic philosophy investigated the real through the theoretical reason. But we have to consider who could spend time to these considerations were free mans who did not work in practical way. The practical activities were carried out by slave who did not have access to theoretical knowledge. The reason went on the ideas, the metaphysics, the a-priori, to which the man could approach by intuition. The intuition guided to comprehension of the being by an inductive process; from the particular it got to universal. From the contingent nature it was possible to pass to the essential one and to get the complete and independent truth. The path was also considered in the opposite direction: from the general, prime idea it got the particular. The shifting on both paths, anyway, was unidimensional just on one axis. This process gave rise to the dialectic logic, in which potentiality and actuality constitute two dimensions of the being of belonging and truth.
But until the beginning, the dialectic logic clashed with the Aristotelean formal logic.” On the scheme on which Aristotele shared out the sciences, the logic is lacking because this does not consider either the production of something, or moral action, or a specific content which is different by the one of the meta-physics or of the physics or the mathematic. On the contrary the Aristotelean logic considers the shape that any probatory speech must have. This logic shows, first how the thought goes on when it thinks, second the structure of the reasoning, third its elements.”15 Therefore, the term “organon”, which means tool, it defines very well the concept and the aim of the Aristotelean logic.
In this discussion and on the basis of our theory, we are used to understand the structure of the Aristotelean logic as the neural pathway caused by an aspect of energy: the wave and, like this, it is exposed to influence of the environment for its structure. On one’s own, yet, this structure does not allow to get a plenty and complete knowledge because, like Aristotele asserts, it does not consider the production of anything. We say it is lacking of the quantum; the latter is, instead, the content of the classic dialectics which, yet, considers the quantum in its sequential and unidimensional displacement.
Before to go on, it is necessary to remember the basis of the biological theory of the mind/knowledge. According to the theory only just named, the essence of the philosophy becomes the energy of the internal and external space which, in its manifestation, follows the laws of physics in accordance with its two aspects, wave and quantum, separately elaborated in two hemispheres. They allow us to know when (the two aspects of energy of the two spaces) synchronize on the body reference systems.
Because we have considered the muscular energy the ground of the cognitive process, we have:
1. annulled the dualism body-mind,
2. taken into consideration the three-dimensional displacement of the energy in space.
3. Overcome the stiffness of the classic dialectics,
4. Given three-dimensionality to formal dialectic
5. Considered both dialectics primary for the cognitive process.
It is really the memorization and the consciousness of the three-dimensional displacement of the two aspects of energy of both spaces (the passage from objective to subjective) which produces its meaning and makes the intuition possible. On the basis of own needs, the subject is able to guess the useful neural pathway (wave) on which to put in coherence and cohesion the information (quantum) and to give rise to linguistic answer, for example, which makes the thought explicit, or whatever other type of answer the behavior included.
As we have seen above, according to the classic dialectic, the knowledge is possible in virtue of intuition: but how does the intuition spring? As the body and the mind were considered split each other, the classic dialectic left out the first part of the cognitive process: the acquisition of the information through the motor conscious experience, how we have only just seen, it makes the intuition possible. The classic dialectic replaced the conscious motor experience with the a-priori, the innate/native, the divinity as well as the current scientific research replaces the consciousness with the neuroimaging.
In our opinion, this type of knowledge, in addition to a long stagnation of the human evolutive process, caused also a wrong and reductive way in understanding the mental process which arrives until the present time and affected and affects the knowledge in general. For these reasons, we are not surprised by the fact that, nowadays, it is intended to study the cognitive process by neuroimaging. In this way the phase of information acquisition (what allows to the investigate areas to become active) is completely ignored. It is also impossible to read those images if below there is not a theory which makes its reading possible.
The stagnation was overcome when the practical activity earned respectability and, joined the theory, it made the scientific revolution possible. On the contrary the cognitive process remained misunderstood until our discovery, how we are going to see later.
From now on, we will investigate the cognitive process in accordance with the biological theory of the mind.
By means of the scientific revolution, the practical activity became the starting point to get knowledge. The scientific investigation starts from the experience to be able to formulate the theory. The Aristotelean formal logic describes the process/displacement of the energy (wave) which gives rise to an abstracted and generalized structure/neural pathway. In virtue of its abstract shape, in answer phase 3, from subjective to objective, it can describe any phenomenon which causes the same displacement. It is sufficient to change the code, letters, numbers, rates etc. of the quantum which the subject is going to elaborate. The cognitive process starts from the perception of the reality like the scientific experience does by means of an inductive process (bottom up, from objective to subjective). Only after the phase 2 (passage from objective to subjective) it is possible memorization, intuition in order to plan the answer/thought by an inverse path from subjective to objective and to start a new dynamic cycle.
The thought develops in virtue of the motor experience. For the scientific experimentation, the dialectic logic proved insufficient, on the contrary, the formal one proved its utility to describe and measure phenomenon. The formal logic was able to satisfy the requests of the neopositivism and the behaviourism it also acquired importance more and more. How above mentioned, the formal logic lost the original meaning until Cicerone’s times and perhaps before. Wrongly still, without any distinction it is understood as a mathematic discipline which studies forms of deductive reasoning. This type of reasoning yet it is possible only after the phase 2 (passage from objective to subjective).
Without any other distinction, the logic became the paradigm and the structure on which to construct the technic. Actually, the latter is the application of the theory.
Summarizing, the logic was born dialect (ratio between thought and contents), as an elaboration only of the substance by an inductive process (stagnation); then, unconsciously it was considered in accordance with its two dimensions (scientific revolution).
On the basis of the contemplated theory, we can state the logic of the current technological society is the one Aristotelean formal. How we are going to see, it will give rise to a deficient cognitive process in addition to altered perception of the self and the context. It will affect in a determinant way the logical reasoning and the behavior as well.