The transition to settled life also served as the basis for development. What is a sedentary lifestyle? §2. The transition to settled life and the beginning of the property stratification of society
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in psychology. On the topic:
Psyche: nature, mechanisms, properties.
Consciousness as the highest level of mental reflection.
Psyche: nature, mechanisms, properties. Consciousness as the highest level of mental reflection.
1. Mind as a property of highly organized living matter. Nature and mechanisms of mental phenomena.
2. Irritability. Sensitivity and sensations, their properties and main differences compared to irritability. Behavior as a process of adaptation to environmental conditions.
3. Consciousness as the highest level of mental reflection. "I-concept" and human criticality, their role in shaping human behavior.
4. Activity and intentionality are the main characteristics of consciousness. Reflection and motivational-value character of consciousness.
5. Basic functions of the psyche. Ensuring adaptation to environmental conditions is an integrative function of the psyche. General problems of the origin of the human psyche.
6. The relationship between the development of the brain and human consciousness. The role of labor in the formation and development of human consciousness. The concept of A. N. Leontiev.
Mind as a property of highly organized living matter. Nature and mechanisms of mental phenomena.
The psyche is a property of highly organized living matter, which consists in the active reflection of the objective world by the subject, in the construction by the subject of an inalienable picture of this world from him and in the regulation of behavior and activity on this basis.
From this definition follows a number of fundamental judgments about the nature and mechanisms of manifestation of the psyche. First, the psyche is a property of only living matter. And not just living matter, but highly organized living matter. Consequently, not every living matter has this property, but only that which has specific organs that determine the possibility of the existence of the psyche.
Secondly, the main feature of the psyche is the ability to reflect the objective world. What does this mean? Literally, this means the following: highly organized living matter, which has a psyche, has the ability to obtain information about the world around it. At the same time, the receipt of information is associated with the creation of this highly organized matter of a certain mental, i.e., subjective in nature and idealistic (non-material) in essence, image, which, with a certain measure of accuracy, is a copy of the material objects of the real world.
Thirdly, information about the surrounding world received by a living being serves as the basis for regulating the internal environment of a living organism and shaping its behavior, which generally determines the possibility of a relatively long existence of this organism in constantly changing environmental conditions. Consequently, living matter, which has a psyche, is able to respond to changes in the external environment or to the effects of environmental objects.
It must be emphasized that there is a very significant number of forms of living matter that have certain mental abilities. These forms of living matter differ from each other in terms of the level of development of mental properties.
Irritability. Sensitivity and sensations, their properties and main differences compared to irritability . Behavior as a process of adaptation to environmental conditions.
The elementary ability to respond selectively to the influence of the external environment is already observed in the simplest forms of living matter. So, the amoeba, which is just one living cell filled with protoplasm, moves away from some stimuli and approaches others. At its core, amoeba movements are the initial form of adaptation of the simplest organisms to the external environment. Such an adaptation is possible due to the existence of a certain property that distinguishes living matter from non-living matter. This property is irritability. Outwardly, it is expressed in the manifestation of the forced activity of a living organism. The higher the level of development of the organism, the more complex the manifestation of its activity in the event of a change in environmental conditions. Primary forms of irritability are found even in plants, for example, the so-called "tropism" - forced movement.
As a rule, living organisms of this level react only to direct influences, such as mechanical touches that threaten the integrity of the organism, or to biotic stimuli. For example, plants react to illumination, the content of microelements in the soil, etc. Thus, we will not be mistaken if we say that living organisms of a given level react only to factors that are biologically significant for them, and their response is reactive in nature, i.e. with. a living organism is active only after direct exposure to an environmental factor.
The further development of irritability in living beings is largely associated with the complication of the living conditions of more developed organisms, which, accordingly, have a more complex anatomical structure. Living organisms of a given level of development are forced to respond to a more complex set of environmental factors. The combination of these internal and external conditions predetermines the emergence in living organisms of more complex forms of response, called sensitivity. Sensitivity characterizes the general ability to sense. According to A. I. Leontiev, the appearance of sensitivity in animals can serve as an objective biological sign of the emergence of the psyche.
A distinctive feature of sensitivity in comparison with irritability is that with the appearance of sensations, living organisms get the opportunity to respond not only to biologically significant environmental factors, but also to biologically neutral ones, although for the simplest representatives of this level of development, such as worms, mollusks, arthropods, leading are still biologically significant environmental factors. However, in this case, the nature of the response of animals with sensitivity to environmental factors is fundamentally different from the response of living organisms of a lower level. Thus, the presence of sensitivity allows the animal to respond to an object that makes sense to him before direct contact with him. For example, an animal of a given level of development of the psyche can react to the color of an object, its paws or shape, etc. Later, in the process of developing organic matter, living beings gradually form one of the main properties of the psyche - the ability to anticipate and holistically reflect the real world. This means that in the process of evolution, animals with a more highly developed psyche are able to receive information about the world around them, analyze it and respond to the possible impact of any surrounding objects, both biologically significant and biologically neutral.
In itself, the appearance in a certain class of animals of sensitivity, or the ability to sense, can be considered not only as the birth of the psyche, but also as the appearance of a fundamentally new type of adaptation to the external environment. The main difference between this type of adaptation lies in the appearance of special processes that connect the animal with the environment - the processes of behavior.
Behavior is a complex set of reactions of a living organism to the effects of the external environment. It must be emphasized that living beings, depending on the level of mental development, have behavior of varying complexity. We can see the simplest behavioral responses by observing, for example, how a worm changes its direction of movement when it encounters an obstacle. Moreover, the higher the level of development of a living being, the more complex its behavior. For example, in dogs we are already seeing manifestations of anticipatory reflection. So, the dog avoids meeting with an object that contains a certain threat. However, the most complex behavior is observed in humans, who, unlike animals, have not only the ability to respond to sudden changes in environmental conditions, but also the ability to form motivated (conscious) and purposeful behavior. The possibility of implementing such a complex behavior is due to the presence of consciousness in a person.
Consciousness as the highest level of mental reflection. "I-concept" and human criticality, their role in shaping human behavior.
Consciousness is the highest level of mental reflection and regulation, inherent only to man as a socio-historical being.
From a practical point of view, consciousness acts as a continuously changing set of sensory and mental images that directly appear before the subject in his inner world and anticipate his practical activity. We have the right to assume that similar mental activity in the formation of mental images occurs in the most developed animals, such as dogs, horses, dolphins. Therefore, a person is distinguished from animals not by this activity itself, but by the mechanisms of its flow, which originated in the process of human social development. These mechanisms and features of their operation determine the presence in a person of such a phenomenon as consciousness.
As a result of these mechanisms, a person separates himself from the environment and realizes his individuality, forms his “I-concept”, which consists in the totality of a person’s ideas about himself, about the surrounding reality and his place in society. Thanks to consciousness, a person has the ability to independently, that is, without the influence of environmental stimuli, regulate his behavior. In turn, the "I-concept" is the core of his system of self-regulation. A person refracts all the perceived information about the world around him through his system of ideas about himself and forms his behavior based on the system of his values, ideals and motivational attitudes. Of course, human behavior does not always correspond to environmental conditions. The adequacy of human behavior is largely determined by the degree of its criticality.
In a simplified form, criticality is the ability to recognize the difference between "good" and "bad". Thanks to criticality, ideals are formed in a person and an idea of \u200b\u200bmoral values is created. It is the ability to critically evaluate what is happening and compare the information received with one's attitudes and ideals, and also, on the basis of this comparison, form one's behavior that distinguishes a person from an animal. Thus, criticality acts as a mechanism for controlling one's behavior. On the other hand, the presence of such a complex mechanism for the formation and operation of mental images determines whether a person has the ability for conscious activity, the manifestation of which is labor.
In order to realize the importance of this conclusion, let us try to deny it by saying that certain animals also perform useful actions. For example, a dog guards, a horse carries firewood, and some animals perform in the circus, demonstrating actions that at first glance seem reasonable. However, all this is so only at first glance. In order to perform such complex actions, an animal needs a person. Without the participation of a person, without his initiating principle, the animal is not able to perform actions similar to conscious behavior. Consequently, human activity and animal behavior differ in the degree of independence. Thanks to consciousness, a person acts consciously and independently.
Thus, we can distinguish four main levels of development of the psyche of living organisms: irritability, sensitivity (sensations), behavior of higher animals (externally conditioned behavior), human consciousness (self-determined behavior). It should be noted that each of these levels has its own stages of development.
Only man possesses the highest level of development of the psyche. But a person is not born with a developed consciousness. The formation and evolution of consciousness occur in the process of physiological and social development of a particular individual (ontogenesis). Therefore, the process of formation of consciousness is strictly individual, due to both the peculiarities of social development and genetic predisposition.
Activity and intentionality are the main characteristics of consciousness. Reflection and motivational-value character of consciousness.
What characterizes consciousness? Firstly, consciousness is always active, and secondly, it is intentional. Activity itself is a property of all living beings. The activity of consciousness is manifested in the fact that the mental reflection of the objective world by a person is not passive, as a result of which all objects reflected by the psyche have the same significance, but, on the contrary, differentiation occurs in terms of the degree of significance for the subject of mental images. As a result, human consciousness is always directed towards some object, object or image, i.e. it has the property of intention (orientation).
The presence of these properties determines the presence of a number of other characteristics of consciousness, allowing us to consider it as the highest level of self-regulation. The group of these properties of consciousness should include the ability for self-observation (reflection), as well as the motivational-value nature of consciousness.
The ability to reflect determines the ability of a person to observe himself, his feeling, his state. Moreover, to observe critically, that is, a person is able to assess himself and his condition by placing the information received in a certain coordinate system. Such a coordinate system for a person is his values and ideals.
Basic functions of the psyche. Ensuring adaptation to environmental conditions is an integrative function of the psyche. General problems of the origin of the human psyche
The functions of the psyche can be most accurately determined, perhaps, only in one area. This is the sphere of interaction between living organisms and the environment. From this point of view, three main functions of the psyche can be distinguished: reflection of the surrounding reality, preservation of the integrity of the body, regulation of behavior. These functions are interconnected and, in fact, are elements of the integrative function of the psyche, which consists in ensuring the adaptation of a living organism to environmental conditions.
The more developed a living being, the more complex the mechanisms of its adaptation. We observe the most complex adaptation mechanisms in humans. The process of human adaptation to a certain extent is similar to the process of adaptation of higher animals. Just like in animals, human adaptation has an internal and external orientation. The internal orientation of adaptation is that thanks to the process of adaptation, the constancy of the internal environment of the organism is ensured and thereby the integrity of the organism is preserved. The external manifestation of adaptation is to ensure adequate contact of a living being with the external environment, i.e., in the formation of appropriate behavior in more developed creatures or behavioral reactions in less developed organisms. Consequently, both the internal and external aspects of adaptation primarily provide the possibility of the biological existence of a living being. In humans, the construction of contact with the external environment has a more complex structure than in animals, since a person is in contact not only with the natural, but also with the social environment, which functions according to laws different from the laws of nature. Therefore, we have the right to believe that the adaptation of a person is aimed not only at ensuring his biological existence, but also at ensuring his existence in society.
In addition, we have the right to assume that the regulation of the internal state of a person occurs at a more complex level, since the influx of information about the changed conditions of the external environment gives rise to certain changes in the course of mental processes, i.e., a person also undergoes mental adaptation.
The way and level of adaptation of animals to the conditions of existence is determined by the degree of development of the psyche of animals. The available scientific material makes it possible to single out several stages in the development of the animal psyche. These stages differ in the way and level of obtaining information about the surrounding world, which prompts the animal to act. In one case, this is the level of individual sensations, in the other, objective perception.
The highest level of development of the psyche of animals at the stage of objective perception allows us to speak of the simplest intellectual behavior of animals. However, the peculiarity of animal behavior is mainly the satisfaction of their basic biological needs.
There is another problem of scientific knowledge of the psyche. This is the problem of the origin of the psyche. What is the reason for the existence of such a phenomenon as the psyche? We have already mentioned the existence of different points of view regarding the origin of the psyche. From one point of view - idealistic - the psychic (soul) in its origin is not connected with the body (the biological carrier of the soul) and has a divine origin. From another point of view - dualistic - a person has two principles: mental (ideal) and biological (material). These two principles develop in parallel and to a certain extent are interconnected with each other. From a third point of view - materialistic - the phenomenon of the psyche is due to the evolution of living nature, and its existence should be considered as a property of highly developed matter.
Disputes about the origin of the psyche do not stop to this day. This is due to the fact that the problem of the origin of the psyche is not only one of the most difficult in scientific knowledge, but also fundamental. Many scientists are trying to explain the origin of the psyche within the framework of not only psychological science, but also philosophy, religion, physiology, etc. Today there is still no unambiguous answer to this question.
In domestic psychology, this problem is considered from a materialistic point of view, which involves the use of a rationalistic method of cognition based on experiment. Thanks to experimental research, today we know that there is a certain relationship between the biological and the mental. For example, it is well known that diseases or dysfunctions of certain organs can affect the human psyche. Thus, a long course of treatment using the "artificial kidney" apparatus is accompanied by the phenomenon of a temporary decrease in intellectual abilities, which is associated with the accumulation of aluminum salts in the brain. After the termination of the course of treatment, the restoration of intellectual abilities occurs.
It should be noted that such complex mental mechanisms observed in humans became possible only as a result of the long evolution of living organisms, the historical development of mankind and the individual development of a particular individual.
The relationship between the development of the brain and human consciousness. The role of labor in the formation and development of human consciousness . The concept of A. N. Leontiev.
In domestic psychology, the question is “What causes the emergence and development of consciousness in a person? “, as a rule, are considered based on the hypothesis formulated by A. N. Leontiev about the origin of human consciousness. In order to answer the question about the origin of consciousness, it is necessary to dwell on the fundamental differences between man and other representatives of the animal world.
One of the main differences between man and animal lies in his relationship with nature. If an animal is an element of living nature and builds its relationship with it from the standpoint of adaptation to the conditions of the surrounding world, then a person does not simply adapt to the natural environment, but seeks to subjugate it to a certain extent, creating tools for this. With the creation of tools, the way of life of a person changes. The ability to create tools for the transformation of the surrounding nature testifies to the ability to work consciously.
Work - this is a specific type of activity inherent only to man, which consists in the implementation of influences on nature in order to ensure the conditions for its existence.
The main feature of labor is that labor activity, as a rule, is carried out only jointly with other people. This is true even for the simplest labor operations or activities of an individual nature, since in the process of their implementation a person enters into certain relationships with the people around him. For example, the work of a writer can be characterized as individual. However, in order to become a writer, a person had to learn to read and write, receive the necessary education, i.e., his labor activity became possible only as a result of involvement in the system of relations with other people. Thus, any work, even seemingly purely individual at first glance, requires cooperation with other people.
Consequently, labor contributed to the formation of certain human communities that were fundamentally different from animal communities. These differences consisted in the fact that, firstly, the unification of primitive people was caused by the desire not just to survive, which is typical to a certain extent for herd animals, but to survive by transforming the natural conditions of existence, i.e., with the help of collective labor.
Secondly, the most important condition for the existence of human communities and the successful performance of labor operations is the level of development of communication between members of the community. The higher the level of development of communication between members of the community, the higher not only the organization, but also the level of development of the human psyche. Thus, the highest level of human communication - speech - determined a fundamentally different level of regulation of mental states and behavior - regulation with the help of the word. A person who is able to communicate using words does not need to make physical contact with the objects around him to form his behavior or idea of the real world. To do this, it is enough for him to have information that he acquires in the process of communicating with other people.
It should be noted that it is the features of human communities, which consist in the need for collective labor, that determined the emergence and development of speech. In turn, speech predetermined the possibility of the existence of consciousness, since a person's thought always has a verbal (verbal) form. For example, a person who, due to a certain set of circumstances, got into childhood with animals and grew up among them, cannot speak, and the level of his thinking, although higher than that of animals, does not at all correspond to the level of thinking of a modern person.
Thirdly, for the normal existence and development of human communities, the laws of the animal world, based on the principles of natural selection, are unsuitable. The collective nature of labor, the development of communication not only led to the development of thinking, but also led to the formation of specific laws of the existence and development of the human community. These laws are known to us as the principles of morality and morality.
Thus, there is a certain sequence of phenomena that determined the possibility of the appearance of consciousness in a person: labor led to a change in the principles of building relationships between people. This change was expressed in the transition from natural selection to the principles of organizing a social community, and also contributed to the development of speech as a means of communication. The emergence of human communities with their moral norms, reflecting the laws of social coexistence, was the basis for the manifestation of the criticality of human thinking. This is how the concepts of "good" and "bad" appeared, the content of which was determined by the level of development of human communities. Gradually, with the development of society, these concepts became more complex, which to a certain extent contributed to the evolution of thinking. At the same time, the development of speech took place. She has more and more features. It contributed to a person's awareness of his "I", the isolation of himself from the environment. As a result, speech has acquired properties that make it possible to consider it as a means of regulating human behavior. All these phenomena and patterns determined the possibility of manifestation and development of consciousness in humans.
At the same time, it should be emphasized that such a logical sequence is only a hypothesis stated from rationalistic positions. Today, there are other points of view on the problem of the emergence of human consciousness, including those stated from irrational positions. This is not surprising, since there is no consensus on many issues of psychology. We prefer the rationalist point of view not only because such views were held by the classics of Russian psychology (A. N. Leontiev, B. N. Teplov, and others). There are a number of facts that make it possible to establish patterns that determined the possibility of the emergence of consciousness in humans.
First of all, attention should be paid to the fact that the emergence of consciousness in man, the appearance of speech and the ability to work were prepared by the evolution of man as a biological species. The upright posture freed the forelimbs from the function of walking and contributed to the development of their specialization associated with grasping objects, holding them and manipulating them, which in general contributed to the creation of an opportunity for a person to work. Simultaneously with this, the development of the sense organs took place. In humans, vision has become the dominant source of information about the world around us.
We have the right to believe that the development of the sense organs could not occur in isolation from the development of the nervous system as a whole, since with the advent of man as a biological species, significant changes are noted in the structure of the nervous system, and above all the brain. Thus, the volume of the human brain exceeds the volume of the brain of its closest predecessor - the great ape - more than twice. If in a great ape the average brain volume is 600 cm 3, then in humans it is 1400 cm 3. The surface area of the cerebral hemispheres increases even more in proportion, since the number of convolutions of the cerebral cortex and their depth in humans is much greater.
However, with the advent of man, there is not only a physical increase in the volume of the brain and the area of the cortex. There are significant structural and functional changes in the brain. For example, in humans, in comparison with the great ape, the area of projection fields associated with elementary sensory and motor functions has decreased in percentage terms, and the percentage of integrative fields associated with higher mental functions has increased.
Such a sharp growth of the cerebral cortex, its structural evolution is primarily due to the fact that a number of elementary functions, which in animals are entirely carried out by the lower parts of the brain, in humans already require the participation of the cortex. There is a further corticalization of the control of behavior, a greater subordination of elementary processes to the cortex in comparison with what is observed in animals. It can be assumed that the evolution of the cerebral cortex in the process of human phylogenesis, along with its socio-historical development, led to the possibility of the emergence of the highest form of development of the psyche - consciousness.
Today, thanks to clinical research, we know that conscious activity and conscious human behavior is largely determined by the prefrontal and parietal areas of the cerebral cortex. So, with the defeat of the anterior frontal fields, a person loses the ability to consciously and intelligently manage his activity as a whole, to subordinate his actions to more distant motives and goals. At the same time, the defeat of the parietal fields leads to the loss of ideas about temporal and spatial relationships, as well as logical connections. An interesting fact is that the frontal and parietal fields in humans, compared with great apes, are developed to the greatest extent, especially the frontal. If the frontal fields in monkeys occupy about 15% of the area of the cerebral cortex, then in humans they occupy 30%. In addition, the anterior frontal and lower parietal areas in humans have some nerve centers that are absent in animals.
It should also be noted that the results of the evolution of motor organs affected the nature of structural changes in the human brain. Each muscle group is closely associated with certain motor fields of the cerebral cortex. In humans, the motor fields associated with a particular muscle group have a different area, the size of which directly depends on the degree of development of a particular muscle group. When analyzing the ratios of the sizes of the areas of the motor fields, attention is drawn to how large the area of the motor field associated with the hands is in relation to other fields. Consequently, the human hands have the greatest development among the organs of movement and are most associated with the activity of the cerebral cortex. It must be emphasized that this phenomenon occurs only in humans.
Thus, we can draw a twofold conclusion about the relationship between labor and the mental development of a person. First, the most complex structure that the human brain has and which distinguishes it from the brain of animals is most likely associated with the development of human labor activity. Such a conclusion is classical from the point of view of materialistic philosophy. On the other hand, given that the volume of the brain of modern man has not changed significantly since the time of primitive people, we can say that the evolution of man as a biological species contributed to the emergence of people's ability to work, which in turn was a prerequisite for the emergence of human consciousness. The absence of indisputable evidence confirming or refuting one of the conclusions has given rise to different points of view on the causes of the emergence and development of human consciousness.
However, we will not focus our attention on theoretical disputes, but only note that the emergence of consciousness in a person as the highest known form of development of the psyche became possible due to the complication of the structure of the brain. In addition, we must agree that the level of development of brain structures and the ability to perform complex labor operations are closely related. Therefore, it can be argued that the emergence of consciousness in humans is due to both biological and social factors. The development of wildlife has led to the emergence of a person with specific features of the structure of the body and a more developed nervous system compared to other animals, which generally determined the ability of a person to work. This, in turn, led to the emergence of communities, the development of language and consciousness, that is, the logical chain of patterns that was mentioned above. Thus, labor was the condition that made it possible to realize the mental potentials of the biological species Homo Sapiens.
It must be emphasized that with the advent of consciousness, man immediately stood out from the animal world, but the first people, in terms of their level of mental development, differed significantly from modern people. Thousands of years passed before man reached the level of modern development. Moreover, the main factor in the progressive development of consciousness was labor. So, with the acquisition of practical experience, with the evolution of social relations, there was a complication of labor activity. A person gradually moved from the simplest labor operations to more complex activities, which entailed the progressive development of the brain and consciousness.
Used Books:
1. Maklakov A. G. General psychology - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2001.
2. Gippenreiter Yu. B. Introduction to General Psychology: A Course of Lectures: Textbook for High Schools. - M., 1997.
3. Nemov R. S. Psychology: Textbook for students. higher ped. textbook institutions: In 3 books. Book. 1: General foundations of psychology. - 2nd ed. - M.: Vlados 1998.
4. Psychology / Ed. prof. K. N. Kornilova, prof. A. A. Smirnova, prof. B. M. Teplov. - Ed. 3rd, revised. and additional - M.: Uchpedgiz, 1948.
5. Simonov P. V. Motivated brain: Higher nervous activity and natural science foundations of general psychology / Ed. ed. V. S. Rusinov. - M.: Nauka, 1987.
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Mental reflection is a subjective representation of the world. Everything that enters the human mind with the help of the senses is subjected to specific processing based on experience.
There is an objective reality that exists independently of human consciousness. And there is a mental reflection, which depends on the characteristics of the senses, emotions, interests and level of thinking of the individual. The psyche interprets objective reality based on these filters. Thus, mental reflection is a "subjective image of the objective world."
When a person rethinks his reality, he forms a worldview based on:
- events that have already taken place;
- actual reality of the present;
- actions and events to take place.
Each person has his own subjective experience, it firmly settles in the psyche and affects the present. The present carries information about the internal state of the human psyche. While the future is aimed at the implementation of tasks, goals, intentions - all this is displayed in his fantasies, dreams and dreams. We can say that a person is in these three states at the same time, regardless of what he thinks at the moment.
Mental reflection has a number of features and characteristics:
- Mental (mental) image is formed in the process of active human activity.
- It makes it possible to correctly reflect reality.
- It has a preemptive character.
- Refracted through the individuality of a person.
- Ensures the expediency of behavior and activity.
- The psychic reflection itself deepens and improves.
This implies the main function of mental reflection: reflection of the surrounding world and regulation of human behavior and activities in order to survive.
Levels of mental reflection
Mental reflection serves to create a structured and integral image from dissected objects of reality. Soviet psychologist Boris Lomov identified three levels of mental reflection:
- Sensory-perceptual. It is considered the basic level on which mental images are built, which arise in the process of development in the first place, but do not lose their relevance later. A person is based on the information that comes with the help of his senses and builds an appropriate strategy of behavior. That is, the stimulus causes a reaction: what happened in real time affects the behavior of a person.
- Presentation Layer. In order for a person to have an image, it is not at all necessary that he be present here and now and that it be stimulated with the help of the senses. For this, there is figurative thinking, and imagination. A person can cause the representation of an object if it has appeared several times before in his field of vision: in this case, the main features are remembered, while the secondary ones are discarded. The main functions of this level are: control and correction of actions in the internal plan, planning, drawing up standards.
- Verbal-logical thinking and speech-thinking level. This level is even less related to the present time, it can even be called timeless. A person can operate with logical methods and concepts that have developed in his mind and the minds of mankind during its history. He is able to abstract from the first level, that is, not to be aware of his feelings and at the same time fully concentrate, relying on the experience of mankind.
Despite the fact that often the three levels function as if by themselves, in fact they smoothly and imperceptibly flow into each other, forming a mental reflection of a person.
Forms of mental reflection
The elementary forms of reflection are: mechanical, physical and chemical. The main form of reflection is biological reflection. Its specificity is that it is characteristic only of living organisms.
In the transition from the biological form of reflection to the psychic, the following stages are distinguished:
- Perceptual. It is expressed in the ability to reflect a complex of stimuli as a whole: orientation begins with a set of signs, a reaction is also observed to biologically neutral stimuli, which are only signals of vital stimuli (sensitivity). Sensations are an elementary form of mental reflection.
- touch. Reflection of individual stimuli: the subject reacts only to biologically significant stimuli (irritability).
- intellectual. It manifests itself in the fact that in addition to the reflection of individual objects, there is a reflection of their functional relationships and connections. This is the highest form of mental reflection.
The stage of intellect is characterized by very complex activity and equally complex forms of reflection of reality.
Is our mental reflection immutable, or can we influence it? We can, but on condition that we develop, with the help of which we are able to change perception and even sensations.
Self-regulation
Self-regulation is the ability of a person, despite the circumstances, to maintain internal stability at a certain, relatively constant level.
A person who does not know how to manage his mental state consistently goes through the following stages:
- Situation: The sequence begins with a situation (real or imagined) that is emotionally relevant.
- Attention: Attention is directed to the emotional situation.
- Evaluation: The emotional situation is evaluated and interpreted.
- Answer: An emotional response is generated resulting in loosely coordinated changes in the experimental, behavioral and physiological response systems.
If a person is developed, he can change this behavior pattern. In this case, the model will look like this:
- Choosing a situation: a person decides for himself whether this situation is necessary in his life and whether it is worth emotionally approaching it if it is inevitable. For example, he chooses whether to go to a meeting, a concert or a party.
- Changing the Situation: If the situation is unavoidable, then the person makes a conscious effort to change its impact. For example, he uses or physically moves away from an object or person that is unpleasant to him.
- Attentive deployment: involves directing attention towards or away from an emotional situation. For this, distraction, reflection and suppression of thoughts are used.
- Cognitive change: modification of how one evaluates a situation in order to change its emotional meaning. A person uses strategies such as overestimation, distance, humor.
- Response Modulation: Attempts to directly influence experimental, behavioral, and physiological response systems. Strategies: expressive suppression of emotions, exercise, sleep.
If we talk about specific practical methods, then the following are distinguished:
- Neuromuscular relaxation. The method consists in performing a set of exercises consisting in alternating maximum tension and relaxation of muscle groups. This allows you to relieve tension from individual parts of the body, or from the entire body.
- Ideomotor training. This is a consistent tension and relaxation of the muscles of the body, but the exercises are performed not really, but mentally.
- Sensory reproduction of images. This is relaxation through the representation of images of objects and holistic situations associated with relaxation.
- Autogenic training. This is learning the possibilities of autosuggestion or autosuggestion. The main exercise is saying affirmations.
As you can see, a person can decide how to relate to a particular situation. However, given that the will is an exhaustible resource, it is necessary to obtain energy through sleep, rest, exercise, proper nutrition, as well as specific techniques.
7. Consciousness as the highest form of mental reflection. Genesis and structure of consciousness.
Consciousness and its characteristics
The psyche as a reflection of reality is characterized by different levels. The highest level of the psyche, characteristic of man, forms consciousness. Consciousness is the highest, integrating form of the psyche, the result of socio-historical conditions for the formation of a person in activity, with constant communication (through speech) with other people. Therefore, consciousness is a social product. Characteristics of consciousness. 1. Human consciousness includes a body of knowledge about the world. The structure of consciousness includes cognitive processes (perception, memory, imagination, thinking, etc.), with the help of which a person truly enriches knowledge about the world and about himself. 2. The second characteristic of consciousness is a distinct distinction between Self and Not-Self. A person who has separated from the surrounding world continues to maintain peace in his mind and realize self-consciousness. A person makes a conscious assessment of himself, his thoughts, actions. 3. The third characteristic of consciousness is the provision of goal setting. The functions of consciousness include the formation of goals, while comparing motives, making volitional decisions, taking into account the progress of achieving goals. 4. The fourth characteristic is the inclusion in the composition of consciousness of a certain attitude. The world of his feelings enters the consciousness of a person, it represents the emotions of assessing interpersonal relationships. In general, consciousness is characterized by 1. activity (selectivity), 2. intentionality (focus on the object), 3. motivational-value character. 4. Various levels of clarity.
The Genesis of Consciousness Gippenreiter
Genesis of consciousness. AN Leontiev owns the hypothesis of the origin of consciousness. According to his definition, conscious reflection is such a reflection of objective reality, in which its "objective stable properties" are distinguished "regardless of the subject's relationship to it." This definition emphasizes "objectivity", i.e. biological impartiality, conscious reflection.
In accordance with the general position, according to which any change in mental reflection occurs after a change in practical activity, the impetus for the emergence of consciousness was the emergence of a new form of activity - collective labor.
Every collaboration involves division of labor. This means that different members of the team begin to perform different operations, and they are different in one very significant respect: some operations immediately lead to a biologically useful result, while others do not give such a result, but act only as a condition for achieving it. Considered by themselves, such operations are biologically meaningless.
For example, the pursuit and killing of game by a hunter directly corresponds to the biological motive - obtaining food. In contrast to this, the actions of the beater, who drives the game away from himself, not only have no independent meaning, but, it would seem, are directly opposite to what should be done. Nevertheless, they have real meaning in the context of a collective activity - joint hunting. The same can be said about the actions for the manufacture of tools, etc.
So, in the conditions of collective labor, for the first time, such operations appear that are not directed directly at the object of need - a biological motive, but have in mind only intermediate result.
Within the framework of individual activity, this result becomes independent. purpose. Thus, for the subject, the goal of the activity is separated from its motive; accordingly, its new unit is allocated in the activity - action.
In terms of mental reflection, this is accompanied by an experience meaning actions. After all, in order for a person to be motivated to perform an action that leads only to an intermediate result, he must understand connection this result with a motive, i.e., to “discover” its meaning for oneself. Meaning, by definition of A. N. Leontiev, and is reflection of the relation of the purpose of action to motive.
For the successful performance of an action, it is necessary to develop an "impartial" type of cognition of reality. After all, actions begin to be directed to an ever wider range of objects, and knowledge of the “objective stable properties” of these objects turns out to be a vital necessity. This is where the role of the second factor in the development of consciousness manifests itself - speeches and language. Most likely, the first elements of human speech appeared in the course of joint labor activities. It was here, according to F. Engels, that people “appeared the need to say something each other".
A unique feature of the human language is its ability to accumulate knowledge acquired by generations of people. Thanks to her, the language became the bearer of social consciousness. It is important to delve into the etymology of the word "consciousness". After all consciousness - This shared knowledge. Each person in the course of individual development through mastering the language is attached to the "joint knowledge", and only thanks to this, his individual consciousness is formed. Thus, meanings and language values turned out, according to A. N. Leontiev, the main constituents of human consciousness.
Leontiev adheres to the position of K. Marx on the essence of consciousness. Marx said that consciousness is a product of socio-historical relations that people enter into and which are only realized through their brain, their sense organs and organs of action. In the processes generated by these relations, objects are posited in the form of their subjective images in the human head in the form of consciousness. Leontiev writes that consciousness is “a picture of the world that opens up to the subject, in which he himself, his actions and states are included. And following Marx, Leontiev says that consciousness is a specifically human form of subjective reflection of objective reality, it can only be understood as a product of relations and mediations that arise in the course of the formation and development of society.
Initially, consciousness exists only in the form of a mental image that reveals to the subject the world around him, while activity, as before, remains practical, external. At a later stage, activity also becomes the subject of consciousness: the actions of other people are realized, and through them, the subject's own actions. Now they communicate by means of gestures or speech. This is the prerequisite for the generation of internal actions and operations occurring in the mind, on the “plane of consciousness”. Consciousness-image also becomes consciousness-activity. The developed consciousness of individuals is characterized by its psychological multidimensionality.
Structure of consciousness according to A.N. Leontiev. Components of consciousness:
a) Sensual fabric - sensual components of specific images of reality, actually perceived or emerging in memory, related to the future, or even only imaginary. These images differ in their modality, sensual tone, degree of clarity, greater or lesser stability, and so on. A special function of sensory images of consciousness is that they give reality to the conscious picture of the world that opens up to the subject, i.e. the world appears for the subject as existing not in consciousness, but outside his consciousness - as an objective field and object of his activity. The development of the sensory content of consciousness occurs in the process of development of human forms of activity. In humans, sensual images acquire a new quality, namely, signification.
b) Meaning - generalized experience of mankind, knowledge, expressed in language. “The meaning represents both the ideal form of existence of the objective world, its properties, connections and relations, transformed and folded in the matter of language, revealed by the cumulative social practice. With the help of meaning, a person indirectly reflects the world. Meanings refract the world in the mind of a person. Language is the bearer of meanings, but socially developed methods of action are hidden behind linguistic meanings, in the process of which people change and cognize objective reality.
in) personal meaning- meaning to me. The function of personal meaning is the partiality of consciousness (subjectivity of thinking).
According to Vygotsky, the components of consciousness are values(cognitive components of consciousness) and meanings(emotional-motivational components).
Consciousness- the highest form of a generalized reflection of the objective stable properties and patterns of the surrounding world, characteristic of a person, the formation of an internal model of the external world in a person, as a result of which knowledge and transformation of the surrounding reality is achieved.
Function consciousness consists in the formation of the goals of activity, in the preliminary mental construction of actions and the prediction of their results, which ensures a reasonable regulation of human behavior and activity. Human consciousness includes a certain attitude towards the environment, towards other people.
There are the following properties consciousness: building relationships, cognition and experience. This directly implies the inclusion of thinking and emotions in the processes of consciousness. Indeed, the main function of thinking is to identify objective relationships between the phenomena of the external world, and the main function of emotion is the formation of a person's subjective attitude to objects, phenomena, people. These forms and types of relations are synthesized in the structures of consciousness, and they determine both the organization of behavior and the deep processes of self-esteem and self-consciousness. Really existing in a single stream of consciousness, an image and a thought can, being colored by emotions, become an experience.
The primary act of consciousness is the act of identification with the symbols of culture, organizing human consciousness, making a person a person. The isolation of the meaning, symbol and identification with it is followed by the implementation, the active activity of the child in reproducing patterns of human behavior, speech, thinking, consciousness, the active activity of the child in reflecting the world around him and regulating his behavior.
Allocate two layers of consciousness(V.P. Zinchenko): I. Being consciousness (consciousness for being), which includes: - biodynamic properties of movements, experience of actions, - sensual images. II. Reflective Consciousness(consciousness for consciousness), including:
Meaning is the content of social consciousness, assimilated by man. These can be operational meanings, subject, verbal meanings, everyday and scientific meanings - concepts. - Meaning - subjective understanding and attitude to the situation, information. Misunderstanding is associated with difficulties in understanding meanings. The processes of mutual transformation of meanings and meanings (comprehension of meanings and meaning of meanings) act as a means of dialogue and mutual understanding.
On the existential layer of consciousness, very complex tasks are solved, since for effective behavior in a given situation, it is necessary to actualize the image that is needed at the moment and the necessary motor program, i.e. the mode of action must fit into the image of the world. The world of ideas, concepts, worldly and scientific knowledge correlates with the meaning (of reflective consciousness). The world of industrial, subject-practical activity correlates with the biodynamic fabric of movement. and actions (existential layer of consciousness). The world of representations, imagination, cultural symbols and signs correlates with the sensual fabric (existential consciousness). Consciousness is born and is present in all these worlds.
The epicenter of consciousness is the consciousness of one's own "I". Consciousness: 1) is born in being, 2) reflects being, 3) creates being. Functions consciousness:
1) reflective, 2) generative (creative - creative), 3) regular-evaluative, 4) reflective function - the main function that characterizes the essence of consciousness. The object of reflection can be: a reflection of the world, thinking about it, ways a person regulates his behavior, the processes of reflection themselves, their personal consciousness. The existential layer contains the origins and beginnings of the reflective layer, since the meanings and meanings are born in the existential layer. The meaning expressed in the word contains: image, operational and objective meaning, meaningful and objective action. Words, language do not exist only as language, they objectify forms of thinking that we master through the use of language.
Consciousness as the highest level of mental reflection.
Consciousness and the unconscious
Main questions:
1. Main approaches to the problems of consciousness.
2. Basic psychological characteristics of consciousness.
3. Theory of consciousness K.K.Platonov. The structure of consciousness.
4. Form consciousness.
5. Consciousness and the unconscious.
CONSCIOUSNESS is the highest level of mental reflection of reality, characteristic only for a person.
In the history of psychological science, consciousness has been the most difficult problem that has not yet been solved from materialistic or idealistic positions; many of the most difficult questions have arisen on the path of its materialistic understanding. Definition consciousness faces a lot of difficulties associated with very different approaches to this problem. The problem of consciousness is one of the most global and complex problems in psychology.
1. Basic approaches to the problem of consciousness
"Consciousness, - W. Wundt wrote, - consists only in the fact that we generally find in ourselves any kind of mental states". Consciousness psychologically represents, from this point of view, as if an inner glow, which is bright or darkened, or even fades away completely, as, for example, in a deep faint (Ledd). Therefore, it can only have purely formal properties; they are expressed by the so-called psychological laws of consciousness: unity, continuity, narrowness, and so on. According to W. James, consciousness is "master of mental functions", that is, in fact, consciousness is identified with the subject. Consciousness is a special mental space, a "scene" (K. Jaspers). Consciousness can be a condition of psychology, but not its subject (Natorp). Although its existence is a basic and quite certain psychological fact, it is indefinable and derivable only from itself. Consciousness is of no quality, because it itself is a quality - the quality of mental phenomena and processes; this quality is expressed in their presentation (representation) to the subject (Stout). Quality is not disclosed, it can only be or not be.
A common feature of all the above views is the emphasis on the psychological poor quality of consciousness.
The representatives of the French sociological school (Durkheim, Halbwachs, and others) have a slightly different point of view. The psychological lack of quality of consciousness is preserved here, but consciousness is understood as a plane onto which notions, concepts that make up the content of social consciousness are projected. By this consciousness is identified with knowledge: consciousness is "co-knowledge", a product of the communication of knowledge.
Of interest is the system of views of L. S. Vygotsky on consciousness. He writes that consciousness is a reflection by the subject of reality, his activity, himself. "Consciously that which is transmitted as a stimulus to other systems of reflexes and evokes a response in them." "Consciousness is, as it were, a contact with oneself." Consciousness is consciousness, but only in the sense that individual consciousness can exist only in the presence of social consciousness and language, which is its real substratum. Consciousness is not given initially and is not generated by nature, consciousness is generated by society, it is produced. Therefore, consciousness is not a postulate and not a condition of psychology, but its problem is the subject of concrete scientific psychological research. At the same time, the process of internalization (that is, the rotation of external activity into internal) does not consist in the fact that external activity moves into the pre-existing internal "plane of consciousness"; it is the process in which this inner plan is formed. The elements of consciousness, its "cells", according to Vygotsky, are verbal meanings.
The views on the problem of consciousness of A. N. Leontiev in many respects continue the line of Vygotsky. Leontiev believes that consciousness in its immediacy is a picture of the world that opens up to the subject, in which he himself, and his actions and states are included. Initially, consciousness exists only in the form of a mental image that reveals to the subject the world around him; at a later stage, activity also becomes an object of consciousness, the actions of other people are realized, and through them, the subject's own actions. Internal actions and operations are generated that take place in the mind, on the "plane of consciousness". Consciousness-image also becomes consciousness-reality, that is, it is transformed into a model in which one can mentally act.
According to B. G. Ananiev, "consciousness as a mental activity is a dynamic correlation of sensory and logical knowledge, their system that works as a single whole and determines each individual knowledge. This working system is the state of human wakefulness, or, in other words, a specifically human characteristic of wakefulness is consciousness"[i]. According to Ananiev, consciousness acts as an integral part of the effect of action. The primary facts of consciousness are the child's perception and experience of the results of his own action. Gradually, not only the effects of actions, but also the processes of the child's activity begin to be realized. Individual development of consciousness is carried out through the transition from the consciousness of individual moments of action to purposeful planned activity. In this case, the entire state of wakefulness becomes a continuous "stream of consciousness", switching from one type of activity to another. "Consciousness as an active reflection of objective reality is the regulation of a person's practical activity in the world around him".
According to L. M. Vecker, consciousness in a broad sense covers the highest levels of integration of cognitive, emotional and regulatory-volitional processes. In a narrower sense, consciousness is the result of the integration of cognitive and emotional processes.
2. Regardless of what philosophical positions the researchers of consciousness adhered to, the so-called reflective ability, those. the readiness of consciousness to cognize other mental phenomena and itself. The presence of such an ability in a person is the basis for the existence and development of the psychological sciences, because without it this class of phenomena would be closed to knowledge. Without reflection, a person could not even have an idea that he has a psyche.
The first psychological characteristic of consciousness a person includes the feeling of being a cognizing subject, the ability to mentally represent the existing and imaginary reality, control their own mental and behavioral states, manage them, the ability to see and perceive the surrounding reality in the form of images.
The feeling of being a cognizing subject means that a person is aware of himself as a being separated from the rest of the world, ready and able to study and cognize this world, i.e. to obtain more or less reliable knowledge about it. A person is aware of this knowledge as phenomena that are different from the objects to which they relate, can formulate this knowledge, expressing it in words, concepts, various other symbols, transfer it to another person and future generations of people, store, reproduce, work with knowledge as with a special object. With the loss of consciousness (sleep, hypnosis, illness, etc.), this ability is lost.
Mental representation and imagination of reality - the second important psychological characteristic of consciousness. It, like consciousness in general, is closely connected with the will. They usually talk about the conscious control of ideas and imagination when they are generated and changed by the effort of a person's will.
Here, however, there is one difficulty. Imagination and ideas are not always under conscious volitional control, and in this regard, the question arises: are we dealing with consciousness in the event that they represent a “stream of consciousness” - a spontaneous flow of thoughts, images and associations. It seems that in this case it would be more correct to speak not about consciousness, but about preconscious - an intermediate mental state between the unconscious and consciousness. In other words, consciousness is almost always associated with a person's volitional control of his own psyche and behavior.
The representation of reality that is absent at a given moment of time or does not exist at all (imagination, daydreams, dreams, fantasy) acts as one of the most important psychological characteristics of consciousness. In this case, a person arbitrarily, i.e. consciously, distracted from the perception of the environment, from extraneous thoughts, and focuses all his attention on some idea, image, memory, etc., drawing and developing in his imagination what he does not directly see at the moment or does not see at all able to see.
Volitional control of mental processes and states has always been associated with consciousness.
Consciousness is closely related to speech and without it in its higher forms does not exist. Unlike sensations and perceptions, representations and memory, conscious reflection is characterized by a number of specific properties. One of them is the meaningfulness of what is represented, or perceived, i.e. its verbal and conceptual significance, endowment with a certain meaning associated with human culture.
Another property of consciousness is that not everything and not random, but only the main, main, essential characteristics of objects, events and phenomena are reflected in consciousness, i.e. what is characteristic of them and distinguishes them from other objects and phenomena that look like them.
Consciousness is almost always associated with the use of words-concepts to denote the perceived, which, by definition, contain indications of the general and distinctive properties of the class of objects reflected in the mind.
The third characteristic of human consciousness - is his ability to communicate, those. conveying to others what the person is aware of through language and other sign systems. Many higher animals have communication capabilities, but they differ from human ones in one important circumstance: with the help of language, a person transmits to people not only messages about their internal states (this is the main thing in the language and communication of animals), but also about what they know, sees, understands, represents, i.e. objective information about the environment.
Another feature of human consciousness is the presence of intellectual circuits in it. A scheme is a certain mental structure, in accordance with which a person perceives, processes and stores information about the world around him and about himself. Schemes include rules, concepts, logical operations used by people to bring their information into a certain order, including the selection, classification of information, assigning it to one category or another.
By exchanging various information with each other, people highlight the main thing in the message. This is how abstraction occurs, i.e. distraction from everything secondary, and concentration of consciousness on the most essential. Being deposited in vocabulary, semantics in a conceptual form, this main thing then becomes the property of the individual consciousness of a person as he learns the language and learns to use it as a means of communication and thinking. The generalized reflection of reality constitutes the content of individual consciousness. That is why we are talking about Without language and speech, human consciousness is unthinkable.
Language and speech, as it were, form two different, but interconnected in their origin and functioning layers of consciousness: a system of meanings and a system of meanings of words. Word meanings name the content that is embedded in them by native speakers. Meanings include all sorts of shades in the use of words and are best expressed in various explanatory common and special dictionaries. The system of verbal meanings constitutes a layer of social consciousness, which in the sign systems of a language exists independently of the consciousness of each individual person.
The meaning of the word in psychology, they call that part of its meaning or that specific meaning that the word acquires in the speech of the person using it. With the meaning of the word, in addition to the part of the meaning associated with it, there are many feelings, thoughts, associations and images that this word evokes in the mind of a particular person.
Consciousness, however, exists not only in verbal, but also in figurative form. In this case, it is associated with the use of a second signal system that calls and transforms the corresponding images. The most striking example of figurative human consciousness is art, literature, music. They also act as forms of reflection of reality, but not in the abstract, as is typical of science, but in a figurative form.
3. An interesting theory about consciousness is the concept of K.K. Platonov, who develops the views of S. L. Rubinshtein and E.V. Shorokhova.