The Cognitive Experience of Non-Western Big Cultures and Its Significance

The ability to provide svyaznost' (linkedness and coherence) is the key and core a priori ability of human consciousness. The cognitive vehicle used by consciousness in the exercise of this ability is the "that-and-such" positing. Not observable directly, it manifests itself in language, sensory perception, and thinking. The possibility of perception of a thing (rather than a scattered set of qualities), proposition (speech) and judgment (logical thinking) is based on positing the svyaznost' (linkedness) of the subject and predicate, "that" and "such". As I. Kant asserted, svyaznost' cannot be perceived in the object of knowledge and borrowed from it, it has to be posited by consciousness. Hence, it is this ability of consciousness which ensures both the svyaznost' of consciousness itself (i.e., the coherence of its various functions) and the svyaznost' of the world as a whole and each individual object of it. Since the big culture is a product of consciousness unfolding, this same ability stands for the svyaznost' of any big culture and the consistency of its segments, which explains the meaning of О. Spengler's "cultural morphology". The ability to provide svyaznost' is realized variably: the multitude of the input data ("such") is linked by consciousness into an object due to the positing of "that", which can be posited as substance, or can be posited as act. In the two cases, different intuitions are involved. An example of interpreting mathematical formula y = 2x (or, in general, y = Nx) shows how the variable ability to posit svyaznost' is realized. Examples from the field of Islamic and European art are discussed and the irreducible contrast of sense positing on the two sides is demonstrated, caused by the discrepancy between the ways of "that-and-such" positing. The significance of the cognitive experience of the Non-Western big cultures lies in the fact that it is the experience of unfolding variants of the "that-and-such" positing different from that which underlies the European big culture. A study of consciousness that does not take into account the completeness of human cognitive experience is doomed in advance to limited results.