November 15, 2020
Hello, dear readers of the KtoNaNovenkogo.ru blog. What is human consciousness?
Perhaps this is the voice of the soul, and then we will not cease to exist even after the death of the body. Of course, provided that the soul exists.
And if it lives thanks to the activity of the brain, then along with the cessation of the latter’s life, consciousness also disappears. This phenomenon is of interest to representatives of various scientific fields. What does humanity know about him today?
Properties of consciousness
Consciousness is a reflection of objective reality in a person’s head.
Each of us thinks in images that are born in the mind. The higher the level of consciousness, the more a person is able to analyze his own actions and actions.
Consciousness allows a person to resort to deep reflection, think analytically and synthetically. A person with developed consciousness is always a person with high intelligence. The ability to analyze a situation and make responsible decisions characterizes a strong personality who knows how to admit even his own defeats.
The properties of consciousness are its significant characteristics that manifest themselves in the process of reflecting objects of the material world. Let's consider how these properties are expressed.
Basic properties of personality consciousness
Activity
One of the main properties of consciousness can be considered activity. Every action that a person performs has a motive and purpose. No one acts thoughtlessly, obeying only a chaotic combination of circumstances. If the goal is desired, then the person is often ready to make even incredible efforts to achieve it. Consciousness controls human behavior and tries to calculate everything in such a way that it is most beneficial to the person himself. Our ability to predict a situation and see our own prospects is a merit of consciousness. Such a property as activity allows consciousness to remain in a working state constantly. Under what circumstances is a person ready to take active steps? In the case when he understands the need for the actions taken.
Dynamism
By dynamism we understand such an orientation towards an object or phenomenon of the surrounding reality, in which consciousness reveals the ability for continuous development. The property of dynamism is that a person’s attention is always changing. We are able to concentrate for the most part only on what is truly meaningful and interesting to us. Turning to some object evokes various emotions; we connect our feelings to what we hear and see around us, what we observe. This property of consciousness as dynamism is always aimed at immersing in the essence of the phenomenon or object in question.
Constant reflection
It must be said that the ability to analyze one’s own actions and actions is an integral and significant characteristic of consciousness. A property called “reflection” helps at the right moment to turn to the source of your “I”, your inner essence and talk with it as frankly as possible. In such internal dialogues, a person often discovers that he lived and acted incorrectly, and was inattentive to his loved ones. Constant reflection is a property of consciousness that allows for effective self-observation at different periods of life. A person almost always compares his present self with the way he was before. Such a property of consciousness as reflection makes it easy to do this. Consciousness itself is capable of expanding and expanding a person’s understanding of the world.
Values and motives
Another property of consciousness is its focus on internal sources of significance. We are talking about values for the sake of which specific actions are taken. Human consciousness is of a motivational and value-based nature. A person sometimes has to make incredible efforts on himself in order to be able to negotiate with his inner conscience. Values and motives set in motion his mental activity.
Thus, the properties of consciousness always reflect the essence of a particular personality, its internal nature and capabilities. Each person is completely individual and each has their own preferences.
What philosophers say
Philosophers believed that consciousness does not exist in isolation from reality. It is the relationship of oneself with reality.
We see the world around us and feel, perceive, think, and fantasize something in connection with it.
Different directions of philosophy interpreted this concept in their own way:
- dualism tends to divide man into consciousness and matter, where the first is spirit, the second is body. Consciousness is eternal, since it continues to live even after the physical death of the body;
- according to idealism , consciousness comes first, then the surrounding world. Matter does not exist if it is unconscious;
- materialists wrote that only highly organized matter, which is capable of creation, has consciousness (I understand that we are talking about a person).
Consciousness, its properties, characteristics
The psyche as a reflection of reality in the human brain is characterized by different levels.
The highest level of the psyche characteristic of a person forms consciousness.
Consciousness is the highest, integrating form of the psyche, the result of the socio-historical conditions for the formation of a person in work, with constant communication (using language) with other people.
Its first characteristic. Human consciousness includes a body of knowledge about the world around us. The structure of consciousness thus includes the most important cognitive processes: sensations and perceptions, memory, imagination and thinking.
With the help of sensations and perceptions, with the direct reflection of stimuli affecting the brain, a sensory picture of the world as it appears to a person at the moment is formed in the mind. Memory allows you to renew images of the past in the mind, imagination allows you to build figurative models of what is an object of needs, but is absent at the present time. Thinking ensures problem solving through the use of generalized knowledge.
The second characteristic of consciousness is the clear distinction enshrined in it between subject and object, i.e., that which belongs to a person’s “I” and his “not-I.” Man, who for the first time in the history of the organic world stood out from it and contrasted himself with his surroundings, continues to retain this opposition and difference in his consciousness. A person makes a conscious self-assessment of his actions and himself as a whole.
The third characteristic of consciousness is ensuring goal-setting human activity.
The functions of consciousness include the formation of goals for an activity, while its motives are formed and weighed, volitional 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 inclusion of a certain attitude in its composition. The world of feelings inevitably enters a person’s consciousness, where complex objective and, above all, social relations in which a person is included are reflected. Emotional assessments of interpersonal relationships are represented in the human mind.
Basic functions of human consciousness
Reflective. Consciousness organizes cognitive processes (perception, representation, thinking), and also organizes memory.
Estimated. Consciousness takes part in the formation of some emotions and most feelings.
A person evaluates most events and himself at the level of consciousness.
Creative. Creativity is impossible without consciousness. Many voluntary types of imagination are organized at a conscious level: invention, artistic creativity.
Reflective. A type of consciousness is self-awareness - the process by which a person analyzes his thoughts and actions, observes himself, evaluates himself, etc.
Transformative. A person consciously defines most of his goals and outlines the path to achieving them.
Time-forming. Consciousness is responsible for the formation of a holistic temporal picture of the world, in which there is a memory of the past, awareness of the present and an idea of the future. This is how human consciousness differs from the psyche of animals.
Properties of consciousness:
Activity - Consciousness is associated with activity, with an active influence on the world around us.
Selective nature - Consciousness is not directed at the whole world as a whole, but only at certain of its objects (most often associated with some unrealized needs)
Generalization and abstraction - Consciousness does not operate with real objects and phenomena of the surrounding world, but with generalized and abstract concepts, devoid of some of the attributes of specific objects of reality.
Integrity - The consciousness of a mentally healthy person, as a rule, has integrity.
Basic Concepts
Consciousness is the highest function of the human brain.
It allows you to reflect the surrounding reality, interpret all current phenomena and events, plan upcoming actions and anticipate their results.
Consciousness helps you control your behavior and regulate your activities.
Its main components are: attention, memory, will, emotions and feelings.
Attention , the ability to perceive the environment and concentrate on individual objects. Attention helps a person in cognitive activity.
Memory is the ability to record learned images and reproduce them if necessary in the future.
The will directs all the actions and actions of the individual. It is a motivating force that forces you to act purposefully.
Emotions and feelings, the highest stages of development of consciousness, thanks to which it becomes possible to build interpersonal relationships and manifest internal sensations.
A special phenomenon from a psychological point of view is the ability to turn off consciousness .
Once the necessary skills and abilities are learned, they can be carried out automatically.
In this case, control over one’s behavior is no longer needed , since the body itself performs the usual actions that were practiced during the acquisition of the skill.
Thus, an experienced pianist does not think about the movements of his hands while playing, and an experienced driver does not analyze the manipulations he performs while driving.
Self-awareness is the highest level of consciousness, which reflects a person’s perception of himself as an individual. It forms ideas about one’s body, character, relationships with people, place in society, achievements, etc.
There are three main levels of self-awareness:
- First . Ideas about the body and its place in the surrounding space. At this level, there is an understanding that our body is a separate independent phenomenon, which to a certain extent is included in the existing order of things.
- Second . The attitude of oneself to a certain social group, community, social institution. At this level, the individual perceives himself through the prism of his social life.
- Third . The most complex and important level, which allows you to identify your own “I”. A person perceives himself as a full-fledged person with a set of qualities, emotions, feelings, and abilities. He fully understands his mental, emotional and intellectual needs and abilities. He is responsible for his own actions, desires and for his future.
Basic properties of consciousness
Within this property, internal conflicts of values or interests are possible.
Constancy - Relative stability, immutability and continuity of consciousness, determined by memory.
The constancy of consciousness is determined by the properties of the individual.
Dynamism - Its changeability and ability for continuous development, determined by short-term and rapidly changing mental processes that can be fixed in the state and in new personality traits.
Distortion - Consciousness always reflects reality in a distorted form (some of the information is lost, and the other part is distorted by individual characteristics of perception and personal attitudes)
Individual character - The consciousness of each person is different from the consciousness of other people.
This is due to a number of factors: genetic differences, upbringing conditions, life experience, social environment, etc.
Ability to reflect - Consciousness has the ability to introspect and self-evaluate, and can also imagine how other people evaluate it.
Properties of consciousness
The term “consciousness” (co-knowledge) is currently a generalization that suggests itself based on the development of philosophy, anthropology, psychology and other areas of knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences, can be understood as the highest level of mental reflection and joint action.
Some naive anthropocentrists believe that such a level of development is possible only among representatives of human society. Meanwhile, scientists more familiar with the natural sciences would not say so.
In its most general form, from a systemic-pragmatic point of view, consciousness is a set of permanently changing sensations, sensory and mental images that appear before the inner gaze of a conscious subject and predetermine his practical and mental activity.
The properties of consciousness are studied in some branches of psychology, as well as in other areas of knowledge.
Properties of consciousness in psychology
There are several basic psychological properties of human consciousness:
- The consciousness of a person (as an aware subject) is necessarily distinguished by activity, most of all conditioned by the specific specifics of the internal state of the subject at the time of action. In most cases, we can talk about the subject having a specific goal and consistent vectors of activity to achieve the goal.
- The consciousness of the subject is characterized by intentionality, that is, a focus on something (not necessarily an object of the material world, not necessarily a specific one). Consciousness is always awareness (or awareness, and at the moment of communication with another subject or group, even co-awareness) of some fact or thought.
- Consciousness is characterized by constant reflection, that is, the subject undergoes a process of continuous introspection. The subject may be aware of the very presence of consciousness and recognition.
- Consciousness is mainly of a motivational and value-based nature (at least among Europeans). Of course, at the present moment in the development of knowledge about man, it would be naive, rude and flat; it would be in vain to think that consciousness is always motivated. This is a mossy thought from the middle of the last century. However, it can definitely be argued that a real subject in our world always strives for a goal (even if the goal is the absence of a goal), he is forced to this by attachment to a completely material living organism.
Other important properties of consciousness include: integrity, abstraction, generality, selectivity, dynamism, distortion, uniqueness and individuality.
In general, it should be understood that although consciousness arises in our world only in real living thinking subjects, it is classified as the sphere of the ideal, since images, sensations and meanings cannot be considered as material objects.
Properties
We can distinguish the following basic properties inherent in the consciousness of an individual from a psychological point of view:
- Activity. Only under conditions of active brain activity does it become possible to achieve set goals and obtain the desired results. The brain is constantly in a state of readiness. Any situation is analyzed, any opportunity is considered and used to achieve goals.
Every person understands what he wants and what he strives for. He also objectively understands that in order to get what he wants, he needs to take appropriate steps.In an effort to get the necessary thing, to achieve the desired result, a person is usually capable of much and does not stop in the face of difficulties.
- Dynamism . Attention is always changing and switching. When the need arises to concentrate on any object or perceive important information, the individual fully mobilizes his resources and directs them to a specific object. If the situation changes and the need arises to show attention to another object, consciousness is immediately rebuilt. Such dynamism allows you to be guaranteed to immerse yourself in the essence of phenomena and processes that are relevant at the current moment in time.
- Reflection .
Reflection refers to the tendency to constant introspection, to thinking about one’s own life. Each individual periodically thinks about his own successes and failures, achievements and failures. He analyzes himself in the past and in the present, makes claims to himself and outlines a plan for further development. Reflection allows you to effectively observe yourself and your experiences throughout your life, draw important conclusions and strive to change the situation for the better. Constant work on yourself is an effective development tool. - Value orientation. Moral attitudes and principles that are characteristic of people primarily determine their behavior. A person rarely acts inconsistently with his internal attitudes, as this leads to serious intrapersonal conflicts and psychological problems in the future. As a rule, any mental activity is formed precisely on the basis of an analysis of existing value systems.
CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHE. SIGNS AND PROPERTIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
The understanding of consciousness, which arose in ancient times and existed for centuries, identifies it with all the psychological characteristics of a person.
Everything that is connected with the human soul, everything in which it manifests itself, was attributed by ancient scientists to the content of consciousness, since the psyche is, in essence, consciousness and there is no other psyche (unconscious).
Thanks to the works of Rene Descartes and John Locke, based on this statement, psychology has long turned into a science of consciousness (although the unconscious in the psyche is also recognized, but still this topic is little touched upon).
There is a point of view that connects a person’s consciousness with experiences, images, thoughts that he is able to describe in some way and about which he is somehow able to communicate to other people.
Consciousness in this definition is a joint, universal knowledge of people, knowledge shared by people, which is able to be transmitted from person to person and as a result become general or collective knowledge. Many scientists relate consciousness exclusively to language and speech, i.e., only what is transmitted through words enters consciousness and can exist in it.
Psychological structure of consciousness
The initial prerequisite for structuring consciousness as a subject of research should be the idea of it not only as an extreme abstraction, but also as a well-defined cultural and historical formation. In science, there are ideas about consciousness both as an epiphenomenon and as an essence reduced to the subconscious - they were formed by the corresponding types of cultural development of society. According to L.S. Vygotsky and A.N. Leontiev, the developed consciousness of a person is characterized by psychological multidimensionality, and at the same time has a semantic structure. Meanings are rooted in existence, the essential aspects of which are human activity and communication; they are objectified in actions and language. Speaking about the structure of consciousness, L.S. Vygotsky, starting from the idea of L. Feuerbach, identified two components in it: consciousness for being and consciousness for consciousness, forming two layers - existential and reflexive.
Consciousness is born in being, reflects being, creates being. The existential layer of consciousness is represented by the world of real ideas, imagination, cultural symbols and signs, production, objective and practical activities. The existential layer is the source of the reflexive layer, because values and meanings are born in the existential layer, and vice versa - it is influenced by the reflexive layer, because semantic evaluation is present in the sensory fabric of the image and the biodynamic fabric of action.
A.N. Leontyev identified three components in the structure of consciousness. They are:
— Sensual fabric of the image.
- Meaning.
- Personal meaning.
Sensory tissue is a general name for various perceptual images. In its pure form, this “fabric” is not revealed to the subject. It consists of either actually perceived, or emerging in memory, or imaginary images, which differ in their modality, sensory tone, degree of clarity, greater or lesser stability and other characteristics. The special function of sensory images of consciousness is that they give reality to the conscious picture of the world that is revealed to the subject. Thanks to the sensory content of consciousness, the world appears for the subject as existing not in consciousness, but outside it, objectively, as an object of the individual’s activity.
The nature of mental sensory images lies in their objectivity, in the fact that they are generated in the process of activity connecting the subject with the external objective world. Sensory impressions serve as an impetus that activates human cognitive processes and abilities, which “extract” additional, hidden from direct perception, information about reality. In humans, sensory images acquire a new quality - their own meaning.
Meanings are the next most important component of human consciousness. Meanings are the content of social consciousness, assimilated by a person; these can be operational meanings, objective, verbal meanings, everyday and scientific meanings - concepts.
They refract the world in human consciousness. The carrier of meaning is language. It captures in ideal form objects and phenomena of the material world, their properties and relationships, socially developed actions, norms of life and behavior, traditions, and culture. Values are classified as:
— operational (related to biodynamic tissue);
- objective (related to sensory tissue);
- verbal (related to meaning).
Meanings exist objectively outside the individual consciousness of a person. In the process of internalization, the assignment of objective meanings and sign systems occurs. Interiorization shortens the path to understanding meaning (nothing is reinvented). This phenomenon allows us to appropriate human experience in a compressed, generalized form. Initially, the mastery of meanings occurs in the child’s external activity with real objects, where he assimilates directly objectively related meanings. Later, he learns logical operations that help to internalize objective meanings, transform them into abstract ones, used in an ideal (mental) sense. So, by internalizing, meanings become the property of individual consciousness, turning into personal meaning.
Meaning is a subjective understanding and attitude to a situation and information. Misunderstandings are associated with difficulties in comprehending meanings.
A characteristic feature of meanings at the level of personal meaning is their bias, their special subjectivity. It is important to note that -meanings do not lose their objectivity and socio-historical nature (of course, we are talking about preserved consciousness). The concept of meaning in. applies equally to both the sphere of consciousness and the sphere of being. It indicates that individual consciousness is not impersonal knowledge, it always belongs to a living subject included in a system of activities, and therefore is always associated with a relationship. Thus, we can consider that the concept of meaning expresses the connection of individual consciousness to the social one, and the concept of meaning expresses the rootedness of individual consciousness in human existence. Meanings and meanings are mutually transformable: in the human mind, meanings of meanings and understanding of meanings constantly happen (V.P. Zinchenko). With such mutual transitions, elements of misunderstanding are possible, caused by understatement or complexity of the comprehended meanings. At the same time, such a misunderstanding should not be regarded only negatively; it can also become a positive moment in the development of a person’s level of knowledge and in his creativity.
V.P. Zinchenko, developing the tradition of domestic psychology, supplemented the structure of consciousness. He introduced the concept of biodynamic fabric of movement and action. In his vision, consciousness is formed by two layers: existential, consisting of the sensory fabric of the image and the biodynamic fabric of living movement and action, and reflexive , which includes meaning and meaning.
Biodynamic tissue is an observable and recorded external form of living movement; it is the material from which expedient voluntary movements and actions are built. As they are built and formed, their internal content becomes more complex, filling with cognitive, emotional and evaluative formations. The arbitrariness and purposefulness of movements and actions is determined by the word, which gives them an internal form. In its pure form, without internal form, biodynamic tissue can be observed in the chaotic movements of newborns and in the impulsive actions of adults.
Sensual fabric is the building material of the image. Both dynamic and sensory tissue have the properties of reactivity, sensitivity, plasticity, and controllability. In addition, they have reversible properties and transform one into another. Thus, movement unfolded in time can turn into a timeless image of space. “Stopping can be considered as accumulated movement” (I. Mandelstam). And the spatial image can turn into a dynamic one.
The reflective (evaluative) layer of consciousness is represented by meanings and meanings. The content of reflexive acts is the comparison of the situation with the intermediate results of actions and the possibility of their continuation. There is a living connection and mutual transitions between the existential and reflexive layers: the reflexive layer is present in the process of realizing the existential, and the existential is a condition for the inclusion of the reflexive.
In a generalized form, what has been said may sound like this: ideas, concepts, everyday and scientific knowledge correlate with meaning as a component of the reflective layer of consciousness; human values, experiences, emotions, affects are correlated with meaning, which is also included in the reflective layer; productive, objective-practical activity is correlated with the biodynamic fabric of movement and action as a component of the existential layer; ideas, imagination, cultural symbols and signs are correlated with the sensory tissue included in the existential layer of consciousness.
In such a structure of consciousness, all components can develop harmoniously, or one component can take on a dominant role. When all components are involved in the activity of consciousness, it acquires existential and reflective experience and the features corresponding to it.
Of course, the identification of layers of consciousness and its constituent parts is very conditional from the point of view of its actual work. Each act of consciousness, according to G.G. Shpet, characterizes intense diversity, which means that all layers and their constituents can be involved in such an act. They are in constant interaction, both horizontally and vertically. The tensions that arise between them are one of the driving forces of human development and self-development. (V.P. Zinchenko).
Self-awareness
Personality formation is carried out in three main areas: activity, communication, self-awareness.
The crown of the development of consciousness is the formation of self-awareness, which allows a person not only to reflect the external world, but, having distinguished himself in this world, to cognize his inner world, experience it and relate to himself in a certain way. The measure for a person in his attitude towards himself is, first of all, other people. Each new social contact changes a person’s self-image and makes him more multifaceted. Conscious behavior is not so much a manifestation of what a person really is, but rather the result of a person’s ideas about himself, which have developed on the basis of communication with others around him.
Awareness of oneself as a stable object presupposes internal integrity, the constancy of the personality, which, regardless of changing situations, is capable of remaining itself. A person’s sense of his uniqueness is supported by the continuity of his experiences in time: he remembers the past, experiences the present, and has hopes for the future.
The main function of self-awareness is to make the motives and results of his actions accessible to a person and make it possible to understand what he really is and to evaluate himself; if the assessment turns out to be unsatisfactory, then the person can either engage in self-improvement, self-development, or, by turning on defense mechanisms, repress this unpleasant information, avoiding the traumatic influence of internal conflict.
In the course of socialization, the connections of a person’s communication with people, groups, and society as a whole expand and deepen, and the formation of an image of his “I” occurs in a person. The image of “I”, or self-awareness (image of oneself), does not arise in a person immediately, but develops gradually throughout his life under the influence of numerous social influences and includes 4 components (according to BC Merlin):
awareness of the difference between oneself and the rest of the world;
— consciousness of “I” as the active principle of the subject of activity;
- awareness of one’s mental properties, emotional self-esteem;
- social and moral self-esteem, self-esteem, which is formed on the basis of accumulated experience of communication and activity.
According to L.D. Stolyarenko, in modern science there are different points of view on the genesis of self-consciousness. It is traditional to understand self-awareness as the original genetically primary form of human consciousness, based on self-perceptions, self-perception of a person, when in early childhood a child develops a holistic idea of his physical gel, of the distinction between himself and the rest of the world. Based on the concept of “primacy,” it is indicated that the ability to self-experience turns out to be a special universal side of self-consciousness that gives rise to it.
There is also an opposite point of view (S.L. Rubinstein) according to which self-consciousness is the highest type of consciousness that arose as a result of the development of consciousness. Ignorance is born from self-knowledge, from the “I,” and self-consciousness arises in the course of the development of the individual’s consciousness.
The third direction of psychological science proceeds from the fact that awareness of the external world and self-awareness arose and developed simultaneously, unified and interdependent. As “objective” sensations are combined, a person’s idea of the external world is formed, and as a result of the synthesis of self-perceptions, a person’s idea of himself is formed. In the ontogenesis of self-awareness, two main stages can be distinguished: at the first stage, a diagram of one’s own body is formed and a “sense of Self” is formed. Then, as intellectual capabilities improve and conceptual thinking develops, self-awareness reaches a reflexive level, thanks to which a person can comprehend his difference in conceptual form. Therefore, the reflexive level of individual self-awareness always remains internally connected with affective self-experience (V.P. Zinchenko).
Research has shown that the sense of self is controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain, and the reflexive mechanisms of self-awareness are controlled by the left hemisphere.
Self-awareness criteria:
1) separating oneself from the environment, consciousness of oneself as a subject, autonomous from the environment (physical environment, social environment);
2) awareness of one’s activity - “I control myself”;
3) awareness of oneself “through another” (“What I see in others can be my quality”);
4) moral assessment of oneself, the presence of reflection - awareness of one’s internal experience.
A person’s sense of his uniqueness is supported by the continuity of his experiences in time: he remembers the past, experiences the present, and has hopes for the future. The continuity of such experiences gives a person the opportunity to integrate himself into a single whole.
When analyzing the dynamic structure of self-consciousness, two concepts are used: “current self” and “personal self.” “Current Self” denotes specific forms of awareness of oneself in the current present, i.e. direct processes of self-consciousness activity. “Personal Self” is a stable structural diagram of self-relation, the core of the synthesis of “current Selves.” In each act of self-awareness, elements of self-knowledge and self-experience are simultaneously expressed.
Since all processes of consciousness are self-reflected, a person can not only realize, evaluate and regulate his own mental activity, but also recognize himself as conscious, self-evaluating.
In the structure of self-awareness we can distinguish:
1) awareness of close and distant goals, motives of one’s “I” (“I as an active subject”);
2) awareness of one’s real and desired qualities (“Real Self” and “Ideal Self”);
3) cognitive, cognitive ideas about oneself (“I am as an observed object”);
4) emotional, sensual self-image. Thus, self-awareness includes:
— self-knowledge (the intellectual aspect of knowing oneself);
- self-attitude (emotional attitude towards oneself). The most famous model of the structure of self-consciousness in modern science was proposed by K.G. Jung and is based on the opposition of conscious and unconscious elements of the human psyche. Jung identifies two levels of self-representation. The first is the subject of the entire human psyche - the “self”, which personifies both conscious and unconscious processes, and therefore is, as it were, a total personality. The second level is the form of manifestation of the “self” on the surface of consciousness, the conscious subject, the conscious “I”.
When a person thinks: “I know myself,” “I feel that I am tired,” “I hate myself,” then in this case he is both subject and object. Despite the identity of “I” - the subject and “I” - the object, it is still necessary to distinguish them - it is customary to call the first side of the personality “I”, and the second - “self”. The difference between the "I" and the self is relative to the "I" being the observing principle, the self being the observed. The "I" of modern man has learned to observe his self and feelings as if they were something different from him. However, the "I" can also observe its tendency to observe - in which case what was at first "I" becomes the self.
Humanistic psychologists view selfhood as the purposefulness of the entire personality to realize the maximum potential of the individual.
The measure for a person in his attitude towards himself is, first of all, other people. Each new social contact changes a person’s self-image and makes him more multifaceted. Conscious behavior is not so much a manifestation of what a person really is, but rather the result of a person’s ideas about himself, which have developed on the basis of communication with others around him.
For self-awareness, the most important thing is to become yourself (to form yourself as a person), to remain yourself (despite interfering influences) and to be able to support yourself in difficult conditions.
In the structure of self-awareness, 4 levels can be distinguished:
- direct sensory level - self-awareness, self-experience of psychosomatic processes in the body and one’s own desires, experiences, mental states, as a result, the simplest self-identification of the individual is achieved;
- holistic-imaginative, personal level - awareness of oneself as an active principle, manifested as self-experience, self-actualization, negative and positive identification and maintenance of the self-identity of one’s “I”;
- reflexive, intellectual-analytical level - the individual’s awareness of the content of the individual’s own thought processes, as a result of which introspection, self-awareness, introspection, self-reflection are possible;
- purposeful-active level - a kind of synthesis of the three considered levels, as a result, regulatory-behavioral and motivational functions are performed through numerous forms of self-control, self-organization, self-regulation, self-education, self-improvement, self-esteem, self-criticism, self-knowledge, self-expression.
The information content of the structures of self-consciousness is associated with two mechanisms of its activity: assimilation, identification of oneself with someone or something (“self-identification”) and intellectual analysis of one’s “I” (reflection and self-reflection).
In general, three layers of human consciousness can be distinguished:
1) attitude towards oneself;
2) attitude towards other people;
3) expectation of other people’s attitude towards oneself (attributive projection).
Awareness of attitudes towards other people can be qualitatively different:
1) egocentric level of relationships (the attitude towards oneself as self-worth influences the attitude towards other people (“If they help me, then they are good people”);
2) group-centric level of relationships (“If another person belongs to my group, he is good”);
3) prosocial level (“Another person is their own value, respect and accept the other person for who they are”, “Do unto others as you would like them to do to you”);
4) estocholic level - the level of outcomes (“Each person is in a certain relationship with the spiritual world, with God. Mercy, conscience, spirituality are the main thing in relation to another person”).
The concept of consciousness. Functions and properties of consciousness.
In other words, consciousness includes only general knowledge, presented at the level of concepts about objects and phenomena that are reflected in language.
There is an interpretation of consciousness as a special state of a person’s psyche in which he is when he correctly perceives what is happening to him and around him at a particular moment and is not sleeping. This point of view assumes the appearance and disappearance of consciousness in a person, as well as his transition to an unconscious state, i.e., the possibility of a person and the psyche being outside consciousness.
The presence of consciousness in a person can be judged by whether or not at the moment there are signs indicating that the person is in this state.
There are several such signs: the ability to describe it in words and imagine it using certain images; the ability to communicate one’s own feelings and thoughts to other people, the ability to separate oneself from what is happening around and determine what is happening inside.
Due to the fact that this is a state of the human psyche, we perceive it as dynamic, since it can change from time to time.
It follows that a change in the state of consciousness itself is possible. It can be strengthened and weakened, it has its own measure, that is, it can be strong and weak.
The psyche as a reflection of reality in the human brain is characterized by different levels.
The highest level of the psyche characteristic of a person forms consciousness. Consciousness is the highest, integrating form of the psyche, the result of the socio-historical conditions for the formation of a person in work, with constant communication (using language) with other people.
In this sense, consciousness, as the classics of Marxism emphasized, is a “social product”; consciousness is nothing more than conscious being.
What is the structure
consciousness, its most important psychological characteristics?
Its first characteristic is given in its very name: consciousness
.
Human consciousness includes the totality
knowledge about the world around us.
K. Marx wrote: “The way in which consciousness exists and in which something exists for it is knowledge
.” The structure of consciousness thus includes the most important cognitive processes with the help of which a person constantly enriches his knowledge.
These processes may include sensations
and
perception, memory, imagination
and
thinking
.
With the help of sensations
and
perceptions
, with the direct reflection of stimuli affecting the brain, a sensory picture of the world as it appears to a person at the moment is formed in the mind.
Memory
allows you to resume images of the past in your consciousness,
imagination
- to build figurative models of what is an object of needs, but is absent at the present time.
Thinking
ensures problem solving through the use of generalized knowledge.
A disturbance, a disorder, not to mention the complete collapse of any of these mental cognitive processes, inevitably becomes a disorder of consciousness.
distinction between subject and object enshrined in it
i.e., what belongs to a person’s “I” and his “not-I.” Man, who for the first time in the history of the organic world stood out from it and contrasted himself with his surroundings, continues to retain this opposition and difference in his consciousness.
He is the only living being capable of self-knowledge
, i.e., turn mental activity to explore oneself. A person makes a conscious self-assessment of his actions and himself as a whole.
The separation of “I” from “not-I” is the path that every person goes through in childhood, carried out in the process of forming self-awareness
person.
The third characteristic of consciousness is ensuring goal-setting human activity
. The functions of consciousness include the formation of goals for an activity, while its motives are formed and weighed, volitional decisions are made, the progress of actions is taken into account and the necessary adjustments are made to it, etc.
Functions
The level of development of the components of consciousness affects the degree of expression of its functions .
All people have different abilities, since their characteristics of memory, will and attention are different.
Basic functions of consciousness:
- Cognitive .
Throughout his life, a person learns about the reality around him. This is expressed in the acquisition of knowledge about nature, about the world, about society, about oneself. The cognitive function begins to manifest itself from the first days of a child’s birth as his intellect develops and he receives basic ideas about the world. This process continues throughout life. Getting an education, mastering moral and value standards in the family, self-development, all this leads to constant knowledge of reality. The more an individual is prone to cognitive activity, the higher the level of his development. - Constructive .
A person is able to independently imagine any objects using existing knowledge and his own imagination. He can predict the development of events and create previously non-existent objects. It was thanks to this function that scientific progress became possible. People did not stop at perceiving those images and phenomena that already existed at the moment. They always strived for new achievements and created objects on their own that did not exist before. Imagination is a powerful stimulus for activity. Once upon a time, people believed that it was impossible to climb into the sky or go into space. But the constructive ability of the consciousness of those involved in the study of these issues made it possible to change existing ideas and achieve their goals. - Regulatory .
This is the ability to self-control, to self-discipline. If we did not know how to control our emotions, our desires and behavior, then life in society would be complete chaos. A person is able to control his behavior and even his thoughts. This allows him, when interacting in society, to act in accordance with existing rules and norms. Persons with impaired regulatory functions, as a rule, are characterized by deviant behavior. - Prognostic . People strive to predict their future as much as possible. They always make plans based on their own ideas, desires, and life experiences. It is impossible to predict your entire life, since unplanned, unpredictable events often occur in it. But individual moments can be foreseen to a certain extent.
Self-awareness performs the following functions:
- Regulatory . A person controls and organizes his behavior, guided by internal attitudes and ideas about himself. The regulatory function allows you to build not only relationships with yourself, but also with others.
- Self-improvement . Each of us has a certain potential that can be realized fully or only to some extent. The degree of desire for self-improvement and development is directly determined by the individual’s commitment and interest in the development process itself. Individuals striving for self-realization, to expand their living space, always try to improve themselves.
- Existential .
Any person, regardless of his level of development, periodically thinks about the meaning of life. These could be thoughts about the existence of the world as a whole or thoughts about one’s own destiny. The existential function motivates to achieve new goals that justify existence and provide an incentive for further life. - Integrative . The ability to effectively combine one’s own individual attitudes with social norms. Personal values are formed largely under the influence of universal human values (learned from traditions, culture, history), which makes it possible to establish harmony between socialization and individualization. A person feels involved in the society in which he lives, but at the same time does not give up his own traits.
- Protective . Being aware of his own “I”, the individual always strives to protect it from external interference. He does not allow the opinions and attitudes of other members of society to shake his ideas about himself or change his perception of his own personality.
