РОЗУМ ТА МІФ

Abstract

B a c k g r o u n d . The article is devoted to a philosophical analysis of the nature of the human mind in the context of contemporary debates on artificial intelligence, rationality, and the limits of cognitive knowledge. The renewed relevance of the problem is driven by the growing popularity of generative artificial intelligence systems, whose outputs increasingly imitate the results of human intellectual activity and provoke a rethinking of the very concept of intelligence. The authors proceed from the assumption that reducing mind to a set of computational or neurophysiological processes does not allow for an adequate explanation of its historical, ontological, and cultural conditionedness. In this connection, they propose turning to the philosophy of myth as a promising methodological framework for the analysis of rationality.

M e t h o d s . The methodological foundation of the study consists in combining historical-philosophical analysis, hermeneutics, the phenomenological approach, and elements of philosophical anthropology. The paper employs a reconstruction of ancient and Neoplatonic conceptions of mind (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Iamblichus) in comparison with contemporary concepts of enactive and embodied cognition (Uexküll, Dreyfus), as well as with findings from neuroscientific and cognitive research. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the socio-practical character of meaning formation and to the role of culturally conditioned ontological representations in the constitution of rationality.

R e s u l t s . It is shown that mind cannot be adequately understood outside the system of social practices within which meanings, concepts, and representations of reality are formed. Ancient conceptions of mind, closely connected with mythological ontology, represent not a naïve or "pre-scientific" stage of thinking, but a holistic model of cultural rationality in which mind functions simultaneously as a principle of ordering the world, a means of knowing it, and a form of human participation in the transcendent order of being. It is demonstrated that any rationality is historically inscribed within a certain mythological horizon that sets the structure of possible practices, criteria of truth, and ethical and axiological orientations. Contemporary forms of rationality, despite their claims to neutrality and universality, likewise rest on a specific ontologization of reality that remains implicit.

C o n c l u s i o n s. An understanding of the human mind through myth is proposed. It is shown that the meanings that represent the external world for a person are based on social activity, and their systematicity is derived from the hierarchy of cultural practices. At the same time, it is revealed that the verified success of any forms of rationality always relies on an unverified cultural ontology, which is constituted by the cultural mind itself. In particular, it is substantiated that the ancient philosophical understanding of reason was inseparable from the mythological ontology, in which being is structured as a relationship between the sacred, eternal "higher" world and the changing sub-celestial world of becoming. It is proven that the selection of sensory data, their inclusion in the practices of communities and the direction of these practices determine the form of reality, and it is myth that constitutes the narrative about being and determines these processes. It is confirmed that the ancient philosophy of reason does not record a "false" proto-scientific model of thinking, but a historically specific self-portrait of the cultural rationality of the era: reason has access to the world only through its own systematicity and therefore functions as a myth about the world, within the framework of which the world itself and the place of man in it acquire certainty.