Mediation as a cognition: a synergistic approach

Abstract

The article critically assesses the generally accepted understanding of mediation as the settlement of a conflict (dispute) by the subjects of intersubjective relations by themselves with the help of a mediator. The author substantiates the cognitive nature of mediation. The purpose of the article is to analyze mediation as a living (cognitive) system. The specific objectives of the study are as follows: to clarify the instrumental capacity of the synergistic approach for analyzing mediation as a living (cognitive) system; to analyze the purpose, nature and content of mediation as cognition; to reveal the information matrix of mediation. The authors chose the synergistic paradigm as the methodological basis of the study.
 In pursuit of the aim and specific objectives of the study, the following main results were obtained: mediation as a self-referential nonlinear procedural system belongs to the genus of cognitive systems. The subjects of cognition in it are its parties. The most adequate methodological tool for its cognition, given the purpose of the article and the specific objectives of the study, is the synergistic paradigm. Synergetic discourse is carried out with the help of a category and conceptual apparatus that is unique to it. Among the basic approaches of synergetics are the concepts of attractor, bifurcation, entropy, information, dissipative structures, order and chaos, systemic openness, and some others, which make it possible to analyze mediation as cognition. A fundamental feature of this cognition is that its subjects do not set themselves special cognitive tasks. These subjects reflect on their common intersubjective practices and the meanings of these practices and the experience gained in them, which led to a conflict (dispute) between them. Cognition, which is carried out within the paradigmatic framework of mediation as a system, is discursive and hermeneutic in nature. The key heuristic tool in it is information. The meaning of this cognition is the acquisition and use of the necessary information by the system. Its purpose is to develop and introduce the necessary correlations into the jointly acquired experience and, as a result, to achieve a qualitatively new state of dynamic balance of mutual goals and interests of the subjects of the intersubjective relationship, to overcome the state of dynamic chaos of the system and to establish a new dynamic order in it.