Structural component of consciousness performing the governing. The structure of consciousness and its functions

Consciousness as the inner world of a person has its own structure. To consider it, one should first of all pay attention to such a circumstance. Quite often the concept of "consciousness" is identified with the concept of "human psyche". This is mistake. The psyche is a more complex formation that includes two spheres of reflection: consciousness and unconsciousness. It is believed that the unconscious is a collection of mental phenomena, states and actions that are outside the sphere of reason. The unconscious includes, first of all, instincts - a set of innate acts of human behavior, which are created as a result of prolonged evolution and are aimed at ensuring the vital functions, the very existence of each creature.

Intuition and automatisms, which can arise in the sphere of consciousness and eventually penetrate into the sphere of the unconscious, are also ranked as the structure of the unconscious. Intuition is knowledge that arises without awareness of the ways and conditions of its receipt, through direct sensory contemplation or speculation. Automatisms are complex human actions, which, initially appearing under the control of consciousness, acquire the character of unconscious as a result of prolonged training and repeated repetition. Dreams, hypnotic states, phenomena of somnambulism, states of insanity, etc. are also unconscious.

Thanks to the connection of the unconscious to mental activity, the load on consciousness decreases, and this, in turn, expands the field of a person's creative possibilities.

So, consciousness is specifically human reflection and spiritual mastery of reality, a property of highly organized matter - human brain, which consists in creating subjective images of the objective world, retaining, storing and processing information, in developing a program of activities aimed at solving certain problems in the active management of this activity.

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

What structure does consciousness itself have? Can highlight the following elements:

The first element is knowledge. This main component, the core of consciousness, the means of its existence. Knowledge is a person's understanding of reality, its reflection in the form of conscious sensory and abstract logical images. Thanks to knowledge, a person can "embrace", comprehend everything that surrounds him and constitutes the subject of knowledge. Knowledge predetermines such properties of consciousness as the ability to purposefully "create the world" by objective activity, to foresee the course of events, to show creative activity. In other words, consciousness is an attitude to reality in the form of knowledge, taking into account human needs.

The second important emotions are an element of the structure of consciousness. Man learns the world not with the cold indifference of an automaton, but with a sense of satisfaction, hatred or sympathy, enthusiasm or resentment. He experiences what reflects Emotions or stimulates or inhibits the individual's awareness of the real phenomena of reality. What pleases the eye is easier to remember. But sometimes the "rainbow" perception of the world can blind, give rise to illusions, wishful thinking. Some, especially negative, emotions negatively affect mental clarity. The feeling of fear, for example, becomes an obstacle to a person's awareness of what is happening. The highest level emotions are spiritual feelings (for example, the feeling of love), which are formed as a result of the realization of the personality's connections with the most essential social and existential values. Feelings are characterized by subject content, constancy, independence from the real situation. The emotional sphere significantly affects all manifestations of human consciousness, performs the function of the basis of his activities.

The third building block consciousness is the will - a conscious, purposeful regulation by a person of his activities. It is the ability of a person to mobilize and direct his mental and physical strength to solve problems that arise in his activities and require conscious overcoming of subjective and objective difficulties and obstacles. The making of tools by man is the first and most important school of the formation of will. Will and purpose are mutually reinforcing. Without will, the goal cannot be achieved; without purposeful activity there is no will. Will is a conscious desire and motivation for action. However, unconscious motives are also characteristic of a person. Sometimes it happens that a person is striving somewhere, but he does not know where and why. Such subconscious regulation remained in humans from animals.

In the structure of consciousness, one should also mention such element like thinking. Thinking is a process of cognitive activity of an individual, which is characterized by a generalized and indirect reflection of reality. This process ends with the creation of abstract concepts, judgments, which are a reflection of the essential, regular relationships of things on the basis of the known, tangible, heard, etc. Thanks to mental activity, we penetrate into the invisible, into that which is not perceived by touch and which cannot be felt ... Thinking gives us knowledge about essential properties, connections and relationships. With the help of thinking, we carry out the transition from the external to the internal, from the phenomenon to the essence of things, processes.

The structure of consciousness also includes attention and memory. Attention is a form of human mental activity, which manifests itself in focus and focus on certain objects. Memory is a mental process, which consists in fixing, preserving and reproducing in the brain of an individual his past experience. The main elements of memory are memorization, preservation, reproduction and forgetting. Physiological basis memorization is the formation and consolidation of temporary neural connections in the cerebral cortex. The subsequent revitalization of nerve connections gives the reproduction of the memorized material, and the inhibition of these connections leads to forgetting.

In the subjective reality of a person, there is such an important substructure as self-awareness. This is a person's awareness of himself as a person, awareness of his ability to make independent decisions and enter, on this basis, into conscious relationships with people and nature, be responsible for decisions taken and actions. In other words, it is a holistic assessment of oneself, one's moral character, one's own knowledge, thoughts, interests, ideals, motives of behavior, actions, etc. With the help of self-awareness, a person realizes an attitude towards himself, realizes his self-esteem as a thinking being capable of feeling ... In this case, the subject makes himself and his consciousness an object of cognition. The appeal of philosophers to self-consciousness as a special sphere of the subjective world began with Socrates, with his maxim “Know thyself”. In the process of the formation of philosophy as a specific knowledge about the world and man, a view was formed on the active, restless nature of the soul, dialogic nature and criticality of reason regarding itself. According to Plato, the activity of the soul is an inner work that has the character of a conversation with oneself. Reflecting, the soul constantly talks to itself, asks, answers, asserts and objects.

Thus, self-awareness is an important condition for the constant self-improvement of a person. In the structure of self-awareness, such elements can be distinguished; well-being, self-knowledge, self-esteem, self-control.

A person's understanding of his inner state, the ability to self-control does not come immediately. Self-awareness, along with such spiritual elements of the personality as worldview, abilities, character, interests, is formed under the influence of the social environment.

Structural elements of consciousness are interconnected and interact and provide consciousness a number of functions vital for a person:

The first function of consciousness is cognitive, or reflective function, i.e., obtaining knowledge about reality, surrounding man, and about himself. How cognitive activity consciousness begins with sensory, figurative knowledge and goes back to abstract thinking... This function is all-encompassing; all others come from it. The cognitive function is not passive, but active, heuristic, that is, consciousness has the property of anticipatory reflection of reality. The cognitive function of consciousness determines accumulative (accumulative) function... Its essence is that in the memory of a person "settles", accumulates knowledge obtained not only from the immediate, personal experience, but also from contemporaries or previous generations of people. This knowledge, as necessary, is actualized, recreated and serves as a means of realizing other functions of consciousness. The richer a person's memory is, the easier it is for him to make the optimal decision.

The next function is - axiological (evaluative). A person not only receives data about the external world, but also evaluates them in terms of their needs and interests. Consciousness, on the one hand, is a form of objective reflection, a form of cognition of reality, independent of human aspirations and interests. The result and goal of consciousness as a cognitive activity is the acquisition of knowledge, objective truth. On the other hand, consciousness includes the manifestation of a subjective attitude to reality, its

assessment, awareness of their knowledge and themselves. The result and goal of the value attitude towards the world is the comprehension of existence, the degree of conformity of the world and its manifestations to human interests and needs, meaning own life... If thinking, cognitive activity basically requires only a clear expression of knowledge, adherence to logical schemes, operating with them, then the value attitude to the world and its awareness requires personal efforts, own reflections and experiences of truth.

Evaluation function goes directly into the function of purposefulness (goal formation). Purposefulness is a purely human ability, which is a cardinal characteristic of consciousness. The goal is the idealized need of a person who has found his object; it is such a subjective image of the object of activity, in the ideal form of which the result of human activity is assumed. The goals are formed on the basis of the entire cumulative experience of mankind and go back to the highest forms of manifestation in the form of social, ethical, aesthetic and other ideals. Purposeful activity is explained by a person's dissatisfaction with the world and the need to change it, to give it the form that is necessary for a person, society.

Higher capabilities consciousnesses are revealed in a creative (constructive) function. Purposefulness, that is, the awareness of "for what" and "for what" a person carries out his actions, - necessary condition any conscious action. The realization of the goal involves the use of certain means, that is, what is created and exists to achieve the goal. Man creates what nature has not generated before him. He creates fundamentally new, builds new world... The scale, forms and properties of things transformed and created by people are dictated by the needs of people, their goals; they embody human designs and ideas.

Another function is communicative (connections). It is due to the fact that people take part in common work and need constant communication. This connection of thoughts is carried out using speech (sound) and technical means (texts, encoded information). It should be borne in mind that in written texts (books, magazines, newspapers, etc.), not knowledge is stored, but only information. For information to become knowledge, it must be subjective. This is why the spread printed word is a condition, but not a guarantee, that the information presented will become knowledge. Additional efforts are needed to transform information into knowledge, that is, a subjective asset.

Completes the logical cycle of personality consciousness regulatory (management) function. Based on the assessment of factors and in accordance with the set goal, consciousness regulates, puts in order the actions of a person, and then the actions of collectives.

The regulatory function of consciousness depends on the interaction of a person with environment and acts in two forms: incentive and executive regulation. The ideological content of the incentives for the behavior and activities of people is important. As ideas acquire a motivating force, a person carries out actions consciously, purposefully, according to his conviction. Executive regulation brings the activities of people in accordance with their needs, ensures the proportionality of the goal and the real means of its regulation.

Consciousness is a unity of mental processes (actively participating in a person's understanding of the objective world and his own being), is determined not directly by his bodily organization (anthropological aspects) and skills of objective activity acquired only through communication with other people, is expressed in language and serves as a regulator of human activity ...

The difference between the concepts of "subjective", "mental", "consciousness". Mental - the individual inner world of the subject ("subjective") and the mechanism that provides reasonable behavior ("objective"). The mental image is the subjective reality, in which the subjective and the objective are dialectically interconnected. The subjective image as knowledge, as a spiritual reality and physiological processes as its material substrate are qualitatively different phenomena. The psyche and consciousness should be distinguished as subjective (individualized) and ideal (non-material) ways of existence of being. So, the psychic reflection of the subject outside world is of a dual nature (materially ideal); on the other hand, not everything in perfect reflection is subjective.

The sphere of consciousness includes, first of all, the reflection of reality in distinct forms of sensibility and thinking. Thinking is a process of indirect and generalized reflection of reality by the subject. Thinking is the "core" of consciousness. The result of thinking is subjectively new knowledge, which cannot be derived from direct experience, from the content of sensations, perceptions, ideas. Fantasy products are also the result of the transformation of the individual's past experience. But the product of fantasy may have nothing to do with objective reality. The results of the thought process always claim to be true and verifiable. Thinking provides forecasting of the future and the decision-making process.

The concept of consciousness is broader than the concept of thinking, since it also includes other conscious elements of the psyche.

Anthropological aspects of consciousness

The human body is a phenomenon of socio-cultural and historical, biological and individual-personal development. Informational and cultural specificity of body organs. Dialogic possibilities of the skin. The problem of skin sensitivity is associated with the localization of an individual body in space and time.

The hand is a universal instrument of a person's relationship with the world, communication with other people, and self-expression. Manual experience and manual consciousness. "Tame consciousness" characterizes the ability of highly organized animals to analyze a specific situation, to form complex associations that reflect connections between things.

The eye and the perceptual capabilities of consciousness. Information and orientation functions of the eye. Eye and harmony of color and spatial relationships.

Ear: the problem of listening to being. Auditory perception of time, rhythm and musical harmony of the world. Nose and perfumery abilities of human consciousness. The world of smells and body odors.

Tongue as a bodily organ of taste. The problem of cultivating taste.

Amplifiers of the body and its individual organs: technical equipment of the hand, eyes and optics, ear and acoustic means.

Phenomenological structures of consciousness

Consciousness is the unity of knowledge and its experience. Knowledge is the main way of existence of consciousness. A person experiences his knowledge in various and many forms, among which, first of all, one must name emotions, feelings and will.

Will is a universal regulator of a person's conscious activity, a universal motivation and motivation for activity.

Emotions are an objective phenomenon. The emotional world of consciousness. The structure and function of emotions. Variety of emotional states. The world of emotional communication. Emotions are a way of cultural and social construction of the world. Understanding emotions as rudiments of failed instincts. J.P. Sartre on emotions as a way to avoid making a responsible decision.

Memory as the ability of consciousness to capture, store and reproduce a person's experience.

Intersubjective structures of consciousness

Language is a form of existence and manifestation of thinking and the most important condition for the formation of consciousness. Language is objectified thinking; a system of signs correlated with a system of meanings (concepts). Thought is a silent language. Structural units of language analysis: word - sentence - text - context linguistic and extralinguistic factors.

The essence of language reveals itself in its functions. Language acts as a means of communication, transmission of thoughts, performs a communicative function. The material, sensory shell of thought is the word as the unity of sign, sound and meaning. The word has two main functions: the function of replacing objects (the function of representing, replacing an object with a sign) and the function of processing experience, which allows you to analyze and synthesize those impressions that a person receives from the outside world. The word singles out the corresponding sign from things (adjectives highlight the signs of things that are included in these things, but do not exist independently; verbs abstract the qualities of action from a thing).

Speech is an activity, a process of communication, exchange of thoughts, feelings, carried out using language as a means of communication.

But language is not only a means of communication, but also an instrument of thought, a means of expressing and shaping thoughts, the ability of a person to respond with the voice of the world around him. The boundaries of language are the boundaries of the human world. It is not the person who speaks with the tongue, but the language speaks through the person. The world is completely present in the language, as in the house of being. The world wants to be expressed, it is only up to the person. The presence of the world in language requires a person: a person can give a word to the world, the world requires a person for its appearance. And man demands peace, because otherwise, as in the world, he will not recognize himself.

Finally, language plays the role of an instrument for the accumulation of knowledge, the development of consciousness. In linguistic forms, our ideas, feelings and thoughts acquire material existence and, thanks to this, can and become the property of other people.

The contradictory unity of language and consciousness. Thought (concept, meaning of a word) is a reflection objective reality, and the word as a sign is a means of expressing and consolidating a thought, transmitting it to other people. Thinking according to its logical laws and forms is international, and language in its own way grammatical structure and vocabulary - national. The lack of identity of language and thinking is also seen in the fact that sometimes we understand words, and the thought expressed with their help remains inaccessible to us. The thinking of any people develops rapidly, and the language changes very slowly, always lagging behind the development of thinking. Language affects consciousness (its historically established norms, specific for each people, in the same object shade different ghosts), however, the dependence of thinking on language is not absolute (thinking is determined mainly by its connections with reality), language can only partially modify form and style of thinking.

Natural languages ​​are the main and decisive means of communication between people, a means of organizing our thinking. At the same time, with the development of knowledge and social practice, both non-linguistic signs and sign systems, artificial languages ​​are formed, formalized programming languages. Artificial languages ​​perform the functions of an economical expression of scientific material, a means of internationalizing science (since artificial languages ​​are unified and international).

Consciousness and self-awareness

The characteristic of consciousness includes a distinct distinction between subject and object, fixed in it, what belongs to a person's "I" and his "not-I". Human being is conscious being.

Russian philosopher Semyon Ludvigovich Frank (1877 - 1950) differentiated consciousness into objective consciousness (focused on understanding the world around a person), consciousness as an experience (feelings associated with the physical sensation of pleasure, fear) and self-awareness (the true content of the human "I" associated with transcending - the achievement of the transrational, which is, first of all, love for people, God). Self-awareness, according to the philosopher, is not only self-knowledge, but also a certain attitude towards oneself, towards one's qualities and states, capabilities, physical and spiritual forces, that is, self-esteem. "I" - is the body, consciousness, the center of mental life. Self-awareness is the solution to the great mysteries of being, which in reality are hidden in ourselves, in our psyche. "He who knows himself knows God" (Clement of Alexandria).

P. Teilhard de Chardin sees in self-consciousness the ability, acquired by consciousness, to focus on oneself and to master oneself as an object with its own specific stability and specific meaning. Self-consciousness is, according to the French philosopher, the qualitative difference between man and the rest of the animal world.

Modern philosophy notes not only the social conditioning of the formation of self-consciousness, but also the individual and social levels of its manifestation: the self-consciousness of the individual (his awareness of his body and its fit into the world of the people around him), the self-awareness of the group (the awareness of his belonging to one or another social group), ethnos (in connection with the latter, the problem of the specifics of national identity arises).

Self-knowledge and self-regulation are forms of self-awareness. Self-knowledge is the basis for the development of constant self-control and self-regulation of a person. Self-control is manifested in the subject's awareness and assessment of his own actions, mental states, in the regulation of their course based on the requirements and norms of activity. Self-knowledge also serves as the basis for the implementation of an evaluative attitude towards oneself (self-esteem). Self-esteem is that component of self-awareness, which includes knowledge about one's own self, and a person's assessment of himself, and a scale of significant values, in relation to which this assessment is determined.

Self-awareness is closely related to the level of a person's aspirations, which can be viewed as the realization of a person's self-esteem in activities and in relationships with others. In the process of self-awareness, a person becomes a person and begins to realize himself both as a person and as a subject of practical and spiritual activity.

The existence of personality without "I" and "I" - without personality.

Consciousness and unconsciousness

Before Freud, the unconscious was considered the periphery of consciousness. The founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) changes this hypothesis: consciousness is only special case structures of the unconscious. Freud continued the work of deanthropologization: the first step in this direction was made by N. Copernicus (the Earth is not the center of the Universe), the second step was taken by Charles Darwin (man does not differ from other animals, but comes from them); the third step was taken by Z. Freud (the human mind is an island in the world of the unconscious).

According to the concept of Z. Freud, the unconscious is mental processes that manifest themselves actively and at the same time do not reach the consciousness of the person experiencing them; it is the main and most meaningful system of the human psyche, regulated by the "principle of pleasure and including various innate and repressed elements, drives, impulses, desires, complexes, characterized by unconsciousness, sexuality, and associality."

The relationship between consciousness and the unconscious was first considered by Freud, who introduced the concept of the levels of the structure of the psyche:

The unconscious is a content that is fundamentally inaccessible to consciousness and constitutes the energy core of the personality. The unconscious - a cauldron of seething passions, emotions, a reservoir of psychic energy - manifests itself in those phenomena that a person does not control.

The subconscious is emotionally loaded memories that can be realized using psychoanalysis techniques.

Subconscious - content that, if necessary, can easily become conscious.

Consciousness is the reflexive content of consciousness, amenable to arbitrary regulation, the surface layer of the mental apparatus. Consciousness is not the master of its own home.

The human psyche has three spheres: "It", "I" and "Super-I". "It" is a layer of unconscious drives and pleasures, drawing its energy mainly from two sources: Libido (sexual drive, responsible for human development) and Thanatos (desire for death and the forces of aggression and destruction).

"I" - the sphere of the conscious, the mediator between the conscious and the external world. Its most important task is self-preservation, ensuring the satisfaction of needs. The "I" makes decisions about postponing or supplanting the demands of the instincts. It obeys the reality principle and protects itself through repression.

The third layer of the human psyche "Super-I" is represented by conscience, various rules and prohibitions, social values ​​and norms, and culture in general. Culture, with its ideals and demands, suppresses the desires of the unconscious and exists due to the sublimated energy of libido.

Freud's main conclusion: a person can never know himself to the end.

Non-classical psychoanalysis

new reading of the unconscious

The problem of the interaction of the conscious and the unconscious in the concept of Alfred Adler 1870 - 1937). Its main provisions:

The idea of ​​the organic integrity of a person as a unique set of behaviors and habits;

Social interest as an innate desire to enter into mutual cooperative relations;

Motivation for the realization of social interest as a natural desire of a person to creatively realize his own "I";

The connection between the cause of a person's actions and the purpose of activity;

The unconscious as an innate social instinct and an indicator of mental health.

The problem of the influence of social and cultural determinants on the development of the individual is reflected in the teachings of the Swiss psychologist and thinker Carl Gustav Jung (1875 - 1961). main idea Jung's idea is that in addition to the personal unconscious (which is a reservoir of repressed repressed or forgotten drives), there is a deeper layer inner peace- the collective unconscious as a repository of latent traces of human memory. Its content is made up of archetypes.

Archetypes are a system of attitudes and reactions to the world of ancient people, when the world was revealed to them in a completely different way than to us now (and people were forced to get used to this world, adapt to it, somehow explain and interpret it). The archetype itself can never reach consciousness directly, but only indirectly - through the experiences and images of specific people, in cultural and religious traditions (God cannot be seen, God is the fear of God), encoded in esoteric symbolism. They appear through dreams, myths, behavioral deviations. Leading archetypes: Anima (feminine principle) and Animus (masculine principle), Shadow (lower man in us, personal unconscious), Person (a set of social masks), Self (our true integral "I", to which we only endlessly approach through the process individualization). Archetypes are initially associated with what is not captured by the mind, they are a secret, they are sacred. They contain colossal energy, a powerful impersonal force. People are drawn to these eternal patterns and at the same time are afraid of them, therefore they express them in symbols that both reveal and hide the power of the unconscious. The crisis of traditional symbols in modern world leads to a volcanic outburst of the unconscious, to aggression, wars, demoralization. Destroying ancient symbols, the intellect leaves a desert around it.

The problem of a person's search for his own identity in the socio-cultural parameters of being is at the center of attention of one of the famous books by Erich Fromm "To have or to be?" The philosopher distinguishes between the two main modes of existence - "to be" and "to have" - ​​as different types of self-orientation and orientation of a person in the world. To be means to be renewed, to grow, to get out of the isolation of one's own "I", to love, to abandon all forms of appropriation.

The problem of the unconscious

in post-non-classical philosophy

The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901 - 1981), starting from Freud and at the same time rethinking him, finally opposes the conscious and the unconscious. The unconscious does not act as the reverse side of the conscious: there is no connection between them, they are absolutely mutually exclusive. On this basis, the thinker concludes that a person is never identical with the attributes of his "I" and therefore his "I" is indefinable. The unconscious is reduced by him to a superhuman essence, which prevents a person from gaining the integrity of his "I", in fact, turns him into a "divid" - a torn, split, fragmented person.

Functions of consciousness

The main functions of consciousness: reflective (generalized, purposeful, evaluative reflection), transformative (constructive-creative, spontaneous-spontaneous, deliberately normative activity), orientational (regulation and self-control).

Leontiev on the essence and structure of consciousness

consciousness in its immediacy is a picture of the world that opens up to the subject, into which he himself, his actions and states are included;

initially, consciousness exists only in the form of a mental image that reveals the world around him to the subject, while activity remains practical, external. At a later stage, activity also becomes an object of consciousness: the actions of other people are realized, and through them the subject's own actions. Now they communicate, signified with the help of gestures or sound speech. This is the prerequisite for the generation of internal actions and operations occurring in the mind, in the "plane of consciousness." Consciousness - the image also becomes consciousness - activity. It is in this fullness of its own that consciousness begins to seem emancipated from external, sensory-practical activity, moreover, to control it;

consciousness undergoes another major change during historical development... It consists in the destruction of the initial fusion of the consciousness of the work collective (for example, the community) and the consciousness of the individuals who form it. In the same time psychological characteristics individual consciousness can only be understood through their connection with those social relations in which the individual is involved;

structure of consciousness includes: sensory fabric of consciousness, meanings and personal meanings;

sensual fabric consciousness forms the sensory composition of concrete images of reality, actually perceived or emerging in memory, attributable to the future or only imaginary. These images differ in their modality, sensual tone, degree of clarity, more or less stability, etc .;

a special function of sensory images of consciousness is that they impart reality to the conscious picture of the world that opens up to the subject. It is thanks to the sensory content of consciousness that the subject's world appears as existing not in consciousness, but outside his consciousness - as an objective "field" and an object of his activity;

sensory images represent a universal form of mental reflection generated by the subject's objective activity. However, in humans, sensory images acquire a new quality, namely, their own significance... The meanings and are the most important "forming" of human consciousness.

meaning refract the world in the mind of a person, Although the carrier of meanings is language, but language is not a demiurge of meanings. Behind linguistic meanings there are socially developed methods (operation) of action, in the process of which people change and cognize objective reality;

the meanings represent the ideal form of existence transformed and rolled up in matter objective world, its properties, connections and relationships disclosed by the aggregate social practice. Therefore, the values ​​themselves, i.e. in abstraction from their functioning in the individual consciousness, are just as “non-psychological” as the socially cognized reality that lies behind them;

it is necessary to distinguish between the perceived objective meaning and its meaning for the subject. In the latter case, they speak of a personal meaning. In other words personal meaning- this is the meaning of this or that phenomenon for a particular person. Personal meaning also creates partiality of consciousness. Unlike meanings, personal meanings do not have their own "psychological existence";

a person's consciousness, as well as his activity itself, is not a certain component of the parts included in it, i.e. it is not additive. It is not a plane, not even a container filled with images and processes. This is not a connection between its individual "units", but the internal movement of its constituents, included in the general movement of activities that carry out the real life of the individual in society. Human activity is the substance of his consciousness.

Consciousness- the highest, inherent only to humans and associated with speech, the function of the brain, which consists in a generalized evaluative and purposeful reflection and constructive-creative transformation of reality, in the preliminary mental construction of actions and foreseeing their results, in the reasonable regulation and self-control of human behavior.

Consciousness- the highest form of reflection of reality inherent only to a person, which is a set of mental processes that allow him to navigate in the world around him, time, his own personality, ensuring the continuity of experience, unity and diversity of behavior.

Wundt: "Consciousness is the ability to notice one's mental states"

James: "Consciousness is the master of mental functions"

Jaspers: “Consciousness as a Stage”

Vygotsky: consciousness is the unity of experience and knowledge

“Consciousness - co-knowledge, shared knowledge” (French social school).

Functions of consciousness:

Reflection

Consciousness organizes cognitive processes - perception, representation, thinking, and also organizes memory.

Regulation

Reflection

A kind of consciousness is self-awareness - the process by which a person analyzes his thoughts and actions, observes himself, evaluates himself, etc. One of the meanings of the word "reflection" is the ability of a person's consciousness to focus on himself. In addition, this term also denotes a mechanism of mutual understanding, that is, a person's understanding of how other people with whom he interacts think and feel.

Creative function

Creativity is impossible without consciousness. Many arbitrary types of imagination are organized on a conscious level: invention, artistic creation.

Spiritual

The structure of consciousness

L. Feuerbach put forward the idea of ​​the existence of consciousness for consciousness and consciousness for being. This idea was developed by L.S. Vygotsky.

A. N. Leont'ev identified three components in the structure of consciousness:

• sensual fabric of the image;
• meaning;
• meaning.

VP Zinchenko adds another component to this structure: the biodynamic tissue of movement and action. Then you can imagine the structure of consciousness schematically as follows:

Properties of consciousness

Activity

Consciousness is associated with activity, with active interaction with the outside world.

Selective nature

Consciousness is directed not at the whole world as a whole, but only at certain of its objects (most often associated with some unfulfilled needs).

Generalization and abstraction

Consciousness operates not with real objects and phenomena of the surrounding world, but with generalized and abstract concepts, devoid of some of the attributes of concrete objects of reality.

Integrity

Consciousness of a mentally healthy person, as a rule, has integrity. Within this property, internal conflicts of values ​​or interests are possible. In some types of mental illness, the integrity of consciousness is impaired (schizophrenia).

Constancy

Relative stability, immutability and continuity of consciousness, determined by memory. The constancy of consciousness is determined by the properties of the personality.

Dynamism

Its variability and ability for continuous development, conditioned by short-term and rapidly changing mental processes, which can be fixed in the state and in new personality traits.

Distortion

Consciousness always reflects reality in a distorted form (part of the information is lost, and the other part is distorted by individual characteristics of perception and personality 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.

Reflection ability

Consciousness has the ability to self-observation and self-esteem, and can also imagine how other people evaluate it.

According to A.N. Leont'ev, consciousness is "a picture of the world that opens up to the subject, into which he himself, his actions and states are included." There are also other definitions of consciousness, in particular, the following: consciousness is a special mental process that ensures the formation in the human psyche of the "I" image as the image of the subject himself, which is the bearer of the psyche.

In addition, there is such definition of consciousness: Human consciousness is formed in the process public life higher form mental reflection of reality in the form of a generalized and subjective model of the surrounding world in the form of verbal concepts and sensory images.

Psychology considers consciousness as a specific phenomenon of a person's spiritual life, characterized by a number of signs. First, consciousness is awareness of the surrounding world, it is a certain system of knowledge, historically formed, continuously replenished, refracted through the prism of personal experience. The second important sign and function of consciousness is a person's attitude to the world, refracted through a system of needs. The goal-setting function of consciousness - the third most important characteristic - is that the function of consciousness includes the formation of goals of activity, the construction of plans and programs of activity.

Also, the inalienable signs of consciousness include: speech, thinking and the ability to create a generalized model of the surrounding world in the form of a set of images and concepts.

Into the structure of consciousness includes a number of elements, each of which is responsible for a specific function of consciousness:

1. Cognitive processes (sensation, perception, thinking, memory). On their basis, a body of knowledge about the surrounding world is formed.

2. Distinguishing between subject and object (opposing oneself to the surrounding world, distinguishing between "I" and "not I"). This includes self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-worth.

3. The attitude of a person to himself and the world around him (his feelings, emotions, experiences).

4. Creative (creative) component (consciousness forms new images and concepts that were not previously in it with the help of imagination, thinking and intuition).

5. Formation of a temporary picture of the world (memory stores images of the past, imagination forms models of the future).

6. Formation of the goals of the activity (based on the needs of a person, consciousness forms the goals of the activity and directs the person to achieve them).

A.N. Leontiev singled out in the structure of human consciousness three main components: the sensory fabric of the image, meanings and personal meaning.

The sensory fabric of an image is a sensory composition of specific images of reality, actually perceived or emerging in memory, attributable to the future or only imaginary. These images differ in their modality, sensory tone, degree of clarity, stability, etc. A special function of sensory images of consciousness is that they give reality to the conscious picture of the world that opens up to the subject, in other words, the world appears for the subject as existing not in consciousness, but outside his consciousness - as an objective "field" and object of activity. Sensual images represent a universal form of mental reflection generated by the subject's objective activity.

Meanings are the most important components of human consciousness. The bearer of meanings is a socially developed language, which acts as an ideal form of existence of the objective world, its properties, connections and relations. The child learns meanings in childhood in the course of joint activities with adults. Socially developed meanings become the property of individual consciousness and allow a person to build his own experience on its basis.

Personal meaning creates the partiality of human consciousness. He points out that individual consciousness is not reducible to impersonal knowledge. Sense is the functioning of meanings in the processes of activity and consciousness of specific people. Meaning connects meanings with the reality of a person's life, with his motives and values.

You can also consider other options for the structure of human consciousness. For example, the structuring of consciousness can be based on the scale of consciousness (individual and public consciousness); components of consciousness (cognition, experience, attitude); types of mental phenomena (conscious processes, states and properties); its properties (constancy, integrity, activity), etc.

Freud developed the doctrine of the three-level organization of the psyche. The lower level is the unconscious mental, this level includes biological instincts, desires, feelings, affects, drives, the main of which is libido - sexual desire. This sphere is saturated with energy, but closed from consciousness due to social prohibitions, attitudes imposed by society. 2nd level - preconsciousness - the level of volitional regulation of behavior in real life conditions. 3rd level - the highest - consciousness - the level of reason, thinking, reflects the requirements and prohibitions that society imposes on human behavior. Since the requirements imposed on the personality by these three levels are incompatible, the personality is constantly in a situation of conflict, from which it is saved with the help of special protective mechanisms.

Into the structure of the unconscious mental includes a wide range of phenomena.

Subsensory (i.e. subthreshold) sensations and perceptions.

Interoceptive sensations that are not normally recognized when a person is healthy and begin to be realized only in case of health disorders.

Automatisms and skills that are developed over the course of life (for example, automatism of speech, walking, writing skills, work skills). Conscious activity can be performed only when most of its elements are automated. We can follow the meaning of speech and writing only if their mechanism is automated.

Impulsive actions - actions performed unaccountably, without control of consciousness. Often such actions are performed by a person in a state of passion.

Information that accumulates throughout life and is stored in memory. Of the total amount of available knowledge, at every moment, the focus of consciousness is only a small fraction of it. Forms of unconscious information processing, in particular, intuition.

Installation as a holistic state of a person, expressing the dynamic orientation of the personality towards activity in any kind of activity, a stable orientation in relation to certain objects.

Mental phenomena arising in a dream. Sleep is not a state of rest of the brain, but its activity state. “The need to distract from the signals of the outside world (this is the essence of sleep) is associated with the peculiarities of organizing information processing, with filling the information capacity of short-term memory, with the need to sort information into long-term memory, into the current program of activities, to destroy unnecessary things” (Wayne). That is, sleep, as an active state of the brain, is characterized by mental activity that is not realized by a person.

Properties of consciousness:

1) the consciousness of the individual is characterized by activity, which is primarily due to the specifics of the internal state of the subject at the moment of action, as well as the presence of a goal and sustainable activity to achieve it;

2) intentionality is inherent in consciousness, that is, focus on an object. Consciousness is always the consciousness of something;

3) the ability of human consciousness for reflection, self-observation, that is, the possibility of awareness of consciousness itself;

4) consciousness has a motivational-value character. It is always motivated, pursues some goals, which is due to the needs of the body and personality.

There are several types of consciousness human:

Everyday life - is formed first among other types of consciousness, arises when interacting with things, is fixed in the language in the form of the first concepts;

Design - covers a range of tasks related to the design and implementation of specific goals of the activity;

Scientific - relies on scientific concepts, concepts, models, explores not individual properties of objects, but their interrelationships;

Aesthetic - associated with the process of emotional perception of the surrounding world;

Ethical - determines the moral attitudes of a person (from extreme adherence to principles to immorality). Unlike other types of consciousness, the degree of development of a person's ethical (moral) consciousness is hardly assessed by him himself.

Definition 1

Consciousness is the highest, inherent only to a person, brain function, the implementation of which consists in a meaningful, generalized and purposeful reflection of the surrounding reality in the form of ideal images, control over mental processes, behavioral strategies, the direction of the course of mental and objective activity, reflection and self-reflection.

Functions of consciousness

Acting as the most important component of the personality, consciousness successfully performs a number of functions, including the following:

• cognitive - thanks to consciousness, a person forms a system of knowledge;
• goal-setting - the person is aware of his needs, carries out goal-setting, planning strategies to achieve the set goals;
• value-orientational - the person analyzes, evaluates the phenomena, processes of reality, formulates his attitude towards them;
• managerial - the person exercises control over his own behavior, the implementation of his own behavioral patterns in accordance with the goals set, formulated by the strategies for achieving them;
• communicative - consciousness exists and is transmitted in a sign form, is closely related to communication activities personality;
• reflexive - thanks to consciousness, a person exercises self-control, self-awareness, self-regulation, providing opportunities for personal development.

The structure of consciousness

Consciousness is a complex, multifaceted and multifaceted phenomenon, in the structure of which the following components can be distinguished:

1. Intelligence- the psychic abilities of a person, necessary in the process of solving mental problems. The abilities of this group include the characteristics of thinking (intensity, flexibility, consistency), memory (volume, speed of memorization, forgetting, readiness to reproduce), attention (distribution, stability, switchability, concentration, volume), perception (selectivity, observation, ability recognition). The core of intelligence is the knowledge system;
2. Motivation- a set of motives, incentives, which determines the purposefulness of a person's activity;
3. Emotions, sensory-emotional sphere - the experiences of a person, reflecting his subjective attitude, the assessment of certain phenomena, phenomena, processes, situations, social environment. The sensory-emotional sphere includes moods, feelings, experiences, emotional stress, affects, etc.;
4. Will- the ability of an individual to consciously regulate his own activities and behavior, to achieve set goals, overcoming difficulties. Volitional regulation presupposes responsibility and freedom;
5. Self-awareness- representation of one's own “I”, a part of the consciousness of the individual, which ensures its self-regulation, self-control and self-education.

Intelligence as one of the most important components of consciousness

Definition 2

Intelligence is general abilities personality to cognition, interpretation, problem solving, to the implementation of the cognitive process, effective problem solving; the ability to organize, plan, control their own activities to achieve the goal.

This concept unites all individual cognitive abilities, including perception, sensation, representation, memory, thinking, imagination.

Acting as the basis of personal consciousness, intelligence includes a number of qualities, including curiosity, depth, flexibility and mobility of the mind, consistency, breadth and evidence of thinking, ensuring the formation of a system of knowledge, ideas of the individual, and her personal development.

Thus, consciousness is a complex, multidimensional formation, in the modeling of which various personal qualities, properties, one of the priority places among which is intelligence.