Reflection and the creation of meaning in human thinking

The historical analysis of the development of ideas about thinking in psychology shows the cross-cutting nature of the issues concerning reflection and creation of meanings. The acuteness of the problem is due to the fact that psychology cannot study reflection and creation of meanings by themselves, but must penetrate into the nature of these processes, and understand their reasons. Representations about reasoning in general determine the boundaries of understanding of thinking. The study of the psychology of thinking leads to the problem of becoming, that is of the complexity of the systematic organization of the psychological science. The psychology of thinking goes through the same evolution as psychology, which is a subsystem of science. There is a rise in the levels of the system organization, both in the thinking of the researchers themselves, and in the understanding of thinking as an object of a psychological research. Like in any other field of science, in psychology there is continuity in the cognition and complexity of ideas regarding thinking. There is a natural transition from "subject-centrism" to the first level of the system approach and from the first level to the second one and further to the third level; and this process continues. Gradually, the emphasis in the research shifts in the direction of understanding thinking as a specifically human way of cognizing the supersensible system qualities that are generated in the "psychological system". The current state of affairs in the field of the psychology of thinking is characterized by the growing differentiation and disintegration of psychological knowledge in this field, as well as in other areas of psychology. Disputes are conducted by the representatives following different levels of the system approach, from the positions of different "mono-systems", isolated from each other. It is difficult to correlate the empirical data obtained in different mono-systems, because these systems generate and then reflect different system qualities that are not correlated with each other. The attempts to "dock" theories that implement different levels of the system approach are doomed to failure. However, these attempts exacerbate the contradictions, thus playing a significant role. When trying to correlate mono-system theories of the same level of systemic nature, the tendency to absorb one theory by the other on the basis of its basic principles often emerges; this also exacerbates contradictions. In this context a tendency to integrate psychological knowledge in particular in the field of the psychology of thinking becomes clear. Gradually it becomes obvious that the meaning of integration does not consist in subordinating one theory to another and not in substituting one leading principle by another. The meaning of such integration consists in the generation (creation) of new integral principles that remove one-sidedness (hypertrophy, nonequilibrium, absoluteness) of the initial principles.

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