p The problems to which this book is devoted can hardly be called new. Some of them had already been posed in antiquity. In spite of the fact that the attempts to solve them have given rise to a voluminous literature, one can say that the results achieved have not given a satisfactory answer to several of them, which have remained topical to the present day. These are the problems that arise when we study human consciousness and reason, and when we elucidate the patterns of man’s understanding of the external world and of himself, and of his place in the world. Not only has interest in these problems not diminished in recent times but there has been a tendency, on the contrary, for it to mount, evoking lively discussion among both philosophers concerned with the theory of knowledge and other scientists (psychologists, sociologists, educationalists, logicians, mathematicians, ethologists, and specialists engaged in heuristics, cybernetics, etc.).

p Among the problems arising when processes of consciousness and understanding are investigated those that lead to paradoxical situations deserve special attention, viz., to the impossibility of overcoming logical contradictions that stem (it would seem) from the simplest, most obvious premises. These problems include the link between sensations and human reason, and the relation between the sensual and rational aspects of understanding. Philosophers from the time of Plato have been investigating the difference between the mentally comprehended (noumenon) and what i$ comprehended by sensations (phenomenon), a difference 6 they reduce to opposition. Classical philosophy drew a more or less clear line hetweeri sensations (emotions, feelings, notions, etc.) and reason (judgments, abstractions, ideas, etc.). But difficulties arose when explaining the connection between these two aspects of cognitive activity which led to the formation of rival conceptions that found expression in a centuries-long confrontation of sensationalism and rationalism. Discussion developed, in particular, on the source of the knowledge that every individual person and humankind as a whole disposed of. By the source of knowledge, moreover, was understood men’s cognitive capabilities that enabled them to obtain knowledge about the external world and themselves. On the one hand, it seemed natural that our knowledge of anything could not emerge in our head unless we had the power to sensually perceive a phenomenon about which we knew something. How can it be claimed that we really know something if we have never seen this ‘something’ anywhere? have heard nothing about it? have not perceived it? have not experienced grief or joyj from it, and so on? On the other hand, however, there is also the undoubted fact that our mind has facts about sensually unperceived objects. People have mentally employed fantastic images of centaurs, goblins, local and universal gods, etc., from time immemorial. Works of literature and art would be impossible without invented characters. Idealised objects that do not exist in reality, and therefore cannot be sensually perceived as independent of our consciousness, were widely employed in science (for example in mathematics) long before the scientific and industrial revolution. Nevertheless, where do the facts about unperceived objects Come into our consciousness from, if the source of our knowledge is sense data?

p In pre-Marxian philosophical literature one of the last attempts to overcome the ’tragic dualism’ of the sensory and the rational that received world recognition was Immanuel Kant’s. Kant’s proposed the synthesis of the sensory and rational within the context of a philosophical conception led to a counterposing of the postulates that resulted in an inner dualism of the conception itself, a dualism that it was as difficult to overcome as the incompatibility of sensationalist and rationalist philosophical conceptions.

p With the development of the separate sciences, and in particular with the growth of scientific knowledge, the old epistemological problematic underwent changes, as did also 7 investigation of the sensory/rational relation. In the middle of the last century analysis of scientific knowledge had already emerged from the general theory of knowledge and acquired independent philosophical significance. The philosophy of science, arising as a special branch of research, made it its special aim to study the structure of scientific knowledge, the means and methods of scientific understanding, and the laws of development of science. At the same time the relationship of the empirical and theoretical levels of science also emerged in the theory of knowledge and was subjected to special examination. The sensory/rational link, interest in which had been characteristic of the general theory of knowledge, is yielding place in the philosophy of science to the empirical/theoretical relations, which is more and more often becoming the subject of special studies devoted to the analysis of scientific knowledge.

p There are definite historical and logical grounds for singling out of the problematic of the relations of the empirical and the theoretical as an independent field of study. In fact, the connections of the sensory with the rational and of the empirical with the theoretical are not identical. When we trace the difference between them we must point out first that sensory reflection of reality is inherent in animals that do not possess reason, while empirical knowledge, being a stage of scientific knowledge, posits the existence in the knowing subject of a capacity for rational, reasoned reflection, i.e. the existence of consciousness.

p The concepts ‘rational’ and ‘theoretical’ are also not equivalent. In the natural sciences rational knowledge arose and developed together with the rise and development of the thinking being, i.e. in the course of the transition from the animal’s direct sensory reflection of reality to its ideal reflection in the heads of primitive men. In other words, the beginning of rational knowledge coincides in time with the evolution of the first representatives of Homo sapiens. ^ But although primitive thought reflected the world at the rational level as well as the sensory, it was still neither theoretical nor scientific. Before man acquired the capacity to construct theoretical models of things, and of their properties and relations, and to create a scientific picture of the world, he passed through a long period of mythological consciousness in his historical development. Early forms of mythological perception of the world have been preserved to our day among tribes that have lagged behind the development of 8 other peoples for a number of reasons. These tribes’ membership of the human race, and the attitude of peoples who are at higher levels of social development toward them as rational beings are practical questions of modern times with a deep moral content as well as a scientific and theoretical one.

p The fact that man, who is distinguished from beasts by being a rational being, does not always or everywhere think in scientific categories, or is guided by a scientific world outlook in his life, not only has epistemological causes but also social ones.

p But it would be a mistake, when tracing the difference between sensory-rational relations on the one hand, and empirical-theoretical ones on the other, not to see that they have a certain, inherent, common element. That is because rational knowledge grows genetically from sensory, while the sensory-rational relation is a precondition of the subsequent rise of the empirical-theoretical one. We can therefore assume that the difficulties that arise in analysis of the empirical and theoretical levels of scientific knowledge have their roots in the long-known epistemological sensory- rational problematic. And the fact that these difficulties really exist is shown by the internecine struggle of the various modern Western trends in philosophy concerned with investigation of scientific knowledge.

p Positivist attempts to substantiate the reliability of scientific knowledge through a rejection of the ‘phantoms’ denying sense perception, and at the same time by banishing exclusively philosophical questions as ‘metaphysical’ ones lying outside the sphere of science, have not been successful. The crisis of the latest conceptions of neopositivism has increased the discrepant and otherwise discordant chorus of the advocates of methodological pluralism. Voices are beginning to be distinguishable in this polyphonic chorus that reflect a leaning toward the old epistemological problematic and to a new’ reading of the texts of thinkers of the past.

p A striving to rethink the philosophical heritage of the past is attractive now in fact, because many of the riddles of the present and future lie in the depths of the past. In order to disclose the essence of some phenomenon as fully as possible, and to predict how it will be in the future, it is important to understand how it arose and developed and Became what it is here and now. That also applies to the, 9 enigmas that modern theories of scientific knowledge are trying to find the answers to. We can therefore consider it justified to return to the old philosophical problematic of the relation of sensation and reason so that we can see, through the prism of the difficulties met in the past, those that have arisen in the analysis of the relations between the empirical and the theoretical in modern theories of scientific knowledge.

p But, however attractive excursions into the history of the development of knowledge of consciousness and understanding may be, this history itself can be scientifically explained from the standpoint of dialectical materialism as a subjective reflection of objective processes taking place in nature and society. Discovery of the mutations of consciousness not only does not eliminate the task of disclosing their objective patterns but makes it even more urgent.

p If there were no content in consciousness that did not depend on the consciousness of each individual, or of all men taken together, there would be no hope of establishing universal values. Their place would be occupied by the unpredictable will of subjective decisions on whoever’s behalf they spring, whether of separate individuals, states, peoples, nations, gods, or of all the people now living on our planet. Such an alternative is fraught with danger for human existence itself. In fact the fighters for truth who do not recognise the existence of objective truth in some way attribute the status of universal truth to their own subjective convictions. What seems just to individuals is raised to the rank of universal, extra-historical justice or correctness.

p The principle of the historicity and objectivity of truth in relation to the problems arising during study of the transition from sensory knowledge to rational, from the empirical to the theoretical, means that an objective determinant has to be found that will preordain this transition. In order to discover the objective conditionality of this transition it is useful to review the evolution of knowledge not as a psychological act stemming from an individual, already formed, knowing personality, but in the broad scientific aspect as a transition from sensory reflection of reality by man’s animal ancestors to its rational reflection by humans. This means that we must make attempts to mentally reconstruct the mechanism of the origin and development of consciousness and knowledge from the appearance of the first glimmers of thought among the ape-like predecessors of man to, 10 humans’ capacity to create modern theories enabling them to penetrate the secrets of both the macrocosm and the microcosm.

p An attempt at such a reconstruction is made in this volume in its most general, schematic form. It is a revised version of our monograph The Sensory, Rational, and Experience published in Russian by the Moscow University Press in 1976.

In conclusion we would like to thank the staff of the philosophy department of Progress Publishers for suggesting that this book be published in English and Swedish, and to the translators who have spent their time on it. It remains for the author simply to hope that his book will prove useful to readers interested in the old, but at the same time topical, problematic of the genesis and evolution of consciousness and knowledge.