p We have already pointed out the role of referential meanings, cognitive norms, and object-hypotheses in the process of cognition, stressing the fact that these norms do not simply emerge in the course of the object affecting the sense organs but control the choice and transformation of sensory information in shaping the object’s image. The question naturally arises as to the nature and origin of these norms. Aren’t the transcendentalists right in asserting that cognitive standards and norms are inherent in the subject’s consciousness and should be understood as a result of analysis of the latter?

p The philosophy of dialectical materialism posits that cognition in all its forms, beginning with perception, based on definite standards and objective norms, is formed in the subject’s practical activity involving material objects. It is not passive reception but practical transformation of the objective environment that is the starting point of man’s attitude to the world.

p “The chief defect of all previous materialism (that of Feuerbach included),” wrote Marx, "is that things [ Gegenstand] reality, sensuousness are conceived only in the form of the object, or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was set forth abstractly by idealism—which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.”^^20^^

p “... But men do not at all begin with ’standing in this theoretical relation to the things of the outer world’. As any animal, they begin with eating, drinking, etc., thus not with ‘standing’ in some relation but with active behaviour, with mastering certain things of the outer world through action and thereby satisfying their needs.”^^21^^

p Lenin stressed repeatedly that Marxism made practice the basis of its epistemology. "... The world does not satisfy man and man decides to clange it by his activity.”^^22^^ "... A full ‘definition’ of an object must include the whole of human experience, both as a criterion of truth 135 and a practical indicator of its connection with human wants.”^^23^^

p The connection between perception formation and the subject’s activity involving objects is now widely recognised in psychology.

p Thus, Piaget’s studies show the incorporation of perception in more general schemes of object-directed activity—sensori-motor schemes, in the case of a baby.

p The first stage in the development of sensori-motor schemes of behaviour (of sensori-motor intellect) is marked, according to Piaget, by the use of innate sensori-motor mechanisms which are adapted to the properties of objects (their form, size, etc.). At this stage, only a finer differentiation of stimuli may take place but not perception of objects.

p The second stage (beginning with the second month of the child’s life), or the stage of primary reactions, is marked by repetition of accidental actions yielding a positive result. At this stage of development, the object appears to the child as a direct continuation of an action.

p At the third stage (the stage of secondary circular reactions, which lasts between the third and the ninth months), the primary reactions come to be applied to new objects. A number of new types of behaviour emerge: visual adaptation to slow movements (the child, following a moving object, continues to follow the trajectory after the disappearance of the object), repeated grasping at one and the same place, recognition of the whole object from its visible part, overcoming obstacles interfering with perception (the child pulls away a piece of cloth thrown over his face) and applying varied actions to one and the same object.

p However, although the child returns to the original action directed at an object in a definite place, there is no searching yet for an object that disappeared except for continuing an action once begun along the same trajectory. Although children pull away a piece of cloth from their face, they never attempt taking it off an object that was covered in their presence. Piaget believes that it is at this stage that the objectness of perception emerges.

p The fourth stage (between nine months and a year) is the stage of coordinating the schemes of action already acquired and their application to new situations. Systematic investigation of new objects begins, connected as it were with discovery of their purpose (scrutinising, swinging, shaking, pressing, sticking into the mouth, throwing, etc.). The child actively searches for the object which 136 disappears before his eyes but does not take into account the object’s movements going on right before his eyes. The object is a reality for the child, but a reality at a definite place in the presence of a definite action.

p At the fifth stage (between the end of the first and the middle of the second year) the child discovers new patterns of action through active experimenting. Actions are performed involving the use of auxiliary implements, the simplest instrumental actions. In searching for a concealed object, the child begins to take into account the consecutive movements of the visible object, looking for it in the place where it was hidden last.

p Finally, the sixth stage (beginning with the middle of the second year) signifies the transition from sensori- motor experience to imagining the results of the child’s own actions, on the one hand, and to imagining objects and their movements, on the other. At this stage, the child learns to take into account several consecutive movements of the object in searching for it even though the object is invisible during these movements (after being shown to the child, it is moved in a closed fist or box).^^24^^

p “Implicitly, perception models, in a way, reality both present and future, and also the future states of the object trasnformed by man,"^^25^^ points out A. M. Korshunov.

p The works of Soviet researchers have shown that initially perception processes are formed and develop as integral components of practical activity, and the overall effect of this activity as a whole consists in establishing the features of the observed situation. The practical object-oriented activity develops the operations of singling out and analysing the features of a thing. As the child’s activity becomes more complex, and he faces more difficult cognitive tasks, the limitations of a purely practical study of the object and the need for special perceptive actions come to fight. However, perceptive actions top are at the first stages externally similar to actions with things. This similarity is observed even in the case of distant receptors which do not come in direct contact with things.^^26^^

p At the same time the realisation that cognitive norms and operations are formed in the subject’s practical activity with material objects is not enough to understand the nature and modes of functioning of the norms of cognition. Marxist philosophy posits that practical activity itself must be understood in its specifically human characteristics, namely, as joint or collective activity in which each individual enters into certain relations with other persons; as mediated activity in which man places between 137 himself and an external, naturally emerging object other man-made objects functioning as instruments or implements of activity; and finally, as historically developing activity carrying in itself its own history.^^27^^ The socially functioning man-made objects mediating various kinds of his activity (beginning with implements of labour, including objects of everyday use, and ending with sign- symbolic systems, models, diagrams, schemes, etc.) play not only an instrumental but also a most important cognitive role. In the objects cognized, man singles out those properties that prove to be essential for developing social practice, and that becomes possible precisely with the aid of mediating objects carrying in themselves reified sociohistorical experiences of practical and cognitive activity.^^28^^ Mastering a socially functioning man-made object, the child begins to single out in external objects, first, those features and characteristics which are essential for the activity with the aid of the given instrument, the given man-made object, and second, those traits in which they are similar to the objects accumulated through human activity. In other words, the instrumental man-made objects function as objective forms of expression of cognitive norms, standards, and object-hypotheses existing outside the given individual. The mastering by the individual of these norms, social in their genesis, permits their functioning as structure-forming components of cognition. It is in the course of this mastering of norms in practical activity with external objects that the objectness of perception is formed. This fundamental fact was discounted by Piaget, who made a great contribution to the study of the links between the process of perception and the development of forms of object-oriented activity but viewed the development of cognitive structures as entirely dependent on progressive changes in the relations of equilibrium between the individual and the external environment.

p In studies by Soviet psychologists relying on the basic tenets of Marxist philosophy about the nature and ways of formation of cognitive norms, the hypothesis was advanced and later experimentally confirmed that the instruments for performing perceptive actions are systems of the objects’ sensuous qualities singled out and recorded in social experience, which, mastered by the child, function as standards, or "units of measurement”, in the perception of the varied phenomena of reality. Systems of sensuous qualities are singled out in various kinds of human activity (the colours of the spectrum, geometrical forms, etc.) which “quantify” in a definite manner the corresponding aspects of reality.^^29^^ That means, for instance, that a clear 138 perceptual distinction between a circle and an oval (and a singling out of these forms in the objects of nature) is derivative from their different functioning in object- oriented activity. Retinal images of a circle and an oval may not differ very much, and their perceptual differentiation is essentially conditioned by the practice of operating with man-made objects used as standards in perceptive activity.

p As we know, from the standpoint of Gestalt psychology the singling out of the circle in the objects perceived by the subject is one of the striking examples of the action of inner structural (in fact, innate) laws of all cognition. Gestalt psychologists believe that the main law determining perception of form is the law of Pragnanz—the tendency of the image of perception to assume "good form"— symmetrical, closed, and simple (the circle is an example of such a symmetrical and simple form). Underlying the law of Pragnanz is, in the view of these theoreticians, the trend towards establishing an equilibrium between the physical processes in the subject and those in the objects external with regard to the subject. Aware that systems with a minimum of potential energy are the best balanced physical systems, Gestalt psychologists endeavour to show that the most characteristic features of these systems are simplicity and symmetry.^^30^^ However, in the case of the singling out of the circle by the perceiving subject, modern psychology provides grounds for the assertion that this process is mediated by assimilation of socially formed perceptual standard. Indeed, the subject is more inclined to single out such simple forms as the circle than others in the objects perceived. But this is explained, first of all, by the special role of such forms in human object-oriented activity, which is in its turn conditioned by certain objective properties of these forms.

p As Marx pointed out, "the eye has become a human eye, just as its object has become a social, human objecton object made by man for man. The senses have therefore become directly in their practice theoreticians... The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present.”^^31^^

p Thus the implementation of the act of cognition as a specifically human reflection or reproduction of the object’s essential characteristics presupposes not only the subject’s handling the object but also man’s creation (the social man rather than a natural individual, that is man in cooperation with other individuals) of a definite system of “artificial” objects mediating the process of reflection and carrying cognitive norms and standards in themselves. 139 These mediating objects, acting as instruments of cognition, have a certain specificity. On the one hand, their purpose is to enable the subject to reflect in cognition the characteristics of objects existing independently from them. On the other hand, the mediators themselves are objects with specific features of their own, possessing internal connections, assuming definite modes of operating with them and existing originally in an external reified form (they are only later assimilated by the individual, becoming his inner attributes). But that means that implementation of the cognitive act assumes not only the subject’s ability to correlate mediating objects with the object cognized. The subject must also master the modes of handling the specific reality constituted by the socially functioning artificial objects.

p Let us consider in this connection some essential moments in the general problem of interrelation between activity and cognition. A short historical-philosophical excursus is in order here. The conception that there is an intimate connection between cognition and activity is of a relatively recent origin. The thinkers of antiquity characteristically drew a sharp distinction between knowledge in the proper sense, that is, understanding of the essence of things, and technical ability to produce or artificially create a certain object. Art can only imitate nature to some extent, but it cannot equal it: such was the view of ancient philosophers. Man cannot produce what is created by nature. That does not mean, in ancient philosophers’ view, that man cannot cognize the reality of nature. But knowledge is not identical with ability for technical reproduction of what is cognized. The thinkers of antiquity (we ignore here the essential differences between various schools in philosophy at that time) insisted that, as distinct from artificial reproduction, knowledge presupposes neither a change in the given object nor construction of a new object but passive reception of the content of reality that is cognized as it is.

p A different conception of the interrelation of knowledge and activity is developed in the philosophy of the New Times, a conception directly linked with the formation of new experimental science. First of all, the activity of artisans and technicians is re-assessed. The view gains currency that technical ability to make some thing is also knowledge, and not just one kind of knowledge, but knowledge of fundamentally the same sort as theoretical and, moreover, one that expresses the essence of any knowledge. Inasmuch as knowledge of the essence of the object implies cognition of its proximate cause, man 140 can really know only that which he made himself, that is, the things whose proximate cause he himself is. Knowledge is thus identified with creation or construction.^^32^^ Since contemporary technology mostly involved mechanical processes of assembly and dismantling, knowledge of nature was reduced to discovery of particular constructions suitably assembled and dismantled, and nature itself was viewed as a giant clockwork. The thesis of the knowability of the world appears in this context as substantiation of the conception that all natural processes can be technically reproduced, that human technical art can in principle attain the same degree of perfection as nature. From this standpoint, scientific theory is nothing but a kind of accumulation of the potential modes of technical activity, for theory mentally dismantles and assembles that which can later be dismantled and assembled materially.

p It is in this context that statements should be understood to the effect that knowledge is power, that man is not only a servant but also the master of nature (Bacon). Descartes did not draw a fundamental distinction between mechanisms created by craftsmen and bodies made by nature.

p Thus the thesis, widely discussed in the philosophy of the New Times, that man can really know only that which he himself created is closely bound up with the prevailing mechanism in new experimental science that replaced the peripatetic medieval physics. For us, however, another point is more important. This thesis is directly linked with yet another idea that began to interest many thinkers precisely at that time, the idea that the subject’s knowledge is only adequate insofar as it is connected with the subject himself, his state, and actions, that is, the idea which was expressed most distinctly by Descartes.

p This last circumstance is particularly important, for the thesis discussed here outlived mechanism exactly because of it. Indeed, if we do not link up too closely any activity with material and technical activity, still less with the work of mechanical assembly and dismantling; if we assume that the essence of activity is purely spiritual, the assertion may be retained that cognition is identical with creation of the object cognized, lending this thesis distinct subjectivist meaning and at the same time discarding the obsolete ideas of philosophical mechanism. That was exactly what was done in German classical philosophy, in the first place in the systems of Kant and Fichte.

p Let us also note that if cognition is identical with 141 creation of the object cognized, all things that cannot be created by the subject and exist by themselves, turn out to be unknowable.

p The establishment of fundamental links between knowledge and activity, theory and practice, and the emphasis on the subject’s active role in cognition, were indubitably an essential contribution to the development of epistemology. Marxist philosophy creatively assimilated these ideas, starting out from their treatment by the German classical philosophers. Still, the idea, that cognition of the object is in principle identical to its creation or construction is unacceptable to scientific epistemology. True, one can attempt to erase the subjectivist colouring of this thesis by reformulating^ as the idea that all knowledge is a set of some potential practical modes of object-oriented activity, and that these modes themselves express the real structure of the object and are in this sense objectively conditioned. But in this formulation, too, the analysed thesis is hardly acceptable, for its main drawback is retained: direct equating of knowledge and modes of practical activity.

p The idea that man’s knowledge is most adequate where it concerns objects which he himself has created is quite untenable, too. It is well known that one may be an excellent handicraftsman or technician and at the same time have a vague notion of the processes which objectively determine the success of certain technical operations. Today, the laws of physico-chemical processes are known much better than the laws of such a man-made phenomenon as language. Man is also far from perfect understanding of the way in which scientific theories are constructed and change. And then there is all the work to be done towards cognizing the phenomena of consciousness. On the other hand, great masses of quite reliable knowledge exist which cannot so far be used practically. Knowledge of this type does not provide modes of practical artificial reconstruction of the objects to which it refers (although it may of course be used in the future, combined with other types of knowledge, for working out new technologies and new modes of practical activity). Nevertheless this kind of knowledge is quite correctly described as knowledge.

p Undoubtedly, cognition grows out of practical activity, servicing material practice throughout its development. This proposition is fundamental in dialectical materialism. It is also true that cognition, being reflection, always appears as a kind of activity and consequently as construction and creation, for activity is always reified in certain objects.

p Cognitive activity is directed at reflection, reproduction of the properties of real objects with the aid of a special system of artificially created mediator objects. Of course, cognition may also involve action on an external object (that happens, e. g., in experimenting), but that action does not bring about changes (or, still less, construction) of cognized characteristics of the object but only production of better conditions for their discovery. (The reference here is to those properties that appear in the given situation as the object of cognition, for it goes without saying that in any material action some objective properties are always changed and some are even created.) It is through the activity of using mediator objects that creation, or construction, of objects enters cognition. Man constructs new apparatus and measurement instruments, creating and developing scientific theories, constructing models, operating with signs and symbols in a definite manner, etc. But this creative, constructive activity pertains precisely to the world of mediator objects and does not imply creation of the object cognized. With the aid of artificially constructed mediator objects the subject cognitively reproduces other objects (often getting a better knowledge of the latter than of the former). It does not follow from the above that mediator objects themselves cannot be objects of knowledge. But in this case they cease to be mediators and assume the construction of a new system of mediator objects, embodying the knowledge about them. Importantly, the goal of theory is reproduction of the essence of an object regardless of a concrete, particular situation of practical employment of it, as distinct from perception which includes only referential meanings directly linked with existing social practice. It is this feature of theory that forms the basis for the development and perfection of practical activity, for finding ways of practical utilisation of new aspects of objects that have been cognized theoretically but have not yet become objects of technical activity.

p Thus cognition, an activity that is genetically and functionally dependent on objective practice, is not at the same time identical with the latter. In practical activity, objects are constructed that have immediate value for society and individual subjects. At the same time practice assumes the use of implements-yobjects in which the material activity of mankind is reified. The properties of real objects may be reproduced in the process of cognition only through creation of a whole world of special mediator objects subject to specific social laws of functioning and carrying social cognitive experiences. Mediator objects 143 used in the process of cognition do not have a value as such but merely as carriers of knowledge about other objects. Creativity and cognition are thus linked in a most intimate manner and assume each other. But in its very essence the act of cognition cannot coincide with the act of creating the object cognized, otherwise we would have no grounds at all for any discussion of cognition and knowledge.

p The idea of the identity of knowledge and creation of the object cognized, developed in the philosophy of the New Times, appears to be diametrically opposed to the ancient view of knowledge as passive reception. Let us note, however, that both of these ideas have one point in common, the conception of knowledge as direct grasping— of the external object in the first case and of the activity of the subject himself, in the second. In both cases there is a failure to understand that the characteristics of a real object may be reproduced in the process of cogjnition only through construction of another system of objects, a special world of mediator objects constituting social reality of a particular kind. In other words, the mediated nature of all knowledge is not understood.

Let us consider Gaston Bachelard’s conception as an example of consistent development of the idea about the identity of knowledge and constructing the cognized object in modern Western philosophy. Pointing to the artificial nature of most of the realities which constitute the practical world of modern man and owe their origin to technical creativity, the French philosopher concludes that science more and more ceases to be knowledge of natural phenomena, becoming a process of constructing phenomena, a kind of factory for their production. Bachelard believes that the phenomena which a physicist or chemist studies are to a considerable extent his own creations. It is not nature that provides the chemist with “pure” substances: he prepares them in his laboratory starting from a theoretical construction. In the end Bachelard comes to the conclusion that the essence of science does not in general lie in comprehending natural reality but in constructing artificial objects; that it consists in technology and not in knowledge (thus he believes that the electron, the positron, the proton, the neutron pertain to the technical aspects of electric phenomena).^^33^^ As we see, constructive activity of creating the world of artificial mediator objects is here confused with creation of the object itself that is to be cognized.