Transcendentalism as a Program for the Development of Epistemology

Abstract

The author discusses some tensions between realism and constructivism in the theory of knowledge and the corresponding research programs in the philosophy of science. In this paper, he argues that the development of transcendentalism can help reduce these tensions. He considers the way for Kant’s transcendentalism development, which is connected with the semiotic interpretation proposed by K.-O. Apel. The author suggests the new interpretation of transcendentalism according to which the transcendental exists as a proto-norm, which is a spontaneous act that assigns the “given” object either the status of a sign reffering to a certain meaning, or the status of a meaning reffering to a certain expression (sign). The author develops G. Frege’s concept of meaning and argues that the existence of two kinds of meaning (meaning-1 and meaning-2), which corresponds with the two fundamental characteristics of consciousness: intensionality and responsiveness. Given this, a transcendental act generates either intensional or responsive meanings of the reality. The proposed symbolic interpretation of transcendentalism allows us explain the emergence of realism and constructivism as semiotic types of cultures and overcome the tensions between them. It is also shown that this version of symbolic transcendentalism is promising for explaining the nature of absolute existences in both classical and non-classical physical theories. The examples of such existences as absolute space and absolute time in Newtonian mechanics and absolute standards in G. Weil's theory of gauge fields are considered. These transcendental existences cannot be interpreted as real physical objects, and at the same time they are necessary for the interpretation of physical experiments. The author comes to the conclusion that transcendentalism is a promising program for the development of philosophy of science as an area for researches in normativity, sign-symbolic structures of cognitive processes, and the forms of knowledge.