MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF THE RF
ALMETYEVSK BRANCH
FEDERAL STATE BUDGET
EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION
HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
KAZAN NATIONAL RESEARCH TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY named after. A.N. TUPOLEVA-KAI

ABSTRACT

by discipline:

"Philosophies"

On the topic: The concept of consciousness. Consciousness and the brain.

Is done by a student
Kurmanaeva N.S.
Group 24179
Checked:
Murtazina S.V.

Almetyevsk 2012

PLAN

1.2. The concept of consciousness…………………………………… ……………………… 5

Chapter 1. Consciousness.
1.1. Consciousness. Its origin and essence.
Consciousness is one of the most difficult problems of philosophy. And at each stage of development it is solved differently. In general, consciousness is one of the most abstract categories. It is paired with the concept of matter: as the philosophy of matter developed, it was filled with new material. The problem of consciousness was pondered in antiquity. At the present stage of development, philosophy has accumulated sufficient material to solve the problem of consciousness. In contrast to matter, consciousness is characterized by such a concept as ideal. This means that it cannot be characterized by features inherent in the physical world, as can be done with a material concept. In consciousness there are images, a variety of objects and things, which in their totality constitute human consciousness and consciousness as a whole. These images of material objects with physical characteristics represent the ideal. The image of a thing and the thing itself are opposites. The ideality of an image is its invisibility, intangibility, non-spatiality, and inaccessibility to other people. Images in consciousness, unlike their material prototypes, do not have weight, smell, spatial or temporal boundaries. They arise due to human interaction with the environment. This is possible only if you have a brain, with its connection with nature. Objects of nature interact with the brain, giving rise to images that form consciousness. The ideal, in contrast to the material, is something that exists not in objective reality, but only in perception, representation, and thinking. However, consciousness itself is reality, i.e. something that exists. But reality is a special kind: not objective reality, but subjective reality (thoughts, feelings, memory, will, etc.). A subjective image bears the imprint of an individual or a group of individuals, reflects the values ​​and attitudes of this group. An image cannot exist outside a specific personality, with all its individual characteristics. It depends on the nervous system, the level of knowledge... Matter and consciousness are two types of realities, objective and subjective. They do not coincide, they are very different from each other, but this difference cannot be absolute. It is absolute only when we talk about what is primary: matter or consciousness. Now - matter, which in evolution goes through a number of stages, and only at a certain stage consciousness arises. But, from the point of view of the prevailing consciousness, this opposition is not absolute. Consciousness is considered in two aspects: ontological, epistemological. . 1. Consciousness is a property of highly organized matter, a function of the human brain, a product of human development. But not in the sense that it is connected with the nervous system, but in the fact that it arose as a social form of the movement of matter. . 2. From a human point of view, consciousness is the highest form of reflection of actions. The main function of consciousness is an adequate reflection of the world, obtaining reliable knowledge about its laws.

1.2. The concept of consciousness.
Since ancient times, thinkers have been intensely searching for a solution to the mystery of the phenomenon of consciousness. Science, philosophy, literature, art, technology - in a word, all the achievements of mankind have combined their efforts to reveal the innermost secrets of our spiritual life. For many centuries, heated debates have continued around the essence of consciousness and the possibilities of its knowledge. Theologians view consciousness as a tiny spark of the magnificent flame of divine intelligence. Idealists defend the idea of ​​the primacy of consciousness in relation to matter. Taking consciousness out of the objective connections of the real world and considering it as an independent and creative essence of being, objective idealists interpret consciousness as something primordial: it is not only inexplicable by anything that exists outside of it, but from itself is called upon to explain everything that happens in nature, history and behavior of each individual person. Supporters of objective idealism recognize consciousness as the only reliable reality. If idealism tears out the gap between the mind and the world, then materialism seeks community, unity between the phenomena of consciousness and the objective world, deriving the spiritual from the material. Materialistic philosophy and psychology proceed in solving this problem from two cardinal principles: from the recognition of consciousness as a function of the brain and a reflection of the external world.
Consciousness- 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. Consciousness is, first of all, awareness of the immediate sensory environment and awareness of a limited connection with other persons and things located outside the individual beginning to become conscious of himself; at the same time it is an awareness of nature. Human consciousness is characterized by such aspects as self-awareness, introspection, and self-control. And they are formed only when a person distinguishes himself from 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.
When considering the side of consciousness, it is necessary to pay attention to 2 points:
1) Consciousness is a property of highly organized matter of the brain. The brain constitutes the material basis of psychological phenomena. Natural science evidence suggests that consciousness is a function of the human brain.
2) Consciousness is a person’s reflection of the external world. This thesis was shared by many thinkers. From the point of view of material consciousness, it is wax, which is capable of taking various forms.
The main figures of materialism believed that the reflection of the external world occurs in the material activities of people. Moreover, material activity determines the structure of consciousness. In the reflection of the external world by humans and animals, there are both common and different. The difference is that human consciousness arises on the basis of the developed first system - the brain, but this is not enough. For the emergence of consciousness, factors of social order are required - the collective labor activity of people. Consciousness is formed through work and communication, primarily linguistic. If these factors are not present, then the child will not develop consciousness.
The difference in reflection is that animals do not distinguish themselves from the outside world, do not distinguish themselves from their life activities. Man changes nature through his actions. A distinctive feature is self-awareness, awareness of one’s personal self. The presence of a second signaling system allows a person to distinguish himself from nature.
The general is associated with the sensory reflection of reality. In addition, animals have conscious, planned actions. They are characterized by individualism and deduction, analysis and synthesis, etc. In addition, animals emotionally reflect the world. Consideration of consciousness as a reflection of the external world does not allow us to identify consciousness with physiological material processes. Consciousness is ideal. Consciousness is ideal insofar as pictures are formed in a person’s head, from which objects of material reality are formed. It is necessary to distinguish between consciousness and psyche. Psyche is the inner spiritual world of a person. Consciousness is one of the components of the psyche. Consciousness presupposes the ability to set goals, control one’s feelings, thoughts and actions, be aware of one’s actions, and foresee the consequences of one’s actions. Consciousness is also the ability to ideally reflect reality, transform the objective content of an object into the subjective content of a person. Thanks to the presence of consciousness, a person is able to evaluate a phenomenon, event, fact, and knows how to plan his activities. Consciousness has already been noted that it is a function of the brain, the essence of this function lies in the adequate, generalized, purposeful reflection and constructive and creative reworking of the external world, in linking new impressions with previous experience. Consciousness consists in an emotional assessment of reality, in the preliminary mental construction of rationally motivated actions, in a person’s separating himself from the environment and opposing himself to it as an object to a subject. Consciousness allows a person to be aware of what is happening both in the surrounding material world and in his own spiritual one. Consciousness is knowledge about the external and internal world, about oneself. The content of consciousness is a system of historically established and gradually replenished knowledge. There is unity between consciousness and knowledge, but there is no identity. Knowledge is an epistemological category. Consciousness has a wide semantic scope, which is based on a deep philosophical meaning.
Consciousness is the highest function of the brain, unique to humans and associated with speech, consisting in a generalized, evaluative and purposeful reflection and constructive and creative transformation of reality, in the preliminary mental construction of actions and anticipation of their results, in the reasonable regulation and self-control of human behavior.

1.3 . Consciousness and the brain.
The emergence of consciousness is one of the greatest mysteries of nature, the solution of which physicists and writers, philosophers and clergy, doctors and psychologists have been struggling for thousands of years. In recent years, knowledge about how the brain works has accumulated very quickly. Therefore, science has come close to solving the riddle of consciousness. Human consciousness- is, in essence, his life, consisting of an endless change of impressions, thoughts and memories. The mystery of our brain is multifaceted and affects the interests of many sciences that study the mysteries of existence. One of the main questions is how consciousness is connected to the brain. This problem is at the intersection of natural science and humanities, since consciousness arises on the basis of processes occurring in the brain, but its content is largely determined by social experience. The solution to this puzzle could build a bridge between the two main types of scientific knowledge and contribute to the creation of a unified picture of the universe that organically includes man and his spiritual world. This is probably the highest goal of science, the achievement of which is necessary to satisfy the inherent human desire for comprehensive knowledge. But the practical significance of this problem for medicine, education, and the organization of work and leisure is also great. Interest in the relationship between consciousness and the brain has been around for a long time. However, for a long time the solution to such a complex problem was considered a matter of the distant future. The understanding that the study of the problem of consciousness is an urgent task of today came to physiologists relatively recently: the rapid progress of brain science brought this topic to the front pages of neuroscience journals. It even arose figuratively English scientist John Taylor, “the race for consciousness.” The breakthrough in this field was largely due to the advent of “living brain imaging” techniques, such as positron emission tomography, functional magnetic resonance, and multichannel recording of the brain’s electric and magnetic fields. The latest devices have made it possible to see on the display screen which zones are activated when performing various tasks that require mental effort, as well as to accurately determine the location of lesions in diseases of the nervous system. Scientists have gained the ability to obtain corresponding images in the form of colorful maps of the brain. From a philosophical point of view, one may wonder how legitimate it is at all to try to explain by the movement of nerve impulses what we perceive as color or sound. Sensation is a purely personal feeling, the “inner theater” of each of us, and the task of brain science is to understand what neural processes lead to the emergence of a subjective image. At the same time, the mystery of the human psyche is not unique in its methodological complexity and stands among other mysteries of nature. Essentially, the emergence of a new quality occurs at each stage of fundamental complication of natural processes. The experience of scientific knowledge shows that a complex phenomenon, as a rule, does not arise out of nothing, but develops in the process of evolution from simpler forms. The same fully applies to subjective experiences. They progress from elementary manifestations, such as sensations and emotions, to higher-order consciousness associated with abstract thinking and speech. Based on these considerations, there are several approaches to the study of consciousness, which, however, do not exclude, but complement each other, explaining phenomena of varying degrees of complexity. At the same time, some basic principles of the organization of nervous processes, discovered in the early stages of the evolution of the psyche, gradually acquire more complex forms to ensure their highest manifestations. Among the many mysteries of nature, one of the most complex is the brain. This is the highest form of organized matter. Hippocrates wrote that our pleasures arose from the brain: laughter and jokes, as well as our sorrows, pain, sadness and tears. With the help of the brain we think, see, hear, distinguish bad from good. A person’s consciousness is formed in connection with the development of his brain. Scientists have created a map of the cerebral cortex, which shows that individual areas of the brain coordinate the activities of various organs. Thus, destruction of the frontal gyrus of the left hemisphere leads to speech damage. When the left temporal region of the brain is damaged, a person stops hearing and perceiving someone else’s speech. Damage to the posterior frontal parts of the left hemisphere leads to loss of the ability to speak. Vision is associated with the occipital lobes of the hemispheres, and hearing with the temporal lobes. Thanks to the advances in the fine anatomy of the brain, extra physiology, psychology, and neurology, it was possible to show that the brain is a highly complex system that acts as a differentiated whole. Thought processes take place in the cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex consists of a huge number (up to 15 billion) of nerve cells - neurons. If these cells are arranged in a row, then they form a chain of 5 thousand km. Each of them, with the help of processes (long axons and short dendrites), is in contact (through synapses) with thousands of others, forming as a whole an openwork network with an innumerable number of connections running along the nerve fibers and nerve endings of the sense organs. Nerve endings are a kind of “tentacle” of the brain. Each person receives tens of thousands of sensations every day through his senses. Information from the outside world affects our senses, passes through nerve ganglia and ends in complex areas of the cerebral cortex. Some areas receive, while others process, analyze and synthesize signals coming from the outside world. The brain operates as a whole, as a complex functional system. But until now, many processes occurring in the cerebral cortex remain a mystery to science. Moreover, as a control system of a high degree of complexity, the brain is designed so as not only to receive, store and process information, but also to make predictions, develop an action plan, and manage actions aimed at solving a specific problem. The human brain constantly receives information from the outside world through the senses. But only a small part of this information becomes a fact of consciousness. A careful selection of information occurs in the brain. Human brain- amazing complex education, the finest nervous apparatus. This is an independent system and at the same time a subsystem, included in the composition of the whole organism and functioning in unity with it, regulating its internal processes and relationships with the outside world. What facts irrefutably prove that the brain is the organ of consciousness, and consciousness is a function of the human brain? First of all, the fact that the level of reflective-constructive ability of consciousness also depends on the level of complexity of the organization of the brain. The brain of primitive, gregarious man was poorly developed and could serve only as an organ of primitive consciousness. Brain modern man, formed as a result of long-term biosocial evolution, is a complex organ. The dependence of the level of consciousness on the degree of organization of the brain is also confirmed by the fact that the consciousness of a child is formed, as is known, in connection with the development of his brain, and when the brain of a very old man becomes decrepit, the functions of consciousness also fade away. A normal psyche is impossible without a normally functioning brain. As soon as the refined structure of the organization of brain matter is disrupted, and even more so destroyed, the structures of consciousness are also destroyed. When the frontal lobes are damaged, patients are unable to produce and implement complex behavioral programs; they do not have stable intentions and are easily excited by side stimuli. When the occipito-parietal parts of the cortex of the left hemisphere are damaged, orientation in space, handling of geometric relationships, etc. are impaired. It is known how the spiritual world of a person is deformed, and how complete degradation often occurs if a person systematically poisons his brain with alcohol and drugs. Experimental data from various sciences, such as psychophysiology, physiology of higher nervous activity, etc., irrefutably indicate that consciousness is inseparable from the brain: it is impossible to separate thought from the matter that thinks. The brain with its complex biochemical, physiological, and nervous processes is the material substrate of consciousness. Consciousness is always connected with these processes occurring in the brain and does not exist apart from them. But they do not constitute the essence of consciousness.

Conclusion
For more than two and a half millennia, the concept of consciousness has remained one of the fundamental ones in philosophy. But we still treat the phenomenon of consciousness, despite certain successes in its research, as
etc.................

Mikhail Igorevich Khasminsky

Every potential suicide believes in the possibility of the cessation of consciousness and the onset of some kind of non-existence, emptiness. Suicides dream of this emptiness as peace, tranquility, and absence of pain.

It is clear that it is beneficial for a suicide to believe in the cessation of consciousness. Because if Consciousness continues life after death, religious ideas about heaven, hell and eternal and very severe torment of this very consciousness turn out to be real, on which all major religions agree. And this is absolutely not included in the calculations of a suicide.

Therefore, if you are a thinking person, you will, of course, want to assess the likelihood of success of your enterprise. For you, the answer to the question of what Consciousness is and whether it can be turned off like a light bulb is of enormous importance.

This is the question we will analyze from the point of view of science: where is Consciousness located in our body and whether it can cease its life.

What is Consciousness?

First, about what Consciousness is in general. People have thought about this question throughout the history of mankind, but still cannot come to a final decision. We know only some of the properties and possibilities of consciousness. Consciousness is awareness of oneself, one’s personality, it is a great analyzer of all our feelings, emotions, desires, plans. Consciousness is what sets us apart, what makes us feel that we are not objects, but individuals. In other words, Consciousness miraculously reveals our fundamental existence. Consciousness is our awareness of our “I”, but at the same time Consciousness is great secret. Consciousness has no dimensions, no form, no color, no smell, no taste; it cannot be touched or turned in your hands. Even though we know very little about consciousness, we know with absolute certainty that we have it.

One of the main questions of humanity is the question of the nature of this very Consciousness (soul, “I”, ego). Materialism and idealism have diametrically opposed views on this issue. From the point of view of materialism, human Consciousness is the substrate of the brain, a product of matter, a product of biochemical processes, a special fusion of nerve cells. From the point of view of idealism, Consciousness is the ego, “I”, spirit, soul - an immaterial, invisible, eternally existing, non-dying energy that spiritualizes the body. Acts of consciousness always involve a subject who is actually aware of everything.

If you are interested in purely religious ideas about the soul, then religion will not provide any evidence of the existence of the soul. The doctrine of the soul is a dogma and is not subject to scientific proof.

There are absolutely no explanations, much less evidence, from materialists who believe that they are impartial scientists (although this is far from the case).

But how do most people, who are equally far from religion, from philosophy, and from science too, imagine this Consciousness, soul, “I”? Let's ask ourselves, what is your “I”? Since I often ask this question in consultations, I can tell you how people usually answer it.

Gender, name, profession and other role functions

The first thing that comes to mind for most is: “I am a person”, “I am a woman (man)”, “I am a businessman (turner, baker)”, “I am Tanya (Katya, Alexey)”, “I am a wife ( husband, daughter)”, etc. These are certainly funny answers. Your individual, unique “I” cannot be defined general concepts. There are a huge number of people in the world with the same characteristics, but they are not your “I”. Half of them are women (men), but they are not “I” either, people with the same professions seem to have their own “I”, not yours, the same can be said about wives (husbands), people of different professions, social status, nationalities, religions, etc. No affiliation with any group will explain to you what your individual “I” represents, because Consciousness is always personal. I am not qualities, qualities only belong to our “I”, because the qualities of the same person can change, but his “I” will remain unchanged.

Mental and physiological characteristics

Some say that their “I” is their reflexes, their behavior, their individual ideas and preferences, their psychological characteristics and so on.

In fact, this cannot be the core of the personality, which is called “I.” Why? Because throughout life, behavior, ideas and preferences change, and even more so psychological characteristics. It cannot be said that if these features were different before, then it was not my “I”.

Realizing this, some people make the following argument: “I am my individual body.” This is already more interesting. Let's examine this assumption as well.

Everyone else from school course Anatomy knows that the cells of our body are gradually renewed throughout life. Old ones die (apoptosis), and new ones are born. Some cells (the epithelium of the gastrointestinal tract) are completely renewed almost every day, but there are cells that go through their life cycle much longer. On average, every 5 years all the cells of the body are renewed. If we consider the “I” to be a simple collection of human cells, then the result will be absurd. It turns out that if a person lives, for example, 70 years. During this time, at least 10 times a person will change all the cells in his body (i.e. 10 generations). Could this mean that not one person, but 10 different people lived their 70-year life? Isn't that pretty stupid? We conclude that “I” cannot be a body, because the body is not permanent, but “I” is permanent.

This means that the “I” cannot be either the qualities of cells or their totality.

But here the particularly erudite give a counter-argument: “Okay, with bones and muscles it’s clear, this really cannot be “I,” but there are nerve cells! And they are alone for the rest of their lives. Maybe “I” is the sum of nerve cells?”

Let's think about this question together...

Does consciousness consist of nerve cells?

Materialism is accustomed to decomposing the entire multidimensional world into mechanical components, “testing harmony with algebra” (A.S. Pushkin). The most naive misconception of militant materialism regarding personality is the idea that personality is a set of biological qualities. However, the combination of impersonal objects, be they even atoms or neurons, cannot give rise to a personality and its core - the “I”.

How can this most complex “I”, feeling, capable of experiences, love, be simply the sum of specific cells of the body along with the ongoing biochemical and bioelectric processes? How can these processes shape the “I”???

Provided that nerve cells constituted our “I”, then we would lose part of our “I” every day. With each dead cell, with each neuron, the “I” would become smaller and smaller. With cell restoration, it would increase in size.

Scientific research carried out in different countries the world prove that nerve cells, like all other cells of the human body, are capable of regeneration (restoration). Here is what the most serious biological international journal Nature writes: “Employees of the Californian Institute for Biological Research named after. Salk discovered that in the brains of adult mammals, fully functional young cells are born that function on a par with existing neurons. Professor Frederick Gage and his colleagues also concluded that brain tissue renews itself most rapidly in physically active animals."

This is confirmed by a publication in another biological journal - Science: “Within two recent years researchers have found that nerve and brain cells are renewed, like the rest in human body. The body is capable of repairing disorders related to the nervous tract itself, says scientist Helen M. Blon.”

Thus, even with a complete change of all (including nerve) cells of the body, the “I” of a person remains the same, therefore, it does not belong to the constantly changing material body.

For some reason, in our time it is so difficult to prove what was obvious and understandable to the ancients. The Roman Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus, who lived in the 3rd century, wrote: “It is absurd to assume that since none of the parts has life, then life can be created by their totality... moreover, it is completely impossible for life to be produced by a heap of parts, and that the mind was generated by that which is devoid of mind. If anyone objects that this is not so, but that in fact the soul is formed by atoms coming together, that is, bodies indivisible into parts, then he will be refuted by the fact that the atoms themselves only lie one next to the other, not forming a living whole, for unity and joint feeling cannot be obtained from bodies that are insensitive and incapable of unification; but the soul feels itself”

The “I” is the unchanging core of personality, which includes many variables, but is not itself variable.

A skeptic can put forward a last desperate argument: “Maybe “I” is the brain?”

Is Consciousness a product of brain activity? What does science say?

Many people heard the fairy tale that our Consciousness is the activity of the brain back in school. The idea that the brain is essentially a person with his “I” is extremely widespread. Most people think that it is the brain that perceives information from the world around us, processes it and decides how to act in each specific case; they think that it is the brain that makes us alive and gives us personality. And the body is nothing more than a spacesuit that ensures the activity of the central nervous system.

But this tale has nothing to do with science. The brain is currently being studied in depth. Long and well studied chemical composition, parts of the brain, connections of these parts with human functions. The brain organization of perception, attention, memory, and speech has been studied. Functional blocks of the brain have been studied. A huge number of clinics and scientific centers They have been studying the human brain for more than a hundred years, for which expensive, effective equipment has been developed. But if you open any textbook, monograph, scientific journal on neurophysiology or neuropsychology, you will not find scientific data about the connection between the brain and Consciousness.

For people far from this area of ​​knowledge, this seems surprising. In fact, there is nothing surprising about this. It’s just that no one has ever discovered the connection between the brain and the very center of our personality, our “I”. Of course, material scientists have always wanted this. Thousands of studies have been conducted, millions of experiments have been conducted, billions of dollars have been spent. The efforts of scientists were not in vain. Parts of the brain were discovered and studied, their connection with physiological processes was established, much was done to understand many neurophysiological processes and phenomena, but the most important thing was not achieved. It was not possible to find the place in the brain that is our “I”. It was not possible even, despite extremely active work in this direction, to make a serious assumption about how the brain can be connected with our Consciousness.

Where did the assumption come from that Consciousness is in the brain? One of the first to make such an assumption was the greatest electrophysiologist Dubois-Reymond (1818-1896) in the mid-18th century. In his worldview, Dubois-Reymond was one of the brightest representatives of the mechanistic movement. In one of his letters to a friend, he wrote that “exclusively physicochemical laws operate in the body; if not everything can be explained with their help, then it is necessary, using physical and mathematical methods, either to find a way of their action, or to accept that there are new forces of matter, equal in value to physical and chemical forces.”

But another outstanding physiologist, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig (Ludwig, 1816-1895), who lived at the same time with Reymon, who headed the new Physiological Institute in Leipzig in 1869-1895, which became the world's largest center in the field of experimental physiology, did not agree with him. The founder of the scientific school, Ludwig wrote that none of the existing theories of nervous activity, including the electrical theory of nerve currents of Dubois-Reymond, can say anything about how, as a result of the activity of nerves, acts of sensation become possible. Let us note that here we are not even talking about the most complex acts of consciousness, but about much simpler sensations. If there is no consciousness, then we cannot feel or experience anything.

Another major physiologist of the 19th century, the outstanding English neurophysiologist Sir Charles Scott Sherrington, Nobel Prize laureate, said that if it is not clear how the psyche arises from the activity of the brain, then, naturally, it is equally unclear how it can have any influence on the behavior of a living creature, which is controlled through the nervous system.

As a result, Dubois-Reymond himself came to the following conclusion: “As we are aware, we do not know and will never know. And no matter how much we delve into the jungle of intracerebral neurodynamics, we will not build a bridge to the kingdom of consciousness.” Raymon came to the conclusion, disappointing for determinism, that it is impossible to explain Consciousness by material causes. He admitted “that here the human mind encounters a “world riddle” that it will never be able to solve.”

A professor at Moscow University, a philosopher, in 1914 formulated the law of “the absence of objective signs of animation.” The meaning of this law is that the role of the psyche in the system of material processes of behavior regulation is absolutely elusive and there is no conceivable bridge between the activity of the brain and the area of ​​mental or spiritual phenomena, including Consciousness.

The leading experts in neurophysiology, Nobel Prize laureates David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel recognized that in order to establish a connection between the brain and Consciousness, it is necessary to understand what reads and decodes the information that comes from the senses. Scientists have recognized that this is impossible to do.

The great scientist, professor of Moscow State University Nikolai Kobozev in his monograph showed that neither cells, nor molecules, nor even atoms can be responsible for the processes of thinking and memory

There is evidence of the absence of a connection between Consciousness and the functioning of the brain, which is understandable even to people far from science. Here it is.

Let us assume that the “I” (Consciousness) is the result of the work of the brain. As neurophysiologists know for sure, a person can live even with one hemisphere of the brain. Moreover, he has Consciousness. A person who lives only with the right hemisphere of the brain certainly has an “I” (Consciousness). Accordingly, we can conclude that the “I” is not in the left, absent, hemisphere. A person with only a functioning left hemisphere also has an “I”, therefore the “I” is not located in the right hemisphere, which is absent in this person. Consciousness remains regardless of which hemisphere is removed. This means that a person does not have an area of ​​the brain responsible for Consciousness, neither in the left nor in the right hemisphere of the brain. We have to conclude that the presence of consciousness in humans is not associated with certain areas of the brain.

Maybe Consciousness is divisible and with the loss of part of the brain it does not die, but is only damaged? Scientific facts and do not confirm this assumption either.

Professor, Doctor of Medical Sciences Voino-Yasenetsky describes: “I opened a huge abscess (about 50 cubic cm of pus) in a young wounded man, which undoubtedly destroyed the entire left frontal lobe, and I did not observe any mental defects after this operation. I can say the same about another patient who was operated on for a huge cyst of the meninges. Upon wide opening of the skull, I was surprised to see that almost the entire right half of it was empty, and the entire left hemisphere of the brain was compressed, almost to the point of being impossible to distinguish.”

In 1940, Dr. Augustin Iturricha made a sensational statement at the Anthropological Society in Sucre (Bolivia). He and Dr. Ortiz spent a long time studying the medical history of a 14-year-old boy, a patient at Dr. Ortiz's clinic. The teenager was there with a diagnosis of a brain tumor. The young man retained Consciousness until his death, complaining only of a headache. When a pathological autopsy was performed after his death, the doctors were amazed: the entire brain mass was completely separated from the internal cavity of the skull. A large abscess has taken over the cerebellum and part of the brain. It remains completely unclear how the sick boy’s thinking was preserved.

The fact that consciousness exists independently of the brain is also confirmed by studies conducted recently by Dutch physiologists under the leadership of Pim van Lommel. The results of a large-scale experiment were published in the most authoritative English biological journal, The Lancet. “Consciousness exists even after the brain has ceased to function. In other words, Consciousness “lives” on its own, absolutely independently. As for the brain, it is not thinking matter at all, but an organ, like any other, performing strictly defined functions. It is very possible that thinking matter does not exist, even in principle, said the leader of the study, the famous scientist Pim van Lommel.”

Another argument that is understandable to non-specialists is given by Professor V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky: “In the wars of ants who do not have a brain, intentionality is clearly revealed, and therefore intelligence, no different from human.” This is truly an amazing fact. Ants solve quite complex problems of survival, building housing, providing themselves with food, i.e. have a certain intelligence, but have no brain at all. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Neurophysiology does not stand still, but is one of the most dynamically developing sciences. The success of studying the brain is evidenced by the methods and scale of research. Functions and areas of the brain are being studied, and its composition is being clarified in more and more detail. Despite the titanic work on studying the brain, world science today is still far from understanding what creativity, thinking, memory are and what their connection is with the brain itself.

So, science has clearly established that Consciousness is not a product of brain activity.

What is the nature of Consciousness?

Having come to the understanding that Consciousness does not exist inside the body, science draws natural conclusions about the immaterial nature of consciousness.

Academician P.K. Anokhin: “None of the “mental” operations that we attribute to the “mind” have so far been able to be directly associated with any part of the brain. If we, in principle, cannot understand how exactly the psyche arises as a result of the activity of the brain, then isn’t it more logical to think that the psyche is not, in its essence, a function of the brain, but represents the manifestation of some other - immaterial spiritual forces?

At the end of the 20th century, the creator of quantum mechanics, Nobel Prize laureate E. Schrödinger wrote that the nature of the connection between some physical processes and subjective events (which include Consciousness) lies “aside from science and beyond human understanding.”

The greatest modern neurophysiologist, Nobel Prize winner in medicine, J. Eccles, developed the idea that based on the analysis of brain activity it is impossible to find out the origin of mental phenomena, and this fact can easily be interpreted in the sense that the psyche is not a function of the brain at all. According to Eccles, neither physiology nor the theory of evolution can shed light on the origin and nature of consciousness, which is absolutely alien to all material processes in the Universe. The spiritual world of man and the world of physical realities, including brain activity, are completely independent independent worlds that only interact and to some extent influence each other. He is echoed by such prominent specialists as Karl Lashley (an American scientist, director of the laboratory of primate biology in Orange Park (Florida), who studied the mechanisms of brain function) and Harvard University doctor Edward Tolman.

With his colleague, the founder of modern neurosurgery Wilder Penfield, who performed over 10,000 brain operations, Eccles wrote the book The Mystery of Man. In it, the authors directly state that “there is no doubt that a person is controlled by SOMETHING located outside his body.” “I can confirm experimentally,” writes Eccles, “that the workings of consciousness cannot be explained by the functioning of the brain. Consciousness exists independently of it from the outside.”

Eccles is deeply convinced that consciousness cannot be the subject of scientific research. In his opinion, the emergence of consciousness, like the emergence of life, is the highest religious mystery. In his report, the Nobel laureate relied on the conclusions of the book “Personality and the Brain,” written jointly with the American philosopher and sociologist Karl Popper.

Wilder Penfield, as a result of many years of studying the activity of the brain, also came to the conclusion that “the energy of the mind is different from the energy of the brain’s neural impulses.”

Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the Russian Federation, Director of the Brain Research Institute (RAMS of the Russian Federation), world-renowned neurophysiologist, Doctor of Medical Sciences. Natalya Petrovna Bekhtereva: “I first heard the hypothesis that the human brain only perceives thoughts from somewhere outside Nobel laureate, Professor John Eccles. Of course, at the time it seemed absurd to me. But then research conducted at our St. Petersburg Brain Research Institute confirmed: we cannot explain the mechanics of the creative process. The brain can only generate very simple thoughts like how to turn pages book to read or stir sugar in a glass. And the creative process is the manifestation of a completely new quality. As a believer, I allow the participation of the Almighty in controlling the thought process.”

Science comes to the conclusion that the brain is not a source of thought and consciousness, but at most a relay of them.

Professor S. Grof talks about it this way: “imagine that your TV is broken and you call a TV technician, who, after turning various knobs, tunes it up. It doesn’t occur to you that all these stations are sitting in this box.”

Already in 1956, the outstanding leading scientist-surgeon, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky believed that our brain is not only not connected with Consciousness, but is not even capable of thinking independently, since the mental process is taken outside its boundaries. In his book, Valentin Feliksovich argues that “the brain is not an organ of thought and feelings,” and that “The Spirit acts beyond the brain, determining its activity, and our entire existence, when the brain works as a transmitter, receiving signals and transmitting them to the organs of the body.” .

English researchers Peter Fenwick from the London Institute of Psychiatry and Sam Parnia from Southampton Central Clinic came to the same conclusions. They examined patients who had returned to life after cardiac arrest and found that some of them accurately recounted the content of conversations that medical staff had while they were in cardiac arrest. clinical death. Others gave an accurate description of the events that occurred during this time period. Sam Parnia says the brain is like any other organ human body, consists of cells and is not capable of thinking. However, it can work as a thought detecting device, i.e. like an antenna, with the help of which it becomes possible to receive a signal from the outside. Scientists have suggested that during clinical death, Consciousness operating independently of the brain uses it as a screen. Like a television receiver, which first receives the waves entering it, and then converts them into sound and image.

If we turn off the radio, this does not mean that the radio station stops broadcasting. That is, after the death of the physical body, Consciousness continues to live.

The fact of the continuation of the life of Consciousness after the death of the body is also confirmed by Academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Director of the Research Institute of the Human Brain, world-famous neurophysiologist N.P. Bekhterev in her book “The Magic of the Brain and the Labyrinths of Life.” In addition to discussing purely scientific issues, in this book the author also provides his personal experience encounters with post-mortem phenomena.

Natalya Bekhtereva, talking about her meeting with the Bulgarian clairvoyant Vanga Dimitrova, speaks quite definitely about this in one of her interviews: “Vanga’s example absolutely convinced me that there is a phenomenon of contact with the dead,” and another quote from her book: “ I can’t help but believe what I heard and saw myself. A scientist does not have the right to reject facts (if he is a scientist!) just because they do not fit into dogma or worldview.”

The first consistent description of afterlife, based on scientific observations, was given by the Swedish scientist and naturalist Emmanuel Swedenborg. Then this problem was seriously studied by the famous psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler Ross, the equally famous psychiatrist Raymond Moody, conscientious academicians Oliver Lodge, William Crookes, Alfred Wallace, Alexander Butlerov, Professor Friedrich Myers, and the American pediatrician Melvin Morse. Among the serious and systematic researchers of the issue of dying, Dr. Michael Sabom, a professor of medicine at Emory University and a staff physician at the Veterans Hospital in Atlanta, should be mentioned; the systematic research of psychiatrist Kenneth Ring, who studied this problem, was also studied by the doctor of medicine and resuscitator Moritz Rawlings. , our contemporary, thanatopsychologist A.A. Nalchadzhyan. The famous Soviet scientist, a leading specialist in the field of thermodynamic processes, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Belarus Albert Veinik, worked a lot to understand this problem from the point of view of physics. A significant contribution to the study of near-death experiences was made by the world-famous American psychologist of Czech origin, founder of the transpersonal school psychology doctor Stanislav Grof.

The variety of facts accumulated by science undeniably proves that after physical death, each of those living today inherits a different reality, preserving their Consciousness.

Despite the limitations of our ability to understand this reality using material means, today there are a number of its characteristics obtained through experiments and observations of scientists studying this problem.

These characteristics were listed by A.V. Mikheev, research fellow St. Petersburg State Electrotechnical University in his report at the international symposium “Life after death: from faith to knowledge”, which took place on April 8-9, 2005 in St. Petersburg:

"1. There is a so-called “subtle body”, which is the carrier of self-awareness, memory, emotions and the “inner life” of a person. This body exists... after physical death, being, for the duration of the existence of the physical body, its “parallel component”, ensuring the above processes. The physical body is only an intermediary for their manifestation on the physical (earthly) level.

2. The life of an individual does not end with current earthly death. Survival after death is a natural law for humans.

3. The next reality is divided into a large number of levels, differing in the frequency characteristics of their components.

4. A person’s destination during the posthumous transition is determined by his attunement to a certain level, which is the total result of his thoughts, feelings and actions during life on Earth. Just as the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation emitted chemical, depends on its composition, just as a person’s posthumous destination is determined by the “composite characteristic” of his inner life.

5. The concepts of “Heaven and Hell” reflect two polarities, possible post-mortem states.

6. In addition to such polar states, there are a number of intermediate ones. The choice of an adequate state is automatically determined by the mental and emotional “pattern” formed by a person during earthly life. That is why negative emotions, violence, the desire for destruction and fanaticism, no matter how they are justified externally, in this regard are extremely destructive for the future fate of a person. This provides a strong rationale for personal responsibility and ethical principles."

And again about suicide

Most suicides believe that their Consciousness will cease to exist after death, that it will be peace, a break from life. We got acquainted with the conclusion of world science about what Consciousness is and about the lack of connection between it and the brain, as well as the fact that after the death of the body, a person will begin another, postmortem life. Moreover, Consciousness retains its qualities, memory, and its afterlife is a natural continuation of earthly life.

This means that if here, in earthly life, Consciousness was struck by some kind of pain, illness, grief, liberation from the body will not be liberation from this illness. In the afterlife, the fate of a sick consciousness is even sadder than in earthly life, because in earthly life we ​​can change everything or almost everything - with the participation of our will, the help of other people, new knowledge, changing the life situation - in another world such opportunities are absent, and therefore the state of Consciousness is more stable.

That is, suicide is the preservation of a painful, unbearable state of one’s Consciousness for an indefinite period. Quite possibly - forever. And the lack of hope for improving your condition greatly increases the painfulness of any torment.

If we really want rest and pleasant peaceful rest, then our Consciousness must achieve such a state even in earthly life, then after natural death it will retain it.

The author would like for you, after reading the material, to try to find the truth on your own, double-check the data presented in this article, and read the relevant literature from the field of medicine, psychology and neurophysiology. I hope that, having learned more about this area, you will refuse to attempt suicide or commit it only if you are confident that with the help of it you can really get rid of Consciousness.

The emergence and development of thinking is closely related to the stages of human development, his labor activity, the emergence of articulate speech and the improvement of language. This is what made him different from the animal.

Initially, communication and exchange of information occurred through a combination of individual words with gestures, facial expressions, and display. Each word introduced into everyday life contained a certain generalization, a certain meaning. Words denoted both objects, processes and phenomena, as well as relationships and their differences. The accumulated set of words contributed to the formation of a signaling system in conditioned reflex activity. People began to imagine, reproduce what they had previously seen, felt, and perceived from other experiences. They acquired the ability, with the help of vocabulary, to reflect, think, imagine, plan, anticipate events, remember, and transfer knowledge.

The mental reflection of reality has been established over the course of 2.5-3 million years and has become a product of the development of the brain and nerve cells, which have formed a unique system. Along with the senses, they allowed the body to remember the situation and find a previously traveled path to food, water, and build its behavior.

The first to conduct experiments related to the analysis of brain activity was the founder of Russian physiology I.M. Sechenov. He established and proved that in the brain there are areas, special “centers,” nervous mechanisms from which inhibitory influences on the involuntary or reflex movements of animals and people emanate. He called them “detaining centers.” He saw the initial cause of actions not in the soul as a divine gift, not in thoughts, will, as idealists falsely declared, but in external sensory stimulation, in specific conditions of life. The innovator noticed that reflexes are impossible without external stimuli, that by influencing the sense organs they stimulate mental activity. The preservation of traces in the central nervous system acted as the basis of memory, and inhibition - as a mechanism for the selective direction of behavior, the work of the brain - as a substrate of motivation. He put practice at the forefront of thinking.

The doctrine of conditioned reflexes (the highest form of adaptation of the organism to the environment) has become a theoretical foundation for the study of higher functions of the brain. New chapter in brain physiology prepared by I. P. Pavlov. Investigating the essence of “psychic salivation”, he discovered interesting fact: along with the secretion of saliva in animals in response to irritation of the oral cavity with food, a similar result can be achieved to any stimulus (light, sound, etc.), if it is reinforced by subsequent feeding. He called reflexes of the first kind (constant connections of the organism with the environment, which are inherited genetically in the form of a code, instinct) unconditional, the second - conditional, which appear on the basis of unconditional ones, i.e. in the process of individual life, and regulate actions in a changing situations. This made it possible to identify important patterns of nervous activity. He noticed that the formation and destruction of temporary connections, i.e., conditioned reflexes, in the cerebral cortex, as well as analytical skills, give animals the opportunity to navigate complex reality. External and internal stimuli coming from the main organs, muscles, bones, ligaments, signal to the brain about favorable or unfavorable conditions for them, excite or inhibit certain areas, and cause appropriate actions. Sleep is a consequence of inhibition of the cerebral cortex.

Conditioned reflexes arise due to mental images. As a result, they are both a physiological phenomenon (inseparable from the reflexes of the brain) and a mental one generated by it.

In humans, in addition to the first signaling system (reactions to direct impact external world) a second signaling system has been developed - speech. Operating with various concepts is of great importance in the development of thinking. These systems are closely interconnected.

Based on the achievements of biology, physiology, and psychology, materialists came to the conclusion that thinking is a function of the bodily brain, an active process of reflecting reality in ideas, concepts, and judgments. With serious damage to certain areas of the brain, the psyche, orientation in space, and coordination of movement are also disrupted.

Analytical and logical thinking was preceded by less perfect forms of reflection and sensations. Things, their properties, relationships affect the senses. The resulting irritations are transmitted through nerve canals to the cerebral cortex. Emerging physiological processes are the material basis of sensations and perceptions. Ideal images are the results of the interaction of an object with the senses, subjective reality (conscious existence), symbols, what is reflected and remains in memory. According to K. Marx, “the ideal is nothing more than the material, transplanted into the human head and transformed in it” (vol. 23, p. 21). But the image does not have the material properties of either the displayed object, or the nervous system and brain. The idea of ​​any fruit has no weight, no color, no smell, no taste. Knowledge of an earthquake, volcanic eruption, or tsunami cannot destroy a city. Concepts are images of objects, not themselves.

Plants react to changes in temperature, day and night, seasons, amoebas and other single-celled organisms - to a food irritant. This is a pre-psychic form of reflection, a physiological reaction. The initial form of the psyche is the ability to reflect the qualities and properties of objects through sensations. Many animal species are capable of some level of rationality. To a certain extent, they have developed instincts, situational expediency in opportunistic actions, which is a prerequisite for logical actions. But by emphasizing the similarities between mental activity in animals and humans, scientists differentiate it. Animals are not aware of their actions. They didn't have the logic. Only people can think abstractly, evaluate, and have consciousness. Dialectical thinking is inherent only to developed individuals.

Thinking is inextricably linked with work and language, with the totality of accumulated terms and phrases. There are no bare thoughts free of vocabulary. Outside of images, perceptions, ideas, thought is devoid of content, that is, it is absent. The language of gestures, facial expressions, pictures outside of words is not able to reflect many things in one, store and transmit information. Words allow you to exchange experiences, knowledge, and communicate. Each level of work organization corresponded to the degree of vocabulary replenishment, although not everyone uses it in full.

People are aware of their surroundings and what is happening with the help of the brain, in which, as is now recognized, over 100 billion nerve cells (neurons) are constantly working. Each of them exchanges information and signals with another 10 thousand other cells. It is not for nothing that it consumes about 20 percent of all energy obtained from food, although its mass is only 2-3 percent of body weight. Mental operations and emotional reactions come from the neural codes of a number of subcortical nuclei. Quantum field structures have special abilities. Skin sensitivity (synesthesia) is a reflection of the properties of an external stimulus: sensations of touch, pressure and vibration, heat and cold, pain.

One of the main principles of the organization of mental functions is the comparison and synthesis in the brain of information about a present stimulus and information extracted from memory. But consciousness as the ability to transform the objective content of the reflected world into the subjective opinion of the individual, into the goal of life, thinking about the means and ways to achieve it is not a function of the brain in itself, although it does not reveal itself in isolation from it. It contains inexhaustible possibilities, but does not contain any program of consciousness. It arises and develops in social life, from the very beginning it is woven into production and communication, into learning, and culture. It is impossible to sense the world without past experience or to actualize it without an external signal, which is first encoded in the form of successive nerve impulses and then appears in consciousness as its exact reflection. Children learn the language of their parents. Thanks to him, they get acquainted with achievements, learn to think, form their beliefs, value orientations, ideals, legal and moral norms. The personality accumulates the entire set of relationships. There are rare cases where small children who grew up among wild animals had completely normal brains, but acquired their habits: they slept during the day, walked on all fours, ate without using their hands, did not know how to speak, think, etc. It took years to instill them elements of human behavior.

It follows from this that consciousness is not given by nature and birth, but is the fruit of all highly developed material systems, traditions and customs, learned from what is seen, heard and read in books. It is determined by the living conditions themselves, the understanding of the natural and sociocultural environment. By working, providing for the life of the family, participating in elections and political actions, realizing their interests, people develop their own consciousness, without which there can be no productive forces and production relations, no power, no culture of relationships.

I. P. Pavlov identified three main innate properties of the nervous system: strength, balance and mobility of excitable and inhibitory processes. Its uniqueness divides people into extroverts, predisposed to sociability, activity, including motor and speech, impulsiveness, risk, jokes, uncontrolled emotions, gravitating toward change and new impressions, and introverts, who are characterized by isolation, inhibition, restraint, and introspection. and self-control, calmness, predominance of negative mood, pessimism. It predetermines temperaments that characterize psychophysiological characteristics. They are determined, according to Eysenck, by the degree and balance of excitation and inhibition in the central nervous system. Temperament depends on the constitution of the body, expresses the pace, rhythm, intensity, endurance of the individual listed processes and states. Its structure includes three components: general activity (from lethargy, inertia to extreme energy), the openness of the individual, his motor manifestations (speed, strength, sharpness, amplitude), his emotionality (the specifics of the emergence, course and cessation of various feelings, affects and moods). ). V.S. Merlin identified nine indicators.

Consciousness and brain

The human brain is an amazingly complex formation, a delicate nervous apparatus. This is an independent system and at the same time a subsystem, included in the composition of the whole organism and functioning in unity with it, regulating its internal processes and relationships with the outside world. What facts irrefutably prove that the brain is the organ of consciousness, and consciousness is a function of the human brain?

First of all, the fact that the level of reflective-constructive ability of consciousness also depends on the level of complexity of the organization of the brain. The brain of primitive, gregarious man was poorly developed and could serve only as an organ of primitive consciousness. The modern human brain, formed as a result of long-term biosocial evolution, is a complex organ. The dependence of the level of consciousness on the degree of organization of the brain is also confirmed by the fact that the consciousness of a child is formed, as is known, in connection with the development of his brain, and when the brain of a very old man becomes decrepit, the functions of consciousness also fade away.

A normal psyche is impossible without a normally functioning brain. As soon as the refined structure of the organization of brain matter is disrupted, and even more so destroyed, the structures of consciousness are also destroyed. When the frontal lobes are damaged, patients are unable to produce and implement complex behavioral programs; they do not have stable intentions and are easily excited by side stimuli. When the occipito-parietal parts of the cortex of the left hemisphere are damaged, orientation in space, handling of geometric relationships, etc. are impaired. It is known how the spiritual world of a person is deformed, and how complete degradation often occurs if a person systematically poisons his brain with alcohol and drugs.

Experimental data from various sciences, such as psychophysiology, physiology of higher nervous activity, etc., irrefutably indicate that consciousness is inseparable from the brain: it is impossible to separate thought from the matter that thinks. The brain with its complex biochemical, physiological, and nervous processes is the material substrate of consciousness. Consciousness is always connected with these processes occurring in the brain and does not exist apart from them. But they do not constitute the essence of consciousness.

The organ that coordinates and regulates human mental activity is the brain. All movements, feelings, desires and thoughts of people are connected with the functioning of the brain, and if its functioning is disrupted, this affects the person’s condition: his ability to perform any actions, sensations or reactions to external influences is lost.
The brain is a symmetrical structure consisting of two hemispheres, the surface of which is covered with grooves and convolutions that increase the surface of the cortex, the outer layer of the brain. The cerebellum is located at the back, and below the cerebral hemispheres is the brain stem, which passes into the spinal cord. Nerves extend from the trunk and spinal cord, along which information from internal and external receptors flows to the brain, and in the opposite direction signals go to the muscles and glands. 12 pairs of cranial nerves arise from the brain. The brain of a newborn human weighs on average 0.3 kg, and an adult - 1.5 kg. Although this represents approximately 2.5% of body weight, the brain constantly receives 20% of the blood circulating in the body and, accordingly, oxygen. The human brain contains about 10 billion nerve cells that send impulses to other cells through special contacts - synapses. Millions of impulses pass through synapses every second: they are the basis of our thoughts, feelings, emotions and memory.
The important role of the brain in the functioning of the psyche gives rise to the emergence of teachings that believe that the brain produces and develops consciousness and that it is in the structure and characteristics of the brain that the mystery of consciousness lies. In the 19th century, the German scientist Wagner tried to prove the relationship between the genius of some people and the characteristics of their brain. Disappointment awaited him: external signs Due to the structure of the brain, it is impossible to say anything definite about personality. I.S. Turgenev's brain weighed 2000 grams, and Anatole France's - 1000 grams. Louis Pasteur, at the age of 46, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage that significantly destroyed the right hemisphere. Yet he lived and worked actively for another 27 years.
The mechanism of the brain has long been identified and can be explained with a simple example. When we take a pen lying on a table with our fingers, the light reflected from the pen is focused in the lens of the eye and transmitted to the retina, where an image of the pen appears. Then it is perceived by the corresponding nerve cells, which transmit the signal to the sensitive nuclei of the brain located in the visual thalamus (thalamus). There, in turn, numerous neurons are activated that respond to the distribution of light and darkness. The primary visual cortex is located in the occipital lobe of the cerebral hemispheres. The impulses that came to it from the thalamus, into a complex sequence of discharges of cortical neurons, some of which react to the boundary between the pen and the table, others to the corners in the image of the pen, etc. From the primary visual cortex, information enters the associative visual cortex, where the image of a pen is recognized. This recognition is based on previously accumulated knowledge about the external outlines of objects. During the planning stage of a movement, in this case picking up a pen, motor neurons located in the frontal part of the brain issue commands to the muscles of the hand and fingers. The approach of the hand to the handle is controlled by the visual system. When we take a pen in our hand, the pressure receptors in our fingertips tell us whether our fingers have a good grip on the pen and how much effort must be exerted to hold it. If we want to write our name with a pen, it will require the activation of other information stored in the brain that allows for this more complex movement, and visual control will help improve its accuracy.
Thus, performing the simplest action involves quite complex brain work. In more complex behaviors involving speech or thinking, other neural circuits are activated, covering even larger areas of the brain.
In the 19th century, materialistic concepts were popular, trying to reduce consciousness to human brain activity. The German physician and naturalist Ludwig Büchner insisted that consciousness is identical to the physical and chemical movement of brain matter. His compatriot Jacob Moleschott compared thought to the movement of light and argued that consciousness is of a physiological nature. Karl Vocht in his “Physiological Letters” wrote that thought is in the same relationship to the brain as bile is to the liver.” In accordance with these views, called “vulgar materialism,” consciousness is nothing more than a subclass of physical processes, occurring in the brain.
In the twentieth century, in the wake of achievements in such branches of science as physiology, psychology, mathematical logic, neurobiology and cybernetics, a movement called “scientific materialism” appeared in Western philosophy. Its main problem is the relationship between matter and consciousness, which is solved in the traditions of materialism of the 19th century. That is, all mental phenomena are reduced in “scientific materialism” to physiological processes. However, the degree of rigidity of such information varies depending on the scientific specialization of representatives of “scientific materialism”. In this regard, the following varieties are distinguished:
“Reductive” materialism (from Latin reductio: returning, pushing back) reduces mental phenomena, states and processes to a subclass of physical phenomena, states and processes.
“Eliminative” materialism (Latin eliminare - to take beyond the threshold, to drive out) believes that consciousness is nothing more than the brain, which acts as an intermediary of stimuli external or internal to the body and motor, emotional and ideal reactions of a person. Mental processes (including consciousness) are what arise in a person as a result of exposure to certain stimuli. One of the representatives of “eliminative” materialism, Australian philosopher David Armstrong, proposed a theory in which mental phenomena are interpreted as forms of linguistic description of neurophysiological processes.
“Cybernetic” materialism proposes to consider mental phenomena as abstract functional properties and states of a living system by analogy with the functioning of a computer.
“Emergent” materialism (from the English Emergence - emergence, emergence of a new thing) allows the independence of the psyche and consciousness as attributes of a material substance. Thus, the Argentine philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge believes that the psyche is a systemic property of the neural structures of the brain, and the American Joseph Margolis believes that consciousness is an integral property of matter, which in the process of evolution acquires cultural properties.
The successes of modern science in explaining the functioning mechanisms of the human brain are embodied in the rapid development of cybernetics. Modern production and everyday life of people are unthinkable without “smart” machines and devices that facilitate human labor or replace it. This gave rise to claims that in the future it is possible to create an “artificial consciousness” that is no different from human consciousness. From a philosophical point of view, the basis for these statements is an incorrect interpretation of the connection between consciousness and the brain.
Philosophy believes that a highly developed human brain is one of the prerequisites for the formation and functioning of consciousness. Other prerequisites, no less important than a developed brain, include social environment, language and work.