REDUCTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE PROBLEM OF A THIRD WAY (Redukcje swiadomosci i problem trzeciej drogi)

The leading idea of the article is defined by a quotation from Fichte concerning the opposition between idealism and 'dogmatism', or naturalism. That opposition is interpreted as a result of two alternative 'reductions of consciousness': according to the first, or the idealistic one, it is possible to reduce the world to consciousness (or to its 'constituted correlate', to a pure phenomenon), while according to the second, the naturalistic one, it is possible to reduce consciousness to the world conceived as a material whole of particles and physical laws. The logics of the idealistic reduction is developed on the example of Husserlian 'pure phenomenology'; this of the naturalistic one is illustrated by the proposals of Paul Churchland and John Searle. The reconstruction of the two alternative modes of reductions aims at revealing their symmetry and, also, the insufficiency of either of them. In the last paragraph, the possibility of a 'third way' between idealism and naturalism is briefly examined (on the examples of several, both classical and contemporary, 'continental' and 'analytical' ideas), but the conclusions are skeptical.