Abstract

I propose here an image of knowledge based on the concept of symbol: according to it, the relation of representation that constituting cognition is a symbolization. It is postulated that both the representing conceptual model, i.e. a pre-linguistic entity acquired in cognition, and the true sentence it generates are of symbolic and not of mirroring character. The symbolic nature of cognition carries dialectical tension. We have at our disposal conceptual models and true sentences which symbolically represent reality. However, it is not possible to lift the symbolic disguise over knowledge, because precisely this disguise is its essence. Reality appears only as symbolically, nonimitatively encoded. The proposed here symbolic realism rejects the traditional adopted dichotomy between, on one side, realism and the absence of the subject’s factors in the cognitive result, and, on the other, idealism and the subject as a factor which is viewed as inevitably leading to the idealistic nature of knowledge.