Immanuel Kant as the first epistemological constructivist

Abstract

According to constructivism-theory, the object of a cognition process is a question which the subject has not answered yet. The subject is not able to retrieve the answer from his memory through direct observations, by reading books or by asking specialists. However, it forms an objective field through reasoning. It is a relatively narrow circle of phenomena, relating to the search for an answer to a cognitively significant question. Cognition serves to organise the subject’s experimental activity, but it does not discover any ontological reality. Here the question of correspondence of the knowledge received by the subject to an object is immediately raised. Kant tried to answer it, having separated the spheres of theoretical and practical mind applications. The sphere of the rational was thus moved to the subject and human activity. Kant’s argumentation contains two steps: 1) previous attempts to coordinate knowledge and the object were in vain; 2) many scientists of early modern Europe took into consideration the correspondence of the object to the knowledge gained. Kant concludes that subjective perceptional and empirical contemplation fill a cognised object with sense and meaning. The subject of cognition transcends experimental limits and lies on the ulterior side of knowledge. Concerning the cognition process, Kant defines a demand for the reality of the knowledge obtained as a stipulated consequence resulting from a number of evidences. This article illustrates these ideas in relation to epistemological constructivism from the position of modern scientific and technological progress as they play a leading part in it.