Consciousness as a philosophical category. Consciousness

1. Spirit and consciousness as a philosophical problem.

2. The history of ideas about consciousness and the basic concepts of its understanding.

3. Reflection and consciousness. Animal psyche.

4. Structure of consciousness: components and levels.

1. Matter and all processes associated with it, including the life processes of the human body, are only one of the aspects of existence. The development of nature, the formation of living matter, leading to the emergence of man and society, are prerequisites for the emergence of another equally important aspect - the spirit. The concept of “spirit” is used to unite all non-material processes that have an ideal nature - consciousness, society, culture. Prof. L.P. Stankevich identifies the following main characteristics of the spirit:

1. Spirit is a form of existence characterized by creation and temporality.

2. Spirit is inseparable from matter, but at the same time opposite to it. Matter is objective, spirit is subjective, being the internal state of material objects. Consequently, if matter is corporeal, then the spirit is incorporeal, but at the same time it is the spirit that controls material objects. The highest form of such control (through material means within the framework of existence) is human activity, for which consciousness is as necessary an element as the presence of artificial tools.

3. The spirit is a system. No spirit in pure form as a certain substance, it exists in the form of individual images, ideas that form a higher system, which is sometimes defined as the world mind, which carries within itself the laws of existence and development of the world as a whole.

4. Spirit and matter are in constant motion, changing and improving. Spiritual development consists of enriching spiritual images, models of the world and oneself contained and formed by the spirit.

5. The highest stage of development of the spirit, represented by the consciousness of man and humanity, is understood as comprehension of the world in which we live and act. Such spiritual activity is aimed at building each person’s life and activity in accordance with the understanding of the basic characteristics of existence 46 .

The problem of consciousness is one of the key problems of philosophy and science. Until now, there has been no definition of consciousness that could unite various research strategies. This means that the thousand-year-old tradition of philosophy continues to be in demand more than ever. If the psychological approach to consciousness consists in clarifying the mechanism of its functioning, identifying natural and social components in it, then the task of philosophy comes down to a comprehensive study of consciousness, in the unity of its historical roots, psychological, physiological and social aspects. This implies questions about the nature of consciousness, its main contradictions, structure, as well as an analysis of consciousness as part of the ideal as a whole (spirit). Philosophy strives to identify common prerequisites for consciousness research: what do we know about our own consciousness? Among these it is customary to highlight the following:

1. Self-evidence of consciousness. Upon closer examination, it turns out that consciousness is the first thing that is given to us. Everything else is perceived through the prism of consciousness, and therefore dependent on it.

2. Consciousness can be freely controlled and changed, i.e. a person can direct his thought to any object (for example, a memory or fantasy or a real object in front of you).

3. The presence of one’s own consciousness serves as a means of mastering all other forms of existence, i.e. the entire surrounding world is given to us through the mediation of consciousness.

The last property of consciousness, according to V.V. Mironov and A.V. Ivanova, 47 poses a number of difficulties in its analysis:

1. "The paradox of elusive objectivity": since consciousness is intentional, i.e. always directed at some object, it is always “consciousness about something.” The problem is that behind this “consciousness about something” we cannot evaluate our consciousness itself as it is (just as we cannot be fully aware of all our actions in life).

2. “The paradox of logical means of understanding consciousness”: in order to rationally understand something, it is necessary to outline the boundaries of the object under study, i.e. show what it is not and then compare. However, how can we delineate the boundaries of consciousness if through it we are “given” all the objects of the world, including itself as an elusive objectivity?

3. The problem of objective methods of studying consciousness: no matter what methods of analysis are used, at the moment it is not possible to eliminate the influence of the characteristics of the scientist’s inner world on the acquisition and interpretation of data. This is due to the emotional and psychological state, facts of personal biography, basic value and intellectual preferences, and national and cultural environment.

4. The problem of linguistic means of describing consciousness: even if certain objective methods for studying consciousness are found, how should they be described? The difficulty is caused by the fact that consciousness is continuous, inseparable, it represents a living stream of intersecting thoughts, while any language is a discrete phenomenon, torn into separate concepts and words 48 .

The philosophical approach to consciousness focuses on the main contradictions in the existence of consciousness. It turns out that consciousness is a synthesis of seemingly completely incompatible opposites: consciousness appears as a mediator between a person’s inner world and external reality, it changes under the influence of circumstances and at the same time has fairly stable stereotypes of behavior and thinking, according to which a person can act throughout his life. life; it consists of conscious and unconscious components that are intertwined differently in each person.

With the help of consciousness, human activity itself becomes possible. This is due to the fact that almost all conscious human actions always have a specific purpose. Goals are formed, maintained, and also adjusted in the process of activity thanks to consciousness.

From the point of view of philosophy, consciousness can be defined as the highest function of the brain, peculiar only to humans and associated with speech, which consists in the ability to ideally reproduce the reality of the real world, including not only generalization and assessment of ongoing processes, but also preliminary mental construction of actions, as well as purposeful creative change of reality.

2. In the modern history of philosophy, it is generally accepted that one of the first to pose the problem of consciousness in European philosophy was Plato. This does not at all mean its absolute primacy (in the East, consciousness has always, in fact, acted as the most important object of reflection). At the same time, the ancient Greeks did not use the term “consciousness” itself. They studied the problem of consciousness in the context of problems of thinking and soul. For example, the philosopher Democritus considered the soul as a special formation consisting of a special variety of atoms. 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. At the same time, consciousness was not yet an independent phenomenon, and the soul (as the carrier of consciousness) was perceived as part of the world cosmos, absolutely accurately reproducing the phenomena of the surrounding world.

IN Middle Ages The study of the soul, thinking and consciousness was influenced by the religious orientation of philosophy. This made it possible to separate soul and spirit as different manifestations of the divine in the human.

IN modern era in the context of the general turn of science from general problems of understanding the world to specific issues of natural science and technology, changes in the perspective of the study of consciousness occur. It is at this time that the turn from the concept of soul to the concept of “consciousness” actually occurs, and the latter is interpreted as a person’s cognitive ability, as “I” - a personal formation. Consciousness is understood as 1) a product of the internal development of thinking in Rene Descartes and as 2) the result of external influences called sensations John Locke And Thomas Hobbes. IN fphilosophyXIXcentury consciousness receives a fundamentally new interpretation. Thus, the irrationalists Schopenhauer and Nietzsche make consciousness dependent on unconscious processes. This will be proven later Z. Freud in the psychology of the unconscious. K. Marx And F. Engels analyze the influence of social preconditions on consciousness.

The following have developed in philosophy and retain their significance in modern culture: concepts of consciousness.

Objective-idealistic interpretation consciousness as a superhuman, transpersonal, ultimately, transcendental phenomenon (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 in this case is a particle, product or other being of the world mind.

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

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, matter is animate and has the prerequisites for thinking (Thales, Anaximander, Aristotle, G. Bruno, B. Spinoza).

Vulgar materialism- this is the identification of consciousness with material formations in the human brain. Consciousness is absolutely material in nature, since it is the result of the functioning of certain parts or formations of the brain (K. Vogt, L. Büchner, J. Moleschott).

Sociologization of consciousness. Consciousness is placed in absolute dependence on the external, including social, environment (J. Locke, Voltaire, P.A. Holbach).

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 (K. Marx, F. Engels).

3. Modern difficulties with defining consciousness can largely be solved in the context of studying the problems of the biological prerequisites of consciousness. In modern psychology and physiology of higher nervous activity, such “biological” prerequisites include:

1) complex mental activity of animals associated with the functioning of the central nervous system and brain;

2) the beginning of tool activity, the instinctive work of humanoid ancestors, which freed the forelimbs in combination with upright walking;

3) the herd form of animal habitation, as well as the emergence of sound signaling to transmit information.

These prerequisites are necessary, but not sufficient for the emergence of human consciousness. In this paragraph we are interested in the first component. Questions arise: what is the mechanism of consciousness functioning? How does it appear?

The theory of reflection continues to play an important role in explaining this issue, according to which consciousness is a product of the evolution of the brain, which in turn is one of the highest forms of development of organic matter. Understood as the result of the evolution of all living things, the human brain is a genetic continuation of simpler forms and ways of connecting living things with the outside, including the inorganic, world.

Thus, matter at all levels of its organization has reflection property, which develops in the process of its evolution, becoming more and more complex and multi-quality. The ability for self-organization and self-development of material systems is one of the most important reasons for the complication of forms of reflection. The evolution of forms of reflection acts as a prehistory of consciousness: as a connecting link between inorganic matter and matter expressed in organic and, above all, in human form.

What is reflection? ABOUTreflection is 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. That is, reflection as a result of the interaction of objects does not stop after the completion of this process, but is stored in the reflecting object as a trace, an imprint of the reflected phenomenon. Such a reflected variety of structures and properties, interacting phenomena is called information, which is understood as the content of the reflection process. It is absolutely fair to talk about different qualitative levels of manifestation of reflection and about different measures of information saturation of reflection.

Such multidimensionality of reflection fundamentally changes its properties in the conditions of inanimate and living nature. If in inanimate nature the diversity of forms of interaction and reflection is minimal, and the threshold of sensitivity in relation to this diversity remains low, which is the source of the weak ability to use the received information for self-organization, then in living nature a higher degree of intensity of the information content of reflection is available and much more its wide volume. The intensity of information exchange in living nature has a powerful impact on the expanded self-reproduction of properties, as well as the formation of new characteristics, their coding and hereditary transmission. Thus, the complication of reflection forms expresses not only the fact of the development and complexity of matter, but also the acceleration of this development.

The levels of reflection in living nature are the phenomena of irritability, sensitivity, as well as the mental form of reflection.

Irritability – This is the body’s ability to make simple reactions to environmental influences, manifested in the form of response actions. We are talking about the 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.

Sensitivity- this is the ability to reflect individual properties of the external environment in the form of sensations, based on the emergence of a set of receptors that significantly enrich the information content of the reflection of the surrounding world. The development of sensations has further accelerated the process of evolution of living things.

Psychic form of reflection- this is a special form of reflection, based on the nervous system and the functioning of its special center - the brain, and manifests itself in the ability to analyze complex complexes of simultaneously acting external stimuli. This form is designed to create a holistic image of the situation, individual behavior based on the experience of an individual, on conditioned reflexes, in contrast to intuitive behavior based on unconditioned reflexes.

The mental form of reflection is characterized not so much by a significant richness in the reflection of phenomena, but by a more active “participation” in the process of reflection of the reflector. In this case, the selectivity of reflection, the concentration and choice of the object of reflection or even its individual properties and characteristics increases significantly. Moreover, such selectivity is determined not only by 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.

Thus, the most important prerequisite for the emergence of consciousness is the fact of the natural-historical evolution of matter and one of its most important properties - 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. Further transformation of the psyche into human consciousness occurs as a result of various factors of anthroposociogenesis, the most important of which are tool activity and the herd form of animal habitation.

4. The structure of consciousness is well presented by A.V. Ivanov in the form of a circle consisting of four parts, each of which is a separate sphere of consciousness:

- sphere of bodily-perceptual abilities : these abilities include sensations, perceptions and specific ideas with the help of which a person receives primary information about the external world, about his own body and about its relationships with other bodies. The main goal and regulator of the existence of this sphere of consciousness is the usefulness and expediency of the behavior of the human body in the world of natural, social and human bodies surrounding it.

- logical-conceptual components of consciousness : with the help of thinking, a person goes beyond the limits of the directly sensory data into the essential levels of objects; This is the sphere of general concepts, analytical-synthetic mental operations and hard logical proofs. The main goal and regulator of the logical-conceptual sphere of consciousness is truth.

- emotional component of consciousness : This is rather the sphere of personal, subjective psychological experiences, memories, premonitions about situations and events that a person has encountered, is facing, or may encounter. It is deprived of direct connection with the external objective world. These include:

1) instinctive-affective states (vague experiences, premonitions, vague visions, hallucinations, stress);

2) emotions (anger, fear, delight, etc.);

3) feelings that are distinguished by greater clarity, awareness and the presence of a figurative-visual component (pleasure, disgust, love, hatred, sympathy, antipathy, etc.).

The main regulator and goal of the “life activity” of this sphere of consciousness will be what 3. Freud at one time called the “pleasure principle.”

- value-motivational (or value-semantic) component of consciousness . The highest motives of activity and spiritual ideals of the individual are rooted here, as well as the ability to form them and creatively understand them in the form of fantasy, productive imagination, and intuition of various types. The goal and regulator of existence of this sphere of consciousness are beauty, truth and justice, i.e. not truth as a form of coordination of thought with objective reality, but values as a form of coordination of objective reality with our spiritual goals and meanings 49 .

These components of consciousness are complemented levels of consciousness, of which in modern philosophy and psychology it is customary to distinguish three - the unconscious, the conscious and the superconscious.

IN unconscious traditionally include a set of bodily sensations and drives, as well as instinctive-affective experiences, memories and complexes that are outside the field of awareness and control on the part of our “I”. Moreover, the unconscious can be both individual and collective. An important contribution to the development of the latter was made by the Swiss psychologist K.G. Jung in his concept of the archetypes of the collective unconscious, i.e. relatively stable figurative and symbolic structures that determine and channel the course of our unconscious processes.

Sphere of the conscious represents a dynamic unity of certain bodily-perceptual abilities, as well as logical-conceptual means of understanding reality. This is a certain set of knowledge and assessments, implemented in actions controlled by our “I”.

To the phenomenon superconscious It is customary to refer to objective and supertemporal processes and acts of consciousness. For example, categories can be included that provide the possibility of generating and understanding any meanings (space, time, movement, quality, quantity), a stable framework of knowledge as such (mathematical truths, logical rules, laws of nature, universal moral, aesthetic and social values), creative insights. In the sphere of the superconscious, the property of consciousness to ascend from individual forms to collective forms is manifested, i.e. do not depend on the preferences and preferences of individual people.

1. Philosophy: textbook. for universities / ed. V.V. Mironov. – M.: Norma, 2008.

2. Spirkin, A.S. Consciousness and self-awareness. - M.: Nauka, 1972.

3. Spirkin, A.S. Philosophy. - M.: Gardariki, 1998.

4. Mamardashvili, M.K. Consciousness as a philosophical category // Questions of philosophy. – 1990. – No. 10.

5. Philosophy: textbook for universities / ed. A.F. Zotov, V.V. Mironov, A.V. Razin; Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov. – 5th ed., revised. and additional – M.:Acad. project: Culture, 2008.

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 physical and 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, and also on the basis labor activity and a person 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 apparent reason, appears at a certain stage in the 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, still 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 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 the highest level of human 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 initial stage 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 quality, self-improvement.

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. Each person, in the course of individual development, through language and speech, in one way or another becomes involved in social 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 the objective 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.

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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 means highest level 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.

Especially important for the development of human consciousness has a productive, creative nature human activity. Consciousness presupposes a person's awareness of not only outside world, but also yourself, your sensations, images, ideas and feelings. Images, thoughts, ideas and feelings of people are materially embodied in their objects 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 socio-historical conditions of 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, for the first time in history organic world having separated himself from it and opposed himself to it, he 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 general functions of consciousness at the cellular-tissue level of organization of matter.

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, which has found a more scientific explanation, declaring consciousness an attribute of a person. 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 qualitatively different forms. A special and integral property of reflection in a living organism is irritability and feelingsAndactivity as a specific property of reflection, interactions of the 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 a 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 a new way of human life - his objective-practical activity, which, in turn, became 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 the natural factors of human origin. 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. The logic of practical actions was fixed in the head and turned into the logic of thinking: a 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 an elementary division of 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 special meaning By consciousness they mean not just a mental state, but the highest, actually human form of reflection of reality. Consciousness here is structurally organized, representing an integral system consisting of various elements, which are in a natural relationship 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 an object (attention), 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 of a 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 contents are synthetic characteristic 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 sensory and practical activity.

Subjective image as knowledge, as spiritual reality and physiological processes as its material substrate - 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, and acts as an integral part of 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, has 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 in-depth development of philosophical issues of consciousness is also dictated by the development of information science and the computerization of human activity, the intensification of a number of aspects of the interaction between man and technology, the technosphere and nature, and the complication of the tasks of educating and developing communication between people. 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.

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THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN PHILOSOPHY. GENESIS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND ITS ESSENCE

The problem of consciousness is one of the most difficult and mysterious. The main difficulty in understanding and studying it is largely due to the fact that we cannot observe the phenomena of consciousness directly, sensually, we cannot measure it or study it using various instruments. Therefore, for many centuries consciousness remained a mystery. This has always given rise to mystifications regarding its nature and essence. Thus, even in ancient times, the idea of consciousness arose as a manifestation of the soul - a mysterious “sensory-supersensitive” entity that was considered responsible for human life and some important states of the human body. Characteristic of these views was that the soul was not separated from the body, and there was no division into the material and the ideal. This also applies to the first philosophical theories. At the initial stages of its development, Greek philosophical thought did not know the concept of “ideal” as a special contrast to the sensory-objective material. Over time, the soul began to be viewed as a kind of immaterial substance, independent of matter, capable of leading an independent existence, immortal and eternal. For the first time, these views were theoretically substantiated and enshrined in the philosophy of Socrates and his student Plato. Heraclitus defined the basis of human conscious actions with the concept of “logos”, which was understood as a word, thought, the essence of the things themselves. The value of the human mind was determined depending on the degree of belonging to this logos - the objective universe. In general, in ancient philosophy, consciousness is involved in the mind, which is cosmic and looks like a generalization of the real world, a synonym for universal law.

In the subsequent historical and philosophical process, the problem of consciousness was interpreted in different ways, and many philosophers explained consciousness depending on what position they took on the issue of the relationship between matter and consciousness. Let us briefly characterize these positions in the main directions of philosophy (Diagram 6.1).

Scheme B.1. The problem of consciousness in philosophy

Over the centuries, idealistic views on the nature of consciousness acquired different contents, but boiled down to the following: consciousness is primary, matter is secondary. Thus, objective idealism endowed consciousness with a supermaterial, supernatural character: it exists independently of the world, somewhere outside the world and outside man, and has nothing to do with the brain; the spirit is not born and does not arise, it lives own life, develops, gives rise to natural and historical phenomena. This statement of idealism about the existence of consciousness directly connects with theology, which argued that human consciousness is a gift from God: creating man, God “breathed into him a living spirit,” endowing him with a particle of Divine light. This means that this is a gift of the Divine mind, which lives its own life, in its development gives rise to natural phenomena and guides the history of society.

From the point of view of dualists, matter and consciousness are independent, equivalent principles (M II C). This means that consciousness was recognized as completely independent of matter. Like matter, consciousness is eternal; it neither arose nor was born. Accordingly, there was no need to resolve the question of its origin. One of the outstanding representatives of dualism was Rene Descartes, who believed that the world is based on two substances: spiritual (thinking) and bodily (extended).

Dualism was also inherent in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Close to the dualistic interpretation of consciousness is the concept of the French philosopher, scientist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He believed that a certain mass of elementary consciousness and psychic energy was contained in earthly matter. After all, consciousness is as original as matter. Therefore, it is not surprising that it made its way into the world from the darkness of the subconscious. No one, including our ancestors, noticed the appearance of intelligence on Earth; “man entered the world silently.” The dialectical concept can be justified on the basis that between consciousness and being there are in fact such clear boundaries that it is almost impossible to reduce them to one another or to any common root. I. Kant wrote about this: “There are two main trunks human cognition, which grow, perhaps, from a single, common, but unknown to us root...”

In the 50s XIX century A vulgar materialistic view of consciousness has spread quite widely. This name is explained by the fact that its adherents (German philosophers L. Büchner, K. Vogt and the Dutchman J. Moleschott) viewed consciousness in a crude, simplified, vulgar way. They believed that consciousness, thought, is “excreted” by the brain in the same way as bile is secreted by the liver or urine by the kidneys (M=C). Climate, food, etc., in their opinion, directly determine a person’s way of thinking. Despite the fact that the vulgar materialistic point of view has been rejected by the achievements modern science, attempts to reduce consciousness to a certain type of matter are still being made. For example, in connection with the successes of electrophysiology, the position was put forward that thought is simply electromagnetic oscillations emitted by the brain. Indeed, the brain continuously emits electromagnetic waves, which change their character if the brain begins to work actively. Studying these waves in the case of human illness makes it possible to detect which parts of the brain are damaged. However, it is impossible to determine the content of thoughts from recordings on tape, since they are not matter.

Mechanistically interpreted consciousness and hylozoism(from Greek hyle - substance and zoe - life). Its adherents assumed the presence of sensations also in inanimate objects (M

A new approach to understanding consciousness was associated with the emergence of dialectical materialism. From the point of view of this direction, consciousness is derived from matter, it is secondary and active in relation to it (M -> C). The origins of both all living things and consciousness are in matter, which is capable of moving and self-developing. Dialectical materialism viewed consciousness as a product of a natural historical development matter, its social form of movement; as a function, a special property not of all matter, but only in a special way of socially organized matter (the human brain); as a subjective image of the objective world, which a person needs for adequate practical activity.

As for modern world philosophy, the study of consciousness is carried out by such a field as phenomenology. It originated in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. and had several versions (Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Max Scheler, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty), among which the theory of E. Husserl is considered the main one. The term “phenomenology” is formed from two concepts - phenomenon and logos, which are of Greek origin: “phenomenon” is that which manifests itself, demonstrates itself, and “logos” is teaching. Within the boundaries of phenomenology, consciousness is considered as a specific area of existence, which cannot be reduced to any relations: neither to the objective, nor to the special, nor to the unconscious basis of consciousness itself. E. Husserl talks about various phenomena of consciousness, M. Heidegger talks about the phenomenon of human existence, J.-P. Sartre - about the reflexive (for being - oneself), in M. Merleau-Ponty - about the spiritualized human body.

Representatives of phenomenology tried to resist the naive naturalistic view of consciousness and the world, which reduces consciousness to an object, an object, and establishes only causal and functional connections between them. According to E. Husserl, the existence of consciousness is fundamentally different from the objective world as pure awareness. M. Heidegger spoke about the difference between human existence and existence. But both consciousness and human existence exist only in unity with the world. This means that we mean the absolute, the stream of consciousness that forms phenomena - the meanings of the objective world.

The problem of consciousness occupies an important place in other foreign philosophical directions. Among them are hermeneutics, existential

socialism, psychoanalysis, linguistic philosophy, structuralism, philosophy of life, etc. They achieved significant results in the process of studying various substantive aspects of consciousness and its internal logic. Today, the research of philosophers has focused on the relationship between “spirit” and “body”, physical and mental states and so on. Much attention is paid to issues that arise at the border of philosophy and language, cognitive psychology and computer modeling of consciousness. The problem of the origin of consciousness remains relevant.

The modern materialistic approach to this problem is unchanged: matter in the process of development under the influence of certain circumstances gives rise to mind. Let's consider this point of view in more detail. And to begin with, let us ask ourselves the question: thanks to what properties does matter come to the peak of its development - the generation of “spirit”; What is this internal force in the “foundation” of matter, which naturally induces the emergence of thinking, will, emotions, etc.?

Natural sciences answer this question unequivocally: “This property of matter is the property of reflection.” So, reflection is the “thread” by which you can hold on to solve the problem of consciousness. What is reflection? Reflection - the universal quality of matter, the process and result of interaction in which the features of one object in a different form are recreated in the features of another object. Since interaction is inherent in all material objects, reflection should be considered as a universal property of matter. The interaction of objects never passes without a trace; consequences always remain. Moreover, a necessary condition for reflection is similarity, correspondence with the reflection.

In the development of reflection as a general property of matter, three large stages can be roughly distinguished: reflection in inanimate nature, reflection in living nature and reflection at the social level. The following forms of reflection correspond to these stages (diagram 6.2):

Scheme 6.2. Evolution of reflection forms

Physico-chemical reflection occurs according to the laws of mechanics, physics, chemistry. This reflection is passive in nature. The mark is not evaluated by the object on which it appeared. The peculiarity of physico-chemical reflection is that it can only be carried out in direct contact. The consequences of such contacts contain certain information about the nature of the interaction. Annual rings on a tree cut, for example, can tell us about climatic conditions in different years. Therefore, an important feature of any reflection is information content. One object leaves a memory of itself in another, and this memory remains for a certain time. So, reflection is a general property of matter, which consists in the informational reproduction of the characteristics of the reflected object.

Physiological reflection occurs at the initial stage of development of living nature and is inherent in unicellular structures. A simpler form of reflection is irritability. This is the property of living organisms to selectively respond to physical and chemical influences and is found in active reactions to factors that have direct biological significance for the organism. At the same time, the body does not notice them if the action is not directed directly at it. Based on irritability, only passive adaptation to the environment is possible. This means that the simplest organism only selects more favorable conditions of existence among those available, but does not look for them itself, much less create them.

Psychic reflection occurs at a higher stage of development of living nature. Of particular importance is the emergence of nerve cells that receive signals from external stimuli. Gradually, differentiation of functions between nerve cells occurs: some specialize in the perception of light signals, others - sound, others - taste, etc. Thus, separate specialized sensory organs and a branched nervous system arise that coordinates their work. This marks the emergence of a separate form of reflection - sensitivity, i.e. reflections in the form of sensations, perceptions and ideas. The emergence of sensitivity means a transition from passive adaptation to active-search orientation activity, which is carried out in the form of hereditary instinctive or personally acquired behavior. Instinctive reflection is characteristic of all invertebrates. It lies in the fact that in stereotypical situations all representatives of a certain biological species behave the same way. At first glance, their actions seem conscious and purposeful, but in fact they are determined by hereditary mechanisms and lose all meaning if the conditions change.

The reflection of vertebrates rises to a qualitatively higher level, in which the brain and central nervous system appear. The way of reflecting the world around us with the help of the brain is called the psyche. Its essence lies in the fact that in highly organized animals, in addition to unconditioned reflexes (instincts), there are also conditioned reflexes, which become the basis for more complex personality-acquired and orientation behavior. Conditioned reflexes are temporary neural connections that arise as a result of the body being exposed to the same or similar factors over a certain period of time. The mechanism of their action is based on the principle discovered by Ivan Pavlov “ feedback", whose task is to constantly inform the brain about what is happening in the system and environment it controls. Moreover, there is a notification not only about the work of a particular organ, but also about the effect of this work, which allows you to correct behavior. So, conditioned reflexes play the role of a signaling device, warning about events that are about to happen, which is a necessary condition for “anticipatory reflection.”

Reflection in the form of consciousness. Its bearer is a person who emerged from the depths of the animal kingdom. The psyche of animals was the biological prerequisite on the basis of which human consciousness developed. Despite the genetic commonality of the human psyche and the psyche of animals, their reflection should not be identified. Consciousness is the highest form of reflection. It has a fundamentally different character than the psyche of animals, and manifests itself:

firstly, that the sensory reflection is filled with deeper and more conscious content. A kind of superstructure appears over it - abstraction, which consists in the mental isolation of a separate object, relationship, property from the totality of objects, relationships, properties. Abstraction is a way of turning observations and ideas into concepts. It dismembers, tears apart, schematizes the integral moving reality. In a single abstraction, the subject departs from reality. But this is precisely what ensures the study of individual aspects of the subject in its pure form and, thus, penetration into their essence;
secondly, consciousness reflects the world not in sensory-visual, but in ideal images. What are these images? What is ideal? When considering the category “ideal,” one must keep in mind that the ideal characterizes, first of all, the epistemological relationship of consciousness to being, revealing the fundamental difference between reflection and reflected, image and object. This difference lies in the fact that ideal images, reflecting the properties of real objects, do not themselves have these properties. Ideal images are not characterized by any physical, chemical or other signs of material objects. They have no spatial dimensions, no geometric shapes, no volume, no mass, etc. The image of a rose does not smell, and the image of fire cannot even light a cigarette. The ideal is something that exists and does not exist at the same time. It does not exist as a special substance that exists along with matter, but it exists as a subjective reality. Subjectivity means that the ideal always belongs to a subject, a person or a group of people and does not exist without its bearer, therefore the content of images and concepts of consciousness reflects the characteristics of the life experience of its bearer, his interests, feelings, mood, experiences, etc. Subjectivity also means incomplete reflection, which is due to the fact that sensations do not provide a mirror copy, but a more or less approximate reproduction of the properties of the object.

It should be noted that in understanding the problem of the ideal, two interrelated approaches have emerged. The first is conventionally designated as “active interpretation of the ideal.” It is associated with the name of the Russian philosopher Evalda Ilyenkova(1924-1979). Proponents of this approach derive the properties of the ideal from the inherent properties of matter. Psychologism, or information approach, the formation of which is associated with the name of another Russian philosopher David Dubrovsky(b. 1929), considers the ideal as a special property of subjectivity, spirituality, relatively independent of the material, neuronal, objective-practical. Both approaches have positive and negative aspects;

Thirdly, human reflection is not adaptive, but actively transformative. Man is not satisfied with what is given by nature, and he strives to change this given so that it meets his needs. A person does this primarily in his consciousness. The content of consciousness is one way or another practically realized. But before that, it acquires the character of a plan or idea. An idea is not only knowledge, but also planning of what should be. Idea is a concept focused on practical implementation. A person first creates and constructs new things in his consciousness - designs of buildings, machines, technological processes, and then translates them into reality with the help of work. Human needs, reflected in consciousness, acquire the character of a goal, i.e. an ideal model of the desired future. When realized in practical activity, the goal materializes in objective form, in the forms of really existing objects that previously did not exist in nature.

This is a brief description of consciousness as the highest form of reflection. It appeared as a result of the evolutionary complexity of matter. In this complex development spanning billions of years, two qualitative leaps can be distinguished: the transition from inanimate to living and the transition from living to thinking. As a result of the second leap, consciousness arose. This became possible because certain biological prerequisites and social conditions appeared.

To immediate biological prerequisites for the emergence of consciousness refer (diagram 6.3)

Scheme V.Z. Biological prerequisites and social conditions for the emergence of consciousness

1) bodily organization of humanoid creatures. Here, primarily upright posture and the development and release of the forelimbs played a role. This made it possible for humanoid creatures to perform labor operations;
2) first signaling system of higher animals(development of sound and motor media). Historically, the signaling system of monkeys was a kind of prelude to linguistic communication;
3) gregarious form of life of anthropoid apes. Under conditions of herd communication, their viability increased, their connections with the environment became more complex, and an internal hierarchy of individuals in the herd took shape. Herd ties are a prerequisite for the communal organization of people;
4) brain, developed nervous system of higher animals. The evolution of the brain in higher animals can be traced using such examples. The brain volume of Dryopithecus or chimpanzee was 400 cm 3; in Pithecanthropus (Java Island) - 900 cm 3; among Chinese ancient people, or Sinanthropus, - about 1050 cm 3; for a Neanderthal - 1300-1400 cm 3. The brain of a modern person has the following parameters: volume - 1400-1600 cm 3, average weight- 1400 g, ratio of brain weight to body weight - 1:40, difficulty internal structure brain - 12-15 billion cells.

The listed biological prerequisites for the emergence of human consciousness only prepared the possibility of the formation of a new phenomenon. However, they were absolutely not enough to turn the possibility into reality. Decisive role Social conditions played a role in the emergence and development of consciousness.

The first factor in the formation of consciousness was work(diagram 6.3). During the process of making elementary tools, man constantly identified common connections and relationships in objects of labor. For example, over time he began to realize that he was cutting not only this sharp object, but also a sharp object in general, fire gives not only friction to these pieces of wood, but friction in general, etc. The labor process pushed the future person to abstraction, generalization, i.e. taught to separate the main features of an object from the object itself and form concepts. With the help of means of labor, which were also means of cognition, man comprehended the properties of the objective world. By making means of labor, in which the identified properties of objects were fixed, a person learned to mentally identify them. The logic of sensory-objective activity was recorded in the head and turned into the logic of thinking. Man learned to think. Thus, a logical image of the object was gradually formed, and the person’s work acquired a conscious character. Archaeological finds indicate that human thinking was associated with his work activity, and with the development of consciousness it became more indirect and abstract. Originating and developing in work, consciousness was embodied in work, creating the objective world of humanized nature, the world of culture.

The second factor in the emergence and development of consciousness is language communication, speech(diagram 6.4).

Language arose in a group of primitive people. In order to jointly dig and camouflage a hole, drive an animal into it and kill it, the hunters had to tell each other a lot. And life forced them to learn this. The variety of information that our ancestors had to transmit to each other required certain signs.

The sign was supposed to become uniform for a certain class of things and actions and common to all participants in the labor process. Gestures did not meet these requirements. They can be accepted and understood only if you see them. Of course, those who do not see each other also participate in collective work. That is why there was a need for a sound system of signs with the help of which communication is carried out. This system of signs is speech. It consists of different words, conventional sound signs and performs a dual function: it acts both as a means of communication and as an instrument of thinking. Words are not only symbols of various objects and processes - they also record our thoughts about these objects. Only with the help of speech (oral, written or artistic) can a person formulate and express his thoughts. Of course, you don't have to speak out loud to think. Deaf and mute people, for example, do not speak audible language, but this does not mean that they lack language and thinking. These people can express their thoughts through gestures and written language. It must be said that expressive body language is used by all people in one way or another, especially to convey emotions and feelings, and to specify the meanings of words.

Scheme 6.4. Unity of consciousness and speech

At the same time, speech is not just a way of recording and transmitting thoughts, it is a necessary condition and instrument of thinking. The process of thinking is the process of operating abstract concepts, which are conditionally encoded in the corresponding words. When formulating a thought, a person seems to pronounce certain words to himself, looking for best shape its incarnation. It is impossible to complete a thought without appropriate verbal form. Sometimes, however, the illusion may arise that the formation of a thought to oneself precedes its verbal formulation. It seems to a person that the thought is completely mature, but he cannot yet clearly express it. However, vagueness and inexpressiveness of statements indicate vagueness and immaturity of thought. And vice versa, a thought that is clear and precise in meaning, harmonious in form, is expressed in intelligible and understandable judgments. Thus, the process of thinking is impossible without speech, which acts as a form of reality of thought.

The third factor in the emergence of consciousness is communal nature of people's lives. Consciousness is a product of society and social development. There was not, is not and will not be consciousness outside of society. The fact that consciousness is impossible without communal relations is evidenced by more than 50 cases of children being “raised” by animals. These children showed no signs of consciousness. How did sociality shape people's consciousness? In the process of working, people enter into certain forms of relationships and mutual communication with each other, which can be industrial or personal. Communication is one of the necessary prerequisites for the formation and development of the individual, his consciousness, and society as a whole. After all, if by communication we understand the interaction of social subjects (classes, groups, individuals), then between them, undoubtedly, there is an exchange of information, experience, abilities, skills, abilities, etc. Communication is one of the conditions for the socialization of an individual. In communication, a person not only receives rational information, forms methods of activity, but through imitation and inheritance he assimilates human emotions, feelings, and forms of behavior.

Thus, for the emergence of consciousness, certain biological prerequisites were necessary, which, however, do not directly create it. Consciousness arises on a social basis and is a product of society and social development. But first of all, consciousness is a function of the human brain. What are physiological basis consciousness, what is the mechanism of its functioning?

The doctrine of brain activity was developed by a galaxy of outstanding domestic scientists, such as Ivan Sechenov, Ivan Pavlov, Nikolai Vvedensky, Alexey Ukhtomsky, Levon Orbeli. In their works they proved that consciousness is a function of that particularly complex piece of matter called the human brain. The human brain, according to I. Sechenov, is “the most wonderful machine in the world.” It is the finest nervous apparatus, the highest form of organized matter in the known part of the Universe. It is also the central point of the body. With the help of numerous sensitive and mobile nerves (peripheral nervous system), the brain is connected to a sensory system that draws information from the external environment and organs that perform certain functions of the body (muscles, glands, blood vessels, etc.). Having received nerve impulses that indicate the state of the external environment and the internal state of the body, the brain regulates difficult relationships organism with changing environmental conditions.

In the brain apparatus itself, there are several parts, or “blocks,” that differ from each other in structure, connections and functions. The overall work of all blocks creates complex higher nervous activity. This is a kind of psychophysiological process. The mental does not exist separately from the physiological. The physiological is a material substrate, a material carrier of the mental, while the mental is the result, product, property of this physiological. They are connected with each other, constituting a single psychophysical process, conditioning each other by their existence. It is impossible to separate thinking from thinking matter.

The brain is not the source of consciousness. Between the thinking brain and thinking itself there is a relationship not of cause and effect, but of organ and function. The human brain is an organ of consciousness, and consciousness is its main function. Moreover, it is not the brain itself that thinks and understands, but a person with the help of the brain. Consciousness reflects not the structure and content of the brain and not the physiological processes that occur in it, but primarily the external world. Otherwise, as L. Feuerbach aptly noted, cats, instead of rushing at mice, would tear their own pupils with their claws. Thus, a person’s consciousness, his psyche is a product of the physiological activity of the brain, its property, and outside of this physiological activity it does not exist.

Concluding our consideration of the first question of the section, let us highlight the main thing (Diagram 6.5):

Scheme 6.5. Concept of consciousness

1) consciousness is a property of highly organized matter;
2) consciousness is the highest form of reflection of reality, the ideal image of the material world;
3) consciousness is a product of socio-historical development and complexity of matter;
4) consciousness is the regulator of purposeful human activity.

So, consciousness is a specifically human reflection and spiritual

mastery of reality, property of highly organized matter - of the human brain, which consists in creating subjective images of the objective world, in retaining, storing and processing information, in developing a program of activities aimed at solving certain problems, in actively managing this activity.

Consciousness is a socio-historical product. It arises together with human society in the process of formation and development of labor activity and speech, forming only in the conditions of the social environment, constant communication of individuals with each other.

American philosopher, cognitive scientist. Dennett is one of the most significant figures in modern analytic philosophy. He is primarily known as a philosopher of consciousness. Dennett is a functionalist - a position according to which consciousness is a set of functional states realized by the brain. Misconceptions regarding the non-physical and mysterious nature of consciousness are associated, according to Dennett, with a specific cultural evolution human language, with an incorrect interpretation of introspective data, as well as with an outdated metaphysical apparatus, which some philosophers rely on. Initially, Dennett's theory of consciousness was called the "multiple sketch model", then he changed it to the concept of "glory in the brain", concluding that neural coalitions compete with each other and those that "win" eventually "glorify" themselves, becoming content of consciousness. Dennett is also known for his compatibilist views on free will - free will is compatible with determinism. It should be noted that he is known for his atheistic views, being part of the conventional group of “four horsemen” of the new atheism. Dennett's friend and researcher D. Volkov wrote a book about him in Russian - “Boston Zombie: D. Dennett and His Theory of Consciousness.”

Property dualism

A theory in the philosophy of mind that states that the brain (or a physical system with similar properties) is necessary for the presence of consciousness, but the properties of consciousness are not identical to the properties of the brain. In other words, consciousness and its qualities (subjectivity, qualitative character) cannot be reduced to the properties of the physical object that generates this consciousness. Nevertheless, consciousness cannot exist on its own, separately from the material carrier that generates it. Modern philosophers who expressed theories of this kind are Thomas Nagel, John Searle.

Substance dualism

A theory in the philosophy of mind that states that consciousness is not identical to the brain or any other physical object or process. It represents "substance" - something that can exist on its own, separate from "material" or "physical" substance. Classical dualism of substances - the philosophy of Rene Descartes.