Global catastrophic risks in the light of unified objectively determined universal process concept. Part 1

Philosophy

Abstract

The article deals with the comparison of ontological and epistemological principles of the global catastrophic risks concept and the concept of unified objectively determined universal process. The author suggests that the concept of global catastrophic risks is an important contemporary trans-disciplinary concept, which has a significant influence both in the expert community and in the mass consciousness. Three ontological and three epistemological principles of the concept have been reconstructed in the article. Ontological principlesare focused on the idea of casual and unpredictable character of any processes in the world, including processes leading to global catastrophes. It follows from equal probability of these processes and the «equality» of all possibilities. Epistemological principles are focused on the idea of autonomy of the subjective side in cognition and its limitations. These limitations are interpreted as results of finiteness of the human experience’s sphere, due to cognitive biases and observation selection effects. However, the system of sciences and humanities facts, which can be interpreted in the light of the concept of unified objectively determined universal process, evidences that the philosophical principles (first of all, ontological ones) of the concept of global catastrophic risks are insufficiently substantiated. The author believes, that the idea of a hierarchy of possibilities and «quantum entanglement’s» phenomenon in the light of the concept unified objectively determined universal process suffer to combine the idea of determined integral progress with the idea of casual processes (includingthe chances of global catastrophes). Also, the link between the world’s infinity and human experience’s sphere in the light of the un-chaotic world’s concept allows to speak about the representative character of our experience with respect to the world as a whole.