Dialectical Thinking: Logics and Psychology

The article is devoted to the relation of logic and psychology of dialectical thinking. It provides three lines of understanding of dialectical thinking: dialectical thinking as a form of developing content, based on the resolution of oppositions; dialectical thinking as postformal stage of intelligence; dialectical thinking as a form of operating relationships of the opposites. Each approach has its own applications to the organization of educational practice. The first approach is presented by the works of E.V. Il'enkov, B.M. Kedrov, P.V. Kopnin and other authors. On a meaningful understanding of dialectics V.V. Davydov developed his methodology of developmental learning. The second approach in the study of dialectical thinking was largely shaped by J.Piaget’s operational concept of the intellect. K. Riegel argued that the development of thinking cannot stop at the stage of formal operations. Later on, the subject develops a more complex form of cognition — dialectical thinking. Representatives of the postformal understanding of dialectical thinking apply it in trainings for the development of professional thinking in adult subjects as well as in psychotherapy. In Russian psychology it has been shown that dialectical thinking acts as the individual’s independent ability to operate with opposites that can be developed starting from preschool age.

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