It is perhaps one of the signs that, in the field of thought we are still under the aegis of modern thought (and with this we are referring in particular to his early period, before the NINETEENTH century) is that it is still common to encounter the idea that the fundamental questions are mainly epistemological: that is, before anything else, we have to ask ourselves, how is possible to know. This is a form of asking that begins in modernity. Obviously the question of knowledge is prior, it was not modernity that invented the skepticism, for example; but he had not acquired up to the XVII-XVIII centuries the centrality that it still has. We think, in fact, on the occasions that we transform a question of the order of the content in an epistemological order (‘should govern the best’ ‘how do we know who are the best’; or the identification of the best I ‘know’ that it is called technocracy).
The apotheosis of this way of thinking is, no doubt, as shown by their continued influence and centrality, the critical project of Kant. This is where the question about the possibility of knowledge takes on greater clarity. Even more, your response has remained central, and from it we will examine the problem.
Posed the question of knowledge as a question of a subject who knows an object appears, immediately, the question on the possible alignment of these to know: How can this happen that we know that externidad that is the object? It is a question that has not been lost, as such, force, and reverberates in, for example, in the questions of how it is possible for the usefulness of mathematics in the description of nature.
The response kantian was, being very coarse, ‘internalising’ the object: This is built by the categories of the subject. Kant was very careful in asking that there is ‘something’ (the noúmeno) that remains outside of it, and that to a certain extent presents the variety which, when observed after the examination of the categories of the subject, is transformed into an object for us. Then our knowledge of the world of phenomena is warranted as correct. The answer of Kant continues to be on the basis of multiple other ideas. The multiple constructivismos not cease to be, finally, extensions of these ideas. Falsificationism popperiano, which posits that categories are not the world -is manifested in the fact that there are experiences outside of them – we still insist that it is the subject which puts the theory (it is the subject’s guess). Then, there can be no guarantee of correctness, in that Popper is as skeptical as Hume, but it is through the categories and ideas of the subject, which you can explore the world. What we know is posted by the subject (the object has a negative role -falsar – not positive on the development of knowledge). The ‘solution’ hegelian consists, finally, in radicalizing the internalization of the object: If we remove the númeno, then there remains only the world of experience -and in it therefore the possibility of knowledge becomes to ensure. The object is something that puts the subject (one of the ways in which it develops the consciousness).
Against all this tradition I believe that it is more appropriate to dissolve the difference subject-object. Or in other words, remember the response of Spinoza in front of this problem.
Why we can know the world? Because we are a part of the world.
This is not just a general statement, and ‘thought’. The theory of Spinoza on the knowledge uses recurrently the assertion that, ultimately, we are a body, and we are talking of a body that you know.
To the extent that we share qualities with the world, then the possibility of the knowledge is given. This vision also has the nice consequence that not only tells us that there are aspects of the world about which we have good knowledge but also tells us that it is necessary that such knowledge is incomplete (i.and we will always be wrong in something). In the end, the misconceptions continue to be some of the others with the same need that the true(*)
Try to dissolve the difference subject-object, as face-to-modernity ‘really existing’, is a project of interest to you: Recognize the subject as a part of the world is an exploration that enables us to solve many of the problems and aporías recurring in our ways of thinking. Spinoza shows us, as it is based firmly in dissolving the foregoing, a possibility of an alternative modernity.
* NOTE: This feature, by the way, is not unique to Spinoza: it Is something that, in fact, shares with the argument of the hegelian.