The transition to consciousness represents the beginning of a new, higher stage in the development of the psyche. Conscious reflection, in contrast to the mental reflection characteristic of animals, is a reflection of objective reality in its separation from the subject's existing relations to it, that is, a reflection that highlights its objective stable properties.
In consciousness, the image of reality does not merge with the experience of the subject: in consciousness, what is reflected acts as “coming” to the subject. This means that when I am conscious, for example, of this book, or even only my thought about the book, then the book itself does not merge in my consciousness with my experience related to this book, the very thought of the book with my experience of this thought.
The singling out of a reflected reality in the mind of a person as an objective one has, as its other side, the singling out of the world of inner experiences and the possibility of developing self-observation on this basis.
The task that faces us is to trace the conditions that give rise to the highest form of the psyche - human consciousness.
As you know, the reason that underlies the process of humanization of human animal-like ancestors is the emergence of labor and the formation of human society on its basis. “... Labor,” says Engels, “created man himself.”25 Labor also created man's consciousness.
The emergence and development of labor, this first and basic condition for the existence of man, led to a change and humanization of his brain, organs of his external activity to organs
15 K. Marx, F. Engels Soch., vol. 20, p. 486.
feelings. “First, labor,” Engels says, “and then, along with it, articulate speech, were the two most important stimuli, under the influence of which the monkey brain gradually turned into a human brain, which, for all its resemblance to the monkey, far surpasses it in size and perfection. The main organ of man's labor activity - his hand - could reach its perfection only through the development of labor itself. “Only thanks to labor, thanks to adaptation to ever new operations ... the human hand has reached that high level of perfection at which it was able, as if by magic, to bring to life the paintings of Raphael, the statues of Thorvaldsen, the music of Paganini.”
If we compare the maximum volumes of the skull of great apes and the skull of primitive man, it turns out that the brain of the latter exceeds the brain of the most highly developed modern species of monkeys by more than two times (600 cm3 and 1400 cm3).
The difference in the size of the brain of monkeys and man is even sharper if we compare its weight; the difference here is almost 4 times: the weight of the orangutan brain is 350 g, the human brain weighs 1400 g.
The human brain, in comparison with the brain of higher apes, has a much more complex, much more developed structure.
Already in Neanderthal man, as shown by casts made from the inner surface of the skull, new fields, not completely differentiated in anthropoid apes, are clearly distinguished in the cortex, which then reach their full development in modern man. Such, for example, are the fields designated (according to Brodman) by the numbers 44, 45, 46 - in the frontal lobe of the cortex, fields 39 and 40 - in its parietal lobe, 41 and 42 - in the temporal lobe (Fig. 18).
It is very clearly seen how new, specifically human features are reflected in the structure of the cerebral cortex when studying the so-called projection motor field (in Fig. 18 it is indicated by the number 4). If you carefully irritate various points of this field with an electric current, then by the contraction of various muscle groups caused by irritation, you can accurately imagine what place the projection of this or that organ occupies in it. W. Penfield expressed the result of these experiments in the form of a schematic and, of course, conditional drawing, which we present here (Fig. 19). From this drawing, made on a certain scale, it is clear what a relatively large surface the projection of such organs of movement as the arms (hands) occupies in the human brain, and especially the organs of sound speech (muscles of the mouth, tongue, organs of the larynx), the functions of which developed especially intensively. in the conditions of human society (labor, verbal communication).
Rice. 18. Areal map of the brain (according to Brodman)
Under the influence of labor and in connection with the development of the brain, the human senses were also improved. Like the organs of external activity, they acquired qualitatively new features. The sense of touch was refined, the humanized eye began to notice more in things than the eyes of the most far-sighted bird, a hearing developed that was able to perceive the subtlest differences and similarities in the sounds of human articulate speech.
In turn, the development of the brain and sense organs had an inverse effect on labor and language, "giving both more and more impetus for further development."
The individual anatomical and physiological changes created by labor necessarily entailed, by virtue of natural interdependence, the development of organs and a change in the organism as a whole. Thus, the emergence and development of labor led to a change in the entire physical appearance of a person, to a change in his anatomical and physiological organization.
Of course, the emergence of labor was prepared by the entire previous course of development. The gradual transition to an upright gait, the rudiments of which are clearly observed even in the existing anthropoid apes, and the formation in connection with this of especially mobile forelimbs adapted for grasping objects, more and more freed from the function of walking - all this created the physical prerequisites for the ability to produce complex labor operations.
Rice. 19. Brain Man by W. Penfield
The process of labor was also being prepared from the other side. The appearance of labor was possible only among animals that lived in whole groups and that had sufficiently developed forms of cohabitation, although these forms, of course, were still very far from even the most primitive forms of human, social life. The most interesting studies by N. Yu. Voytonis and N. A. Tikh, carried out in the Sukhum nursery, testify to how high stages of development the forms of living together in animals can reach. As these studies show, in a herd of monkeys there is an already established system of relationships and a kind of hierarchy with a correspondingly very complex system of communication. At the same time, these studies make it possible once again to make sure that, despite the complexity of internal relations in a herd of monkeys, they are still limited to directly biological relations and are never objectively determined by the objective content of animal activity.
Finally, an essential prerequisite for labor was also the presence among the highest representatives of the animal world of highly developed, as we have seen, forms of mental reflection of reality.
All these moments in their totality constituted the main conditions due to which, in the course of further evolution, labor and a human society based on labor could arise.
What is that specifically human activity which is called labor?
Labor is a process that connects man with nature, the process of man's influence on nature. “Labor,” says Marx, “is first of all a process taking place between man and nature, a process in which man, through his own activity, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. He himself opposes the substance of nature as a force of nature. In order to appropriate the substance of nature in a form suitable for his own life, he sets in motion the natural forces belonging to his body: hands and feet.
gi, head and fingers. Acting through this movement on the external nature and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops the forces dormant in her and subordinates the play of these forces to his own power.
Labor is primarily characterized by the following two interrelated features. One of them is the use and manufacture of tools. "Labour," says Engels, "begins with the making of tools."
Another characteristic feature of the labor process is that it takes place in conditions of joint, collective activity, so that in this process a person enters into certain relationships not only with nature, but also with other people - members of this society. Only through relations with other people does a person relate to nature itself. This means that labor appears from the very beginning as a process mediated by a tool (in the broad sense) and at the same time socially mediated.
The use of tools by man also has a natural history of its preparation. Already in some animals, as we know, the beginnings of tool activity exist in the form of the use of external means with the help of which they carry out individual operations (for example, the use of soldering in anthropoid apes). These external means - the "tools" of animals - however, are qualitatively different from the true tools of man - the tools of labor.
The difference between them is not at all that animals use their "tools" in rarer cases than primitive people. Their difference can still less be reduced to differences in their external form. We can reveal the real difference between human tools and animal "tools" only by turning to an objective examination of the very activity in which they are included.
No matter how complex the "tool" activity of animals, it never has the character of a social process, it is not carried out collectively and does not determine the relations of communication of the individuals who carry it out. However, on the other hand, the instinctive communication between the individuals that make up the animal community may be complex, it is never built on the basis of their "productive" activity, does not depend on it, is not mediated by it.
In contrast, human labor is an activity originally social, based on the cooperation of individuals, involving at least a rudimentary technical division of labor functions; labor, therefore, is a process of influencing nature, connecting its participants among themselves, mediating their communication. “In production,” says Marx, “people enter into a relationship not only with nature. They are
they cannot produce without uniting in a certain way for joint activity and for the mutual exchange of their activity. In order to produce, people enter into certain connections and relations, and only within the framework of these social connections and relations does their relation to nature exist, production takes place.
In order to understand the concrete significance of this fact for the development of the human psyche, it is sufficient to analyze how the structure of activity changes when it is carried out under the conditions of collective labor.
Already at the earliest time in the development of human society, a separation of the previously single process of activity between individual participants in production inevitably arises. Initially, this division seems to be random and inconsistent. In the course of further development, it takes shape already in the form of a primitive technical division of labor.
It now falls to the lot of some individuals, for example, to maintain the fire and process food on it, to the lot of others - to get the food itself. Some participants in a collective hunt perform the function of pursuing game, others - the function of waiting for it in ambush and attacking.
This leads to a decisive, radical change in the very structure of the activity of individuals - participants in the labor process.
We have seen above that any activity that directly carries out the biological, instinctive relations of animals to the nature around them is characterized by the fact that it is always directed towards objects of biological need and is stimulated by these objects. In animals, there is no activity that would not meet one or another direct biological need, which would not be caused by an impact that has a biological meaning for the animal - the meaning of an object that satisfies its given need, and which would not be directed by its own the last link directly to this subject. In animals, as we have already said, the object of their activity and its biological motive are always merged, always coincide with each other.
8*
Let us now consider from this point of view the fundamental structure of the activity of the individual in the conditions of the collective labor process. When a given member of the team carries out his labor activity, he also does it to satisfy one of his needs. Thus, for example, the activity of a beater, a participant in a primitive collective hunt, is motivated by the need for food or, perhaps, the need for clothing, which the skin of a slain animal serves for him. What, however, is his activity directly aimed at?^ It can be aimed, for example, at frightening away a herd of animals and directing it towards other hunters hiding in ambush. This, in fact, is what should be the result of the action
the strength of this person. On this, the activity of this individual participant in the hunt stops. The rest is done by other participants of the hunt. It is clear that this result - the frightening of game, etc. - in itself does not lead and cannot lead to the satisfaction of the beater's need for food, animal skin, etc. What these processes of his activity are aimed at, therefore, does not coincide with what motivates them, i.e., does not coincide with the motive of his activity: both here are divided among themselves. Such processes, the subject and motive of which do not coincide, we will call actions. It can be said, for example, that the activity of a beater is hunting, while frightening game is his action.
How is the birth of an action possible, i.e., the separation of the object of activity and its motive? Obviously, it becomes possible only under the conditions of a joint, collective process of influencing nature. The product of this process, which on the whole meets the needs of the collective, also leads to the satisfaction of the need of the individual, although he himself may not carry out those final operations (for example, a direct attack on the prey and its killing) that already directly lead to the mastery of the object of this need. . Genetically (i.e., in its origin), the separation of the object and motive of individual activity is the result of the ongoing isolation from the previously complex and multi-phase, but unified activity of individual operations. These separate operations, now exhausting the content of the given activity of the individual, turn into an independent action for him, although in relation to the collective labor process as a whole they continue, of course, to remain only one of its particular links.
The natural prerequisites for this isolation of individual operations and their acquisition of a certain independence in individual activity are, apparently, the following two main (although not the only) moments. One of them is the often joint nature of instinctive activity and the existence of a primitive "hierarchy" of relationships between individuals, observed in communities of higher animals, such as monkeys. Another important point is the separation in the activity of animals, which still continues to retain all its integrity, of two different phases - the phase of preparation and the phase of implementation, which can significantly move away from each other in time. For example, experiments show that a forced interruption of activity in one of its phases makes it possible to delay the further reaction of animals only very slightly, while an interruption between phases gives the same animal a delay that is tens and even hundreds of times greater (experiments A V. Zaporozhets).
However, despite the presence of an undoubted genetic connection between the two-phase intellectual activity of higher animals and the activity of an individual, which is included in the collective labor process as one of its links, between
there is a huge difference between them. It is rooted in the difference in those objective connections and relations that underlie them, to which they correspond and which are reflected in the psyche of acting individuals.
A feature of the two-phase intellectual activity of animals is, as we have seen, that the connection between both (or even several) phases is determined by physical, material connections and relationships - spatial, temporal, mechanical. In the natural conditions of the existence of animals, these are also always natural, natural connections and relationships. The psyche of higher animals, respectively, is characterized by the ability to reflect these material, natural connections and relationships.
When the animal, making a detour, moves away from the prey earlier and only then seizes it, then this complex activity is subject to the spatial relations of the situation perceived by the animal; the first part of the path - the first phase of activity with natural necessity leads the animal to the possibility of carrying out its second phase.
The form of human activity we are considering has a decidedly different objective basis.
The frightening of the game by the beater leads to the satisfaction of his need for it not at all due to the fact that such are the natural correlations of a given material situation; rather, on the contrary, in normal cases, these natural relationships are such that the frightening of the game destroys the possibility of mastering it. What, then, connects the immediate result of this activity with its final result? Obviously, nothing else than the relation of this individual to other members of the collective, by virtue of which he receives from their hands his part of the booty - part of the product of joint labor activity. This relation, this connection is carried out thanks to the activities of other people. This means that it is the activity of other people that constitutes the objective basis of the specific structure of the activity of the human individual; This means that historically, i.e., according to the method of its occurrence, the connection of a motive with the object of action reflects not natural, but objective social ties and relations.
Thus, the complex activity of higher animals, which is subject to natural material connections and relations, turns in man into an activity that is subject to connections and relations that are originally social. This is the immediate cause due to which a specifically human form of reflection of reality arises - human consciousness.
The isolation of an action necessarily presupposes the possibility of mental reflection by the acting subject of the relationship between the objective motive of the action and its object. Otherwise, the action is impossible, it loses its meaning for the subject. So, if we turn to our previous example, it is obvious that the beater's action is possible only under the condition of reflection
to them the connection between the expected result of the action he personally performs and the end result of the entire hunting process as a whole - an ambush attack on a fleeing animal, killing it and, finally, its consumption. Initially, this connection appears before a person in its still sensually perceived form - in the form of real actions of other participants in labor. Their actions give meaning to the subject of the beater's action. Similarly, vice versa: only the actions of the beater justify, give meaning to the actions of people waiting for game in ambush, if it were not for the actions of the beaters, then the ambush would be meaningless, unjustified.
Thus, here again we meet with such an attitude, with such a connection, which determines the direction of activity. This relation, however, is fundamentally different from those relations to which the activity of animals is subject. It is created in the joint activity of people and is impossible outside of it. What the action is directed to, subject to this new relationship, in itself may not have any direct biological meaning for a person, and sometimes even contradict it. So, for example, frightening game in itself is biologically meaningless. It acquires meaning only in conditions of collective labor activity. These conditions give human rational meaning to the action.
Thus, along with the birth of action, this main "unit." human activity, the main, social in nature "unit" of the human psyche arises - a reasonable meaning for a person of what his activity is aimed at.
It is necessary to dwell on this specifically, because this is a very important point for a concrete psychological understanding of the genesis of consciousness. Let's explain our idea again.
When a spider rushes in the direction of a vibrating object, then its activity is subject to a natural relationship that connects vibration with the food property of an insect that enters the web. By virtue of this relationship, vibration acquires for the spider the biological meaning of food. Although the connection between the property of an insect to cause the web to vibrate and the property to serve as food actually determines the activity of the spider, but as a connection, as a relation, it is hidden from him, it "does not exist for him." Therefore, if you bring any vibrating object to the web, for example, a sounding tuning fork, the spider still rushes to it.
The beater, who frightens the game, also subordinates his action to a certain connection, a certain relationship, namely, the relationship that connects the escape of the prey and its subsequent capture, but this connection is no longer based on a natural, but on a social relationship - the beater's labor connection with others. participants in a collective hunt.
As we have already said, the sight of the game itself, of course, cannot yet induce to frighten it. For a person to accept
take on the function of a beater, it is necessary that his actions be in a relationship that connects their result with the final result of collective activity; it is necessary that this relationship be subjectively reflected by him, so that it becomes "existing for him"; it is necessary, in other words, that the meaning of his actions be revealed to him, be realized by him. Consciousness of the meaning of the action takes place in the form of reflection of its object as a conscious goal.
Now the connection between the object of the action (its goal) and what motivates the activity (its motive) is revealed to the subject for the first time. It is revealed to him in its immediately sensuous form, in the form of the activity of the human labor collective. This activity is reflected in the human head no longer in subjective fusion with the object, but as an objective-practical attitude of the subject to it. Of course, under the conditions under consideration, this is always a collective subject, and, consequently, the relations of individual labor participants are initially reflected by them only to the extent that their relations coincide with the relations of the labor collective as a whole.
However, the most important, decisive step has already been taken. The activity of people is now separated for their consciousness from objects. It begins to be recognized by them precisely as their relation. But this means that nature itself - the objects of the world around them - now also stands out for them and appears in its stable relation to the needs of the collective, to its activities. Thus, food, for example, is perceived by a person as an object of a certain activity - searches, hunting, cooking, and at the same time as an object that satisfies certain needs of people, regardless of whether this person has a direct need for it and whether it is now the object of his own activities. Therefore, it can be distinguished by him from other objects of reality not only practically, in the activity itself and depending on the present need, but also “theoretically”, i.e., it can be retained in the mind, it can become an “idea”.
As K. Marx notes, "people begin with production", because only it provides a person with the satisfaction of his material needs. Labor, as we know, is a process taking place between man and nature, a process in which man, through his own activity, mediates, regulates and controls metabolism. On the basis of material activities, human consciousness grows. The formation of consciousness is primarily associated with the emergence in the course of labor activity of a specifically human attitude to the outside world, which is mediated by new motives, incentives for activity.
All animal behavior makes sense for him only insofar as it is somehow directed to the satisfaction of biological needs - food, sexual, defensive. True, in some animals, especially in anthropoid apes, one can notice a developed orienting-exploratory activity. If the monkey has nothing to do, then it begins to feel the objects around it. It would seem that there is behavior that is not motivated by a biological need. However, this is not so: under natural conditions, such actions contribute to the detection of biologically important features for the organism, and, therefore, they are of an opportunistic nature. With this trait in mind, Marx emphasized that the animal also produces. It builds a nest or dwelling for itself, as a bee, a beaver, an ant, etc., do. But the animal produces only what it itself or its cub directly needs.
Of course, man is also a biological being. In order to live, he must eat, drink, procreate, etc. But his biological needs have lost their purely animal character. So, the food consumed by a person should not only be high-calorie, but also be specially prepared. Qualitatively new needs arise and develop in a person in the course of social life. Among them, first of all, is the need for labor activity, changing objects, and hence the tools themselves. All this leads to the formation of a fundamentally new relationship between man and the world around him. Significant for a person are not only those phenomena that are directly related to the satisfaction of an immediate material or biological need, but also those that serve these needs indirectly. Already the production of tools of labor in itself is the creation of such objects that are not directly included in the system of satisfying immediate needs.
Based on the development of specifically social material needs, a system of, so to speak, non-utilitarian needs is formed in a person. This is a need for communication, knowledge of the truth, an aesthetic need, etc. In connection with this, a specific theoretical, aesthetic, etc. attitude of a person towards his object arises. Since human labor is feasible only in the presence of social relations and a person's awareness of his function in an integral system, his relationship with other people, to the extent that a person himself becomes an object of knowledge. Knowing the outside world, people are forced to move on to understanding themselves, their practical and spiritual activities. Consciousness becomes self-consciousness.
Social needs not only determine the range of objects to be known, but act as determinants of the significance of objects, their role for a person. The thing is that the objects of cognition and activity, being included in the sphere of human activity, act for him not only from the side of natural properties, but also as socially significant, having value. Value (practically utilitarian, aesthetic, etc.) is a certain function that an object acquires in the course of human activity, serving to satisfy some needs. As you can see, although value is a feature of objects associated with their natural characteristics, it is not reduced to them; it is, as it were, the second, already the social being of the thing. Therefore, in the process of cognition, the object is revealed by the subject both as a natural phenomenon and as significant for his activity. This means that evaluation activity becomes a factor in the cognition of an object. An evaluative attitude, during which the meaning of an object for the subject is revealed, its internal connection with certain human needs is revealed, and constitutes a specific side of the human relationship to the outside world. A person, in other words, carries out cognition by applying to them certain socially developed measures - practical, theoretical, aesthetic, moral, etc.
The restructuring of the sphere of cognitive activity and the system of social relations is carried out under the influence of human labor activity, is associated with the formation of the ability to set goals. Goal setting is a specific feature of a person, born in him in the process of labor, based on needs and characterizing the peculiarity of consciousness. This follows from the fact that the satisfaction of human needs is carried out in the course of changes in the phenomena of the external world. The presentation of the results of activity in the form of an image to be created is the main content of the goal. The goal is a reflection of reality in the mind of a person in the form that it should become in the process of practice. Setting a goal means not only the formation of an ideal result of activity, but also certain conditions, means and forms of activity. Emphasizing the connection of all these components, K. Marx noted that the result of labor should have been present in a person's head "ideally, as an internal image, as a need, as an incentive and as a goal" *.
* K. Marx and F. Engels. Soch., vol., 12, p. 718.
In the formation of a plan of activity, the creative nature of consciousness is revealed. If the subject creates a certain product, thing, object, then, first of all, in the process of ideal activity, the subject forms an image of what is created in the form of a visual representation, which is objectified by him in diagrams, drawings, image plans, in sign systems. Created models or images of the future go far beyond the present, the past, and therefore beyond the boundaries of reproducing ideas.
The creative activity of consciousness makes it possible to reproduce the dynamics of an object. In the case of goal setting, we are talking about reproducing the dynamics of an object in the course of practical activity; placing objects in connection with the tools of labor, the subject causes changes in them, allowing them to fully understand their nature.
In goal-setting, the result of activity is defined in its relation to the objective properties of the objects being changed, as well as to the change itself, since here it is always given in unity with certain means and forms of activity. If, as a result of the activity, the objective laws to which the subject of activity is subject are correctly taken into account, the necessary means are selected and adequate forms of activity are determined, then the created plan will be adequate to the future result. In this case, the mental transformation of the object in the course of creating a plan that expresses the final result of people's actions will also be adequate.
The problem of the origin of consciousness is, in fact, the problem of the origin of man, because the bearer of consciousness in the only form known to us today is man. The idea of a plurality of worlds, forms of life and intelligence has been repeatedly expressed by scientists and philosophers in the course of history, and modern science is listening to this point of view. For example, the hypothesis of coexistence on Earth, along with a protein-nucleic acid other - field - life form, according to its supporters, may be fruitful for explaining UFOs, telepathy, unusual extrasensory abilities of individuals, as well as the strangeness of the worldview of young children. Reflections on various forms of rationality have the right to exist, but they are still hypothetical in nature and are inherent not only and not even so much in scientists as in science fiction writers.
In the space age it would be strange not to meet with the idea of the cosmic origin of life, man, his mind. An alternative to the terrestrial version of the origin of life is the idea of bringing the organic principle to Earth from space, for example, on the “tail” of a comet (in line with the concept of panspermia, where life is considered an integral, attributive property of space). Having found favorable conditions on Earth, life evolved up to its highest forms. In another variant anthropogenesis(the origin of man) is considered through an appeal to some extraterrestrial "operator". The situation with the origin of man is artificially created, as it were, in a space “laboratory flask” (on Earth), and developing hominids (later humans) act in the passive role of guinea pigs of super-perfect and very inquisitive representatives of some super-civilizations.
Modern science does not have sufficient material to confirm the hypotheses of the extraterrestrial, extraterrestrial origin of man. But the very fact that anthropogenesis is “inscribed” not only in the history of the development of life on our planet, but also in the processes taking place in the Universe, science considers indisputable. She established the fact of interference in the evolution of living beings (especially higher ones) by the cosmic factor in the form of a periodic change in the Earth's magnetic poles (geomagnetic inversions). As a result of inversions, ionizing radiation increased and the frequency of mutations (changes in the hereditary fund of the living) increased. Under the influence of radiation (whose nature can be not only cosmic, but also volcanic, seismic, magmatic, etc.) and the mutations caused by it, the psychophysiological organization of the human fossil ancestor was restructured. This served as a prerequisite for changing the stereotypes of the life of our ape-like ancestors and the emergence of labor - the main line of anthroposociogenesis.
In 1859, a book by an English naturalist was published in London Ch. Darwin"The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection" and, in 1871, "The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection." They outlined the theory of evolution of the organic world, expressed the idea of the genetic relationship of man as a biological species Homo sapiens with higher mammals. Evolutionary ideas were expressed by many natural scientists even before Darwin (J.B. Lamarck, A.R. Wallace, P. Mathieu, etc.). But it was Darwin, relying on numerous facts, who developed the theory of the origin of species, the essence of which is the idea of natural selection and the survival of the fittest. The origin of man fit into the process of speciation, its laws. The direction of evolution is created, according to Darwin, only by natural selection. Hereditary variability provides only material for natural selection; it does not have an adaptive character and a definite direction.
At the time of Darwin, genetics did not yet exist, therefore the concepts of variability and heredity were either abstractly vague or interpreted in a sense close to Lamarckism. Lamarck proceeded from the concept later refuted by genetics, according to which acquired traits are inherited. There are other provisions of Darwin's theory that have come to the attention of his critics (the absolutization of gradualness and the underestimation of leaps in evolution, the consideration of evolution only as an adaptive process, etc.). But the main principles of Darwinism are significant today. In the 1920s, the synthetic theory of evolution (STE) was born, which is an updated Darwinism based on the synthesis of Darwin's ideas with the achievements of genetics and molecular biology. It is possible and necessary to get acquainted with modern evolutionary theory by referring to additional literature.
The evolutionary theory of Darwin became the subject of special attention of F. Engels, who named it among the natural-science prerequisites for the formation of Marxist philosophy. His essay "The Role of Labor in the Transformation of Ape into Man" (1876) opens with references to Darwin's work and raising the question of the role of social factors in human evolution. Darwin, pointing to the natural origin of man, faced insurmountable difficulties in explaining a number of facts of the social life of people that interested him; they could not be explained from the standpoint of natural selection. Only by singling out labor as the basic condition of all human life did Engels significantly clarify many aspects of anthropogenesis, overcoming a certain limitation of Darwinism in the specific historical form in which it was formulated by the author himself. He substantiated the close relationship between the origin of man and the formation of society. Engels thus made a great contribution to theory of anthroposociogenesis, and in conditions when many specific sciences (archeology, paleontology, etc.), investigating the problem of the origin of man, were still in their infancy.
Labor has not canceled the action of the biological mechanisms of variability and heredity. However, he transformed the nature and direction of natural selection by "introducing" the ability of emerging people to create and use artificial tools, to cooperate with their own kind, to work together to transform the environment, and not just adapt to it. Because of this, natural selection in human society gradually lost its significance.
Labor and its influence on the formation of consciousness. K. Marx and F. Engels considered work as a universal purposeful objective activity of a person to transform external nature with the help of tools. They emphasized that labor is a process of changing not only nature, but also man himself.
Speaking about the role of labor in the origin of man, it must be borne in mind that labor has undergone changes in the course of history and some of its features have been formed as human consciousness itself has been formed. In its developed form, it represents the conscious, purposeful activity of people, in its origins it acted as a factor in the formation of consciousness. And as such, he already possessed a number of features that distinguish him from the life of animals.
Work, firstly, has the character of an active-transformative, and not a passive-adaptive activity. Secondly, the primary result of such activity is the manufacture of tools, which then turn out to be a means of carrying out labor activity. Manufactured tools can be intended for the manufacture of other tools, so labor presupposes an integral system of tools for production activity. Moreover, the process of making and using tools of labor serves to consolidate relations between individuals that are adequate for this activity. Therefore, an object simply extracted from the external environment cannot be considered an instrument of labor. Thirdly, labor is a social, collective process, and not the activity of individuals.
By embodying these features, labor had a decisive influence on the formation of consciousness. Let us specify this effect by highlighting three main directions.
1. Actually anthropological direction, which allows us to trace the influence of labor on the anatomical, physiological, morphological structure of a person. This aspect of the problem is based on the principle of the hominid triad, first formulated by Engels.
It was already Ch. Darwin and his like-minded people who discovered the genetic connection between the bodily organization of man and the morphological structure of his closest animal ancestors - anthropoids, anthropoid apes. The change in the type of life activity of anthropoids led to a corresponding restructuring of their anatomical and morphological structure. Joint activities using first natural and then artificial tools led to the separation of the hominin family from the order of primates with three main features that distinguish them: upright posture, a specific structure of the hand, and a complex organization of the brain. Modern authors supplement Engels' "triad" with other features that distinguish humans from primates: structural features of the skeleton, chest, jaw, etc. In the literature, the signs are not simply stated, but their sequence is analyzed in the course of the formation of a person: first, the differentiation of the upper and lower extremities, i.e. bipedal vertical walking and a free hand, later - the development of the brain (an increase in its volume and the formation of higher centers).
Upright walking was the result of a change in the way of life of great apes - the transition from arboreal to terrestrial in open areas and near water sources. The development of bipedality (bipedia), as evidenced by the data of anthropological science, was facilitated by the factor of obtaining and assimilation of food, as well as a decrease in the area and density of forests in the ecological niche. The process of formation and consolidation of an upright gait was gradual and extremely lengthy. Apparently, anthropoids, like a child who had just learned to walk, at first got up on all fours from time to time, which helped them move faster, and most importantly, it was a more familiar and reliable way for them to move. It is possible that the psychic mechanisms of demonstration and imitation of each other, so developed in higher apes, played a significant role in fixing upright walking.
Upright walking led to the liberation of the hand, which acted as a natural biological tool in the transformation of nature. When performing labor actions, the hand began to develop, the thumb was increasingly opposed to the palm, and this made it possible to carry out more and more complex actions with objects. Hegel emphasized the importance of the hand as a specifically human organ. “The hand and especially the hand of a person,” he wrote, “is ... something only peculiar to him; not a single animal has such a mobile instrument of activity, directed outward. The human hand, this tool of tools, is capable of serving as an expression of an infinite number of manifestations of the will. The idea of the decisive role of the evolution of the hand in the separation of man from the animal world and in the transformation of the environment by him was developed in Marxist literature. Thanks to the labor, the organ and product of which it was, “the human hand has reached that high level of perfection,” wrote Engels, “on which it was able, as if by magic, to bring to life the paintings of Raphael, the statues of Thorvaldsen, the music of Paganini.”
It was the hand, as a “perceiving” (directly contacting with things) organ, that gave instructive lessons to other sense organs, for example, the eye. But the hand, as an organ of labor, had a special influence on the formation of the brain. The active hand taught the head to think before it itself became an instrument for carrying out the will of the head. The logic of practical actions turned into the logic of thinking: a person learned to think. Touch, feeling and other operations with objects, as well as the coordination of the activity of the right and left hands, were imprinted on the central nervous system, contributing to its further evolutionary development.
The development of the brain is the third element of the hominid triad, the formation of which as a human is also associated with the improvement of labor activity, the formation of society. The human brain, with all its resemblance to the monkey, wrote Engels, far surpasses it in size and perfection. Not so much the quantitative dimensions of the brain (its volume, weight), but the qualitative indicators of its structure and functioning are the criterion for determining the "line" between the monkey and man. Although, of course, an increase in the volume of the brain and especially its growth in height were the objective basis of its evolution. Studies have shown that at the final stages of anthroposociogenesis, an increasingly decisive role was played not so much by the mass of the medulla (which, for example, in the classical Neanderthal was not inferior, and sometimes even exceeded the corresponding indicator in modern man), but rather its structure, the level of morphological organization. The development of the cerebral cortex, its frontal lobes, responsible for behavioral characteristics, occurs under the influence of emerging sociality, nascent thinking, and speech. It should be noted that even in modern man, only ancient parts of the brain are formed in the embryonic period, and the process of growth and differentiation of the new cortex, the nature of which is genetically determined, occurs already after the birth of a child under the influence of factors, mainly social ones.
2. Gnoseological direction analysis allows us to reveal the influence of labor on the formation of consciousness as a specific form of reflection of reality.
Although it was not the cognitive (reflective) side that came to the fore in the emerging consciousness, but the communicative side, which ensured the “fitting” of human behavior into collective labor activity, the reflective side cannot be excluded from the characteristics of primary consciousness. At first, the reflection was predominantly sensual-objective, concrete-situational in nature, the cognitive process was still buried in emotions, and only later acquired the features characteristic of abstract-logical thinking. This process assumed the development of the human brain as its biological basis - the differentiation of the hemispheres into right and left, their functional asymmetry: the specialization of the right hemisphere in concrete-figurative, emotional reflection, and the left hemisphere in verbal-conceptual, verbal-sign. But it would be wrong to associate the change in the nature of reflection only with the evolution of the brain; labor played its role in this process.
Labor begins with the manufacture of tools that break the direct connection between man and nature. Man's attitude to nature is mediated by the process of creating and using tools, and this cannot but affect the nature of the reflection of the world.
The manufacture of labor tools is impossible without the construction of an activity plan, goal setting. The processes of creating, using tools and consuming the results of activities are separated in time, and this requires keeping in mind a sample of the future product, anticipating the desired effect. Created to satisfy a certain need, for example, food, a tool of labor only indirectly, ultimately fulfills this task (naturally, it is not directly used for food). In a word, in the process of labor, reflection becomes systematic, purposeful, leading, and these features of it are improved as labor itself develops.
Once made, a tool of labor is used many times in various situations, this is the subject of labor - an ancient person differs from an animal that episodically uses objects removed from the external environment and is not capable of consolidating the perfect action. Thanks to the repeated use of tools, the ability to analogy, generalize, and form general concepts is formed. We can say that the bearer of the first generalized image, the first abstraction, was the tool of labor. The material and the ideal acted in the process of evolution as dialectically inseparable components of the emerging consciousness.
In the process of labor, pulling the object out of natural conditions and putting it into other connections, a person reveals essential properties hidden from direct sensory observation. In the course of the manufacture of tools (change of stone under the influence of another stone and other similar processes), causal relationships were captured, abstract ideas about hardness, sharpness, etc. were born, which, with a passive attitude towards the world, cannot be revealed. Thus, there was a gradual formation of thinking as a way of reflecting internal, essential, necessary connections. The rational-logical component of primitive consciousness is concentrated in the earliest myths, the origins of which are lost on the border of the animal and social worlds.
In labor activity, not only objects are tested, but also the images of these objects: their inaccuracy and insufficient information content are revealed. Reflection develops in the direction of ever greater adequacy, consciousness acquires a cognitive (cognitive) function, which complements the regulatory function. By comparing the obtained result with the expected one, the ability to assess, evaluate reflection was developed.
Man contemplates himself in the tools and results of labor, in the world he creates. Recognizing in the process of joint labor activity of other people, he thereby realizes himself. Thus, self-consciousness as the most important element of consciousness is not suddenly and accidentally flashed in the head of a primitive man, but formed in the course of the complication and division of labor, in the process of the formation of society. Self-consciousness is the latest product of anthroposociogenesis, appearing at its final stage.
Thus, the process of formation of proper human consciousness was associated with the expansion of the epistemological horizon, with the growth of elements of abstract thinking. But it would be wrong to reduce all the richness of the emerging consciousness to the appearance of abstract-logical thinking unknown to animals. The latter coexisted with a string of object-sensory images of the surrounding world. The mind illuminated the feelings, emotions of our ancestors, gradually humanizing them. The sensual fabric of consciousness was enriched, colored with previously unknown colors, images, symbols. Evidence of this was the birth of primitive art. The most ancient mythological legends, primitive art reveal not only the subject-rational, but also the spiritual-emotional world of ancient man.
Primitive consciousness did not yet possess independence in relation to being. “The production of ideas, ideas, consciousness,” wrote the founders of Marxism, “was initially directly woven into the material activity and material communication of people, into the language of real life. The formation of ideas, thinking, spiritual communication of people are here still a direct product of the material relationship of people. This original, inevitably limited, syncretic, weakly differentiated form of consciousness, which performs cognitive and regulatory functions, is called mythological consciousness.
3. Sociological direction, within which labor is considered as a factor in the formation of society, the development of specifically human communication mechanisms - language and speech.
Primitive labor is not only a system of interaction between people and nature through tools of labor, but also a social (public, specifically primitive communal) form of relations between people due to this interaction. The manufacture of hunting tools and obtaining food, the development of fire and the construction of a dwelling required the division of functions, joint coordinated, collective actions, i.e. cooperation. Primitive cooperation determined the elementary organization, discipline and coordination of the labor activity of all members of the community, acted as the "core" of the emerging sociality. Cooperation led to the establishment of a spirit of solidarity and mutual support, mutual assistance and cooperation as forms of social relations conducive to survival. With the complication of labor activity, the emergence on this basis of social production, other types of activity, the formation of diverse social relations (industrial, political, spiritual), as well as the “clarification” on this basis of the emerging consciousness, the process of development of sociality, the formation of society took place.
The collective nature of labor required the development of means of communication through which it would be possible to transmit information (warn about enemies, signal about prey, etc.), exchange experience. The formation of man, his consciousness, human society was associated with the formation of non-biological forms of communication, the emergence of language and speech.
Animals do not have consciousness, they do not have a language equal to human. Mimic-gestural, sound means of mutual communication - the so-called "language" of animals - are tied to a specific situation and are not intended to operate with abstract concepts, abstract meaning in isolation from the current situation. They serve as a means of signaling biologically significant factors, an expression of a subjective state (caused by hunger, fear, etc.), a simple indication, a call for joint action. The analogue of this in human language are interjections, exclamations, shouts, gestures, etc. Animals do not speak verbally, and what little they have to communicate to each other can be communicated without speech. The type of communication based on the use of sound signals by higher animals served as the basis for the emergence of human language and speech.
Origin of language and speech. There are various conceptions of the origin of language and speech: theological, in which speech is "God's gift"; social contract theory, which considers language to be the result of an agreement between a certain set of people; the concept of "semantic leap", in which speech is the result of a random mutation.
From the point of view of the theory of anthroposociogenesis, the process of the formation of language, speech activity occurs simultaneously with the development of consciousness on a common labor basis. Language has a socio-psychological nature; its origin is based on the psychological need for communication, the features of labor as a collective and instrumental activity.
Joint work gave rise in our fossil ancestors to the need to say something to each other, to transfer skills and abilities, and this need created a corresponding organ for itself - the larynx, capable of making sounds, and then articulate speech. This process was accompanied by the development of the frontotemporal and parietal lobes of the brain responsible for speech activity.
The process of making and using tools played a role in the formation of speech (the second signal system). Initially, the signal function associated with the inducement to a certain action was performed by the tool itself. By its appearance, it already evoked the image of a labor action, it was a sign of a certain action. However, many properties of the tool (size, shape, etc.) made it difficult to perform the signal function, and it switched to gestures performed by the hand. Gestures in their signaling function did not need completeness and sequence of implementation and were folded into symbolic gestures. With good reason, we can say that the hand was not only the organ of labor, but also the organ of the origin of speech. However, sign language was not always acceptable for communication (in the dark, at a distance, etc.). Gradually, it was supplemented, and somewhere it was replaced by a sound, a word. If initially a labor action was identified in a person with the type of tool, then with a gesture, now with a sound, a word. A conditioned reflex connection was established in the brain between the labor action and the sound complex containing the ideal image of this labor action.
Thus, the physiological mechanism of speech formation is conditioned reflex: the sounds uttered in a given situation, accompanied by gestures, were combined in the brain with the corresponding objects and actions, and then with the ideal phenomena of consciousness. The sound from a simple stimulator of actions, the expression of emotions, has turned into a means of designating the images of objects, their properties and relationships, i.e. into a meaningful sign. Sound like signal transformed into word as an element of language and speech.
Language definition. The literature gives many definitions of the language, and this reflects the real fact of the existence of different languages, different approaches to their study.
In philosophy, language is considered as a material carrier of consciousness, which has an ideal nature. “On the “spirit,” write Marx and Engels, “from the very beginning there is a curse - to be “weighted down” by matter, which appears here in the form of moving layers of air, sounds - in a word in the form of a language.” Only being objectified, materialized, consciousness appears as a kind of social reality.
Along with verbal colloquial language, consciousness can also be expressed, objectified in material phenomena of a different kind (drawings, graphics, dance, music, etc.). These phenomena, just like the spoken language, acquire a sign function, become a sign. A material phenomenon, a material object become sign in the event that they express some content of consciousness, they become the carrier of certain social information. The sign is always associated with meaning- a reflection of objective reality expressed in the material form of a sign. There are many signs: signs-copies, signs-signs, signs-signals, signs of natural and artificial languages. The science that studies sign systems of various kinds is called semiotics.
Language is a system of signs of any physical nature, intended to serve as a means of communication and an instrument of thinking.
Allocate natural languages which are the result of the creativity of different peoples, their communication and knowledge of the world. Now there are over 2000 languages on the globe. The natural language in its vocabulary, grammatical structure historically bears the imprint of the labor, practical activities of people (for example, this conditionality can explain that in the Eskimo language there are several dozen names for a walrus: “feeding walrus”, “walrus on an ice floe”, “walrus, sailing to the west”, etc.). The diversity of languages is a blessing, not a disadvantage, of the human community. As for the Russian language, it is certainly our great asset. At the origins of the modern Russian language is the figure of A.S. Pushkin, and his current descendants should not lose all the depth and colorfulness of the national language.
Number artificial languages(languages of mathematics, logic, programming) created by man for special purposes, it is difficult to count.
The essence of language is revealed in its dual function: to serve as a means of communication (communicative function) and an instrument of thinking (cognitive or cognitive function).
Language is a means of communication. The communicative function of language finds its expression in speech. Speech- this is a direct process of communication, the exchange of thoughts, feelings, wishes, etc., which is carried out with the help of language. Speech is language in action. The structural units of speech (language) are words and sentences, texts made up of them. It is customary to single out speech (oral), written, mimic-gestural, internal. Together, these elements of the speech system form the material basis of communication and the basis for the functioning of thinking.
Communication involves the one who transmits information (writer, speaker, etc.), and the one who perceives this information (reader, listener, etc.). The individual characteristics of each of the parties leave their mark on the nature of communication. The thoughts of one person by themselves cannot affect the senses of another person, the expression "I read your mind" should not be taken literally (leaving aside the paranormal phenomena that take place, which science still needs to investigate). In order for the process of communication to take place, it is necessary to express the richness of the spiritual world of a person, for which there are various means: musical sounds, drawings, formulas and, of course, verbal language - a universal communication tool.
The word is a great power, it encourages one or another action, with its help we think, communicate, share grief and joy, bring good, and often evil. The word is a tool that can elevate a person, or humiliate, injure and even kill. And this, unfortunately, is not just a metaphor ...
Through the language of thought, the feelings of individual people are transformed from their personal property into the public, into the spiritual wealth of the whole society. Social experience and knowledge are not genetically inherited. The results of the mental work of previous generations, the accumulated experience are fixed in the language, which serves as a material form of storing the spiritual values of society and thereby plays the role mechanism of social inheritance. By mastering a language, a person goes beyond the narrow limits of individual experience, joins the accumulated cultural wealth and receives an impetus for his spiritual development.
Language is an instrument of thought. In addition to the communicative function, language has a cognitive function, which is realized through the inseparable connection between thinking and language. The word not only informs, but also generalizes.
Through language, there is a transition from sensations and perceptions to concepts. . Language helped a person mentally “break away” from a specific reality, create words denoting classes of objects and processes, as well as those properties and qualities that are not directly perceived by the senses. Sensations and perceptions do not need a word, their existence is ensured by the direct connection of a person with the world. Whereas for abstract, abstract thinking, a special system of material signs is needed, capable of becoming a carrier of generalized images of objects, phenomena, i.e. language. The need for language thus arises at the highest levels of consciousness, at the level of abstract thinking. However, it should be noted that a person does not have pure sensuality, not mediated by thinking. Highlighting the levels of reflection, we mean their relative independence and close relationship in the real process of cognition. Therefore, in general terms, the thesis of the unity of consciousness and language is indisputable.
In the literature there is a point of view about the existence of non-verbal, non-verbal thinking. The possibility of operating with only sensual and conceptual images without their accompaniment by words, gestures (information in a "pure" form) is substantiated by reference to the fact of intuitive thinking in the course of creativity, solving chess problems. Under these conditions, there is a sharp acceleration of the thought process and the "dropping" of the linguistic form, which complicates the process of operating with images. The presence of non-verbal thinking, the features of which have yet to be studied by psychologists and linguists, does not violate the fundamental position on the relationship between thinking and language.
The closeness of thinking and language, their organic relationship leads to the fact that thought receives its adequate expression precisely in language. A thought that is clear in content and harmonious in form is expressed in intelligible and consistent speech. “He who thinks clearly, speaks clearly,” says folk wisdom.
Consciousness is a single system of language and thinking that performs cognitive and communicative functions. The highest forms of communication inherent in man are possible on the basis of the ability of human thinking to penetrate into the essence of events, to reflect reality in generalized images.
Unity of language and consciousness. Language and consciousness are one: in their existence they mutually condition each other. The internal ideal content of consciousness presupposes its external material form - language. Language is the immediate reality of thought, consciousness. Consciousness is not only revealed, but also formed with the help of language. Our thoughts are built in accordance with our language, and on the other hand, we organize our speech in accordance with the logic of our thought.
But unity does not mean identity. Both sides of unity differ from each other: consciousness reflects reality, while language designates it and expresses it in thought. Speech is not thinking, otherwise, as L. Feuerbach noted, the greatest talkers would have to be the greatest thinkers. The non-identity of language and thinking is also evidenced by the fact that a grammatically correct sentence can contain a meaningless judgment. For example: "A harmless smell flees into the distance."
The determining side of unity is consciousness, thinking: being a reflection of reality, it dictates the laws of its linguistic existence. Language is more conservative than thinking, it is less flexible, less mobile. When a new thought arises, it requires an adequate linguistic form. Problems arise when they try to squeeze new content into an old sign form, and vice versa, a successfully found term, formula, etc. open space for thought.
But language not only experiences the influence of thinking, but is also able to actively influence it. It gives thought a certain coercion, exercises a kind of "tyranny" over thought, directs its movement along the channels of linguistic forms that "sculpt" the image.
There is a point of view according to which language is not a means of expressing thoughts, but rather a form that determines the way we think. Language determines the way of seeing and structuring the world. Groups of people who speak different languages perceive and comprehend the world differently. This statement is called linguistic relativity hypotheses or “the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” (named after its developers, American researchers E. Sapir and B. Whorf). The doctrine linguistic determinism. Its extreme form is linguistic idealism, who proclaimed that consciousness is not determined by the object, but by how it is represented in the language.
Of course, the influence of language (including national) on consciousness, thinking should not be exaggerated. Despite the difficulties, interethnic communication, mutual understanding of people of different cultures are possible. But it should not be underestimated either. The outstanding German philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt considered language to be the soul of a nation, it arises simultaneously with it and cannot be separated from it. It is in the language that the whole national character is imprinted.
For a long time Orthodoxy stood guard over the Russian soul and the Russian word. The words "grace", "mercy", "holiness" adorned the soul of a Russian person, with them moral values entered the consciousness of the people. The word was recognized as a gift of God, elevating a person, a negative attitude was formed towards idle talk. Orthodoxy taught that for every vain and evil word a person will give an account on the Day of Judgment, that by curbing the mouth, we purify the heart.
Alas, we now use other words. There are many barbarian words in our language, mostly of American origin. Borrowings can be convenient (for example, in the language of science), undesirable, but tolerable (for example, in everyday life, when it comes to "cartridges", "shaping", "leasing", etc.). But if borrowing is connected with the moral concepts and value system of the people, then they can be dangerous. The fact is that barbarisms are for us only a complex of sounds containing either something unknown or something distant. They do not contain the semantic depth that accompanies the words of the native language. Therefore, if any phenomenon of life, to which a stable negative attitude has developed in the worldview of the people, enshrined in the original name, is designated by an unfamiliar sound combination, then this phenomenon will be perceived indifferently or more calmly, tolerantly (compare: "murderer" and "killer") . To be called a killer is “fashionable”, while a murderer is a shame. The borrowed word, being fixed in the language, is also fixed in our consciousness, carrying with it guidelines alien to our worldview. And from thoughts to actions - within reach. Through words and with words, something foreign enters into thoughts, into the soul, into life. We must not forget that not only we control words, but also words control us, dictating attitudes, directing thoughts, feelings, deeds.
The introduction of a language system of borrowing into the semantic spaces can lead to sad consequences in the system of consciousness: to a confusion of value orientations, loss of linguistic sense, an impoverished idea of the world around, inability to vivid, imaginative thinking. The native word in our days has become a guarantor of the preservation of the self-consciousness of the Russian people, so it must be revered and protected.
When considering the problem of language and thinking, one sometimes encounters the opinion that there is not unity, but antagonism between them. Language is seen as a fetter for free thought, which, in the words of A. Schopenhauer, "dies the minute it is embodied in the word." A subtle, penetrating thought, full of nuances and shades, reflecting the changing reality, inevitably loses something in its spiritual richness, clothed in language, materializing in finished forms. Perhaps this was what F.I. Tyutchev meant when he said: “A thought uttered is a lie.” However, the separation of language from thinking, their opposition leads, on the one hand, to the mystification of consciousness, which is deprived of the material means of its existence, and on the other hand, to the formalization of language, which, outside of its subject content, is reduced to a simple operation with formulas.
In reality, there is a dialectical relationship between language and thinking, consciousness, which does not allow either their identification, or their separation and opposition.
The topic of language throughout the history of philosophy has aroused the interest of thinkers. But modern Western philosophy is thoroughly saturated with attention to language, it is at the center of research in a number of areas.
Analytical philosophy, a variety of which is neopositivism, the subject of philosophy is the analysis of scientific statements clothed in language. She is characterized by a particular interest in semantics (the theory of meaning and meaning) and syntax (the combination of words in a sentence). Clarifying the meaning and meaning of scientific statements, achieving maximum clarity of the language of science is the goal of the activity of a philosopher-analyst.
hermeneutics understands language as the very being of essence, and not as a means of expressing it, i.e. ontologizes the language. Language is the "house of being". It is considered as an environment in which the process of understanding is carried out. Being open to understanding is language (Gadamer).
Postmodernism puts the language at the center of philosophizing, primarily the text, which is subjected to deconstruction (destruction, decomposition), but not with the aim of revealing any original meaning hidden in it, but with the aim of its construction, construction. Within the framework of postmodernism, the meaning is constituted in the course of reading the text, its source is declared to be the Reader, which entails the idea of the “Death of the Author” (which is the reverse side of the idea of the “Death of the Subject” fundamental to postmodernism). For postmodernism, language is a universal environment for human sensibility, and the deconstruction of the text also aims to liberate this sensibility (pleasure, pleasure, pain, suffering).
In the work of J. Lacan, the author of the concept of "structural psychoanalysis", which can be characterized as "post-Freudian", language is the "language of desires", rooted in the unconscious sphere. Hence the fundamental Lacanian thesis: "the unconscious is structured like a language." The unconscious is not a language, but is structured, realized in formal breaks, shifts and layers of language.
Consciousness is the highest form of a generalized reflection of the objective stable properties and patterns of the surrounding world, characteristic of a person, the formation of an internal model of the external world in a person, as a result of which knowledge and transformation of the surrounding reality is achieved.
Consciousness develops in a person only in social contacts. In phylogenesis, human consciousness has developed and becomes possible only under conditions of active influence on nature, in conditions of labor activity. Consciousness is possible only under the conditions of the existence of language, speech, which arises simultaneously with consciousness in the process of labor.
And the primary act of consciousness is the act of identification with the symbols of culture, organizing human consciousness, making a person a person. The isolation of the meaning, symbol and identification with it is followed by the implementation, the active activity of the child in reproducing patterns of human behavior, speech, thinking, consciousness, the active activity of the child in reflecting the world around him and regulating his behavior.
Since man did not develop in the order of biological evolution, but in the process of the history of human societies, “consciousness ... from the very beginning is a social product and remains so as long as people exist at all” (3). A person is born without consciousness, but already having the individual characteristics of his psyche. In the process of communication with other people and activities, his psyche develops and becomes consciousness. All mental phenomena in a person are conscious, as they manifest his consciousness, but not all can be equally conscious. Unconscious actions are highly automated skills, some habits, ideomotor and emotion-induced impulsive actions.
Labor played a decisive role in the development of consciousness. Labor is “the first basic condition of all human life, and, moreover, to such an extent that in a certain sense we must say: labor created man himself,” wrote F. Engels. Labor is a special type of interaction between man and nature, in which a person realizes a consciously set goal.
Labor activity is not an adaptation of a person to nature, which is inherent in an animal, but a change in it.
Historically, the primary type of human activity is labor. Labor as a whole is not a psychological, but a social category. In its basic social laws, it is not the subject of psychology, but of the social sciences. Therefore, the subject of psychological study is not labor as a whole, but only the psychological components of labor activity. K. Marx in his works characterizes labor as a conscious purposeful activity, which is directed to the implementation of the result and is regulated by the will in accordance with its conscious Purpose. Directed by its main orientation towards the creation of a certain result, labor is at the same time the main way of personality formation. In the process of labor, not only this or that product of the labor activity of the subject is born, but it is also formed in labor. In labor activity, the abilities of a person develop, his character is formed.
The link between man and nature is the tools of his labor. During communication in joint work, people had a need to say something to each other. This need, which gave birth to language, created concepts as a force that directly affects the development of consciousness. Thanks to language, a person began to possess not only individual experience, but also the experience of pre-existing generations. At the same time, labor has developed and continues to develop human self-awareness.
In labor, not only the technique of labor is essential, but also the attitude of man to labor. It is in it that the main motives of human labor activity are concluded. This subjective relation of man to labor is due to the objective social relations reflected in the minds of people. Normally, work is a basic human need. To work means to show oneself in activity. In labor, as in the real activity of a person, all aspects and manifestations of his personality participate to one degree or another. Each type of labor has its own more or less complex technique that must be mastered. Thus, labor occupies a special place in the system of human activity. It was thanks to labor that man built modern society, created objects of material and spiritual culture.
Human consciousness arose as a result of the transition from animal existence to labor activity. The animal adapts to nature, while man changes nature to meet his needs.
The peculiarity of this production, labor activity, which constitutes the main, decisive difference between man and his animal ancestors, determines the features of the conscious psyche of man.
Labor is primarily characterized by two interconnected traits:
- the use and manufacture of tools,
- social, collective nature of labor activity.
The prerequisites for this were already created, as we have seen, in monkeys. Such prerequisites were the partial liberation of the hand from the function of movement and its adaptation to the function of grasping, the development of the ability to manipulate things under the control of vision, the development of the rudiments of mental activity. However, one more decisive step was required - the transition to a straight gait and the complete liberation of the hand from the function of movement, in order to move from the accidental use of tools by higher apes to the labor activity of the first people, based on the manufacture and use of tools.
Numerous experiments have shown that a monkey can sometimes use a stick, branch or other long object in order to get the bait (banana, orange), which he cannot reach with his hand. However, there is an essential difference between a real tool and a stick that a monkey uses as a "tool" for getting a banana. This difference is connected with the collective nature of labor. Labor arose as a collective activity, and from the very beginning, the tools of labor were characterized by certain methods of use, developed by a given collective and known to this collective. Therefore, the tools could be made "for the future" and stored by the team. We find nothing of the kind in monkeys. The "method of using" a banana stick is not assigned to that stick and becomes a property of it known to a whole group of monkeys.
The use of a stick as a "tool" has a random, episodic character. Therefore, animals never store their "tools". The use of tools is associated with the awareness of some stable permanent properties of the object and equally stable relations of this object to others. It is impossible to make and use a tool without realizing that it is a means of obtaining food or clothing, without being aware, therefore, of the relation that it has to those things that are obtained with the help of it. And in order to manufacture and store a tool for future use, one must realize that this relationship has a permanent, stable character. Awareness of the constant properties of an object and its relationship to other objects is one of the most important signs of the transition from the rudiments of mental activity observed in animals to conscious human thinking.
The collective nature of labor presupposes a certain cooperation of individuals, i.e., a certain, at least the most elementary, division of labor operations. Such a division is possible only if each individual is aware of the connection of his actions with the actions of other members of the collective and, thus, with the achievement of the ultimate goal.
Let us take, for example, the activity of a beater in the conditions of primitive collective hunting. What motivates him to act? - The need for meat or the skin of an animal. The ultimate goal pursued by all participants in the hunt is to take possession of the meat and skin of the animal. However, the immediate goal of the beater's actions is completely different - to frighten the beast and drive it away from itself. What sense would these actions have if the beater did not realize the connection of his actions with the actions of other participants in the hunt and, thereby, with the achievement of the ultimate goal - obtaining meat and skin of an animal? Obviously, the actions of the beater are possible only because he is aware of his actions as a means leading to the achievement of the ultimate goal of the hunt.
Thus, in the conditions of collective labor, human activity becomes purposeful, i.e., it involves awareness of the goal and the means that lead to the achievement of this goal. This is one of the fundamental differences between human activity and consciousness and the behavior and psyche of animals.
Animals don't have a language. True, animals often influence each other with the help of voice sounds. An example is the signals given by guard birds in a flock. As soon as a person or a predatory animal approaches a flock of cranes that have descended on a meadow, the guard bird utters a piercing cry and rises into the air with a noisy flapping of its wings, and the entire crane flock is removed after it. However, these cases are only superficially similar to the verbal communication of people. The call of a bird is not with the conscious purpose of informing the birds of an approaching danger; a cry is part of an instinctive reaction to danger, a reaction that includes, in addition to a cry, the flapping of wings, takeoff, etc. Other birds take off not because they "understood the meaning" of this cry, but because of the instinctive connection between this scream and fly.
Conditional signals for an animal can be a variety of objects or their individual properties, coinciding in time with the appearance of food or the approach of danger. Such signaling, which provides orientation in the environment according to the properties and characteristics of surrounding objects and phenomena, which has common patterns for higher animals and humans, was called by IP Pavlov the first signal system.
In humans, unlike animals, a sound language has developed in the process of labor and social life. Words and combinations of words that we hear, see or feel when pronouncing, also signal certain objects or relations of things around us. This constitutes the second signaling system, which is a product of social life and forms a specially human “increase” not found in animals.
“In the developing animal world in the human phase,” writes I. P. Pavlov, “an extraordinary increase in the mechanisms of nervous activity occurred. For an animal, reality is signaled almost exclusively only by stimuli and traces of them in the cerebral hemispheres, which directly come to special cells of the visual, auditory and other receptors of the body ... This is the first signal system of reality that we have in common with animals. But the word constituted the second, especially our, signal system of reality, being the signal of the first signals.
About the meaning of verbal influences, I. P. Pavlov writes:
“A word for a person is the same real conditioned stimulus as all the others that he has in common with animals, but at the same time it is as comprehensive as any others, not going in this respect in any quantitative and qualitative comparison with the conditioned stimuli of animals. The word, thanks to the entire previous life of an adult, is associated with all external and internal stimuli that come to the cerebral hemispheres, signals them all, replaces them all, and therefore can cause all those actions, reactions of the body that cause those stimuli.
The second signaling system is inextricably linked with the first; in humans, there is always an interaction of both signaling systems. The second signaling system makes it possible to store the accumulated knowledge in a generalized form, serves to communicate between people and underlies the mechanism of human thinking. Through the second signal system, in its interaction with the first, the decisive influence of social conditions on the development of human consciousness is carried out; through the second signal system, the consciousness of a person manifests itself in his social activity.
At the same time, an organ of human consciousness was also formed - the human cerebral cortex. “First, labor,” as Engels points out, “and then, next to it, articulate speech were the most important stimuli under the influence of which the brain of monkeys could gradually turn into a human brain, which, with all the similarities in the basic structure, surpasses the first in size and perfection” .
The human brain differs from the brain of all animals, including higher apes, primarily in its size: the average weight of the human brain is 1,400 g, while the average weight of the brain of great apes is from 400 to 500 g.
The human cerebral cortex is exceptionally highly developed. It is a plate 3-4 mm thick, fitting the outside of the large hemispheres. Microscopic examination reveals that the cortex consists of a number of layers that differ from each other in the type and functions of the nerve cells present in them. Nerve fibers extending from these cells connect them with the sense organs, with the organs of movement, and also form connections between cells. There are about 16 billion nerve cells in the cortex.
The human cerebral cortex is an integral organ, the individual parts of which, performing various functions, are closely connected with each other.
In parallel with the development of the brain, the development of its closest tools - the sense organs and the organs of movement - went on. The most important in the early stages was the development of the hand, which in developing people was both the organ of labor movements and the organ of knowing things through touch. Equally important was the development of the human vocal apparatus, capable of producing articulate sounds, the human ear, capable of perceiving articulate speech, and the human eye, capable of perceiving in things that which is inaccessible to any animal.
The teachings of IP Pavlov about the second signal system and its interaction with the first point to specifically human mechanisms of higher nervous activity. The basic laws of higher nervous activity established by IP Pavlov are common to all people. But the content of a person's mental life is determined primarily by the influence of the social conditions in which a person lives and acts. With the change in social life, the psychology of people changes significantly, as a set of historically determined features, habits, knowledge, thoughts and feelings. These changes in the spiritual make-up of people are what distinguishes a person from one historical epoch from another, one class from another.
