Reflections on the Essence of Proof in Criminal Proceedings

In this paper, the author continues the cycle of his scientific publications devoted to the problems of theory, legislative regulation and practice of cognition and proving of circumstances that are relevant to a criminal case. The paper investigates and analyzes two of the most common scientific approaches to the essence of criminal procedural evidence: a) a narrow approch, i.e. identifying proving with a specific type of cognitive activity of a person; b) a broad approach, i.e. involving inclusion in the content of proving cognitive (cognitive-verifying) techniques and various argumentative and logical operations carried out by the interrogator, investigator, as well as the accused, the defence counsel, the victim and other participants in criminal proceedings. Methodologically relying on the results of many years of research conducted at the intersection of philosophy and psychology, psychophysiology and neuropsychology, the author comes to a conclusion about the feasibility of using a broad approach to the essence of criminal procedural evidence that reflect the continuity of this enforcement activity in relation to the general laws of gnoseology and formal logic. According to the author, the use of this approach allows to maximize harmonization of criminal procedural theory with the real life needs of investigative and judicial practices. At the same time, the paper concludes that many scientific disputes and disagreements about the essence and content of criminal procedural evidence are to some extent factitious and derived from a lack of uniformity in the terminology used. However, the author believes that in modern conditions it is almost impossible to reach any consensus in this part of the development of criminal procedural science. Thus, this circumstance should be perceived as an objectively existing theoretical reality.