Public consciousness is a set of ideas, theories, views, perceptions, feelings, beliefs, emotions of people, moods, which reflect nature, the material life of society and the entire system of social relations. Social consciousness is formed and develops along with the emergence of social life, since consciousness is possible only as a product of social relations. But society can also be called a society only when its basic elements, including social consciousness, have taken shape.
The essence of consciousness is precisely that it can reflect social being only under the condition of its simultaneous active and creative transformation.
A feature of social consciousness is that in its influence on being, it can, as it were, evaluate it, reveal its secret meaning, predict, transform it through the practical activity of people. And therefore, the public consciousness of the era can not only reflect being, but also actively contribute to its transformation. This is the historically formed function of social consciousness
In multinational states, there is a national consciousness of various peoples.
Forms of public consciousness:
Political consciousness is a systematized, theoretical expression of public views on the political organization of society, on the forms of the state, on relations between various social groups, classes, parties, on relations with other states and nations;
Legal consciousness in theoretical form expresses the legal consciousness of society, the nature and purpose of legal relations, norms and institutions, issues of legislation, courts, prosecutors. It aims to establish a legal order that meets the interests of a particular society;
Morality is a system of views and assessments that regulate the behavior of individuals, a means of educating and strengthening certain moral principles and relationships;
Art is a special form of human activity associated with the assimilation of reality through artistic images;
Religion and philosophy are the forms of social consciousness farthest from material conditions. Public and individual consciousness are in close unity. Public consciousness is interindividual and does not depend on an individual. For specific people, it is objective.
Individual consciousness is the consciousness of an individual, reflecting his individual being and, through it, to one degree or another, social being. Public consciousness is an aggregate of individual consciousness.
Each individual consciousness is formed under the influence of individual life, lifestyle and social consciousness. In this case, the most important role is played by the individual way of life of a person, through which the content of social life is refracted. Another factor in the formation of individual consciousness is the process of assimilation by an individual of social consciousness.
The 2 main levels of individual consciousness:
1. Initial (primary) - "passive", "mirror". It is formed under the influence of the external environment, external consciousness on a person. The main forms: concepts and knowledge in general. The main factors in the formation of individual consciousness: educational activity of the environment, educational activity of society, cognitive activity of the person himself.
2. Secondary - "active", "creative". Man transforms and organizes the world. The concept of intelligence is associated with this level. The end product of this level and of consciousness in general is the ideal objects that arise in human heads. Basic forms: goals, ideals, faith. The main factors: will, thinking - the core and the backbone element.
Public consciousness is a set of ideas, views, theories and perceptions of people in society (that is, the spiritual life of society).
Public consciousness has a social nature (basis). It arises from the social practice of people as a result of their various activities. And it is the result of a joint understanding of social reality by people interacting with each other.
Individual consciousness is the consciousness of an individual, his special, individual perception of the world around him (the totality of his views, ideas and interests).
It also gives rise to the corresponding individual behavior.
The relationship between social and individual consciousness
Public consciousness is closely, dialectically interconnected with individual consciousness as a category of "general" and "individual". Public consciousness is a reflection of a single (individual) consciousness and at the same time manifests itself through a single one.
1. However, individual consciousness, being autonomous, is not completely independent from society.
It interacts with public consciousness: it enriches it with its images, experiences, ideas and theories.
2. In turn, the individual consciousness of any person is formed and develops on the basis of social consciousness: it assimilates the views, ideas, prejudices existing in society.
Social psychology- is a set of feelings, emotions, unsystematic views, moods, customs, traditions, habits, formed under the influence of direct social life.
Ideology rises above social psychology. Ideology is a set of ideas, views, theories that reflect social relations in a more or less harmonious system. Ideology includes political and legal views, theories, philosophy, morality, art, religion.
Social psychology is not capable of rising to deep scientific and theoretical generalizations. It reflects social life superficially, although it is more closely connected with it, responsive to all its changes. Ideology, reflecting more deeply the essence of social life, contributes to its more radical changes based on the use of scientific data.
There is an organic and dialectical unity between social psychology and ideology. Ideology, analyzing and summarizing the results of people's practical activities, makes it possible to establish the main trends in the development of historical processes.
Public consciousness is a very complex structurally formation. In this regard, its division into
structural elements can be held on a variety of grounds. First, the specificity of those aspects of reality that are reflected by public consciousness can serve as such a basis, and then we are talking about its forms; secondly, the division can be carried out in connection with the subjects of consciousness, and then, along with the consciousness of the whole society, the consciousness of large social groups and even individual consciousness should be considered. And, finally, the structure of social consciousness can be viewed from the angle of view of the level, depth of reflection by public consciousness of social reality, and then social psychology and ideology are singled out as the main structural elements. From the characteristics of these elements, we will begin the structural analysis of social consciousness.
The public consciousness of each historical epoch (excluding the primitive communal system) has two levels: psychological and ideological.
Social psychology is a set of feelings, moods, customs, traditions, motives characteristic of a given society as a whole and for each of the large social groups (class, nation, etc.). Social psychology grows directly under the influence of the concrete historical conditions of social life. And since these conditions are different for each of the large groups, their socio-psychological complexes inevitably differ among themselves. These specific features are especially noticeable in a class society. Of course, 6 socio-psychological complexes of opposite classes exist in each country and common features associated with its historical characteristics, national traditions, and cultural level. It is no coincidence that we are talking about American efficiency, German punctuality, Russian non-obligation, etc.
Ideology is a system of theoretical views, reflecting the degree of society's knowledge of the world as a whole and its individual aspects, and, as such, it represents a stage higher than that of social psychology, the level of social consciousness - the level of theoretical reflection of the world. If in the analysis of the psychology of social groups we use the epithet “social”, because there is still age-related psychology, professional psychology, etc., then the concept of “ideology” does not need such a differentiating epithet: there is no individual ideology: it always has a social character.
It must be borne in mind that the concept of "ideology" is used in social philosophy in another, narrower sense - as a system of theoretical views of one large social group, directly or indirectly reflecting its fundamental interests. Thus, if in the first case the cognitive aspect dominates, the level of social consciousness is clarified, then in the second variant of application the emphasis shifts towards the axiological (value) aspect, and the assessment of certain social phenomena and processes is given from narrow group positions.
If social psychology is formed spontaneously, directly under the influence of those life circumstances in which the class is located, then ideology predominantly acts as a product of the theoretical activity of the “specially empowered” class - its ideologists, who, in the words of Marx, theoretically come to the same conclusions, to which the class as a whole comes practically. It is very important to note that in terms of their social position the ideologists of a class may not belong to this class, but, expressing the interests of the class in the language of ideology, ideologists serve it, constitute its intelligentsia.
The relationship between social psychology and ideology is predetermined by the fact that the first is an emotional, sensual, and the second is a rational level of social consciousness.
It is known that sensory cognition is generally an insufficient (superficial), but necessary level of consciousness, because only thanks to it our brain can receive primary information about the world and from it synthesize knowledge about the essence of things. Social psychology is that direct reflection of the external manifestations of social reality, which constitutes a kind of basis for the emergence of the corresponding ideology. Ideology clarifies what is vaguely grasped by psychology, penetrates deeply into the essence of phenomena.
The relationship between ideology and social psychology is very complex. On the one hand, while forming, the ideology is based on certain features of the psychology of a given social group. On the other hand, ideology is not a simple passive reflection of the characteristics of social psychology. Having been born, it helps to strengthen some of the psychological traits of its class and weaken, the introduction to a minimum of others.
In the philosophical and historical literature, the concepts of "everyday consciousness" and "mass consciousness" are very often encountered. And although, as follows from the names, these concepts are intended to characterize different aspects of social consciousness (in the first case we are interested in the degree of “oneness” of consciousness, in the second - in the degree of its prevalence in society), to this day they largely coincide in their volume and can be synonymously defined as an empirical consciousness that arises spontaneously in the process of everyday life practice and is characteristic of the bulk of members of society. Their relationship with social psychology and ideology looks more complicated. It is not uncommon to meet with an attempt to reduce the entire content of everyday and mass consciousness exclusively to the socio-psychological. This is especially not true in relation to modern society, the everyday and mass consciousness of whose members is already noticeably theorized and ideologized.
At all stages of historical development, the socio-psychological factor plays an active role. It is possible, for example, to clearly trace the patterns of the psychological maturation of social revolutions, as well as those psychological factors that make it possible to stabilize the post-revolutionary society. Thus, when analyzing the transition from slavery to feudalism, Engels traced the feedback of the psychological factor and the socio-economic revolution. “Slavery,” he noted, “has ceased to pay for itself and therefore has died out. But dying slavery has left its poisonous sting in the form of contempt of the free for productive labor. It was a hopeless impasse in which the Roman world fell: slavery became economically impossible, the labor of the free was considered despicable from the point of view of morality. The first could no longer, the second could not yet be the main form of social production ”. Thus, the transition to new relations of production (their “choice”) is determined not only by the economic factor (the level of productive forces), but also by the psychological factor: how much a particular structure is morally legitimate or condemned in the eyes of society.
The category of consciousness is used in two senses: broad and narrow. In the broadest sense of the word, consciousness is the highest form of reflection associated with the social life of a person and is a rather complex multi-level formation. In the narrow sense of the word, consciousness is the core of human mental activity and is associated with abstract logical thinking. Since the analysis of the structure of consciousness should be as comprehensive as possible, in order to avoid confusion, we will use the concept of consciousness in the broad sense of the word as a synonym for the highest form of reflection of the world inherent in man.
The problem of the structure of consciousness has been actualized recently in connection with the intensive penetration of the system-structural method into various fields of knowledge and an increased interest in the problem of consciousness from the side of linguistics, cultural studies, ethnography, psychology, sociology, political science and other sciences. Each science focuses on certain structural elements of consciousness from the point of view of its subject area, therefore, philosophy is faced with the task of integrating specific scientific knowledge about consciousness, preserving the integrity, indivisibility of such a complex phenomenon, which is consciousness.
Consciousness can be structured for various reasons. The most universal, in our opinion, are, first, the division of consciousness in relation to the bearer, the subject - social and individual; secondly, according to the degree of awareness of being, the means and methods of reflecting reality - levels and forms; thirdly, according to the role of its main components in the regulation of human activity - the sphere.
Analysis of the structural elements of consciousness on any of the grounds suggests the need to take into account the role and significance of the structure of consciousness for all the rest. So, considering the relationship between social and individual consciousness, one should not forget about the role of the unconscious or volitional component both in the consciousness of the individual and in the mass or group consciousness. Or, when analyzing the cognitive or emotional sphere of consciousness, one cannot ignore the roles of such forms of consciousness as science, ideology and religion. All facets of the existence of consciousness characterize its multi-quality and require special consideration.
The most general basis for the structuring of consciousness is the separation of social and individual consciousness in it, which arise as a reflection of different types of being. As you know, consciousness arises in the depths of the psyche of a particular person. Here, the system of concepts, certain forms of thinking, characteristic of consciousness as such, takes place. But the activity of consciousness also gives rise to the phenomena of consciousness - the world of a person's sensations, his perceptions, emotions, ideas, etc., which in turn are formed under the influence of many factors. These include natural data, conditions of the social environment, personal life of a person, working environment, age, etc. In addition, in the process of activity, people constantly exchange opinions, judgments, and experiences. As a result, views, understanding, assessments of phenomena, as well as common interests and goals are developed for certain social groups. They also affect the consciousness of individuals.
Thus, individual consciousness exists only in conjunction with public consciousness. In doing so, they form a contradictory unity. Indeed, the source of the formation of both social and individual consciousness is the existence of people. The basis of their manifestation and functioning is practice. And the way of expression - language - is also one. However, this unity implies significant differences. First, individual consciousness has “boundaries” of life, conditioned by the life of a particular person. Public consciousness can "cover" the life of many generations. Secondly, individual consciousness is influenced by the personal qualities of the individual, the level of his development, personal character, etc. And public consciousness is in a sense transpersonal. It can include what is common, which is characteristic of the individual consciousness of people, a certain amount of knowledge and assessments, transmitted from generation to generation and changing in the process of development of social being. In other words, social consciousness is characteristic of society as a whole or of various social communities included in it, but it cannot be the sum of individual consciousnesses, between which there are significant differences. And at the same time, public consciousness manifests itself only through the consciousness of individual individuals. Therefore, public and individual consciousness interact with each other, mutually enrich each other.
Already in ancient philosophy, the opinion began to emerge that consciousness exists in society not only in individual, but also in social forms. Thus, Plato assumed that eternal supra-cosmic ideas lay at the heart of social consciousness, and Herodotus and Thucydides suggested mental characteristics, morals, and different ways of thinking of peoples and tribes. And in the future, the social phenomenon of consciousness was the subject of interest of thinkers of different eras. In modern literature, there are three points of view on the problem of the essence and nature of social consciousness: 1) social consciousness functions only through individual consciousnesses; 2) exists independently of the consciousness of the individual and precedes it; 3) manifests itself in both personal and transpersonal form in the form of a culture separated from a person. The differences in these points of view are based on different approaches to understanding the nature of the ideal.
Social consciousness should be understood as the totality of ideas, theories, views, feelings, moods, habits, traditions that reflect the social existence of people, their living conditions.
A subject considered at various levels of community - humanity, state, ethnos, family, individual - has its own type of consciousness. The subject-individual, logically completing the hierarchy of the structural organization of society, is always “rooted” in certain social communities and bears in his individual consciousness the imprint of social and group interests and requirements presented in an individual form. In a number of relations, individual consciousness is richer than social consciousness; it always contains something individually personal, not objectified in the impersonal forms of culture, inalienable from a living personality. At the same time, the content of social consciousness is broader than the content of individual consciousness, but it cannot be interpreted as absolutely impersonal. Established in the form of elements of the spiritual culture of society, it precedes each forming consciousness, acts as a condition for its formation and development. But only individual consciousness is the source of new formations in public consciousness, the source of its development.
The complexity of the structure of consciousness, the relationship of its elements is manifested in the fact that it, both social and individual, includes the whole gamut of various mental reactions of a person to the outside world, interacting and influencing each other. Any structure of consciousness "impoverishes" its palette, emphasizes the importance of some elements and leaves others "in the shadows". But without analyzing the structure of this complexly organized phenomenon, it is impossible to understand its essence, its nature and, most importantly, the role and significance in the regulation of human activity.
When analyzing consciousness, it is necessary to turn to the consideration of the unconscious, since the phenomenon of the unconscious is an object of study by a number of sciences and is involved in the functioning of the human psyche as a whole. The unconscious is a set of mental phenomena, states and actions that are not represented in the consciousness of a person, lying outside the sphere of his mind, unaccountable and not amenable, at least at the moment, to the control of consciousness.
The unconscious manifests itself in various forms - attraction, attitude, sensation, intuition, dreaming, hypnotic state, etc. But not everything that is outside the focus of consciousness, the unconscious, should be attributed to the unconscious. The level of the unconscious includes instincts from which a person as a biological being cannot free himself. But instincts give rise to desires, emotions, volitional impulses in a person, which can move to the level of awareness, and, in addition, the unconscious can direct the behavior of people and, in this regard, affect their consciousness. And, on the other hand, the so-called automatisms and intuition can be formed at the level of perceptual and mental activity, and then, as a result of repeated repetition, acquire an unconscious character, get out of the control of consciousness. In the structure of the unconscious, a special place is occupied by the level of the subconscious, which includes mental phenomena associated with automatisms. From a physiological point of view, unconscious processes are very expedient. They perform a protective function, freeing the brain from overstrain, automating human actions and increasing human creativity.
Z. Freud, on the basis of experimental and clinical data, substantiated the important role of the unconscious in human mental activity, presented it as a powerful irrational force, which is in antagonistic opposition to the activity of consciousness. In modern philosophy and psychology, the unconscious is recognized and widely used not only in scientific analysis, but also in practical medicine (the method of psychoanalysis).
The term "unconscious" is used to characterize not only individual, but also group behavior, the goals and actions of which are not realized by the participants in the action. The follower and popularizer of Freud's concept K. Jung, while studying the unconscious, found in its structures the images of the collective unconscious - "archetypes". In contrast to the "complexes" of Freud as an individual human life, archetypes are associated with the collective life of people and are inherited from generation to generation. Archetypes represent a system of innate programs and attitudes, typical reactions that are not declared as sociocultural norms, but come from the deep layers of the mental life of the human race. They can serve as an explanatory model of human and social behavior. If consciousness does not take into account the possibility of archetypes manifestation and orient them, attract them as an attraction, the psyche is threatened by the invasion of the unconscious in the most primitive forms. According to K. Jung, this can lead to individual and mass psychoses, false prophecies, unrest and wars.
It should be noted that both consciousness and the unconscious are the real sides of the psyche, ensuring its unity. In the genesis of the human psyche, the unconscious is the first stage of its formation and development, on the basis of which consciousness begins to form. Under the influence of the evolution of consciousness, the unconscious in the subject is humanized and socialized.
Characterizing the structure of social consciousness in terms of the degree and ways of realizing the real world, we can distinguish levels (everyday-practical and scientific-theoretical) and forms that differ in methods and means of reflecting reality and impact on the real life of people.
Ordinary consciousness includes the consciousness of the masses of people, which is formed in the practice of everyday life, in direct interaction with the outside world in work and everyday life. It includes 1) the experience of labor activity accumulated over centuries, empirical knowledge, skills, ideas about the world around, a spontaneous worldview, formed from facts; 2) everyday standards of morality, customs, spontaneously formed ideas about their position, their needs; 3) folk art. Ordinary consciousness does not have the depth of rational comprehension, clear awareness, scientific validity, and in this aspect it is inferior to the consciousness of the theoretical level. On the other hand, ordinary consciousness has such advantages over the theoretical as completeness, versatility, and the wholeness of the worldview. In addition, ordinary consciousness is closer than theoretical consciousness to immediate real life, therefore, it reflects more fully and in more detail the features of situations of current social reality.
Everyday consciousness is very close to the individual. However, this is a mass, collective consciousness and it is formed in the consciousness of certain groups. The definition of mass consciousness seems to be quite difficult. Some argue that this is a kind of everyday consciousness, others that it is the consciousness of various types and types of masses (the consciousness of large social groups, common human consciousness), while others interpret social psychology as a mass consciousness. This is due to the fact that in reality mass consciousness is a very complex spiritual and social phenomenon. It is a set of mental, epistemological and social in nature spiritual formations, including elements of all levels and forms of social consciousness. It expresses the real state of consciousness of large masses of people, with all its contradictions, features and differences in the components that fill it.
The category "mass consciousness" can be considered in close connection with the category "public opinion". Public opinion is people's judgments about the facts of reality, an assessment of the state of life in the field of economics, politics, morality, science, religion, etc. In these judgments, an ordinary, empirical approach to the events of social life is intertwined with a theoretical, scientific one.
At the level of everyday consciousness, social (or social) psychology develops, which is one of the constituent parts of everyday consciousness. It covers the area of \u200b\u200bsocial feelings, moods, perceptions, emotions, traditions, customs, prejudices, attitudes that are formed in various social groups of people in the conditions of their daily life: in work, in communication with each other. Social psychology is the first, direct stage of reflection of social life.
Theoretical consciousness is a reflection of essential connections and laws of reality. It seeks to penetrate into its inner side, therefore it finds its expression in science. The theoretical level of public consciousness is being transformed into ideology. Ideology is a set of theoretically grounded political, philosophical, aesthetic views, legal and moral norms and principles, which are systematized. Ultimately, ideological views are determined by economic relations and express the interests, goals, aspirations, ideals of certain classes and other social strata and groups. In ideology, ideas and views are systematized, developed theoretically, acquire the character of ideological systems and concepts.
The variety of types of social and practical activities of people gives rise to various ways of spiritual mastery of reality. Due to this, the following forms of social consciousness can be distinguished: political, legal, moral, aesthetic, religious or atheistic, philosophical and scientific. The process of differentiation of social consciousness, the emergence of new structural elements continues and it is due to the objective process of differentiation of social relations, the needs of the development of society.
The criteria for differentiating the forms of social consciousness are:
object of reflection, special side or aspect of social life;
ways, techniques and methods of reflection of social life;
features of the emergence and development of each of the existing forms;
social functions of each form of social consciousness.
All forms of social consciousness are closely interconnected and have an active influence on each other. In different social epochs, their role in the life of society changes. Thus, with the rise of classes, political consciousness firmly occupies a leading position in relation to all forms of social consciousness; the Renaissance is characterized by the increasing role of the aesthetic development of the world, and the Middle Ages - by the dominance of religion; the formation of capitalist relations lays the foundation for the constantly growing influence of science on all aspects of social life. But in all these processes, political consciousness plays a decisive role.
Depending on the role of the main components of consciousness in the regulation of human activity, the following spheres can be distinguished in its structure: cognitive, emotional and motivational-volitional.
The cognitive sphere of consciousness is made up of the cognitive characteristics of the subject, the process of cognition and the result of cognitive activity. They form the "left half" of our consciousness, focused primarily on the external objective world, and its main goal is an adequate reflection of the world.
The emotional sphere expresses the state of a person's inner world, his personal, subjective-psychological attitude to the object of the external world, to other people, to himself. It includes: a) feelings proper (joy, love, hatred, disgust, sympathy, antipathy); b) affects (rage, horror, despair, foreboding, hallucinations, stress); c) passions and emotional well-being or mood (cheerful, depressed); d) elementary emotions associated with sensory reactions (hunger, thirst, fatigue). Emotions are a reflection of an object in the form of an experience, emotional excitement and an evaluative attitude towards it. In emotions, the object does not oppose the subject, but is experienced as a single whole with the subject, satisfying his needs. With strong experiences, consciousness is completely turned off.
The motivational-volitional (or value-semantic) sphere is "responsible" for the formation of motives, interests, spiritual ideals of the individual in unity with the ability to achieve the goal. Volitional actions, prompting or inhibiting the activity of the subject, are manifested in situations of choice of motives and goals. In this sphere, not truth is formed and developed as a form of reconciliation of consciousness, thought and objective reality, but the values \u200b\u200bof beauty, justice, goodness, duty as a form of reconciling reality with our ideals, goals, beliefs.
The volitional and emotional spheres form the "right half" of consciousness, in which the subject itself and the products of his creative self-realization in the diverse forms of the spiritual culture of society are the subject of cognition. Outwardly, the cognitive sphere of consciousness is presented here in a filmed form, reduced and subordinated to the emotional-volitional component.
The integrating core in the structural organization of consciousness is thinking. It not only permeates all its components, but also acts as a leading factor (in a normal state of mind) of people's behavior, their constructive practical activity. In turn, emotions are capable of generating new needs and motives, and will leads to the achievement of new knowledge, acts as a connecting link for knowledge, emotions and practical activities of people.
In various spheres of practical, cognitive and communicative activity of the subject, the role of each component of consciousness is revealed with the necessary completeness, which do not function without the influence and participation of each other.
Knowledge, emotions, will in their unity characterize the work of consciousness and ensure that it performs a number of vital functions for a person.
The primary function of consciousness, which expresses its very essence, is the function of cognition - a correct, adequate reflection of reality. Consciousness allows a person to penetrate into the essence of objects, processes, phenomena of the objective world, to obtain the necessary information about them. Cognition is carried out in the forms of sensory and rational reflection, at the empirical and theoretical levels of thinking. The peculiarity of human reflection is its awareness. In other words, cognition is inextricably linked with the awareness of what this or that thing is, in what relations it is with other things, what value it has for the cognizing subject. Awareness is unique to man.
Thanks to the unity of cognition, awareness, self-awareness, an important function of evaluating the information received is performed. A person not only receives data about the external world, but also assesses the degree of their adequacy and completeness, assesses the reality itself in terms of his needs and interests.
Human consciousness also performs the function of accumulating knowledge (accumulative function). The consciousness of an individual accumulates knowledge obtained from direct, personal experience, as well as obtained by his contemporaries or previous generations of people. This knowledge becomes the basis for obtaining new knowledge, for the implementation of practical actions.
However, their implementation is possible only due to the fact that consciousness performs another important function - goal setting. Ahead of the course of events, a person builds a model of the “desired future” and determines the ways to achieve it, that is, sets a goal and plans his actions.
The highest possibilities of consciousness are manifested in its constructive and creative function, which consists in the mental construction of directions and forms of human activity in order to create a fundamentally new one. Consciousness can predict, anticipate what will happen due to the action of objective laws.
Based on the assessment of factors and in accordance with the goals set, consciousness regulates, orders the actions of a person, and then the actions of human collectives, that is, it performs the function of management. Since the activity of the individual as a social being requires communication of the individual with other people, mutual exchange of thoughts and knowledge, consciousness, converting thought into word, performs the function of communication (communicative function).
These are the most important functions of consciousness. They are all interconnected and intertwined. The interaction of the components of consciousness reveals their differences, which in turn dictates the need for an integrated approach in the study of the phenomenon of consciousness, in which it is necessary to highlight the following aspects:
ontological - consciousness by the way of its being is a property of the brain, the nervous processes of the brain are material carriers of consciousness;
epistemological - in terms of content, consciousness is a reflection of reality, information about the external world obtained on the basis of its purposeful reflection by the subject;
genetic - consciousness is a product of the development of biological and social forms of motion of matter; the subject's socially objective activity is a condition for the formation and development of consciousness;
functional - consciousness is a factor in controlling behavior and activity, a condition for the formation of forms of logical thinking.
The multidimensionality of consciousness dictates, in turn, the need to develop programs for its research, which could provide an integral approach to determining its essence. In modern philosophy and science, three types of the most promising programs for studying the nature, essence and content of consciousness have developed.
Instrumentalist programs approach consciousness as an instrument, means, and form of human life. With their help, cognitive-informational mechanisms of consciousness are investigated: the extraction and transformation of information, as well as pattern recognition, calculation and coordination of operations. Knowledge of these mechanisms is extremely necessary in the analysis and planning, management and decision-making in the practice, knowledge and training of people. These programs have achieved notable success in addressing analogs of "artificial intelligence" that reveal the operational and computational abilities of a person.
Intentional programs (intention - directionality) analyze the conditions for the possibility of the processes of consciousness. The same information about the world can receive different meanings and names in consciousness, depending on what the consciousness is aimed at, with whom or with what, what object the subject contacts. The intentional properties of consciousness have been systematically studied since the beginning of the 20th century in phenomenological philosophy and psychology. Intentional mechanisms of consciousness form the objective meaning of the content of names with the properties of its descriptiveness, demonstrativeness and analyticity.
Conditioning programs (conditio - condition) investigate the dependence of consciousness on the bodily organization, on the structure and functions of the psyche, the unconscious, factors of communication, social environment, culture and human history.
All three types of programs for analyzing the essence of consciousness allow us to investigate the mechanisms of action of its structural elements and to form an idea of \u200b\u200bthe functioning of the phenomenon under study as a complex, self-organizing systemic formation in which each structure and each of its elements perform special functions, ensuring the performance of the functions of consciousness itself.
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Individual consciousness is a subjective image of the world that is formed in an individual under the influence of his living conditions and mental characteristics. It has an intrapersonal being, often representing an unknown stream of consciousness.
Public consciousness characterizes collective perceptions of emerging social communities and groups under the influence of transpersonal factors: the material conditions of society and its spiritual culture.
The difference between individual and social consciousness does not mean that only social consciousness is social. Individual consciousness is an integral part of the consciousness of society. The culture historically developed by society spiritually nourishes the individual, turning into an organic part of the individual consciousness. Each individual is a representative of his people, ethnos, place of residence, and his consciousness is inextricably linked with society. At the same time, social consciousness develops only in constant contact with the individual, through its involvement in the really functioning consciousness of the individual.
Public consciousness has a complex structure. Two levels stand out - ordinary and theoretical consciousness.
Everyday consciousness is heterogeneous in its content. It includes the experience of labor activity accumulated by previous generations, moral norms, customs, more or less strict regulations in the sphere of everyday life, observations of nature, some ideological ideas, folk art (folklore), etc. with them the daily living conditions and relationships of people. It is syncretic, detailed, emotional, spontaneous and practical. Ordinary consciousness, which is formed under the direct influence of everyday aspects of life, is conservative, closed, dogmatic. Everyday consciousness has limited cognitive capabilities: it is unable to penetrate into the essence of phenomena, to systematize facts.
Theoretical consciousness relies on the ordinary, but overcomes its limitations.
These levels reveal the structure of social consciousness as moments in the movement of cognition, differing in the degree of its adequacy to the object. At the same time, public consciousness, being the result of the spiritual activity of social communities and groups, bears the stamp of their subjective abilities. Social psychology and ideology are the elements in which the influence of the characteristics of the carriers of social consciousness is revealed.
The relationship between social and individual consciousness is mutual. Common consciousness, as it were, absorbs, absorbs the spiritual achievements of individual people, and the individual. consciousness - carries the features of the public. The discrepancy between the individual consciousness and the public has a dual character: it either outstrips the public consciousness, or lags behind it. But in their interaction, public consciousness is the leading one. It was a prerequisite for the emergence of individual consciousness, a condition for the formation of the spiritual world of ch-ka. Social consciousness is transpersonal, it is internally co-natural to man: everything in it is created by man, and not by any outside human force. At the same time, public consciousness is not a quantitative sum of individuals. consciousnesses, and their qualitatively new hypostasis. Social consciousness does not exist for individuals as an external mechanical force. Each of us absorbs this force, reacts to it in different ways, and each of us can influence public consciousness in different ways. Each ind. from. It also has its own sources of development, therefore, each person, despite the unity of the human culture that embraces it, is unique.
The contradictory interaction between public consciousness and the individual is also manifested in the fact that the former is a continuous spiritual process, while the other develops discontinuously.
Not distinguishing between individual and social consciousness is fraught with such dangerous diseases for culture as dogmatism and voluntarism.
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Plan:
Introduction
1.Historical development of the concept of consciousness
2. Structure of consciousness
3. Public consciousness
4.individual consciousness
Conclusion
Introduction
The psyche as a reflection of reality in the human brain is characterized by different levels.
The highest level of the psyche inherent in a person forms consciousness. Consciousness is the highest, integrating form of the psyche, the result of socio-historical conditions for the formation of a person in labor activity, with constant communication (using language) with other people. In this sense, consciousness is a "social product", consciousness is nothing more than a conscious being.
Human consciousness includes a body of knowledge about the world around us. K. Marx wrote: "The way in which consciousness exists and how something exists for it is knowledge." Thus, the structure of consciousness includes the most important cognitive processes, with the help of which a person constantly enriches his knowledge. These processes include sensations and perceptions, memory, imagination and thinking. With the help of sensations and perceptions with the direct reflection of stimuli affecting the brain, a sensory picture of the world is formed in consciousness as it appears to a person at a given moment.
Memory allows you to renew in consciousness the images of the past, imagination - to build figurative models of what is the object of needs, but is absent at the present time. Thinking provides problem solving through the use of generalized knowledge. Violation, disorder, not to mention the complete disintegration of any of these mental cognitive processes, inevitably become a disorder of consciousness.
The second characteristic of consciousness is the distinct distinction between subject and object, that is, what belongs to a person's “I” and his “not-I”, enshrined in it. A person who for the first time in the history of the organic world separated from it and opposed himself to the environment, continues to preserve this opposition and difference in his consciousness. He is the only one among living beings who is able to realize self-knowledge, that is, to turn mental activity into the study of oneself. A person makes a conscious self-assessment of his actions and himself as a whole. The separation of “I” from “not-I” is the path that every person goes through in childhood, is carried out in the process of forming a person's self-consciousness.
The third characteristic of consciousness is the provision of goal-setting human activity. The functions of consciousness include the formation of goals of activity, while its motives are formed and weighed, volitional decisions are made, the course of actions is taken into account and the necessary adjustments are made to it, etc. K. Marx emphasized that “a person not only changes the form of what given by nature; in what is given by nature, he realizes at the same time his conscious goal, which as a law determines the method and character of his actions and to which he must subordinate his will. " Any violation due to illness or
for some other reason, the ability to carry out goal-setting activity, its coordination and direction is considered as a violation of consciousness.
Finally, the fourth characteristic of consciousness is the inclusion in its composition of a certain attitude. “My attitude to my environment is my consciousness,” wrote K. Marx. The world of feelings inevitably enters the consciousness of a person, where complex objective and, above all, social relations, in which a person is included, are reflected. In the mind of a person, emotional assessments of interpersonal relationships are presented. And here, as in many other cases, pathology helps to better understand the essence of normal consciousness. With some mental illnesses, impairment of consciousness is characterized precisely by a disorder in the sphere of feelings and relationships: the patient hates his mother, whom he loved dearly before, speaks angrily about loved ones, etc.
Historical development of the concept of consciousness
The earliest ideas about consciousness emerged in antiquity. At the same time, ideas about the soul arose and the questions were posed: what is the soul? How does it compare with the objective world? Since then, debates have continued about the essence of consciousness and the possibility of its cognition. Some proceeded from cognizability, others - that attempts to understand consciousness are in vain as well as an attempt to see yourself walking down the street from the window.
Initial philosophical views did not contain a strict distinction between consciousness and the unconscious, ideal and material. So, for example, Heraclitus linked the basis of conscious activity with the concept of "logos", meaning the word, thought and essence of things themselves. The degree of involvement with the logos (objective world order) determined the qualitative level of development of human consciousness. Likewise, in the works of other ancient Greek authors, mental, thought processes were identified with material ones (the movement of air, material particles, atoms, etc.).
For the first time, consciousness as a special reality, different from material phenomena, was revealed by Parmenides. Continuing this tradition, the sophists, Socrates, Plato considered various facets and sides of mental activity and asserted the opposition of the spiritual and the material. For example, Plato created a grandiose system of the "world of ideas" - a single basis for all that exists; developed the concept of a world, self-contemplating, disembodied mind, which is the prime mover of the cosmos, the source of its harmony. In ancient philosophy, the ideas of the involvement of the individual human consciousness with the world mind, which was given the function of an objective universal law, were actively developed.
In medieval philosophy, conscious human activity is seen as a "reflection" of the almighty divine mind, which was convincing evidence of the creation of man. Outstanding medieval thinkers Augustine the Blessed and Thomas Aquinas, representing various stages in the development of philosophical and theological thought, consistently and thoroughly considered the issues of the inner experience of the individual in conscious and mental activity in connection with the self-deepened comprehension of the connection between the soul and divine revelation. This contributed to the identification and resolution of actual specific problems of conscious activity. So, during this period, the concept of intention was introduced as a special property of consciousness, expressed in its focus on an external object. The problem of intention is also present in modern psychology; is also an important component of the methodology of one of the most common interdisciplinary areas of the theory of knowledge - phenomenology.
The greatest influence on the development of problems of consciousness in modern times was exerted by Descartes, who focused his main attention on the highest form of conscious activity - self-consciousness. The philosopher viewed consciousness as the subject's contemplation of his inner world as a direct substance opposing the external spatial world. Consciousness was identified with the subject's ability to have knowledge of his own mental processes. There were other points of view as well. Leibniz, for example, developed a provision on the unconscious psyche.
The French materialists of the 18th century (La Mettrie, Cabanis) substantiated the proposition that consciousness is a special function of the brain, thanks to which it is able to acquire knowledge about nature and itself. On the whole, the materialists of the New Age viewed consciousness as a kind of matter, the movement of “thin” atoms. Conscious activity was directly connected with the mechanics of the brain, the release of the brain, or with the general property of matter (“And the stone thinks”).
German classical idealism constituted a special stage in the development of ideas about conscious activity. According to Hegel, the fundamental principle of the development of consciousness was the historical process of the formation of the World Spirit. Developing the ideas of his predecessors Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel considered such problems as various forms and levels of consciousness, historicism, the doctrine of dialectics, the activity nature of consciousness, and others.
In the 19th century, various theories arise that limit conscious activity, insisting on the innate powerlessness of the mind, preaching irrational approaches to assessing human spiritual activity (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freudianism, behaviorism, and others).
K. Marx and F. Engels continued the materialistic traditions in philosophy, formulated the idea of \u200b\u200bthe secondary nature of consciousness, its conditioning by external factors, and above all economic. Marxism actively used various views and especially dialectical ideas of German classical philosophy.
The structure of consciousness.
The concept of "consciousness" is not unambiguous. In the broad sense of the word, it means a mental reflection of reality, regardless of the level at which it is carried out - biological or social, sensual or rational. When they mean consciousness in this broad sense, they thereby emphasize its relation to matter without revealing the specifics of its structural organization.
In a narrower and more specific sense, consciousness is not simply a mental state, but the highest, properly human form of reflection of reality. Consciousness is structurally organized here, it is an integral system consisting of various elements that are in regular relationships with each other. In the structure of consciousness, first of all, such moments as awareness of things, as well as experience, that is, a certain attitude to the content of what is reflected, are most clearly distinguished. The way in which consciousness exists, and how something exists for it, is knowledge. The development of consciousness presupposes, first of all, its enrichment with new knowledge about the surrounding world and about the person himself. Cognition, awareness of things has different levels, the depth of penetration into the object and the degree of clarity of understanding. Hence the ordinary, scientific, philosophical, aesthetic and religious awareness of the world, as well as the sensory and rational levels of consciousness. Feelings, perceptions, ideas, concepts, thinking form the core of consciousness. However, they do not exhaust all its structural completeness: it also includes the act of attention as its necessary component. It is thanks to concentration of attention that a certain circle of objects is in the focus of consciousness.
A person cannot develop and live outside of society. Everyone depends on public opinion, even those who say that this is not about them. How to understand where the individual consciousness, the thoughts of one person ends, and the influence of social thinking begins? Is it possible to preserve individuality within the framework of society? Let's figure it out.
Consciousness is a multilevel system of perception and reflection of reality. Consciousness allows you to live according to social norms, to see things as they are:
- A conscious person realizes that he is alone in the room. An individual with mental problems, not in himself, with a distorted consciousness thinks that someone else is present in the room.
- A conscious person looks at the wall and realizes that it is motionless. The altered consciousness makes the wall move.
- A person with a healthy person (an element of consciousness) understands that there are dangers in the world, but this does not mean that one should not leave the house altogether. A person with an incorrect self-awareness is convinced that the whole world is waiting for a convenient moment in order to harm him.
Consciousness is a reflection of the reality that a person sees. Conscious motives, thoughts, actions - those in which the subject is aware of, controls, understands the essence. The unconscious also make themselves felt, but it is much more difficult to control them, evaluate, and understand.
What is individual and social consciousness
Individual consciousness is a collection of ideas, assessments, feelings of one person. It is brighter than the public one, but it is narrower. Individual consciousness reflects one personality. But each person is unique by nature, you cannot find exactly the same thinking options.
Public consciousness is a set of beliefs, assessments and opinions of the entire society regarding current life. Public consciousness deeper and broader studies any problem of society. Public consciousness unites the experience, thinking of all people and puts forward something in between.
For example, have you ever wondered where the idea arose in the public mind that young people are losing spiritual values? After all, one cannot say that all young people are like that: in life we \u200b\u200bmeet different representatives. This is the basis of the statement: there are different, but those who forget about the meaning of help, love, friendship, are becoming more. Therefore, we can conclude that, in general, young people are losing values.
Public consciousness is everyday and scientific-theoretical:
- The first involves establishing causal relationships and making inferences based on life experience.
- The second type of consciousness is an in-depth approach to the study of social phenomena.
Based on our example, everyday consciousness is the opinion of most grandmothers on the bench, supported by arguments with a couple of negligent teenagers. Scientific consciousness - sociological polls, observations, experiments confirming the theory that the morality of young people is falling.
The relationship between individual and social consciousness
Whether we like it or not, we identify with the society in which we live. At least psychologically healthy people and mature individuals understand that they are part of the system anyway. One person contains both individual and social consciousness. Their interconnection is simply explained: they either harmonize with each other, or come into conflict.
Examples of different relationships:
- A person understands that public consciousness is ruled by consumerism in all its small manifestations, but the individual himself is convinced that cafes, clubs, trinkets, branded clothes are not worth such attention. There is a conflict: you need to somehow live in this world.
- Public consciousness supports and promotes complete equality of the sexes, and some woman dreams of giving birth, staying at home, running a household and being behind her husband. Again, the contradiction: she needs to either find a man with a similar individual thinking, or study, develop, look for work, provide for herself.
- An example of the harmony of social and individual consciousness: we are witnessing the rapid technologicalization, computerization of the world. Citizen H is very happy about this because he likes every decision and in general. From his point of view, we are moving towards a wonderful future with opportunities, discoveries, a simplified and interesting life.
On the one hand, public consciousness forces a person to rethink his place in the world, his individual consciousness. But on the other hand, society is millions of people who have individual consciousness. That is, public consciousness consists of many individual ones? No, it's not that simple.
Not all people are endowed with individual thinking, some simply go with the flow, obeying the consciousness of the majority. There are those who broadcast their beliefs through the media, and there are those who simply absorb it. This is how public consciousness arises. In fact, these are the beliefs of one person brought into the large masses.
Someone blindly accepts them, someone analyzes them. Of those who analyze, there are people who agree and disagree. Among those who disagree, activists and passive oppositionists stand out. Active dissenting individuals come up with their ideas, offer them to the masses. Therefore, public consciousness is less stable than individual. As a result, public consciousness is almost always contradictory. It absorbs all forms of individual consciousness. And the more individual opinions, the more original public consciousness.
The interconnection of individual and social consciousness, perhaps, will never be separated. On the one hand, each of us has historical traditions, ideals, values, but on the other hand, we create new guidelines for other generations.
