Criticism of empirical epistemology and principles of interpretation in the article “Sensation and Thought” by R.G. Collingwood

Abstract

The article “Sensation and Thought” by R.G. Collingwood, a prominent British philosopher of the 20th century, is an original effort to criticize grounds of empirical epistemology. Collingwood’s investigation field contains basic notions used by empiricism to solve the problem of relation between sensation and thought, such as: “sense-data”, “universals”, “immediacy”, “mediation”, “interpretation”. Collingwood points out the inconsistency of both sensationalism and intellectualism that absolutize one of the elements of knowledge (sense or intellect), and demonstrates the futility of empiricist approach that combines both of the mentioned doctrines. To avoid defects and distortions of empiricist approach, Collingwood proposes to reject the so called faculty-psychology that differentiates between the sensuous and intellectual components in the cognition. For a description of the authentic nature of knowledge, he uses categories of immediacy and mediation that express correlative aspects of knowledge and emphasize its oneness.