The Natural, the Artificial and Human Sciences

Abstract

The author analyses the possibilities of transforming human mind in connection with the appearance of “digital civilization” and the development of human sciences, in particular, cognitive and neural ones. The article argues that human sciences can promote human perfection (and will not be used as a means of its degradation) only if they take into account the principal fact: the human being is a natural/artificial creature engaged in activity and culture. In this context the author studies the relationship between individual and collective activity and analyzes different forms of the latter: relative independence of participants, distributed activity, and cooperative activity. Cooperation requires constant communication between the participants. Therefore activity and communication cannot be opposed to each other, as the act of communication matters only in the context of activity, and also because communication itself can be understood as a specific kind of activity. In this connection social constructionism in psychology and other human sciences is criticized.