Dedicated to Vladislav A. Lektorsky’s 90th anniversary EPISTEMOLOGICAL REALISM AS A NECESSARY FOUNDATION

Modern epistemology is undergoing some changes related to the transformations of human environment, primarily caused by digitalization. Epistemology is now dominated by two opposing trends — “naturaliziation” and “socialization”. It can be assumed that the strengthening of the “naturalization” trend in epistemology is a reaction to the previously dominant socio-constructionist trend, characterized by the rejection of epistemological realism and subjecting the concepts of truth, reality, objectivity, and knowledge to a critical revision. This approach is characterized by the idea of the dependence of knowledge on social factors, where knowledge is a tool in the hands of “power”, i.e. those social groups that have the power to compel others to their understanding of reality. Such ideas lead to the devaluation of the authority of science and knowledge in general, and are dangerous because they cause the disintegration of society, since the ability to talk about a common reality is denied and each social group has its own “knowledge” about the world. A radical gap is forming between the subject of cognition and reality, since human is dealing now with a large number of information flows, as well as digital objects and interactions, so that the knowledge obtained through direct experience is replaced by information obtained indirectly from various sources that present information in a distorted way. The modern digital environment is also problematic, because it is designed in such a way that it encloses a person within their own familiar pictures of the world, not allowing him to look beyond them and see alternative points of view. The key problem is the loss of trust — a modern subject has no criteria for selecting reliable and trustworthy sources of information, and as a result he or she does not trust anyone, which becomes a significant obstacle for obtaining knowledge. It can be concluded that the appeal to realism is important not only for solving the above mentioned epistemological problems, but also for conducting a dialogue between various social groups, which is necessary for the survival of mankind.