Theory of knowledge (epistemology, epistemology). “The formation and essence of the systems approach. Theoretical and cognitive problems of the systems approach
Problems of the theory of knowledge, problems of science are placed at the center of philosophical research in the philosophy of the New Age from the very beginning. Already Bacon and Descartes linked human success in mastering nature and regulating social life with the growth of knowledge and the development of science. Then Locke, Hume, and the philosophers of the French Enlightenment, and Kant especially, paid primary attention to cognitive problems. But at that time the question was posed in terms of what a person can know, what are the limits, if any, of human knowledge and how does she know, what are the methods and means of knowledge.
In non-classical philosophy, cognitive problems arise on a different plane. she is not interested in the question of the relationship between scientific knowledge and the object of this knowledge, with the exception of early positivism and machismo, where this question is present to some extent. she is not interested in the question of how our knowledge, these or other ideas arise. “The question of the ways in which a new idea - be it a musical theme, a dramatic conflict or a scientific theory - comes to a person,” writes K. Popper, “may be of significant interest for empirical psychology, but it is completely irrelevant to the logical analysis of scientific knowledge. ...In order to subject a statement to logical analysis, it must be presented to us. Someone must first formulate such a statement and then subject it to logical analysis." That is, issues related to the paving of scientific knowledge itself (no pun intended), its content and truth, the relationship between knowledge and consciousness, problems of the development of science and its significance in the life of society come to the fore.
Positivism and stages of its development
Positivism emerges in the 30s of the 19th century. Its founder was the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857). The founders of positivism also include English philosophers: John Stuart Mill (1806-1973) and Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). their ideas constitute the main content of the first stage of the development of positivism. And, without a doubt, it was Kosh who deserved the credit for developing the basic ideas of positivism.
Of course, it did not arise out of nowhere. Comte himself named Bacon, Descartes, and Galileo as his predecessors, who stood at the origins of a new science based on empirical facts and experiment. Among the predecessors of positivism, we should also mention Hume and Kant, who declared that only phenomena are accessible to our knowledge, and not things in themselves, their essence, “internal” nature.
It is impossible not to say at least a few words about the social prerequisites of positivism. And such a prerequisite was Comte’s dissatisfaction with the existing state of affairs in society. “So, the task of positivism,” says Comte, “is to generalize science and unify the social system. In other words, the goal of positivism is to build a philosophy of science as the foundation of a new social religion. Social doctrine is the goal of positivism, scientific doctrine is the means.” According to Comte, the level of development of society is determined by the development of thought, the dominant type of philosophical thinking or the phase of intellectual development of society and each individual.
The main position of positivism, according to Comte, is that true philosophy believes: “Only phenomena are available to our knowledge, this knowledge of phenomena is relative, not unconditional. We do not know either the essence or even the real way of occurrence of a known fact, only its relation to other facts by continuity and similarity." This is how Mill forms the credo of positivism. Previous philosophy believed that the task of science is to reveal the deep causes of phenomena, to reveal the essence that underlies the phenomenon. Positive philosophy thinks that science should describe phenomena and establish and formulate laws of interconnection between phenomena. On this basis, science can and should make predictions about the future and predict social practice.
Another important position of Comte's philosophy is that humanity in its development goes through three stages or phases: theological, metaphysical and positive.
The theological phase of intellectual development is characterized by the fact that people seek the cause of all natural and social phenomena in forces located outside of nature and society, in the gods who control natural processes. Religion is the dominant form of worldview and dictates its own method of approach to explaining phenomena. Of course, religion also does not remain unchanged, it changes from polytheism to monotheism, but the principle of approach to phenomena remains unchanged.
The metaphysical phase of intellectual development replaces the theological one and is characterized by the fact that the place of otherworldly forces, the place of gods is occupied by the first causes and primary essences, some substances that are beyond the limits of experience and cause phenomena accessible to us. Metaphysical philosophy aims knowledge at the search for substances behind phenomena. She tries to answer the question of why this or that phenomenon occurs, to find the invisible reason for its occurrence and existence. If myth and religion at the theological stage of human development show us How gods rule the world and determine the existence of objects and phenomena, then metaphysical philosophy tries to show Why certain phenomena occur.
“In the positive phase, the mind, convinced of the futility of any search for causes and essences, is limited to the observation and classification of phenomena and the discovery of unchanging relations of sequence and identity between things: in a word, the discovery of the laws of phenomena.” Now the mind again comes to the conclusion that it can only answer the question “how” and not “why”. The task of science is to describe phenomena and their relationships with each other, and not to look for “deep causes.” What happens, in Hegel’s language, is the negation of the negation; we again return to the question “how?”, but at a new stage of development, the stage of positive science. “...A person believes that he can comprehend the causes and essences of surrounding phenomena, while the positivist, realizing his inconsistency, limits himself to revealing the laws governing the sequence of these phenomena.”
Of course, these phases or types of philosophical thinking do not exist in their pure form. Of all times, even at the theological stage, other phases existed in parallel: metaphysical and positive. Another thing is that genetically in the first historical period the theological stage dominated, in the second historical period the metaphysical stage dominated, and in the 19th century the positive stage began to reign. In addition, in different areas of knowledge, changes and alternations of stages or phases occur at different times. Based on the study of the formation of partial sciences, their transition to the positive stage, Comte classifies the sciences, placing them in the following order: 1) mathematics, which includes “the science of numbers, geometry, mechanics”; 2) astronomy; 3) physics; 4) chemistry; 5) biology; 6) sociology, or social science. All sciences are interconnected, they are branches of a single tree of science, with more complex sciences based on the laws of simple ones.
And what then remains for philosophy if science is reduced to a description of phenomena observed in experience? Classical positivism does not deny the importance of philosophy; in its opinion, it is “innate in human nature.” According to Spencer, “...philosophy is knowledge of the highest generality” and the task of philosophy is, on the basis of a generalization of the positive sciences, to discover the general laws of the development of the world and knowledge. Such laws are Comte's law of three phases of intellectual development or Spencer's law of evolution. Mill believes that philosophy must become a philosophy of science and defines it in this way: “The philosophy of science is ... nothing more than science itself, considered not in relation to its results, the truths that it determines, but in relation to the processes , with the help of which the mind achieves these results, the signs by which it learns about these truths, as well as their relatively harmonious and methodical arrangement in terms of the greatest possible clarity of understanding, as well as the most complete and convenient application: in a word, this is the logic of science ". In short, Mill believes that philosophy is the theory of knowledge of a positive science; it develops general methods of knowledge of phenomena.
The second stage in the development of positivism is empirio-criticism, or Machism, named after Ernst Mach (1838-1916), an Austrian philosopher and physicist. Along with Mach, the founder of empirio-criticism is the German philosopher Richard Avenarius (1843-1896), but Mach's views have become more widespread. And therefore, when considering this stage of the development of positivism, attention was focused on the views of E. Mahu.
Machism arose in the wake of the crisis in physics that erupted at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. In connection with the discovery of radioactivity and the divisibility of the atom, it became obvious that Newton's laws, which were considered general, do not work in the microworld. Physicists were faced with problems: what are the laws of physics by their nature, are they a reflection of objective reality that exists outside of us, or are they rather arbitrary constructions of our mind? In this situation, Mach proposed that the last reality with which the scientist deals experimentally are the “primary elements of the world,” which appear in one case, namely in their relationships with each other, as a physical phenomenon, for example, the dependence of color on the sun’s rays, and in other - as mental, as sensations, for example, the dependence of color on the structure of our eye. The last thing we deal with in the process of cognition is sensation; there is no substance behind the elements of the world.
“...The complete exclusion of sensory sensations,” writes E. Mach, “is an impossible matter; on the contrary, we consider them the only direct source of physics...”. The idea of substance “does not find the slightest basis in the elements...”. And the main principle that guides our thinking when analyzing and generalizing the data of experience, that is, sensations, is the principle of economy or the least expenditure of effort.
Thus, if classical positivism, the positivism of Comte and Spencer, expels from science the primary causes, primary reality, substances, without doubting the objective existence of the facts of experience, then Machism already doubts the existence of objective reality and experience, declaring that such ultimate reality are the primary elements of the world , which simultaneously relate to the world of the physical (objective) world of the mental (subjective).
But empirio-criticism did not dominate the minds of philosophers and physicists for long, although it was initially supported by many physicists. Already in the twenties of the 20th century, it gave way to a new direction, called “neopositivism,” that is, NEW POSITIVISM.
THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
(gnoseology, epistemology) – a branch of philosophy that analyzes the nature and possibilities of knowledge, its boundaries and conditions of reliability. Not a single philosophical system, since it claims to find the ultimate foundations of knowledge and activity, can do without studying these issues. However, the problematic of the theory of knowledge can be contained in a philosophical concept and in an implicit form, for example. through the formulation of an ontology that implicitly defines the possibilities and nature of knowledge. Knowledge as a problem was specifically studied already in ancient philosophy (the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle), although subordinated to ontological themes. The theory of knowledge turns out to be at the center of all the problems of Western philosophy in the 17th century: the solution of theoretical-cognitive questions becomes a necessary condition for the study of all other philosophical problems. A classical type of theory of knowledge is emerging. True, the term “theory of knowledge” itself appears quite late - only in 1832; before this, the problem was studied under other names: analysis of the mind, study of knowledge, criticism of reason, etc. (usually the term “epistemology” is used as synonymous with the term “theory of knowledge”; however, some philosophers, for example K. Popper, classify epistemology only as the study of scientific knowledge). The theory of knowledge continued to occupy a central place in Western philosophy until the middle. 20th century, when there is a need to rethink the very ways of posing its problems and methods of solving, new connections between the theory of knowledge and other areas of philosophy, as well as science and culture in general, are revealed. A non-classical theory of knowledge emerges. At the same time, at this time, philosophical concepts appear that either try to push theoretical-cognitive problematics to the periphery of philosophy, or even abandon the entire problematic of the theory of knowledge, “overcome” it. Understanding the nature of the problems of the theory of knowledge, their fate and possible future involves the analysis of its two types: classical and non-classical. In the classical theory of knowledge, the following features can be distinguished:
1. Criticism. In essence, all philosophy arises as a distrust of tradition, of what is imposed on the individual by the external (natural and social) environment. Philosophy is a way of self-determination for a free person who relies only on himself, on his own powers of feeling and reason in finding the ultimate foundations of his life. Therefore, philosophy also acts as a critique of culture. The theory of knowledge is a criticism of what is considered knowledge in ordinary common sense, in the science of a given time, in other philosophical systems. Therefore, the starting point for the theory of knowledge is the problem of illusion and reality, opinion and knowledge. This theme was already well formulated by Plato in the dialogue “Theaetetus”. What counts as knowledge? It is clear that this cannot be a generally accepted opinion, for it may be a general error; it cannot be simply an opinion to which a real state of affairs corresponds (i.e., a true statement), because the correspondence between the content of a statement and reality can be purely accidental. Plato comes to the conclusion that knowledge presupposes not only the correspondence of the content of the statement and reality, but also the validity of the former.
The problem of substantiating knowledge has become central in Western European philosophy since the 17th century. This is due to the formation of a non-traditional society, with the emergence of a free individual relying on himself. It is at this time that what is sometimes called the “epistemological turn” occurs. What exactly can be considered a sufficient justification for knowledge? This question is at the center of philosophical discussions. The theory of knowledge acts primarily as a critique of existing metaphysical systems and accepted systems of knowledge from the point of view of a certain ideal of knowledge. For F. Bacon and R. Descartes, this is a criticism of scholastic metaphysics and peripatetic science. For D. Berkeley, this is a criticism of materialism and a number of ideas of new science, in particular the ideas of absolute space and time in Newton’s physics and the ideas of infinitesimal quantities in the differential and integral calculus developed at that time (the subsequent history of science showed the correctness of this criticism). Kant uses his epistemological construct to demonstrate the impossibility of traditional ontology, as well as some scientific disciplines (for example, psychology as a theoretical, not descriptive science). The very system of Kantian philosophy, which is based on the theory of knowledge, is called critical. Criticism determines the main pathos of other epistemological constructions of the classical type. So, for example, in E. Mach the theory of knowledge acts as a way to substantiate the ideal of descriptive science and criticize the ideas of absolute space and time of classical physics (this criticism was used by A. Einstein when creating the special theory of relativity), as well as atomic theory (which was rejected science). Logical positivists used their epistemological principle of verification to criticize a number of statements not only in philosophy, but also in science (in physics and psychology). Popper, using the epistemological principle of falsification, tried to demonstrate the unscientific nature of Marxism and psychoanalysis.
2. Fundamentalism and normativism. The very ideal of knowledge on the basis of which the task of criticism is solved must be justified. In other words, we should find a foundation for all our knowledge about which there is no doubt. Anything that claims to be known but does not actually rest on this foundation must be rejected. Therefore, the search for the basis of knowledge is not identical to a simple clarification of causal dependencies between different mental formations (for example, between sensation, perception and thinking), but is aimed at identifying such knowledge, compliance with which can serve as a norm. One must distinguish between what actually takes place in the cognizing consciousness (and everything that is in it, for example, an illusion of perception or a delusion of thinking, is causally determined by something), and what must be in order to be considered knowledge (i.e. .i.e. what corresponds to the norm). At the same time, in the history of philosophy, the normative has often been mixed with the actually existing and passed off as the latter.
In this capacity, the theory of knowledge acted not only as criticism, but also as a means of establishing certain types of knowledge, as a means of their unique cultural legitimation. Thus, according to Plato, sensory perception cannot give knowledge; one can truly know only what mathematics teaches. Therefore, in the strict sense of the word, there cannot be a science of empirical phenomena; the ideal of science is Euclid’s geometry. According to Aristotle, this is not the case: sensory experience says something about reality. Experimental science is possible, but it cannot be mathematical, because experience is qualitative and cannot be mathematized. New European science, which arose after Copernicus and Galileo, essentially synthesized the programs of Plato and Aristotle in the form of a program of mathematical natural science based on experiment: empirical science is possible, but not on the basis of a description of what is given in experience, but on the basis of artificial construction in experiment (and this involves the use of mathematics) of what is being studied. This program is based on a certain theoretical-cognitive attitude: reality is given in sensory experience, but its deep mechanism is comprehended through its preparation and mathematical processing. The theory of knowledge in this case acts as a way to substantiate and legitimize a new science, which contradicted both the old tradition and common sense, and was something strange and unusual.
At the same time, the division of theoretical-cognitive concepts into empiricism And rationalism . From the point of view of empiricism, only that knowledge that corresponds to the maximum extent to the data of sensory experience, which is based on either sensations ( sensationalism ), or “sense data” ( neorealism ), or elementary protocol sentences ( logical empiricism ). Rationalism considered as knowledge only what fits into the system of “innate ideas” (Descartes, Spinoza) or into the system of categories and schemes (Hegel, neo-Kantians). Kant tried to take a kind of third position in this debate.
Another fundamental division characteristic of the classical theory of knowledge is the division between psychologists and antipsychologists. Of course, all philosophers distinguished between a causal explanation of certain phenomena of consciousness and their normative justification. However, for psychologists (this includes all empiricists, as well as some supporters of the theory of “innate ideas”), the norm that ensures the connection of cognition with reality is rooted in the empirically given consciousness itself: this is a certain fact of consciousness, and the theory of cognition in this regard is based on psychology . Historically, many researchers in the field of the theory of knowledge were at the same time outstanding psychologists (D. Berkeley, D. Hume, E. Mach, etc.). For antipsychologists, epistemological norms that speak not of what is, but of what should be, cannot be simply facts of individual empirical consciousness. These norms are of a universal, obligatory and necessary nature, they cannot therefore be obtained by simple inductive generalization of anything, incl. and the work of empirical knowledge. Therefore, their source should be sought in another area. For philosophical transcendentalism (Kant, neo-Kantians, phenomenology) this area is transcendental consciousness, distinct from ordinary empirical consciousness, although present in the latter. In this case, the method of theoretical-cognitive research cannot be an empirical analysis of psychological data. For Kant, this is a special transcendental method of analyzing consciousness. Phenomenologists, as a method of theoretical-cognitive research, offer a special intuitive grasp of the essential structures of consciousness and their description. The theory of knowledge in this case turns out to be not a theory at all in the precise sense of the word, but a descriptive discipline, although the description in this case does not refer to empirical facts, but to a special kind of a priori phenomena. In addition, this discipline does not depend on any others (including psychology), but precedes them. Neo-Kantians solve this problem differently: from their point of view, the theory of knowledge tries to identify the transcendental conditions for the possibility of knowledge. To do this, a specialist in the theory of knowledge (at the same time, they reduce philosophy to the theory of knowledge) must subject to analysis the knowledge objectified in texts (primarily scientific ones). The theory of knowledge in this case acts as, on the one hand, analyzing empirically given texts, and on the other hand, revealing as a result of this analysis not empirical, but a priori dependencies.
Antipsychologism in the theory of knowledge was continued in a unique way in analytical philosophy , where it was understood as the analysis of language. True, this analysis itself is no longer a transcendental procedure, but a completely empirical procedure, but no longer dealing with the facts of empirical consciousness (as was the case with psychologists), but with the facts of the “deep grammar” of language. Within the framework of this approach, the theory of knowledge was interpreted as an analytical discipline, and the old theory of knowledge was criticized (in particular by L. Wittgenstein) as an untenable “philosophy of psychology.” Such epistemological principles that set the standards of knowledge, such as verification and falsification, were understood as rooted in the structures of language. In this regard, the “context of discovery” of a particular statement, which is the subject of psychological research, was clearly separated from the “context of justification” with which philosophical, epistemological analysis deals. Early analytical philosophy, especially its versions such as logical positivism, shares the basic principles of classical epistemological antipsychologism. A peculiar anti-psychological understanding of the theory of knowledge is characteristic of K. Popper. For him, it should be based on the study of the history of scientific knowledge, objectified in texts (“objective knowledge”) - in this he is similar to the neo-Kantians. The theory of knowledge does not deal with the individual subject. And since, according to Popper, there is no other subject besides the individual, the theory of knowledge has no relation to the subject in general (“epistemology without a knowing subject”). However, unlike the neo-Kantians, Popper believes that the theory of knowledge must use the methods of empirical science. This means, in particular, that epistemological generalizations can, in principle, be subject to revision.
3. Subjectocentrism. The very fact of the existence of the subject acts as an undoubted and indisputable basis on which a system of knowledge can be built. From Descartes' point of view, this is generally the only self-reliable fact. In everything else, incl. and the existence of a world external to my consciousness and other people can be doubted (i.e., criticism, characteristic of the entire classical epistemological tradition, is greatly strengthened by the acceptance of this thesis). Knowledge of what exists in consciousness is undeniable and immediate; knowledge about things external to my consciousness is indirect. For empiricists, the sensations given in my consciousness have such an indisputable status. For rationalists, these are a priori forms of consciousness of the subject. This is how specific problems of the classical theory of knowledge arise: how is knowledge of the external world and the consciousness of other people possible? Their solution turned out to be very difficult not only for philosophy, but also for the empirical sciences about man, which accepted the subject-centric attitude of the classical theory of knowledge (in particular, for psychology). For a number of philosophers and scientists who shared the fundamental position of the classical theory of knowledge regarding the immediate givenness of states of consciousness and at the same time did not doubt the same obviousness of the fact of the existence of external objects (cognitive-theoretical materialism, realism), it turned out to be difficult to reconcile these provisions. Hence the ideas of G. Helmholtz about the “hieroglyphic” relationship of sensations to reality, the “law of specific energy of the sensory organs” of I. Muller and others. These difficulties did not exist for V.I. Lenin, who in his work “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism” proceeded from the realistic attitudes about the objective existence of objects of knowledge and at the same time from the thesis that sensations underlie all knowledge. The latter have been interpreted as “subjective images of the objective world,” which in reality they are not. A number of representatives of the theory of knowledge proposed to “remove” the very problems of the relationship between knowledge and the external world, interpreting the consciousness of the subject as the only reality: for empiricists these are sensations, for rationalists these are a priori structures of consciousness. The world (including other people) appears in this case either as a set of sensations or as a rational construction of the subject. This position has been criticized by representatives of various realistic schools (neorealism, critical realism), however, as long as cognition is understood only as a fact of individual consciousness, as something happening “inside” the subject (even if causally conditioned by events in the external world), noted difficulties cannot be resolved. If Descartes did not distinguish between the empirical and transcendental subjects, then in the subsequent development of philosophy such a distinction was made. Empiricists and psychologists deal with the individual subject, transcendentalists deal with the transcendental. So, for example, for Kant it is undeniable that the objects given to me in experience exist independently of me as an empirical individual. However, this experience itself is constructed by a transcendental subject. The transcendental unity of the apperception of this subject is even a guarantor of the objectivity of experience. For Husserl, the undoubted reality is the givenness of phenomena to transcendental consciousness. As for the relationship between these phenomena and external reality, phenomenology “refrains” from these questions. The neo-Kantians of the Baden school proceed from the fact that the theory of knowledge deals with “consciousness in general,” while the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism deals rather with the “spirit of science.” According to the early representatives of analytical philosophy, statements receive meaning from their relationship to the subjective data of the individual's experience, although language is not the property of only one individual subject. Some epistemological concepts that are classical in most respects go beyond these limits at this point. This applies, in particular, to Hegel’s epistemological system, in which an attempt is made to overcome the opposition of the subjective and objective as two separate worlds on the basis of the Absolute Spirit, which is not an individual subject (neither empirical nor transcendental); the same can be said about Popper's “epistemology without a knowing subject.”
4. Science-centrism. The theory of knowledge acquired a classical form precisely in connection with the emergence of modern science and in many ways acted as a means of legitimizing this science. Therefore, most epistemological systems proceeded from the fact that scientific knowledge, as it was presented in the mathematical natural sciences of this time, is the highest type of knowledge, and what science says about the world actually exists. Many problems discussed in the theory of knowledge can only be understood in the light of this attitude. This is, for example, the so-called problem discussed by T. Hobbes, D. Locke and many others. primary and secondary qualities. The primary ones (heaviness, shape, location, etc.) are considered to belong to the real objects themselves, and the secondary ones (color, smell, taste, etc.) are considered to arise in the consciousness of the subject when objects of the external world influence the senses. What really exists and what really does not exist, in this case, is completely determined by what classical physics said about reality. Kant's theory of knowledge can be understood as the foundation of classical Newtonian mechanics. For Kant, the fact of the existence of scientific knowledge is initially justified. The two questions of his Critique of Pure Reason are “How is pure mathematics possible?” and “How is pure natural science possible?” – do not question the justification of these scientific disciplines, but only try to identify the theoretical-cognitive conditions of their possibility. The same cannot be said about the third question of Kant’s Critique – “How is metaphysics possible?” The philosopher is trying to show that from an epistemological point of view the latter is impossible. For neo-Kantians, the theory of knowledge is possible only as a theory of science. Logical positivists saw the task of philosophy (the analytical theory of knowledge) precisely in the analysis of the language of science, and not at all of ordinary language. According to Popper, epistemology should deal only with scientific knowledge. In the last decades of the 20th century. A non-classical theory of knowledge is gradually emerging, which differs from the classical one in all basic parameters. The change in theoretical-cognitive issues and methods of work in this area is associated with a new understanding of cognition and knowledge, as well as the relationship between the theory of knowledge and other sciences about man and culture. The new understanding, in turn, is due to shifts in modern culture as a whole. This type of theory of knowledge is in the initial stage of development and has the following features:
1. Post-criticism. This does not mean a rejection of philosophical criticism (without which there is no philosophy itself), but only an understanding of the fundamental fact that knowledge cannot begin from scratch, based on distrust of all traditions, but presupposes the inscription of the knowing individual into one of them. Data from experience are interpreted in theoretical terms, and the theories themselves are transmitted over time and are a product of collective development. The attitude of distrust and the search for self-confidence is replaced by an attitude of trust in the results of the activities of others. This is not about blind trust, but only about the fact that any criticism presupposes a certain point of support, the acceptance of something that is uncriticized at a given time and in a given context (this may become the object of criticism at another time and in a different context). This idea is well expressed by L. Wittgenstein in his later works. Collectively developed knowledge may contain content that is not currently recognized by the participants in the collective cognitive process. I may also have such tacit knowledge that I am not aware of regarding my own cognitive processes. In the history of knowledge, different traditions mutually criticize each other. This is not only mutual criticism of myth and science, but also criticism of each other by different cognitive traditions in science, for example. mathematical and descriptive traditions in biology. In the process of developing knowledge, it may become clear that those cognitive traditions that seemed completely repressed or moved to the periphery of knowledge discover new meaning in a new context. So, for example, in the light of the ideas of the theory of self-organizing systems developed by I. Prigogine, the modern heuristic meaning of some ideas of ancient Chinese mythology is revealed.
2. Refusal of fundamentalism. It is associated with the discovery of variability in cognitive norms and the inability to formulate strict normative instructions for developing cognition. Attempts to separate knowledge from ignorance using such prescriptions made in 20th century science, in particular logical positivism and operationalism, failed.
There are different reactions to this situation in modern philosophy. Some philosophers consider it possible to talk about abandoning the theory of knowledge as a philosophical discipline. So, for example, some followers of the late Wittgenstein, based on the fact that in ordinary language the word “know” is used in several different senses, do not see the possibility of developing a unified theory of knowledge. Others (for example, R. Rorty) identify the rejection of fundamentalism with the end of the theory of knowledge and with the displacement of epistemological research by philosophical hermeneutics. A number of philosophers (and they are the majority) consider it possible to give a new understanding of this discipline and in this regard they propose various research programs, for example. W. Quine’s “naturalized epistemology” program. According to Quine, scientific epistemology must completely abandon the issuance of prescriptions, any normativism and be reduced to a generalization of data from the physiology of higher nervous activity and psychology using the apparatus of information theory. J. Piaget developed the concept of “genetic epistemology”. Unlike Quine, he emphasizes that epistemology deals with norms. But these are not the norms that the philosopher formulates based on a priori considerations, but those that he finds as a result of studying the real process of mental development of a child, on the one hand, and the history of science, on the other.
An even more interesting and promising program for developing a non-fundamentalist theory of knowledge in connection with the study of modern psychology is proposed within the framework of modern cognitive science. The philosopher builds some ideal model of cognitive processes, using, among other things, and results obtained in the history of the theory of knowledge. He conducts various “ideal experiments” with this model, exploring first of all the logical possibilities of this model. Then, based on this model, specific mathematical programs for the computer are developed, and the operation of this computer is compared with data obtained in psychology. This comparison serves as a way to test the effectiveness of both computer representations of the work of the psyche (from the point of view of modern cognitive psychology, it is cognitive processes that underlie all mental processes) and the corresponding cognitive theoretical models. This type of epistemological research, interacting with psychology and developments in the field of artificial intelligence, has been called “experimental epistemology.”
Thus, within the framework of the non-classical theory of knowledge, there is a kind of return to psychologism. However, we are not talking about psychologism in the old sense of the word. Firstly, the theory of knowledge (like modern cognitive psychology) proceeds from the fact that certain norms of cognitive activity are, as it were, built into the work of the psyche and determine the latter (and in this regard, rational grounds also act as causes of mental phenomena). Secondly, the main way to obtain data about the work of the psyche is not an inductive generalization of introspectively given facts of consciousness, but the construction of ideal models, the consequences of which are compared with the results of psychological experiments (self-reports of subjects are used, but only subject to their critical verification and comparison with other data). In the process of theoretical-cognitive work of this kind, the important heuristic role of some ideas expressed in line with the rationalistic anti-psychological tradition (in particular, a number of ideas of I. Kant and E. Husserl) is revealed.
There are other ways of understanding the tasks of epistemology in the light of the collapse of fundamentalism. A number of researchers emphasize the collective nature of acquiring knowledge (both ordinary and scientific) and the need in this regard to study the connections between subjects of cognitive activity. These connections, firstly, involve communication, secondly, they are socially and culturally mediated, and thirdly, they change historically. The norms of cognitive activity change and develop in this socio-cultural process. In this regard, a program of social epistemology is formulated (which is now being implemented by researchers in many countries), which involves the interaction of philosophical analysis with the study of the history of knowledge and its socio-cultural research. The task of a specialist in the field of epistemology looks in this context not as prescribing cognitive norms obtained on the basis of some a priori considerations, but as identifying those of them that are actually used in the process of collective cognitive activity. These norms change, they are different in different spheres of knowledge (for example, in everyday and scientific knowledge, in different sciences), they are not always fully understood by those who use them, and there may be contradictions between different norms. The task of the philosopher is to identify and explicate all these relationships, establish logical connections between them, and identify possibilities for changing them. In domestic research into the theory of knowledge, under the influence of K. Marx’s ideas on the collective and communicative nature of cognitive activity, a school of socio-cultural analysis of knowledge has emerged.
Finally, it is necessary to name such a direction of modern non-fundamentalist theory of knowledge as evolutionary epistemology - the study of cognitive processes as a moment of the evolution of living nature and as its product (K. Lorenz, G. Vollmer, etc.). In this regard, attempts are being made to solve a number of fundamental problems in the theory of knowledge (including issues of correspondence between cognitive norms and external reality, the presence of a priori cognitive structures, etc.) based on data from modern biology.
Epistemology– a branch of philosophy in which the nature of knowledge, its possibilities, the relationship between knowledge and reality is studied, and the conditions for the reliability and truth of knowledge are identified. The theory of knowledge studies human cognitive activity without regard to what this activity itself is (everyday or professional). The specificity of the philosophical theory of knowledge is revealed when it is compared with non-philosophical sciences that study cognitive activity. Currently, cognitive activity is studied by psychology, physiology of higher nervous activity, cybernetics, logic, linguistics, historical science, etc. The philosophical theory of knowledge explores the same phenomena of cognitive activity, but its main difference from other sciences is in terms of the relationship, knowledge to objective reality, to truth, to its achievement. The main category of epistemology is true. Sensation, concept, intuition, etc., for example, for psychology act only as forms mentally associated with cognition, with human activity, and for epistemology they are means of achieving truth or cognitive abilities associated with truth. From a special point of view, epistemology at the same time does not neglect the data of other sciences, but, on the contrary, relies on them as a special scientific basis. Do we know the world? This is a traditional question that arose in ancient times. The question of the cognition of the world in epistemology is revealed through a series of questions: how do our thoughts about the world around us relate to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of being aware of reality? Can we, in our ideas and concepts about the reality of the world, form a correct attitude towards reality? The main question of epistemology should be formulated as a question about the knowledge of the world (is it possible to reliably know objects, things, their essences and manifestations of essence).
In the history of philosophy, two views on the problem of knowledge have developed: agnosticism and cognitive realism. In our domestic science, for quite a long time it was imagined that agnosticism rejects the knowledge of things. The idea that agnosticism rejects knowledge of things does not apply to any of its forms. The presence is a consequence of the fact that cognition is a complex phenomenon. Protagoras(Ancient Greece): “Different people have different knowledge and assessments of the same phenomena (man is the measure of all things).” He concludes that reliable unambiguous knowledge in existing surrounding phenomena is impossible . Piron: “Sensitive perceptions are reliable, delusions arise when we try to move from a phenomenon to its basis, essence.” D. Hume: “Nature keeps us at a respectful distance from her secrets and ideas, and gives us only a knowledge of a few superficial qualities of objects, hiding from us those forces and principles on which the reality of these objects entirely depends.” E. Kant: “We don’t know what they (things) can be in themselves, but we only know their phenomena, i.e. the ideas they produce on us, acting on our senses, are only cognizable phenomena.”
By the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, a direction emerged conventionalism. This is a philosophical concept according to which scientific theories and concepts are not a reflection of the objective world, but are the result of an agreement between scientists. It is opposed in epistemology cognitive realism. Cognitive realism does not diverge from agnosticism on two points, on the issue of the cognition of phenomena, as phenomena of objects of sensory knowledge. In answer to the question: Is it possible to know the world as a whole in all its connections and manifestations? both concepts give a negative answer. The discrepancy between them lies in understanding the essence of objects, things, whether phenomena are related to the essence, whether it is possible to obtain reliable knowledge about the essence through phenomena. Cognitive realism says Yes, and agnosticism says No.
When considering them, it is customary to distinguish 2 types:
1) Sensory cognition.
2) Rational knowledge.
Each of them has its own forms of cognition. The sensory includes: sensation, perception, representation. Feeling- a form of sensory knowledge corresponding to the individual properties of a thing, an object. Perception- a form of sensory knowledge corresponding to the system of properties of a thing, an object, and it comes together from several sensations. Performance- a form of sensory cognition, a sensory visual image of a thing or an object of reality, stored and reproduced in consciousness without the direct impact of the objects themselves on the senses. Representation - image.
Rational cognition includes: concept, judgment, inference. Concept- an elementary form of thought, which reflects the most important features, properties of things and objects expressed by this concept. Judgment– the connection between concept and inference. Inference- a conclusion from several judgments.
Sensual and rational cognition form a single human psyche. Consideration of knowledge through the interaction of the sensory and rational is one of the aspects of consideration of knowledge with the knowledge of the universal.
Knowledge- a practice-tested result of knowledge of reality, or rather its reflection in the human mind. The relationship between knowledge and ignorance can be expressed in 4 main cognitive situations:
1) ignorance about ignorance (pre-problem situation)
2) ignorance of knowledge
3) knowledge about ignorance (problematic situation)
4)knowledge about knowledge
Under subject It is customary to understand the source of purposeful activity, the bearer of objective-practical activity of assessment and cognition. The subject can be identified as an individual, a collective, and a society. An object– that which opposes the subject, to which the objective-practical and cognitive activity of assessment and cognition is directed. An object and objective reality are not the same thing. Subject and object are paired categories, an expression of the unity of opposition. The subject is a comprehensive consideration of cognition (this is another aspect of the consideration of cognition in its most general form):
1) It is allowed to think, the principle of reflection with the principle of the creative active nature of cognitive activity.
2) It allows us to understand the material form of knowledge as a subjective image of the objective world, to reveal the dialectic of the subjective and objective in the process of cognition. Allows us to reveal the mechanism of social conditioning of the cognitive process.
The creation of a cognitive structure by the subject not only carries information about the object, but also reflects the state of social development, the needs and goals of society.
The problem of truth is the main one in epistemology. There are different understandings of truth. For example: truth is experimental confirmation (the position of philosophical empiricism). Truth is the usefulness of knowledge, its effectiveness (the position of pragmatism). Truth is an agreement (commentalism position). We take: truth is the correspondence of knowledge to reality. This interpretation of truth includes the following points:
1) reality - objective reality, consisting not only of phenomena, but also of the entities hiding behind them and manifesting themselves in them.
2) reality – subjective reality (spiritual)
3) Truth as a result of knowledge is associated with practice. The object is defined by practice, and truth as reliable knowledge reproduced in practice.
4) Truth is not a residual, but a dynamic formation, it is a process.
Every truth includes 2 sides: objective and subjective. Objective means that the true content of human ideas does not depend either on an individual person or on humanity as a whole. Subjective means that it does not exist apart from man and humanity.
Epistemology operates with such understandings of truth as objective, absolute and relative. Objective truth– an adequate reflection of the object cognizing by the subject, reproducing the cognitive object, because it exists on its own outside of consciousness. From the understanding of truth as objective, its concreteness follows. There is no abstract truth, truth is always concrete. Concreteness of truth– the dependence of knowledge on the connections and interactions inherent in certain phenomena, on the conditions, place and time in which they exist and develop.
Objective truth contains 3 aspects:
1)Anthological object. Associated with fixation in the truth of being, as
2) Axeological. It consists of the edges of the moral, ethical and aesthetic fullness of truth, its close connection with the meanings of life, with its value for all, including practical, human activity.
3) Praxeological. Reflects the inclusion of truth in its connection with practice.
The first one is the most important. From his position, truth is the correspondence of concrete sensory and conceptual representations to an object. There are different forms of truth. Identify conceptual and operational truth.
For epistemology, absolute and relative truths are of particular importance. Under absolute truth This kind of knowledge is understood as being identical to its subject and therefore cannot be refuted. Absolute truth– complete comprehensive knowledge about the subject. Relative truth– not complete knowledge about the same subject. Absolute truth is made up of many relative truths; at the same time, each relative truth is also absolute, because there is a part of the absolute in it. The unity of absolute and relative truths is determined by their content. They are objective truths.
Truth is a process. This property manifests itself in two ways. Firstly, the increasing completeness of the reflection of the object. Secondly, as a process of overcoming misconceptions.
The opposite of truth is a lie. Lie– deliberate construction of obviously incorrect ideas in the truth. The concept of lies is close to the concept of disinformation, but they are not the same thing. Disinformation– transmission of objectively false knowledge as true or true as false. Varieties of disinformation can be half-truths and lies by omission. A lie is always associated with the intentionality of the subject, and disinformation can be conscious or unconscious. For epistemology, the concept of delusion seems more important. Misconception– a unique theoretical-cognitive phenomenon, which represents an unintentional discrepancy between judgments or concepts of an object. This property of unintentionality significantly distinguishes it from the concept of lying. Misconceptions differ in relation to facts, their impact, the degree of reliability of the information they contain, the role of knowledge development, etc. The role of misconceptions in cognition is not clear. On the one hand, any error leads away from the truth and interferes with knowledge, but on the other hand, they can lead to the creation of problematic situations and the ability to construct a true theory. The problem of truth is the problem of distinguishing it from error. This comes down to the problem of criteria of truth. In modern epistemology, the main criterion of truth is practice taken in the process of its movement and development. At the same time, the statement that practice is the main criterion of truth does not reject other criteria, which in this regard can be considered as an addition, but at the same time perform important heuristic functions. For example, in theoretical knowledge, the logical criterion is important, the essence of which is logical completeness, subordination to the forms of logic. In natural science and philosophy, the axeological criterion plays an important role, i.e. appeal to ideological, socio-political, moral and ethical principles and attitudes.
A branch of philosophy that analyzes the nature and possibilities of knowledge, its boundaries and conditions of reliability.
Not a single philosophical system, since it claims to find the ultimate foundations of knowledge and activity, can do without studying these issues. However, theoretical-cognitive issues can be contained in a philosophical concept and in an implicit form, for example, through the formulation of an ontology that implicitly determines the possibilities and nature of knowledge. Knowledge as a problem was specifically studied already in ancient philosophy (the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle), although subordinated to ontological themes. The theory of knowledge turns out to be at the center of all the problems of Western philosophy in the 17th century: the solution of theoretical-cognitive questions becomes a necessary condition for the study of all other philosophical problems. A classical type of theory of knowledge is emerging. True, the term “theory of knowledge” itself appears quite late - only in 1832. Before this, this issue was studied under other names: analysis of the mind, study of knowledge, criticism of the mind, etc. (usually the term “epistemology” is used as synonymous with the term “theory of knowledge” "However, some philosophers, for example, K. Popper, classify only the study of scientific knowledge as epistemology). The theory of knowledge continued to occupy a central place in Western philosophy until the middle of the 20th century, when there was a need to rethink the very ways in which its problems were posed and solutions, new connections were identified between the theory of knowledge and other areas of philosophy, as well as science and culture in general. A non-classical theory of knowledge emerges. At the same time, at this time, philosophical concepts appear that either try to push theoretical-cognitive topics to the periphery of philosophy, or even abandon the entire problematic of the theory of knowledge, “overcome” it.
Understanding the nature of the problems of the theory of knowledge, its fate and possible future involves the analysis of its two types: classical and non-classical.
In the classical theory of knowledge, the following features can be distinguished.
1. Criticism. In essence, all philosophy arises as a distrust of tradition, of what is imposed on the individual by the external (natural and social) environment. Philosophy is a way of self-determination for a free person who relies only on himself, on his own powers of feeling and reason in finding the ultimate foundations of his life. Therefore, philosophy also acts as a critique of culture. The theory of knowledge is a criticism of what is considered knowledge in ordinary common sense, in the science available at a given time, in other philosophical systems. Therefore, the starting point for the theory of knowledge is the problem of illusion and reality, opinion and knowledge. This theme was already well formulated by Plato in the dialogue “Theaetetus”. What counts as knowledge? It is clear that this cannot be a generally accepted opinion, for it may be a general delusion, nor can it simply be an opinion to which the real state of affairs corresponds (i.e., a true statement), since the correspondence between the content of the statement and reality can be purely random. Plato comes to the conclusion that knowledge presupposes not only the correspondence of the content of the statement and reality, but also the validity of the former (Plato, 1993). The problem of substantiating knowledge has become central in Western European philosophy since the 17th century. This is due to the formation of an unconventional society, with the emergence of a free individual relying on himself. It is at this time that what is sometimes called the “epistemological turn” occurs. What exactly can be considered a sufficient justification for knowledge? This question is at the center of philosophical discussions. The theory of knowledge acts primarily as a critique of existing metaphysical systems and accepted systems of knowledge from the point of view of a certain ideal of knowledge. For F. Bacon and R. Descartes, this is a criticism of scholastic metaphysics and peripatetic science. For D. Berkeley, this is a criticism of materialism and a number of ideas of the new science, in particular, the ideas of absolute space and time in Newton’s physics and the ideas of infinitesimal quantities in the differential and integral calculus developed at that time (the subsequent history of science showed the correctness of Berkeley’s critical analysis of some foundations of modern science). Kant uses his epistemological construct to demonstrate the impossibility of traditional ontology, as well as of some scientific disciplines (for example, psychology as a theoretical rather than descriptive science) (Kant, 1965). The very system of Kantian philosophy, which is based on the theory of knowledge, is called critical. Criticism determines the main pathos of other epistemological constructions of the classical type. So, for example, for E. Mach, his theory of knowledge acts as a way to substantiate the ideal of descriptive science, and in connection with this, criticize the ideas of absolute space and time of classical physics (this criticism was used by A. Einstein when creating the special theory of relativity), as well as atomic theory (which was rejected by science). Logical positivists used their epistemological principle of verification to criticize a number of statements not only in philosophy, but also in science (physics, psychology), and K. Popper, using the epistemological principle of falsification, tried to demonstrate the unscientific nature of Marxism and psychoanalysis (Popper, 1983a, pp. 240-253). 2. Fundamentalism and normativism. The very ideal of knowledge on the basis of which the task of criticism is solved must be justified. In other words, we should find a foundation for all our knowledge about which there is no doubt. Anything that claims to be known but does not actually rest on this foundation must be rejected. Therefore, the search for the basis of knowledge is not identical to a simple clarification of causal dependencies between different mental formations (for example, between sensation, perception and thinking), but is aimed at identifying such knowledge, compliance with which can serve as a norm. In other words, one should distinguish between what actually takes place in the cognizing consciousness (and everything that is in it, for example, an illusion of perception or a delusion of thinking, is causally determined by something) and what must exist in order to be considered knowledge ( i.e. what corresponds to the norm). At the same time, in the history of philosophy, the normative has often been mixed with the actually existing and passed off as the latter.
In this capacity, the theory of knowledge acted not only as criticism, but also as a means of establishing certain types of knowledge, as a means of their unique cultural legitimation. Thus, according to Plato, sensory perception cannot give knowledge; one can truly know only what mathematics teaches. Therefore, from this point of view, in the strict sense of the word, there cannot be a science of empirical phenomena; the ideal of science is the geometry of Euclid. According to Aristotle, the situation is different: sensory experience says something about reality. Experimental science is possible, but it cannot be mathematical, because experience is qualitative and cannot be mathematized. New European science, which arose after Copernicus and Galileo, essentially synthesized the programs of Plato and Aristotle in the form of a program of mathematical natural science (Gaidenko, 1980), based on experiment: empirical science is possible, but not on the basis of a description of what is given in experience, but on the basis of artificial construction in an experiment (and this involves the use of mathematics) of what is being studied. This program is based on a certain theoretical-cognitive attitude: reality is given in sensory experience, but its deep mechanism is comprehended through its preparation and mathematical processing. The theory of knowledge in this case acts as a way to substantiate and legitimize a new science, which contradicts both the old tradition and common sense, and is something strange and unusual.
At the same time, a division of epistemological concepts into empiricism and rationalism occurs. From the point of view of the former, only that knowledge can be considered valid that corresponds to the maximum extent to the data of sensory experience, which is based on either sensations (sensualism), or “sensory data” (neorealism), or elementary protocol propositions (logical empiricism). The latter considered as knowledge only what fits either into the system of “innate ideas” (Descartes, Spinoza) or into the system of a priori categories and schemes of reason (Hegel, neo-Kantians). Kant tried to take a kind of third position in this debate.
Another large and fundamental division characteristic of the classical theory of knowledge is the division between psychologists and antipsychologists. Of course, all philosophers distinguished between a causal explanation of certain phenomena of consciousness and their normative justification. However, for psychologists (this includes all empiricists, as well as some supporters of the theory of “innate ideas”), the norm that ensures the connection of cognition with reality is rooted in the empirically given consciousness itself. This is a definite fact of consciousness. The theory of knowledge in this regard is based on psychology, which studies empirical consciousness. Historically, many researchers in the field of the theory of knowledge were at the same time outstanding psychologists (D. Berkeley, D. Hume, E. Mach, etc. (Berkeley, 1978; Hume, 1965; Mach, 1908)). For anti-psychologists, epistemological norms that speak not about what is, but about what should be, cannot be simply facts of individual empirical consciousness. After all, these norms are of a universal, binding and necessary nature; therefore, they cannot be obtained through a simple inductive generalization of anything, including the work of empirical consciousness and cognition. Therefore, their source should be sought in another area. For philosophical transcendentalism (Kant, neo-Kantians, phenomenology) this area is transcendental consciousness, distinct from ordinary empirical consciousness, although present in the latter. In this case, the method of theoretical-cognitive research cannot be an empirical analysis of psychological data. For Kant, this is a special transcendental method of analyzing consciousness (Kant, 1965). Phenomenologists, as a method of theoretical-cognitive research, offer a special intuitive grasp of the essential structures of consciousness and their description. The theory of knowledge in the latter case turns out to be not a theory at all in the precise sense of the word, but a descriptive discipline, although the description does not refer to empirical facts, but to a special kind of a priori phenomena (Husserl, 19946). In addition, this discipline does not depend on any others (including psychology), but precedes them. Neo-Kantians solve this problem differently: the theory of knowledge, from their point of view, tries to identify the transcendental conditions for the possibility of knowledge. To do this, a specialist in the theory of knowledge (and neo-Kantians reduce philosophy to the theory of knowledge) must subject to analysis the knowledge objectified in texts, and above all in scientific texts. The theory of knowledge appears, with this understanding, as, on the one hand, analyzing empirically given texts, and on the other, revealing as a result of this analysis not empirical, but a priori dependencies (Cassirer, 1916; Cassirer, 1906).
Anti-psychologism in the theory of knowledge was continued in a unique way in analytical philosophy. Here it was understood as the analysis of language. True, this analysis itself is no longer a transcendental procedure, but a completely empirical procedure, but no longer dealing with the facts of empirical consciousness (as was the case with psychologists), but with the facts of the “deep grammar” of language. Within the framework of this approach, the theory of knowledge was interpreted as an analytical discipline, and the old theory of knowledge was criticized, in particular by L. Wittgenstein, as an untenable “philosophy of psychology” (Wittgenstein, 1994 a, p. 24). Such epistemological principles that set the standards of knowledge, such as verification and falsification, were understood as rooted in the structures of language. In this regard, the “context of discovery” of a particular statement, which is the subject of psychological research, was clearly separated from the “context of justification” with which philosophical, epistemological analysis deals. Early analytical philosophy, especially such versions as logical positivism, shared the basic principles of classical epistemological anti-psychologism.
A peculiarly anti-psychological understanding of the theory of knowledge (epistemology) by K. Popper (Popper, 1983b, pp. 439-495). For him, it should be based on the study of the history of scientific knowledge, objectified in texts (“objective knowledge”) - in this he is similar to the neo-Kantians. The theory of knowledge (epistemology) does not deal with the individual subject. And since, according to K. Popper, there is no other subject besides the individual, epistemology has no relation to the subject in general (“epistemology without a knowing subject”). However, unlike the neo-Kantians, K. Popper believes that epistemology should use the methods of empirical science. This means, in particular, that epistemological generalizations can, in principle, be subject to revision.
3. Subjectocentrism. The very fact of the existence of the subject acts as an undoubted and indisputable basis on which a system of knowledge can be built. From Descartes' point of view, this is generally the only self-reliable fact. Everything else, including the existence of the world external to my consciousness and other people, can be doubted (thus, the criticism characteristic of the entire classical epistemological tradition is greatly strengthened by the acceptance of this thesis). Knowledge about that. what exists in consciousness is undeniable and immediate. Knowledge about things external to my consciousness is indirect (Descartes, 1950). For empiricists, the sensations given in my consciousness have such an indisputable status. For rationalists, these are a priori forms of consciousness of the subject. This is how specific problems of the classical theory of knowledge arise: how is knowledge of the external world and the consciousness of other people possible? Their solution turned out to be very difficult (although a number of such solutions were proposed), including not only for philosophy, but also for the empirical sciences about man, which accepted the subject-centric attitude of the classical theory of knowledge, in particular for psychology. For a number of philosophers and scientists who shared the fundamental position of the classical theory of knowledge regarding the immediate givenness of states of consciousness and at the same time did not doubt the same obviousness of the fact of the existence of internal objects (theoretical cognitive realism) it turned out to be difficult to reconcile these provisions. Hence the ideas of G. Helmholtz about the “hieroglyphic” relationship of sensations to reality, the “law of specific energy of the sensory organs” of I. Muller, etc. These real difficulties were essentially simply passed over as non-existent in V.I. Lenin’s work “Materialism and Empirio-criticism” , which comes from a realistic attitude about the objective existence of objects of knowledge and at the same time from the sensualist thesis that sensations underlie all knowledge (Lenin, 1957). The latter were interpreted by V.I. Lenin as “subjective images of the objective world,” which sensations in reality are not and cannot be (see sensations). On the basis of the simplified attitude adopted in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, many complex problems of the theory of knowledge simply could not be discussed. A number of representatives of the theory of knowledge proposed to “remove” the very problem of the relationship between knowledge and the external world, interpreting the consciousness of the subject as the only reality: for empiricists these are sensations, for rationalists these are a priori structures of consciousness. The world (including other people) appears in this case either as a set of sensations or as a rational construction of the subject. This position was criticized by representatives of various realistic schools (neorealism, critical realism), however, as long as cognition continued to be understood only as a fact of individual consciousness, as something that occurs only “inside” the subject (even if causally determined by the events of the external world) , the noted difficulties could not be solved.
If Descartes does not distinguish between the empirical and transcendental subjects, then such a distinction is subsequently made. Empiricists and psychologists deal with the individual subject, transcendentalists deal with the transcendental. So, for example, for Kant it is undeniable that the objects given to me in experience exist independently of me as an empirical individual. However, this experience itself is constructed by a transcendental subject. The transcendental unity of the apperception of this subject is even a guarantor of the objectivity of experience. For E. Husserl, the undoubted reality is the givenness of phenomena to transcendental consciousness. As for the relationship between these phenomena and external reality, phenomenology “refrains” from these questions. The neo-Kantians of the Freiburg school proceed from the fact that the theory of knowledge deals with “consciousness in general,” while the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism deals rather with the “spirit of science.” For the early representatives of analytical philosophy, although language is not the property of only one individual subject, the meaning of statements derives from their relationship to the subjective data of the individual's experience.
Some epistemological concepts that are classical in most respects go beyond these limits at this point. This applies, in particular, to Hegel’s epistemological system, in which an attempt was made to overcome the opposition of the subjective and objective as two separate worlds on the basis of the Absolute Spirit, which is not an individual subject (neither empirical nor transcendental). The same can be said about K. Popper’s “epistemology without a knowing subject” (Popper, 19836).
4. Science-centrism. The theory of knowledge acquired a classical form precisely in connection with the emergence of modern science and in many ways acted as a means of legitimizing this science. Therefore, most epistemological systems proceeded from the fact that scientific knowledge, as it was presented in the mathematical natural sciences of that time, is the highest type of knowledge, and what science says about the world actually exists. Many problems discussed in the theory of knowledge can only be understood in the light of this attitude. This is, for example, the problem of the so-called primary and secondary qualities discussed by T. Hobbes, D. Locke and many others, some of which (gravity, shape, location, etc.) are considered to belong to the real objects themselves, while others (color, smell, taste) etc.) are considered as arising in the consciousness of the subject when objects of the external world influence the senses. What really exists and what really does not exist, in this case, is completely determined by what classical physics said about reality. Kant's theory of knowledge can be understood as the foundation of classical Newtonian mechanics. For Kant, the fact of the existence of scientific knowledge is initially justified. Two questions of his “Critique of Pure Reason” - “how is pure mathematics possible” and “how is pure natural science possible” - do not question the justification of these scientific disciplines, but only try to identify the epistemological conditions of their possibility. This cannot be said about the third question of Kant’s “Critique” - “how is metaphysics possible” - the philosopher is trying to show that from an epistemological point of view, the latter is impossible. For neo-Kantians, the theory of knowledge is possible only as a theory of science. Logical positivists saw the task of philosophy (the analytical theory of knowledge) precisely in the analysis of the language of science, and not at all of ordinary language. According to K. Popper, epistemology should deal only with scientific knowledge.
We can say that in the last decades of the 20th century, a non-classical theory of knowledge began to gradually take shape, which differs from the classical one in all main parameters. The change in theoretical-cognitive issues and methods of work in this area is associated with a new understanding of cognition and knowledge, as well as the relationship between the theory of knowledge and other sciences about man and culture. This new understanding is in turn driven by shifts in modern culture as a whole. This type of epistemological theory is in its early stages of development. Nevertheless, some of its features can be highlighted.
1. Post-criticism. This does not mean a rejection of philosophical criticism (without which there is no philosophy itself), but only an understanding of the fundamental fact that knowledge cannot begin from scratch, based on distrust of all traditions, but presupposes the inscription of the knowing individual into one of them. Data from experience are interpreted in theoretical terms, and the theories themselves are transmitted over time and are a product of collective development. The attitude of distrust and the search for self-confidence is replaced by an attitude of trust in the results of the activities of others. This is not about blind trust, but only about the fact that any criticism presupposes a certain point of support, the acceptance of something that is not criticized at a given time and in a given context (this may become the object of criticism at another time and in a different context). This idea is well expressed by L. Wittgenstein in his later works (Wittgenstein, 19946). This means that collectively developed knowledge may contain content that is not currently recognized by the participants in the collective cognitive process. I may also have such tacit knowledge that I am not aware of regarding my own cognitive processes (Polanyi, 1985). In the history of knowledge, different traditions mutually criticize each other. This is not only a mutual criticism of myth and science, but also a criticism of one cognitive tradition from the point of view of another in science, for example, the mathematical and descriptive traditions in biology. In the process of developing knowledge, it may become clear that those cognitive traditions that seemed completely repressed or moved to the periphery of knowledge discover new meaning in a new context. So, for example, in the light of the ideas of the theory of self-organizing systems developed by I. Prigozhin, the modern heuristic meaning of some ideas of ancient Chinese mythology is revealed (Prigozhy, 1986; Stepin, 1991).
2. Refusal of fundamentalism. It is associated with the discovery of the variability of cognitive norms, the impossibility of formulating rigid and unchanging normative instructions for developing cognition. Attempts to separate knowledge from ignorance with the help of such prescriptions, undertaken in 20th-century science, in particular by logical positivism and operationalism, turned out to be untenable.
There are different reactions to this situation in modern philosophy.
Some philosophers consider it possible to talk about abandoning the theory of knowledge as a philosophical discipline. So, for example, some followers of the late L. Wittgenstein, based on the fact that in ordinary language the word “know” is used in several different senses, do not see the possibility of developing a unified theory of knowledge. Others (for example, R. Rorty (Rorty, 1996; Yulina, 1998)) identify the rejection of fundamentalism with the end of the theory of knowledge and with the displacement of epistemological research by philosophical hermeneutics.
Other philosophers (and they are the majority) consider the opportunity to provide new understanding of this discipline and in this regard they propose different research programs.
One of them is expressed in the program of “naturalized epistemology” by William Quine (Quine, 1972). According to the latter, scientific epistemology must completely abandon the issuance of prescriptions, any normativism and be reduced to a generalization of data from the physiology of higher nervous activity and psychology using the apparatus of information theory.
The famous psychologist J. Piaget developed the concept of “genetic epistemology” (Piaget, 1950). Unlike W. Quine, he emphasizes that epistemology deals with norms. But these are not the norms that the philosopher formulates based on a priori considerations, but those that he finds as a result of studying the real process of mental development of a child, on the one hand, and the history of science, on the other. The fact is that cognitive norms are not an invention of philosophers, but a real fact rooted in the structure of the psyche. The job of a specialist in the theory of knowledge is to generalize what really exists, empirically.
An even more interesting and promising program for developing a non-fundamentalist theory of knowledge in connection with the study of modern psychology is proposed within the framework of modern cognitive science. The philosopher builds some ideal model of cognitive processes, using, among other things, the results obtained in the history of the theory of knowledge. He conducts various “ideal experiments” with this model, exploring first of all the logical possibilities of this model. These models are then compared with data obtained in psychology. This comparison serves as a way to test the effectiveness of the corresponding epistemological models. At the same time, these models can be used to develop computer programs. This type of epistemological research, interacting with psychology and developments in artificial intelligence, is sometimes called “experimental epistemology” (D. Dennett et al. (198 lb)).
Thus, within the framework of the non-classical theory of knowledge, there seems to be a kind of return to psychologism. It is important to emphasize, however, that we are no longer talking about psychologism in the old sense of the word. Firstly, the theory of knowledge (like modern cognitive psychology) proceeds from the fact that certain norms of cognitive activity are built into the work of the psyche and determine the latter (and in this regard, rational grounds also act as causes of mental phenomena). Secondly, the main way to obtain data on the work of the psyche is not the inductive generalization of introspective data of consciousness, but the construction of ideal models, the consequences of which are compared with the results of psychological experiments (self-reports of subjects are used, but only subject to their critical verification and comparison with others data). By the way, in the process of theoretical-cognitive work of this kind, the important heuristic role of some ideas expressed in line with the anti-psychological tradition (in particular, a number of ideas of I. Kant and E. Husserl) is revealed.
There are other ways of understanding the tasks of epistemology in the light of the collapse of fundamentalism. A number of researchers emphasize the collective nature of acquiring knowledge (both ordinary and scientific) and the need in this regard to study the connections between subjects of cognitive activity. These connections, firstly, involve communication, secondly, they are socially and culturally mediated, and thirdly, they change historically. The norms of cognitive activity change and develop in this socio-cultural process. In this regard, a program of social epistemology is formulated (which is currently being implemented by researchers in many countries), which involves the interaction of philosophical analysis with the study of the history of knowledge in the socio-cultural context. The task of a specialist in the field of epistemology looks in this regard not as a prescription of cognitive norms obtained on the basis of some a priori considerations, but as identifying those of them that are actually used in the process of collective cognitive activity. These norms change, they are different in different spheres of knowledge (for example, in everyday and scientific knowledge, in different sciences), they are not always fully understood by those who use them, and there may be contradictions between different norms. The task of the philosopher is to identify and explicate all these relationships, establish logical connections between them, and identify the possibilities of changing them (Motroshilova, 1969; Bloor, 1983; Yudin, 1984; Scientific Knowledge, 1988). In domestic studies of the theory of knowledge, under the influence of the ideas of K. Marx on the collective and communicative nature of cognitive activity, a successfully working school of socio-cultural analysis of knowledge has developed (Ilyenkov, 1974; Bibler, 1975; Kuznetsova, 1987; Bibler, 1991; Lektorsky, 1980; Mamchur, 1987; Theory of Knowledge, 1991-1995; Markova, 1992; Mamarda-shvili, 1996; Ogurtsov, 1998; Rationality at the Crossroads, 1999; Stepin, 2000; Frolov, Yudin, 1986; Frolov, 1995).
Finally, it is necessary to name such a direction of modern non-fundamentalist theory of knowledge as evolutionary epistemology - the study of cognitive processes as a moment of the evolution of living nature and as its product (K. Lorenz, G. Vollmer, etc.). In this regard, attempts are being made to solve a number of fundamental problems in the theory of knowledge (including issues of correspondence between cognitive norms and external reality, the presence of a priori cognitive structures, etc.) based on data from modern biology (Lorenz, 1994; Vollmer, 1998; Kezin, 1994; Merkulov, 1999 ).
3. Refusal of subject-centrism. If for the classical theory of knowledge the subject acted as a kind of immediate given, and everything else was in doubt, then for the modern theory of knowledge the problem of the subject is fundamentally different. The cognizing subject is understood as initially included in the real world and the system of relations with other subjects. The question is not how to understand the knowledge of the external world (or even prove its existence) and the world of other people, but how to explain the genesis of individual consciousness based on this given fact. In this regard, important ideas were expressed by the outstanding Russian psychologist L. Vygotsky, according to which the internal subjective world of consciousness can be understood as a product of intersubjective activity, including communication. Subjectivity, thus, turns out to be a cultural-historical product. These ideas were used in a number of domestic developments of problems in the theory of knowledge (with this understanding, the difference between two modern approaches to the development of the theory of knowledge is removed: interacting with psychology and relying on the cultural-historical approach). They were also picked up and combined with the philosophical ideas of the late L. Wittgenstein by a number of Western specialists in the field of epistemology and philosophical psychology, who proposed a communicative approach to understanding the Self, consciousness and cognition (R. Harre et al. (Harre, 1984; Harre, Gillet, 1994)). The communicative approach to understanding the subject, which turned out to be very fruitful, at the same time poses a number of new questions for the theory of knowledge: is knowledge possible without the Self; Doesn’t the communicative interaction between the researcher and the subject when studying mental processes lead to the creation of the very phenomena that are being studied, etc.
4. Refusal of science-centrism. Science is the most important way of understanding reality. But not the only one. In principle, it cannot displace, for example, ordinary knowledge. In order to understand knowledge in all the diversity of its forms and types, it is necessary to study these pre-scientific and extra-scientific forms and types of knowledge. The most important thing is that scientific knowledge not only presupposes these forms, but also interacts with them. This was well shown, in particular, in the study of ordinary language in the philosophy of the late L. Wittgenstein and his followers. For example, the very identification of objects of research in scientific psychology presupposes an appeal to those phenomena that have been identified by common sense and recorded in everyday language: perception, thinking, will, desire, etc. The same, in principle, applies to all other sciences about man: sociology, philology, etc. Similar ideas were developed by E. Husserl in his later works, when he tried to show that a number of problems in modern science and European culture are a consequence of forgetting the rootedness of the original abstractions of scientific knowledge in the everyday “life world” (Husserl , 1994 a). Science is not obliged to follow the distinctions that common sense makes. But she cannot ignore them. In this regard, the interaction of everyday and scientific knowledge can be likened to the relationship between different cognitive traditions, which mutually criticize each other and in this criticism are mutually enriched (today, for example, there is a heated debate on the question of how much the data of “folk psychology” should be taken into account, recorded in everyday language, in cognitive science (see: Porus, 1982; Zotov, 1985; Filatov, 1989; Scientific and non-scientific forms of thinking, 1996; Kasavin, 1998; Kasavin, 2000; Farman, 1999)). Thus, today the theory of knowledge finds itself at the center of many human sciences, from psychology to biology and studies of the history of science. The emergence of the information society makes the problem of obtaining and assimilating knowledge one of the central issues for culture as a whole. At the same time, the problems and nature of the theory of knowledge are changing significantly. New ways are being found to discuss traditional problems. Questions arise that did not exist for the classical theory of knowledge (see also: Nikitin, 1993; Mikeshina, 1997).
THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE (epistemology, epistemology) is a section of philosophy that analyzes the nature and possibilities of knowledge, its boundaries and conditions of reliability. Not a single philosophical system, since it claims to find the ultimate foundations of knowledge and activity, can do without studying these issues. However, the problems of the theory of knowledge can be contained in a philosophical concept and in an implicit form, for example, through the formulation of an ontology that implicitly determines the possibilities and nature of knowledge. Knowledge as a problem was specifically studied already in ancient philosophy (the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle), although subordinated to ontological themes. The theory of knowledge turns out to be at the center of all the problems of Western philosophy in the 17th century: the solution of theoretical-cognitive questions becomes a necessary condition for the study of all other philosophical problems. A classical type of theory of knowledge is emerging. True, the term “theory of knowledge” itself appears quite late - only in 1832; before this, the problem was studied under other names: analysis of the mind, study of knowledge, criticism of reason, etc. (usually the term “epistemology” is used as synonymous with the term “theory of knowledge”; however, some philosophers, for example K. Popper, classify only the study of scientific knowledge as epistemology ). The theory of knowledge continued to occupy a central place in Western philosophy until the mid-20th century, when there was a need to rethink the very ways in which its problems were posed and solutions, and new connections between the theory of knowledge and other areas of philosophy, as well as science and culture in general, were identified. A non-classical theory of knowledge emerges. At the same time, at this time, philosophical concepts appear that either try to push theoretical-cognitive problematics to the periphery of philosophy, or even abandon the entire problematic of the theory of knowledge, “overcome” it. Understanding the nature of the problems of the theory of knowledge, their fate and possible future involves the analysis of its two types: classical and non-classical. In the classical theory of knowledge, the following features can be distinguished:
1. Criticism. In essence, all philosophy arises as a distrust of tradition, of what is imposed on the individual by the external (natural and social) environment. Philosophy is a way of self-determination for a free person who relies only on himself, on his own powers of feeling and reason in finding the ultimate foundations of his life. Therefore, philosophy also acts as a critique of culture. The theory of knowledge is a criticism of what is considered knowledge in ordinary common sense, in the science of a given time, in other philosophical systems. Therefore, the starting point for the theory of knowledge is the problem of illusion and reality, opinion and knowledge. This theme was already well formulated by Plato in the dialogue “Theaetetus”. What counts as knowledge? It is clear that this cannot be a generally accepted opinion, for it may be a general error; it cannot be simply an opinion to which a real state of affairs corresponds (i.e., a true statement), since the correspondence between the content of a statement and reality can be purely accidental. Plato comes to the conclusion that knowledge presupposes not only the correspondence of the content of the statement and reality, but also the validity of the former.
The problem of substantiating knowledge has become central in Western European philosophy since the 17th century. This is due to the formation of a non-traditional society, with the emergence of a free individual relying on himself. It is at this time that what is sometimes called the “epistemological turn” occurs. What exactly can be considered a sufficient justification for knowledge? This question is at the center of philosophical discussions. The theory of knowledge acts primarily as a critique of existing metaphysical systems and accepted systems of knowledge from the point of view of a certain ideal of knowledge. For F. Bacon and R. Descartes, this is a criticism of scholastic metaphysics and peripatetic science. For D. Berkeley, this is a criticism of materialism and a number of ideas of the new science, in particular the ideas of absolute space and time in Newton’s physics and the ideas of infinitesimal quantities in the differential and integral calculus developed at that time (the subsequent history of science showed the correctness of this criticism). Kant uses his epistemological construct to demonstrate the impossibility of traditional ontology, as well as some scientific disciplines (for example, psychology as a theoretical, not descriptive science). The very system of Kantian philosophy, which is based on the theory of knowledge, is called critical. Criticism determines the main pathos of other epistemological constructions of the classical type. So, for example, in E. Mach the theory of knowledge acts as a way to substantiate the ideal of descriptive science and criticize the ideas of absolute space and time of classical physics (this criticism was used by A. Einstein when creating the special theory of relativity), as well as atomic theory (which was rejected science). Logical positivists used their epistemological principle of verification to criticize a number of statements not only in philosophy, but also in science (in physics and psychology). Popper, using the epistemological principle of falsification, tried to demonstrate the unscientific nature of Marxism and psychoanalysis.
2. Fundamentalism and normativism. The very ideal of knowledge on the basis of which the task of criticism is solved must be justified. In other words, we should find a foundation for all our knowledge about which there is no doubt. Anything that claims to be known but does not actually rest on this foundation must be rejected. Therefore, the search for the basis of knowledge is not identical to a simple clarification of causal dependencies between different mental formations (for example, between sensation, perception and thinking), but is aimed at identifying such knowledge, compliance with which can serve as a norm. One must distinguish between what actually takes place in the cognizing consciousness (and everything that is in it, for example, an illusion of perception or a delusion of thinking, is causally determined by something), and what must be in order to be considered knowledge (i.e. i.e. what corresponds to the norm). At the same time, in the history of philosophy, the normative has often been mixed with the actually existing and passed off as the latter.
In this capacity, the theory of knowledge acted not only as criticism, but also as a means of establishing certain types of knowledge, as a means of their unique cultural legitimation. Thus, according to Plato, sensory perception cannot give knowledge; one can truly know only what mathematics teaches. Therefore, in the strict sense of the word, there cannot be a science of empirical phenomena; the ideal of science is Euclid’s geometry. According to Aristotle, this is not the case: sensory experience says something about reality. Experimental science is possible, but it cannot be mathematical, because experience is qualitative and cannot be mathematized. New European science, which arose after Copernicus and Galileo, essentially synthesized the programs of Plato and Aristotle in the form of a program of mathematical natural science based on experiment: empirical science is possible, but not on the basis of a description of what is given in experience, but on the basis of artificial construction in experiment (and this involves the use of mathematics) of what is being studied. This program is based on a certain theoretical-cognitive attitude: reality is given in sensory experience, but its deep mechanism is comprehended through its preparation and mathematical processing. The theory of knowledge in this case acts as a way to substantiate and legitimize a new science, which contradicted both the old tradition and common sense, and was something strange and unusual. At the same time, a division of epistemological concepts into empiricism and rationalism occurs. From the point of view of empiricism, only that knowledge can be considered valid that corresponds to the maximum extent to the data of sensory experience, which is based on either sensations (sensualism), or “sensory data” (neorealism), or elementary protocol propositions (logical empiricism). Rationalism considered as knowledge only what fits into the system of “innate ideas” (Descartes, Spinoza) or into the system of categories and schemes (Hegel, neo-Kantians). Kant tried to take a kind of third position in this debate.
Another fundamental division characteristic of the classical theory of knowledge is the division between psychologists and antipsychologists. Of course, all philosophers distinguished between a causal explanation of certain phenomena of consciousness and their normative justification. However, for psychologists (this includes all empiricists, as well as some supporters of the theory of “innate ideas”), the norm that ensures the connection of cognition with reality is rooted in the empirically given consciousness itself: this is a certain fact of consciousness, and the theory of cognition in this regard is based on psychology . Historically, many researchers in the field of the theory of knowledge were at the same time outstanding psychologists (D. Berkeley, D. Hume, E. Mach, etc.). For antipsychologists, epistemological norms that speak not of what is, but of what should be, cannot be simply facts of individual empirical consciousness. These norms are of a universal, binding and necessary nature; therefore, they cannot be obtained through a simple inductive generalization of anything, including the work of empirical knowledge. Therefore, their source should be sought in another area. For philosophical transcendentalism (Kant, neo-Kantians, phenomenology) this area is transcendental consciousness, distinct from ordinary empirical consciousness, although present in the latter. In this case, the method of theoretical-cognitive research cannot be an empirical analysis of psychological data. For Kant, this is a special transcendental method of analyzing consciousness. Phenomenologists, as a method of theoretical-cognitive research, offer a special intuitive grasp of the essential structures of consciousness and their description. The theory of knowledge in this case turns out to be not a theory at all in the precise sense of the word, but a descriptive discipline, although the description in this case does not refer to empirical facts, but to a special kind of a priori phenomena. In addition, this discipline does not depend on any others (including psychology), but precedes them. Neo-Kantians solve this problem differently: from their point of view, the theory of knowledge tries to identify the transcendental conditions for the possibility of knowledge. To do this, a specialist in the theory of knowledge (at the same time, they reduce philosophy to the theory of knowledge) must subject to analysis the knowledge objectified in texts (primarily scientific ones). The theory of knowledge in this case acts as, on the one hand, analyzing empirically given texts, and on the other hand, revealing as a result of this analysis not empirical, but a priori dependencies.
Antipsychologism in the theory of knowledge was continued in a unique way in analytical philosophy, where it was understood as the analysis of language. True, this analysis itself is no longer a transcendental procedure, but a completely empirical procedure, but no longer dealing with the facts of empirical consciousness (as was the case with psychologists), but with the facts of the “deep grammar” of language. Within the framework of this approach, the theory of knowledge was interpreted as an analytical discipline, and the old theory of knowledge was criticized (in particular by L. Wittgenstein) as an untenable “philosophy of psychology.” Such epistemological principles that set the standards of knowledge, such as verification and falsification, were understood as rooted in the structures of language. In this regard, the “context of discovery” of a particular statement, which is the subject of psychological research, was clearly separated from the “context of justification” with which philosophical, epistemological analysis deals. Early analytical philosophy, especially its versions such as logical positivism, shares the basic principles of classical epistemological antipsychologism. A peculiar anti-psychological understanding of the theory of knowledge is characteristic of K. Popper. For him, it should be based on the study of the history of scientific knowledge, objectified in texts (“objective knowledge”) - in this he is similar to the neo-Kantians. The theory of knowledge does not deal with the individual subject. And since, according to Popper, there is no other subject besides the individual, the theory of knowledge has no relation to the subject in general (“epistemology without a knowing subject”). However, unlike the neo-Kantians, Popper believes that the theory of knowledge must use the methods of empirical science. This means, in particular, that epistemological generalizations can, in principle, be subject to revision.
3. Subjectocentrism. The very fact of the existence of the subject acts as an undoubted and indisputable basis on which a system of knowledge can be built. From Descartes' point of view, this is generally the only self-reliable fact. Everything else, including the existence of the world external to my consciousness and other people, can be doubted (i.e., criticism, characteristic of the entire classical epistemological tradition, is greatly strengthened by the acceptance of this thesis). Knowledge of what exists in consciousness is undeniable and immediate; knowledge about things external to my consciousness is indirect. For empiricists, the sensations given in my consciousness have such an indisputable status. For rationalists, these are a priori forms of consciousness of the subject. This is how specific problems of the classical theory of knowledge arise: how is knowledge of the external world and the consciousness of other people possible? Their solution turned out to be very difficult not only for philosophy, but also for the empirical sciences about man, which accepted the subject-centric attitude of the classical theory of knowledge (in particular, for psychology). For a number of philosophers and scientists who shared the fundamental position of the classical theory of knowledge regarding the immediate givenness of states of consciousness and at the same time did not doubt the same obviousness of the fact of the existence of external objects (cognitive-theoretical materialism, realism), it turned out to be difficult to reconcile these provisions. Hence the ideas of G. Helmholtz about the “hieroglyphic” relationship of sensations to reality, the “law of specific energy of the sensory organs” of I. Müller, etc. These difficulties did not exist for V. I. Lenin, who in his work “Materialism and Empirio-criticism” proceeded from a realistic attitude about the objective existence of objects of knowledge and at the same time from the thesis that sensations underlie all knowledge. The latter have been interpreted as “subjective images of the objective world,” which in reality they are not. A number of representatives of the theory of knowledge proposed to “remove” the very problems of the relationship between knowledge and the external world, interpreting the consciousness of the subject as the only reality: for empiricists these are sensations, for rationalists these are a priori structures of consciousness. The world (including other people) appears in this case either as a set of sensations or as a rational construction of the subject. This position has been criticized by representatives of various realistic schools (neorealism, critical realism), however, as long as cognition is understood only as a fact of individual consciousness, as something happening “inside” the subject (even if causally conditioned by events in the external world), noted difficulties cannot be resolved. If Descartes did not distinguish between the empirical and transcendental subjects, then in the subsequent development of philosophy such a distinction was made. Empiricists and psychologists deal with the individual subject, transcendentalists deal with the transcendental. So, for example, for Kant it is undeniable that the objects given to me in experience exist independently of me as an empirical individual. However, this experience itself is constructed by a transcendental subject. The transcendental unity of the apperception of this subject is even a guarantor of the objectivity of experience. For Husserl, the undoubted reality is the givenness of phenomena to transcendental consciousness. As for the relationship between these phenomena and external reality, phenomenology “refrains” from these questions. The neo-Kantians of the Baden school proceed from the fact that the theory of knowledge deals with “consciousness in general,” while the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism deals rather with the “spirit of science.” According to the early representatives of analytical philosophy, statements receive meaning from their relationship to the subjective data of the individual's experience, although language is not the property of only one individual subject. Some epistemological concepts that are classical in most respects go beyond these limits at this point. This applies, in particular, to Hegel’s epistemological system, in which an attempt was made to overcome the opposition of the subjective and objective as two separate worlds on the basis of the Absolute Spirit, which is not an individual subject (neither empirical nor transcendental); the same can be said about Popper's “epistemology without a knowing subject.”
4. Science-centrism. The theory of knowledge acquired a classical form precisely in connection with the emergence of modern science and in many ways acted as a means of legitimizing this science. Therefore, most epistemological systems proceeded from the fact that scientific knowledge, as it was presented in the mathematical natural sciences of this time, is the highest type of knowledge, and what science says about the world actually exists. Many problems discussed in the theory of knowledge can only be understood in the light of this attitude. This is, for example, the problem of the so-called discussed by T. Hobbes, D. Locke and many others. primary and secondary qualities. The primary ones (heaviness, shape, location, etc.) are considered to belong to the real objects themselves, and the secondary ones (color, smell, taste, etc.) are considered to arise in the consciousness of the subject when objects of the external world influence the senses. What really exists and what really does not exist, in this case, is completely determined by what classical physics said about reality. Kant's theory of knowledge can be understood as the foundation of classical Newtonian mechanics. For Kant, the fact of the existence of scientific knowledge is initially justified. The two questions of his Critique of Pure Reason are “How is pure mathematics possible?” and “How is pure natural science possible?” - do not question the justification of these scientific disciplines, but only try to identify the theoretical-cognitive conditions of their possibility. The same cannot be said about the third question of Kant’s Critique - “How is metaphysics possible?” The philosopher is trying to show that from an epistemological point of view the latter is impossible. For neo-Kantians, the theory of knowledge is possible only as a theory of science. Logical positivists saw the task of philosophy (the analytical theory of knowledge) precisely in the analysis of the language of science, and not at all of ordinary language. According to Popper, epistemology should deal only with scientific knowledge. In the last decades of the 20th century, a non-classical theory of knowledge gradually emerged, which differs from the classical one in all main parameters. The change in theoretical-cognitive issues and methods of work in this area is associated with a new understanding of cognition and knowledge, as well as the relationship between the theory of knowledge and other sciences about man and culture. The new understanding, in turn, is due to shifts in modern culture as a whole. This type of theory of knowledge is in the initial stage of development and has the following features:
1. Post-criticism. This does not mean a rejection of philosophical criticism (without which there is no philosophy itself), but only an understanding of the fundamental fact that knowledge cannot begin from scratch, based on distrust of all traditions, but presupposes the inscription of the knowing individual into one of them. Data from experience are interpreted in theoretical terms, and the theories themselves are transmitted over time and are a product of collective development. The attitude of distrust and the search for self-confidence is replaced by an attitude of trust in the results of the activities of others. This is not about blind trust, but only about the fact that any criticism presupposes a certain point of support, the acceptance of something that is uncriticized at a given time and in a given context (this may become the object of criticism at another time and in a different context). This idea is well expressed by L. Wittgenstein in his later works. Collectively developed knowledge may contain content that is not currently recognized by the participants in the collective cognitive process. I may also have such tacit knowledge that I am not aware of regarding my own cognitive processes. In the history of knowledge, different traditions mutually criticize each other. This is not only mutual criticism of myth and science, but also criticism of each other by different cognitive traditions in science, for example. mathematical and descriptive traditions in biology. In the process of developing knowledge, it may become clear that those cognitive traditions that seemed completely repressed or moved to the periphery of knowledge discover new meaning in a new context. So, for example, in the light of the ideas of the theory of self-organizing systems developed by I. Prigogine, the modern heuristic meaning of some ideas of ancient Chinese mythology is revealed.
2. Refusal of fundamentalism. It is associated with the discovery of variability in cognitive norms and the inability to formulate strict normative instructions for developing cognition. Attempts to separate knowledge from ignorance using such precepts in 20th century science, particularly logical positivism and operationalism, failed.
There are different reactions to this situation in modern philosophy. Some philosophers consider it possible to talk about abandoning the theory of knowledge as a philosophical discipline. For example, some followers of the late Wittgenstein, based on the fact that in ordinary language the word “know” is used in several different senses, do not see the possibility of developing a unified theory of knowledge. Others (for example, R. Rorty) identify the rejection of fundamentalism with the end of the theory of knowledge and with the displacement of epistemological research by philosophical hermeneutics. A number of philosophers (and they are the majority) consider it possible to give a new understanding of this discipline and in this regard they propose various research programs, for example. W. Quine’s “naturalized epistemology” program. According to Quine, scientific epistemology must completely abandon the issuance of prescriptions, any normativism and be reduced to a generalization of data from the physiology of higher nervous activity and psychology using the apparatus of information theory. J. Piaget developed the concept of “genetic epistemology”. Unlike Quine, he emphasizes that epistemology deals with norms. But these are not the norms that the philosopher formulates based on a priori considerations, but those that he finds as a result of studying the real process of mental development of a child, on the one hand, and the history of science, on the other.
An even more interesting and promising program for developing a non-fundamentalist theory of knowledge in connection with the study of modern psychology is proposed within the framework of modern cognitive science. The philosopher builds some ideal model of cognitive processes, using, among other things, the results obtained in the history of the theory of knowledge. He conducts various “ideal experiments” with this model, exploring first of all the logical possibilities of this model. Then, based on this model, specific mathematical programs for the computer are developed, and the operation of this computer is compared with data obtained in psychology. This comparison serves as a way to test the effectiveness of both computer representations of the work of the psyche (from the point of view of modern cognitive psychology, it is cognitive processes that underlie all mental processes) and the corresponding cognitive theoretical models. This type of epistemological research, interacting with psychology and developments in the field of artificial intelligence, has been called “experimental epistemology.” Thus, within the framework of the non-classical theory of knowledge, there is a peculiar return to psychologism. However, we are not talking about psychologism in the old sense of the word. Firstly, the theory of knowledge (like modern cognitive psychology) proceeds from the fact that certain norms of cognitive activity are, as it were, built into the work of the psyche and determine the latter (and in this regard, rational grounds also act as causes of mental phenomena). Secondly, the main way to obtain data about the work of the psyche is not an inductive generalization of introspectively given facts of consciousness, but the construction of ideal models, the consequences of which are compared with the results of psychological experiments (self-reports of subjects are used, but only subject to their critical verification and comparison with other data). In the process of theoretical-cognitive work of this kind, the important heuristic role of some ideas expressed in line with the rationalistic anti-psychological tradition (in particular, a number of ideas of I. Kant and E. Husserl) is revealed.
There are other ways of understanding the tasks of epistemology in the light of the collapse of fundamentalism. A number of researchers emphasize the collective nature of acquiring knowledge (both ordinary and scientific) and the need in this regard to study the connections between subjects of cognitive activity. These connections, firstly, involve communication, secondly, they are socially and culturally mediated, and thirdly, they change historically. The norms of cognitive activity change and develop in this socio-cultural process. In this regard, a program of social epistemology is formulated (which is now being implemented by researchers in many countries), which involves the interaction of philosophical analysis with the study of the history of knowledge and its socio-cultural research. The task of a specialist in the field of epistemology looks in this context not as prescribing cognitive norms obtained on the basis of some a priori considerations, but as identifying those of them that are actually used in the process of collective cognitive activity. These norms change, they are different in different spheres of knowledge (for example, in everyday and scientific knowledge, in different sciences), they are not always fully understood by those who use them, and there may be contradictions between different norms. The task of the philosopher is to identify and explicate all these relationships, establish logical connections between them, and identify possibilities for changing them. In domestic research into the theory of knowledge, under the influence of K. Marx’s ideas on the collective and communicative nature of cognitive activity, a school of socio-cultural analysis of knowledge has emerged.
Finally, it is necessary to name such a direction of modern non-fundamentalist theory of knowledge as evolutionary epistemology - the study of cognitive processes as a moment of the evolution of living nature and as its product (K. Lorenz, G. Vollmer, etc.). In this regard, attempts are being made to solve a number of fundamental problems in the theory of knowledge (including issues of correspondence between cognitive norms and external reality, the presence of a priori cognitive structures, etc.) based on data from modern biology.
3. Refusal of subject-centrism. If for the classical theory of knowledge the subject acted as a kind of immediate given, and everything else was in doubt, then for the modern theory of knowledge the problem is fundamentally different. The cognizing subject is understood as initially included in the real world and the system of relations with other subjects. The question is not how to understand knowledge (or even prove the existence) of the external world and the world of other people, but how to explain the genesis of individual consciousness based on this objective reality. In this regard, important ideas were expressed by the outstanding Russian psychologist L. Vygotsky, according to which the internal subjective world of consciousness can be understood as a product of intersubjective activity, including communication. Subjectivity, therefore, turns out to be a cultural-historical product. These ideas were used in a number of domestic developments of problems in the theory of knowledge (with this understanding, the difference between two modern approaches to the development of the theory of knowledge is removed - interacting with psychology and relying on the cultural-historical approach). They were also picked up and combined with the philosophical ideas of the late Wittgenstein by a number of Western specialists in the field of epistemology and philosophical psychology, who proposed a communicative approach to understanding the Self, consciousness and cognition (R. Harré and others). The communicative approach to understanding the subject, which turned out to be very fruitful, at the same time poses a number of new theoretical and epistemological questions: is consciousness possible without the Self; Doesn’t the communicative interaction between the researcher and the subject when studying mental processes lead to the creation of the very phenomena that are being studied, etc.
4. Refusal of science-centrism. Science is the most important way of understanding reality. But not the only one. In principle, it cannot displace, for example, ordinary knowledge.
In order to understand knowledge in all the diversity of its forms and types, it is necessary to study these pre-scientific and extra-scientific forms and types of knowledge. The most important thing is that scientific knowledge not only presupposes these forms, but also interacts with them. This has been well shown, in particular, in the study of ordinary language in the philosophy of the late Wittgenstein and his followers. For example, the very identification of objects of research in scientific psychology presupposes an appeal to those phenomena that have been identified by common sense and recorded in everyday language: perception, thinking, will, desire, etc. The same, in principle, applies to all other human sciences: sociology, philology, etc. Similar ideas were developed by E. Husserl in his later works, when he tried to show that a number of problems in modern science and European culture are a consequence of forgetting the fact that the original abstractions of scientific knowledge are rooted in everyday “life.” world." Science is not obliged to follow the distinctions that common sense makes. But she cannot ignore them. In this regard, the interaction of everyday and scientific knowledge can be likened to the relationship between different cognitive traditions, which mutually criticize each other and in this criticism are mutually enriched (today, for example, there is a heated debate on the question of how much data from “folk psychology” should be taken into account , recorded in everyday language, in cognitive science).
Thus, the theory of knowledge finds itself at the center of many human sciences - from psychology to biology and studies of the history of science. The emergence of the information society makes the problem of obtaining and assimilating knowledge one of the central issues for culture as a whole.
V. A. Lektorsky
New philosophical encyclopedia. In four volumes. / Institute of Philosophy RAS. Scientific ed. advice: V.S. Stepin, A.A. Guseinov, G.Yu. Semigin. M., Mysl, 2010, vol.IV, p. 47-52.
Literature:
Descartes R. Reasoning about the method. Metaphysical reflections, - In the book: He. Favorite works. M., 1950; Hume D. Studies on human cognition, - Op. in 2 vols., vol. 2. M., 1965; Mach E. Analysis of sensations and the relationship of the physical to the mental. M., 1908; Kant I. Prolegomena to any future metaphysics. - Op. in 6 volumes, volume 4, part 1. M., 1965; Husserl E. Philosophy as a strict science. Novocherkassk, 1994; Kassirer E. Cognition and reality. St. Petersburg, 1996; Potter K. Epistemology without a cognizing subject, - In the book: He. Logic and the growth of scientific knowledge. M., 1983; Polanyi M. Personal knowledge. On the way to post-critical philosophy. M., 1985; Piaget J. Selected psychological works. M., 1969; Wittgenstein L. Philosophical works. M., 1994; ToulminS. Human understanding. M., 1984; Lorenz K. Evolution and a priori.- “Bulletin of Moscow State University. Ser. Philosophy", 1994, No. 5; Rorty R. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. M., 1996; Khila T.I. Modern theories of knowledge. M., 1965; Lektorsky V. A. Subject, object, cognition. M., 1980; Epistemology in the system of philosophical worldview. M., 1983; Mikeshina L.A., Openkov M.Yu. New images of knowledge and reality. M., 1997; Stenin V. S. Theoretical knowledge. M., 2000; Cassirer E. Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenshaft der neueren Zeit. V., 1906-20; Quine W. V. O. Epistemology Naturalised.- The Psychology of Knowing. N.Y.-P., 1972; PiagetJ. Introduction a l "epistemologie genetique, T. 1-3. P., 1950; Dennett D. Artificial Intelligence as Philosophy and Psycho-logy. - Idem. Brainstorms. Cambr. (Mass.), 1981; Bloor D. Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge. N. Y., 1983; Scientific Knowledge Socialized. Bdpst, 1988; Harre R, Gillett G. The Discursive Mind. L., 1994.
- Drying organic liquids Wine spirit and its relatives
- Laboratory work: Production of methane and experiments with it Calcium carbide was used to dehydrate ethanol
- Model of error in the form of a random elementary function Mathematical model of measurement results of measurement error
- Questions for subject and object Basic geometric shapes