Parity of technical and humanitarian potentials of society as a factor of its sustainable development

Abstract

A thoughtful study of the historical process with all its ups and downs allows us to argue that at all turning points in the development of mankind such a characteristic feature of social consciousness as its humanitarian-instrumental dualism has clearly manifested itself. The subject of this study is interdependent and mutually complementary evolution of the two parameters of social intelligence — technical and humanitarian. Substantively the article is divided into two parts. The first discusses the possibilities of using reason in the field of morality. One of the main trump cards of ethical skeptics (non-cognitivists), D. Hume’s guillotine, is presented, and the conclusion is made that it only limits ways of justification of moral norms, but does not exclude this perspective in principle. Some of the foundations of ethical cognitivism are discussed, and a firm belief is expressed that this is the approach that needs to be cultivated by the educational system to provide a justificatory sentence to reason in the field of morality. The second part of the article is devoted to a description of various aspects of the techno-humanitarian balance model. It is shown that modernity is marked by a painful process of cultural-psychological adjustment to new information and communication technologies. Two levels of this process — global and existential — are distinguished. The role of education in mitigating the lapping and increasing its efficiency at each of these levels is assessed.