p In our analysis of the Kantian conception of the cognitive relation between subject and object (see Part One) we have noted that the continuity of experience or, as Kant puts it, its unity, is an important indication of the objectiveness of knowledge. For Kant, this is even the only indication. And yet, a type of experience is imaginable that would be internally cohesive, continuous and consistent and at the same time entirely subjective. Something of this kind probably happens in the case of the illusory worlds which some mental patients create and live in. The events occurring in these worlds are subject to a definite inner logic, but it does not correspond to the real connections of the real objective world, which becomes clear from the patient’s behaviour and his relation to reality and to other people. A most important condition of objectiveness of experience, as shown in Marxist philosophy, is therefore its connection with practical objectoriented activity, for it is this connection that allows man to correct experience itself, to separate illusions in it from that which corresponds to the objective real state of affairs. The latter in its turn assumes the inclusion of the subject in a system of adequate social communications. As for mental cases, they are evidently incapable of any of these things.

p However, as far as socially accepted norms rather than morbid deviations are concerned, the unity or continuity of experience and its correction through practice appear to be inseparable to the subject himself. In this connection it becomes clear that Kant touched on a very important problem indeed. Consider this: if experience is discrete, if its subsequent stage does not follow from the previous one and is not conditioned by it, we have no grounds at all for regarding it as objective. Of course, I cannot observe one and the same object continuously and infinitely long. 175 Different things keep intruding on the field of my perception and passing beyond it. Objects may be given in the experience of other men with whom I communicate which are not given in my own experience. All these facts, however, do not prove discreteness of experience. Incorporated in the very mechanism of my perception is the realisation that the object’s existence is not discontinued simply because I cease looking at it. The objects of experience of one subject may simultaneously or after some time become part of the experience of another.

p Objects which are not perceived by any subject at the given moment also exist in reality. If some object disappears, if it ceases to exist, that happens only due to certain events at a previous stage of experience. At the same time, the disappearing object always leaves some trace, which is expressed in the transformation of some objects into others, so that there is a definite continuity of events and processes relating to different stages of experience. The realisation of the continuity of the objective processes to which experience relates is not merely a product of interpretative reflexion, a result of reasoning, but a direct condition of the givenness of experience itself as a kind of knowledge. In other words, the process of perception assumes the action of an amodal objective scheme of the world, which makes possible the realisation of the independence of the objects from the act of their cognition (see Chapter 1 of Part One). This scheme also underlies scientific theoretical thinking which starts from the premise that the world of objects is independent from the subject’s cognitive activity. If there are gaps in experience, we have every right to doubt its objectiveness, to suspect that we deal with hallucinations, illusions, etc.

p The question arises, however, whether we might not assume the existence of experience distinctly different from ours, that is, one that would relate to objects of an essentially different kind, so that there would be no direct transition from one type of experience to another. That would mean a gap between these two kinds of experience. At the same time this experience of an unusual kind would be quite normal and objective, that is, not only internally cohesive and continuous but also included in a definite type of object-related practical activity-true, an activity different from ours. Such experience might be characteristic of beings different from man (e.g., the inhabitants of other cosmic worlds). Kant accepted this possibility, but he believed this question to be insoluble, for any answer to it involves going beyond the domain of human 176 experience, and this step is absolutely inadmissible, in his view.^^59^^

p Even a very preliminary contemplation of this problem compels one to doubt the justifiability of posing it. Indeed, if there is only one objectively real world, there can hardly exist types of experience pertaining to this world that are so different that there are no transitions between them and that are at the same time objective. Of course, the experiences of every subject are unique and different from those of other subjects. At the same time the existence of my experience includes the possibility of understanding the statements of other individuals about the data of their experiences, for our different experiences objectively belong to one and the same world and, moreover, they subjectively comprise one and the same world of objects. I can know less about this world than another subject, or more, but the types of objects themselves remain the same for both of us. Those objects that are comprised in the experiences of another subject can also be included in my experience. In other words, our different experiences are essentially commensurable: the overall system of objects ensures continuity between them. It is quite another matter when different types of objects are subjectively present in experiences objectively belonging to the same world. If that were possible, a gap would obviously exist between these different types of experience. Inasmuch as cognition is reflection or reproduction of reality, gaps are impossible not only in the framework of the given type of experience but also in the relations between experiences of different types (and consequently, the existence of fundamentally incommensurable experiences is also impossible). It would therefore appear that if we encountered such fundamentally incommensurable cognitive experiences (although it is not quite clear how that is possible), we would have to admit, first, that all of them could not equally be referred to cognition and, second, that some of them are apparently only a subjective illusion. Kant could accept (albeit only as a hypothetical possibility) the existence of different types of cognitive experiences only because, in his view, the substantive structure of experience is constituted by consciousness and, consequently, the existence of different types of consciousness determines different types of experience. If we reject this subjectivist premise of Kant’s philosophy, we have no right to argue the possibility of different types of experience.

p This line of reasoning appears to be well substantiated. However, scientists in different fields have now 177 encountered facts which they deem it necessary to explain in terms of hypotheses of the existence of different types of cognitive experience, different perceptive and conceptual worlds.

p ’Let us begin our exposition and analysis of these conceptions with a reminder that, according to Piaget’s theory, there are different stages in the development of perceptive structures, so that at the early stages of this development the continuity of experience is as yet nonexistent for the child (the object that passes beyond his field of vision disappears for him in an absolute sense) and there are gaps of a certain kind between different stages of perceptive and intellectual development, each stage being characterised by its own structures and the subsequent stages replacing the previous ones. At the same time all these stages, in Piaget’s view, express different phases of the development of cognition in the intellectual ontogenesis.

p True, Piaget deals with perceptive and intellectual structures which characterise only different stages in the genesis of the adult’s cognitive activity rather than the activity itself.

p And yet Kuhn, the well-known specialist in the theory and history of science, in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions substantiates the existence in science of fundamentally different “paradigms” replacing one another in the course of historical development of scientific knowledge. Kuhn points out extremely important facts: the impossibility of presenting the structure of scientific theories as a system of purely formal relations between language constructions (that was the interpretation of scientific theory by logical positivists); the immersion of theoretical systems in certain meaningful cognitive schemes determining both the character and the paths of further development of the theory as well as the mode of setting up and interpreting experiments; the existence of continuous links between the descriptive function of the paradigm (it is the paradigm that determines the ontology of the theory, that is, the type of real objects to which the given theory or a whole system of theories relates) and its normative, methodological, and heuristic functions. Kuhn indicates that paradigms may be viewed as definite systems of prescriptions shared by the scientific community that accepts a given paradigm. These prescriptions are not usually formulated as a system of clear-cut rules or formal algorithms.(apparently, such a kind of formulation of the prescriptions is even impossible), being incorporated, as it were, in the content structure of the paradigm itself. 178 It is the paradigm, Kuhn insists, that determines the cohesion of a scientific study at all of its levels, its inclusion in a definite semantic context. The mode of organisation of the given integral whole is reminiscent not so much of formal mathematical or logical structures as of the structures of perception, the perceptive “gestalts”. The transition from one paradigm to another may be regarded as a kind of switching to a different “gestalt”.

p We shall not consider in detail the characteristics which Kuhn ascribes to a paradigm, or his conception as a whole. Let us note merely that he has drawn the attention of specialists in the theory, methodology, and history of science to a whole series of problems which have mostly been overshadowed by others but are nevertheless quite real and, moreover, essential for understanding the structure and functions of scientific knowledge, for an understanding of the actual historical process of the development of science.

p It is important here to single out only one aspect of Kuhn’s conception, namely that which provoked accusations of subjectivism. It is also a point that has caused the greatest amount of argument. The transition from one paradigm to another (that is what a scientific revolution is about, according to Kuhn) is regarded as passing into a different conceptual and perceptual world in which the scientist works. What the scientist observes in experience is determined by the content of his theoretical paradigm, states Kuhn. At the same time the paradigms being integral wholes similar to perceptive gestalts are different from one another, there are no transitions between them. After a scientific revolution, the scientist sees the world in a different way: he observes those objects which previously did not exist for him, while that which previously seemed self-obvious and directly given no longer forms part of his experience. The new paradigm may use the same terms as the old one, and it usually includes most of the symbolic generalisations present in the old paradigm ( formulations of scientific principles and laws) as well as the procedures of measurement, the rules for using apparatus, etc. However, in the context of a new meaningful whole, these terms, formulations, and rules are given a qualitatively new meaning.^^60^^ "...During revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places where they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community has been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well. Of course, nothing of quite that sort does occur: 179 there is no geographical transplantation; outside the laboratory everyday affairs usually continue as before. Nevertheless, paradigm changes do cause scientists to see the world of their research-engagement differently. In so far as their only recourse to that world is through what they see and do, we may want to say that after a revolution scientists are responding to a different world.”^^61^^ Different paradigms are mutually intranslatable and incommensurable with each other, asserts Kuhn. Adequate communication between representatives of different paradigms is impossible: the same words are given different meanings. There exists a gap between the paradigms.^^62^^

p To substantiate the thesis of the possibility of different conceptual and perceptive worlds, some theoreticians go even farther than Kuhn in some respects, linking up these worlds not only with certain theoretical systems but also with the modes of dissecting the world which are embodied in everyday language. The American linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, generalising the results of ethnolinguistic studies (in particular, Whorf’s studies in the language of the Hopis, an Indian tribe) came to the conclusions formulated as the so-called hypothesis of linguistic relativity, or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. (Kuhn mentioned the influence of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis on the shaping of his own conception.) According to this hypothesis, the world we perceive and interpret is unconsciously built on the basis of definite language norms. We break up reality into elements in accordance with classification rules (embodied in lexical units) and grammatical structures inherent in the given language. Inasmuch as there are no two similar languages, different societies may be said to exist in different worlds. "We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages,” writes Whorf. "The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way... We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated.”^^6^^3 According to the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, different language pictures of the world can implement different categorical 180 structures, thereby affecting the norms of thinking and, in a mediated way, the norms of behaviour of the given collective. In modern European languages of the IndoEuropean family, there is a division of words into nouns and verbs, into subjects and predicates. Whorf believes that this circumstance determines the ontology shared by the speakers of these languages-^the division of the world into objects and their actions, processes. In Whorf’s view, in the Hopi language there is no division into subject and predicate, and in that of the Nootka tribe, no division even into verbs and nouns. In this latter case, the habitual division of the world into objects and processes is nonexistent.^^64^^

p The Hopi language does not categorise time the way European languages do. "...It will be found that it is not possible to define ’event, thing, object, relationship’, and so on, from nature, but that to define them always involves a circuitous return to the grammatical categories of the definer’s language.”^^65^^

The most radical and at the same time logically polished formulation of the possibility of alternative conceptual worlds has been suggested by Willard Quine, an outstanding modern American logician, mathematician, and philosopher; this formulation is linked with his theory of the so-called ontological relativity.