Structure and components of human consciousness in psychology

Updated July 24, 2021 563 Author: Dmitry Petrov
Hello, dear readers of the KtoNaNovenkogo.ru blog. What is human consciousness?

Perhaps this is the voice of the soul, and then we will not cease to exist even after the death of the body. Of course, provided that the soul exists.

And if it lives thanks to the activity of the brain, then along with the cessation of the latter’s life, consciousness also disappears. This phenomenon is of interest to representatives of various scientific fields. What does humanity know about him today?

Definition of the concept

Psychologists and philosophers identify two aspects of the psyche that make a person human.

This is consciousness and self-awareness. Consciousness is understood as the highest degree of reflection of reality and control of life.

With the help of consciousness, a person controls his mental functions, forms a model of the external world, cognizes and evaluates everything that happens to him and around him.

The most important element of consciousness is self-awareness . It means the individual’s understanding of himself as an object of the world, the formation of an image of his “I”, ideas about himself.

Consciousness and self-awareness are functions that humanity acquired and developed in itself in the process of evolutionary development.

The first signs appear in infancy, when the child distinguishes sensations from different objects and processes that happen to him.

to clearly understand himself at 2-3 years old; at the age of seven, children develop self-esteem.

The most rapid and rapid development of consciousness and self-awareness occurs in adolescence , when a person is actively searching for himself, his style, and determining his place in life. During this same period, moral principles were formed.

Thus, the following forms are distinguished in consciousness:

• self-awareness,
• rationality, the relationship of oneself and one’s concepts with the world,
• reason, thinking consciousness,
• spirituality, the highest degree of consciousness.

There are many theories about consciousness . For example, Freud believed that every event and human experience is determined by the conscious and unconscious.

In the area of ​​the unconscious there is the sexual and aggressive side of the personality, as well as those events that the individual has deliberately repressed from his memory and mind. When the unconscious tries to “break through” into consciousness, a person experiences a feeling of anxiety.

From the point of view of idealism, consciousness is always primary. The world cannot exist outside of human perception.

Materialism considers consciousness to be a property of highly organized matter. It not only reflects the existing reality, but also controls it.

Functionalism defines consciousness as a function, that is, a person, being in a conscious state, performs certain functions. Artificial intelligence is built on this .

Consciousness as a mental process: its structure, functions and characteristics

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Plan:

1. The concept of consciousness.
2. Structure.
3. Functions.
4. Characteristics.

Consciousness is the highest form of reflection of the real world; a function of the brain that is unique to humans and associated with speech, consisting in a generalized and purposeful reflection of reality, in the preliminary mental construction of actions and anticipation of their results, in the reasonable regulation and self-control of human behavior. The “core” of consciousness, the way of its existence, is knowledge. Consciousness belongs to the subject, the person, and not to the surrounding world. But the content of consciousness, the content of a person’s thoughts is this world, certain aspects of it, connections, laws. Therefore, consciousness can be characterized as a subjective image of the objective world.

One of the first ideas about the structure of consciousness belongs to Sigmund Freud, according to which consciousness has a hierarchical structure and includes the subconscious, consciousness, and superconsciousness. The subconscious and superconscious form the composition of the unconscious.

Alexey Nikolaevich Leontyev identified three of its components: the sensory fabric of consciousness, meaning and personal meaning. (see additional material)

The essential features of consciousness include: speech, thinking and the ability to create a generalized model of the surrounding world in the form of a set of images and concepts.

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

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

2. Distinction between subject and object (contrasting oneself with the surrounding world, distinguishing between “I” and “not I”). This includes self-awareness, self-knowledge and self-esteem.

3. A person’s relationship to himself and the world around him (his feelings, emotions, experiences).

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

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

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

These functions of consciousness can be schematically shown on the diagram in the form of relatively independent, but interconnected functional blocks (Fig. 18.1):

Basic functions of consciousness

As the famous German philosopher Karl Marx wrote: “My relationship to my environment is my consciousness,” and this is actually true. In psychology, the main functions of consciousness are identified, thanks to which a certain attitude towards the very environment where the individual is located is formed. Let's look at the most basic of them:

1. The cognitive function of consciousness is responsible for knowing everything around, forming an idea of ​​reality and acquiring factual material with the help of sensation, thinking and memory.
2. The accumulative function is generated by a cognitive feature. Its meaning is that in human consciousness and memory a lot of knowledge, feelings, impressions, experiences, emotions are “collected” not only from one’s own experience, but also from the actions of other contemporaries and predecessors.
3. The evaluative function of consciousness or reflective, with its help a person compares his own needs and interests with data about the outside world, gets to know himself and his knowledge, distinguishes between “I” and “not I”, which contributes to the development of self-knowledge, self-awareness and self-esteem.
4. Function of purposefulness , i.e. As a result of analyzing the experience gained, a person who is not satisfied with the world around him tries to change it for the better, forming for himself certain goals and ways to achieve them.

1. The creative or creative function of consciousness is responsible for the formation of new, previously unknown images and concepts with the help of thinking, imagination and intuition.
2. The communicative function is carried out using language. People work together, communicate and enjoy it, storing the information they receive in their memory.

Four main characteristics of consciousness.

1. Consciousness is the totality of knowledge about the world around us.

2. A clear distinction between subject and object, between “I” and “not I” is recorded in consciousness.

3. Consciousness ensures the implementation of human goal-setting activity.

4.The structure of consciousness also includes the emotional sphere of a person.

Additional material for question 20.

Human consciousness is characterized by such aspects as self-awareness, introspection, and self-control. And they are formed only when a person separates himself from the environment. Self-awareness is the most important difference between the human psyche and the psyche of the most developed representatives of the animal world. It should be noted that reflection in inanimate nature corresponds to the first three forms of movement of matter (mechanical, physical, chemical), reflection in living nature corresponds to the biological form, and consciousness corresponds to the social form of movement of matter.

A person reflects the outside world not in passive contemplation, but in the process of practical, transformative activity. Consciousness is characterized not only as a reflection of the world, but also as such a spiritual activity that is aimed at the active, creative transformation of reality.

The content of consciousness is necessarily, one way or another, practically realized. But for this purpose it acquires the character of a plan, or an idea. An idea is not only the knowledge of what is, but also the planning of what should be. An idea is a concept focused on practical implementation.

The creative activity of consciousness is closely connected with the practical activity of man and with the needs that arise under the influence of the external world. Needs, reflected in a person’s head, acquire the character of a goal. A goal is an idealized human need that has found its object, a subjective image of the object of activity, in the ideal form of which the result of this activity is anticipated. Goals are formed on the basis of the entire cumulative experience of humanity and rise to the highest forms of their manifestation in the form of social, ethical and aesthetic ideals. The ability to set goals is a specifically human ability that constitutes a cardinal characteristic of consciousness. Consciousness would become an unnecessary luxury if it were deprived of goal-setting, that is, the ability to mentally transform things in accordance with social needs.

Thus, the relationship between the purposeful activity of man and nature is not reduced to a simple coincidence. The basis of human goal-setting activity is dissatisfaction with the world and the desire to change it, to give it the forms necessary for man and society. Consequently, human goals are generated by social practice, the objective world and presuppose it.

But human thought is capable of not only reflecting what directly exists, but also breaking away from it. The infinitely diverse objective world, with all its colors and forms, seems to glow, reflected in the mirror of our “I” and forming an equally complex, diverse and surprisingly changeable world. In this bizarre kingdom of the spirit, its own spiritual space, human thought moves and creates. Both true and illusory ideas arise in people's minds. Thought moves according to ready-made templates and breaks new paths, breaking outdated norms. She has a wonderful ability to innovate and create.

Recognition of the active, creative nature of consciousness is a necessary requirement for understanding human personality: people are the products and creators of history. The connection with reality is not achieved by consciousness itself, but by real people who practically transform the world. The objective world, influencing a person and being reflected in his consciousness, turns into the ideal. Being a consequence of the influence of the external world as a cause, ideal consciousness, in turn, acts as a derivative cause: consciousness, through practice, has a reverse influence on the reality that gave rise to it. Activity is characteristic not only of individual, personal, but also of social consciousness, first of all, of progressive ideas.

Four main characteristics.

1. Consciousness is the totality of knowledge about the world around us. In addition, it allows this knowledge to be shared among all people. The very word “consciousness” implies this: consciousness is a joint, cumulative knowledge, i.e. individual consciousness cannot develop separately from social consciousness and language, which is the basis of abstract thinking - the highest form of consciousness. Thus, the structure of consciousness includes all cognitive processes - sensation, perception, memory, thinking, imagination, with the help of which a person continuously expands his knowledge about the world and about himself. A violation of any of the cognitive processes automatically becomes a violation of consciousness as a whole.

2. A clear distinction between subject and object, between “I” and “not I” is recorded in consciousness. Man is the only creature that is capable of distinguishing itself from the rest of the world and opposing itself to it. At the initial stage of its development, human consciousness is directed outward. A person, endowed with sense organs from birth on the basis of data delivered by analyzers, recognizes the world as something separate from him, and no longer identifies himself with his tribe, with natural phenomena, etc.

In addition, only a person is capable of turning his mental activity towards himself. This means that the structure of consciousness includes self-awareness and self-knowledge - the ability to make a conscious assessment of one’s behavior, one’s individual qualities, role and place in social relations. the identification of oneself as a subject and the development of self-awareness occurred in phylogenesis and occurs in the process of ontogenesis of each person.

3. Consciousness ensures the implementation of human goal-setting activity. At the end of the labor process, a real result is achieved, which in an ideal form was already formed in the mind before the labor process began. A person imagined in advance the final goal and product of his activity, thereby forming motivation. He planned actions in accordance with this idea, subordinated his volitional efforts to it, and adjusted activities already at the stage of its implementation so that the final result would maximally correspond to the original idea of ​​it. Violation in the implementation of goal-setting activity, its coordination and direction is one of the types of disorders of consciousness.

4.The structure of consciousness also includes the emotional sphere of a person. It is responsible for the formation of emotional assessments in interpersonal relationships and self-esteem, emotional reactions to phenomena in the surrounding world, to internal phenomena. If a person’s emotional assessments and reactions are adequate, this contributes to the regulation of his mental processes and behavior, the correction of relationships with other people. In some mental illnesses, a violation of consciousness is expressed by a disorder specifically in the sphere of feelings and relationships.

The sensory fabric of consciousness, according to A.N. Leontiev, “forms a sensory composition of specific images of reality that is actually perceived or emerges in memory. These images differ in their modality, sensory tone, degree of clarity, greater or lesser stability, etc…. The special function of sensory images of consciousness is that they give reality to the conscious picture of the world that is revealed to the subject. That, in other words, it is precisely thanks to the sensory content of consciousness that the world appears for the subject as existing not in consciousness, but outside his consciousness - as an objective “field” and the object of his activity. Sensory tissue is the experience of a “sense of reality.”

Meaning is the content associated with a particular expression (word, sentence, sign, etc.) of some language.

In other words, this is the content of words, diagrams, maps, drawings, etc., which is understandable to all people speaking the same language, belonging to the same culture or similar cultures that have gone through a similar historical path.

Personal meaning reflects the subjective significance of certain events, phenomena of reality to the interests, needs, and motives of a person. It creates partiality in human consciousness.

Refracted in the sphere of individual consciousness, the meaning acquires a special, unique (personal) meaning.
Arthur Minimulin

Structure

What is included in the structure of consciousness? In psychology, important structural components of consciousness are identified:

• being,
• reflection,
• self-awareness.

It performs the following functions:

1. Reflection . This includes an individual's ability to perceive, perceive, remember and store information.
2. Reflection . This is an opportunity to realize oneself as an object of the world, to understand one’s “I”.
3. Transformation . A person is able to set goals and achieve them.
4. Creative . With the help of the mind, a person shows imagination and creativity.
5. Grade . This includes emotions.
6. Communication . A person conveys his knowledge with the help of certain signs. That is, consciousness cannot exist without communication.
7. Time formation .
   This is a holistic picture of the world, containing memories of the past, understanding of the present and future. This property is the main difference between humans and animals.

Structure of consciousness

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

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

Finished works on a similar topic

Course work The structure of consciousness 400 ₽ Abstract The structure of consciousness 240 ₽ Test work The structure of consciousness 200 ₽

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Stages and functions of self-awareness

Self-awareness is an individual’s perception of himself, understanding of his differences from others, awareness of his needs, emotions, feelings, experiences.

Self-awareness performs the following functions:

1. Distinguishing yourself from others, accepting your individuality.
2. Maintaining consistency of actions and behavior, responsibility for one’s actions.
3. Motivation for a specific activity.
4. Formation of a model of relationships with others.
5. The ability to develop personality traits, control emotions and feelings.

In its development, self-awareness goes through the following stages :

1. Natural . The child learns to distinguish and perceive sensations and the effects of external factors on him with the help of sensorimotor intelligence.
2. Social .
   A person perceives himself, evaluates and compares with others. At this stage, self-respect and will appear.
3. Personal . The individual understands the reasons for his actions and evaluates the possibilities for further development.

Thus, the psychological structure of self-awareness consists of the following components :

• self-knowledge,
• self-control and self-regulation,
• self-esteem,
• self-acceptance,
• self-respect.

Stages of development:

1. Awareness of identity, differentiation of oneself. Develops by 12 months of the baby’s life.
2. Understanding oneself as a subject of society and activity. Appears at 2-3 years of age.
3. Acceptance of individual mental characteristics. Formed in teenagers.
4. Formation of moral and ethical principles. Begins to develop in adolescence.

Functions of consciousness

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

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

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Main characteristics of consciousness

Actively. This characteristic applies to many animals, but a distinctive feature of man is the ability to psychologically reflect reality, to perceive the world around him not passively and indifferently, but according to the degree of significance. Such differentiation occurs consciously, but without human intervention in the psychological processes of the brain.

Intentionally. This property means “aspiration”, “direction”. The characteristic of consciousness is expressed in a person’s desire to realize a goal that appears as a result of conscious thinking or unconscious intention. In the literal sense, “intention” implies a person’s attraction to the implementation of a given task without direct intervention.

The presence of the main characteristics of consciousness produces the following properties:

Psychological reflection through the use of human feelings and cognitive processes (memory, thinking, sensation, imagination, perception). When one of the processes is disrupted, conscious actions are also disrupted. Self-esteem and reflection. A person is able to observe himself, control emotions, thoughts and actions. Thanks to this, human ideals and values ​​are born. Hegel's statement reflects this characteristic well. He said that although man is an animal, he is aware of it, which means he is no longer an animal. Ability to make sound judgments. This property is clearly manifested in moral feelings and judgments, moral qualities and life values. Setting a goal. A person is able, on the basis of conscious activity, to make decisions, make plans, motivate himself, and make some adjustments.

It is noteworthy that all information received by the brain is processed and realized by a person. At first, a person takes active steps to assess the situation that has occurred, and then the processes are automated.

About consciousness in simple words

It has long been proven that only man : it is his main distinguishing feature in comparison with other living beings. A flower does not think about what time to close its petals or open them - it does it at a certain hour, because it is in its DNA.

The lion will not be upset if he does not catch his prey and will not make Napoleonic plans to take revenge on the tiger with whom he recently fought. Aquarium fish do not remember what the food tasted like yesterday, and do not draw a mental image of it. All this is available only to a representative of the human race .

Thus, consciousness is a property of mental matter, with the help of which we can reflect reality.

A simple example: I see a cup in front of me. It is a beautiful red color. By the way, can I have some tea? The one I bought a week ago at the tea exhibition. The seller highly praised this variety. It's time to make sure of his honesty and brew this promising drink.

In one minute, a bunch of thoughts and images associated with them flashed through my head. I visited the past, future and present, experienced certain emotions and even sensations. This is what we call consciousness .

Consciousness can be compared to the wind, which cannot be seen, but traces of its activity can be observed.

I got this idea from this interesting video:

Consciousness and self-observation data

As a constitutive fact of internal life, S. is potentially open to introspection, which allows us to highlight several in it. characteristic phenomena: 1) many specific ones. sensory qualities, or “qualia” (Latin qualia – properties), constituting the “sensory fabric” of the image (A. N. Leontyev); 2) decomp. the degree of clarity of the contents of the S., some of which are, as it were, in the “focus” of the S., while others form its blurred periphery (in the case of emotional experiences, such a periphery, or background, is the person’s mood); 3) a sense of freedom of choice and the ability to arbitrarily determine the nature of at least the simplest actions performed (see Free will).

The last group of phenomena indicates the presence in episodes of self-awareness of a person playing the role of observer, arbiter and initiator of decisions made (see Personality). It is no coincidence that the expressions “come to consciousness” and “come to your senses” are almost synonymous. Internal “theater for oneself” (N.N. Evreinov) often includes several characters, which characterizes S.’s dialogical nature: we notice that we are carrying on internally with ourselves or with someone else. dialogue, we look at ourselves from the outside through the eyes of those around us, we evaluate others depending on how they evaluate us, we try to imagine how we would act in the place of another or how another person would behave in our situation.

What is human consciousness?

Human consciousness is a program, an energy-informational model of perception and reproduction of objective reality. In other words, Consciousness is a system of understanding and perception of the world around us, it is what forms a person’s personality, his assessment of the surrounding reality.

Such an energy information model cannot exist on its own and it exists strictly according to an algorithm . A well-developed astral body, like a professional employee, can easily understand the descriptions of the world in which the body and consciousness live. So how is this algorithm manifested in consciousness?

This function is performed by the mental body - the third subtle body of a person. It is in the mental body that all these multi-volume descriptions of the World are stored.

Mental is a huge library of knowledge. There is all the information that a person has accumulated during his life - read, learned, learned, seen, heard. He cannot know everything, but it can be replenished, enriched, developed, expanded, if there are no prohibitions on this.

By developing your consciousness, you can:

1. Uncover all your talents and abilities;
2. Reprogram the basic rules and principles on which human reality is built;
3. Get rid of programs “hardwired” at birth that negatively affect personality development;
4. Remove negative feelings and emotions (resentment, guilt, envy, revenge...);
5. Increase the capacity of knowledge and change the structure of its perception;
6. Receive a modified destiny program. What is fate, see here>>.

How to find out your destiny, read here>>.

Properties of personality consciousness.

The multi-layered structure and polysemy of the term consciousness also gave rise to different opinions among scientists about the properties of this phenomenon. There are several general interpretations that provide an understanding of the properties of consciousness:

• It is a product of human evolution . Gradually, the brain learned not just to react to external stimuli, but moved on to introspection and tracking its reactions to what was happening.
• It is real and cannot be reduced to other phenomena . Proof of this is the statement of the American professor of neurophysiology Joseph Bogen, who compared consciousness to the wind. The wind cannot be seen; it is only possible to notice the results of its activity.
• It is filled with subjective experiences. Scientists call this phenomenon “Qualia” - “phenomenal consciousness”. These are our sensations: warm-cold, tasty-tasteless, sour-sweet, comfortable-uncomfortable. All this is not measured by any physical instruments, but represents different sensations for different people.
• Qualitatively manifests itself in different states. In moments when a person declares his love or reads political news, he feels differently.
• Integrates different elements into a single field. For example, when a person reads a book, he not only puts letters together into individual words. At the same time, he feels the roughness of the pages, forms an opinion about what he has read, experiences emotions, worries about emerging associations and his past experiences.
• It is primary. Everything created by man first appeared in his consciousness. It is this that helps a person realize his plans, “put” his soul into his affairs, and feel his own worth and necessity.

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