The ideological foundations of technological singularity

Thus, it can be stated the following: dialectics, dialectical logic is one of the most significant achievements of philosophy for all the time of its existence, is “the central element of philosophy”. The attention of philosophy to dialectics as a universal logic of thinking is especially evident in periods when philosophical reflection on thinking reaches an extremely developed form: it was so in antiquity, in the era of German classics, in Marxism. During these periods, among all the forms and methods of human attitude to being, thinking that was considered to be the most important, and dialectical logic is today the most profound system of thinking (39, 77). The idea of dialectics is the core of modern scientific thinking.

At the beginning of the third millennium, ideas, forming the viewpoint, undergo a profound transformation of their foundations. It is connected with the consequences of the scientific and technological revolution, with the informational “explosion”, with the rapid development of the IT industry and the technology of artificial intelligence (mechanical intelligence), as well as the imminent and frightening technological singularity. Our crisis time is one of those periods when the ideological rethinking of the evolutionary paradigm is required, which is possible only with the involvement of the deepest system of human thinking today – the dialectical method of scientific knowledge.

1.4 Axiom of the dialectic universality

Based on all mentioned above in the previous sections, it can be claimed that dialectics is a universalinherent characteristic of actual reality. Accordingly, the basic evolutionary mechanism for structuring the surrounding world must have a dialectical character. Indeed, the roots of dialectics are in objective reality, in the surrounding real world (“dialectics is an objective situation, an objective rhythm of a thing”). Let’s recall Hegel: “All the things in existence hide within themselves a dialectic process that turns out to be a truly all-pervading method of substance. Everything lives dialectically… The dialectic process determines the fate of all reality” (21, 119).

Further, the dialectic is peculiar to not only objective, but also subjective reality. Thinking in its form is subjective, however, dialectic patterns are also characteristic of thinking. This is because logical forms of thinking (philosophical categories) are nothing more than appropriately rethought and transformed objective relations of things. Philosophical categories, by definition, are the essence of the expression and reflection of the laws of the objective surrounding world; these are definitions of the “objective world” expressing “essential in things”. In their interrelation, philosophical categories form a system of objectively reproducing the interdependence of things, nature, and “the universal ways of the relation of man to the world”. The forms of interrelation of thoughts in thinking are correct only if they are an adequate reflection of objectively existing forms of interconnection between objects, phenomena, reflected in these thoughts (3).

Thus, all the above mentioned gives us reason to suggest the following as the first basic axiom of a hypothetical energoinformational picture of the world:

Dialectics is a universal inherent basic property of actual reality

(the axiom of the dialectics universality)

As a consequence, the basic evolutionary mechanism for structuring actual reality must have a dialectical character. The concept of actual reality combines both objective and subjective reality.

As part of the axiomatic approach, the axiom of universality of the dialectics is taken as one of the starting points for further general scientific constructions and does not require a detailed substantiation of its truth. The truth criterion of it will be the practice, the correctness of the theory conclusions, built based on this axiom, the real processes of the surrounding world, its heuristic and prognostic abilities to serve as a matrix of scientific search for fundamentally new properties, phenomena, processes, theories and applied innovative technologies.

1.5 Structure as philosophical category

Philosophical categories are the result of knowledge, the synthesis of the cognition experience and practice of the entire previous history of mankind. These are the key points of knowledge, the “steps” of the thinking approaching the essence of things. In their content, as already mentioned, they reflect the existing reality, properties and relations of the objective world outside us.

The new categories of dialectics included in the scope of philosophical categories in the 20th century, are the concepts of “structure”, “element” and their combination – the system (systematicity) (34, 45). This means that there has taken place an awareness of these concepts as universal ways of the human relation to the world, as general and essential properties of objective reality.

An element is a philosophical category that characterizes a relatively independent part of the whole, an object that is a part of a particular system and is considered within it as indivisible. Structure is a philosophical category characterizing the way of the elements connection in the whole, which is inherent in it and peculiar to it, characterizing the structure and internal form of the system organization, acting as a unity of stable interrelations between its elements, and the laws of these interrelations.

In the 20th century, the development of philosophical thought led to the conscious understanding that structural property (systematicity) is an essential element, an attribute of all real-life objects and systems. There can be no bodies in the world without a structure, without a certain internal organization (system). Thanks to the variety of structural levels of matter, each material system is polystructural. For example, society has an economic structure, a political structure, and others. In systems of nature, a certain structure of objects corresponds to each structural level of matter (42, 462).

Thus, structural properties (systemicity) are the universal inherent characteristic of the matter. Movement (development), space, time, structure are the forms of the matter existence. Matter is inconceivable outside its structural properties, as it is inconceivable outside the space, outside the time, outside its development, change.

One of the main requirements of dialectical logic, of the dialectical thinking method is the haecceity of truth. Dialectical logic requires specification of the matter (objective reality) properties when analyzing a particular phenomenon or process. Taking into account structural properties as those inherent in the objective reality, the haecceity of truth requires specification of the structural level, in relation to which a certain phenomenon or a certain process is considered,, that is, reasoning about objective reality outside structural levels, outside structural properties can be considered as inconsistent with the dialectical method of knowledge, as incorrect and uncertain.

Above mentioned, along with the extrapolation of the structural properties into the subjective reality, gives us reason to accept the following as the second basic axiom of the energoinformational picture of the world:

Structurality is a universal inseparable basic property of actual reality

(an axiom of structural properties)

Next, we will view the world as a hierarchical system of interrelated and interdependent structural levels of its organization. The world around us is inconceivable outside the structural levels, as it is inconceivable outsidethe space, outside time, outside development and movement.

As a part of the axiomatic approach, this provision is accepted as one of the starting points for further general scientific constructions and does not require any detailed substantiation of its truth. The criterion of truth will be practice itself, the correlation of the conclusions made in the context of the theory, which is built on the database of axioms, with the actual processes in the surrounding world, its heuristic and prognostic abilities to serve as a matrix of scientific search for fundamentally new properties, phenomena, processes, theories and applied innovative technologies.

1.6 Mathematics and Objective reality

What is knowledge? It is useful to recall the statements of V.I. Lenin, written by him about the doctrine of the concept in Hegel’s “Science of Logic”: “Knowledge is a reflection of nature by man. But it is not simple, not direct, not integral reflection, but a process of a number of abstractions, formation, genesis of concepts, laws, and such concepts, laws (thinking, science = ‘logical idea’) encompass conventionally, approximately, the universal pattern of the evermoving and developing nature” (29, 164).In the same place, “abstractions reflect nature more deeply, or rather, in the more integral way. From living contemplation to abstract thinking and then from it to practice – this is the dialectical way of the truth cognition…” (29, 152). Abstract thinking, the creation of a theory, study of the properties of concepts do not tear knowledge away from the real world, but allows, if they are correct, to know it more profoundly, constitutes the necessary step of any knowledge.

According to the basic principles of dialectics, all processes and phenomena of actual reality are deeply correlated with each other (the principle of interconnection), besides, these are dynamic relations, according to the principle of development, change. The essence of the process of knowledge can be defined as the revealing, defining of these dynamic connections, as well as reflecting of the universal laws of the ever-moving and evolving nature. At the same time, one of the universal methods of cognition is the modeling of relations using a certain set of abstract model elements (for example, numbers or other signs), further, the transformation of these model structures in accordance with the laws of transformation that preserve the connections integral, obtaining new abstract structures, new sets of connections and the correlation of these new connections with objective reality.

Mathematics serves as one of the means of abstract modeling using the set of symbols and the rules for combining them. Mathematics is much more than science, because it is, according to N. Bor, the language of science (7). The defining characteristic of each specific mathematical discipline is a certain formal method, potentially allowing the existence of various material representations and consequently, practical applications. Whether this or that object, this or that phenomenon of the real world can be investigated using this mathematical method – this question is not solved by the nature of the given object or phenomenon, but by their formal structural properties (20).

What is the subject of mathematics research? According to F. Engels, “pure mathematics has as its object spatial forms and quantitative relations of the real world” (30-XX, 37). N. Bourbaki argue that “mathematical structures, strictly speaking, become the only mathematical objects” (9, 251). One can agree with this group of French mathematicians. However, where do these structures come from and how do they relate to the world of reality?

If these are abstractions of some sides of the real world, then the position of Bourbaki is quite consistent with the point of view of F. Engels. N. Bourbaki themselves wrote "…the main problem lies in the interaction of the experimental world and the mathematical one. The fact that there is a close connection between material phenomena and mathematical structures is what seems to be completely unexpectedly confirmed by recent discoveries of modern physics, but the profound reasons for this are completely unknown to us, and perhaps we will never know them” (9, 258). This is a pessimistic conclusion, and, according to academician B. V. Gnedenko, it means only that N. Bourbaki only superficially touched the most important question: what is the object of the mathematical study (17). They did not attempt to reveal the process of the basic concepts and basic tasks of mathematics formation in the historical aspect.

Such questions cannot arise in connection with the definition of F. Engels, since it already contains the statement that mathematical concepts are only abstractions derived from certain relations and forms of the real world, they are taken from the real world and therefore are naturally associated with it. In essence, this explains the amazing applicability of the results of mathematics to the phenomena of the world around us, explains the success of the process that we are now witnessing and which is called the “mathematization” of knowledge. A number of examples is known when abstractly created mathematical theories were far ahead of the discovery of the corresponding real physical processes in the field of natural science. “The amazing, incomprehensible efficiency of mathematics in natural science, the fact that its modern models often describe quite well the complex processes of material reality, evidence of the fact that that mathematics reflects not only the quantitative, but also to some extent qualitative aspect of the objective reality phenomena, and that was noticed yet by Kant and Hegel” (20, 16).

1.7 Hypothesis of “associative analogy”

If we analyze the state of modern mathematics as a field of science, as a language of science in a historical aspect, and reveal the process of the basic concepts formation, it becomes obvious that modern mathematics has a logical internal structure, elements of which are, in turn, the same mathematical structures, amazing applicability of which is so surprising (“the principle of hierarchy of structures” by N. Bourbaki).

But if mathematical concepts are abstractions of relations and forms of the real world, are taken from the real world and are naturally associated with it, then the question arises – whether the internal structure of modern mathematics, formed in the process of historical abstraction of forms and relations of the real world, can reflect the underlying fundamental structure of the real the world? Isn’t the internal structure of mathematics a model of the real world? If this is so, then there is a unique opportunity to look at objective reality through the prism of the internal structure of modern mathematics. So, what is the basis of modern mathematics?

In accordance with the research of the N. Bourbaki school, the set theory is the foundation of modern mathematical knowledge. “It is possible to derive almost all modern mathematics,” Bourbaki write, “from a single source, the theory of sets” (43, 26). The theory of sets, as it is well known, is based on two concepts – the concept of “set” and the concept of “relation”. “Set” is a collection of elements. The element of the set is the main structural unit in the simulation of objective reality by the means of mathematics. The concept of “relationship” reflects the presence of connections between elements of a set. The combination of the elements of a set and connections, relations between them form a specific mathematical structure (43). Thus, the concepts of “set” and “relation” can be considered as the foundation of the logical structure of mathematics.

Consider some “set of elements”. The relation (the law of composition) between the proper elements of this set is defined as internal (unary, binary, ternary – depending on the number of elements). The simplest mathematical structure – the groupoid