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" Concept" consciousness" in the history of philosophy"

1. Concept of consciousness

Consciousness is one of the basic concepts of philosophy, psychology and sociology. It denotes the highest level of mental activity of a person as a social being. The uniqueness of this activity lies in the fact that the reflection of reality in the form of sensitive and mental images anticipates the practical actions of a person, giving them a purposeful character. This determines the creative transformation of reality, initially in the sphere of practice, and then on the internal plane in the form of representations, thoughts, ideas and other spiritual phenomena that form the content of consciousness, which is imprinted in cultural products (including language and other sign systems), taking shape ideal and acting as knowledge.

Human consciousness arose and developed during the social period of its existence, and the history of the formation of consciousness probably does not go beyond the framework of those several tens of thousands of years that we attribute to the history of human society. The main condition for the emergence and development of human consciousness is joint productive speech-mediated instrumentthactivity of people. This is an activity that requires cooperation, communication and interaction between people. It involves the creation of a product that is recognized by all participants in joint activities as the goal of their cooperation.

The productive, creative nature of human activity is of particular importance for the development of human consciousness. Consciousness presupposes a person’s awareness not only of the external world, but also of himself, his sensations, images, ideas and feelings. The images, thoughts, ideas and feelings of people are materially embodied in the objects of their creative work and with the subsequent perception of these objects precisely as embodying the psychology of their creators they become conscious.

Consciousness forms the highest level of the psyche characteristic of man. Consciousness is you With shaya integrating form of the psyche, the result of social historical conditions forms And development of a person in work, with constant communication (using language) with other people . In this sense, consciousness is a “social product”; consciousness is nothing more than conscious being.

What is the structure of consciousness, its most important psychological characteristics?

His first characteristic given already in its very name: consciousness, i.e. scoopPwealth of knowledge about the world around us. The structure of consciousness thus includes the most important cognitive processes with the help of which a person constantly enriches his knowledge. A disturbance, a disorder, not to mention the complete collapse of any of the mental cognitive processes, inevitably becomes a disorder of consciousness.

Second characteristic of consciousness- clearly enshrined in it distinction between subject and object, those. of what belongs to a person’s “I” and his “not-I”. Man, who for the first time in the history of the organic world stood out from it and opposed himself to it, retains this opposition and difference in his consciousness. He is the only one among living beings capable of self-knowledge, i.e. turn mental activity to the study of oneself: a person makes a conscious self-assessment of his actions and himself as a whole. The separation of “I” from “not-I” - the path that every person goes through in childhood, is carried out in the process of forming a person’s self-awareness.

The third characteristic of consciousness- ensuring goal-setting human activity. When starting any activity, a person sets himself certain goals. At the same time, her motives are formed and weighed, strong-willed decisions are made, the progress of actions is taken into account and the necessary adjustments are made to it, etc.

The fourth characteristic of consciousness is the presence of emotional assessments in interpersonal relationships. And here, as in many other cases, pathology helps to better understand the essence of normal consciousness. In some mental illnesses, a violation of consciousness is characterized by a disorder specifically in the sphere of feelings and relationships: the patient hates his mother, whom he previously loved dearly, speaks with anger about loved ones, etc.

As for the philosophical characteristics of consciousness, then consciousness in modern historyTotovke isthe ability to direct one’s attention to objects of the external world and at the same time concentrate on those states of internal spiritual experience that accompany this attention; a special state of a person in which both the world and himself are simultaneously accessible to him.

M.K. Mamardashvili, a Soviet philosopher, humanist, defined consciousness as a luminous point, some mysterious center of perspective, in which what I saw, what I felt, what I experienced, what I thought is instantly brought into connection, into correlation. In his work “How I Understand Philosophy” he writes: “Consciousness is, first of all, the consciousness of something else. But not in the sense that a person is alienated from the familiar, everyday world in which he finds himself. At this moment, a person looks at it as if through the eyes of another world, and it begins to seem unusual to him, not self-evident. This is consciousness as evidence. That is, I emphasize, firstly, that there is consciousness and, secondly, that the term “consciousness” in principle means some kind of connection or correlation of a person with another reality on top of or through the head of the surrounding reality.”

Consciousness controls the most complex forms of behavior that require constant attention and conscious control, and is brought into action in the following cases: (a) when a person faces unexpected, intellectually complex problems that do not have an obvious solution, (b) when a person needs to overcome a physical or psychological resistance in the path of movement of thought or bodily organ, (c) when it is necessary to realize and find a way out of any conflict situation that cannot be resolved by itself without a volitional decision, (d) when a person unexpectedly finds himself in a situation containing a potential threat for him in case of failure to take immediate action.

Thus, we can conclude that withknowledge is a property of highly organized brain matter. Therefore, the basis of consciousness is the human brain, as well as his senses.

2. Consciousness as a philosophical problem

There are various historical and philosophical interpretations of the problem of consciousness. Depending on which worldview was dominant in a particular era, the understanding of consciousness also changed. In antiquity, under the prevailing cosmocentric worldview, man’s attention was entirely directed to the world around him. Consciousness was defined as the universal connection between mind and object, which exist independently of each other. The moment they meet, the object leaves a mark on the field of the mind, just as a seal leaves a mark on wax. The ancient Greek was not focused on his inner world. Ancient philosophy discovered only one side of consciousness - focus on an object.

In the culture of Christianity, there is a need for inner concentration. It was caused by the need to communicate with God through prayer. In it, a person must plunge inside himself. Along with prayer, the practice of confession arose, which reinforced the ability for introspection and self-control. Then consciousness is knowledge, first of all, about one’s own spiritual experience. Its content includes instincts and passions, reflexes and reasoning, and, finally, merging with God. Consciousness is the center between the first and the second. That is, consciousness is the ability to reproduce experiences, rising to the level of God and evidence of the insignificance of man. The worldview of the Middle Ages can be called geocentric.

In modern times, man renounces God; he himself wants to be God, the king of nature, relying on his Reason. This testified to the formation of a new spiritual experience of people, in which a person is freed from the power of the supersensible, and an agreement to accept his origin only through natural evolution. Essentially, this is the beginning of an anthropocentric worldview. Man was declared the beginning and cause of everything that happens to him in the world. He is the condition and possibility of a world, a world that he can understand and act in. Man, through his activity, creates the world; R. Descartes declared that the act “I think” is the basis for the existence of man and the world. You can doubt everything, but you cannot doubt that I think, which means I exist. Therefore, consciousness is presented as a kind of vessel that already contains ideas and samples of what is to be encountered in the world. This doctrine was called idealism. But the experience of turning to the inner world was used in the statement that consciousness is open to itself, i.e. is self-awareness. Consciousness is identified with thinking, i.e. maximally rationalized. It can construct the world according to the rules of logic, since consciousness is identical to the objective world.

Philosophers and natural scientists have always been concerned with the question of the sources of consciousness. Different strategies for its research have emerged: realistic, objective-idealistic, phenomenological, vulgar-materialistic, etc. The vulgar-materialistic direction reduces consciousness and thinking to material changes (some of its representatives Vogt, Moleschott point to the similarity of thinking to bile produced by the liver) ultimately The nature of thinking, it turns out, is determined by food, which influences the brain and its work through blood chemistry. The opposite of this - the objective-idealistic approach defines consciousness as independent of the brain, but determined by a certain spiritual factor (God, idea).

The philosophical-realist direction in understanding the sources of consciousness identifies the following factors:

External objective and spiritual world; natural, social and spiritual phenomena are reflected in consciousness in the form of specific sensory and conceptual images. Such information is the result of a person’s interaction with the current situation, ensuring constant contact with it.

Sociocultural environment, ideas, social ideals, ethical and aesthetic guidelines, legal norms, knowledge, means, methods and forms of cognitive activity. It allows the individual to see the world through the eyes of society.

The spiritual world of an individual, his own unique experience of life and experiences. A person, even in the absence of external interactions, is capable of rethinking the past, making plans, etc.

The brain as a macrostructural natural system that ensures the implementation of matter at the cellular-tissue level of organization general functions consciousness.

The source of consciousness is probably the cosmic information-semantic field, one of the links of which is human consciousness.

Thus, the source of individual consciousness is not the ideas themselves (as with objective idealists), and not the brain itself (as with vulgar materialists), but reality (objective and subjective), reflected by a person through a highly organized material substrate - the brain in system of transpersonal forms of consciousness.

Revealing the nature of consciousness, it is necessary to find out whether consciousness is an attribute of a person or is it a superhuman, cosmic phenomenon. The second approach is presented primarily in religious movements (V.S. Solovyov, D. Landreev, T. de Chardin), in the center of which is the divine mind, the living body of the cosmos, the “galactic mind”, etc. Without rejecting this approach, let us dwell on another one that has found more scientific explanation, declaring consciousness an attribute of man. It was developed within the framework of philosophical realism (dialectical materialism). Its ideological basis is the principle of reflection, which describes the properties of matter as a substance.

consciousness philosophy anthropogenesis

3. Consciousness in the context of anthropogenesis

The consciousness of modern man is a product of the entire world history, the result of centuries of development of the practical and cognitive activity of countless generations of people. And in order to understand its essence, it is necessary to clarify the question of how it originated. Consciousness has its own not only social history, but also a natural prehistory - the development of biological prerequisites in the form of the evolution of the animal psyche. Twenty million years have created the conditions for the emergence of intelligent man. Without this evolution, the emergence of human consciousness would be simply a miracle. But no less a miracle would be the appearance of the psyche in living organisms without the presence of the property of reflection in all matter.

Reflection is a universal property of matter, which consists in reproducing the signs, properties and relationships of the reflected object. The ability to reflect, as well as the nature of its manifestation, depend on the level of organization of matter. Reflection in inorganic nature, in the world of plants, animals and, finally, humans appears in qualitative various forms. A special and integral property of reflection in a living organism is irritability and feelingsAndactivity as a specific property of reflection, interactions of external and internal environment in the form of excitation and selective response.

Reflection in all its diversity of forms, from the simplest mechanical traces to the human mind, occurs in the process of interaction of various systems of the material world. This interaction results in mutual reflection, which in the simplest cases appears in the form of mechanical deformation, in the general case - in the form of a mutual restructuring of the internal state of interacting systems: in a change in their connections or directions of movement, as an external reaction or as a mutual transfer of energy and information. Any reflection includes an information process: it is an information interaction, one leaves a memory of itself in the other.

These changes, imprinted in others and used by self-organizing systems are called information(sand and water, imprints on limestone, objects reflected by a mirror).

The property of reflection inherent in inanimate nature, under certain conditions, gives rise to reflection in living nature - a biological form of reflection. Its varieties: irritability, sensitivity, the elementary psyche of higher animals. This reflection is associated with the adapted life activity of living organisms, which reveals the essence of their life. In this process, the nervous system develops.

Irritability- the reaction of living organisms to favorable environmental conditions, causing activity (there are already plants).

Sensitivity - a higher type of biological reflection, the ability to reflect the properties of things in the form of sensations.

These forms of reflection are characterized by activity and purposefulness. Even plants and simple organisms, based on the needs of self-preservation, react expediently to biological important conditions environment.

Based on this, the manifestation of the rudiments occurs mental form of reflection. This property of living organisms (vertebrates) is expedient to respond to an objectively designed environment for the purpose of adaptive behavior. The forms of such reflection are reproduceAndperformances and performances have reflex nature. Reflex, underlies mental phenomena, serves as a reflective nervous mechanism. It begins with the perception of a stimulus, continues with the first processes in the body, ends with a response movement and is fixed as unconditional (R. Descartes, I.P. Pavlov, I.M. Sechenov).

Next form - conditioned reflex. In its biological essence, it is a signaling activity based on the formation of temporary connections between the signal and the external and internal environment for the body (conditioned stimuli) foreshadow, signal the upcoming onset of unconditionally important reflex activity for the body (food, protective, sexual, etc. ). This was due to the complication of the forms of behavior themselves, the development of the nervous system, and the complication of the structure of the brain. This form of psychological reflection is called neuropsychological, since reflexes have the neuropsychological activity of the brain as their basis.

Based on the signaling nature of the body’s reflective activity, an advanced reflection of reality arises and develops. Such reflection in animals is carried out by elementary forms of the psyche - sensations, perceptions, ideas, specifically figurative objective thinking. Its physical mechanism is called the first signal system (Pavlov).

The mental form of reflection of higher animals develops conscious form of denialAmarriage. The essence of this form is the ability of the reflector to receive a signal not about the properties of the stimulus, but a signal or image of the image of the object. The forms of such reflection become - concept, judgment, inference. The anticipatory nature of reflection is complemented by a sign of purposefulness. This allows a person, before starting a task, to see the result and build a course of action to achieve it. This made it possible to implement new way human life - his objective-practical activity, which, in turn, has become a necessary condition for the formation of consciousness.

Consciousness- the highest form of reflection of the real world; a function of the brain that is unique to humans and associated with speech, consisting in a generalized and purposeful reflection of reality, in the preliminary mental construction of actions and anticipation of their results, in the reasonable regulation and self-control of human behavior. The “core” of consciousness, the way of its existence, is knowledge. Consciousness belongs to the subject, the person, and not to the surrounding world. But the content of consciousness, the content of a person’s thoughts is this world, certain aspects of it, connections, laws. Therefore, consciousness can be characterized as a subjective image of the objective world.

For the emergence of consciousness, both biological and social prerequisites were necessary, which are considered in evolutionary theories of the origin of man. Most commonly used labor theory of anthropogenesis, in which labor is considered in unity with natural factors origin of man. Among the first natural prerequisites for anthropogenesis are:

Active volcanic activity

Strong radiation background in the ancestral home of man - southern Africa

Climate change on Earth

Cosmic influences, “passionary” shocks

It is assumed that one of the factors or their entire combination caused the mutation, which, along with natural selection, led to the appearance of biological human characteristics:

Body adapted for upright walking;

Brushes designed for fine manipulation;

A brain that is complex in structure, developed and in volume;

Bare skin;

Developed the first signaling system;

Herd form of habitation of proto-people;

They did not become decisive for the appearance of man, and only social conditions may have played a decisive role. This:

Labor and the labor process, starting with the use of natural objects as tools of labor, and ending with their production in joint work and communication.

The decisive role of labor operations in the formation of man and his consciousness received its material fixed expression in the fact that the brain as an organ of consciousness developed simultaneously with the development of the hand as an organ of labor. The actively working hand taught the head to think before it itself became an instrument for executing the will of the head, which deliberately plans practical actions. In the process of development of work activity, tactile sensations were refined and enriched. Logics practical actions was fixed in the head and turned into the logic of thinking: the person learned to think. And before starting the task, he could already mentally imagine its result, the method of implementation, and the means of achieving this result. The key to solving the question that represents the origin of man and his consciousness lies in one word - work.

Articulate speech, for transmitting information during work and communication, language formation.

Life in a team, joint activities in the community.

Together with the emergence of labor, man and human society were formed. Collective work presupposes the cooperation of people and thereby at least elementary division labor actions between its participants. The division of labor efforts is possible only if the participants somehow comprehend the connection of their actions with the actions of other members of the team and thereby with the achievement of the final goal. The formation of human consciousness is associated with the emergence of social relations, which required the subordination of the individual’s life to a socially fixed system of needs, responsibilities, historically established customs and mores.

That. consciousness is a historical formation that appears as the development of the property of reflection inherent in matter; the highest form of reflection of reality inherent in man as a specially organized matter, the function of his brain, is associated with biological prerequisites and social conditions.

4. Structure of consciousness

The concept of “consciousness” is not unique. In the broad sense of the word, it means the mental reflection of reality, regardless of what level it is carried out - biological or social, sensory or rational. When they mean consciousness in this broad sense, they thereby emphasize its relationship to matter without identifying the specifics of its structural organization.

In a narrower and more specialized meaning, consciousness means not just mental condition, but the highest, actually human form of reflection of reality. Consciousness here is structurally organized, representing an integral system consisting of various elements that are in regular relationships with each other. In the structure of consciousness, the following moments stand out most clearly: awareness things, as well as having survivedAtion, that is, a certain attitude towards the content of what is reflected. The way in which consciousness exists, and in which something exists for it, is - knowledge. The development of consciousness involves, first of all, enriching it with new knowledge about the world around us and about the person himself. Cognition, awareness of things has different levels, depth of penetration into the object and degree of clarity of understanding. Hence the everyday, scientific, philosophical, aesthetic and religious awareness of the world, as well as the sensory and rational levels of consciousness. Sensations, perceptions, ideas, concepts, thinking form the core of consciousness. However, they do not exhaust its entire structural completeness: it also includes the act attention as its necessary component. It is thanks to the concentration of attention that a certain circle of objects is in the focus of consciousness.

Objects and events that influence us evoke in us not only cognitive images, thoughts, ideas, but also emotional “storms” that make us tremble, worry, fear, cry, admire, love and hate. Knowledge and creativity are not a coldly rational, but a passionate search for truth.

Without human emotions there has never been, is not and cannot be the human search for truth. The richest sphere of the emotional life of the human personality includes feelings, representing the attitude towards external influences (pleasure, joy, grief, etc.), mood or emotional well-being(cheerful, depressed, etc.) and affects(rage, horror, despair, etc.).

Due to a certain attitude towards the object of knowledge, knowledge receives different significance for the individual, which finds its most vivid expression in beliefs: they are imbued with deep and lasting feelings. And this is an indicator of the special value for a person of knowledge, which has become his life guide.

Feelings and emotions are components of human consciousness. The process of cognition affects all aspects of a person’s inner world - needs, interests, feelings, will. Man's true knowledge of the world contains both figurative expression and feelings.

Cognition is not limited to cognitive processes aimed at the object (attention) and the emotional sphere. Our intentions are translated into action through our efforts VOwhether. However, consciousness is not the sum of many of its constituent elements, but their harmonious unification, their integral, complexly structured whole.

Based on the considered representation of consciousness, we can distinguish the functions of consciousness:

Cognitive

Forecasting, foresight, goal setting

Evidence of the truth of knowledge

Value

Communicative

Regulatory

That. consciousness is the highest function of the brain, assisted only by man and associated with speech, which consists in a generalized, evaluative and purposeful reflection of the world in subjective images and constructive and creative transformation of reality, in the preliminary mental construction of actions and the anticipation of their results, in the reasonable regulation and self-control of behavior person; it is a way of existence of the ideal.

5. Objective and subjective in consciousness

The physiological mechanisms of mental phenomena are not identical to the content of the psyche itself, which is a reflection of reality in the form of subjective images. The dialectical-materialist concept of consciousness is not compatible either with idealistic views that separate mental phenomena from the brain, or with the views of so-called vulgar materialists who deny the specificity of the mental.

The reflection of things, their properties and relationships in the brain, of course, does not mean their movement into the brain or the formation of their physical imprints in it like imprints on wax. The brain does not become deformed, does not turn blue, or become cold when it is exposed to hard, blue and cold objects. The experienced image of an external thing is something subjective, ideal. It is not reducible either to the material object itself, located outside the brain, or to those physiological processes that occur in the brain and give rise to this image. Perfect is nothing more than material, “transplanted” into the human head and transformed in it.

The essence of consciousness is its ideality, which is expressed in the fact that the images that make up consciousness have neither the properties of the objects reflected in it, nor the properties of the nervous processes on the basis of which they arose.

The ideal acts as a moment of a person’s practical relationship to the world, a relationship mediated by forms created by previous generations - primarily by the ability to reflect language and signs in material forms, and transform them through activity into real objects.

The ideal is not something independent in relation to consciousness as a whole: it characterizes the essence of consciousness in relation to matter. In this regard, the ideal allows us to more deeply comprehend the secondary nature of the highest form of reflection. Such an understanding makes sense only when studying the relationship between matter and consciousness, the relationship of consciousness to the material world.

The ideal and the material are not separated by an impassable line; the ideal is nothing more than the material, transplanted into a person’s head and transformed into it. This transformation of the material into the ideal is carried out by the brain.

The spiritual world of man cannot be touched, seen, heard, or detected by any instruments or chemical reagents. No one has yet directly found a single thought in the human brain: a thought that is ideal has no existence in the physical and physiological sense of the word. At the same time, thoughts and ideas are real. They exist. Therefore, an idea cannot be considered something “invalid”. However, its reality, reality is not material, but ideal. This is our inner world, our personal, individual consciousness, as well as the entire world of the “transpersonal” spiritual culture of humanity, that is, externally objectified ideal phenomena. Therefore, it is impossible to say which is more real - matter or consciousness. Matter - objective, and consciousness - subjective reality.

Consciousness belongs to man as a subject, and not to the objective world. There are no “anyone’s” sensations, thoughts, feelings. Every sensation, thought, idea is a sensation, thought, idea specific person. The subjectivity of the image is by no means an arbitrary introduction of something from the subject: objective truth is also a subjective phenomenon. At the same time, the subjective also appears in the sense of incomplete adequacy of the image to the original.

The content of the mental image of an object is determined not by the anatomical and physiological organization of a person and not by what the cognizing subject finds directly in nature on the basis of his individual experience. Its content is a synthetic characteristic of an object obtained in the course of subject-transforming activity. This opens up the fundamental possibility of an objective study of consciousness: it can be known through the forms of its revelation in the sensory practical activities.

The subjective image as knowledge, as spiritual reality, and physiological processes as its material substrate are qualitatively different phenomena. Misunderstanding of this qualitative specificity gave rise to a mechanical tendency to identify them. The absolutization of the specificity of consciousness as a subjective image gives rise to a tendency to contrast the ideal and the material and bring the opposition to the complete disintegration of the world into two substances - spiritual and material.

Consciousness and the objective world are opposites that form a unity. Its basis is practice, the sensory-objective activity of people. It is precisely this that gives rise to the need for mental conscious reflection of reality. The need for consciousness, and at the same time a consciousness that gives a true reflection of the world, lies in the conditions and requirements of life itself.

6. The concept of social consciousness, its structure

Man, being, according to Aristotle’s definition, a “social animal,” is called upon to live in society by the very course of the development of Matter. Being an individual, he, nevertheless, still represents a certain element of society, which, in turn, is a kind of system, a hyperorganism, made up of a certain number of all kinds of people forced to live in a given society.

Social consciousness is a set of ideas, theories, views, ideas, feelings, beliefs, emotions of people, moods that reflect nature, the material life of society and the entire system of social relations. Social consciousness is formed and develops along with the emergence of social existence, since consciousness is possible only as a product of social relations. But a society can be called a society only when its basic elements have been formed, including social consciousness. A set of generalized ideas, ideas, theories, feelings, morals, traditions, i.e. everything that constitutes the content of social consciousness, forms spiritual reality, acts integral part social existence. But although materialism asserts a certain role of social existence in relation to social consciousness, however, one cannot simplistically talk about the primacy of the first and the secondary nature of the other. Social consciousness arose not some time after the emergence of social existence, but simultaneously and in unity with it.

Without social consciousness, society simply could not arise and develop, because it exists, as it were, in two manifestations: reflective and actively creative. The essence of consciousness lies precisely in the fact that it can reflect social existence only under the condition of its simultaneous active and creative transformation. But, emphasizing the unity of social existence and social consciousness, we must not forget about their differences, specific disunity, and relative independence.

Feature social consciousness is that in its influence on existence it can, as it were, evaluate it, reveal its hidden meaning, predict, and transform it through the practical activities of people. This is the historical function of social consciousness, which makes it a necessary and really existing element of any social structure. No reforms, if they are not supported by public awareness of their meaning and necessity, will not give the expected results, but will only hang in the air.

The connection between social existence and social consciousness is multifaceted and diverse. Reflecting social existence, social consciousness is able to actively influence it through the transformative activities of people. The relative independence of social consciousness is manifested in the fact that it has continuity. New ideas do not arise out of nowhere, but as a natural result of spiritual production, based on the spiritual culture of past generations. Being relatively independent, social consciousness can be ahead of social existence or lag behind it. For example, ideas for using the photoelectric effect arose 125 years before Daguerre invented photography. Ideas for the practical use of radio waves were implemented almost 35 years after their discovery, etc.

Social consciousness is a special social phenomenon, distinguished by its own, unique characteristics, specific patterns of functioning and development. Social consciousness, reflecting all the complexity and contradictory nature of social existence, is also contradictory and has a complex structure. With the advent of class societies, it acquired a class structure. Differences in the socio-economic conditions of people's lives naturally find their expression in public consciousness. In multinational states there is a national consciousness of different peoples. The relationships between different nations are reflected in people's minds. In those societies where national consciousness prevails over universal consciousness, nationalism and chauvinism take over.

According to the level, depth and degree of reflection of social existence in the public consciousness, consciousness is distinguished ordinary and theoretical. From the point of view of its material carriers, we should talk about public, group and individual consciousness, and from a historical-genetic perspective they consider social consciousness as a whole or its features in various socio-economic formations.

Conclusion

Philosophy puts at the center of its attention as the main question the relationship between matter and consciousness, and thereby the problem of consciousness. The significance of this problem is already revealed in the fact that the species to which we humans belong is designated as Homo sapiens. Based on this, we can rightfully say that a philosophical analysis of the essence of consciousness is extremely important for a correct understanding of the place and role of man in the world. For this reason alone, the problem of consciousness initially attracted the closest attention of philosophers when they developed their initial ideological and methodological guidelines. In modern conditions, an in-depth development of philosophical issues of consciousness is also dictated by the development of computer science and the computerization of human activity, the aggravation of a number of aspects of interaction between man and technology, the technosphere and nature, and the complication of the tasks of education and the development of human communication. Perhaps there is no more complex question than the question of what consciousness is, what the mind is, what is their nature, their essence. This phenomenon itself is so complex that it is studied by a number of sciences - psychology, logic, physiology of higher nervous activity, psychiatry, cybernetics, computer science, etc. At the same time, consideration of individual aspects of consciousness as a specifically human form of regulation of human interaction with reality within the framework of various disciplines is always is based on a certain philosophical and ideological attitude in approach and consciousness. This gives the solution to the question of the nature of consciousness from a philosophical position a special, additional meaning and significance.

Bibliography

1. Barulin V.S. Social philosophy. - M.: Polis, 1999.

2. Ilyin V.V. Philosophy. - M.: Higher School, 1999.

3. History of philosophy: Textbook for universities. Rostov n/d.: Phoenix, 2001.

4. Kanke V.A. Philosophy. Historical and systematic course. - M.: Logos, 2004.

5. Copleston F. History of Philosophy. XX century. - M.: ZAO Tsentropoligraf, 2002.

6. Leshkevich T.G. Philosophy of science: traditions and innovations. - M.: PRIOR, 2001.

7. Spirkin A.G. Philosophy. - M.: Higher School, 2001.

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Introduction

The very first ideas about consciousness arose in ancient times. At the same time, ideas about the soul arose and questions were posed: what is the soul? How does it relate to the objective world? Since then, debates have continued about the essence of consciousness and the possibility of knowing it. Some proceeded from cognition, others - that attempts to understand consciousness are as futile as trying to see oneself walking down the street from a window.

Relevance. Consciousness is one of the traditional eternal philosophical mysteries. The constant reproduction of it in the history of culture, philosophy and science testifies not only to the existence of theoretical and methodological difficulties in solving it, but also to the enduring practical interest in the essence of this phenomenon, the mechanism of its development and functioning.

In the very general view“consciousness” is one of the most general philosophical concepts denoting subjective reality associated with the activity of the brain and its products: thoughts, feelings, ideas, prejudices, scientific and extra-scientific knowledge. Without clarifying the place and role of this reality, it is impossible to create either a philosophical or scientific picture peace. For many centuries, heated debates around the essence of consciousness and the possibilities of its knowledge have not ceased. Theologians view consciousness as a tiny spark of the majestic flame of the divine mind. Idealists defend the idea of ​​the primacy of consciousness in relation to matter. Tearing consciousness out of objective connections real world and considering it as an independent and creative essence of being, objective idealists interpret consciousness as something primordial: it is not only inexplicable by anything that exists outside of it, but is itself called upon to explain everything that happens in the nature, history and behavior of each individual person. Proponents of objective idealism recognize consciousness as the only reliable reality. If idealism tears out the gap between the mind and the world, then materialism seeks community, unity between the phenomena of consciousness and the objective world, deriving the spiritual from the material. In different historical periods, different ideas about consciousness developed, natural scientific knowledge accumulated, and the theoretical and methodological foundations of analysis changed. Modern science, using the achievements of scientific and technological revolution, has made significant progress in the study of the nature of the substrate basis of consciousness, but at the same time has identified new aspects of conscious human activity that require fundamentally different theoretical and methodological approaches to philosophical analysis. Philosophy places the relationship of the matter of consciousness, and thereby the problem, at the center of its attention as the main issue consciousness. The significance of this problem is already revealed in the fact that the species to which we humans belong is designated as Homo sapiens. Based on this, we can rightfully say that a philosophical analysis of the essence of consciousness is extremely important for a correct understanding of the place and role of man in the world. For this reason alone, the problem of consciousness initially attracted the closest attention of philosophers when they were developing their initial ideological and methodological guidelines.

The purpose of this work: to study consciousness in philosophy. Explore the concept of reflection. Analyze the creative nature of consciousness.

Based on this goal, I set myself the following tasks:

1. Study and analyze the evolution of the concept of consciousness, define consciousness;

2. Study and analyze the concept of reflection;

3. Study and analyze the creative nature of consciousness.

1. Evolution of concepts of consciousness. Concept of consciousness

A person’s entire life from the moment of birth to death, his behavior and activities are determined to one degree or another by consciousness.

Thanks to consciousness, a person penetrates into the past and the future, invades the distances of space and the depths of the microworld, where he cannot physically reach. With its help, man creates something that does not exist in nature, creates a world of culture. Consciousness is a wonderful gift of nature, but it is also the eternal curse of man, since it gives him the opportunity to realize the whole tragedy of his existence, finite in time, to understand that his life is an existence leading to death.

Consciousness is one of those secrets that nature reveals with great reluctance. Some philosophers have argued that understanding consciousness is as futile an attempt as the desire of a drowning person to pull himself out of the water by his hair. Others are indifferent about this, recognizing the possibility of knowing consciousness. This cognition is carried out indirectly, through the actions of people and through their speech structures, that is, words and sentences.

What is consciousness? This is a person’s ability to ideally reproduce reality, objects, phenomena, processes and connections of the surrounding world. He carries out the ideal reproduction of reality in the form of sensory and mental images, the roles of which are sensations, perceptions, concepts, thoughts, ideas that make up the content of consciousness. Consciousness is the inner, spiritual world of a person, built from ideal phenomena. It gives him the opportunity to understand the world around him, the processes and phenomena occurring in it, his thoughts and actions, his attitude to the outside world and to himself. Consciousness allows him to rationally organize his life and carry out behavior and activities with knowledge. In the 19th century, Arthur Schopenhauer called consciousness “the crux of the universe,” hinting that the mystery of consciousness remains the darkest place in the entire corpus (collection) of human knowledge. In the 20th century, the philosophy of consciousness has become one of the most popular areas of research; a huge amount of literature is published on this topic every year. The modern American philosopher Richard Rorty even stated that, in his opinion, the philosophy of consciousness today is the only truly useful philosophical discipline.

The problematic of the philosophy of consciousness dates back to Antiquity. Plato and Aristotle are the predecessors of modern dualists, because they believed that mind exists as an ontological reality separate from matter. At the origins of the tradition of monism is another Greek philosopher, Parmenides, who argued that being and thinking are one. Consciousness becomes the most important object of study for philosophers in modern times, in the concepts of Descartes, Spinoza, Locke and Hume. Today, philosophy of consciousness develops mainly within the framework of analytical philosophy. Since ancient times, thinkers have been intensely searching for a solution to the mystery of the phenomenon of consciousness. It is traditionally believed that the merit of a holistic formulation of the problem of consciousness, or rather the problem of the ideal, belongs to Plato. Before Plato, such a problem did not exist. The carrier of human thoughts and feelings was considered the soul, which was reduced to the fundamental principle of the whole world. Atomists (Democritus) consider the soul as a formation consisting of special round atoms and emptiness, i.e. as a special material education. Developing Socrates' ideas about the innateness of true knowledge to the soul before its incarnation in the human body, Plato for the first time identifies the ideal as a special essence that does not coincide and is opposite to the sensory, objective, material world of things. Plato: “...a wide opening stretches along the entire length [of the cave]. Prisoners live inside the cave. From an early age they have shackles on their legs and necks, so that people cannot move from their place, and they only see what is right in front of their eyes, because they cannot turn their heads because of these shackles. People have their backs turned to the light emanating from the fire, which burns far above, and between the fire and the prisoners there is an upper road, like the screen behind which magicians place their assistants when dolls are shown on top of the screen... So imagine what is behind this along the wall, other people are carrying various utensils, holding them so that they are visible over the wall; they are carrying statues and all sorts of images of living beings made of stone and wood... First of all, do you think that, being in such a position, people see anything? is it their own or someone else’s, except for the shadows cast by the fire on the wall of the cave located in front of them?..” In this passage, Plato develops his “theory of the cave,” the essence of which is the following provisions: a person wanders in the darkness of a cave and sees only objectified shadows of ideas that have real existence somewhere outside of it - thus, in allegorical form, Plato seeks to show the relationship between the “primary” world of ideas (objects carried outside the cave), the “derived” physical world (the shadows of things in the cave) and human consciousness, capable of perceiving only shadows, but not “true” ones. ” ideas. Consciousness, according to Plato, is a set of signals coming from the senses; its task is to compare these signals, establish similarities and differences between them, contrast the individual and find commonality to bring them into code form. The following concepts of consciousness have developed in philosophy and retain their significance in modern culture.

¾ Objective-idealistic interpretation of consciousness as a superhuman, transpersonal, ultimately transcendental idea (the world of ideas in Plato; the absolute idea in Hegel; God in theologians; alien intelligence in ufologists), underlying all forms of earthly existence. Human consciousness is a particle, a product or other-worldly mind.

¾ Subjective-idealistic systems consider human consciousness as a self-sufficient entity containing a picture of itself as the substance of the material world (R. Descartes, J. Berkeley).

R. Descartes: “I am a substance, an essence whose nature consists in thinking and which for its existence does not need a place and is independent of any material thing...

“I am, I exist” is certain. But how long? As much as I think, for it is possible that I would completely cease to exist if I completely stopped thinking.”[3, p.154].

From what was quoted, it clearly follows that, according to Descartes, the soul not only in the cognitive aspect depends on consciousness (we comprehend the soul with only this attribute), but also ontologically the soul exists insofar as it thinks. Thus, this is a completely idealistic theory, based on the postulate of the primacy of the spirit as a substance independent of nature, the manifestations of which are thinking and will.

¾ Hylozoism (materialized life) asserts that all matter thinks, consciousness is an attributive property of the entire material world. From the point of view of hylozoism, all matter is animated or, at least, has the prerequisites for thinking. This concept goes back to the early teachings of the Milesian school; its elements are contained in the teachings of Aristotle, J. Bruno, B. Spinoza. .

The data of modern science on the elements of rational activity of animals, the successes of physiology in diagnosing diseases of the central nervous system, the achievements of cybernetics in the creation of “thinking machines” revive the ideas of hylozoism and psychophysiological parallelism, according to which the mental and the physiological are two independent entities, the study of which should be carried out through their own substantiality. Vulgar materialism as a reductionist identification of consciousness with material formations in the human brain. Consciousness is purely material in nature, it is the result of the functioning of certain parts or formations of the brain. The denial of the qualitative specificity of consciousness and human thinking has its origins in ancient culture and was especially clearly manifested in ancient atomism, but the materialization of consciousness gained particular popularity at the end of the 18th century. early XIX century due to the spread of the idea of ​​Darwinism. Its most prominent representatives K. Vogt, L. Büchner, J. Moleschott, promoting the achievements of science in the mid-19th century, coarsened and simplified the most complex philosophical and psychophysical problem, the problem of the relationship between matter and consciousness. In the 20th century, due to the success of solving technical design problems artificial intelligence, philosophical discussions about the problem “can a machine think?”, research that discovered a direct relationship between the content side of thinking and the structure of processes occurring in the brain, the ideas of the characteristics of thinking as an attribute of the material substrate were again updated.

¾ Sociologization of consciousness. Consciousness is placed in absolute dependence on the external environment, including the social environment. At the origins of these ideas are J. Locke and his followers, the French materialists of the 18th century, who believe that a person is born with a soul, consciousness, like a blank sheet of paper. Criticizing the concept of "innate ideas"

Descartes, they believed that the content of ideas and concepts, with the help of which a person analyzes sensory data about the individual properties of things, shapes society and education. The beginnings of this concept can be found already in Aristotle, who made the formation of human abilities and virtues dependent on the needs of society and the interests of the state-polis. These ideas deny the individuality of human thinking, the dependence of the thinking individual’s abilities on the structural features and functioning of his central nervous system.

¾ Dialectical materialism approaches the study of consciousness as a complex, internally contradictory phenomenon of the unity of the material and ideal, objective and subjective, biological and social. Based on the achievements of classical and modern science, the dialectical-materialist concept of consciousness reveals the essential features and characteristics of human consciousness.

¾ Consciousness is an ideal phenomenon, a function, a special property, a product of a highly organized material substrate - the human brain, thinking matter.

¾ Consciousness is an ideal image, snapshot, copy, reflection of a material object in the brain of the subject.

¾ Consciousness has creative activity, manifested in the relative independence of its functioning and development and the reverse impact on the material world.

¾ Consciousness is a product of socio-historical development; it does not arise outside of society and cannot exist.

¾ Consciousnessas perfect reflection the material world does not exist without language as a material form of its expression.

All six considered concepts contain a share of truth in understanding the nature of consciousness, have their supporters, advantages and limitations, answer some questions, but do not give answers to others, and therefore have equal rights to exist within the framework of philosophical knowledge. In non-classical and post-non-classical philosophy, a paradoxical situation arises: theoretically, the question of the specificity of consciousness and, consequently, the philosophical status of the phenomenon of consciousness is called into question, and the practical study of consciousness by objective, including scientific, methods is intensified, which indicates the enduring significance and significance of human thinking. Throughout the 20th century, some participants in the debate about the nature of consciousness reproduce ideas about the unreality and transcendence of consciousness, while others reduce consciousness to language, behavior, and neurophysiological processes, denying the specificity and special structure and essence inherent in consciousness itself. The diversity of interpretations of consciousness is primarily related , with the question of the nature of consciousness and the justification of its content.

Representatives of modern concrete scientific knowledge and philosophical systems oriented towards science give preference to the dialectical-materialistic concept, which, unlike others, makes it possible to study various forms and products of mental activity using scientific methods. However, despite its popularity in the scientific community, this concept does not provide logically consistent and testable answers to the most complex, fundamental questions of the problem of consciousness:

¾ How did thinking matter arise in the process of evolution of inanimate, non-sentient nature?

¾ What is the mechanism for transforming material, biological stimulation in the central nervous system of living organisms into an ideal reflection, into an act of consciousness?

¾ What is ideal, what is its nature? And others.

These questions are directly related to the general philosophical and scientific problem of the origin of man, the solution of which is proposed by the concept of anthroposociogenesis.

Within the framework of this hypothesis, several ideas are formulated, in particular the concept of reflection and the concept of the evolutionary-labor nature of human origin.

1.1 Consciousness - as a reflection (The concept of reflection)

According to the concept of reflection, consciousness is a property of highly organized matter - the human brain. Of the material structures known to modern science, it is the brain that has the most complex substrate organization. About 11 billion nerve cells form a very complex systemic whole in which electrochemical, physiological, biophysical, biochemical, bioelectric and other material processes occur. Having arisen as a result of the long evolution of living things, the human brain, as it were, crowns biological evolution, closing on itself the entire information and energy system of the whole organism, controlling and regulating its vital activity. As a result of the historical evolution of the living, the brain acts as a genetic continuation of simpler forms and ways of connecting the living with the outside, including the inorganic world. But how and why does matter, consisting of the same atoms and elementary particles, begin to realize its existence, evaluate itself, think? It is logical to assume that in the foundation of the very knowledge of matter there is an ability similar to the sensation, but not identical to it, that “all matter has the property essentially akin to sensation, the property of reflection.” Such an assumption was made by D. Diderot back in the 18th century.

Matter at all levels of its organization has the property of reflection, which develops in the process of its evolution, becoming more and more complex and multi-quality. The complication of reflection forms is associated with the developing ability material systems to self-organization and self-development. The evolution of reflection forms acted as a prehistory of consciousness, as a connecting link between inert matter and thinking matter.

The supporters of hylozoism came closest to the idea of ​​reflection in the history of philosophy, but they endowed all matter with the ability to feel and think, while these forms of reflection are characteristic only of certain types of it, for living and socially organized forms of being.

Consciousness- this is the highest, characteristic only to man, form of reflection of objective reality, the way of his relationship to the world and to himself, which represents the unity of mental processes that are actively involved in man’s understanding of the objective world and his own existence and is determined not directly by his bodily organization (as in animals), but skills of objective actions acquired only through communication with other people. Consciousness consists of sensory images of objects that are sensations or representations and therefore have meaning and meaning, knowledge as a set of sensations imprinted in memory, and generalizations created as a result of higher mental activity, thinking and language. Thus, consciousness is a special form of human interaction with reality and its control. Reflection refers to the process and result of interaction in which some material bodies, with their properties and structure, reproduce the properties and structure of other material bodies, while preserving a trace of the interaction.

Reflection as a result of the interaction of objects does not cease after the completion of this process, but continues to exist in the reflecting object as a trace, an imprint of the reflected phenomenon. This reflected variety of structures and properties of interacting phenomena is called information, understood as the content of the reflection process.

Etymologically, the concept of information means familiarization, explanation, communication, however, in philosophical discussions on the issue of the subject area of ​​information, three positions have emerged: attributive, communicative and functional. From the point of view of the attributive concept of information as a reflected variety of objects in relation to each other, information is universal in nature and acts as the content of the reflective process in both living and inanimate nature. It defines information as a measure of the heterogeneity of the distribution of matter and energy in space and time, accompanying all processes occurring in the world. The communicative concept of information as the transfer of information, messages from one person to another was the most popular in connection with the everyday practical meaning of the term and was preserved until the mid-20s of our century. Due to the increase in the volume of transmitted information, the need for its quantitative measurement has arisen. In 1948, K. Shannon developed the mathematical theory of information. Information has come to be understood as those messages transmitted by people to each other that reduce uncertainty for the recipient. With the advent of cybernetics as a science of control and communication in living organisms, society and machines, a functional concept of information took shape as the content of reflection in self-developing and self-governing systems. In the context of a functional approach to the nature of information, the problem of the informational nature of human consciousness is posed and solved in a fundamentally new way. The attributive concept of information as the necessary content of any reflection makes it possible to explain the development of living matter from non-living matter as the self-development of the material world. Probably, in this sense, it is justified to talk about different qualitative levels of manifestation of reflection and, accordingly, about different measures of information saturation of reflection. At each level of the systemic organization of matter, the property of reflection manifests itself as qualitatively different. Reflection inherent in phenomena and objects of inanimate nature has a fundamentally different intensity of information content than reflection in living nature. In inanimate nature, for interacting phenomena, firstly, the absolutely predominant volume of their mutual diversity remains unperceived, unreflected due to its “insignificance” for the given qualitative state of these phenomena. Secondly, due to the low organization of these phenomena, they have a very low threshold of sensitivity to this diversity. Thirdly, this same low level of organization of phenomena determines the weak ability to use the information content of reflection for self-organization. These are, for example, the forms of reflection available to rocks, minerals, etc., where in the sensory observable content of the reflection it is impossible to grasp the constructive use of information as a factor of self-development. The destructive result of reflection dominates here, since these objects are not able to use its information content for increasingly complex self-organization, to acquire new, more complex qualities and properties. The emergence of organic nature forms a qualitative new uniform reflections. Phenomena of living nature already have access to a higher degree of intensity of the information content of reflection and a significantly wider volume of it. Thus, if a mineral exhibits only the ability to accumulate changes in the external environment, plant growth is much more dynamic and actively reflects external diversity. It actively reaches out to the sun, uses the information that appears in connection with this for a more dynamic mobilization of its resources in the process of photosynthesis and, ultimately, for self-development. This increasing intensity and wealth of information connections forms in living things the ability for more intensive growth and expanded self-reproduction of properties, the formation of new characteristics, their encoding and inheritance. Thus, the complication of reflection forms expresses not only the fact of the development and complexity of matter, but also the fact of the acceleration of this development. The increase in the intensity of information connections with the development of form-reflection brings new qualitative characteristics to the spatio-temporal forms of the existence of matter. The spatial parameters of the existence of matter are expanding, its development is accelerating. The simplest level of reflection inherent in living matter manifests itself in the form of irritability. Irritability is the body’s ability to make simple responses to environmental influences. This is already a selective response of living things to external influences. This form of reflection does not passively perceive information, but actively correlates the result of the reaction with the needs of the body. Irritability is expressed only in relation to vital influences: nutrition, self-preservation, reproduction. Gradually, irritability appears not only in relation to biologically important stimuli, but also to other phenomena significant for the body, signals that carry more indirect information about the environment. Irritability is already quite noticeable in many plants and simple organisms. This rather information-rich form of reflection determines the further development and complexity of organisms, their accelerating evolution. In the course of evolution, sensory organs that are in demand, enriched by reflection, arise. In accordance with the functions performed by these sense organs, the process of formation of a specific material tissue (material substrate) - the nervous system, which concentrates the functions of reflection - occurs in parallel. With the emergence of this specialized material instrument of reflection, the body’s connections with the external environment become even more complex and flexible. The emergence of a set of receptors significantly enriches the information content of the reflection of the surrounding world. This level of reflection development is defined as sensory reflection. It has the ability to reflect individual properties of the external environment. The emergence of sensations is associated with the emergence of elementary forms of the psyche, which gives a new impetus to the evolution of living things. Regarding the sensitive nature of consciousness, Helvetius said: “The senses constitute the source of all our knowledge... We have three main means of research: observation of nature, reflection and experiment. Observation collects facts; thinking combines them; experience verifies the result of combinations... every sensation of ours entails a judgment, the existence of which, being unknown, when it has not attracted our attention, is nevertheless real.”

Already at the level of relatively simple organisms, the nervous system significantly expands the possibilities of reflection, makes it possible to record the diversity of the environment in the individual “memory” of the organism and use this in rather complex adaptive reactions to changes in the environment. With the emergence of a special center of the nervous system - the brain, the information volume of reflection reaches a new qualitative level. Already in vertebrates, perception arises - the ability to analyze complex complexes of simultaneously acting external stimuli, to create a holistic image of the situation. Individual behavior appears, based on individual experience, on conditioned reflexes, in contrast to intuitive behavior based on unconditioned reflexes. A complex mental form of reflection is formed, accessible to highly organized mammals. The mental form of reflection is characterized not only by a significantly greater richness of reflection of phenomena, but also by a more active “presence” of the reflector in the process of reflection. Here, the selectivity of reflection, the concentration and selection of the reflection object or even its individual properties and characteristics increases significantly. Moreover, this selectivity is determined not only by the biophysical relevance for reflecting certain properties and signs, but also by emotional and mental preference. It should be noted that the complication of the properties of mental reflection is directly related to the development of the brain, its volume and structure. At this level of development, memory resources expand, the brain’s ability to capture specific images of things and their inherent connections, and to reproduce these images in various forms of associative thinking. Based on associative thinking, animals (great apes, dolphins, dogs) demonstrate excellent abilities for anticipatory reflection when they first construct their actions and actions in an ideal model that anticipates the logic of events. They also have richer content channels of information connections, more complex sound and motor means of signaling, which act as the primary forms of substitution of the objects themselves. And yet, no matter how complex the mental reactions of animals to the outside world may be, no matter how meaningful their actions may seem, animals do not possess consciousness or the ability to think. Consciousness represents a higher level of reflection associated with a qualitatively new level of organization of the material world - society, social form being. Thus, based on all of the above, it can be stated that consciousness is formed as a result of the natural historical evolution of matter and its universal, attributive property - reflection. In the process of evolutionary development, matter, becoming more and more complex in its structural organization, gives rise to such a substrate as the brain. Outside the brain, which is capable of producing information not only to adapt to reality, but also to transform it, consciousness does not arise. Consequently, the appearance of a developed brain, a mental form of reflection, is the main result of the evolution of prehuman forms of reflection.

2. The creative nature of consciousness

The final chord in the movement and development of consciousness is human activity, in which all phenomena of consciousness are embodied and through which he transforms and changes the world around him. Activity, like nothing else, expresses the active, creative character of human consciousness.

The creative nature of human consciousness, according to P.Ya. Chaadaev, allows people to “create life themselves, instead of leaving it to its own course.”

Since the time of Aristotle, the nature of the soul, psyche, and consciousness of a person has been associated with his ability to freely navigate and act in uncertain situations, involving the search and construction of such methods of action that would be consistent with the logic of the future, i.e., with the special universal creative activity of man. Similar views from varying degrees clearly appear in the works of Stagirite, Augustine the Blessed, R. Descartes, B. Spinoza, I. Kant. However, over time, this understanding was consigned to relative oblivion and gave way to a flat reproductiveist interpretation of the psyche, put forward by socialism, tightened by behaviorists and which found its “natural scientific basis” among a number of representatives of the physiology of higher nervous activity. In a modernized version, this interpretation is presented in various types of adaptation-homeostatic models of the psyche. This is, for example, the concept of J. Piaget, where cognitive adaptation is considered as the functional and genetic core of consciousness (intelligence), which, “like its biological counterpart, consists in balancing assimilation and accommodation.” In our philosophy and psychology, the reproductive interpretation of the psyche has taken root on the basis of the vulgar, schoolboyly interpreted theory of reflection as passive doubling in the creation of objects in the external world. The subsequent “enrichment” of this interpretation with ideas about the isomorphism of an object and its subjective image, “neurodynamic codes of mental phenomena,” etc. led to the final disappearance of the creative principle of consciousness.

It should be noted that the reproductiveist interpretation of the psyche, in its own way, correctly reflected the situation that has developed in a society of divided labor, when the majority of working individuals turn out to be carriers of “transformed” (in this case, reproductive) forms of consciousness. But such an approach largely set the logic of development and the structure of psychological knowledge, up to its modern state, orienting researchers to the study of completely “transformed” forms of the psyche. Consciousness was deprived of its genetic and initial dimensions, its “substantiality” (we are talking, of course, not about awareness as a special substance, but about its correspondence, speaking in Hegelian language, to its own concept). Consciousness as a “function of the brain” did not need intrinsic value; it was enough for it to remain a “certain link” of the conditioned reflex. The evaporation of the “authenticity” of consciousness (i.e., its creative nature) was facilitated by a broad discussion of the so-called psychophysical problem (and its component, the psychophysiological problem), which already in its original formulation completely crossed out the said nature: “The object is a seal, the brain is sealing wax... Accordingly, being socially determined, consciousness does not simply passively reflect reality, but every time creatively reorganizes it in accordance with certain historical settings of the time. In addition to historical variability, the creative nature of consciousness also lies in its ability to simultaneously reflect reality, that is, in the possibility of anticipating a situation based on existing experience. The ability to proactively reflect reality is associated with such a fundamental property of consciousness as goal setting. The goal settings in which consciousness is concretized are at the same time not only determined by the historical situation, but also go beyond its boundaries, allowing one to expand the horizons of sociocultural reality and create new values. One of the main factors through which the social-creative nature of consciousness is realized is activity. Practice and activity actually determined the emergence and functioning of consciousness, where every mental act is an “internal action.” At the same time, human activity is distinguished by “awareness” associated with the ability to set goals. The dialectic of the connection between consciousness and activity can be represented, following Marx, as follows: activity is the process of “objectification” of the ideal values ​​of consciousness, while consciousness and thinking are the “deobjectification” of material values. Associated with activity, consciousness depends on the current level of social practice, reflecting and advancing its development. Tradition and education act as the main cultural mechanisms that ensure the formation and development of consciousness. It is they who define the system of “cultural prejudices”, which guarantees the integrity and stability of the worldview. Despite all the conservatism of the institutions of traditions and education, they, just like activity, reveal the creative nature of consciousness. On the one hand, as mechanisms of socialization, tradition and education shape consciousness in its cultural and historical variability, on the other hand, they lay the necessary foundation for the subsequent development of the individual, the creative potential of which sometimes directly depends on its general cultural and educational levels. Another factor that determines the sociocultural dimension of consciousness is communication. It specifies the phenomenon of activity at the level of interpersonal interactions, determining not only the situation of a person as a whole, but also the nature of consciousness. The real experience of consciousness is always defined as a communicative process in the variety of its forms: autocommunication, dialogue, polylogue. Through communication, the functional characteristics of consciousness are manifested and consolidated at all its structural levels, but it is of particular importance for the intuitive-volitional characteristics that determine the nature of the “I” and self-awareness. The very construction of “I” is possible only as a sign-communicative unit: “someone saying “I” is directed to another person” (E. Levinas), where true self-determination is carried out as a reinterpretation of “I” in the mirror of the Other. The cultural mechanisms that ensure communication are speech and language. In language the social nature of consciousness reveals itself with particular clarity. Language is as ancient as consciousness. Language and consciousness represent an organic unity, which does not, however, exclude contradictions between them. The essence of language reveals itself in its functions. First of all, language acts as a means of communication, transmission of thoughts, and performs a communicative function. According to the definition of F. Saussure, language is a system of differentiated signs corresponding to differentiated concepts. Speech is a verbal activity formalized in accordance with the rules accepted in society, in which language is concretized. Thus, language realizes itself through speech, but in relation to the latter it is a more fundamental structure. A speech utterance as an elementary unit of speech can be characterized as a certain act, an action aimed at achieving a targeted effect on the part of the perceiving people. Through speech acts, direct interpersonal interaction and correlation of the “I” with social reality are carried out. Moreover, the rules of such correlation are dictated by language, and more specifically, by the “language game” as an integral system of communication, subject to its own internal rules and agreements.

In this case, language acts as a universal sociocultural matrix that provides diverse language games and situations.

The importance of language for understanding the experience of consciousness is enormous. In fact, any fact of our consciousness is reflected in the corresponding linguistic construct: a statement, a word, a name. Language serves as a means for the formation and expression of thoughts. It acts as a universal cultural mechanism for the preservation and transmission of information and communication; is a necessary mediator between man and the world, the perception and knowledge of which is possible only through the prism of language. For example, every language contains a certain “conceptual scheme”, which, through specific grammatical forms, defines the categorical-logical structure of the perception of space, time, modality, quantity, quality, etc., specific to certain ethnocultural groups, which allows us to trace differences in linguistic material in the worldview and mentality of various peoples. However, the emphasis on language as the exclusive means of studying consciousness, made in the philosophy of the twentieth century, is hardly legitimate. One example of the impossibility of a consistent reduction of consciousness to language is the current problem of creating “artificial intelligence”: computers can successfully solve logical problems, but they do not think like humans. In addition to the verbalized, rational-logical, human consciousness is based on a non-verbal, figurative-associative type of thinking, the phenomena of which are only “after the fact” translated into verbal form. Intuition as the main cognitive mechanism of this type of thinking is associated with direct knowledge about an object obtained as a result of the extra-logical combination of various fragments of experience into a holistic image. Existing in addition to stable logical and linguistic structures, intuition nevertheless, in a context different from reason, reproduces the sociocultural dimension of consciousness, being the result of the initial, conditioned by the current situation, focus of thought on the problem and preliminary work by her decision.

The impossibility of adequately reconstructing the experience of consciousness by means of language contributed to the reorientation of philosophy at the end of the twentieth century towards the idea of ​​text as a tool for solving this traditional problem. Unlike language, a text is not bound by a single structure, but exists as an intersection of various contexts and fragments of experience. The emergence of personal meanings occurs in a situation of collision of different interpretations, each of which refers to an already known cultural discourse, but, combining in a new space, gives rise to the uniqueness of individual interpretation and experience. “Consciousness as a text” is at the same time “consciousness as a trace”, referring to the diversity of cultural practitioner, but realized through their creative reinterpretation. The idea of ​​a text existing in a situation of “multi-layered” contexts and “conflict of interpretations” demonstrates the complexity and complexity of the problem of consciousness in philosophy. Structural differentiation and integrity, sociocultural conditionality and individuality of the “I”, immediacy of feelings and abstractness of rational constructions, reflection and creativity - all these characteristics organically complement each other in the real experience of consciousness, but destroy the logical harmony of its theoretical reconstruction. Thus, the questions: “What is a person?” and “what is consciousness?” in many ways remain open to philosophical and scientific knowledge, simultaneously stimulating the search for new forms and accents in the self-determination of culture and humanity. It should also be noted that consciousness cannot be derived from the process of reflecting objects of the natural world alone: ​​the “subject-object” relationship cannot give rise to consciousness. To do this, the subject must be included in a more complex system of social practice, in the context public life. Each of us, coming into this world, inherits a spiritual culture, which we must master in order to acquire our own human essence and be able to think like a human being. We enter into a dialogue with public consciousness, and this consciousness opposing us is a reality, the same as, for example, the state or the law. We can rebel against this spiritual force, but just as in the case of the state, our rebellion can turn out to be not only senseless, but also tragic if we do not take into account those forms and methods of spiritual life that objectively oppose us. In order to transform the historically established system of spiritual life, you must first master it. Social consciousness arose simultaneously and in unity with the emergence of social existence. Nature as a whole is indifferent to the existence of the human mind, and society could not only arise and develop without it, but also exist for not a single day or hour. Due to the fact that society is an objective-subjective reality, social existence and social consciousness are, as it were, “loaded” with each other friend: without the energy of consciousness, social being is static and even dead.

The essence of consciousness lies in the fact that it can reflect social existence only under the condition of its simultaneous active and creative transformation. The function of anticipatory reflection of consciousness is most clearly realized in relation to social existence, which is significantly connected with aspiration to the future. This has been repeatedly confirmed in history by the fact that ideas, in particular socio-political ones, can outstrip the current state of society and even transform it. Society is a material-ideal reality. The totality of generalized concepts, ideas, theories, feelings, morals, traditions, etc., that is, what constitutes the content of social consciousness and forms spiritual reality, is an integral part of social existence, since it is given to the consciousness of an individual . But while emphasizing the unity of social existence and social consciousness, we must not forget their differences, their specific disunity. The historical relationship between social existence and social consciousness in their relative independence is realized in such a way that if in the early stages of the development of society social consciousness was formed under the direct influence of existence, then later this influence acquired an increasingly indirect character - through the state, political, legal relations, etc., and the opposite the influence of social consciousness on being, on the contrary, is acquiring an increasingly direct character. The very possibility of such a direct influence of social consciousness on social being lies in the ability of consciousness to correctly reflect being. So, consciousness as a reflection and as an active creative activity represents the unity of two inseparable sides of one and the same thing process: in its influence on existence, it can both evaluate it, revealing its hidden meaning, predict it, and transform it through the practical activities of people. And therefore, the social consciousness of the era can not only reflect existence, but actively contribute to its restructuring. This is the historically established function of social consciousness, which makes it an objectively necessary and really existing element of any social structure. The fact that social consciousness includes different levels (everyday, theoretical, social psychology, ideology, etc.), and the fact that each level of consciousness reflects social existence differently is precisely the real difficulty in understanding the phenomenon of social consciousness. And therefore it cannot be considered as a simple sum of the concepts of “consciousness” and “social”. Possessing an objective nature and immanent laws of development, social consciousness can either lag behind or ahead of existence within the framework of the evolutionary process that is natural for a given society. In this regard, public consciousness can play the role of an active stimulator of the social process, or a mechanism for its inhibition. The powerful transformative force of social consciousness is capable of influencing existence as a whole, revealing the meaning of its evolution and predicting prospects. In this regard, it differs from the subjective (in the sense of subjective reality) finite and limited individual consciousness. The power of the social whole over the individual is expressed here in the individual’s obligatory acceptance of historically established forms of spiritual development of reality, the methods and means by which the production of spiritual values ​​is carried out, the semantic content that has been accumulated by humanity for centuries and without which the formation of personality is impossible.

Conclusion

So, from all of the above we can draw the following conclusions.

The concept of “consciousness” is far from ambiguous. In a broad sense, the words mean a mental reflection of reality, regardless of the level at which it occurs - biological or social, sensory or rational. When they mean consciousness in this broad sense, they thereby emphasize its relationship to matter without identifying the specifics of its structural organization. The transition to consciousness represents the beginning of a new, higher stage of mental development. Conscious reflection, unlike the mental reflection characteristic of animals, is a reflection of objective reality in its separation from the subject’s existing relations to it, i.e. a reflection that highlights its objective, stable properties. The creative activity of consciousness is closely connected with the practical activity of a person and with the needs that arise under the influence of the external world. Needs, reflected in a person’s head, acquire the character of a goal. A goal is an idealized human need that has found its object, a subjective image of the object of activity, in the ideal form of which the result of this activity is anticipated. Goals are formed on the basis of the total experience of humanity and rise to the highest forms of their manifestation in the form of social, ethical and aesthetic ideals.

The ability to set goals is a specifically human ability that constitutes a cardinal characteristic of consciousness. Consciousness would become an unnecessary luxury if it were deprived of goal setting, that is, the ability to mentally transform things in accordance with social needs.

Thus, the relationship between the purposeful activity of man and nature is not reduced to a simple coincidence. The basis of human goal-setting activity is dissatisfaction with the world and the desire to change it, to give it the forms necessary for man and society. Consequently, human goals are generated by social practice, the objective world and presuppose it. But human thought is capable of not only reflecting what directly exists, but also breaking away from it. The infinitely diverse objective world, with all its colors and forms, seems to glow, reflected in the mirror of our “I” and forming an equally complex, diverse and amazingly changeable world. In this bizarre kingdom of the spirit, its own spiritual space, human thought moves and creates. Both true and illusory ideas arise in people's minds. Thought moves according to ready-made templates and creates new paths, breaking outdated norms. She has a wonderful ability of innovation and creativity. Recognition of the active, creative nature of consciousness is a necessary requirement for understanding human personality: people are the products and creators of history. The connection with reality is not realized by consciousness itself, but by real people who practically transform the world. The objective world, influencing a person and being reflected in his consciousness, turns into the ideal. Being a consequence of the influence of the external world as a cause, ideal consciousness, in turn, acts as a derivative cause: consciousness, through practice, has a reverse influence on the reality that gave rise to it. Activity is characteristic not only of individual, personal, but also of social consciousness, primarily of progressive ideas, which, taking possession of the masses, become “material force.”

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Glossary

Class consciousness - arising as a result of an individual's identification with representatives of a certain social class - characterized by a feeling of solidarity with them and the subordination of the individual's personal interests to class interests.

Mass consciousness is a type of social consciousness,

associated with the activities of mass communities; and reflecting various aspects of society that arouse the interest of mass communities. Mass consciousness is characterized by fragmentation, mobility, inconsistency, rapid unexpected changes in some cases and certain stereotypes in other cases.

Social consciousness is a reflection in the spiritual activity of people of interests, ideas of various social groups, classes, nations, society as a whole.

Subconscious - unconscious systems of the psyche.

Self-awareness is a person’s awareness and assessment of himself as an individual, his moral character and interests, values ​​and motives of behavior.

Consciousness is the highest form of reflection of reality, which is a set of mental processes: allowing a person to navigate the world around him, time, and his own personality; ensuring continuity of experience, unity and diversity of behavior. Consciousness is the ability to think, reason and determine one’s attitude to reality. In clinical practice, the state of consciousness is judged by orientation: in time and place of stay; in the people around you and in your own personality. Consciousness - in the theory of psychoanalysis - the state of a person of sound mind, solid memory; the ability to be aware of one’s actions and feelings.

Group consciousness is a type of social consciousness; a set of group feelings, value orientations and ideals, ideas about group goals, ways and means of achieving them.

The unconscious is a set of mental processes that are not consciously recognized by the subject. According to Z. Freud, the unconscious includes all latent, temporarily unconscious and suppressed processes and mental states that are repressed beyond the boundaries of consciousness.

Thinking is the process of reflecting objective reality in conclusions, concepts, theories, judgments, etc.

Consciousness - one of the basic concepts not only of psychology, but also of philosophical science.

In philosophy concept consciousness is revealed by comparing it with another important philosophical concept matter. Therefore, understanding the essence of consciousness turns out to depend on the way of solving the question of the relationship between matter and consciousness, on the understanding of consciousness in a broad or narrow sense.

In understanding consciousness in a broad sense it is interpreted as an independent entity, a substance capable of creating the world. Such a substantial broad understanding consciousness is characteristic of idealistic philosophy.

This approach was first most consistently expressed in antiquity by the philosophy of Plato. The same approach developed in Christian philosophy of the Middle Ages, which recognized Bora as the bearer of higher consciousness, and later in German classical philosophy, in Hegel’s idealistic system, in which the role of the first principle of the world was played by absolute idea. Absolute idea(world mind), according to Hegel, is the primary substance that creates all other forms of being; it permeates both nature and man, which are interpreted by Hegel only as forms otherness all the same absolute idea.

IN materialist philosophy the term "consciousness" is used elsewhere, in a narrow sense. In the interpretation of Jehovah's material, the scope of the concept "consciousness" narrows significantly. Here it loses the character of an independent entity and takes on the appearance of only one of the properties of matter, moreover, a property that arises only with the advent of highly organized matter - the human brain. Here the role of the eternal and infinite substance, the origin, is transferred to matter. In this narrow sense of the word, consciousness turns out to be not a universal origin, but only one of the forms of being, and a secondary form. closely related to matter, without which it cannot exist. In the understanding of materialists, it is not consciousness that gives rise to matter, but on the contrary, matter gives rise to consciousness as a secondary being. Consciousness here descends from the pedestal of the creative substance and turns into just a specific form of man’s relationship to nature, into the relationship of the human “I” to the natural “Not-I”.

An analysis of consciousness will be incomplete without clarifying its origin.

Origin of consciousness with different understandings of it - in the broad and narrow sense - it is explained differently.

Consciousness in a broad, substantial sense is eternal, and therefore the question of its origin is not even raised in idealistic philosophy. In this sense, as noted, it is close to the concept of God, the circumstances of whose appearance in religion and religious philosophy are also not discussed.

But when understanding consciousness in the narrow sense as a property of matter, the question inevitably arises about its origin from matter.

This question turned out to be very difficult due to the obvious opposition between matter and consciousness, the phenomena of which - sensations-perceptions, concepts and judgments - are completely opposite to material objects, since, unlike them, they do not have color, smell, taste, or any visible form.

It was from the desire to resolve this difficult issue that materialism arose. reflection theory. In this theory, the emergence of consciousness is associated with the universal, fundamental property of matter and - reflection. which supposedly exists along with such more well-known properties of matter as time, space and motion.

Reflection is understood as the property of material systems in the process of interaction to reproduce the features of other systems, preserving their traces and imprints. Within the framework of this theory, consciousness acts as the highest form of such reflection.

The first level of reflection is recognized as physico-chemical interactions in inanimate nature, and the second - biological interactions with the participation of sensory organs.

Thus, according to the ideas of materialists, consciousness arose on the basis of the property of reflection as a fundamental property of matter, as well as on the basis of labor activity and man with his own kind. The latter is especially important for the development of human consciousness, since it is especially quickly enriched on the basis of all forms of social activity.

Modern psychologists characterizing the sphere of consciousness, first of all they note that for all the apparent harmony of both idealistic and materialistic approaches to explaining the nature of consciousness, each of these approaches still has its own shortcomings.

Yes, according to the idea materialists, consciousness as if suddenly, “miraculously”, without visible reasons appears at a certain stage of development of living matter. In addition, the content of our knowledge cannot be reduced only to the results of reflection. This is evidenced by the content of our knowledge: in it there is a great role of knowledge obtained independently of the process of reflection, as a result of the autonomous, creative activity of consciousness itself. The problem of the psycho-physiological substrate of these and many other processes of consciousness remains one of the most complex, yet unresolved problems of psychological science.

At the same time, of course, there are many facts that definitely indicate about addiction, existing between brain and mental processes, material and ideal phenomena. This circumstance is one of the main arguments in favor of materialism. But this relationship is still not evidence that the development of the material is the cause of the emergence and formation of the ideal.

According to the witty remark of one of the critics of the materialist concept of the French philosopher Henri Bergson(1859-1941): a cloak hanging on a hanger is connected to the hanger and can even swing with it. but this does not mean that a raincoat and a hanger are the same thing. The material interacts with the ideal in exactly the same way. Although they are interconnected, as indicated by the theory of reflection, they are in no way identical to each other.

But also idealistic a view that asserts the independence of the ideal from the material also faces problems when it is necessary to explain the facts accumulated by modern medicine, physiology and psychology about the relationship between mental processes, physical states of a person and the functioning of his brain.

Therefore, today some definitions of consciousness are trying to somehow combine these two opposing approaches, which is expressed, for example, in the following synthetic definition:

Consciousness is highest level a person’s reflection of reality, if the psyche is considered from a materialistic position, and the actual human form of the mental principle of being, if the psyche is considered from an idealistic position.

However, it is obvious that this definition suffers from uncertainty and ambiguity.

Consciousness is the highest form of mental reflection and self-regulation, inherent only to man as a socio-historical being, formed in the process of communication, mediated by speech, aimed at transforming reality; associated with, focused on the inner world of the subject.

And finally, if the center, the core of the entire human psyche is recognized as the organization of optimal behavior of the organism to satisfy the needs of the individual, then consciousness with its main function of “reflection” turns out to be only the initial stage of the functioning of the psyche, and not its highest level, as it appears in the previous definition.

With this understanding, the main task of the entire psyche, including consciousness, is to organize expedient behavior to fulfill the need chosen by the individual that is relevant for him at the moment.

To understand the essence of consciousness, which is revealed by the above definitions, it should be taken into account that they are talking specifically about consciousness, as one of the structural parts of the psyche, and not about the entire psyche as a whole. Consciousness and psyche are close, but different in content concepts, although in philosophical and sometimes in psychological literature their unlawful identification is allowed.

It should also be taken into account that the above definitions of consciousness attempt to highlight only its essence, the main property, but do not exhaust the entire richness of its content. Content is always richer than essence. Therefore, the opinion that any definition of essence is always “lame” is fair. To overcome this “lameness”, the insufficiency of any definitions, they are usually supplemented with characteristics of others, not the main ones, but essential properties subject. as well as a description structures, i.e. those parts from which they are composed.

Structure and levels of consciousness

When describing structures consciousness, the following features are usually distinguished:

Consciousness is a two-dimensional phenomenon:

• firstly, it includes information about the external world, an object;
• secondly, it is also directed at the bearer himself, the subject of consciousness, i.e. consciousness acts as self-awareness.

The picture of the world that consciousness forms includes the person himself, his actions and states. The presence of a person’s ability to self-knowledge is the basis for the existence and development of psychology, because without it, mental phenomena would be closed to knowledge. Without reflection, a person could not have the idea that he has a psyche.

Self-awareness is a person’s awareness of his activities, thoughts, feelings, and needs.

The ability to carry out self-knowledge, i.e. directing mental activity towards oneself is a unique property of man, distinguishing him from animals.

In the process of self-awareness, a person realizes the meaning of his own life, develops his mental, moral, and professional qualities, and improves himself.

Consciousness and self-awareness in the human psyche are closely related to unconscious. The unconscious is sometimes, for example in Freudianism, sharply opposed to consciousness. Moreover, this concept assigns the decisive role in human life not to consciousness, but to the subconscious, especially sexual feelings. The subconscious, according to Freud, manifests itself primarily in dreams, in a state of hypnosis.

There is, however, another interpretation of the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious, the essence of which is to recognize the priority of consciousness, especially rational consciousness and thinking. In philosophy, this interpretation is represented by rationalism (Descartes), and in psychology by Gestal psychology (Köhler) and cognitive psychology (Neisser).

Modern psychology believes that the conscious and unconscious in the human psyche are not fenced off and constantly influence each other. In addition, a person is able to control his entire psyche at the level of consciousness.

Consciousness includes several basic structural blocks, the main ones of which are:

• , which include sensations, perceptions, ideas, thinking, memory, language and speech;
• emotional states - positive and negative, active and passive, etc.;
• volitional processes - making and executing decisions, volitional efforts.

All these structures of consciousness ensure the formation of knowledge and the subject-practical activity of a person to satisfy his diverse needs.

To complete the characterization of the phenomenon of consciousness, attention should be paid to some of its essential features, which are most often indicated in the psychological literature.

Consciousness is dynamic, mobile, changeable. In the focus of consciousness, continuously, from morning to evening and even in sleep, a person appears, replacing each other, first one and then another, images, thoughts, ideas. Consciousness is like the flow of a river. Therefore, it is sometimes characterized by the term “stream of consciousness.” This feature of consciousness was first noticed by the ancient philosopher Democritus, who expressed the idea that everything in the world flows, everything changes, you cannot enter the same river twice, and human souls flow like streams.

Consciousness never exists in a “pure form”, in itself, isolated from its specific carrier. This feature of consciousness is expressed by the term “subjectivity of consciousness”, and is also reflected by the formula: “Consciousness is a subjective image of the objective world.” All works of human culture—material and spiritual—originally arose in the minds of their creators.

But any individual consciousness does not arise in an empty place, not in a vacuum. The most important feature of consciousness, which Russian psychology especially persistently emphasized, is close connection between individual consciousness and social consciousness. This connection is carried out through language and speech, which in their content embody the entire experience of human culture. Every person during individual development through language and speech one way or another is introduced to the public consciousness.

Consciousness is active. This feature of consciousness manifests itself not only in the process of creating and changing the “picture of the world”, but also in substantive and practical activities to meet the needs of a person who needs an adequate image of the world in order for his activities to be effective. This feature of consciousness is expressed by the formula: “ consciousness not only reflects the world, but also creates it.” This means that if the psyche of animals ensures, first of all, the animal’s adaptation to the world around it, then the consciousness of a person can allow him to change the world, adapting it to your needs.

Consciousness can not only reflect the real world, but also create ideal structures, ideas that have no analogues, prototypes in the real world. A person is capable, distracted from the real perception of the surrounding reality, to draw in his imagination something that does not exist at the moment, or even something that has never existed and will never exist. This is the content of religions, social utopias, as well as some hypotheses that claim to be scientific.

Introduction

The very first ideas about consciousness arose in ancient times. At the same time, ideas about the soul arose and questions were posed: what is the soul? How does it relate to the objective world? Since then, debates have continued about the essence of consciousness and the possibility of knowing it. Some proceeded from knowability, others - that attempts to understand consciousness are as futile as trying to see oneself walking down the street from a window.

Relevance. Consciousness is one of the traditional eternal philosophical mysteries. Its constant reproduction in the history of culture, philosophy and science testifies not only to the existence of theoretical and methodological difficulties in solving it, but also to the enduring practical interest in the essence of this phenomenon, the mechanism of its development and functioning.

In its most general form, “consciousness” is one of the most common philosophical concepts denoting subjective reality associated with the activity of the brain and its products: thoughts, feelings, ideas, prejudices, scientific and extra-scientific knowledge. Without clarifying the place and role of this reality, it is impossible to create either a philosophical or scientific picture of the world. For many centuries, heated debates have continued around the essence of consciousness and the possibilities of its knowledge. Theologians view consciousness as a tiny spark of the magnificent flame of divine intelligence. Idealists defend the idea of ​​the primacy of consciousness in relation to matter. Taking consciousness out of the objective connections of the real world and considering it as an independent and creative essence of being, objective idealists interpret consciousness as something primordial: it is not only inexplicable by anything that exists outside of it, but from itself is called upon to explain everything that happens in nature, history and behavior every single person. Supporters of objective idealism recognize consciousness as the only reliable reality. If idealism tears out the gap between the mind and the world, then materialism seeks community, unity between the phenomena of consciousness and the objective world, deriving the spiritual from the material. In different historical periods, different ideas about consciousness developed, natural science knowledge accumulated, and the theoretical and methodological foundations of analysis changed. Modern science, using the achievements of scientific and technological revolution, has made significant progress in studying the nature of the substrate basis of consciousness, but at the same time has identified new aspects of conscious human activity that require fundamentally different theoretical and methodological approaches to philosophical analysis. Philosophy puts at the center of its attention as the main question the relationship between matter and consciousness, and thereby the problem of consciousness. The significance of this problem is already revealed in the fact that the species to which we humans belong is designated as Homo sapiens. Based on this, we can rightfully say that a philosophical analysis of the essence of consciousness is extremely important for a correct understanding of the place and role of man in the world. For this reason alone, the problem of consciousness initially attracted the closest attention of philosophers when they developed their initial ideological and methodological guidelines.

The purpose of this work: to study consciousness in philosophy. Explore the concept of reflection. Analyze the creative nature of consciousness.

Based on this goal, I set myself the following tasks:

1. Study and analyze the evolution of the concept of consciousness, define consciousness;

2. Explore and analyze the concept of reflection;

3. Study and analyze the creative nature of consciousness.

1. Evolution of concepts of consciousness. Concept of consciousness

A person’s entire life from birth to death, his behavior and activities are determined to one degree or another by consciousness.

Thanks to consciousness, a person penetrates into the past and the future, invades the depths of space and the depths of the microworld, where he cannot physically reach. With its help, man creates what does not exist in nature, creates the world of culture. Consciousness is a wonderful gift of nature, but it is also the eternal curse of man, since it gives him the opportunity to realize the whole tragedy of his existence, finite in time, to understand that his life is an existence leading to death.

Consciousness is one of those secrets that nature reveals with great reluctance. Some philosophers have argued that understanding consciousness is as futile an attempt as a drowning man's attempt to pull himself out of the water by his hair. Others have a different opinion on this matter, recognizing the possibility of knowing consciousness. This cognition is carried out indirectly, through the actions of people and through their speech structures, that is, words and sentences.

What is consciousness? This is a person’s ability to ideally reproduce reality, objects, phenomena, processes and connections of the surrounding world. He carries out the ideal reproduction of reality in the form of sensory and mental images, the roles of which are sensations, perceptions, concepts, thoughts, ideas that make up the content of consciousness. Consciousness is the inner, spiritual world of a person, built from ideal phenomena. It gives him the opportunity to understand the world around him, the processes and phenomena occurring in it, his thoughts and actions, his attitude to the outside world and to himself. Consciousness allows him to rationally organize his life and competently carry out behavior and activities. In the 19th century, Arthur Schopenhauer called consciousness “the crux of the universe,” implying that the mystery of consciousness remains the darkest place in the entire corpus (collection) of human knowledge. In the 20th century, philosophy of mind became one of the most popular areas of research; a huge amount of literature is published on this topic every year. Contemporary American philosopher Richard Rorty even stated that, in his opinion, philosophy of mind is the only truly useful philosophical discipline today.

The problems of philosophy of consciousness go back to Antiquity. Plato and Aristotle are the forerunners of modern dualists because they believed that mind exists as an ontological reality separate from matter. At the origins of the tradition of monism is another Greek philosopher, Parmenides, who argued that being and thinking are one. Consciousness becomes the most important object of study for philosophers in modern times, in the concepts of Descartes, Spinoza, Locke and Hume. Today, philosophy of consciousness develops mainly within the framework of analytical philosophy. Since ancient times, thinkers have been intensely searching for a solution to the mystery of the phenomenon of consciousness. It is traditionally believed that the merit of a holistic formulation of the problem of consciousness, or rather the problem of the ideal, belongs to Plato. Before Plato, such a problem did not exist. The soul, which was reduced to the fundamental principle of the whole world, was considered the bearer of human thoughts and feelings. Atomists (Democritus) consider the soul as a formation consisting of special round atoms and emptiness, i.e. as a special material formation. Developing Socrates' ideas about the innateness of true knowledge to the soul before its incarnation in the human body, Plato for the first time identifies the ideal as a special essence that does not coincide with and is opposite to the sensory, objective, material world of things. Plato: “...a wide opening stretches the entire length [of the cave]. Prisoners live inside the cave. From an early age they have shackles on their legs and necks, so that people cannot move, and they only see what is right in front of their eyes, because they cannot turn their heads because of these shackles. People have their backs turned to the light coming from the fire, which burns far above, and between the fire and the prisoners there is an upper road, like the screen behind which magicians place their assistants when they show dolls over the screen... So imagine that too that behind this wall other people are carrying various utensils, holding them so that they are visible over the wall; they carry statues and all sorts of images of living beings made of stone and wood... First of all, do you think that, being in such a position, people see anything, their own or someone else’s, except for the shadows cast by fire on the located in front of them is the wall of a cave?..” In this passage, Plato develops his “theory of the cave,” the essence of which lies in the following provisions: a person wanders in the darkness of a cave and sees only objectified shadows of ideas that have a real existence somewhere outside of it - thus in In allegorical form, Plato seeks to show the relationship between the “primary” world of ideas (objects carried outside the cave), the “derived” physical world (the shadows of things in the cave) and human consciousness, which is capable of perceiving only shadows, but not “true” ideas. Consciousness, according to Plato, is a set of signals coming from the senses; its task is to compare these signals, establish similarities and differences between them, contrast the individual and find commonality to bring them to one form. The following concepts of consciousness have developed in philosophy and retain their significance in modern culture.

¾ Objective-idealistic interpretation of consciousness as a superhuman, transpersonal, ultimately transcendental idea (the world of ideas in Plato; the absolute idea in Hegel; God in theologians; alien intelligence in ufologists), underlying all forms of earthly existence. Human consciousness is a particle, product or other being of the world mind.

¾ Subjective-idealistic systems consider human consciousness as a self-sufficient entity that contains a picture of itself and is the substance of the material world (R. Descartes, J. Berkeley).

R. Descartes: “I am a substance, an entity whose nature consists in thinking and which for its existence does not need a place and does not depend on any material thing...

“I am, I exist” is certain. But how long? As much as I think, for it is possible that I would completely cease to exist if I completely stopped thinking.”[3, p.154].

From what was quoted, it clearly follows that, according to Descartes, the soul not only in the cognitive aspect depends on consciousness (we comprehend the soul with only this attribute), but also ontologically the soul exists insofar as it thinks. Thus, this is a completely idealistic theory, based on the postulate of the primacy of the spirit as a substance independent of nature, the manifestations of which are thinking and will.

Consciousness person is a subjective experience of external reality, which is expressed in self-report of these events. A broader definition of the concept of consciousness is a property of the psyche through which external events are reflected, regardless of the level of implementation (biological, social, sensory or rational). In a narrower sense, this is a function of the brain, characteristic only of people, which, associated with speech, is expressed in the purposeful and generalized reflection of the phenomena of reality, the preliminary construction of actions in the mind and the prediction of results, manifested in rational management and actions through.

The concept of human consciousness is the subject of research in many sciences (psychology, philosophy, sociology); scientists are trying to uncover the meaning of the existence and occurrence of such a phenomenon.

Consciousness is a synonym: reason, comprehension, understanding, comprehension, thought, reason, they will be used later in the text.

Forms of consciousness

There is individual and social consciousness. The first, individual, is the consciousness of each individual about his individuality of being, through his social being. It is an element of social consciousness. Consequently, secondly, the concept of social consciousness is the generalized individual consciousness of various individuals. This generalization occurs historically, over a long period of time. Therefore, it is also considered group.

In group consciousness, it is necessary to consider two features - this is the social contact of people as an important factor and the common strength of these people when combining their individual forces.

Each collective constitutes a group of different individuals, however, not every group of individuals will be a collective. Based on this, the manifestation of collective consciousness will always be group, and group consciousness will not always be collective. Collective intelligence is, firstly, a manifestation of social consciousness as a social idea, and secondly, this idea determines the activities of individuals in this collective.

Individual awareness of typical individuals always determines group awareness. But only what is typical for a certain group, which is suitable in terms of frequency of manifestation, strength of expression at any time, that is, what is ahead, directs the development of this group.

Collective and group forms of consciousness are dependent on social consciousness and are determined by the relationships between group members. Thus, those mental phenomena that are characteristic of the communication process represent different phenomena in group consciousness.

The latter, in turn, is divided into several forms of consciousness. The most specific are mass phenomena; they constitute public moods and create a group psychological climate. These moods are mostly caused by interpersonal relationships. If the group has good, warm and trusting relationships, then the psychological climate will be favorable and it will be easier for such a group to solve problems. But if a person is introduced into such a team, dissipating hostility between group members, naturally, the psychological climate will deteriorate, and labor efficiency will begin to fall. Also, the mass mood in the group can be affected by didactogenies - these are changes in mood that reach a painful state and are caused by rude behavior and the influence of the leader.

Another form of group consciousness is panic. Panic is a manifestation, a state that captures an entire group and, under the influence of mutual imitation, intensifies even more.

Fashion is a form of group consciousness, when people begin to imitate each other, follow public opinion and rely on information about funds mass media, regarding what they should wear, dress, put on shoes, what music to listen to.

Collective thinking is also a form of group consciousness; it consolidates the purposefulness of each member in solving the task of the team, makes it possible to think through it and illuminate it with different sides, also promotes initiative. Collective thinking adds criticality to decisions, and this contributes to the development of self-criticism in each member of the group, enriches the knowledge and experience of some by acquiring knowledge from others, creates a positive emotional tone, creates situations of competition, increasing efficiency, and reduces the time for solving the task. Solving one task contributes to the emergence of new ones and thus stimulates the development and progression of the group; collective thinking moves the team forward.

The form of social consciousness is divided into several types: religion, science, law, morality, ideology and art. Forms such as religion, law, morality and art, as social phenomena, are relatively independent and are studied by different sciences. Moral and aesthetic consciousness have a connection that can be observed every day, for example, moral actions are often characterized as beautiful, and vice versa, immoral actions are called disgusting or ugly.

Religious art through church painting and music is used to deepen religious feelings and, in general, the religious consciousness of each individual and entire groups. In small groups, religious awareness is a phenomenon from religious psychology, which includes the religious worldview of the individual and groups.

The philosophical type of consciousness is a theoretical worldview, knowledge about the laws of nature, man and society; it highlights methods of their knowledge. Displays existence in a conceptual form, performs epistemological and ideological functions.

The scientific nature of consciousness is a rational, systematized reflection of the surrounding world through the application scientific theories, arguments and facts, is displayed in the minds of people in the categories of laws and theories. It allows a person to think in categories, to apply various principles of cognition in order to make new discoveries. The application of scientific consciousness can be seen in all possible spheres of human existence.

Morality, as a form of awareness, has emerged and changed, as well as the moral psychology of a group, which generalizes the socially beneficial experience of communication in groups and in appropriate conditions.

Morality of consciousness is based on the category of morality, it is the most ancient form of social consciousness, and it also passes through all areas of human activity (profession, everyday life, family). It is reflected in the categories by which a person thinks and is guided: good, evil, conscience, dignity and others. Morality is determined by the outlook of specific societies and classes. Moral norms reflect universal, that is, independent of social class, moral values: humanism, honor, responsibility, compassion, collectivism, gratitude, generosity.

The political nature of consciousness began to emerge with the formation of the state, classes and the sphere of politics. It reflects the interactions of classes and social groups, the place and their role in state power, the relations between nations and states, oriented by economic motives. It integrates all forms of social consciousness. It is influenced by various spheres: religion, science, law, but the political remains the leading one. It is also an element of the functioning of the country's political system. It has two levels: the everyday practical level and the ideological-theoretical level. At the everyday theoretical level, experience and tradition, the emotional and the rational, experience and traditions are interconnected; it appears spontaneously, from the activities and life experiences of people. It is also unstable because it exists under the influence and dependence of living conditions, people's emotions and constantly changing experiences.

The use of everyday consciousness is important because it is characterized by the integrity of life understanding, and with creative processing it is the basis of theoretical consciousness. Theoretical political consciousness is characterized by a completeness and depth of reflection of political reality, characterized by the ability to predict and systematize views. It can develop a political program based on the economic and social spheres. Such a political ideology is capable of actively influencing the level of public consciousness. Only specially trained people who work on understanding the laws of social life and engage in “political creativity” work on the creation of ideology. A well-formed ideology can influence the consciousness of society as a whole, since it is not just a system of beliefs, but a well-structured propaganda that permeates all layers and spheres of society, which uses state power and uses the media, science, culture, and religion.

Legal consciousness has a very strong connection with the political, since it contains political as well as economic interests of various social groups. It affects various spheres of social life, in which it performs the following functions: regulatory, cognitive and evaluative.

Also legal, it has a historical nature, and its development occurs depending on economic and political circumstances and living conditions, it arises along with the first manifestations of the political organization of society, law and class division and reflects the relationships of people, organizations, government bodies that are bound by rights and obligations, their guarantor is the law.

Economic awareness reflects knowledge and theories of economic activities and social needs. It is formed under the influence of historical conditions and is determined by the need to understand economic and social changes. It also aims to improve economic reality.

Ecological aspects of human consciousness perform social functions. First of all, cognitive and educational functions. It is interconnected with other forms of consciousness: moral, aesthetic and legal. The state of the environment requires a person to have an aesthetic and moral attitude towards surrounding nature, in other cases, a person succumbs to the influence of legal consciousness in order to pay for the damage caused to nature.

Environmental awareness consists of a humane attitude towards nature, a person’s awareness of himself as a part of this nature. The criterion for this is the spiritual need for careful attitude and desire to preserve the beauty of nature.

Consciousness and unconsciousness

A state of awareness is a state of a person in which he is able to clearly see and comprehend everything that is happening around him and what is happening directly to him, is able to control his actions and monitor the development of events around him.

The unconscious is uncontrolled, unconscious actions and special mental manifestations. These are two different poles of the psyche, but they are in connection and interaction.

He was the first in psychology to begin to study individual consciousness and the unconscious, their relationship and how they manifest themselves in behavior. According to this school of thought, a person’s awareness is just no more than one tenth of the psyche. The majority is made up of the unconscious, in which instincts, desires, emotions, fears are stored; they are always with a person, but only sometimes they appear and at that moment control the person.

Consciousness is synonymous with awareness and this term will also be used. So, the conscious is that which is controlled by a person, the unconscious is that which cannot be controlled, only it itself is capable of influencing a person. Insight, dreams, associations, reflexes - appear without our will, also intuition, inspiration, creativity, impressions, memories, intrusive thoughts, slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, illnesses, pains, impulses - manifestations of the unconscious, sometimes some of them can appear at a completely inopportune moment or if a person does not expect it at all.

Thus, there is a connection between the unconscious and the conscious, and today no one dares to refute it. Both the conscious and the unconscious are intertwined in a person and influence both him and each other. The unconscious sphere can open up to a person, which establishes what internal motivations and forces drive a person, his thoughts and actions, outside of consciousness.

Guided by this knowledge, you can greatly improve your life, learn to trust your intuition, become open to creativity, work on your fears, open up, listen to your inner voice, and work through repressed desires. All this requires a reserve of strength and desire, but then in order to fully understand yourself, develop, achieve goals, get rid of complexes, you need to engage in introspection and deep self-knowledge.

The unconscious relieves the mind of unnecessary stress and protects against information overload. It contains negative experiences, fears, information traumatic to the psyche and, thanks to this, protects a person from psychological stress and breakdowns. Without such a mechanism, people would not be able to withstand all the pressures from the outside world. Thanks to liberation from negative experiences or outdated unnecessary information, a person is able to fully realize himself.

Protection of a person’s consciousness is manifested in freeing him from constant control over the actions that he carries out every day. Actions such as brushing teeth, using appliances, riding a bicycle, and many others become automatic and do not require thinking about the actions. Also, an adult does not notice how he makes words from letters when he reads, and does not think about what actions he needs to perform in order to walk. In the same way, actions become automatic in professions.

Because some information passes into the unconscious area, much more space is freed up for assimilation of new information, and the mind more easily concentrates on new important tasks. But we must not forget that even what has gone into the unconscious does not disappear without a trace, it is stored, and under the influence of some stimulus it is able to break out, because, in any case, it is part of a person.

The conscious and unconscious psyches are of equal importance to people, and the functionality of either of them cannot be underestimated.

Consciousness and self-awareness

The concept of human consciousness is also used in the context of self-awareness. The properties of consciousness are that it, as the personal core of a person, contains feelings, sensations, thoughts and emotions. The meaning of self-awareness is that it is a person’s attitude towards himself. It turns out that both concepts are parts of a single whole.

If we look back at the history of mankind, primitive people had only underdeveloped awareness, which developed in stages. It began with the fact that a person felt his body on a physical level and understood the limitations of his abilities. After exploring his body, he began to explore the outside world, from which his mind gained new information, which stimulated his development. The more a person gets acquainted with different objects, the more he can find their differences and learn new properties.

The formation of self-awareness happened a little later. At first, man was guided only by innate instincts (reproduction, self-preservation). Thanks to self-awareness, man managed to rise above such primitivism, and the emergence of hierarchy in communities contributed to this. Each group had a leader whom everyone listened to, followed his instructions, and accepted criticism and praise. Thus, people became above their instincts, because they began to do something not specifically for themselves alone, but for the whole group and the leader. This is a manifestation of self-awareness in the external world, and not inside the human consciousness. Even later, the individual began to listen to his own voice and act in relation to what he “heard,” this allowed him to rise above instincts, fleeting desires and other factors that interfered with personal development.

In the development of modern man, the formation of consciousness and self-awareness also appears in stages. At first, the child gradually becomes aware of himself, then finds himself under the guidance of adults. Later, external managers are replaced by internal ones. But this development has not reached everyone. In undeveloped countries, there are people who still live according to their old instinct.

Without self-awareness, a person cannot go further in his personal development, achieve goals, get along with people around him, or become successful. With the help of self-awareness, a person sees and makes his life the way he wants. All successful people own this property. Otherwise, they would not be able to become intelligent and develop intelligence.

By the way, categories such as consciousness and are often compared. Many people believe that if there is consciousness, then this also speaks of intelligence, but these categories have different meaning. intelligent man not always conscious. The level of consciousness among less educated people may be higher. Therefore, consciousness and intelligence are not identical concepts. But with the help of self-awareness, intellectual capabilities develop. The properties of self-awareness and consciousness constitute the life of a modern person, help him in gaining freedom, otherwise it would remain only within the framework of desires.

Consciousness in philosophy

The concept of consciousness in philosophy is complex topic for study, great people have pondered over it. The relationship between the concepts of consciousness and brain in philosophy is an even more difficult topic, since the two concepts are presented as completely different. The definition of consciousness is an idea, and the brain is a material substrate. But still there is definitely a connection between them.

Modern philosophers are confident in the existence of consciousness and regarding its sources, they identify several of its factors. First, the external and spiritual world, the natural and the spiritual, are reflected in consciousness under the guise of certain sensory-conceptual ideas. Such information is the result of interactions between a person and a situation that provides contact with it.

Secondly, the sociocultural environment, aesthetic and ethical attitudes, legal acts, knowledge, methods and means of cognitive activity - this allows a person to be a social being.

Third, this is the spiritual inner world of the individual, her life experiences and experiences, rethinking which a person makes plans.

Fourth, the brain is such a factor because at the cellular level it ensures the functioning of consciousness.

Fifth, the cosmic information field, a link of which is the functioning of human consciousness, is also a factor.

It turns out that the source of consciousness is not only the ideas themselves (according to the theory of idealists), and not the brain itself (according to materialists), but objective and subjective reality, which is reflected by a person with the help of the brain in transpersonal forms of consciousness.

Consciousness and the brain in philosophy are studied from several approaches. One of these is physicalism - a materialist direction that denies the existence of consciousness as an independent substance, since, first of all, it is generated by matter.

Solipsism is also an approach that studies the concept of consciousness and presents extreme views. It says that the awareness of each person exists as a single reliable reality. The material world is a product of consciousness.

The described approaches demonstrate moderate materialism and objective idealism. Regarding the first, the category of consciousness in it is defined as a unique manifestation of matter, which allows one to reflect oneself. The second one insists that consciousness has a certain connection with matter, the existence of consciousness is defined as original.

Indeed, a person's awareness of the brain, or how, in itself is not explained by the approaches described above. Other areas need to be explored. For example, there is a cosmic view, according to it - the meaning of consciousness is independent of the material carrier - it is a gift of the cosmos, and is indivisible.

According to biological theory, the ability to be aware is a product of living nature and is inherent in absolutely everyone, even the simplest organisms. Because life is not spontaneous, and patterns flow from consciousness. All living creatures have instincts that are innate and acquired in the process of their life, accumulated along with experience; they are also capable of performing actions that are complex in structure, and some animals even have a peculiar morality.

But there is also a view in relation to which the property of consciousness is considered to be inherent exclusively to man. But even coming from such different versions and definitions, philosophy does not give a single answer to the question about the source of the origin of consciousness. The human mind is in continuous movement and development, since different events happen to it every day, which a person tries to comprehend and realize.

Consciousness and language in philosophy can be briefly described as another issue of concern to philosophers. Mind and language directly have mutual influences that can be controlled. When a person works to improve speech data, he also changes his own properties of consciousness, thereby developing the ability to objectively perceive information and make decisions. Ancients philosophical thinkers, such as Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, studied the relationship between consciousness, thinking and language. This can even be seen in the Greek word “logos,” which literally means that thought is inseparable from the word.

Consciousness and language in philosophy can be briefly explained through such a philosophical movement as “philosophy of language”; it asserts that the ability of consciousness directly affects a person’s worldview, in particular his speech, and from this it follows that it also influences communication with others.

In modern times, many scientists are trying to find new relationships in consciousness and language. For example, recent studies have confirmed that every person’s thinking uses visual pictures that were formed under the influence of consciousness. Thus, awareness guides the thought process. Close to this definition was the thinker Rene Descartes, who gave such an explanation that was forever entrenched in philosophy and other sciences that it can be found dominant.

Descartes believed that there are two substances - thinking and bodily, fundamentally different from each other. Things and events of a bodily substance are considered spatial and accessible to external contemplation, then consciousness and events in it are not spatial, that is, they are impossible to observe, but they can be realized by the internal experience of the bearer of this consciousness.

Idealists did not support such an idea, but argued that personality is a state of consciousness, like a spirit, in which the bodily and biological do not have much meaning. Contemporaries are not satisfied with such a view, therefore philosophers discussing the psychophysical problem of consciousness adhere to a greater extent to variants of materialism.

The most consistent version of the materialist direction is the theory of identity, which believes that thought processes, perceptions and sensations are identical with the state of the brain.

Functionalism, as another view on the definition of consciousness, considers phenomena and processes as functional states of the brain, and not physical ones. The brain is defined as a complex multi-level system with physical, functional and systemic properties. This approach has several disadvantages, the main one being that such a definition is very much in the spirit of Cartesian dualism.

Some supporters of modern philosophy believe that it is necessary to turn away from Descartes' ideas about personality as a "spirit in a machine", based on the fact that initially a person is a rational animal, capable of conscious behavior, personality cannot be divided into two worlds, so there is a need for a new interpretation of concepts associated with the ability of consciousness - from simple sensations to intellectual processes and self-awareness.