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Файл:Philosophy. Educational manual
.pdf
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a system of coding, transmission and dissemination of the content of
consciousness.
6. The structure of consciousness.
Consciousness has a complex structure. The most ancient layer
of consciousness is the sensory-affective level. This includes
sensation, perception, representation, various kinds of affects, i.e.,
well-established strong spontaneous reactions of a person to external
stimuli (fear, rage, pain, pleasure).
This level can also be attributed to the passions of a person,
that is, the well-established inclinations of a person (love, hatred,
resentment, envy). They are predominantly mind controlled.
The next level is value-volitional. Will — the ability of
a person to set goals and mobilize himself to achieve goals. Emotions
are value-colored reactions to external influences.
The most important level of consciousness is abstract-logical
thinking, acting in such forms as concept, judgment, conclusion,
various logical operations.
A necessary component of consciousness is the conscious and
the unconscious parts.
Characterizing the structure of consciousness, such aspects of it
as social and individual consciousness can be singled out.
Social consciousness is a necessary and specific side of social
life, it is not only a reflection of the changing social life, but at the
same time it performs an organizing, regulatory and creativetransforming function. It is of a socio-historical nature. This is
a certain set of ideas, ideas, values, standards of communication,
thinking and practical activities.
It is necessary to single out two planes of analysis of social
consciousness: a description of the content of social consciousness
and a description of the ways in which the phenomena of social
consciousness exist, which must be borne in mind from the point of
view of the relationship between individual and social consciousness.
Individual consciousness is the consciousness of an individual,
which, of course, is unthinkable outside of society. The
consciousness of each person necessarily includes, as its main
content, ideas, norms, attitudes, views, etc., which have the status of
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social consciousness. Individual consciousness is a single
consciousness in which, in each individual case, features that are
common to the consciousness of a given era, special features
associated with the social affiliation of the individual, and individual
personality traits conditioned by the upbringing, abilities and
circumstances of the individual's personal life are freely combined.
Ontogenesis of personality is a process of socialization, appropriation
of socially significant spiritual values.
Thus, individual consciousness is social in the sense that it is
permeated, organized, saturated with social consciousness. This
individual consciousness can be richer in a number of aspects than
the social consciousness. It is capable of containing such new ideas,
assessments that are absent in the content of social consciousness and
can enter it only with time. Social consciousness, considered in terms
of its content, is fixed in "social memory" as a necessary condition
for its "live" existence in a multitude of individual consciousness.
The dimensions of consciousness considered above which have
developed within the framework of the functional and substantive
paradigms of its interpretation (when consciousness is considered
from the point of view of its material carrier, the prerequisites for its
origin and development, its structural and functional dimensions,
etc.) do not exhaust the entire diversity of the phenomenon of
consciousness. It should be noted that both in modern philosophy and
in science these approaches have not lost their significance: the
functional paradigm of consciousness in a broad context is presented
within the framework of the philosophical, analytical and scientific
tradition, the substantial model of consciousness is developed within
the framework of structuralist and post-structuralist concepts that
reduce consciousness to the phenomena of language and text; new
philosophical and natural-scientific ideas about human consciousness
are being formed, associated with its existential, phenomenological
and cosmic dimensions, unique and not yet always ajar secrets of
human existence.
Also, the structure of consciousness can be divided into 3 parts
with some degree of conditionality: reason, perception and will.
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Reason is the main part of consciousness. By definition, man is
a rational being. Reason is a condition and a consequence of
cognitive activity, which can be carried out rationally and
irrationally. Reason can take the form of fantasy, imagination and
logic. Reason provides mutual understanding of people necessary for
their communication and joint activities.
Perception (feelings, senses, emotions) is a condition and
a consequence of a person's selective attitude to the world.
Everything that exists in the world evokes positive and negative
emotions in a person, or a neutral attitude. This is due to the fact that
something is useful to a person, something is harmful, and something
is indifferent, something in the world is beautiful, something is ugly.
As a result, a rich emotional world is formed in the personal
consciousness because everything that happens in the world has
a different degree of significance and a different nature of
significance for a person. Emotions and feelings express an
evaluative attitude towards the world. The richness of feelings and
emotions is manifested in the vocabulary of the language. There are
several hundred words that contain feelings and emotions. The
poverty of a person's individual vocabulary also speaks of his
emotional poverty of his consciousness, and, consequently, of his
personality.
Will is a part of consciousness that ensures the achievement of
pre-set goals by mobilizing the forces necessary to achieve them.
A person, unlike an animal, is able to look into the future and
consciously, at the expense of his will, form the options for the future
he needs. Willpower is needed to focus on certain thoughts, feelings,
actions, objects of the outside world. Will is also needed to resist
adverse influences, to ensure mental stability. Lack of will makes
a person susceptible to adverse influences and unable to achieve
goals due to the inability to make choices and concentrate on a given
direction.
7. The problem of conscious and unconscious elements of
our mind.
Since the time of Descartes and Kant, philosophers have been
convinced that the progress of knowledge depends on the further
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deepening of the analysis of reason as the main faculty of
consciousness.
But Z. Freud proved that the psyche is wider than
consciousness and in its space there is a content that is not
represented in consciousness.
Mental life, which takes place without the participation of
consciousness, as well as mental phenomena, states and actions that
occur outside the control of the mind, are designated by the concept
of the unconscious.
I will remind you that the Freud's main discovery was
substantiated the dependence of conscious life on the unconscious,
and as the core of the unconscious and the source of the individual's
mental life, he singled out sexual desire — libido (lat. Libido —
"attraction, desire").
According to Sigmund Freud, human personality is complex
and has more than a single component. In his famous psychoanalytic
theory, Freud states that personality is composed of three elements
known as the id, the ego, and the superego. These elements work
together to create complex human behaviors. The ego is the self, and
the superego, it keeps the id in check.
Each component adds its own unique contribution to
personality and the three interact in ways that have a powerful
influence on an individual. Each element of personality emerges at
different points in life.
Conscious and subconscious levels. The human psyche
includes, in addition to consciousness, the subconscious. The
subconscious is a part of the human psyche that is closed to the
person himself. The subconscious, unlike consciousness, works
continuously, even when a person is sleeping. Sleep is a shutdown of
consciousness only. The subconscious contains everything that
a person had in his mind: in mind, in feelings, will. The content of
consciousness passes into the subconscious. In a state of hypnosis,
you can open the "room" of the subconscious and help a person replay any episode (any picture) of his life that is imprinted in the
mind.
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Consciousness is not an addition to the human psyche, but the
very subjective side of the psyche, awareness of the nearest sensually
perceived environment and awareness of a limited connection with
other persons and things that are outside the person who is beginning
to become aware of himself, and at the same time awareness of
nature.
The unconscious can be understood as two different things:
firstly, it is an action performed automatically, reflexively, when the
reason for it did not have time to reach consciousness, and also
during a natural shutdown of consciousness, and secondly, these are
active mental processes that are not directly involved in the
conscious relation of the subject to reality, and therefore they
themselves are not conscious at the moment.
On the other hand, a variety of ideas, conjectures, intuitive
insights constantly come from the subconscious into the
consciousness, helping a person to solve complex problems that he
cannot solve with the help of pure logic. Creative thinking is
impossible without these ideas that come from the subconscious into
the consciousness.
Today, there are a large number of educational, training,
therapeutic, management methods (technologies) that are based on
a direct invasion of the subconscious, bypassing consciousness. It is
noticed that giving a momentary effect, they lead to the destruction
of the psyche, impaired memory, thinking. Ultimately, this leads to
a weakening of the forces of the soul, necessary for other, nonearthly purposes.
8. The problem of free will.
Usually people believe that consciousness allows them to
completely control their behavior, control reactions and make
deliberate choices. The presence of free will in a person implies that
he has a moral and legal responsibility for his actions.
But, if we consider a person as a part of the material physical
world and assume that consciousness is the result of the work of the
brain as a material carrier, then does a person have free will?
The whole world around us is subject to objective physical
laws, and therefore is determined from the outside.
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Could an apple break the law of universal gravitation and not
want to fall on Newton's head? Is the lion responsible for killing the
hunter? Is it possible to say that your dog acted dishonestly by
stealing and eating your dinner alone? Is the soldier who killed his
opponent guilty?
These questions allow us to trace the logic of scientists'
thoughts about free will. Let's add one more argument. Can
a person's action be justified by an irresistible impulse?
Cognitive scientists argue that human behavior in many
situations is influenced by the unconscious — that area of the psyche
that is not subject to consciousness and is not controlled by a person.
In order to present the key theories regarding the problem of
free will, it is necessary to clarify the concept of "causal
determinism".
Causal determinism is the view that all events happen for
a reason, and that all causes necessarily determine the result.
Imagine a universe in which everything that happens is
completely caused by whatever happened before it. This is true from
the very beginning of the universe, so what happened in the
beginning of the universe caused what happened next, and so on
right up until the present.
Philosophers have long debated whether a causally
deterministic universe like this one poses a threat to free will and
moral responsibility. For example, suppose that in this universe
a man murders his spouse. Everything that has come before this (e.g.,
the man’s upbringing, his parents’ decision to pass on their genes, his
past experiences with his spouse) fully determined that he would
commit this murder. Given this, is it still reasonable for us to blame
him for his crime?
One study even finds that these attitudes about moral
responsibility in a deterministic universe depend on whether you’ve
been given a dose of the hormone oxytocin!
A conclusion of much of this work is that ordinary people think
it’s impossible to be morally responsible for one’s actions in
a causally deterministic universe.
In modern philosophy, scientists are divided into two camps.
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Compatibilist positions are positions according to which free
will and moral responsibility are compatible with causal
determinism.
People are people because they are able to resist the
determinism of nature, to go beyond the boundaries of the definite
places and actions.
For example, people thought that, in this universe, you could
imagine a purple square, compose a complicated piece of music, and
fall in love.
Incompatibilist positions are positions according to which free
will and moral responsibility are incompatible with causal
determinism.
For example, Incompatibilism tended to believe that you
couldn’t think twice about doing something immoral, decide not to
go to a party in order to study for an exam, or resist the urge to eat
a steak.
9. The functions of consciousness.
The main function of consciousness is the ability of a person to
relate himself to the outside world. It is this ability that enables
a person to realize himself and form as a person. To do this,
consciousness uses different levels of perception and reflection of
objective reality.
There are currently three levels:
1. Sensual-emotional — perception and reflection of the world
by the senses.
2. Rational-discursive — the perception of the world, through
the definition of its characteristics.
3. Intuitive-volitional — contributes to the integrity of the
perception of the world and self-awareness.
In addition to reflection and reflection of objective reality,
consciousness also performs other functions, which are indicated in
the following classification:
1. Reflective — perception of the objective world through
cognitive processes (memory, thinking, attention). Reflective — the
main function that characterizes the very essence of consciousness,
our ability to self-consciousness.
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2. Evaluative — our attitude to this world, events and to
ourselves which can be expressed in the form of feelings and
emotions.
3. Generating — creative.
4. Transformative — management of volitional processes
where we ourselves make decisions and act.
5. Time-forming — the ability to track the connection between
the past, present and the future.
In addition to these classifications, there are others, for
example:
1. Accumulating — the accumulation of information.
2. Integration — uniting all systems of perception of the
objective world.
3. Communicative — determining our environment.
The number of such classifications continues to grow over
time. This is due to new, complementary ideas of modern science
about consciousness.
Consciousness is the highest form of reflection of the real
world, peculiar only to man. It is associated with articulate speech,
logical generalizations, abstract concepts. The formation of
consciousness is associated with the emergence of labor. The need
for labor in the process of communication caused the appearance of
language. Labor and language had a decisive influence on the
formation of human consciousness.
Consciousness has a multicomponent structure, however, it is
a single whole. The "core" of consciousness, the way of its existence
is knowledge. At the same time, consciousness is a phenomenon of
a moral order, because it deals with meaningful life problems.
Consciousness thus acts as a key, initial philosophical concept for the
analysis of all forms of manifestation of the spiritual and mental life
of a person in their unity and integrity, as well as ways to control and
regulate his relationship with reality, manage these relationships.
10. Philosophy of artificial intelligence.
One of the topical issues of the philosophy of consciousness
today is the question of the possibility of recreating human
consciousness in the form of artificial intelligence.
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In order to answer this question, it is necessary to show the
difference between the concepts of consciousness and intelligence.
As we have already said, consciousness is a complex spiritual
phenomenon that characterizes the mental state of a person and his
socio-cultural, creative act. This is the highest form of reflection of
reality in the form of images, concepts.
We can concretize this definition by denoting what
consciousness includes:
1. Intelligence is the ability of mental purposeful activity,
analysis, abstraction and generalization.
2. Sensitivity: the ability to be aware (feel, perceive or be
aware) of one's environment or to have subjective experience.
3. Self-awareness: the ability to introspect and the ability to see
oneself as a person, separated from the environment and other
personalities.
4. Identity is the ability to consciously relate oneself to large
and small groups for one reason or another.
5. Qualia — individual moments of subjective, conscious
experience.
The concept of intellect can be correlated with only one of the
aspects of consciousness — rationality.
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for
abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional
knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and
problem-solving. More generally, it can be described as the ability to
perceive or infer information, and to retain it as knowledge to be
applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or
context.
Through intelligence, humans possess the cognitive abilities to
learn, form concepts, understand, apply logic and reason, including
the capacities to recognize patterns, plan, innovate, solve problems,
make decisions, retain information, and use language to
communicate.
These intellectual abilities are determined by the development
of attention, memory, and imagination.
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The modern computer has long surpassed man in the
development of intellectual abilities. The amount of computer
memory is not comparable to that of a human, the ability to
concentrate is endless, and even the resource of imagination has been
mastered by the computer programs have appeared that are capable
of self-learning and combinatorics.
Artificial intelligence replaces a person in many industries and
various activities. Anthropomorphic machines appeared, which think
better than humans and look like humans.
Can we say that artificial intelligence has consciousness?
Not yet, because only one element of consciousness is
available — thinking.
But the problem persists. What happens if the machine's selflearning ability leads to self-awareness?
And if this happens, will an artificial intelligence with
consciousness be a morally responsible, have a free will and legal
competent?
At the end of this course, you will write an essay and indicate
your arguments for and against the prospects of artificial intelligence.
I will only remind you that an action can be considered free if it:
- alternatively (there is a choice, and the person has doubts
about the consequences of his choice);
- authorial (a person performs an action on his own, and not
under control or pressure from others);
- responsibly (a man commits an act, which means that he has
control over its behavior and is aware of its responsibility for what he
has done).
Practical tasks and questions
1. Explain why the problem of consciousness is so difficult for
philosophy?
2. Give four definitions of consciousness.
Which definition do you think best explains consciousness?
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