Introduction

During the last 20 years anti-realism in different forms has become popular in Russian research in the sphere of humanities, human and cognitive sciences (phi­losophy, historical studies, psychology, neurosciences, etc.).

V.A. Lektorski (s)

Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

e-mail: v.a.lektorski@gmail.com

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 353

E. Agazzi (ed.), Varieties of Scientific Realism,

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51608-0_19

Nevertheless, I make such a defense and argue the following thesis: a certain conception of realism is a philosophical position that not only adequately interprets facts of cognition and consciousness, but also formulates the best methodology for contemporary research in this field.

1.1 Consciousness as the Only Certainty?

Doubts about a possibility to know the world as it really is, that is, independent of its cognition, arose already in ancient times. They are expressed in particular in the famous relativist words of Protagoras: “Something is as it appears to anybody”. But such ideas were successfully refuted, So philosophy in Antiquity and Middle Ages had ontological orientation—the world determines the possibilities of its cognition. Certainly, beliefs and knowledge, illusion and reality were sharply distinguished and even opposed to each other. Philosophy arose as a critique of those things that are considered as indubitable from an ordinary point of view. But ordinary opinions and even illusions were considered as having ontological correlates.

Subjectivism in understanding knowledge and cognition appeared in the frame­work of the “epistemological turn” in philosophy in 17th century.

For three centuries European philosophy and human sciences (although there were a number of schools and trends) proceeded from the idea that only the sub­jective world, but not the objective one, is immediately present to a human being. Here are words of a contemporary Russian specialist in cognitive science V.Allakhverdov about “the most perplexed and the most grand philosophical problem”: “The content of consciousness is the only that is known and about which we can be certain. We can know about the existence of things only owing to that content. But how can we know what things really are, if we know only the content of consciousness?” (Allakhverdov 2003, p. 37). If we are closed in the subjective world, we cannot compare the content of consciousness with the objective world. And it is logical to conclude that my consciousness is the only existent. It is solipsism as a result of such understanding. According to Kant, it is a scandal in philosophy, although he himself shared the idea about the impossibility to compare contents of consciousness with what exists out of it. So it is not simply a strange fantastic idea, but a necessary conclusion from a thesis which seems evident: the content of consciousness is the only about which we know anything with certainty.

It is clear that in ordinary life, out of the sphere of philosophizing, one cannot seriously be a solipsist without self-contradiction (B. Russell wrote about a philosopher who had written to him a letter with an astonishment: why other philosophers don't share such a convincing idea as solipsism?).

The majority of philosophers did not share solipsist ideas, although in the 20th century some thinkers were not afraid to call themselves solipsists, and the problem of solipsism is being discussed now (I will write about it later). But in any case the idea of consciousness as a specific closed world was considered obvious for a long time.

It was shared by empiricists and rationalists, by psychologists and anti-psychologists. For Berkeley existence is a collection of sensations, “simple ideas”: esse est percipi. For Kant the world of objects exists only in the framework of experience, which is constructed by the Transcendental Subject from sensations and a priori forms of sensitivity and a priori categories of understanding. The distinction of illusory and real worlds is within consciousness: the illusory is that which is not consistent with the interconnection of the components of experience.

The phenomenology of Husserl, influential in the 20th century, made some modifications in transcendental philosophy: it stressed a distinction between acts and intentional objects of consciousness. But according to phenomenology inten­tional objects are in the sphere of consciousness. A question about relations between intentional objects and the outer world is “in brackets”, phenomenology abstains from answering it. From this point of view realism in epistemology and philosophy of science is an uncritical and naive naturalistic position, which can be shared in ordinary life and even in scientific investigations, but which cannot be admitted in sophisticated philosophical reflection. According to Husserl phe­nomenology must be understood as an “egology”—a study of Transcendental Ego. So Husserl was interpreted as close to solipsism.

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