1 what is the specificity of the theoretical and cognitive problems. "Formation and essence of a systematic approach

NON-CLASSICAL EPISTEMOLOGY AND COGNITIVE THEORETICAL PARADIGMS OF THE 20TH CENTURY

V.E. Bydanov

The problem of cognition is the question of the reality of knowledge, and, consequently, the question of the relation of human cognition to the external world and the elucidation of reality itself as an internal form of knowledge belongs to the enduring problems of human existence. How people make their history - both individual history and the history of human communities - depends to a large extent on conscious self-awareness and on critical thinking about what knowledge is, where it comes from, and what results it can achieve. The philosophy of knowledge in itself is one of those historical institutions by which people verify their activity.

Not a single philosophical system, in so far as it claims to find the ultimate foundations of knowledge and activity, can do without studying the questions of the nature and possibility of knowledge, its boundaries and conditions of certainty. However, epistemological problems 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. The definition of the category "cognition" is impossible outside the epistemic picture of the world and the general epistemic theory.

For correct reflection it is necessary to demarcate cognition and the theory of cognition. What is meant by the term "theory of knowledge" is the totality of theories of knowledge. Theories of knowledge and, in particular, various epistemological concepts exist both as components of philosophical constructions and within the framework of individual sciences. As a branch of philosophy, the theory of knowledge is a non-empirical doctrine of the origin, essence, development, structure and functions of knowledge, as well as its possibilities and limits. The philosophical theory of knowledge is, on the one hand, a historical form of knowledge, and on the other hand, a speculative theory that interprets the foundations and driving forces of knowledge, phylogenetic and ontogenetic patterns of the relationship between knowledge and practice, in particular, between theory and practice, as well as the relationship between theory and experience, theory and experiment, subject-object relations, the relationship of cognition to truth, and, finally, the patterns of analytic and synthetic functions of cognition - both epistemic and normative (critical, evaluative, regulatory). In accordance with various ontological, epistemological and methodological premises and orientations, certain theories of knowledge solve particular problems in different and often opposite ways.

Epistemology and epistemology are elements of world and human pictures and, at the same time, systems of their justification; they are part of the third world of objective knowledge, the relation to which human knowledge is determined by the semantics of the picture of the world. They are - explicitly or implicitly - the basis of the concepts of "reality" through which the reality of knowledge is constituted, within which alone reference becomes possible. They always play the role of "frame theories" necessary for the choice of ontology.

Cognition is an ideal form in which humanity, comprehending its relationship to nature and the historically established relations between people, seeks in the course of the logical-historical process of approaching the truth to find an answer to the main question of its existence - to the question of how true judgments about being and beings and how they can be used to justify a truly human practice. Cognition is a way of actualizing the problem, the formulation of which is initially due to the ontological mismatch of the object and

subject, being and consciousness, the world-in-itself and the world-for-us. Cognition is a sensory-rational cognitive act in which recognition of the phenomena of reality and reflective knowledge that distinguishes between subject and object form a unity. Cognition is the resultant of cognitive acts carried out by cognizing subjects; it is a process of increasing rationality of the human race.

Cognition is the result of activity, which is determined by the following factors: 1) the reality of material and ideal phenomena that transform into objects of knowledge in the course of the cognitive process; 2) internal structure and dynamics of knowledge; 3) socio-historical relations that make practice necessary and possible and form a frame open to the past and future, within which the possibilities of cognition are realized.

Knowledge constitutes reality, coupled with external reality and representing a universe of meanings. This process unfolds in the history of civilization, being realized at various historical levels. In the course of this process, the structure and functions of cognition are constantly changing, and, consequently, the relationship between its internal (ideal-logical) and external (material-social) history. This change is associated with the continuous expansion of human knowledge about the world and about himself, with the expansion of the area of ​​competence of individual consciousness, its cognitive capabilities.

The variety of interpretations of knowledge both in the history of philosophy and in the history of science is in itself a form of expression of the historicity of knowledge, its structure and functions. Epistemological attitudes are determined in various ways by general (framework) theories and practical interests, in particular, those in the analysis of which they are used: the concept of knowledge is, firstly, relative in theoretical terms, and secondly, it is relative in social terms; it necessarily includes the dependence of its content on how reality is understood and, in particular, human life; it is influenced by the idea of ​​how the worldview system relates to reality. In this regard, some researchers, such as Kraft, point out that the formulation of the concept of knowledge in general can be nothing more than the result of postulation, and its suitability is determined by conventionality.

Historically, the theory of knowledge has been at the center of all the problems of Western philosophy since the 17th century. Since that period, the solution of epistemological questions has become a necessary condition for the study of all other philosophical problems. During this period, the classical type of the theory of knowledge takes shape, the apex and end of which are the epistemologies of Kant and Hegel. Starting from the second half of the XIX century. and until the middle of the twentieth century, the theory of knowledge continues to occupy a central place in Western philosophy, but the foundations and elements of the non-classical theory of knowledge are gradually being formed. And already in the last third of the twentieth century. there is a need to rethink the very ways of posing problems and methods of solving the classical theory of knowledge, new connections are revealed between the theory of knowledge and other areas of philosophy, as well as science and culture in general. This process is accompanied by the emergence of philosophical concepts that either declare epistemology to be marginal philosophical knowledge, or declare it to be "overcome", through the rejection of all its problems (for example, in R. Rorty's neopragmatism). Those. an attempt is made to abandon epistemic rationality, which is a scale for measuring the rationality of human actions.

Understanding the nature of the problems of the modern theory of knowledge, its fate and possible future involves an analysis with the allocation of its two types: classical and non-classical, in which there are different interpretations of the cognitive

process. In the classical theory of knowledge, the following features are distinguished (for example, V.A. Lektorsky): 1) criticism as a criticism of tradition, with the problem of substantiating knowledge, which has become central in Western European philosophy since the 17th century. (F. Bacon, R. Descartes, J. Berkeley and others). Criticism determines the main pathos of epistemological constructions of the classical type (for example, I. Kant, E. Mach, and others).

2) Fundamentalism and normativism, which imply that the very ideal of knowledge, on the basis of which the task of criticism is solved, must be justified, i.e. we must find a foundation of all our knowledge about which there is no doubt. All that claims to be knowledge, but does not really rest on this foundation, must be rejected. At the same time, one should distinguish between what actually takes place in the cognizing consciousness, and what should be in order to be considered knowledge (ie, what corresponds to the norm). In this capacity, the classical theory of knowledge acted not only as a critique, but also as a means of affirming certain types of knowledge, as a means of their peculiar cultural legitimation. During this period, there is a division of epistemological concepts into empiricism and rationalism, into psychologists and antipsychologists.

3) Subjectocentrism, i.e. the very fact of the existence of the subject acts as an undeniable and indisputable basis on which a system of knowledge can be built.

4) Science-centrism. This includes the understanding that the theory of knowledge acquired a classical form precisely in connection with the emergence of modern science (classical scientific rationality) and in many respects acted as a means of legitimizing this science. Therefore, most epistemological systems proceeded from the fact that it is scientific knowledge, as it was presented in the mathematical natural sciences of that time, that 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.

In the 60s. In the twentieth century, a non-classical theory of knowledge gradually begins to take shape, which differs from the classical one in all basic parameters. The change in epistemological 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 of man and culture. This new understanding, in turn, is due to shifts in modern culture as a whole, which was catalyzed by postmodernity.

In the theories of knowledge of the twentieth century, a wide range of concepts is presented, fixing the hierarchical organization of knowledge in different ways. The main difference between them is the assessment of the "rigidity" of the structure of knowledge, its suitability for any cognitive circumstances, its, so to speak, universality. The question is to learn how to navigate in those real cognitive contexts where certain epistemological and epistemological approaches, norms and criteria are effective (pragmatization).

This kind of task does not imply the relativization of epistemological approaches, but, on the contrary, indicates the presence in cognitive activity of some core attitudes (for example, empiricism), the presence of which alone allows us to raise the question of the appropriateness of referring to certain standards and norms in cognitive practice. , as well as to the epistemological positions behind these norms. In this appropriateness or inappropriateness of the use of certain epistemological norms, the objective grounds for the cognitive inquiry addressed to modern epistemology and epistemology, the objective grounds for its functional boundaries, emerge precisely. These

boundaries are contextual, and in order to reveal the essential functions of epistemology, it is necessary to clarify the context of its cognitive functioning.

Non-classical epistemology normalizes cognitive activity, i.e. represents the norms on the basis of which a critical-reflexive assessment and corresponding correction of cognitive practice becomes possible. Non-classical epistemology reveals the essential characteristics of a person's cognitive attitude to the world and, generalizing them, develops a concept of the nature of cognition, its capabilities and boundaries (mainly on a naturalistic basis). On this conceptual basis, it forms the conditions for the truth of knowledge - various kinds of norms, standards and criteria, the observance of which is a necessary condition for a true assessment of knowledge.

It is possible to single out some general features of non-classical epistemology, represented by a number of epistemological complexes.

1) Post-criticism is the preservation of philosophical criticism, but with the simultaneous recognition of the fundamental fact that cognition cannot start from scratch, on the basis of distrust of all traditions, which implies that the cognizing subject inevitably fits into one of them. Any criticism should imply a certain point of support, the acceptance of something that is not criticized at a given time and in a given context (this can become an object of criticism at another time and in a different context) (the ideas of the late L. Wittgenstein). This means that in the collectively developed knowledge there may be such content that is not realized at the moment by the participants in the collective or individual cognitive process (M. Polanyi).

2) Rejection of fundamentalism. As a result of research in logical positivism and operationalism, it is associated with the discovery of the variability of cognitive norms, the impossibility of formulating rigid and unchanging normative prescriptions for developing cognition. But here there is a range of opinions from the neopragmatism of R. Rorty with his declaration of the end of the theory of knowledge and its replacement by philosophical hermeneutics to partial preservation, but in a new interpretation, of epistemology, which found its expression in the naturalistic theoretical-cognitive programs (cognitive science) of "naturalized epistemology" W. Quine, "genetic epistemology" by J. Piaget, "evolutionary epistemology" by K. Popper, K. Lorenz, G. Folmer. Thus, within the framework of the non-classical theory of knowledge, there seems to be a kind of return to psychologism, but at a higher level.

But here, non-classical epistemology can face the danger associated with the fact that the philosophical ideal of cognition can be replaced by a natural science one. The methods and results of natural science alone, but not of philosophy, can now be considered scientific. With a change in the cognitive ideal, a person's idea of ​​himself also undergoes fundamental changes. The idealistic concept, from the point of view of which he is a spiritual being, to a certain extent accidentally enclosed in a bodily shell, gives way to the naturalistic concept, which interprets him as part of nature, and the spiritual and cultural achievements of man are declared biological, based on the structure and evolution of his body and inherent his innate patterns of behavior.

3) Refusal of subjectocentrism. In non-classical epistemology, the cognizing subject is not a direct given, but is initially included in the real world and the system of relations with other subjects. And here the main question becomes 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 givenness.

4) Rejection of science-centrism. Science is the most important way of knowing reality. But scientific knowledge is fallibilistic (K. Popper) and discrete. In principle, it cannot displace other types of knowledge, for example, those related to the world of everyday life (ordinary knowledge, pre-scientific knowledge, etc.). Within the framework of post-nonclassical rationality, scientific knowledge must inevitably interact with them, thereby asserting the cognitive pluralism of various cognitive traditions, their mutual criticism, partial convergence and competition.

In general, the most important trend of epistemological paradigms of the second half of the twentieth century. is the desire for a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach in the development of the entire set of epistemological problems. A wide range of definitions of non-classical epistemology: "genetic", "evolutionary", "naturalistic", "historical", "dynamic", "experimental", etc. - expresses not only important features in the positions of various authors, but also the common fact that their unites: confidence in the necessity and fruitfulness of a systemic concrete scientific analysis of all aspects of the process of cognition and its mechanisms.

The specificity of the philosophical approach to knowledge
The theory of knowledge (or epistemology, philosophy of knowledge) is a branch of philosophy in which the nature of knowledge and its possibilities, the relationship of knowledge to reality are studied, the conditions for the reliability and truth of knowledge are revealed.
The term "epistemology" comes from the Greek words gnosis - knowledge and logos - concept, doctrine and means "the concept of knowledge", "the doctrine of knowledge". And although the term "theory of knowledge" was introduced into philosophy relatively recently by the Scottish philosopher J. Ferrer (in 1854), the doctrine of knowledge began to be developed since the time of Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle.
In the subject of philosophy as universal in the system "world - man" the correlate of epistemology is cognitive subject-object relations. Gnoseology studies the universal characterizing human cognitive activity. In her competence is the second side of the main question of philosophy, most often expressed by the question "Do we know the world?". There are many other questions in epistemology, the disclosure of which is associated with other categories and concepts: “consciousness”, “truth”, “practice” and “knowledge”, “subject” and “object”, “material” and “ideal”, “human ” and “computer”, “sensual”, “rational”, “intuition”, “faith”, etc. Each of these concepts, expressing spiritual or material phenomena, is autonomous and is associated with a special worldview problem. However, in the theory of knowledge, all of them turn out to be united with each other through the concept of "truth", with which they are somehow related.
The theory of knowledge studies the universal in human cognitive activity, regardless of what this activity itself is: everyday or specialized, professional, scientific or artistic. In this regard, it is incorrect to identify the theory of knowledge with epistemology (the theory of scientific knowledge), which is allowed in a number of philosophical publications, including the Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary. This identification is widespread in modern Western philosophical literature. However, it is advisable to distinguish between these concepts, linking epistemology only with the analysis of scientific knowledge and including it in epistemology. Here we join the opinion of A. I. Rakitov that the scientific knowledge of the world has a number of specific features that we do not find in everyday, artistic, religious and other knowledge; and since studies of cognitive procedures and operations, criteria and methods for the formation of abstractions carried out in scientific activity are of exceptional interest for the theory of knowledge, it is advisable to single out a special level or section in it, in which the problems of scientific knowledge proper will be concentrated - epistemology (“Philosophical problems Science, Systemic Approach", Moscow, 1977, pp. 23 - 24). The concepts related to epistemology include the concepts of empirical and theoretical levels of cognition, the concepts of the style of scientific thinking, the method of scientific cognition, etc. All of them are also concepts of the theory of knowledge.
The subject of epistemology is, along with other aspects of subject-object relations, the specifics of scientific knowledge, the specifics of ordinary, everyday knowledge, the specifics of other types of human cognitive activity. But consideration of these types of knowledge does not become an end in itself here. Otherwise, philosophical epistemology, at least in part, would have turned into a special-scientific study and would have become part of the science of science or the logic and methodology of scientific knowledge. The specificity of this or that type of cognition is of interest to epistemology only from the ideological side and in terms of the achievement and forms of existence of truth.
Ontology and epistemology are interconnected in scientific philosophy through the main issue of worldview.
Ontology as a general doctrine of being, as a branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental foundations of being, the most general essences and categories of being, is a prerequisite for the scientific theory of knowledge. All concepts of epistemology and the principles of dialectical thinking have their own ontological justification and, in this sense, an ontological side. The content of the theory of knowledge, like the content of ontology, is permeated with the idea of ​​development. At the same time, the categories that reveal the essence of determinism and development have logical and epistemological functions and are aimed at ensuring the further development of knowledge. In other words, the theory of knowledge and ontology, having their own specific problems and content, being not reducible to each other, are interconnected: epistemology is “ontological”, and ontology is “epistemological”. Gnoseology, as part of philosophy, is also closely connected with ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophical doctrine of man.
I. Kant took a decisive step in self-determination of epistemology as a doctrine of scientific knowledge. “The Critique of Pure Reason” is that “turning point in the history of epistemology, in which for the first time the theory of natural science in the proper sense of the word stands out from the general theory of knowledge - what in the Anglo-Saxon countries was called “epistemology” (Kissel M.A. "Critique of Pure Reason" as the First Experience of the Philosophy of Science" // "Critique of Pure Reason". Kant and Modernity", Riga, 1984. P. 73). I. Kant emphasized the inseparability of the theory of knowledge from the problem of man, from philosophical anthropology and ethics (the connection between the theory of knowledge in the Critique of Pure Reason and ethical issues in the Critique of Practical Reason). Philosophy, he wrote, can be called the science of the highest maxim of the application of our reason. Philosophy is the science of the relation of reason to its ultimate goal, to which, as the highest, all other goals are subordinate and within which they must form a unity.
A careful reading of the Critique of Pure Reason reveals in this work the question in an implicit form: how is human freedom possible? Man is not merely a transcendental unity of apperception, but a person who acquires the predicate of freedom, the understanding of duty, and the strength to follow it. The purpose of philosophy is to promote the intellectual self-determination of the individual, to form the theoretical and practical mind of a person.
Noting this aspect of Kantian epistemology, A.V. Gulyga reports the following (see: Gulyga A.V. “The main problem of Kant’s philosophy” // “Issues of the theoretical heritage of Immanuel Kant”. Kaliningrad, 1978. Issue 3. P. 61) . At the end of his days, the philosopher admitted that his main work on epistemology arose from the need to solve the antinomy of human freedom. There is freedom, but where is it? In the world of appearances, we will not find it, a person is free only in the world of "things in themselves." Kant's dualism is a kind of attempt to justify the ambivalence of human behavior in a society where one has to adapt to circumstances, and moral behavior requires heroism. And by the way, the problem of the ideality of time, which is so shocking to the materialistically thinking mind, was introduced by Kant for the same reasons: time is the order of things over which no one has power, it is the genetic connection of states. Freedom requires the manifestation of the autocracy of man. Therefore, if time is inherent in things in themselves, freedom is impossible. Only because in the intelligible world there is no iron chain of causes and effects, there is no time, a special kind of causality is possible - “through freedom”, which alone makes a person a moral being.
Despite the internal connection with the problems of man and the world as such, epistemology still remains a relatively independent part of philosophical knowledge, its autonomous section, a specific discipline within the framework of philosophy.
The problematic and subject-content specificity of the philosophical theory of knowledge becomes clear when it is compared with non-philosophical sciences that study cognitive activity. And the sciences that study cognition are becoming more and more. At present, cognitive activity is studied by psychology, the physiology of higher nervous activity of a person, cybernetics, formal logic, linguistics, semiotics, structural linguistics, the history of culture, the history of science, etc. Thus, a new direction has arisen in psychology - cognitive psychology (from Latin cognitio - knowledge, cognition). For her, analogies with a computer are important, and the primary goal is to trace the movement of the flow of information in the “system” (i.e., in the brain). Cognitive psychology studies cognitive activity associated, as W. Neisser notes, with the acquisition, organization and use of knowledge (see: "Cognition and Reality. Meaning and Principles of Cognitive Psychology", M., 1981, p. 23).
In the psychology of thinking, an area has developed that studies "artificial intelligence". With the help of this metaphor, they designate the development of computer software that allows it to solve problems that were previously solved by man. Didactics of automated learning emerged. "Artificial intelligence" penetrates into the field of scientific, technical, artistic creativity. Works on "artificial intelligence" raised such questions as the question of the relationship between mental and information processes, the question of differentiation of mental and non-mental systems, the question of the possibility of creating an artificial psyche on inorganic media, etc. (see: Tikhomirov O.K. "Psychology of thinking". M., 1984. S. 260 - 261).
In general psychology, which studies the most general patterns, theoretical and practical principles, methods, basic concepts and the categorical structure of psychology, the first place is the task of studying cognitive forms and processes: sensations, perceptions, memory, imagination, thinking. General psychology also studies mental states that are directly related to cognition, such as doubt, confidence, moods, and affects.
All these disciplines (or sections) of psychological science are aimed, as we see, at the study of human cognitive activity. They relate to the relationship of the individual (or collective) psyche of people with the external environment, the consideration of psychological phenomena as a result of the influence of external factors on the central nervous system, changes in the behavior or state of a person under the influence of various external and internal factors.
The philosophical theory of knowledge explores in many respects the same phenomena of cognitive activity, but in a different perspective - in terms of the relationship of knowledge to objective reality, to truth, to the process of achieving truth. The main category in epistemology is "truth". Sensations, concepts, intuition, doubt, etc. act for psychology as forms of the mental, associated with the behavior, life of an individual, and for epistemology they are means of achieving truth, cognitive abilities or forms of existence of knowledge associated with truth.
For epistemology, the sociological, or rather, sociocultural aspect of human activity is also important; modern psychology is increasingly imbued with a sociological approach. However, for epistemology, the sociocultural approach to the cognition of the subject was initially given, it is the leading one, while for the individual psychological approach, which dominates in psychology, it still acts only as an additional one.
Considering many phenomena of cognitive activity, which are also studied by other cognitive disciplines, but from a special point of view, modern scientific philosophy at the same time does not neglect the data of other sciences, but, on the contrary, relies on them as a special scientific (psychological, physiological, historical cultural and other) basis.
V. A. Lektorsky notes that a specialist in epistemology now has to seriously reckon with the empirical data and theoretical generalizations obtained within the framework of special disciplines. It is not forbidden for the theoretician of knowledge, he writes, to engage in a special-scientific study of one or another aspect of knowledge, for example, the history of a separate science (sometimes this is simply necessary due to the fact that some episodes of the history of knowledge have not yet been studied from that angle, which is important from the point of view of philosophical conclusions). “It is important, however, not to forget that epistemology is not, and in principle cannot be reduced, either to one or another special scientific discipline dealing with the study of cognition, or to a simple collection of such disciplines. For the theory of knowledge as a philosophical study, the results of a special-scientific analysis of knowledge are a kind of empirical material that is reconstructed in a special way within the framework of the tasks of identifying the norms for obtaining true knowledge, in the context of developing issues related to the relationship between knowledge and reality "(" Specificity of the theoretical-cognitive research in the system of dialectical materialism "/" Epistemology in the system of philosophical outlook ". M-, 1983. P. 43).
Such, in general terms, is the specificity of the epistemological approach to cognition in comparison with particular disciplines that study human cognitive activity.
Along with questions about what the essence of the world is, whether the world is finite or infinite, whether it develops, and if it develops, then in what direction, what time, causality, etc. represent, an important place in philosophical problems is occupied by questions associated with the knowledge of objects surrounding a person (things, relationships, processes). "Do we know the world?" - such is the traditional question that arose in the ancient era, when philosophy took its first steps, striving to be a demonstrative, rationally justified worldview. But the traditional nature of just such a form of question can lead to the idea that there were philosophers who believed that the world is not cognizable at all.
Is there a real problem in the dilemma "The world is not knowable - the world is knowable"? Apparently not. If something is reflected in it, then only in a certain, specific sense, which requires special disclosure, which, in turn, leads to a refinement of the content of this antinomy and its expression.
The question of whether
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A branch of philosophy that analyzes the nature and possibilities of knowledge, its boundaries and conditions of reliability.

No philosophical system, insofar as it claims to find the ultimate foundations of knowledge and activity, can do without an investigation of these questions. However, epistemological problems 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 is specifically studied already in ancient philosophy (sophists, Plato, Aristotle), although in submission to ontological topics. The theory of knowledge turned out to be at the center of all the problems of Western philosophy in the 17th century: the solution of epistemological questions becomes a necessary condition for the study of all other philosophical problems. There is a classical type of theory of knowledge. True, the term “theory of knowledge” itself appears rather late - only in 1832. Prior to 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, refer to epistemology only the study of scientific knowledge). The theory of knowledge continued to occupy a central place in Western philosophy until the middle of the 20th century, when it becomes necessary to rethink the very ways of posing its problems and methods of solving it, new connections are revealed between the theory of knowledge and other areas of philosophy, as well as science and culture in general. There is a non-classical theory of knowledge. At the same time, philosophical concepts appear at this time, which either try to push epistemological 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 distrust of tradition, of what is imposed on the individual by the external (natural and social) environment. Philosophy is a way of self-determination of 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 that is available at a given time, in other philosophical systems. Therefore, the initial problem 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 is considered knowledge? It is clear that this cannot be a generally accepted opinion, because it can be a general delusion, it cannot be just an opinion, which corresponds to the real state of affairs (i.e., a true statement), because the correspondence between the content of the statement and reality can be purely random. Plato comes to the conclusion that knowledge implies not only the correspondence between the content of the statement and reality, but also the validity of the former (Platon, 1993). The problem of substantiating knowledge has become central in Western European philosophy since the 17th century. This is connected with the formation of an unconventional society, with the emergence of a free individual who relies on himself. It is at this time that what is sometimes called the "epistemological turn" occurs. What exactly can be considered a sufficient substantiation of knowledge? This question is at the center of philosophical discussions. The theory of knowledge acts primarily as a critique of established 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 critique 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 principles of modern science). Kant uses his epistemological construction to demonstrate the impossibility of traditional ontology, as well as some scientific disciplines (for example, psychology as a theoretical, not 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 of substantiating the ideal of descriptive science, and in connection with this, criticizing 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 (in physics, psychology), and K. Popper, using the epistemological principle of falsification, tried to demonstrate the unscientific nature of Marxism and psychoanalysis (Popper, 1983 a, 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 substantiated. In other words, we should find such a foundation of all our knowledge about which there is no doubt. All that claims to be knowledge, but does not really rest on this foundation, must be rejected. Therefore, the search for the basis of knowledge is not identical to a simple clarification of causal relationships 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, the illusion of perception or the delusion of thinking, is caused by something) and what must be in order to be considered knowledge ( i.e. what corresponds to the norm). At the same time, in the history of philosophy, the normative was often confused with the actually existing and passed off as the latter.

In this capacity, the theory of knowledge acted not only as a critique, but also as a means of affirming certain types of knowledge, as a means of their peculiar cultural legitimation. So, 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 can be no 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 emerged 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 design in experiment (and this involves the use of mathematics) of what is being investigated. This program is based on a certain theoretical-cognitive attitude: reality is given in sensory experience, but its deep mechanism is comprehended with the help of its preparation and mathematical processing. The theory of knowledge in this case acts as a way of substantiating and legitimizing a new science that contradicts both the old tradition and common sense, is something strange and unusual.

At the same time, epistemological concepts were divided into empiricism and rationalism. From the point of view of the former, only that knowledge can be considered justified, which corresponds to the maximum extent to the data of sensory experience, which is based on either sensations (sensualism), or “sense data” (neorealism), or elementary protocol sentences (logical empiricism). The latter considered as knowledge only that which 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 certain third position in this dispute.

Another major and fundamental division characteristic of the classical theory of knowledge is the division into psychologists and anti-psychologists. Of course, all philosophers have distinguished between the causal explanation of certain phenomena of consciousness and their normative justification. However, for psychologists (they include 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. It is a certain 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 and others (Berkeley, 1978; Hume, 1965; Mach, 1908)). For anti-psychologists, epistemological norms that speak not of what is, but of what should be, cannot simply be facts of individual empirical consciousness. After all, these norms are of a universal, obligatory and necessary character; therefore, they cannot be obtained by 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, which is different from ordinary empirical, although it is present in the latter. The method of epistemological research in this case cannot be an empirical analysis of psychological data. For Kant, this is a special transcendental method for analyzing consciousness (Kant, 1965). As a method of epistemological research, phenomenologists 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 exact sense of the word, but a descriptive discipline, although the description refers not to empirical facts, but to a special kind of a priori phenomena (Husserl, 19946). Moreover, 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 reveal 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 both in texts, and above all in scientific texts. The theory of knowledge appears in such an understanding 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 (Cassirer, 1916; Cassirer, 1906).

Anti-psychologism in the theory of knowledge was peculiarly continued 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 dealing no longer with the facts of empirical consciousness (as was the case with psychologists), but with the facts of the "deep grammar" of the 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 certain statement, which is the subject of psychological research, was clearly separated from the “context of substantiation”, with which philosophical, epistemological analysis deals. Early analytic philosophy, especially versions of it such as logical positivism, shared the basic tenets of classical epistemological anti-psychologism.

K. Popper's anti-psychological understanding of the theory of knowledge (epistemology) is peculiar (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 than the individual, epistemology has nothing to do with 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 revised.

3. Subject-centrism. The very fact of the existence of the subject acts as an undeniable and indisputable basis on which a system of knowledge can be built. From the point of view of Descartes, this is generally the only self-reliant fact. Everything else, including the existence of a world external to my consciousness and other people, can be doubted (thus, criticism, characteristic of the entire classical epistemological tradition, is multiplied by the acceptance of this thesis). Knowledge about. what exists in consciousness is undeniable and immediate. Knowledge about things external to my consciousness is indirect (Descartes, 1950). For empiricists, sensations given in my mind have such an indisputable status. For rationalists, these are a priori forms of the subject's consciousness. This is how the 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 them were proposed), including not only for philosophy, but also for the empirical sciences about man, which adopted the subject-centric setting 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 that the existence of the insin of objects (theoretical epistemological realism), it turned out to be difficult to reconcile these provisions. Hence the ideas of G. Helmholtz about the “hieroglyphic” relation of sensations to reality, the “law of specific energy of the sense organs” by I. Müller and others. These real difficulties were simply ignored as not existing in V.I. Lenin’s work “Materialism and Empiriocriticism” , which proceeds from a realistic attitude about the objective existence of objects of knowledge and at the same time from the sensationalist thesis that sensations lie at the basis of 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 approach 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 - a priori structures of consciousness. The world (including other people) acts 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 happens only “inside” the subject (even if it is causally determined by the events of the external world) noted difficulties could not be solved.

If Descartes does not distinguish between empirical and transcendental subjects, then such a distinction is made subsequently. Empiricists and psychologists deal with the individual subject, transcendentalists deal with the transcendental. Thus, for example, for Kant it is beyond doubt that the objects given to me in experience exist independently of me as an empirical individual. However, this experience itself is constructed by the transcendental subject. The transcendental unity of the apperception of this subject is even the guarantor of the objectivity of experience. For E. Husserl, the undoubted reality is the givenness of phenomena to transcendental consciousness. As regards the relation of these phenomena to 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 analytic philosophy, although language is not the property of only one individual subject, the meaningfulness of the statement comes 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 between the subjective and the 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 the science of modern times and in many respects acted as a means of legitimizing this science. Therefore, most epistemological systems proceeded from the fact that it is scientific knowledge, as it was presented in the mathematical natural sciences of that time, that 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. Such, for example, was discussed by T. Hobbes, D. Locke and many others, the problem of the so-called primary and secondary qualities, some of which (heaviness, 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 act on the senses. What really exists and what does not really 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 existence of scientific knowledge is initially justified. The two questions of his "Critique of Pure Reason" - "how pure mathematics is possible" and "how pure natural science is possible" - do not call into question the justification of these scientific disciplines, but only try to identify the epistemological conditions for their possibility. This cannot be said about the third question of Kant's "Critique" - "how is metaphysics possible" - the philosopher tries to show that from the 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 in ordinary language. According to K. Popper, epistemology should deal only with scientific knowledge.

It can be said 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 basic parameters. The change in epistemological 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 of man and culture. This 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. Nevertheless, some of its features can be distinguished.

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 start from scratch, on the basis of distrust of all traditions, but presupposes that the cognizing individual is inscribed in one of them. The data of experience are interpreted in theoretical terms, and the theories themselves are broadcast in time and are the product of collective development. The attitude of mistrust and the search for self-reliance is replaced by the 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 involves 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 an 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). The foregoing means that in the collectively developed knowledge there may be such content that is not realized at the moment by the participants in the collective cognitive process. Such implicit knowledge, unconscious to me, may also be in my possession regarding my own cognitive processes (Polanyi, 1985). In the history of knowledge, different traditions mutually criticize each other. This is not only a mutual critique of myth and science, but also a critique 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 turn out that those cognitive traditions that seemed completely repressed or relegated to the periphery of cognition find new meaning in a new context. 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 (Prigozhiy, 1986; Stepin, 1991).

2. Rejection of fundamentalism. It is associated with the discovery of the variability of cognitive norms, the impossibility of formulating rigid and unchanging normative prescriptions for developing cognition. Attempts to separate knowledge from ignorance with the help of such prescriptions, undertaken in the science of the 20th century, in particular by logical positivism and operationalism, turned out to be untenable.

In modern philosophy there are different reactions to this situation.

Some philosophers consider it possible to talk about the rejection of 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 most of them) see the opportunity to give a new understanding of this discipline and in this regard, offer different research programs.

One of them is expressed in the program of "naturalized epistemology" by W. Quine (Quine, 1972). According to the latter, scientific epistemology should completely abandon the issuance of prescriptions, any normativism and be reduced to generalizing the data of the physiology of higher nervous activity and psychology, using the apparatus of information theory.

The well-known 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 on the basis of a priori considerations, but those that he finds as a result of studying the real process of the mental development of the 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 task of a specialist in the theory of knowledge is to generalize what exists really, empirically.

An even more interesting and promising program for the development of 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, primarily exploring 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. However, these models can be used to develop computer programs. This kind of epistemological research, interacting with psychology and developments in artificial intelligence, is sometimes called "experimental epistemology" (D. Dennett et al. (Dennett, 198 lb)).

Thus, within the framework of the non-classical theory of knowledge, a kind of return to psychologism takes place. It is important, however, to emphasize 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 the causes of mental phenomena). Secondly, the main way to obtain data on the work of the psyche is not an 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 the subjects are used, but only under the condition of their critical verification and comparison with others data). By the way, in the process of epistemological work of this kind, the important heuristic role of some ideas expressed in line with the antipsychological tradition (in particular, a number of ideas of I. Kant and E. Husserl) is revealed.

There are other ways of understanding the problems of the theory of knowledge in the light of the collapse of fundamentalism. A number of researchers emphasize the collective nature of obtaining knowledge (both ordinary and scientific) and the need in this connection to study the links between the 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 being formulated (which is currently being implemented by researchers in many countries), which implies the interaction of philosophical analysis with the study of the history of knowledge in a socio-cultural context. The task of a specialist in the field of the theory of knowledge in this regard does not look like 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 areas of knowledge (for example, in everyday and scientific knowledge, in different sciences), they are not always fully understood by those who use them, there may be contradictions between different norms. The philosopher's task is to identify and explication all these relationships, to establish logical connections between them, to identify the possibilities for their change (Motroshilova, 1969; Bloor, 1983; Yudin, 1984; Scientific Knowledge, 1988). In domestic studies of the theory of cognition, under the influence of the ideas of K. Marx on the collective and communicative nature of cognitive activity, a successfully operating school of socio-cultural analysis of cognition 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 a Crossroads, 1999; Stepin, 2000; Frolov, Yudin, 1986; Frolov, 1995).

Finally, it is necessary to name such a direction of the modern non-fundamentalist theory of knowledge as evolutionary epistemology - the study of cognitive processes as a moment in 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 of the theory of knowledge (including questions of the correspondence between cognitive norms and external reality, the presence of a priori cognitive structures, etc.) based on the data of modern biology (Lorenz, 1994; Vollmer, 1998; Kezin, 1994; Merkulov, 1999). ).

3. Refusal of subjectocentrism. 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. In this regard, important ideas were expressed by the outstanding Russian psychologist L. Vygotsky, according to which the inner 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 the problems of 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 based on a cultural-historical approach). They were also picked up and connected with the philosophical ideas of the late L. Wittgenstein by a number of Western experts in the field of the theory of knowledge 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 raises a number of new questions for the theory of knowledge: is knowledge possible without the Self; Does not the communicative interaction of the researcher and the subject in the study of mental processes lead to the creation of the very phenomena that are being studied, etc.

4. Rejection of science-centrism. Science is the most important way of knowing reality. But not the only one. It fundamentally cannot displace, for example, everyday knowledge. In order to understand knowledge in all its variety of 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 research subjects in scientific psychology involves referring to those phenomena that were singled out by common sense and fixed in everyday language: perception, thinking, will, desire, etc. The same, in principle, applies to all other sciences of human: 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 the result 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 made by common sense. But she can't ignore them. In this regard, the interaction of ordinary and scientific knowledge can be likened to the relationship between different cognitive traditions that mutually criticize each other and in this criticism are mutually enriched (today, for example, there is a heated discussion on the question of how much to take into account the data of "folk psychology", fixed 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 is at the center of many human sciences, from psychology to biology and research in the history of science. The emergence of the information society makes the problem of obtaining and assimilating knowledge one of the central ones 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 branch of philosophy that analyzes the nature and possibilities of knowledge, its boundaries and conditions of reliability. No philosophical system, insofar as it claims to find the ultimate foundations of knowledge and activity, can do without an investigation of these questions. 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 is specifically studied already in ancient philosophy (sophists, Plato, Aristotle), although in submission to ontological topics. The theory of knowledge turned out to be at the center of all the problems of Western philosophy in the 17th century: the solution of epistemological questions becomes a necessary condition for the study of all other philosophical problems. There is a classical type of theory of knowledge. True, the very term "theory of knowledge" appears rather late - only in 1832; before that, the problems were studied under other names: analysis of the mind, study of knowledge, criticism of the mind, etc. (usually the term "epistemology" is used as a synonym for the term "theory of knowledge"; however, some philosophers, such as K. Popper, refer only the study of scientific knowledge to epistemology ). The theory of knowledge continued to occupy a central place in Western philosophy until the middle of the 20th century, when it becomes necessary to rethink the very ways of posing its problems and ways of solving it, new connections are revealed between the theory of knowledge and other areas of philosophy, as well as science and culture in general. There is a non-classical theory of knowledge. At the same time, philosophical concepts appear at this time, which either try to push the epistemological problematics to the periphery of philosophy, or even abandon the whole 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 lack of trust in tradition, in what is imposed on the individual by the external (natural and social) environment. Philosophy is a way of self-determination of 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 this time, in other philosophical systems. Therefore, the initial problem 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 is considered knowledge? It is clear that this cannot be the generally accepted opinion, for it may be a general error; nor can it be simply an opinion to which the actual state of affairs (i.e., a true statement) corresponds, for the correspondence between the content of the statement and reality may be purely accidental. Plato comes to the conclusion that knowledge presupposes not only the conformity 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 connected with the formation of an unconventional society, with the emergence of a free individual who relies on himself. It is at this time that what is sometimes called the "epistemological turn" occurs. What exactly can be considered a sufficient substantiation of knowledge? This question is at the center of philosophical discussions. The theory of knowledge acts primarily as a critique of established 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 critique 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 idea of ​​absolute space and time in Newton's physics and the idea 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 construction to demonstrate the impossibility of traditional ontology, as well as of 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 of substantiating the ideal of descriptive science and criticizing 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). The 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 substantiated. In other words, we should find such a foundation of all our knowledge about which there is no doubt. All that claims to be knowledge, but does not really rest on this foundation, must be rejected. Therefore, the search for the basis of knowledge is not identical to a simple clarification of causal relationships 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. It is necessary to distinguish between what actually takes place in the cognizing consciousness (and everything that is in it, for example, the illusion of perception or delusion of thinking, is caused 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 was often confused with the actually existing and passed off as the latter.

In this capacity, the theory of knowledge acted not only as a critique, but also as a means of affirming certain types of knowledge, as a means of their peculiar cultural legitimation. So, 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 can be no 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. Modern 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 design in experiment (and this involves the use of mathematics) of what is being investigated. This program is based on a certain theoretical-cognitive attitude: reality is given in sensory experience, but its deep mechanism is comprehended with the help of its preparation and mathematical processing. The theory of knowledge in this case acts as a way of substantiating and legitimizing a new science that contradicted both the old tradition and common sense, was something strange and unusual. At the same time, epistemological concepts were divided into empiricism and rationalism. From the point of view of empiricism, only that knowledge can be considered justified, which 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 sentences (logical empiricism). Rationalism considered as knowledge only that which 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 certain third position in this dispute.

Another fundamental division characteristic of the classical theory of knowledge is the division into psychologists and antipsychologists. Of course, all philosophers have distinguished between the causal explanation of certain phenomena of consciousness and their normative justification. However, for psychologists (they include all empiricists, as well as some supporters of the theory of “innate ideas”), the norm that ensures the connection of knowledge with reality is rooted in the empirically given consciousness itself: this is a certain fact of consciousness, and the theory of knowledge in this connection 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, and others). For antipsychologists, epistemological norms that speak not of what is, but of what should be, cannot simply be facts of individual empirical consciousness. These norms are universal, obligatory, and necessary; therefore, they cannot be obtained by 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, which is different from ordinary empirical, although it is present in the latter. The method of epistemological research in this case cannot be an empirical analysis of psychological data. For Kant, this is a special transcendental method for analyzing consciousness. As a method of epistemological research, phenomenologists 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 exact 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. Moreover, 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 reveal the transcendental conditions for the possibility of knowledge. To do this, a specialist in the theory of knowledge (in this case, they reduce philosophy to the theory of knowledge) must subject to analysis the knowledge objectified in texts (primarily scientific). 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 peculiarly continued 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 dealing no longer with the facts of empirical consciousness (as was the case with psychologists), but with the facts of the "deep grammar" of the 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 certain statement, which is the subject of psychological research, was clearly separated from the “context of substantiation”, with which philosophical, epistemological analysis deals. Early analytic philosophy, especially such versions of it as logical positivism, shares the main tenets 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 than the individual, the theory of knowledge has nothing to do with the subject in general (“epistemology without a knowing subject”). However, unlike the neo-Kantians, Popper believes that the theory of knowledge should use the methods of empirical science. This means, in particular, that epistemological generalizations can, in principle, be revised.

3. Subject-centrism. The very fact of the existence of the subject acts as an undeniable and indisputable basis on which a system of knowledge can be built. From Descartes' point of view, this is generally the only self-reliant fact. Everything else, including the existence of a world external to my consciousness and other people, can be doubted (thus, criticism, characteristic of the entire classical theoretical-cognitive tradition, is greatly enhanced by the acceptance of this thesis). Knowledge of what exists in the mind is undeniable and immediate; knowledge about things external to my consciousness is indirect. For empiricists, sensations given in my mind have such an indisputable status. For rationalists, these are a priori forms of the subject's consciousness. This is how the 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, who adopted the subject-centric setting 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 given states of consciousness and at the same time did not doubt the same evidence of the fact of the existence of external objects (epistemological materialism, realism), it turned out to be difficult to reconcile these provisions. Hence - the ideas of G. Helmholtz about the “hieroglyphic” relation of sensations to reality, the “law of specific energy of the sense organs” by I. Muller and others. These difficulties did not exist for V. I. Lenin, who in his work “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism” proceeded from a realistic setting about the objective existence of objects of cognition and at the same time from the thesis that sensations lie at the basis of all cognition. 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, a priori structures of consciousness. The world (including other people) acts 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 is understood only as a fact of individual consciousness, as something that happens “inside” the subject (even if it is causally determined by the events of the external world), noted difficulties cannot be solved. If Descartes did not distinguish between 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. Thus, for example, for Kant it is beyond doubt that the objects given to me in experience exist independently of me as an empirical individual. However, this experience itself is constructed by the transcendental subject. The transcendental unity of the apperception of this subject is even the guarantor of the objectivity of experience. For Husserl, the undeniable reality is the givenness of phenomena to transcendental consciousness. As regards the relation of these phenomena to 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 analytic philosophy, statements derive their 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 the epistemological system of Hegel, in which an attempt was made to overcome the opposition between the subjective and the 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 of Popper's "epistemology without the knowing subject".

4. Science-centrism. The theory of knowledge acquired a classical form precisely in connection with the emergence of the science of modern times and in many respects acted as a means of legitimizing this science. Therefore, most epistemological systems proceeded from the fact that it is scientific knowledge, as it was presented in the mathematical natural sciences of that time, that 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. Such, for example, was discussed by T. Hobbes, D. Locke and many others, the problem of the so-called. primary and secondary qualities. Primary (heaviness, shape, location, etc.) are considered to belong to the real objects themselves, while secondary ones (color, smell, taste, etc.) are considered as arising in the mind of the subject when objects of the external world act on the senses. What really exists and what does not really 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 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 epistemological conditions of their possibility. The same cannot be said about the third question of Kant's Critique, "How is metaphysics possible?" The philosopher tries to show that from the 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 in ordinary language. According to Popper, epistemology should only deal with scientific knowledge. In the last decades of the 20th century, a non-classical theory of knowledge is gradually taking shape, which differs from the classical one in all major parameters. The change in epistemological 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 of 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 start from scratch, on the basis of distrust of all traditions, but presupposes that the cognizing individual is inscribed in one of them. The data of experience are interpreted in theoretical terms, and the theories themselves are broadcast in time and are the product of collective development. The attitude of distrust and the search for self-reliance is replaced by the 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 involves a certain point of support, the acceptance of something that is not criticized at a given time and in a given context (it may become an object of criticism at another time and in a different context). This idea is well expressed by L. Wittgenstein in his later works. In the collectively developed knowledge, there may be such content that is not realized at the moment by the participants in the collective cognitive process. Such implicit knowledge, which I am not aware of, may also exist in me 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 turn out that those cognitive traditions that seemed completely repressed or relegated to the periphery of cognition find 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. Rejection of fundamentalism. It is associated with the discovery of the variability of cognitive norms, the impossibility of formulating rigid normative prescriptions for developing cognition. Attempts to separate knowledge from ignorance with the help of such prescriptions, undertaken in the science of the 20th century, in particular logical positivism and operationalism, failed.

In modern philosophy there are different reactions to this situation. Some philosophers consider it possible to talk about the rejection of 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 most of them) consider it possible to give a new understanding of this discipline and in this regard they offer various research programs, for example. W. Quine's "naturalized epistemology" program. According to Quine, scientific epistemology should completely abandon the issuance of prescriptions, from any normativism and be reduced to a generalization of the data of 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 on the basis of a priori considerations, but those that he finds as a result of studying the real process of the mental development of the child, on the one hand, and the history of science, on the other.

An even more interesting and promising program for the development of 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, investigating, first of all, the logical possibilities of this model. Then, on the basis of this model, specific mathematical programs for the operation of a computer are developed, and the operation of this computer is compared with the 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 theoretical-cognitive 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 the causes of mental phenomena). Secondly, the main way to obtain data on 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 the subjects are used, but only under the condition of their critical verification and comparison with other data). In the process of epistemological work of this kind, the important heuristic role of some ideas expressed in line with the rationalist antipsychological tradition (in particular, a number of ideas of I. Kant and E. Husserl) is revealed.

There are other ways of understanding the problems of the theory of knowledge in the light of the collapse of fundamentalism. A number of researchers emphasize the collective nature of obtaining knowledge (both ordinary and scientific) and the need in this regard to study the links between the 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 being 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 and its socio-cultural research. The task of a specialist in the field of the theory of knowledge in this context does not look like prescribing cognitive norms obtained on the basis of some a priori considerations, but as identifying those that are actually used in the process of collective cognitive activity. These norms change, they are different in different areas of knowledge (for example, in everyday and scientific knowledge, in different sciences), they are not always fully understood by those who use them, there may be contradictions between different norms. The task of the philosopher is to identify and explication of all these relationships, to establish logical connections between them, to identify the possibilities for their change. 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 school of socio-cultural analysis of knowledge has developed.

Finally, it is necessary to name such a direction of the modern non-fundamentalist theory of knowledge as evolutionary epistemology - the study of cognitive processes as a moment in the evolution of living nature and as its product (K. Lorentz, G. Vollmer, etc.). In this regard, attempts are being made to solve a number of fundamental problems of the theory of knowledge (including questions of the correspondence between cognitive norms and external reality, the presence of a priori cognitive structures, etc.) on the basis of data from modern biology.

3. Refusal of subjectocentrism. 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 the 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 inner 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 the problems of 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 based 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 experts in the field of the theory of knowledge and philosophical psychology, who proposed a communicative approach to understanding the Self, consciousness and cognition (R. Harre and others). The communicative approach to understanding the subject, which turned out to be very fruitful, at the same time raises a number of new epistemological questions: is consciousness possible without the Self; Does not the communicative interaction of the researcher and the subject in the study of mental processes lead to the creation of the very phenomena that are being studied, etc.

4. Rejection of science-centrism. Science is the most important way of knowing reality. But not the only one. It fundamentally cannot displace, for example, everyday knowledge.

In order to understand knowledge in all its variety of 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 Wittgenstein and his followers. For example, the very identification of objects of study in scientific psychology presupposes an appeal to those phenomena that were singled out by common sense and fixed in everyday language: perception, thinking, will, desire, etc. The same applies in principle 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 the result of forgetting the fact that the original abstractions of scientific knowledge are rooted in everyday "life the world." Science is not obliged to follow the distinctions made by common sense. But she can't ignore them. In this regard, the interaction of ordinary and scientific knowledge can be likened to the relationship between different cognitive traditions that mutually criticize each other and in this criticism are mutually enriched (today, for example, there is a heated discussion on the question of how much the data of “folk psychology” should be taken into account). fixed in everyday language, in cognitive science).

Thus, the theory of knowledge is at the center of many human sciences - from psychology to biology and research in the history of science. The emergence of the information society makes the problem of obtaining and assimilating knowledge one of the central ones 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. Huseynov, G.Yu. Semigin. M., Thought, 2010, vol.IV, p. 47-52.

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