2 Man's problem is not in the atomic bomb, man's problem is in his heart Love is a personal experience for which there are no recipes. It is an art that requires discipline, patience and empathy. To love, one must be aware of it - and work daily. In our

The human mind can watch the abandoned body Since biblical times, if not earlier, people have speculated on the claim that the so-called out-of-body (OBE) clearly proves the possibility of separating a person's consciousness from his body. Look at the following example

Man has neither wings, nor fast legs, nor terrible teeth and claws. The main thing that we got from nature for survival is a unique mental phenomenon - consciousness. This is what allows a person to feel like a separate person. It seems that it has always been with us… But how does consciousness work? How do its main mechanisms work?

Physics and Tears Sound is just vibrations in the air, even if these vibrations are caused by the trembling of a violin string. But our brain in some incomprehensible way turns them into Mozart's music, from which a feeling of bright joy arises or tears well up in our eyes. The brain somehow connects the physical world with our absolutely ideal non-physical psyche. However, not a single scientific fact that would demonstrate this process is known. Yes, neuroscientists conduct experiments in which they try to find the area in the brain that responds to a specific stimulus, such as a photo of a grandmother or Marilyn Monroe. But this, alas, does not give us anything to understand the mechanism of emotional and psychological perception by a person of his own grandmother or a famous actress. We have to admit that there is an information gap between the phenomena of neurophysiology and psychology, and it seems that closing it will be as difficult as comprehending the mysteries of the Universe.

Sergei Mats

If we humans have a developed psyche, consciousness, intellect, then all this must have some evolutionary significance. Otherwise, natural selection simply would not have allowed all these phenomena to develop. Homo sapiens have a brain that makes up about 2% of their total body mass, but it is an incredibly energy-intensive organ, taking about a quarter of the body's energy consumption. Why do we need such a complex and voracious device? After all, it is obvious that in the animal world there are many creatures that do not have a developed psyche, but at the same time are perfectly adapted and have survived more than one geological era. Take, for example, echinoderms. A starfish can be cut in half and two starfish will grow from the pieces. We could only dream of such a thing - it's almost immortality. But insects solve the adaptation problem differently: they change generations very quickly, effectively manipulating their genome. An individual can live only a few hours, but more and more new organisms allow the population as a whole to adapt perfectly to changing conditions.

The greatest car in the world

For a human, this is impossible. Our body is much more complex than the body of a fly or a moth, it grows and develops for many years, and this is too valuable a resource to “squander” it like insects do. Of course, the change of generations also plays a certain evolutionary role in the life of mankind - for this there is a mechanism of aging, but our strength as a population lies elsewhere. The advantage that our long-growing and long-lived body needs is the ability to adapt very quickly. A person can instantly assess the changed situation and figure out how to adapt to it, while remaining alive and healthy. All this is possible for us thanks to consciousness. In the words of the well-known Russian neurophysiologist, academician Natalya Bekhtereva, “the brain is the greatest machine that can process the real into the ideal.” This means that the most important property of human consciousness is the ability to create and store within itself a picture of the surrounding world. The benefits of this skill are enormous. Encountering some phenomenon or problem, we do not have to solve or comprehend them from scratch - we just need to compare new information with the idea of ​​the world that we have already developed.

Sound is just air vibrations, even if these air vibrations are caused by the trembling of a violin string, but our brain in some incomprehensible way turns these vibrations into Mozart's music, from which a feeling of bright joy arises or tears well up in the eyes. The brain somehow connects the physical world with our absolutely ideal non-physical psyche. However, not a single scientific fact that would demonstrate this process is known. Yes, neuroscientists conduct experiments in which they try to find the area in the brain that responds to a specific stimulus: for example, a photo of a grandmother or Marilyn Monroe. But this, alas, does not give us anything to understand the mechanism of emotional and psychological perception by a person of his own grandmother or a famous actress. We have to admit that there is an information gap between the phenomena of neurophysiology and psychology, and it seems that closing this gap will be as difficult as comprehending the mysteries of the Universe.

The history of human development from a practically zero psyche in infancy to a diverse experience of a mature personality is a constant accumulation of adaptive information, addition and correction of an individual picture of the world. And the activity of human consciousness is nothing but the incessant filtering of new information through the acquired experience. It must be said that the Russian word “consciousness” very successfully reflects the essence of the phenomenon: consciousness is life “with knowledge”. To do this, evolution endowed man with a unique computing resource - the brain, which allows you to continuously compare a new reality with previously gained experience.

In the words of the well-known Russian neurophysiologist, academician Natalia Bekhtereva, “The brain is the greatest machine that can process the real into the ideal.”

Does our consciousness have flaws? Of course, the main one is the incompleteness and inaccuracy of any personal picture of the world. If, for example, a man meets a blonde, then, based on personal experience, he may decide that blondes are too frivolous or materialistic, and refuse a serious relationship. But maybe the whole point is just that he personally was once unlucky with a particular blonde, and therefore his experience is atypical. This happens all the time, and sometimes the accumulation of facts that contradict the individual picture of the world can lead to what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. At the moment of dissonance, the old picture of the world collapses, and a new one emerges in its place, which is also part of our adaptive mechanism.

Abyss of the unconscious

Another drawback of consciousness is that it is not omnipotent, although it creates the illusion (but this is only an illusion!), As if 100% of all new information passes through itself. However, he does not have such a physical ability. Consciousness is an evolutionarily very new tool, which at some point was built on top of the unconscious part of the psyche. Which creatures had consciousness for the first time, and whether certain animals have consciousness is a separate, very interesting and far from understanding question. Unfortunately, there is still no scientific tool for communicating with animals - be it cats, dogs or dolphins, and therefore we cannot find out to what extent they are conscious.

Consciousness creates the illusion that it passes 100% of information through itself, but this is not so.

At the same time, the unconscious, that is, the resources of the psyche that are outside of consciousness, have been preserved in full in humans. It is impossible to estimate the size of the unconscious or control its contents - consciousness does not give us access to it. It is generally accepted that the extraconscious is limitless, and this mental resource comes to the rescue in situations where the resources of consciousness are not enough. Help is given to us in the form of processes, the results of which we notice, but the processes themselves are not. A textbook example is the periodic table of elements, which Dmitri Mendeleev allegedly saw in a dream after long painful reflections.

Even if we admit that this is just a beautiful legend, it illustrates well what each of us knows from personal experience. A decision that has not been given for a long time, sometimes suddenly comes as if from nowhere. Sometimes - from the realm of sleep. However, we not only cannot see the work of the unconscious, but we cannot even guarantee its connection. This archaic instrument, as already mentioned, is not subject to the efforts of our will.

Where is the place for socks?

On the other hand, another reserve mechanism, not so dark and inaccessible as the unconscious, the human consciousness also has. This mechanism in psychology is sometimes associated with the concept of "character", but it works like this. When the subject compares the incoming information with his picture of the world, he first of all wants to get an answer to the question: “What should I do in the current situation?” And if there is not enough concrete experience for consciousness, the search for an answer to the question begins: “What do people generally do in such situations?” This question is actually addressed to childhood, to parental upbringing. Mom and dad give children a set of behavioral templates (patterns) on the topic “what is good and what is bad”, but everyone’s upbringing is different, and patterns for the same case can differ significantly from person to person. For example, the husband pattern says that socks can be thrown in the middle of the room, and the wife pattern says that dirty laundry should be immediately taken to the washing machine. This conflict has two possible outcomes.

In one case, the wife will turn to her husband with a request not to scatter socks, and he may agree with his wife. At the same time, the consciousness of two people will evaluate the situation "here and now", and a compromise will be the result of rapid adaptation. In another case, if the husband "stubbornly rests", the wife will most likely begin to angrily reproach him with words like: "This is disgusting! Nobody does that!" “No one does” or “everyone does” – this is the “alternate airfield” of consciousness, its reserve system. Such a system plays an important adaptive role - it allows not to transfer the task to the extraconscious (there will be no control over it at all), but to leave it in consciousness. Unfortunately, at this moment, to some extent, the most beneficial adaptation mode is turned off - the analysis of immediate reality.

Mirror for a hero

So, the most important evolutionary advantage of a person is the ability to constantly bring his inner picture of the world in line with reality and thus predict future events and adapt to them. But how to evaluate the correctness of adaptation? To do this, we have a feedback device - an emotional response system, thanks to which something is pleasant for us and something unpleasant. If we're good, then we don't need to change anything. If we feel bad, we worry, which means that there is an incentive to change the adaptive model. People with weakened feedback are schizoids who have a lot of thoughts, but they are more than strange.

These people do not care at all how to apply their own diverse thoughts to reality, they are not very interested in this, since there is no positive feedback. There are, on the contrary, hysterical people who have powerful feedback. They are constantly under the influence of emotions, only the adaptive model is not changed for a long time. They go to college and don't study. They start a business and ruin it with their inaction. Isteroids can be compared to a broken clock, which only shows the exact time twice a day. Well, schizoids are clocks whose hands randomly rotate in different directions.

Which one of us is a genius?

Another evolutionary task is connected with the work of consciousness. It not only helps an individual to quickly adapt to changing circumstances, but also works for the survival of humanity as a whole. We all have our own inner picture of the world, to some extent reflecting reality. But someone will definitely have it more adequate, and we wonder how this person - let's call him a genius - understood what others could not understand. The more people who see the situation most adequately, the more likely the community as a whole is to survive. Therefore, the diversity of human consciousness is also very important from the point of view of the evolutionary process.

In each port by person

Two systems - the system of adaptation and the system of introspection of adaptive actions - together form a human personality. A highly developed personality can be considered a person in whom both systems work in the greatest harmony. He quickly grasps the essence of phenomena, is clearly aware of them, thinks vividly, feels comprehensively. It is often said about the perception of such people: “Wow, how exactly he said! I couldn't do that!" A person is like an ideal gastronomic product, in which there is exactly as much as necessary, and the unconscious, and adaptability, and introspection. Does such an integration require an excessive amount of information? Not at all. For a high speed of adaptation, key information is needed that allows you to draw the right conclusion and take the right action.

At the same time, the person must correspond exactly to the place and time. Many prominent personalities probably would not have received such a reputation if they were in a different socio-cultural environment. Moreover, even in one person, under certain conditions, several personalities coexist. This may be, for example, associated with so-called altered states of consciousness.

Regulatory, biologically significant for a person is the state when all the resources of the psyche are turned to the external environment. You must always be on the alert, constantly analyze incoming information. But when the focus of attention partially or completely switches to internal states, this is called the state of change. In this case, the personality may also change. Everyone knows that a drunk person is capable of such actions that he could not even think of in a normal (sober) state. Yes, and everyone knows firsthand about the stupid behavior of lovers.

American psychologist Robert Fisher proposed the concept of "ports", according to which our consciousness is like a sea captain who travels the world, and in every port he has a woman. But none of them know anything about the others. So is our consciousness. In different states, it is capable of producing different personal properties, but these personalities are often completely unaware of each other.

Considering the career of Francis Crick, perhaps the most gifted and influential biologist of the second half of the 20th century, one can see that understanding consciousness is the most difficult of all tasks facing science.

After World War II, when Crick began to study biology, it was believed that science was faced with two great unanswerable questions: what distinguishes the living from the nonliving, and what is the biological nature of consciousness. At first, Crick turned to the simpler question of the difference between living and non-living matter and began to study the nature of the gene. In 1953, after only two years of working together, he and Jim Watson helped science unravel the mystery. As Watson later wrote in his book The Double Helix, “During dinner, Francis flew into the Eagle Pub to tell everyone who sat close enough to hear him that we had discovered the secret of life.” Over the next two decades, Crick helped science decipher the genetic code and understand how DNA makes RNA and RNA makes protein.

In 1976, at the age of sixty, Crick turned to the remaining scientific puzzle - the biological nature of consciousness. He worked on it until the end of his life in collaboration with Christoph Koch, a young specialist in computational neuroscience. Crick applied all optimism and extraordinary intelligence to the study of this issue. It is thanks to him that the scientific community, which previously ignored this issue, is now focused on the problem of consciousness. But in thirty years of continuous work, Crick has made little progress in understanding the nature of consciousness. Moreover, some mental scientists and philosophers still find consciousness incomprehensible and tend to believe that it can never be explained in biological terms. They doubt the fundamental possibility of knowing how a biological system, a biological machine, can feel something. Even more doubtful is the question of how she can think about herself.

Thanks to the work of a small group of neuroscientists and theoretical physicists over the past few years, we may finally find a way to analyze the mysterious and metaphysical realm of consciousness on a scientific basis. The latest breakthrough in this new field comes from Max Tegmark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The scientist claims that consciousness is actually a state of matter.

"Just as there are many types of liquid, there are many types of consciousness"

He says. With this new model, Tegmark argues that consciousness can be described in terms of quantum mechanics and information theory, allowing us to scientifically consider such puzzling topics as self-consciousness, and why we perceive the world in classical three-dimensional terms rather than as an endless series of objective realities. proposed before the emergence of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Consciousness has always been a difficult subject for scientific discussion. After all, science deals with effects that can be observed and described mathematically, and consciousness has so far successfully evaded this approach.

Recent attempts to formalize consciousness have been made by Giulio Tononi, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who proposed Integrated Information Theory (IIT), and now by Max Tegmark at MIT, who has attempted to generalize Tononi's work in terms of quantum mechanics. In his scientific work "Consciousness as a state of matter", Tegmark suggested that consciousness can be considered as a state of matter called "perceptronium", which can be differentiated from other types of matter (solid, liquid, gaseous) using five mathematically sound principles.

In short, the theory takes Tononi's IIT - consciousness is the result of a system that can store and use information effectively - and leads it to perceptronium, defined as "a common substance that is subjectively self-perceived." This substance not only can accumulate and use data, but is also indivisible and unified. Much of the work describes the perceptronium in terms of quantum mechanics and considers why we perceive the world in terms of classical independent systems rather than in terms of one big interconnected quantum mess. Tegmark has no answer to this question, in particular.

Tegmark's work doesn't get to the point where we can answer the question of what causes or creates consciousness, but the path it has taken suggests that consciousness is governed by the same laws of physics that govern the rest of the universe.

There is a difficult problem with the unity of consciousness, but perhaps it can be solved. This unity can sometimes fall apart. Patients in whom two hemispheres of the brain are surgically separated from each other have, as it were, two consciousnesses, each of which perceives its own single picture of the world.

A more complex scientific problem is connected with the second feature of consciousness - subjectivity. Each of us lives in a world of unique sensations that are more real to us than the sensations of others. We perceive our thoughts, moods and feelings directly, while we are able to evaluate the experience of other people only indirectly, with the help of sight or hearing. Therefore, we can ask the following question. Do your reactions to the blue you see or the smell of jasmine you smell and the meaning it all have to you match my reaction to the blue I see and the smell of jasmine I smell and with the meaning it all has for me?

The problem concerns not only perception as such. The question here is not whether we see very similar shades of the same blue. This is relatively easy to find out by registering the signals of individual nerve cells in the visual system of each. The brain reproduces our perception of an object, but apparently the perceived object itself (for example, a blue color or a note up to the first octave on a piano) has the corresponding physical properties, such as the wavelength of the reflected light or the frequency of the emitted sound. The question concerns the meaning of these colors and sounds for each of us. We have not yet figured out how the electrical activity of neurons provides the meaning that we attribute to a given color or sound. The fact that each person's conscious experience is unique raises the question of whether it is possible to isolate any objective features of consciousness that are common to all of us. If our feelings ultimately give rise to sensations that are wholly and entirely subjective, then we, according to this argument, cannot arrive at any general definition of consciousness based on personal experience.

But what about philosophy? Take, for example, an interview with Thomas Metzinger, a professor of theoretical philosophy who studies consciousness and neuroethics.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍- How did philosophy become interested in the study of consciousness?

‍ ‍ ‍- Consciousness is a concept with a relatively short history dating back to the 1650s. The famous philosopher Katie Wilks taught at St. Hilda's College, who noted that 90% of the languages ​​on the planet do not have the word "consciousness". Naturally, in this context, the question of the importance of studying this concept looks doubtful, but there are reasons.

At the origins of the modern concept of consciousness was Descartes, who in 1650 destroyed all previous ideas about the structure of the human worldview with his concept of cognitive consciousness. The famous idea of ​​Descartes is that the body is extended in space, consists of parts and, therefore, can be divided. The mind has no spatial reference and cannot be divided. This idea formed the basis of the problem of body and mind. Conscious experience is one of the planes of modern understanding of the problem of body and mind.

It is important to question the importance of such research. It must be understood that this is just one small tradition in Western philosophy for which consciousness has become a big problem. People from South America or China, for example, may not ask or understand this question at all. So, of course, this issue is relative. But again, there is a big difference between being awake and being under anesthesia.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍- What is the connection between the classical definition of consciousness and the concept of the ego tunnel that you developed?

‍ ‍- As I say at the beginning of my book, there are a few simple problems associated with the problem of consciousness. For example, "the one world problem" is a question about why we have the feeling that we live in the same world and in the same situation. To humans, this seems to be something absolutely normal, but there must be some reason for the brain to perceive the world in this way. In classical philosophy, this problem was called the problem of the unity of consciousness. Now we are interested in the question of how global integration occurs in the brain.

Another problem is "the problem now" (the now problem). Perhaps not everyone notices this, but the content of our consciousness is neither in the future nor in the past, but always in the present. Even if you have a plan for what you will be doing tomorrow, you have a conscious mental situation of "now" in your head. Even if you remember what happened to you at the age of six, you still have a conscious memory of "now" in your head. Thus, any conscious experience is always in the present tense. And we need to understand what that means.

The third problem is the "reality problem". Why does everything look so real? Why is it not just my consciousness, but reality? For example, many people think that they open their eyes and see colored objects. Of course, we all know from school physics lessons that there are no colored objects in the whole world. Every time you experience a sensation of red or green, you are only experiencing a model constructed by your brain, a model of a tree or an apple in your hand. All these qualities (redness, saltiness, coldness) are the walls of the ego tunnel. This is not so for the mind or knowledge, but conscious experience (colors, sounds, feelings) is what is defined in our head. Our knowledge is not, social interactions are not, culture is not, but the subjective experience of all this is defined in our heads.

This is a very interesting problem - why does someone have such an experience (why is this your thought, and not just a thought; why is this your experience, and not just an experience; who am I who experiences this experience?). The most difficult question is whether it is possible to naturalize experience from a first-person perspective? Can we achieve a simplistic scientific understanding of this environment, internal networks? There is not only a model of reality with colors and sounds, but there is also someone who experiences it.

‍ ‍ ‍ ‍- How much does the ego tunnel simplify our perception of reality?

‍ ‍ ‍- Objective reality is much more complex than we see and perceive it. Reality is not only much richer than we consciously experience, but it is also very different. The human nervous system is the product of millions of years of evolution. Her goal was not to show reality as it is, but to help us survive, to copy our genes in the most efficient way possible. For example, many animals lack color vision. Human beings have color vision, most likely because it helped our ancestors, the apes in West Africa, distinguish between ripe and unripe fruits.

Modern research shows that conscious experience involves a great deal of self-deception. For example, if you look at your children, you will automatically perceive them to be smarter and more beautiful than other children. This is not your opinion, not your judgment - you just see it that way. Most often, we are not even aware of how biased and subjective our perception is. It designs the world we live in. And it's lucky that he looks so real.

What would reality be like if a person could perceive it in all its complexity? That would mean having sense organs for cosmic radiation, ultrasound, everything. We would need very strong cognitive abilities just to take in all this information. I believe that the strength of conscious experience is that it reduces the complexity of reality, that it is a very powerful filter of the outside world, which we simply need. Otherwise, your brain must be able to process all this information. Perhaps such things are simply physically impossible for a being with a physical body.

Consciousness - one of the basic concepts not only of psychology, but also of philosophical science.

In philosophy concept consciousness is revealed by comparing it with another important philosophical concept matter. Therefore, the understanding of the essence of consciousness turns out to depend on the method of solving the question of the relationship between matter and consciousness, on the understanding of consciousness in a broad or narrow sense.

Understanding Consciousness in a broad sense it is interpreted as an independent entity, a substance capable of creating the world. Such a substantive broad understanding consciousness is characteristic of idealistic philosophy.

This approach was first most consistently expressed in the period of antiquity by the philosophy of Plato. The same approach developed in the Christian philosophy of the Middle Ages, which recognized Bora as the bearer of higher consciousness, and later in German classical philosophy, in the idealistic system of Hegel, in which the role of the origin of the world was played by absolute idea. Absolute Idea(world mind), according to Hegel, is the primary substance, creating all other forms of being; it permeates both nature and man, which are interpreted by Hegel only as forms otherness all the same absolute idea.

IN materialistic philosophy the term "consciousness" is used in another, narrow sense. In the interpretation of the material of Jehovah, the scope of the concept "consciousness" narrows considerably. Here it loses the character of an independent essence and acquires the appearance of only one of the properties of matter, moreover, a property that arises only with the appearance of highly organized matter - the human brain. Here the role of the eternal and infinite substance, the first principle, is transferred to matter. In this narrow sense of the word, consciousness turns out to be not a universal principle, but only one of the forms of being, and a secondary form at that. closely connected with matter, without which it cannot exist. In the understanding of materialists, it is not consciousness that generates matter, but, on the contrary, matter generates consciousness as a secondary being. Consciousness here descends from the pedestal of the creative substance and turns into just a specific form of man's relationship to nature, into the relationship of the human "I" to the natural "Not-I".

The analysis of consciousness will be incomplete without clarifying its origin.

Origin of consciousness with different understanding of it - in the broad and narrow sense - is explained in different ways.

Consciousness in a broad, substantial sense is eternal, and therefore the question of its origin in idealistic philosophy is not even raised. In this sense, as noted, it is close to the concept of God, the circumstances of whose appearance in religion and religious philosophy are also not discussed.

But when understanding consciousness in the narrow sense as a property of matter, the question of its origin from matter inevitably arises.

This question turned out to be very difficult because of the obvious opposition of matter and consciousness, the phenomena of which - sensations-perceptions, concepts and judgments - are completely opposite to material objects, since, unlike them, they have neither color, nor smell, nor taste, nor any visible form.

Out of the desire to solve this difficult question arose the materialistic reflection theory. In this theory, the emergence of consciousness is associated with the universal, fundamental property of mater and - reflection. which allegedly exists along with such better known properties of matter as time, space and motion.

Reflection is understood as a property of material systems in the process of interaction to reproduce the features of other systems, retaining their traces, imprints. Within the framework of this theory, consciousness acts as the highest form of such reflection.

Physicochemical interactions in inanimate nature are recognized as the first level of reflection, and biological interactions with the participation of the sense organs are recognized as the second.

Thus, according to the ideas of materialists, consciousness arose on the basis of the property of reflection as a fundamental property of matter, as well as on the basis of labor activity and man with his own kind. The latter is of particular importance for the development of human consciousness, since it is enriched especially rapidly on the basis of all forms of social activity.

modern psychologists, characterizing the sphere of consciousness, first of all, they note that for all the apparent harmony of both idealistic and materialistic approaches to explaining the nature of the conscious, each of these approaches still has its drawbacks.

Yes, according to the presentation materialists, consciousness, as it were, suddenly, “miraculously”, for no apparent reason appears at a certain stage in the development of living matter. In addition, the content of our knowledge cannot be reduced only to the results of reflection. This is evidenced by the content of our knowledge: the role of knowledge obtained independently of the process of reflection, as a result of the autonomous, creative activity of consciousness itself, is great in them. The problem of the psycho-physiological substratum of these and many other processes of consciousness remains one of the most complex, yet unresolved problems of psychological science.

At the same time, of course, there are many facts that definitely indicate about addiction, existing between brain and mental processes, material and ideal phenomena. This circumstance is one of the main arguments in favor of materialism. But this relationship is still not evidence that the development of the material is the cause of the emergence and formation of the ideal.

According to the witty remark of one of the critics of the materialistic conception of the French philosopher Henri Bergson(1859-1941): A cloak hanging on a hanger is connected to the hanger and can even swing with it. but this does not mean that the cloak and the hanger are the same. In the same way, the material interacts with the ideal. Although they are interconnected, as indicated by the theory of reflection, they are by no means identical to each other.

But also idealistic the view that affirms the independence of the ideal from the material also faces problems when it is required to explain the facts accumulated by modern medicine, physiology and psychology about the relationship between mental processes, physical states of a person and the work of his brain.

Therefore, today some definitions of consciousness are trying to somehow combine these two opposite approaches, which is expressed, for example, in the following synthetic definition:

Consciousness is the highest level of a person's reflection of reality, if the psyche is considered from a materialistic position, and the proper human form of the mental beginning of being, if the psyche is considered from an idealistic position.

However, it is obvious that this definition suffers from uncertainty and duality.

Consciousness - the highest form of mental reflection and self-regulation, inherent only to man as a socio-historical being, is formed in the process of communication, mediated by speech, aimed at transforming reality; associated with, focused on the inner world of the subject.

And finally, if the organization of the optimal behavior of the organism to satisfy the needs of the individual is recognized as the center, the core of the entire human psyche, then consciousness with its main function of "reflection" turns out to be only the initial stage of the functioning of the psyche, and not its highest level, as it appears in the previous definition.

With this understanding, the main task of the entire psyche, including consciousness, is to organize expedient behavior in order to fulfill the need chosen by the individual at the moment.

To understand the essence of consciousness, which is revealed by the above definitions, it should be taken into account that they are talking about consciousness as one of the structural parts of the psyche, and not about the entire psyche as a whole. Consciousness and the psyche are close, but not identical in content, concepts, although in philosophical and sometimes in psychological literature their illegal identification is allowed.

It should also be taken into account that the above definitions of consciousness are trying to single out only its essence, the main property, but do not exhaust the entire richness of its content. Content is always richer than essence. Therefore, the opinion that any definition of essence is always "lame" is correct. In order to overcome this “limping”, the insufficiency of any definitions, they are usually supplemented with the characteristics of others, not the main ones, but essential properties subject. as well as a description structures, i.e. the parts of which they are composed.

Structure and levels of consciousness

When describing structures consciousness, the following features are usually distinguished:

Consciousness is a two-dimensional phenomenon:

• firstly, it includes information about the outside world, the object;
• secondly, it is also directed at the carrier itself, the subject of consciousness, i.e. consciousness acts as self-awareness.

The picture of the world that consciousness forms includes the person himself, his actions and states. The presence of a person's ability to self-knowledge is the basis for the existence and development of psychology, because without it mental phenomena would be closed to knowledge. Without reflection, a person could not have an idea that he has a psyche.

Self-awareness is a person's awareness of his activities, thoughts, feelings, needs.

The ability to exercise self-knowledge, i.e. to direct mental activity towards oneself is a unique property of man, which distinguishes him from animals.

In the process of self-consciousness, a person realizes the meaning of his own life, develops his mental, moral, and professional qualities, and improves himself.

Consciousness, self-consciousness in the human psyche are closely related to unconscious. The unconscious is sometimes, for example, in Freudianism, sharply opposed to consciousness. Moreover, this concept assigns a decisive role in human life not to consciousness, but to the subconscious, especially sexual feelings. The subconscious, according to Freud, manifests itself primarily in dreams, in a state of hypnosis.

There is, however, another interpretation of the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious, the essence of which is the recognition of the priority of consciousness, especially rational consciousness, thinking. In philosophy, this interpretation is represented by rationalism (Descartes), and in psychology by Gestal psychology (Köhler) and cognitive psychology (Neisser).

Modern psychology believes that the conscious and unconscious in the human psyche are not fenced off and constantly influence each other. In addition, a person is able to control his entire psyche at the level of consciousness.

Consciousness includes several basic structural blocks, the main of which are:

• which include sensations, perceptions, ideas, thinking, memory, language and speech;
• emotional states - positive and negative, active and passive, etc.;
• volitional processes - making and executing decisions, strong-willed efforts.

All these structures of consciousness ensure the formation of knowledge and the subject-practical activity of a person to satisfy his diverse needs.

In conclusion of the characterization of the phenomenon of consciousness, attention should be paid to some of its essential features, which are most often indicated in the psychological literature.

Consciousness is dynamic, mobile, changeable. In the focus of consciousness continuously, from morning to evening and even in a dream, a person appears, replacing each other, then one, then another images, thoughts, ideas. Consciousness is like the flow of a river. Therefore, it is sometimes characterized by the term "stream of consciousness". This feature of consciousness was first noticed by the ancient philosopher Democritus, who expressed the idea that everything in the world flows, everything changes, you cannot enter the same river twice, and human souls flow like streams.

Consciousness never exists in a "pure form", by itself, in isolation from its particular carrier. This feature of consciousness is expressed by the term "subjectivity of consciousness", and is also reflected by the formula: "Consciousness is a subjective image of the objective world." All works of human culture - material and spiritual - originally arose in the minds of their creators.

But any individual consciousness does not arise in an empty place, not in a vacuum. The most important feature of consciousness, which was especially persistently singled out by domestic psychology, is close connection of individual consciousness with the public. This connection is carried out through language and speech, which in their content embody the entire experience of human culture. Each person in the course of individual development through language and speech in one way or another joins the public consciousness.

Consciousness is active. This feature of consciousness is manifested not only in the process of creating and changing the “picture of the world”, but also in the subject-practical activity to meet the needs of a person who needs an adequate image of the world in order for his activity to be effective. This feature of consciousness is expressed by the formula: consciousness not only reflects the world, but also creates it.” This means that if the psyche of animals provides, first of all, the adaptation of the animal to the surrounding world, then the consciousness of a person can allow him to change the world, adapting it to your needs.

Consciousness can not only reflect the real world, but also create ideal constructions, representations that have no analogues, prototypes in the real world. A person is able, distracted from the real perception of the surrounding reality, to draw in his imagination something that does not currently exist, or even that which has never existed and will not exist. Such is the content of religions, social utopias, as well as some hypotheses that claim to be scientific.

Any sufficiently complex system has a consciousness, be it a human brain or a bee brain. According to the American neuroscientist Christoph Koch, the Internet is not an exception

Where does consciousness come from? Philosophers have been looking for an answer to this question for centuries. Scientists - for decades. We know consciousness exists because we are aware of ourselves. But it remains a mystery how the birth of consciousness is connected with the chemical and electrical processes of the human brain. American neuroscientist Christoph Koch is a leading specialist in the study of the brain at the Allen Institute (Seattle). Koch believes that consciousness appears in any sufficiently complex system capable of processing information. All animals (from humans to earthworms) have consciousness. Moreover, even the Internet can have consciousness.

Koch's concept is a modern version of an old philosophical doctrine called panpsychism. Panpsychism includes the teachings of Plato, Benedict Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz and George Lucas. According to panpsychism, there are no inanimate objects in nature. A soul or some equivalent like a monad or a Force exists in both a stone and a sea wave. This is more the area of ​​philosophy and esotericism than science.

But Koch has spent the last 30 years searching for the neurobiological basis of consciousness. Koch's accomplishments at the Allen Institute made him one of the leaders of the US government-sponsored collaborative brain mapping project. As Barack Obama announced in early 2013, $300 million a year will be allocated to the project over the next ten years. How do Koch's panpsychic views fit in with his role at the forefront of scientific progress?

Boy and his dog

As a child, Christoph Koch had a dog. Koch was brought up in a Catholic family. Young Christoph was always embarrassed by the idea that a person has a soul and he can go to heaven, but a dog does not have a soul. It seemed to him that either humans or dogs should have souls, or no one should have them at all. Then Koch discovered Buddhism with its idea that "all three worlds are only consciousness." Buddhism was not far from the work of Plato, Spinoza and Arthur Schopenhauer, who also believed that consciousness is universal and omnipresent.

Christoph Koch, Leading Brain Researcher at the Allen Institute in Seattle.

Koch personally likes this interpretation of being most of all for two reasons. The first reason is metaphysical. The existence of consciousness cannot be denied. Man has to comprehend the facts about the structure of the Universe indirectly, but consciousness can be studied directly. The second reason is biological. All animals have a complex physiology. And at the level of the biological device, there is nothing special in the human brain.

Using a microscope, a scientist can easily tell whether a sample of the brain matter of a mouse, monkey or human. But many animals are capable of complex behavior. Even bees can recognize human faces and tell each other the location of food sources through dance. Bees can find their way through complex mazes using signals stored in their short-term memory. If you give a certain smell to the hive, then the bees will return to the place where they last felt this smell. And this is already associative memory - moving from object to object along the chain of mental associations. The simplest explanation for the presence of associative memory in bees, according to Koch, is the presence of consciousness. Consciousness should be considered an integral property of highly organized fragments of matter (for example, the brain).

Italian-American psychiatrist and neuroscientist Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin theorized that consciousness is the adaptive ability of the brain to dynamically integrate information flows. In Tononi's integrative model, any brain is assigned the F parameter. This is an indicator of how integrated the system is, how much it, as a whole, differs from the sum of its parts. Ф can be considered a unit of measurement of consciousness. Any system in which Ф is greater than zero has consciousness. To have consciousness according to Koch means to feel something.

It cannot be said that consciousness is inherent in any physical system. A black hole, a pile of sand, or a bunch of neurons in a Petri dish are not integrated. They do not have consciousness - but it is in complex systems. The amount of consciousness (since we decided to measure it in units) depends on the number and nature of connections in the system.

The dream of the internet

In the human brain, the whole system is endowed with consciousness, not individual nerve cells. In an ecosystem, consciousness depends on how its individual components (say, the trees in a forest) are integrated into the system... which should not be confused with the usual biological interactions between trees.

Map of neural connections in the human brain.

The American philosopher John Searle asked: "Why do countries have no consciousness?" In some countries, there are more than a billion people interacting with each other. But they do not have a common consciousness.

When two people talk to each other, they interact differently than brain cells. Individuals are endowed with consciousness - but there is no super-brain that would unite us all into a single whole. Man does not have a collective consciousness. The same applies to forests with trees. Consciousness is a matter of degree and quantity of interactions between all the components included in the system.

Koch does not exclude that the Internet may have consciousness. There are 10 billion computers in the worldwide network, and there are billions of transistors in the central processing unit of each computer. In total, at least 10 19 transistors are included in the Internet. There are about 1000 trillion (or quadrillion) synapses in the human brain. So there are 10,000 times more transistors on the internet than there are synapses in the human brain!

Internet map as of 2005.

But is the internet more complex than the human brain? This again depends on the degree of integration. In the human brain, the transmission of a nerve impulse occurs from neuron to neuron or from neuron to effector cell along permanent synapse connections. In computer science, this kind of network would be called a circuit-switched connection. The Internet, as you know, is organized according to a different principle - packet switching. The information is divided into small pieces, which are transmitted through the public network independently of each other.

But according to Koch's theory of neo-panpsychism, the Internet feels like something in working order. If the connections between computers are cut off, this feeling will disappear. And then the Internet will be like a person in a state of deep dreamless sleep.

Through the eyes of a climber

The difference between the consciousness of man and animal is determined by the total amount of sensations and the complexity of the device of the sensory apparatus. The cerebral cortex in mice is similar to that of humans, but the prefrontal cortex is less developed. So the mouse most likely does not have self-awareness, it does not recognize symbols ... but the processes of sight and hearing in a mouse are comparable to how we see and hear the world.

Many animals, including dogs, do not recognize their reflection in a mirror. But Koch suspects that dogs can recognize themselves by smell. They recognize the smell of their own feces and distinguish it from the smell of other dogs' feces - this is already a primitive form of self-awareness. Koch does not believe that the dog is capable of introspection - their psyche is not complex enough. But dogs can experience feelings of joy and excitement at the level of children and some adults.

In animals, self-awareness is very rare (higher primates demonstrate it), and in humans, its level is even excessive. This is due to the level of development of the prefrontal cortex of the brain. But animals can experience happiness without self-awareness. Koch compares the inner world of an animal with the sensations of a climber conquering Everest. The inner voice is silent, but a person is hypersensitive to the smallest details of the environment. Self-awareness in such a situation is reduced to a severe minimum ... but a person still experiences happiness.

Returning to the theory of pansychism, Koch draws a clear line between science and metaphysics. Theoretically, the presence of consciousness in any system can be checked. It is possible to build two systems with the same amount of incoming and outgoing data. But in one of the systems, the information will be integrated. And such a system will have consciousness. Consciousness will be determined not by the incoming and outgoing data, but by the nature of the system's internal connections. According to this theory, simple systems endowed with consciousness and complex systems without consciousness are possible. There is no consciousness in the cerebellum of the human brain due to the primitiveness of its connections.

Theoretically, the degree of complexity of connections can be calculated. So far, we cannot do this. Modern methods of monitoring the activity of the human brain are too primitive. At the cellular level, there are millions of details that we still don't know anything about.

As a scientist, Koch believes that the most important thing now is to find a way to confirm or disprove his theory. Tononi's group has built a device to manipulate the brain and assess the level of consciousness (or lack of consciousness) in comatose patients in a vegetative state. This kind of research can answer the question of whether the human consciousness disappears in a coma, or whether people in the “vegetable” state continue to experience pain and fear, but are not able to bring them to others. In the second case, Koch's ideas about consciousness as an integral property of complex matter will be confirmed. And in the first one you will have to look for some other theory.

“We live in a universe where organized fragments of matter give rise to consciousness,” says Christoph Koch. - This theory will help us answer many interesting questions: at what stage of development does a fetus or a child become conscious? Do people in a coma have consciousness? We will be able to explore the pathology of consciousness and the consciousness of animals. Why exactly we live in such a universe is also a very interesting question. But I don't see how we can answer it today."

According to Wired