Understanding the Impossible and the Unthinkable
For the first time, the article analyzes a new psychological problem - the subject's understanding of events and situations that can be characterized as impossible and inconceivable. The problem is solved from the standpoint of the psychology of the possible. The classification of categorical signs of the discussed phenomena is carried out, five meanings of the category “impossible” and three signs of “unthinkable” are identified. The meanings depend both on objective circumstances and on the knowledge and expectations of the knowing subject: the contradiction between the logically acceptable and the physically unacceptable; “causelessness” of the event; implausibility; the unknown as impossible; meaninglessness of “situations of impossibility”. Events and situations that people assess as unthinkable are characterized, first, by the suppression of the irrational by the rational; secondly, going beyond the boundaries of the usual moral reasoning, due to the impossibility of moral choice; thirdly, such a discrepancy between knowledge and the existential experience of a subject understanding the world, in which he finds himself in an ambivalent position: at the same time it is necessary and impossible to see the impossible.