Ecosystem rationality is a philosophical discourse of thinking about the modern world and its future

Plyusnin Lev Vital'evich Junior scientist, Institute of education, Tomsk state university; Senior lecturer, Department of ontology, epistemology and social science, Tomsk state university. 634050, Russia, Tomsk region, Tomsk, Lenin str., 34, office a levplusnin@gmail.com

Petrova Galina Ivanovna Doctor of Philosophy Professor of department Ontology, epistemology and social science, National research Tomsk state university. Leading researcher Institute of education, Tomsk state university 634050, Russia, Tomsk region, Tomsk, Lenin str., 34a seminar_2008@mail.ru

Introduction

Relevance. In connection with the prophecies of various kinds of "ends", "twilight", "deconstructions" ("the end of history", "death of man", expulsion of the subject from "his royal place", "twilight of the gods", etc.), the desire to see the future has acquired the character of an urgent necessity today. The question is relevant already because a person in the XX and XXI centuries for the first time in history learned about his own possible end in the future, not only as an individual, but also as a genus as a whole. This is evidenced by serious social tension in the world, and high militaristic technologies that threaten to solve social conflicts with their help, and the results that artificial intelligence brings not only with its advantages over humans, but also with its threats to human existence. Concern for the future in our time characterizes a variety of areas of social practice: management (strategic and foresight sessions), education (its continuity, individual educational trajectories, advanced training), lifestyle (evil and good, causes of human aggression, artificial intelligence, etc.), culture (socio-cultural future of a multipolar world), etc. This set of practices, of course, takes as a starting point a certain picture of the future. There are many methods of creating this picture (how-to answers) ^{[1, p. 25]}: "French Scenario School" ^{[2, p. 1488-1492] [3]}, Delphi ^[4], Multilevel analysis of causes ^[5], approaches of the Integral Future ^[6], System Foresight ^{[7, 120-137]}, Fast foresight ^[8], etc.

Practical work related to the construction of the future often uses the concepts of "ecosystem", "ecosystem approach", "ecosystem" as its (future) characteristics. Thus, already at the beginning of the XXI century, work was underway on the international program "Ecosystems and human well-being", the report on the results of which "Ecosystem Assessment at the threshold of the Millennium" was published ^[9]. The stated approach and the term used require theoretical development and justification. Such a goal is realized, for example, in dissertation research on the problems of foresight and forecasting ^{[10][11][12][13]}. There are many publications (philosophical and scientific profile) devoted to issues where the key word is also "ecosystem" ^{[14][15][16][17]} applied to the study of the present with its transformations that took place already in the XXI century, which, obviously, prepare the future. It can be assumed that it is the ecosystem form of thinking that makes it possible to peer (predict, anticipate, design, designate horizons, etc.) into the future from the standpoint of the present.

The problem of the article, therefore, is connected with the development of ecosystem rationality as a thinking tool relevant to the main vectors of the development of modern social reality in its movement towards the future. The difficulty of the work lies in the fact that when solving the problem, it is necessary, of course, to proceed from the specifics of the image (picture) of the future, that is, from the picture of what is not yet there. What form of rationality can be relevant for thinking and designing the future is the problematic question of the article. The performativity of philosophical knowledge, which is not prescription knowledge, but offers theoretical reasoning about a particular problem, in this case reveals itself in deferred practice, in the mental construction of the future. The first root of the word "ecosystem" is taken from the concept of "ecology" and says that the object of this form of rationality is nature, but not in its virginity, but in a state directly, systemically and closely related to man. Nature today, having received anthropogenic impact, exists only in integrity with a person who has socially, technically and culturally transformed it. On the other hand, man himself has also undergone changes in his biological-natural existence, receiving, for example, prosthetic (prolonging his biological life) forms of existence, or (in the case of, for example, AI) already today receiving a warning about the possibility of abandoning his biological specificity. Ecosystem is a concept that testifies to a new human habitat in nature, society, culture – in their closely intertwined integrity. This environment carries sociocultural and philosophical-worldview connotations and can no longer be investigated only within the framework of a scientific Logos (ecology, biology or zoology), it is the prerogative of a broad philosophical-worldview understanding. The concept of ecology has expanded its meaning, losing the meaning only of the doctrine of the house (oikos) as nature, and enriched its content by including man, culture, society, technology, science as an activity. There was an eco–system - the house as a system of different structures in which a person finds his place: this is his abode, which needs to be studied not only by a scientific logos, but also by methods of a social and existential-anthropological nature, which allow faith, feeling, intuition, understanding, experience, etc. as cognitive means, while maintaining its place in science – in biology – ecology has acquired at the same time the character of a philosophical, socially-anthropological knowledge: it is heard as an ecological credo calling to protect not only the natural environment, but to protect the world as a whole, to preserve it for the future of human, socio-cultural and natural existence. The world is an ecosystem whose connections – versatile, multi–vector – have demanded ecological logic that can work with chaos, revealing order from it (And. Prigozhin).

  The purpose of the article is to present and substantiate the form of rational thinking – ecosystem rationality – with the methodological help of which it would be possible to have judgments about the integrity of the modern world as a person's home, his residence as a close unity and interweaving of nature, man, culture, sociality. Such an oikos is an ecosystem–based modern reality. In its versatility, and the unity of multiplicity, in the diversity of development, it is not limited (it has no concrete and static limits-boundaries) and therefore is not grasped by a strict and pure Logos, it is difficult to keep in the laws of development.  In the ecosystem image, modern reality is moving towards the future.

In the methodological justification, the article proceeds from the concept of scientific rationality (V.S. Shvyrev, V.S. Stepin) and the interpretation of ideas about the questions posed by such domestic authors as L. Gudkov, D. Peskov, P. Luksha, M. Kozharinov, I.T. Kasavin, Z.A. Sokuler, V.N. Porus, S.V. Pirozhkova, etc. Western authors are represented by the names of F. Guattari, M. Heidegger, J.-L. Nancy, F. Fukuyama, Y. Habermas, K.-O. Apel, etc. The works of these authors give reason to talk about serious transformations of the reality of the modern world, which appeared in ecosystem integrity, unity, interweaving and coupling of its various elements (natural, social, anthropological), which allows us to assert the birth of ecosystem rationality as a new form of post-non-classical thinking. Hypothetically, we believe that this particular form may be relevant for thinking and designing the future.

The research method, which focused on solving the problem, was, of course, a systematic analysis that provides a holistic vision of a person in the perspective of his activities, weaving him into nature, changing it and his own condition, too. It was this method that allowed us to propose the concept of ecosystem rationality as relevant for thinking about the future. The methods of practical work with the future – foresight, forecasting, design, social expertise, etc. – are not yet affected. The system analysis is supplemented in the article by the method of comparison, when different types of rationality (classical, non-classical and post-non-classical) are considered in the potential possibilities of their forms to think about the social reality of the future. The method of content analysis and analysis of bibliographic publications of domestic and foreign authors was used, which led to the possibility of using the method of systematization and generalization based on a specific criterion – natural, socio-anthropological unity. Of course, the method of interdisciplinary research also helped in substantiating the concept of ecosystem rationality.

Discussion

1. Ecosystem of the modern world: challenges to rational thinking

Philosophical reflection on modern reality has revealed itself in extravagant, from the point of view of classical philosophy, statements: "there is no more nature" ^[18] "The "world" is ontologically not a definition of being ..., but a feature of the presence itself" ^{[19, p. 64]}; only in the horizon of the idea of being in general "can one draw the difference between existence and reality. Both imply existence after all" ^{[18, p. 314]} "man is "programmed" Being and belongs to his being only insofar as he hears the demand of Being. Standing in the lumen (Lichtung) of being, I call the existence of man," which consists, "of course, not in the fact that he becomes the substance of being as his "subject" in order to drown his (being) being as the ruler of being ^{[19, p. 117, 212, 314]}; "Today it is not enough to think in order to be, as Descartes declares" ^{[20, p. 35]}.

As if summing up all this kind of reasoning, the literature states the emergence of a new way of thinking – the ecosophical – and a new sphere of philosophical knowledge stating the unity of man, nature, society and culture – the ecosophy.  "Ecosophical problems are human existence in historical contexts, which are characterized by new ecological registers (the unity of three ecologies) – the environment, social relations and human subjectivity" ^{[20, p. 28, 34]}.

This kind of reasoning is relevant to the topic of the article to the extent that they focus on a new vision of a person's place of residence and a new metaphysical vision of his rational thought. The novelty lies in the fact that vision and thinking, being scientifically rational, are directed not only at science, determining the principles of the discovery of scientific truth, but are formed as a result of rational research of the specifics of the entire human environment. The ecosystem novelty of being requests such a person's vision as an instrument of his thinking, which places the traditional epistemic criteria of science in the integrity of the system of philosophical, ethical, anthropological, spiritual, aesthetic, etc., I.P. characteristics. What exactly justifies this request?

Firstly, this novelty is justified by the fact that the ontological problems, which presuppose the original thesis about the dichotomy of man and being, are being transformed today and base themselves on the vision of their systemic integrity. Arguing this position, we can refer to the concept of "fundamental ontology" by M. Heidegger, where specific accents are placed in connection with the introduction of anthropological categories into ontology – "openness", "understanding", "care", "location" – and where a person is defined in the categories "dasein", "Presence", "understanding of being", "being-in-the-world". Man is "open" to being itself, thanks to which it appears to him, because a priori he is endowed with the ability to understand. This ensures the specific location of a person in being: he receives a reflexive attitude towards him, always treats him (unlike an animal), i.e. he is aware of him. The specificity of the "position of man in Space" ^[21] is that being needs to be conscious, and therefore, as it were, programs a person to hear his "call" as a call to "highlight" him by entering his "lumen".

Secondly, the novelty of ecosystem thinking today is also initiated by the fact that philosophical reflection on nature and the methodological principle of its research change their character under the influence of anthropogenic factors.   "There is no more nature," says J.L. Nancy ^[18] In another way: nature loses its naturalness. It is being perfected: powerful techniques of knowledge about the Earth and about Space, the achievements of modern technoscience have transformed the nature of nature, putting it (nature) at the service of man, thereby influencing the principle of ecology, which has acquired an all-encompassing meaning, spreading to nature that no longer exists outside of human traces. Ecologists, biologists, stating the situation of anthropogenic impacts, use the word devolution of nature, since the modern ideological focus of its vision departs from the principle of unidirectional development and offers optics that denies the linearity of progressive evolution, showing its zigzags and ramifications. The world is seen in its extreme multiplicity, diversity, heterogeneity. The natural sciences, therefore, propose to introduce the laws of the multiple world: the law of binary multiplicity of objects and phenomena of the world and their interactions; the law of branching cyclic development of objects and phenomena of the world with the balancing of branches, their subsequent convergence and the beginning of a new cycle; the law of dynamic integrity of the world (See, for example: Tetior A. N. Integrity, beauty and the expediency of the world of multiple nature ^[22]). Reflecting on the development of the modern world, philosophy uses the concepts of "stochasticity", "rhizome", "singularity", "multiplicity", uncertainty", "unpredictability", "dynamic integrity", etc. When the world is seen through these categories, it appears to be a maze in which it is difficult (impossible) to strategically and a rationally clear goal, move rigidly, rigorously and precisely to realize it. Nature is a multidirectional ecosystem, rhizome-vector, fixing randomness and randomness. Such a nature makes it necessary to think about it and see it not in the strict logic of a scientific view, but in ecosystem logic.

Thirdly, ecosystem thinking today is caused (and this is its novelty, too) by the need to work with objects that have manifested themselves to such a degree of unity of man, nature, society and culture that they have been called "super-complex", "revived", techno-socio-humanitarian ^{[23] [24] [25]}. Thinking about them has encountered difficulties in describing them. It required not only philosophical, but also scientific (neurobiological, sociological, cultural, etc.) methods of their research. Today there are well–known authors who came to philosophy from biology – U. Maturana, F. Varela (created the theory of autopoiesis of living organisms), sociology - K. Knorr-Cetin, M. Kallon, B. Latour, N. Luhmann (developed object-centric sociology, actor-network theory and communication theory), etc.

In view of the above, there are grounds to state that the emergence of the ecosystem world as a human habitation gives rise to a new form of rational thinking about it – ecosystem rationality, which, assuming the above characteristics of the modern world, forms its own research view relevant to it.

2.      Ecosystem rationality is a specific form of rational thinking about the modern world and its future

The characteristics that describe modern reality and its ecosystem vision allow us to conclude that scientific rational thinking today is thinking not only about how science gets the truth, but thinking about life – about man and all spheres of culture and society as a whole. In connection with the tragedies of the twentieth century, which began to be associated (is it justified?) with the rational-scientific attitude of man to the world, the question arose about the possibilities of reason in human life in general – in economics, politics, morality, education, etc., etc. Therefore, the epistemic criteria of scientific rationality (the effectiveness of knowledge of the truth, the renewability of results, cliched, single-line commitment to the truth, certainty, clarity and sequence of steps in reasoning, etc., etc.), today have a wide scope of application and are not reduced to logical consistency, rigor and accuracy. It was necessary to supplement these criteria with moral, aesthetic, legal, cultural, national, etc. - humanitarian, evaluation criteria concerning human life and humanity in general. Human life in its ideal spiritual content (and in its material and bodily content, too) cannot be understood within the framework of science and only with the help of epistemic criteria. The rigor of scientific reason, while retaining its logical meaning, in the new reality of the world requires "hermeneutical inoculation" (P. Riker), needs anthropological existentials of "understanding", "caring", "location", "trust", "intuition", "imagination, etc., etc. It is this optics that is offered for vision the future that modern philosophical thinking assumes, discovering ecosystem rationality.

If we agree that ecosystem rationality can become the form of rational thinking from which it is possible to think and explore the future, then research interest should be associated with the development of its content and criteria. Modern thought about the future, being methodologically new, at the same time cannot but be based on philosophical traditions, which were the platform of this thinking. Of greatest interest is the tradition of classical philosophy, which today is read as representing the prerequisites of a non-classical (and post-non-classical) type of rational thinking.

So, this tradition should be associated with the name and philosophical authority of A. Bergson, who developed a "non-standard" ^[26] theory of the evolution of life, in which, if it does not directly talk about the future, nevertheless, in theoretical judgments about evolution, it is possible to see and make some assumptions about this.  The interest in Bergson is caused, firstly, by his use of the categories "duration", "life impulse", "flow", "intuition", "creativity", etc. as the leading ones in his philosophy. In this sense, he precedes modern authors in ontological reflections, defining ontology in the conceptual characteristics of "fluidity", "rhizomacy", "eventfulness", "heterogeneity", "multidimensionality", etc. Secondly, Bergson, talking about life, speaks on equal terms (without emphasis on priorities) about intelligence and instinct, reason and intuition, and finally, about the past, present and future, which are connected, merged, linked in a "rush", which is the duration of material and spiritual forms of life. Such a categorical series and the judgments in which it (this series) is used in describing the duration of evolutionary processes are very similar to the modern ecological (as an ecosystem) vision. Indeed, the world lives not only and not so much on the principles of reason and intelligence. It contains intuition, "instinct", spirit, memory, which have no material basis, are not amenable to rational analysis, but declare themselves irrationally as "organs of metaphysics". All this interpenetrates and flows into each other, initiating and realizing a life impulse that diverges along different lines, where instinct is inherited, and intelligence is constantly engaged in creativity and is always in a state of change. On the basis of instinct and intelligence, civilizations arise, are created and grow. The world of plants, animals, and human culture is one, it is governed by a common life impulse and force, the manifestations of which are spontaneous and have no specific purpose and no specific direction.

The picture that A. Bergson paints is very similar to the manifestation of modern ideas about the versatility of natural, cultural and anthropological connections, representing ecosystem relationships in general. In such unity, the future is also drawn – uncertainty, development outside of a rigidly set and strictly oriented goal. It is impossible to think about it within the framework of strict classical logic. Chaos, labyrinth – ontological metaphors of modern social reality.

A. Bergson's premonitions concerning the transformations of scientific rationality in the horizon of its non-classical (post-non-classical) state today find theoretical embodiments. So, at the end of the twentieth century, the book "Rationality as a subject of philosophical research" was published, the leitmotif of which is the idea that rationality is a way of human attitude to the world as a whole, and therefore it has a social content, and is studied in "two approaches" – "rational (analyticity, discursivity, orderliness, systematization, normativity, etc.). The mind is a movement of thought impossible without fantasy, intuition, imaginative sensuality, etc." ^{[27, p. 65]}. The turn in the study of scientific rationality to a broader socio–cultural and anthropological side meant that this methodology of thinking and cognition acquired not only a scientific, but also a philosophical and worldview status, went "beyond the scope of scientific interest only" when "recognition of its philosophical and worldview essence sets the necessary perspective for its formulation, comprehension and research" ^{[28, p. 5-6] [29, p. 93]}.

To solve the problem posed in this article, such a transformation of scientific rationality focuses on starting thinking about reality (modern and future) from the integrity of the rational type of human attitude to it. Man, being the only being in the world having this integral relationship, i.e. being aware of himself and the world ("himself-in-the-world", in nature, in society), received a special purpose: not only to transform him according to the laws of science, but also to be for him (who gave birth to man himself in the evolutionary process) in response. Unlike all other living beings, man is endowed with responsibility. And since his attitude to the world reveals itself in active and transformative activity, it is in the field of this activity that the question of acquiring socio-cultural and humanitarian criteria by scientific rationality is actualized in general. In this perspective, the philosophical and ideological problem of scientific rationality becomes a cultural value.

In the horizon of the so–understood scientific rationality, it begins to base itself simultaneously on the criteria of logic and science, as well as those that come from ethics, aesthetics, politics, law, psychology, sociology - from all social structures. In the unity of these criteria, one can see the specifics of the so-called ecological logic, the principles of thinking of which contribute to ensuring harmony, beauty and their life-preserving power in human relations to the world. Therefore, the content of scientific rationality today includes both epistemological components of human activity to discover the truth (logic of rational movement, validity, expediency, efficiency of the result), and purely anthropological, socio-cultural, value characteristics. The history of the twentieth century and (XXI, too) has shown that the mind, which has forgotten about its humanitarian saturation and cultural-value completeness, loses its life-supporting purpose. Let's join and summarize those definitions of ecosystem rationality that are found in its individual characteristics in the literature. Ecosystem rationality is a "transversal" thinking according to the principles of ecological logic, "which no longer imposes only a logical "resolution" of opposites, but because of this unity and unity with man and because of his anthropogenic impact, it is necessary to be investigated by the same ecosystem mind, aware of the unity found and feeling responsible for its condition ^{[20, p. 43]}.

The task of modern philosophy is to develop the content of scientific rationality in its philosophical and ideological definition, filled with existential characteristics, based on the interdisciplinary efforts of logicians and scientists of natural sciences, but also psychologists, historians, literary critics, lawyers, representatives of philosophical sciences - ethics, aesthetics, art theory, cultural studies, etc. disciplines. The complexity and multidimensionality of scientific rationality is the condition and basis of its ecosystem character. In such a content, ecosystem rationality can be a methodological platform for thinking about the future.

Conclusion A man of modern times considered changing the world a matter of honor. But today? The idea that we are building the world and the future, knowing exactly "how", has become an accepted fact, which, however (if we keep in mind the example of building communism), has not been justified. "Philosophy illuminates the way to the future. Descartes and Kant were the conductors of the new history. Aristotle and Plato announced the possibility of a new world in which the mind was the engine" ^{[30, p. 98]}. The emergence in the twentieth century of the philosophy of "suspicion of reason" initiated the need for philosophical reflection in relation to those forms of scientific reason in which it historically revealed itself and showed the ways of future development.  Ecosystem rationality seems to be a relevant philosophical response to the transformation of the ontology of modern social reality and the transformation of strictly rational thinking about such an object as the future. In order for this relevance to be preserved, ecosystem rationality is formed as a form of post-non-classical thinking that "removes" the specifics of the modern world in its traditions of preserving the heritage of classics, and at the same time in the trends of movement towards the future. The pathos of the article was to see the main characteristics of ecosystem rationality as a form of thinking about the world in which a person holds the answer for him – is responsible.

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