p The divorce between the categories of the ideal and the psychic mainly results from the identification of the ideal with the logical and refusal to regard the ideal as a psychic phenomenon. Such an approach to the problem of the ideal is an upshot of a broader theoretical conception which may be called radical antipsychologism. It dates back to the Pythagoreans and Plato and runs through the theoretical thinking of all adherents of objective idealism. The logical as the universal and the necessary indeed has a strong appeal to a scientific mind as it is really independent of current psychic states of an individual and poses as something suprapersonal and obligatory for every concrete thinking process. This characteristic becomes crucial in logic and mathematics where not infrequently it has a Platonic ring. Such absolutisation of logical and mathematical forms is traceable in Gottlob Frege and George Cantor and, among philosophers, in Edmund Husserl, Karl Popper and others. This attitude was partly a reaction to extreme empiricism, predominantly of the positivist variety, that gained wide currency in the Western philosophy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries with its attempts at a psychological substantiation of logic and epistemology (recall, for instance, John Stuart Mill).

p The blind alleys of psychologism and antipsychologism in the history of philosophy and logic deserve special investigation that goes beyond the scope of our subject. However, it is worth noting in this context one very characteristic detail: the radical antipsychologists’ arguments that brought into the limelight a number of epistemological problems, helped reveal the specificity of logical and mathematical propositions and proved instrumental in the critical analysis of positivist empiricism with its attempts at “psychologising” philosophical knowledge, but at the same time were not infrequently used 95 to give a new lease of life to objective idealism.^^1^^

p Though the irreducibility of the logical to the psychic appears to be evident, the difference between these categories should not be absolutised. They are always interrelated, and the analysis of their essential links is very important from the methodological and world-view standpoints.

p In what sense are logical (and mathematical) constructs independent of the psyche? In the sense that they are reflections of objective relationships of reality and practical activity, of the laws of the objective world and cognitive thinking. Every logical construct or form is a socially recognised result of the reflection of a definite relationship, an essential property having a universal (or at least very general) character for a given sphere of objective reality. It is true not only of logical and mathematical forms, but also of any philosophical and scientific (general and specific) category. The results of such true reflection are objectified in corresponding sign and other material systems, in practical actions, in social activity in general, as well as in “ready-made” objective and communicative structures.

p It is only as such objectively validated reflections that logical forms are independent of an individual’s psyche, i.e. of his current mental states, wishes, assessments, volitional intentions, his character, temperament, memory, etc. The independence of logical forms also shows up in a possibility of their alienation from the human psyche and objectification in a system of graphic symbols, a computer programme, a machine design, etc. Logical forms may also be deobjectified, for instance, in the process of the individual’s study, the assimilation of cultural values whereby they become an immanent factor in the individual’s subjective reality and, as such, begin to shape and regulate his thinking.

p However, in all indicated cases the independence of the logical from the psychic is relative. A logical construct (a category, a principle, a rule) is a result of human reflection and, consequently, is necessarily connected historically and actually with the thinking and conscious activity of people. There is no thinking or conscious activity outside and apart from the psychic. Any logical form is a form of thought, a form of cognitive activity and its product. The objective existence of a certain property (relationship, regularity) reflected and fixed, as 96 it were, in a logical form is by no means tantamount to the existence of the logical form itself outside and independent of our mind.

p If the opposite were true, we would have to recognise absolute identity of a given logical form and the objective relationship reflected in it and, in the final count, absolute identity of the totality of logical forms (in logic, philosophy, natural science) and the totality of universal properties, relationships and regularities in objective reality itself. Should we come to a conclusion that the sum total of the existing interrelated logical forms (i.e. those that can be described in terms of logic, philosophy, science, common language) are identical not with all actually existing universal properties, relationships and regularities, but only with a certain number of them that are actually known, we would evidently be bound to regard those that have not been cognised and reflected in logic (philosophy, science) as unknown logical forms (their existential status in man’s actual thinking being unclear).

p As a result, we would have to admit the existence of primordial logical forms preceding the thinking of any individual, the forms representing the steadfast, abiding substance of thinking identical with the substance of objective reality. In other words, we would have to reduce the cognition of reality to the mind’s cognition of itself and get ourselves into the rut of the age-old Platonic or, when appropriately modified, Hegelian scheme.

p However, if we postulate the existence of so far unknown objective laws (which is only too natural) and the possibility of existence of their logical counterparts which are not yet represented in our thinking but may be formed in the process of ever deepening knowledge of reality, we at once lay bare the untenability of the Hegelian principle of the identity of thought and being and set the problem of the logical form in a new perspective ruling out the possibility of its mystification along the lines of objective idealism.

p Indeed, what we call a logical form is inherent in thought and not in objective reality as such. A logical form reflects reality but exists only in thought. In concrete acts of thinking one or another logical form need not necessarily be reflected. Being logical by nature, such a form should be singled out and described by the corresponding scientific discipline (dialectical 97 logic, mathematical logic, etc.). New logical forms are products of the research activity of concrete individuals (like any new ideas with objective content that further the advance of scientific knowledge). Epitomising the achievements of scientific thought, new logical forms simultaneously make it richer and more effective in the solution of various research problems as is attested to, for instance, by the development of modal logic and other latest trends in logical investigations.^^5^^

p The logical form is only ideal as a form of thought which, according to Engels, "exists only as the individual thought of many milliards of past, present and future men".^^6^^ But the individual thought is a mental process, so the ideality of logical forms consists only in that they are represented in definite psychic (thinking) processes of real individuals. This fundamental fact must never be lost sight of if we are to adhere to the definition of the ideal as subjective reality and to rule out once and for all any possibility of idealistic hypostatisation of thinking, logical forms and the category of the ideal in general.

p There is no such thing as suprapersonal and extrapersonal thinking; thinking is always personal, though its logical forms, its normative character are suprapersonal. Indeed, man is a social being and his thinking is a social act, i.e. it is conditioned by language, interiorised cultural values and participation in interpersonal communication. Thinking is realised through the aqts of deobjecjtification and objectifica’tion, the latter being essentially normative as they provide generally recognised, socially (practically) validated forms for the specific thought content. These meaningful logical forms are immanent in the process of thinking though they seem to be constantly imposed upon it as something alien, for they have their own sooio-objectdve (and socio-strucitural) mode of other-being. Such material other-being of logical forms is nothing else than the objeotificaition of tthe results of past thinking embodied .in a definite orderly pattern of material and energy components.

p The content of an actual process of thinking as an ideal phenomenon is constantly objectified in linguistic, material and operational forms |and turns into the content of social objects and processes, i.e. becomes materialised in the objective world. Such objectified results of past thinking are a necessary condition of any present thinking. Moreover, the constant process 98 of objectificatnon and alienation of the results of man’s thinking goes side by side with the opposite process of their deobjectification and interrnalisation (at least in linguistic forms). Thus there can be no socially significant thinking process without the involvement of extrapsychic socio-material factors and means. That does not mean, however, that we should identify actual thought and its logital forms with |all these material conditions, means and results of the realisation of a thinking process. The latter remains essentially a psychic process and for this reason alone falls under the head of the ideal.

p As regards logiqal forms, it must be admitted that at least some of them may no,t only assume a material form ( transforming into a definite objective relations between different compon^ ents or functional properties of a thing), but also become embodied, for instance, in a diagram, an algorithm realised through certain relationships of physical variables, and so on. To be sure, there is nothing ideal in logical operations performed by the computer, though they may be a replica of certain logical thought operations.

p In like manner, every more or less difinite system of knowledge objectified and estranged from man by different methods may be stored and even function, in one way or another, in non-psychic forms.

p Criticising Popper’s conception of the "third world", A. I. Rakitov convincingly shows that the property of "being a knowledge" is necessarily linked with the concept of consciousness and human activity. "Popper’s chief error consists in that he regards sign systems or, more accurately, scientific texts as knowledge per se, irrespective of other non-sign phenomena, on the one hand, and of definite types of human activity, both intellectual and objective-practical, on the other hand.”^^7^^ As a result, sign constructs taken out of the context of their relations to objects they represent, to human consciousness and activity turn into fragments of the "first world" (ibid., p. 109).

p The category of the ideal does not characterise knowledge merely as a set of data, as a reflection (the latter may be completely material); rather, it focuses on its mode of existence, namely, on its original, initial state, its manifestation (and creative transformation) in living thought, i.e. in the form of subjective reality.

p However, knowledge taken as information, as a definite content, can also exist in the form of objective reality, i.e. it can be objectified knowledge. Here the content existing originally in the form of subjective reality remains intact but is represented by objective code relationships, code patterns of material processes rather than in subjective images and ideas. In the process of deobjectification this material knowledge, the content of the socio-material object again assumes the ideal form. Hence, the ideal cannot be carried beyond the bounds of the psychic, for there begins the domain of the material.

p Every subjective reality is a psychic phenomenon, yet not every .psychic phenomenon is subjective reality. Some classes of psychic phenomena (e.g. temperament, prattical (actions, and so on) cannot be coherently included into the category of the ideal. At the same time the sphere of the psychic representing subjective reality encompasses very diverse phenomena. Not only sensual pleasures or fleeting images, but also strict logical reasoning of a rrtatJhematician proving a theorem are psychic processes. The discourse of a philosopher on extremely abstract things is also a psychic process. Any modifications of scientific notions and theories are initially effected in the mind.

p All these facts show that under the head of the psychic come mental operations related to cognition and evaluation. However, though the conception of the ideal as a psychic phenomenon is incompatible with the basic premises of radical antipsychologists, it does not imply the reducibility of logic, epistemology and axiology to psychology. What it does imply is the need for logic, epistemology and axiology to be fully aware of close ties between their objects and the phenomena of subjective reality described in terms of psychology and common language. Such awareness would be a constant reminder of the relativity of most indisputable logical, mathematical and scientific truths, a reliable safeguard against the absolutisation of our knowledge and turning its objectified forms into a fetish. Any knowledge we may have is only human (or lacking in humaneness!), but there are no bounds to inquisitive and creative human thought.

p The psychic nature of the ideal underlies the unity of extremely diverse phenomena of subjective reality and is accountable for the conventional nature of any analytical division or synthetic integration of man’s continuum that has been or ever will be 100 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1988/PI292/20090722/199.tx" attempted. It is incompatible with the notion of the ideal as something open only to abstract thought, something logically necessary and universal. Radical antipsychologism tends to hypostatise the necessary and the universal which is inherent in available knowledge and to restrain within its narrow confines the insatiable, ever searching human spirit. This sterile temple of the necessary and universal where everything is ordered once and for all has no room for restlessness of the mind and creative search, for new historical formations, for human perspective which is always oriented on a new kind of the universal and the necessary.

p The history of radical antipsychologism shows that its expounders have never been consistent. Even the most prominent representatives of this trend were at loggerheads with the rules of logic and proved unable to dovetail their theoretical premises. For instance, Husserl’s conception based on the ideal of apodictic knowledge and the corresponding method of ideation ( expressing the postulate of radical antipsychologism) peacefully coexists with the method of "intentional analysis" resting on the results of psychological research.^^8^^

p The excessive contrast between the categories of the ideal and the psychic, the reduction of the ideal to the universal and the necessary are bound to create considerable theoretical difficulties, largely artificial. Rightly criticising attempts to view epistemological problems exclusively in terms of psychology, M. Kissel goes, in our opinion, too far in his otherwise illuminating book when he says: "The content of our knowledge is ideal, i.e. does not depend on the concrete conditions of place, time or specific circumstances of cognition. The ideality of knowledge in this sense means nothing else than its universality and necessity whereby, for instance, schoolchildren of the socialist society understand the geometry of Euclid who lived in antiquity, i.e. under entirely different historical conditions.”^^9^^

p In our view, it is hardly correct to give .the category of the ideal such restrictive interpretation. Not every knowledge has the merit of universality and necessity. Not infrequently it is particular and probable; what is more, ’the truth of some propositions "depends on concrete conditions of place and time". If such knowledge cannot be rated as ideal, it must be included under the category of the material, which is absurd.

p It would be more consistent to call ideal any knowledge existing in the form of subjective reality. The category of the ideal includes all phenomena of subjective reality. It embraces not only knowledge, but also many other modalities of subjectively experienced states that do not lend themselves to a simple classification, but are described in psychological terms and in common language, expressed in art and by methods of extralinguistic communication. Suffering, anxiety, pleasure, faith, hope, aspiration, aesthetic feelings, the sense of justice and so on- all these experiences alongside thoughts, images and numerous existential states are phenomena of subjective reality closely linked with one another in its integrated structures.

p A broad interpretation of the category of the ideal was characteristic of Engels who included under this term very different manifestations of the human psyche. "The influences of the external world upon man express themselves in his brain, are reflected therein as feelings, thoughts, impulses, volitions—in short, as ’ideal tendencies’, and in this form become ’ideal powers.’ "^^10^^

As we see, Engels interprets the ideal in psychological terms for it is the only way to understand the internal diversity of subjective reality. Such interpretation lays bare the oversimplification of the logistic models of the mental, the primitivism of pseudoscientistic debasement of spiritual integrity and complexity reducing it to a single dimension—reflective-logistic. It paves the way for an integrated approach to all principal dimensions of the spiritual, the ideal—reflective-cognitive, axiologico- existential and creatively active. Without a unity of these dimensions we can hardly expect to comprehend the nature of cognitive activity, of logico-theoretical constructs and their place in the spiritual activity of man.