Criterion of Practice in Epistemology

Basic principle of dialectical materialist theory of knowledge. Marxism holds that knowledge and practice are not two independent categories that have nothing to do with each other. Practice not only provides various material conditions for knowledge, but also serves as the source, motive and the only criterion for testing the truth in knowledge. In the struggle against empirio-criticism, Lenin further pointed out that the viewpoints of life and practice should be the primary and basic viewpoints of epistemology. (1) As a pursuit of the unity of subject and object, cognition is essentially a dynamic reflection of object in subject on the basis of practice. Dialectical materialism insists that cognition is a reflection and imitation of the objective world, but this imitation is not a passive, mirror-like and intuitive description, but a perceptual human activity and practice. The process of cognition is the subjective revelation and exploration of objective things by human beings in the process of practice. It is the process of the subject’s active selection of objective objects according to its own purposes and needs. It includes not only the grasp of the essence and laws of objects, but also the construction and reconstruction of objects in human thinking. Besides, people can also make use of the nature and laws they have mastered to develop scientific theories and successfully predict the change and development trend of things through a dynamic reflection process, thus improving the predictability of practical activities. Lenin said that the goal activity is not to point to oneself... but to obtain the reality with the external reality form by eliminating the regulations (aspects, characteristics, phenomena) of the external world. The realization of all this must be based on human’s practical activities.

(2) Practice not only provides various material conditions for knowledge, but also is the source, motive and the only criterion for testing the truth of knowledge. Practice, as a criterion for testing truth, is determined by the nature of truth and the characteristics of practice. Truth and falsehood embody the mutual relationship between thought and being, subject and object, and the criteria for testing this relationship can only exist at the “crosspoint” of the two. Practice is an activity in which the subjective is seen from the objective. It has not only the dignity of universality, but also of immediate actuality, meeting the requirement for the criteria for testing truth. In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin pointed out that Machism’s mistake lied in examining human knowledge merely from a theoretical perspective and trying to answer the question of objectivity and subjectivity, of the reality or unreality of the world, only from the standpoint of theory. But the thing is, knowledge can be useful biologically, useful in human practice, useful for the preservation of life, for the preservation of the species, only when it reflects objective truth, truth which is independent of man. Therefore, only the “success” of human practice proves the correspondence between our ideas and the objective nature of the things we perceive. Only practice can be the criterion of testing the truth of knowledge.

While adhering to the active theory of reflection, the theory of knowledge of dialectical materialism introduced the viewpoint of practice into the theory of practice, so as to organically combine reflection with practice, materialism with dialectics. This not only overcame the defects of old materialism in epistemology, but also correctly revealed the occurrence and development process of human knowledge. Adhering to practice as the criterion in the theory of knowledge will help us overcome the simple subjectivity and one-sidedness of thinking, start from objective reality and avoid falling into the quagmire of idealism.