What is the mind and which are his characteristics? How can we examine our capacity and see that objects are to our scope and which over our comprehension? How to know the origin, the certainty and the extension of the human knowledge? How to know the essentials and the grades of credence, of opinion and feeling that can be had with regard to the different objects that refer to our spirit? What are the faculties of the spirit? What are the limits of the certainty of our knowledge and the essentials of the opinions that are seen reigning between the men? The functioning of the human beings in learning and in the daily this life basically determined by the quantity of endogenous neurohormonas that produces our brain and that also it consumes. These chemical substances or endogenous drugs take place inside or in the surface of our brain and are consumed also there; therefore, it is as if we had the whole pharmacy inside us that segregates the indispensable matters for the construction of the knowledge and the thought.
The brain is not only a cash machine register but at the same time that it registers he interprets the sense of the impressions. The act of perception is not like the response of a machine. If he installs to himself several artists to whom they paint the same scenery, each of it gives us a different picture. Every spectator of a movie can speak to us about the different things that he has observed; a piece of music is perceived in a very different way by different listeners; several witnesses of an accident or of an event tell us varied versions. We do not perceive only with an organ but every phenomenon is registered by several and the lightest deviation in each one can give place to considerable changes in every person.
Kant says that, "we see the things not as them they are but since we are we". The perception can become an interpretation of the unknown thing. The following story exhibits us the idea that a blind person of the sun had:
A blind man of birth was. He had never seen the sun and was asking how it was to the people whom he it had seen. Someone said to him that the sun has the form of a plate of brass. The blind person struck a plate of brass and listened to his sound. Hence from now on when it heard the sound of a bell he was thinking that it was the sun. Later they said to him that the light of the sun was like that of a sail; the blind person felt a sail and believed that such age the form of the sun and this way when further on it touched a big sail he thought that it was a question of the sun.
It is deduced of this history that the perception cannot be communicated and his relations are deduced also with the imagination. Of the above mentioned story we can extract the conclusion that the truth is more difficult to see the sun, and when the people do not know her he behaves exactly just as the blind person. What is true for the exterior perceptions also it is for the internal ones; these perceptions are not fixed elements and they have to be understood in his set.
What happens when we look at an object? The luminous waves reflected by the object come to our eyes and, with certain modifications, impress the retina where they give us an inverted image that is straightened up on having come to the brain, where also it is related to diverse affiliations and memories. This combined image is projected then on the object, which never tears the veil of our perception. We never perceive the exterior world but in reason of ours own.
Therefore, the perception is not completely different from the imagination. Certain grade of fantasy is always projected on the perceptions. We must establish a basic distinction between sensation, that is to say, the reception of the stimulus, and the perception that includes the knowledge of the existence of the object. The perception combines certain number of sensations; for example, the colour, the form, the smell, size and weight, etc.
We must remember that, the exterior reality has some qualities that we can recognize with the reason. These qualities are the mathematical relations, that is to say all that that can measure oneself, as the length, the width and the depth. These quantitative qualities are so clear and clear for the reason as which the human beings we are a few thinking beings. On the other hand, the qualitative qualities as the colour, the smell and the flavour, are related to our senses and do not describe really the exterior reality.
But the exterior reality is essentially different from the reality of the thought. Rene Descartes (1596-1650)), already had stated that two forms different from reality existed, or two substances. A substance is the thought or "soul ", the different one is the extension or "matter ". The soul only realizes, does not occupy place in the space and by it cannot divide into smaller parts either. The matter, nevertheless, only has extension, occupies place in the space and it can always split into smaller and smaller parts, but it does not realize.
Socrates was sure that only our reason can provide to us sure and real knowledge. We cannot rely about what they say the old books. We cannot even rely about what they say to us our senses.
This way Plato thought, also he thought that only the reason can provide to us sure knowledge. There is a line that goes from Socrates and Plato and that happens for San Agustin before coming to Rene Descartes. All these philosophers were rationalist. They were thinking that the reason is the only sure source of knowledge.
The imagination as mental process
What is the imagination? We call imagination to that declaration of our activity which character consists of representing, that is to say, of putting productive acts of images. In the images we distinguish with the content the act, representing, or, producing contents of conscience in whose reality we do not believe. The formation of the imaginative products they are ruled exclusively by the laws of affiliation and reproduction.
The images are products, real constructions that do not represent real object any; it is the constructive imagination, named also creative or productive. The images represent experiences previously had, reproduce them with major or minor accuracy; it is called a reproductive imagination of that time.
Phases of application of the Memory 1. Reception of the Information across our senses (ear, sight, tact and taste).
2. Association of the Information, this is a golden rule; since in agreement as one manages to find some relation with the previous information, it is possible to be useful appropriately. All the more affiliations let's establish much better we will remember.
3. Conservation or Retention of the Information.
4. Evocation or memory of the information.
Four basic mechanisms of the memory If we had no memory, in spite of the organs of the senses we would not be, conscious of what we had seen, heard or perceived, because the stimuli happen across us of leaving traces. Due to the function of reception or retention in the brain that we call a memory, we know certain stimuli that we perceive. Not we retain everything; when we go for a street we see thousands of faces, hear innumerable noises, and perceive big number of stimuli. More they happen without leaving to us trace, but we retain the general image of the street, perhaps the most interesting picture of an exhibition or the content of a conversation, this is, which it has called our attention.
One of the basic functions of the memory, that of acquisition or retention, is related to the attention. The acquired material is retained; the treasure of the memory preserves for his later use the knowledge that he is acquiring. The retention of the material (memory) is the base of the third function of the memory, the recognition. Only we can recognize a new stimulus if we have already experienced it in advance and if then it was fixed in our mind (fixation) in such a way that to compare it with the new material leads us to recognizing mechanically to the exterior stimuli. We can reproduce intentionally the material that we have acquired and retained, that is to say, possess the function to evoke the past. The evocation takes place by means of the function of the memory that we call a memory or function to remember.
The machine of memorizing Four basic functions of the memory; acquisition, retention, recognition and memory, they make to think at first sight about certain analogies with a machine that can preserve certain stimuli as the sounds, retain them on a disc and reproduce them. If the same stimulus reappears, a mechanism puts it in movement.
Up to certain grade, it is possible to support the concept of the memory as mechanism. It has been observed that almost 50 % of the children younger than fourteen years, after seeing a picture during brief time, (from 10 until 40 seconds) is capable of describing it with so many accuracy as if they were still looking at it and, sometimes, they can remember up to the minor details.
To this capacity it has called him "imagination eidetic" or, which is the same, reproductive fantasy. In this case, the memory acts as a mental camera registering the mental photography.
The functions of the memory can be disordered to very advanced age being able to come up to the so-called "senile dementia". Aristotle compares the memory with a slat of wax in that, when it is new and soft, it is possible to write easily, but if it is hard and rigid it does not admit new impressions. The function can be disordered because of cerebral injuries or poisonings, as the chronic alcoholism. In the psychosis called Korsakoff the memory retains, remembers and admits everything happened before the illness, but on the other hand it cannot already receive the recent impressions.
In the cases of cerebral injuries as that they produce the shots of firearm; the patient cannot remember the facts happened before a shock, since it happens in the cranial traumatism. In some cases the memory retains certain memories that are repeated repeatedly, like it happens on a streaky disc.
The harsh mnémico is reinforced by repetitions of the same stimulus, in such form that goes so far as to memorize every stimulus or combination. A combination of meaningless sounds goes so far as to get connected with certain reactions, and this way it happens that when a dog hears the sound combination T-A-K-E it comes to his owner. Both the man and the animal develop "reflexes determined", with that the memory answers immediately to stimuli to which it is syntonized.
The method of affiliation by partners is used to prove the mechanism of establishing linkage, the memory of a member of the pair when there appears other, the duration of the retention, the rapidity to memorize and the retention of a successive series of stimuli or of outlying examples. The memory is stimulated by the resemblance, the contiguity, the proximity, the frequency, the contrast and the intensity. The stimulant factors change with the individuals, but the proximity is usually more effective than the frequency and this one more than the intensity.
The active factor of the memory is studied also in experiments of relearning. Any material learned previously and turned, to arranging as for his continuity for the second memorizing, is learned more rapidly than the new material.
The emotions are a disturbing factor for the memory, which tends to try the biggest grade of balance. For example, the negligence depends on a dynamic system of the organism, of a fact that it can disorder.
Four basic phases of the memory: acquisition, retention, recognition and memory. How is it possible to explain and to describe the relation that exists between the thought and the human existence? Where do they keep or there are stored the mental representations of the individual as product of the stimulus of the objects or facts of the sensitive world? What is the grade of reliability or veracity of the mental representations that the individual constructs of the objects or facts of the sensitive world?
The human conscience
As well as the only solid foundation is the sciences of the man for other sciences, this way the only solid foundation that we could give to the science of the man rests necessarily on the EXPERIENCE and the OBSERVATION. The organ of knowing or of the reason it is the conscience.
It is important to know how it obtains KNOWING or THE KNOWLEDGE for OBSERVATION and EXPERIENCE the man across the CONSCIENCE.
What is the conscience? It is the organ of knowing; it is a heterogeneous process, inside which figure knowing. THE CONSCIENCE is not always a passive recipient. It arranges and prepares all the sensations and emotions and mental processes that enter little by little her.
THE CONSCIENCE is, according to David Hume a species of theater where the different judgments appear happening some to others; they happen, return, leave and are mixed in an infinity of positions and situations.
HE MAKES AWARE OF ONE HIMSELF means to realize our humour (frames of mind) and also our ideas on the humour (John Mayer). It can be also, an attention to states of conscience more interns that this one provokes neither reaction nor judgment sensibility can be also less calm.
THE CONSCIENCE is an essential feature of everything all that exists {…}, an evidence that shows in his coherence and systematical conformity to the law that exhibit the organic totalities. It is possible to suspect that the MATTER only corresponds at a level of the reality; another level is that of the conscience and his behavioural declarations that do not exclude his coincidence in the matter, but also it she comes out.
The development of the Conscience as the Nucleus of character Ausubel has described the psychological fundamental capacities of the conscience as "the aspect of the structure of the ego that it treats as the cognitive – emotive organization of the moral values".
These psychological capacities can be related to the purpose of classifying them. When they are compared with the classification of the affective skills, there are perceived other possibilities of action that the teacher has to promote the socialization. It is clear, for example, that the skills and capacities of high level are necessarily complementary, and the possibility of interdependence exists, therefore, between the lowest levels of both classifications.
About this interdependence, in the figure (), it learns the fact that the process of socialization depends on a development adapted in every successive level.
The following descriptions refer, to the development of the Psychological Fundamental Capacities on which the Conscience is based, emphasize the importance that they have for the education comprising the affective and social skills.
1. The aptitude to foresee consequences. Ausubel suggests that the activity of the conscience presupposes aptitude to foresee disagreeable consequences. It is not important that it is the punishment, the insecurity, the anxiety or the fault; the conscience will not be able to drive towards an inhibitory control of the conduct if the child cannot project in his imagination the consequences of his acts before realizing them.
Although the aptitude to foresee is fundamental for the development of the conscience, in case of many persons his meaning does not disappear but it remains as one of the most important factors that govern his relations with the others. For example, those pupils who have a limited intelligence or a limited system of values, can be placed in a too complex social situation that prevents them from appreciating the consequences of his acts; very often they are punished for what it is not another thing than the ignorance.
In such cases, the legal maxim of which to ignore the law is not an excuse goes against the professional responsibility.
It is necessary to suppose that the skills of receiving and answering will depend on certain grade of stability in the experience that is had to foresee the consequences.
2. The aptitude to tolerate the frustration. The development of the autocontrol implies the existence of certain compensating force. On one hand, it operates the impulse towards an immediate satisfaction, while in the opposite side there is other that justifies postponing it. The child who wants to preserve the approval of his parents learns to postpone the satisfaction of those pleasant impulses that are opposite to the express desires of his parents.
The aptitude to tolerate the frustration is indispensable for the basic mutuality that must exist in an effective disappointment and a response, or, in the relations between the ego and the rest in those who intervenes the affective skills that need this form of self-discipline.
3. Capacity for internalizar values. This psychological aspect is considered to be the aptitude to assimilate external norms or to create others that, in a case or other they will influence directional internal relatively stable the conduct … The process of Internalización as regards the development of the conscience differs from the Internalización of any other value only in the fact that it takes control of a moral factor.
The Internalización of the values can be carried out in several forms: across the emotional identification with another person (for example, of the child with the mother who proves to be to him a sweetheart): across the adoption of values for utility or expediency; or as result of the rational evaluation or subsequent adoption of the same ones for considering them of profit. It is this situation, the most important variables are the quality of the relations of the ego with the others and the values expressed in the conduct of the persons with whom the individual interacts. And so, the pupil who thinks that the adults in general are hostile limits his access to many sources of values, which happens also with the pupil proceeding from a hearth where both parents lack a system of integrated values.
The ideas, impressions, sensations and subconscious thoughts redeem a very important role in the world of the thought. It is understood now that in any conscious act, there are many things that belong to the region subconscious.
After the mastery of the conscious thing the big region of the subconscious spreads. This region subconscious shuts up many mysteries that stop the attention of the psychologists and other thinkers. It is believed that less than ten per cent of the mental operations of the daily life occur in the big region of the subconscious. What we call the conscious thought, is only the tops of submerged mountains, which mass remains hidden by the waters. We are as a forest, during a deep night, with a lantern that projects in our contour a small luminous circle surrounded with an extensive ring of half-light after which darkness stays only, there is carried out a work which results are, when it is necessary, got in the luminous circle that we call A CONSCIENCE.
The memory is principally a function of our mind subconscious. Of the subconscious it is the big region where one finds the big store of deposit of the Memory.
From the moment that we receive an impression up to the moment in which this one returns to the field of the conscious thing, the subconscious faculties are in work. We receive and store an impression; where do we store it? It is not in the conscious region, but we would have her constantly present, but yes in the depths of the store subconscious, mixed with other impressions, and often with so much oversight that is almost impossible to find it again when we need it to us. Is it where this one hid during the years that often pass between the moment of the storage and that of the return of the life? What way do we use when we want to remember an impression? Simply an order that departs from the will and orders to the workpeople of the store subconscious that they find and extract to light the impression kept therefore time.
Conscience cannot be considered to be like synonymous of mind. If we treat the conscience and the mind as having equal extension and separate the idea of the domain subconscious of the intellect, we will not be able to explain where one finds everything else of the mind during a conscious particular state, where there are all the rest articles of the mental choice out of the particular object used in this moment.
The mastery of the conscious thing in an any moment is very limited; to resemblance of when it looks in a microscope or in a telescope, where it is seen only what it is in the field of the instrument, everything what nonexistent field is out of this one in this moment. The mind is constantly full of ideas, of thoughts, of impressions, etc., of which we are absolutely unconscious while they do not come to the field of the conscience.
One believes that all received impression, any conceived thought, any executed act is registered in some part of the big store subconscious of the mind and that nothing remains absolutely forgotten forever. Many things that many years seem forgotten, they appear again in the field of the conscience when they are called by some affiliation of ideas, some desire, some need, and some effort.
A lot of mental impressions, they will not appear again in the field of the conscience, because there is no need; nevertheless, they will remain hidden in the depth of the mind, waiting the hour of being used, exactly as the light and the heat future they remain hidden in the coal layers that are discovered in the surface of the ground, waiting the moment to be put in use.
In any moment, we are only conscious of a very small part of what is stored in the mind. Many things that seem forgotten, and that in many occasions we have wanted to remember, return in a given moment, in appearance involuntarily, in the field of the conscience, as for his own movement.
We divide of that the conscience: • Is unconscious, • Realizes, • Has a Corporal base, • Has a Social base, • Has a Mental Base, • Has a base of Psyche (soul), • Has a base of Spirit (reality that the matter comes out).
The psychology deals with the study of the human conscience and with his behavioural declarations.
What means the concept "psychology ", and when it appeared? It is said that, psyche derives the term " psychology " from the Greek words, soul, and logos, science; then the psychology is the science of the soul. This term was already in the scientific literature in the X Th century (in addition to the term "neumatología", that was used by major frequency), but it was introduced officially in the second half of the XVIII Th century, when the psychology separated as a branch of knowing independently about the knowledge.
The attempts of knowing the human psyche date back to immemorial times. The first systematical exhibition of psychological facts was made by Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) the one who already generalized the experience of the knowledge of the spiritual piled up life of the men then. It titled his agreement of the soul. Much later, the doctor and naturalist Roman Claudio Galeano, who lived approximately in the years 130-200 of our age, I try to demonstrate with experiments in animals that the brain is the organ of the sensations and of the thought.
Physician believed that the spiritual processes were taking place for a psychic pneuma (pneuma in Greek it means spirit) who circulates along the nerves, that these transmit the sensations from the organs of the senses to the brain, and from this one the orders go out towards the motive organs.
– but it is known that neither the man nor the animals have soul.
How can be a science of what does not exist? We have to accept that, there cannot be a science of what does not exist. But the denominations of the sciences formed historically: his content changes way continues, and it lacks sense to change the denominations. Then it would be necessary to give a new denomination to many sciences. The content of the physics is only a part of the natural history, although his name comes from the Greek word Physis, nature.
Of course, the soul does not exist in his idealistic and religious conception. But there exist psychic processes, like conscience, sensation, perception, conception, thought, emotions and will.
Since also Aristotle described in his agreement, in major grade, psychic real phenomena, and not the abstract soul, about which he started speaking later the Christianity, prevaricating to a great extent the concepts of Aristotle.
The idealists always tried and they try to interpret the psyches as a declaration of certain spiritual primary beginning, independent from the matter. The dialectical materialism affirms that the psyche is the secondary thing, since it owes his origin to the matter; and that the being, the matter and the nature are the primary thing.
The history of the psychology is the history of the struggle of the materialism against the idealism, and of his victory on this one. Anyone are in the details the concepts of the world, ultimately all of them can split into two groups. If a person believes that the surrounding world exists only in his conscience, it is idealistic. If he believes that the sensitive world, the nature and the being exist out and independently of his conscience, it is materialistic. In a word, for the materialist the primary thing the being is; for the idealist, the conscience.
Many errors have been committed in the comprehension of the psychic phenomena. This way, Baruch Espinosa (1632-1677), philosopher, atheist and Dutch materialist, he was thinking the thought an eternal attribute of the matter. From middle of last century there acquired wide diffusion the psychophysical parallelism, according to which the psychic and physiological phenomena develop in independent form, in parallel one to other. From beginning of our century, in the North American psychology there spread the behaviourisms (of English behaviour, conduct; 1925); this reactionary tendency denies the conscience and the activity conscience of the man.
The time, the conscience and I The author can say that, in this case I am not merely I, but also I, the reader. And up to more reading than author. And not only because the author is old and the young reader, but also because this book has been a writing for and on the reader.
The time accelerates his career. Carlos Marx wrote that they were necessary millenniums so that the famine that was forcing the people to swallow raw meat with the hands, the fingernails and the teeth, was turning into famine that is satisfied eating meat cooked with knife and holder. Federico Engels wrote that they needed centuries so that the sexual love of the ancient ones was acquiring the moral criterion of reciprocity. But only a few decades of socialistic diet were precise, for example, to transform central Asiatic Soviet, to transform the work, of painful need in rejoiced spiritual demand, to do the simple Soviet worker more intellectual than the bourgeois current intellectual. And this process accelerates to eyes conference.
The epoch in which we live loaded on his backs the whole heredity of the past; and at the same time we already clearly see our communist and capitalist future in our present, as ideological doctrines.
That's why, our conscience not only reflects the present, but also it has accumulated the whole past one and longs for the future. Marx was saying that the individual is a social product, since the conscience and the language develop together in the work.
In different persons, the conscience in his different declarations corresponds to the present, or presents " spots ", survivals of the past, or go forward to today. And this way it can happen in everything: in the interests and aspirations, in the conception of the world and in the conduct, in the customs and the character.
But I want that my conscience of liberal of the bad heredity of the past, which takes of this one only the good thing for the future. I want that my conscience, in addition to going to the unison with the time, surpasses it; it moves my morning to my present. I want to help you in this.
And he us wants to help you and. When more the man strains for obtaining it, so much more conscience considers. It is not chance that "makes aware" the words and "knowledge "have a common root. The wider and deep is the knowledge of the man, the clearer and rich is his conscience and the more conscience is he.
What are the functions of the Human Conscience? The functions of the conscience are the perception, the desire, the will and the action.
What are the psychic facts contained of conscience or substantive states? They are the sensations, images, elementary feelings and the thoughts.
What are the structures of the conscience? The structures of the conscience – some of whose facets are unconscious – they are the body, the mind, the soul and the spirit.
What are the states of conscience? The states of conscience can be normal (as the wake, the sleep and the deep sleep) or altered (as the states mediativos and not ordinary of conscience).
What are the forms of the conscience? The forms of the conscience are included by the aesthetics, the morality and the scientist. The development of the conscience includes a wide bogey that goes from the prepersonal thing to the personal thing and, from there, even the transpersonal; from the subconscious to the autoconscious thing and, from there even the supraconsciente, from the id to the ego and, from there, up to the spirit.
There exist two classes of content of conscience Impressions and representations you (design). The first ones are the experienced sensations, and the seconds, copies that it does the conscience or reproductions of the impressions or sensations.
The impressions (perception or sensation that is achieved across the senses or the world of the senses) in yes, are the given, the last reality; but the representations, as copies or reproductions, need an analysis to know of which impressions stem.
There is so, two classes of impressions 1. Those who contribute Knowledge; 2. The Impressions of the feeling and of the will.
A few and others usually transform in Ideas (this is, representations like contents of conscience reproduced).
An example of ideas there are the geometric figures, the colours, the weight of an object, the form, etc., that are remembered or imagine.
Also Ideas are the sentimental representations of happiness or of pain and of desires or volitions; that as previous, they are a result of a memory or of the imagination.
All the contents of the conscience or perceptions, they are two classes: impressions and ideas. The first ones are properly sensations (to hear, to see, to feel, to wish, to push back …); the seconds, representations you (design), good that debilitated, of the first ones. To his shift, the impressions subdivide in two groups:
1. Impressions of the sensation and, 2. Impressions of the reflection.
Is here an impression that makes feel heat or I fry, be or famine across the senses. Next the conscience produces a copy of her, copies that usually remains softened once the sensation. To this copy Idea is called, and the impression wherefrom it comes, an impression of sensation. On having presented to him in the soul, later, such a accompanied idea of pleasure or pain, (or represented by an emotion), there can arise new impressions of desire or distaste, happiness or fear, etc. impress The above mentioned they are impressions of reflection.
All the objects of the knowledge split into two groups: 1. Representations (done) and, 2. Reflective relations of these.
Mechanisms for the Construction of the Ideas or Representations For what mechanisms do the ideas form in the individual? Plato was thinking that the reality is divided in two.
a) A part is the world of the senses, on which only we can obtain imperfect knowledge using our five senses (approximate and imperfect). Of everything what exists in the world of the senses, we can say that everything flows and that nothing remains. There is nothing that is in the world of the senses, only it is a question of a heap of things that arise and perish.
b) Another part is the world of the Ideas, on which we can obtain true knowledge, by means of the use of the reason. Consequently, this world of the Ideas cannot be recognized by means of the senses. On the other hand, the Ideas are eternal and immutable.
According to Plato, the human being also is divided in two parts. We have a body that flows, and that, therefore, is indissolubly tied to the world of the senses, and it finishes likewise all other things belonging to the world of the senses (as for example a pomp of soap). All our senses are tied to our body and are, therefore, of entrusting little. But also we have an immortal soul, the residence of the reason. Precisely because the soul is not material it can be the world of the Ideas.
The process of Acquisition of the Knowledge as Index of the Conditions The mind has to face an avalanche of information proceeding from two sources: 1) the situation – problem of the moment, of which information is obtained across the senses, and 2) the storage of knowledge across process of recovery or of rememorizing. If this information is conceited in terms of the simplest element that the mind can distinguish by means of some of his senses, the entire number of such elements of information of a situation problem that come to the mind is astronomical. For example, the entire possible information in relation to the colours of a picture would involve several millions of this type of distinguishable elements between yes.
The volume of these would be such that the head office congestion. Let's bear in mind that the mind not only has to process the input but also the product in the skill that we call a communication.
Prosecution of the Information The mind creates very effective forms to handle or to process this stream of information. For ends of the school classroom it is adapted to consider them like discriminates or of selection; classification or of grouping and generalizantes, or that goes beyond the information received in the moment- Nevertheless, although it is proper to speak about the discrimination, classification and generalization of the information that comes and goes out, it is a question only of three aspects (although basic) of the complex skill of the informative process. This stability includes not only these three aspects, but all the cognitive skills that take part in the development of the intellectual capacity, which is a fundamental worry of the pedagogies.
Members of the intellectual capacity The intellectual capacity is composed of:
1. Knowledge – the information accumulated about the previous experiences can be available when an individual needs to solve a problem. It is necessary to speak about the knowledge in terms of:
a) Quantity: the number of elements of information relative to a problem, and b) Quality: the utility of the knowledge to solve problems on having allowed that the new problems should be considered to be special cases of the already well-known thing.
2.- Cognitive skills – types of operation that act on the information that is had about previous experiences. For pedagogic intentions we can group them in:
a) Skills of the thought: a number of complex skills that are applied isolated or jointly, and b) Skills of communication: related to the organization and presentation of the information destined to report and to understand another individual, or systematizing the information for proper use.
John Locke uses the Introspective Method as two different routes, to describe the experiences in the human being.
1. The External experience comes from the SENSATION and PERCEPTION (the world of the senses in accordance with Plato) that is the modification that experiences the soul when the senses it her excites directly (external factors, stimuli).
2. The Internal experience is the way of the reflection that is the autoperception of the soul of his own one to happen (the world of the ideas as Plato).
Locke before the entanglement and the disorientation caused by the erroneous reigning methods of thought in his time, tried, in his Essay on the human understanding, to establish the limits of the reason. Argue Locke that the truth must be limited what can be deduced or logically constructed across the sensory experience; that the infallible test of the love to the truth is in "not taking in consideration any proposition with major safety than the one that could facilitate the test on which this one is constructed", with the object of that the grade of establishment that we give to a certain point of view rests on the existing essentials of probability on his favor.
And, since it is that the metaphysical speculations and the theological dogmas have not such a base, the above mentioned speculations and sayings dogmas must not be taken in consideration. If such hypotheses are accepted as real truths, we are then "living plunged in a species through light sleep" to "a state of illustrated ignorance".
During the XVII Th century, several philosophers belonging to the philosophical current of the Empiricism (John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume, between others) adopted the point of view of which we do not have absolutely any content in the conscience before acquiring our experiences by means of the senses Since an empiric wants to make to derive all knowledge on the world what our senses tell us.
John Locke (1632-1704) tries to clarify two questions. First of all he asks wherefrom the human being receives his ideas and concepts. Secondly if we can rely what our senses do not count. Locke is sure that everything what we have of thoughts and concepts are only reflexes of what we have seen and heard. Before receiving with our senses, our conscience is like a "table razes", or slate in target.
There is a line that goes from Socrates and Plato and happens for San Agustin before coming to Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Leibniz. During the XVII Th century all these philosophers were RATIONALIST. They were thinking that the REASON is the only sure source of knowledge. Yes, a RATIONALIST believes in the REASON as source of knowledge. He thinks that the human being is born with certain ideas, which exist therefore in the conscience of the men before any experience.
Plato says that we cannot know anything with safety about anything that changes constantly. On what it belongs to the world of the senses, that is to say, what we can feel and touch; only we can have ideas or slightly sure hypotheses. Only we can have sure knowledge of what we see with the reason. The proper visual faculty can change from one person to other one. Nevertheless, we can rely about what he says to us the reason, because the reason is the same for all the persons; the reason is the opposite of the opinions and the appreciations. We might say that the reason is eternal and universal precisely because only it is pronounced on eternal and universal matters. Only we can have vague ideas on what we feel, but yes we can obtain true knowledge on what we recognize with the reason.
What is the reasoning? The reasoning is a logical operation by means of which, departing from one or more judgments, there stems the validity, the possibility or the falsity of another different judgment. In general, the judgments on which reasoning is based express already acquired knowledge or, at least, postulated as hypothesis.
When the operation is realized rigorously and the derivative judgment detaches with logical need of the judgments precedents, the reasoning receives the name of inference. The judgments that serve as starting point are named premises and they redeem the function to be the conditions of the inference. The result that is obtained or, the judgment inferred as consequence, it is called a conclusion.
The inference allows to extract of the already established knowledge, another knowledge that one finds implied in the premises or that turns out to be possible in agreement they. When in the conclusion it goes over to knowledge less general that the expressed one in the premises, will have carried a deductive inference out. When the conclusion constitutes a synthesis of the premises and, consequently, knowledge of major generality, an inductive inference will have been practised. And, when the conclusion has the same grade of generality or of peculiarity as the premises, then an inference will have been executed transductiva. The execution of the inferences is realized in accordance with certain rules that have been elucidated in the experience and formulated in a strict way for the logic.
In any case, which is obtained as conclusion of an inference is simply a judgment of possibility, or what is the same, a hypothesis.
Periods of the development of the Child, Jean Piaget (1896-1971) How does the individual acquire knowledge? 1. Period of the Intuitive Thought (4 – 7 years) The children who are in the stage of the intuitive thought modify at random the circumstances; observing what happens in particular cases without deducing general any beginning. As in the previous stage, it is considered to be more trustworthy what is perceived (information that receives across the senses and the perception) that the product of the thought (the world of the Ideas or the Reason).
2. Period of the Concrete Operations (7 – 11 years) This type of thought is characterized by the aptitude to analyze the problem, but also by the ineptitude to face the problem of the integration. Everything tends to remain disorganized by virtue of the worry on the parts. This way, in this stage, a pupil can have several partial solutions to a problem without being able to continue the way that should take it to the integration that gives him the global response.
3. Period of the Formal Operations (11 – 15 years). Only up to this period, the child can realize and carry out purely scientific investigations, notifying the factors in accordance with all the possible combinations and in a systematical order.
4. Stages of Transition.
In accordance with the periods of the Development of Piaget. It is important that the teacher knows the limitations that to certain age the thought of a pupil has to dominate a mathematical concept.
The child is not a passive being and without character, to which the teacher can form arbitrary. The child is never a mere object of education, but it is always an active and independent being faced by personal concepts, desires, feelings and reflections. The teacher or facilitator must always treat the child as a personality that he learns creadoramente and to whom it is necessary to face the education.
According to D. Hume (1711-1776), if all the scientific knowledge could be explained by the beginning of Identity, would simplify his explanation epistemology; but in the knowledge that are a part of the sciences many, unyielding relations de facto intervene to such beginning.
It is necessary to study these fundamental relations; who can explain oneself as two groups of a whole of seven.
1. Of resemblance, 2. of Mishap, 3. of quantitative and numerical Proportion, 4. of Qualitative Grade, 5. Spatial and temporary relations, 6. Identity (objective or metaphysics), 7. Causality.
The four first ones uncover at first sight, and belong rather to the Mastery of the Intuition than to that of the Demonstration. Only they depend on the Ideas, and can be an object of knowledge and of certainty. In the perception of colours and of the qualitative and quantitative resemblances between the objects, the materials are given by the sensation of the sight. These relations constitute a sufficient guarantee to the sciences that are based on them. The last three relations, on the other hand, allow understanding other disciplines.
He needs to accept that there are sciences as the mathematics (arithmetic, geometry, algebra), based on mere relations of quantitative or numerical proportion. His truth does not depend on the empirical existence of the objects; they do not need to be confirmed by the experience. The physical sciences are based on the spatial and temporary relations, but they are less true, because in them they intervene the relation of cause and effect, and only they have scientific value while they do not exceed the field of the experience.
The limitations of the human understanding This understanding is compatible, neither in the extension of his generalizations nor in his conceptions, with the big speculative systems of the philosophy. "All these sublime thoughts that go back over the clouds, coming up to the same sky, are born and have his base here; in all this vast extension for the one that is digressing in wings of these remote speculations that seem to rise up to sublime regions, the mind does not move not in line beyond those ideas that the sensation or the reflection have given to the contemplation". But, unfortunately, this is the only antidote of permanent value against the sprouts of mysticism, of irrationality, of troublemaker verbalisms and of simulated depth with which, in the evening in evening, of vein infected the philosophers. John Locke lived in a similar epoch, in certain aspects, through ours, especially in these explosions of religious emotion and in resorting to instinctive and emotional platforms in an attempt of basing the credence; platforms, those, which are not but the expression of "an obstinate self-assurance, confidence generated for ostensible interior lighting". The critiques of Locke against this tendency are so valid and pertinent today since they it were in last times.
Locke tried to distinguish and to separate the rational convictions of "the inclinations, fantasies and deep-rooted certainties" that, abjuring of the reason, re-connect this one with "the free and arbitrary imaginations of the brain of the man, to which they take for foundation of the judgment and of the behaviour". The lighting, the inspiration condemned, Locke, roundly what he was calling "without the corresponding investigation and the certainty without subjection previous to test". All this is, in Locke, an immense and permanent value, not limiting itself his influence only his country (England), but, come up to France, these ideas constituted a powerful impulse for the French Enlightenment (1789).
"With our word and our pen we can do that the men are more illustrated and better". This way Voltaire was writing. Without being a deep thinker, I do not stop Voltaire experiencing an admiration without limits for John Locke, whose ideas it assimilated, turning into the most effective propagandist and popularization of the new philosophy between the reading public. Said ideas were new and revolutionary; it was, that one, an epoch of transition, and the critical thought of Voltaire was fitting perfectly in his time.
We must recognize that the common sense of thinkers of the shaft of Diderot, D`Alembert, Voltaire, Helvétius and Holbach; his comprehension of the facts, as clear others, relative to the human suffering, his hate towards the mystification and to the trick they had the effect of a moral and intellectual bath for the world of his time. We will never be able to be grateful sufficient for the good that these man did to us. His movement did not consist only of the combat of the reason against the injustice, but of the opposition of a skeptical reason of a speculative reason, of a reason that had constructed the whole philosophy of the existence with the first beginning arising from the rational intuition and from the pure logic. Locke and Hume were the principal protagonists of this skeptical position in England; and, to a little time, the spirit of the critique propagated France.
The philosophers of the French Enlightenment directed his attacks first against the church and then against the society. They inaugurated the new age of the European thought, paving the way for the French Revolution and for the Marxism.
Simple, Compound and complex Ideas exist. In England, David Hume took the skepticism still. It divided the permissible exhibitions in mathematical truths and in positive facts. "When imbued with this beginning, we leaf through of the books of our libraries: of what a lot of ravages we turn out to be exposed to being victims! If we throw hand, for example, of an any volume on theology or metaphysics, the first thing that it is necessary to do is wondering: does any abstract touching reasoning contain this book to the quantity or to the number? Is any experimental reasoning in him about positive facts and the existence? If the response is negative, then there is not but to throw it to the fire, because similar book cannot contain any more than a collection of sophistries and of illusions.
Hume begins for stating that the man has two types different from perceptions, which are impressions and ideas. With impressions he wants to say the immediate perception of the external reality. With ideas he wants to say the memory of an impression of this type.
For example. If an individual burns himself in a warm stove, it receives an immediate impression or he believes in his mind an image of the event. Further on he can think about that time that is burned. It is to this what Hume calls an Idea. The difference is that the Impression is stronger and more alive than the memory of the reflection on the memory. It is possible to say that the sensation is only the original one, and that the Idea or the memory of the sensation is only a pale copy. Because the impression is the direct cause of the Idea that one hides in the conscience.
> Objectives Qualities or primary qualities of the senses according to John Locke, it refers to the Extension of the things; his weight, form, movement, number. As for these quantitative qualities we can be sure that the senses reproduce the real qualities of the things.
subjective Qualities or secondary qualities of the senses according to John Locke, are qualitative qualities as colour, flavour or sound, although not always they reflect the real qualities that are inherent in the things themselves, but only they reflect the influence of the exterior reality on our senses.
Where from do we receive our ideas and concepts? Is it really the world as we perceive it? Locke was saying that little by little we are joining and interlacing the sensations forming concepts during our experiences. But the whole material of our knowledge (content of conscience) on the sensitive world enters after all the sensory organs. Therefore, the knowledge that cannot stem from simple sensations is false knowledge and it must be pushed back.
The scientific thought
What is the science? The science as general and logistic concept is the methodical investigation of the natural laws for the determination and the systemizing of the causes of a phenomenon or certain fact.
For Aristotle, the science or epísteme consists, not so much in a series of knowledge targets, but in an intellectual virtue that is defined as a demonstrative habit, then we can conclude that this proper aptitude of the scientist has, as instrument of formation, precisely the syllogism, operation that demonstrates rigorously the proposed dissertations. And, finally, with this one concludes that the Logic is the proper instrument of the scientist and of the philosopher.
The biggest impulse that generates the science is the desire of systematical explanations and controllable for the empirical evidence. The distinctive intention of the science is the discovery and the formulation in general terms of the conditions in which events of diverse classes happen, and the widespread propositions of such determinant conditions that serve as explanations of the corresponding events.
The science is one of few realities that can bequeath the future generations. The men of every historical period assimilated the scientific results of the previous generations, unrolling and extending some new aspects. Of the double element of the epoch, the immutable thing and the fixed thing, still not verified and the established thing definitively, only the last thing is accumulative and progressive.
Those elements that constitute a good part of the science and that are the ephemeral and transitory part, as certain hypotheses and theories, get lost in the time and preserve, when more, certain historical interest.
Every epoch prepares his theories as the level of evolution in which he is, substituting the ancient ones that happen to be considered to be like overcome and consequently anachronistic.
What allowed the science to come at the current level was a nucleus of skills of practical order, the empirical facts and the laws that form the element of continuity, and that has come being perfected and extended along the history with the evolution itself of the man.
The science in the models in those who are represented today, is relatively recent. Only in the modern age of the history he acquired the scientific character that shows today. But already from the beginning of the humanity, the first rudimentary lines are as traces of knowledge, of skill, and that then would be constituted in science.
The scientific, in strict sense revolution, it registers in the XVI Th and XVII Th centuries with Copérnico, Bacon and his experimental method, Galileo Galilei, Descartes and others. It did not arise, so, by chance. Any occasional and empirical discovery of skills and knowledge regarding the universe, the nature, and the men, from the ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Babylonians, the contribution to the creative spirit Greek synthesized and extended by Aristotle, the inventions done in the epoch of the conquest, prepare the emergence of the scientific method and the spirit of objectivity that it is going to characterize to the science from the XVI Th century, before indefinite form and now in a rigorous way.
Years later, already in the XVIII Th century, the experimental method is perfected and applied to the new areas of the knowledge. There develops the study of the chemistry, of the biology, knowledge arises more target of the structure and functions of the alive organisms. In the following century a general modification happens in the intellectual and industrial activities. There arises new information relative to the evolution, to the atom, the light, the electricity, the magnetism and to the nuclear energy.
Already in the XX Th century, the science with methods targets and exact, develops investigations in all the fronts of the physical and human world, obtaining a grade of surprising precision, not only in the field of the space travel, of the communications, cybernetic and the transplants, but also in the most diverse sectors of the social reality.
The empiricism and the modern science Much is what owes to him the modern science to the Empiricism in what it contains exclusively to the observation and to the experimentation. The constant progress of such inquiries, the extension of the same ones to the alive beings, the achievements of the theory evolutionist, the development of the biochemistry, the cybernetics, the artificial intelligence, the robotics, the mecatrónica have been gaining constantly area to the supernaturalism and to the " vital forces " of the nature as the science conceives her.
At present he does not believe already, in an effective way and with the largeness of earlier, in the interference of a supernatural (invisible) world in the world in which we live. If the device of radio or the car have a breakdown, if a child has fever or shows other symptoms of illness, if a plague of insects destroys the crops we already do not attribute such events or facts to intangible or spiritual causes. We already even attribute the mental illnesses, the infantile crime, the anxious neurosis, the sexual abnormality or the tense conjugal relations to psychological causes. Every time we believe more that the inquiry of the cause of many things or events is of the exclusive obligation of the SCIENCE. In spite of everything, the mysticism keeps on disorienting many people, mysticism that constitutes the crooked method of his way of thinking; for what it is not necessary to move back in the critical attitude, earlier well it is necessary to intensify it more and more. But, after everything, we can make sure that the supernaturalism goes of conquered.
The science in his evolution has undoubtedly as driving axis, the methods and instruments of investigation that they increase and perfect, united to the scientific, perspicacious, rigorous spirit and target.
What is a general problem? In general terms, for problem we understand any difficulty that could not be solved automatically, that is to say with the alone action of our instinctive and determined reflexes, or by means of the memory of what we have learned previously. Therefore, continuously the most diverse problems are caused in us, whenever we face unknown situations, before which we lack specific sufficient and necessary knowledge. "Then we turn out to be forced to look for the solution or the behaviour adapted to be able to face successfully such situations." What is the knowledge Target? It is that one that allows reproducing in the abstract thought the aspects and essential relations of the reality. The different ideologies can facilitate or make difficult the discovery of the essence of the processes and objects, of the laws that explain his emergence, development and transformation. The ideology as false conscience, as deformed representation of the reality, which emission is, precisely, to conceal, distorting the real causes and consequences of the relations of the investigation.
The science tries, since, to approach the truth objective in order to discover the relations, dependencies and essential structures of the reality as the only way for the establishment of scientific laws; but in the sciences, especially in the social sciences, the values of the individuals (fundamental elements of the ideology) it is present in the process of investigation and in his products and they can make difficult or facilitate the discovery of the truth objective. The ethical and moral values have a practically insignificant influence in the making of the knowledge in the science natives since what is of interest here is to reach a knowledge more finished and precise target as the only form to have an every time major mastery of the nature, although the values are present in the selection of the problems that are studied and in the use of the products of scientific chore, who will answer to a great extent to the interests of the class that the investigator should represent.
The scientific production in social sciences cannot, on the other hand, be subordinated completely to the interests of one or another social class.
For it, the contributions of other theoretical approaches must happen, first, for the critical optics of the theory and the methodology of the dialectical materialism.
How are the problems structured? To approach a little more the comprehension of what they are the problems it is convenient to analyze the aspects that are present in all of them, independently of the class to which they belong. Following Mario Bunge, it is possible to distinguish in any problem the following aspects:
1. The problem itself, the explanation that is needed.
2. The act of asking, the psychological of the problem.
3. The expression of the problem, the linguistic aspect, the questions.
There exist three types of problems (reasoning, difficulty and conflict) The problems can qualify of very different ways. Some authors distinguish three types of problems.
1. The problems of reasoning, where the important thing there are the use of the logic and his operations of arrangement and of inference. Example: solve the following equation: The X – Y + 5 = 0 2. The problems of difficulties. In this case we know that the response to a problem but we have opposition or difficulty to execute it. For example, we want to give return to a screw and this one does not advance.
3. The problems of conflicts. They are problems that we take as the opposition of the will of the others, be already because they do not understand us or because they are opposed with animosity to our projects. The emotional aspect, in this type of problems it plays an important role. And also it can bring as consequence a discrepancy.
The problems also can qualify in convergent and divergent 1. The convergent problems, they have the only solution or a set of definite solutions, for example, to solve an equation, to conclude a formal reasoning, to find a definition in a dictionary, to answer some memory.
2. The divergent problems, they have an indeterminate number of possible responses that depend on the creativity of the person, for example: how to do a good publicity for a few new chocolates in bar? How many forms can I extract of a currency that fell down in a well? CRITERION OF RATIFICATION OF THE SCIENCE "A full clarity is the measurement of all the truth" Hursserl When a thing is clear for yes same, there is no major difficulty; but, ordinarily, the majority of the things are not clear for yes same and they need a demonstration. The science costs so much all that is capable of trying, but the science cannot demonstrate everything, since they depend on other previous, indemonstrable knowledge and that they are clear for yes same.
Martinez (1989) mentions that in last century, one was emphasizing the empirical base of the evidence; in this century, preferably in the last decades, the epistemology has emphasized more importance of the rational evidence.
Nowadays, we must become very alert at the time of accepting something as more or less "clear", have to do a systematical critique to reduce the margin of error of our knowledge. Martinez proposes six criteria of ratification of the science:
1. We cannot start thinking from zero, since others have thought before me, and I am taken by his thought. There can exist several hypotheses, theories or coherent bodies of credence that, even if some of others are very different, give sufficient reason of all the facts known in a certain field of a discipline.
2. It is possible to overcome the concepts of "objectivity" and "subjectivity "with wider and rational one, which is that of "approach" since there represents a mental perspective, a collision, or an ideological approach, a point of view from a personal situation, which suggests not even the universality of the objectivity not the personal prejudices of the subjectivity; the proper appreciation only.
3. The concept of approach takes us there is extremely rich other, that of complementarity. If every approach offers us an aspect of the reality and an interpretation of the same one from this point of view, several approaches, and the dialogue between his representatives, they will give us a wealth of much major knowledge.
4. It is necessary to revalue in our academic means the intuition and more concretely the so-called tacit knowledge. The intuition is so much at first as at the end of any cognitive process and all scientific knowledge. At first in the postulation of hypothesis and promising guesswork and in the end in the "cross-check" of each of the results and conclusions. Any demonstration, any reasoning and any test are not but a chain of minor intuitions, of "intellectual visions" that indicate that the things are of a certain way. And although the above mentioned process realizes partly, it is never fully.
5. In the majority of the designs of investigation of court classic there is used the analytical logic (derivative of the beginning aristotlelics, joined a vision determinist derived from the English empiricist as D. Hume and J. Mill), has been demonstrating increasingly that the above mentioned logic is unable to understand the complex problems of the human sciences, since the human systems work neither with the sequence of this ordinary logic nor with the coincidence of only one sense, but they are systems with circular reciprocal and influenced interaction; that is to say, it is necessary to transfer the step to a logical structural, systematical and dialectical piece of news. In a system, as L. Von Bertalanffy (1981), a set of interrelated units happens in such a way that the behaviour of every part depends on the state of all others, since they all are in a structure that interconnects them. In the human beings there happen structures of the highest level of complexity, which are constituted by system systems which comprehension defies the keenness of the most privileged minds.
6. The truth has only a provisional character. Our current knowledge cannot happen; in the strict sense more that we can do is to confirm them with tests or conclusive contrasts that reaffirm us in our current ideas, but that will not last any more than the approach or recognized paradigm lasts. The truth has a historical sense, and process of formation will always be in continuo. "The today truths will constitute the errors of the tomorrow …" 4. THE NATURE, THE CULTURE AND SCIENCE Of what way does it influence the scientific and technological thought, in the Individual and the Culture? Philosophy of the Culture It is called a Philosophy of the Culture to the discipline that you propose to explain to him the phenomenon of the Culture, departing from his most essential laws, investigating the causes of his genesis, the norms of his transformation, the conditions of his growth and decline, the contents and the forms of his phases: and the remote ends of his tendencies you become close.
Between one of his purposes there is to face us critically on the development of the intellectual life, as well as on his ends, ways and a half.
The Philosophy of the Culture creates neither the science, nor the right, nor the education, neither the art, nor the religion or the scientific and technological thought. All these phenomena have been products of the human conscience that has reflected on facts and natural or cultural phenomena.
These facts of the Culture are the starting point of the philosophical reflection. The philosophy of the Culture takes them as something produced by the Mind of the man and they limit itself to being described, telling them and it tries of determining the forms or general structures for which they have taken place. He looks for the values of the culture: the truth, the kindness, the beauty, the justice, the holiness, realized in the cultural products, like cultural concrete creations.
Evaluation of the Culture With regard to the evaluation of the culture the following currents can differ: the optimist who affirms that they have to eliminate the lacks of the spirit and of the nature up to coming to a state of perfection.
The Scientific spirit in the Development of the Culture If we consider the activity of the scientific spirit across his declarations, it is easy to warn the pendulous movement that has characterized it in relation to the creation of the Culture across the scientific and technological development.
When there have been difficult the conditions of the human existence it has directed for itself to create the means to understand and to use the resources of the nature, when this situation has been overcome thanks to the current scientific and technological development, it has turned his worry on yes same.
This way we think that the scientific and technological spirit as cultural entity they have ranged of a materialistic, worried realism for the mastery of the science and of the skill, to a scientific humanism centred on an autoimproving producing the best thing to allow the man to reach the happiness and to try to amend and to solve partially all his needs and plans so that it reaches his spiritual elevation.
Nature, science and culture Although the distinction is already implied between nature, science and culture in the concepts previously spilt, it is necessary to clarify it moreover for the distinction between the concepts: the naturalistic concept of science; and the concept of the scientific and technological spirit as cultural entity.
The naturalistic concept of science considers this one to be a simple natural development, or, a spontaneous deployment of the human nature.
The concept of science as cultural chore, he meditates to the scientific and technological thought as a human activity on which a direction has been printed and one has indicated to him a goal planned consciously, for what one affirms that the science and the technology are cultural entities that are produced and take root in the human spirit, and is not a natural entity.
For Nature we understand the set of the beings like they are for his origin and birth and that we find in our world, in our cosmos, without no human intervention has come up.
Nature of the scientific spirit This spirit that is existed awakening and prepared along the history of the humanity, now is imposed in an inexorable way, to all the incursion in the search and they honour in a faithful way the scientific legacy of the past, extending his borders and saving all kinds of resistances.
The scientific spirit is, first of all, an attitude or subjective disposition of the investigator who looks for serious solutions with methods adapted to the problem that it tries to solve; this attitude, certainly that is not innate to the person, conquers him along the life at the cost of work and even of sacrifices. It can and must be learned, any more it is never, inherited.
The scientific spirit, in the practice, is translated by a critical mind, objective and rational.
The critical conscience will lead the investigator to perfecting his capacity of judgment and to unrolling the discernment, qualifying it to distinguish and to separate the essential thing of the accidental thing, the important thing of superficially or secondarily.
Criticizing is to judge, to distinguish, to discern, to analyze for better to be able to evaluate the elements components of a problem.
The conscience objective, in turn, implies a courageous breakage with all the subjective, personal positions and badly based of the vulgar knowledge. To conquer the scientific objectivity, it is necessary to escape from the whole subjective vision of the world, established in the proper biological and psychological organization of the subject and, also, influenced by the social fear.
The objectivity is the basic condition of the science. This it costs is not what any scientist imagines or thinks, this is what really is. The objectivity returns the scientific work in impersonal; only the problem and the solution is of interest. Any other it will have to be able to repeat the same experience of investigation if this way he wishes it and the result will be the same, because it does not depend on subjective conditions.
The objectivity of the scientific spirit does not accept solutions by half nor solve scarcely personnel. "I believe", "I might be like that", they do not satisfy to the objectivity of the knowledge, because the scientific spirit has his sustenance in the rationality. The explanatory reasons of a problem can be only intellectual or rational.
The reasons that the reason does not know are the reasons of arbitrariness, of the feeling that explain nothing they do not even justify in the ambience of the science. The qualities that they characterize to the scientific spirit are:
> Intellectuals:
Taste and precision for the clear ideas and the truth Daring imagination been ruled by the need of the cross-check Curiosity that leads to entering on the problems Keenness and power of discernment
> Mulberry trees:
Attitude of humility before the knowledge Recognition of limitations Possibility of error Impartiality Veracity in the information and the information Scrupulous regard on the truth To face with fortitude the obstacles and the dangers that an investigation could present He does not recognize borders It does not admit interfering of the authority. It defines freely the analysis of the problems.
THE SCIENCE AND THE IDEOLOGY What is the relation that target and ideology exists between knowledge? In the sciences, fundamentally in the social ones, the ideologies cannot be excluded – as already it has been demonstrated – from the process of investigation and from the products of the scientific chore since in them the relation is present fastened cognoscente-object of knowledge. The activity of the investigator is located in a social certain context and answers to an interest of class that could be that of him or that of another social class.
What is an ideology? It can be said that every man they have an ideology, as conception of the world, of the things, and that there are ideologies more scientific than different as soon as they rest on the information proveniences of the sciences to have a more finished and correct vision of the reality, and which face to the human beings in his daily practice, as well as inside a field of the science.
The search of the truth objective, the precise, finished and deep reconstruction (in the abstract thought) of real, as the only way to discover the laws of the development and functioning of the social life in every social concrete formation.
The knowledge I criticize and target of the contradictions and fundamental instances of a social particular reality, it will allow to serve as base for his correct comprehension and his transformation.
Also it is possible to say that, in the same individual or social group there interweave different types of ideologies (ideological spheres: religious, political, artistic, etc.) and who are in different planes.
The ideology of a social group is determined by the interests of class, but also the different ideological spheres can be influenced mutually (for example, the political ideology can receive influence of the religious one) with which the position pushes back reduccionista that consists of thinking that any idea is a product necessary and unavoidable of the relation that is had by regard, although the set of ideas on the life and the society has a direct and indirect reference in the material conditions of existence of every social group. Also, the ideology, as already it has been mentioned, faces the action of the men allowing them major or minor possibilities approaching the knowledge target of the social reality.
The ideology is: 1. A set of ideas about the world and the society that 2. He answers to interest, aspirations or ideal of a social class in a social given context and that 3. It guides and justifies a practical behaviour of the men according to these interests, aspirations or ideal.
The conception that has of the society, of his structure, organization, processes, institutions, relations, answers to a great extent to an interest of class which is present (in the shape of ideology) during the process of investigation and in his results.
The ideology of the scientist demonstrates in the selection of the problems that he studies, in the theoretical conception to which it resorts to locate them, in the selection of the skills to gather the empirical information, in the interpretation of the information, in the recommendations that it raises to solve the problems, in the form in which the results of the investigations are used.
The ideological positions influence major or minor measurement the emergence, content and use of the social knowledge. His influence is major in his genesis and formation that in his content where the requirements of cientificidad impose restrictions to the ideology; major influence exercises the ideology in the use or function of the social science, in that the subordination of this one is made clear clearly, as form of human activity, to social needs.
The science tries, since, to approach the truth objective in order to discover the relations, dependencies and essential structures of the reality as the only way for the establishment of scientific laws; but in the sciences, especially in the social ones, the values of the individuals (fundamental elements of the ideology) are present in the process of investigation and in his products and can make difficult or facilitate the discovery of the truth objective.
The values have a practically insignificant influence in the making of the knowledge in the natural sciences since what is of interest here is to reach a knowledge more finished and precise target as the only form to reach a knowledge more finished and precise target as the only form to have every time major mastery of the nature, although the values are present in the selection of the problems that are studied and in the use of the products of the scientific chore, who will answer to a great extent to the interests of the class that the investigator should represent.
5. Forms and types of scientific investigation What is a scientific problem? The variety of the thoughts is already daily or scientific, it is infinite. The same happens with the problems. To the methodology of the science the scientific problems worry him in a preferable way.
But "not any problem, since it is obvious, is a scientific problem: the scientific problems are exclusively those that appear on a scientific background and are studied by scientific means (scientific method and scientific instruments) and with the primary target to increase our knowledge".
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