Consciousness- one of the basic concepts of philosophy, sociology and psychology, denoting the human ability to ideally reproduce reality in thinking.

The origin of consciousness is connected, first of all, with the formation of culture based on the practical transformative activity of people, with the need to consolidate, fix the skills, methods, and norms of this activity in special forms of reflection. These skills, methods, norms of specific human activity have a specific nature; arise, are implemented and reproduced in joint collective activity; therefore, the forms of reflection that consolidate them are always of a social nature. Thus, in a narrower sense, consciousness is the highest form of mental reflection, characteristic of a socially developed person. Without consciousness, the joint activity of people in one generation, as well as the transfer of cultural experience from one generation to another, is impossible. Consciousness, thus, performs the function of the social memory of humanity, developing some schemes for the reproduction of the experience accumulated by humanity.

The emergence and development of consciousness is inextricably linked with the development of language as the material embodiment of the norms of consciousness.

Consciousness appears in two forms: individual (personal) and social. Social consciousness is a reflection of social existence; forms of social consciousness - science, philosophy, art, morality, religion, politics, etc.

Consciousness can, with some degree of convention, be divided into 3 parts: mind, feelings and will.

The mind is the main part of consciousness. By definition, a person is a rational being. Reason is a condition and consequence of cognitive activity, which can be carried out rationally and irrationally. Reason can take the form of fantasy, imagination and logic. Reason provides the mutual understanding of people necessary for their communication and joint activities.

Feelings are a condition and consequence of selective relationship person to the world. Everything that is in the world causes a person to have positive and negative emotions, or a neutral attitude. This is due to the fact that something is useful to a person, something is harmful, and something is indifferent, something in the world is beautiful, something is ugly. As a result, a person develops a rich emotional world, because everything that happens in the world has varying degrees of significance and a different nature of significance for a person. Emotions and feelings express an evaluative attitude towards the world. The wealth of feelings and emotions is manifested in the vocabulary of the language. There are several hundred words that contain feelings and emotions. The poverty of a person’s individual vocabulary also speaks of his emotional poverty of his consciousness, and, consequently, of his personality.

Will is a part of consciousness that ensures the achievement of pre-set goals by mobilizing the forces necessary to achieve them. A person, unlike an animal, is able to look into the future and consciously, through the will, form the options for the future that he needs. Powers volitions are needed to concentrate attention on certain thoughts, feelings, actions, and objects of the external world. Will is also needed to resist adverse influences and to ensure mental stability. Lack of will makes a person susceptible to adverse influences and unable to achieve goals due to the inability to make choices and concentrate on a given direction.

REFLECTION– the main characteristic of cognition and consciousness from the point of view of the philosophy of dialectical materialism. Cognition and consciousness are understood within the framework of this concept as a reflection, reproduction of the characteristics of objects that exist objectively - in reality, regardless of the consciousness of the subject.

The theory of reflection in Marxist philosophy forms the basis of the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge. Reflection theory has specific tasks:

disclosure of the most common features and patterns inherent in all levels and forms of reflection;

research into the emergence and development of forms of mental reflection, including questions of the origin of consciousness and the special scientific substantiation of the possibilities of human cognitive activity;

studying the connection between the characteristics of the content and form of the image, knowledge; revealing the essence of reflection in inanimate nature;

clarification of the features of reflection (signaling) in communication and control technology, in particular the relationship and connection between humans and cybernetic devices.

The starting point for the theory of reflection and Marxist epistemology in general is the dialectical-materialist principle of reflection, according to which the results of knowledge must be relatively adequate to their source - the original. They are achieved through two interrelated requirements and their corresponding processes: active extraction of necessary and exclusion of unnecessary, side information about the original.

Reflection as an epistemological principle was also recognized in pre-Marxist materialism, however, as Lenin noted, the main problem of old materialism was the inability to apply dialectics to the theory of reflection, as a result of which reflection was understood as a passive, dead “photography” of the external world.

Marxist philosophy understands reflection dialectically, as a complex and contradictory process of interaction between sensory and rational cognition, mental and practical activity, as a process in which a person does not passively adapt to the outside world, but influences it, transforming and subordinating it to his goals. Therefore, attempts to criticize the Marxist theory of reflection as “conformist”, which supposedly dooms the knowing subject to passive and inactive contemplation of the surrounding world, are without any basis. On the contrary, active objective activity of man and humanity is possible only on the basis of the reflective function of consciousness, which ensures adequate knowledge of the world and influence on it in accordance with objective laws.

The problem of consciousness in philosophy and science

The very first ideas about consciousness arose in ancient times. Then it was expressed by the concepts of soul and mind. The questions were asked: 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 knowledge.

In the history of the f-phy there are 2 main understandings of consciousness˸

Philosophical idealism˸ consciousness became absolutized in the form of a certain absolute spirit, a world mind that creates the world; consciousness is primary;

Philosophical materialism˸ consciousness was declared to be the function of the brain to reflect the world, to create ideal models of the world, with the help of which a person can adapt to the surrounding action; matter is primary both historically and epistemologically; she is the bearer and cause of ᴇᴦο emergence; consciousness is a derivative of matter.

A person is conscious with the help of the brain, but consciousness is not a function of the brain itself, but a function of a certain type of relationship between a socially developed person and the world. Consciousness is not only a reflection of the surrounding world. Consciousness is a manifestation of being in us. Everything we know about the world is given to us through consciousness. Consciousness completes the world, completes it. Consciousness is the source of all knowledge and all understanding of the world. For h-ka, the world is nothing more than a being realized through thoughts and experiences.

Consciousness is not an independent substance, but one of the properties of matter and, therefore, is inextricably linked with matter. Absolute the opposition between matter and consciousness leads to the fact that consciousness appears as a kind of self. a substance existing along with matter. Consciousness is one of the properties of the movement of matter. Between consciousness and matter there is both difference, connection, and unity. Difference- consciousness is not matter itself, but one of its properties. The images of external objects that make up the content of consciousness are different in form from these objects, like their ideal copies.

Unity and connection- arising in the consciousness of the psyche. images are similar in content to the material objects that evoke them.

The central philosophical question has always been the question of the relationship of consciousness to being, the question of the inclusion of a person with consciousness in the world, about the opportunities that consciousness provides a person. Therefore, consciousness acts as a key initial philosophical concept for the analysis of all forms of manifestation of the spiritual and mental life of a person in their unity and integrity, as well as ways to control and regulate relationships with reality, and manage these relationships.

By consciousness, according to Spirkin, we mean the ability to ideally reflect reality, transform the objective content of an object into the subjective content of a person’s mental life.

The problem of consciousness in philosophy and science - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Problem of consciousness in philosophy and science" 2015, 2017-2018.

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. 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.
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 and is opposite to the sensory, objective, material world of things. In the allegorical image of prisoners in a cave, Plato explains the independent existence of the world of ideas (the real world), which determines the existence of the world of things as a reflection, a shadow of the primary world. This concept of dividing the world into 2 parts (the world of ideas and the world of things) turned out to be decisive for the entire subsequent philosophical culture of Europe, in contrast to the Eastern tradition.
The following concepts of consciousness have developed in philosophy and retain their significance in modern culture.

1. An 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.
2. 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).
3. Hylozoism (materialized life) states that all matter thinks, consciousness is an attributive property of the entire material world. From the point of view of hylozoism, all matter is animate 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 both the mental and the physiological are two independent entities, the study of which should be carried out through own substantiality.
4. 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 - beginning of the 19th centuries in connection with 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, in connection with the success of solving technical problems in the construction of artificial intelligence, philosophical discussions about the problem “can a machine think?”, and research that discovered a direct relationship between the content side of thinking and the structure of processes occurring in the brain, the ideas of characterizing thinking as attribute of the material substrate.
5. Sociologization of consciousness. Consciousness is placed in absolute dependence on the external, including social, environment. At the origins of these ideas are J. Locke and his followers, 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” of 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 - the polis. These ideas deny the individuality of human thinking, the dependence of the abilities of a thinking individual on the structural features and functioning of his central nervous system.
6. 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.

• Consciousness is an ideal phenomenon, a function, a special property, a product of a highly organized material substrate - the human brain, thinking matter.
• Consciousness is an ideal image, snapshot, copy, reflection of a material object in the subject’s brain.
• Consciousness has creative activity, manifested in the relative independence of its functioning and development and the reverse impact on the material world.
• Consciousness is a product of socio-historical development; it does not arise outside of society and cannot exist.
• Consciousness as an ideal reflection of the material world does not exist without language as the material form of its expression.

All six concepts considered contain some 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: in theoretical terms, 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 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 variety of interpretations of consciousness is associated primarily 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-materialist 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:

• How did thinking matter arise in the process of evolution of inanimate, non-sentient nature?
• 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?
• 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 offered 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.
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, bioelectrical and other material processes occur. Having emerged 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 entire organism, controlling and regulating its life activity. As a result of the historical evolution of living things, the brain acts as a genetic continuation of simpler forms and ways of connecting living things 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, and think? It is logical to assume that in the foundation of the very knowledge of matter there is an ability similar to sensation, but not identical to it, that “all matter has a property essentially related to sensation, the property of reflection.” This 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 increasing complexity of reflection forms is associated with the developing ability of material systems for self-organization and self-development. The evolution of forms of reflection 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.
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 stop 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, clarification, 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 remained 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 mathematical information theory. Information began to be understood as those messages transmitted by people to each other that reduce the uncertainty of the recipient. With the advent of cybernetics as the science of control and communication in living organisms, society and machines, the 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 sensually observed content of 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, for acquiring new, more complex qualities and properties.
The emergence of organic nature forms a qualitatively new form of reflection. Phenomena of living nature have access to a higher degree of intensity of the information content of reflection and a significantly wider volume of it. So, if a mineral exhibits only the ability to accumulate changes in the external environment, then the plant reflects external diversity much more dynamically and actively. 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 richness 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 coding and inheritance. Thus, the complication of reflection forms expresses not only the fact of the development and complication of matter, but also the fact of the acceleration of this development. The increase in the intensity of information connections with the development of forms of reflection brings new qualitative characteristics to the spatiotemporal forms of 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 due to enrichment with 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 - proceeds 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.
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 and 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 object of reflection 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 characteristics, 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, a social form of being.
Thus, based on all of the above, we can state 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.

Consciousness as the highest form of reflection of reality: the concept of reflection, the main features of reflection, the evolution of forms of reflection in living, inanimate nature. The structure of consciousness, self-awareness and its forms. The category consciousness is the opposite of the category matter. In the history of philosophy, the very concept of consciousness began to be used around the 18th century, when the physiology of the brain began to be studied.

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The problem of consciousness in philosophy and science.

1. Definitions of the concept of ideal, spiritual in philosophy.
2. Consciousness as the highest form of reflection of reality: the concept of reflection, the main features of reflection, the evolution of forms of reflection in living, inanimate nature. Social and natural conditions for the emergence of consciousness. The difference between consciousness and the psyche of higher animals.
3. The structure of consciousness, self-awareness and its forms. Social activity of consciousness and creative character. Functions of consciousness.
4. Conscious and unconscious in the human psyche.

The category consciousness is the opposite of the category “matter”. This concept is associated in philosophy with the existence of the spiritual world and ideal phenomena. In the history of philosophy, the very concept of “consciousness” began to be used approximately with XVIII century, when the physiology of the brain began to be studied. Unlike science, philosophers designated all spiritual experiences, emotions, will, and values ​​with the concept “ideal” or “spiritual,” and the very existence of spiritual acts was associated with the presence of a soul in a person.

Democritus also believed that knowledge, experience, and feelings are connected with the soul. For Plato, the ideal exists in itself (the world of ideas), but individual manifestations of the spirit (especially knowledge, feelings) are connected with the human soul. A similar point of view is characteristic of all objective idealism, which identifies the ideal as the fundamental basis of the universe (for example, Hegel believed that pure thought objectively exists).

With the development of science and natural science knowledge, extremely materialistic interpretations of the phenomenon of consciousness appeared. Thus, Descartes argued that all nature has thinking. This conclusion can be drawn based on his dualism: the world is based on two substances: material (has extension) and spiritual (has thinking), it follows that a stone can think. This position is called hylozoism.

In the XVIII to German physiologistsVogt, Meleschott, Buchner(the founders of vulgar materialism) argued that consciousness is a product of the physiological activity of the brain, that the brain secretes consciousness in the same way as the liver secretes bile.

Russian physiologists Pavlov, Sechenov, Bekhterev, Ukhtomsky, Anokhin, Bekhtereva made a special contribution to the explanation of consciousness and the ideal. Their work made it possible to explain that consciousness is a property of reflection that is characteristic of humans. The material substrate of consciousness is the human brain, i.e. consciousness is a special property of highly organized brain matter to reflect the objective world.

Reflection is characteristic of all nature: both living and inanimate.The main features of reflectionas a universal property of matter is:

1. Objectivity
2. Information content: reflection stores information about the reflected object.
3. Adequacy: reflects only what it interacts with.
4. Depends on the conditions, on the strength of interaction, on the complexity of interacting systems.

Biological reflection is the most complex reflection, especially the psyche of higher animals. Consciousness is a social form of reflection, but has a natural basis.The question of the emergence of consciousnesscontroversial. There are three main concepts in culture:

1. Theological : consciousness is a gift from God

2. Panspermic: consciousness came from Space

3. Evolutionary (labor, socio-historical): based on scientific discoveries and facts. This is anthropology, paleontology, which provide the basis to explain the natural conditions and social factors of the emergence of consciousness: to the firstnatural conditionsinclude the presence of a certain genetic basis on which a person would develop. Such a basis is Australopithecus. The second factor is natural and climatic conditions, changes in which became the main reason for changes in human physicality: upright walking contributed to the formation of the cerebellum, the development of the hand contributed to the formation of the cerebral hemispheres, the transmission of information by sound changed the larynx, which also affected the change in the brain (centers responsible for memory).

Social conditions:

1. Life in society and communication led to the development of communication ties.

2. A sign system appeared - language, the material shell of thought. Language has become an indicator of abstract thinking. Conceptual thinking develops through language and communication.

3. Labor plays a special role in the emergence of consciousness; it is the purposeful activity of a person to create the values ​​he needs. In work, goals, values, an image of the desired result, and means of achieving these goals are formed: this is evidence of abstract thinking.

THE DIFFERENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS FROM THE PEEK OF HIGHER ANIMALS:

Consciousness	First signaling system	Concrete thinking	Language, speech, writing	Reflection active	Environmental change
Permanent residence permit	First and second signaling systems	Abstract thinking		Passive reflection	device

STRUCTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

Consciousness includes the following as structural components:

1. Bodily-perceptualcomponents: sensation, perception, idea of ​​the world, feelings.
2. Emotional : positive and negative emotions.
3. Motivational-volitional:will, motives, interests, needs.
4. Logical-conceptual: rational thinking, concepts, judgments, inferences, knowledge.

If you compare the structure of consciousness with the DP, you can find the following: these elements have a basis:

Consciousness	Bodily-perceptual component		Emotions	Motivational-volitional component		Knowledge, self-awareness
Permanent residence permit	Sensory perception		Unconscious Experiences	Unconscious urge to action		Conditioned and unconditioned reflexes

Self-awareness - awareness of one’s own “I”. If all components of human consciousness are embedded in the psyche and develop on a social basis, then self-awareness refers exclusively to the social component. Self-awareness is formed on the basis of activity, in the system of social connections and relationships, starting from early childhood. The first form of SS is well-being. The second is self-identification (2_3 years). Next is self-control; self-respect. Later - self-realization, self-affirmation. Self-awareness determines a person’s personal qualities and, together with the personality, can atrophy under the influence of an unhealthy lifestyle, illness, and aging. Forms of self-awareness can change and reach extremes: egoism.

That. consciousness is a special highest form of reflection. Having a material substrate, consciousness is ideal. However, all components of consciousness can be objectified. For example, knowledge is expressed generally in the things that we create. Emotions will be reflected in actions. Conclusion: C not only reflects the world, but also creates it, is active and creative in nature, achievements in culture and culture itself are nothing more than the result of the activity of our consciousness.

On the one hand, consciousness is secondary in relation to matter, to the brain, to the world as a whole, but on the other hand, consciousness is capable of changing both the world and the person himself.

Consciousness is objective in its content, because it reflects the objective world, but on the other hand, in form, it is subjective, that is, consciousness is a subjective image of the objective world. These points express the inconsistency of consciousness.

BASIC FUNCTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS:

1. Reflective : When studying consciousness, one cannot limit oneself only to the physiology of the brain, because the brain of modern man is no different from the ancient one, but consciousness is different. Consciousness also does not depend on gender, weight, etc. The content of consciousness is what is reflected by it.
2. Transformative: consciousness cannot be “empty”: it is always aimed at goals, which means change, transformation.
3. Communicative: thanks to consciousness, a person has the ability to establish communication connections and communication.

CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS.

In the history of philosophy to the end XIX century, the rational capabilities of man were absolutized. It was believed that a reasonable person subjects all his actions, actions, and goal-setting to rational analysis.

At the beginning of the 20th century Schopenhauer, Marx, BergsonFor the first time, human rationalism was questioned. But a holistic scientific concept of the human psyche was presented Freud . He showed that it is human nature not only to be aware of the world and to think, but also the phenomenon of the unconscious, which plays the most important role according to Freud. Freud argued that structure includes the psyche:

1. IT - the unconscious is like the underwater part of an iceberg. Includes all instincts, the most powerful - the death instinct tanatos and sexual instinct eros.

2. I - consciousness has reflective ability.

3. Superego - cultural prohibitions - morality, religion, traditions, ideals.

Freud believed that the superego limits the manifestation of the unconscious. The energy that is not realized goes into activity, creativity, science, otherwise a person worries and suffers, which leads to disorders and neuroses.

Freud subordinated consciousness to unconsciousness. The unconscious is active; this approach is biologizing, because the social essence of consciousness is not taken into account.

The conscious and unconscious are connected. The unconscious manifests itself in dreams, in hypnosis, and during anesthesia, but the content of the unconscious reflects conscious life. This is a structure of the human psyche that cannot be controlled by consciousness. For example, actions that a person has brought to automatism are subsequently not realized by him and go into the layer of the unconscious. This is important because the consciousness is unloaded, it is free for creativity.

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