Since I have long been interested in the nature of consciousness, I read and listen to a lot about it, which gives the impression that a serious ideological crisis is brewing in the field of studying man as a natural phenomenon, including his consciousness, both in specific sciences and in philosophical sciences that study consciousness.
A crisis is when the old answers are no good, but there are no new ones yet.
The information age in the experience of the activity of a specific person has accumulated so many new facts that are not described and explained by the traditional language of natural sciences and philosophy, formed in the anthropocentric model of the world, on which the entire culture of humanity is based. In this model, a person is at the center of the world, the brain is at the center of the person, andGod is taken out to unknown limits, and about the connections between these three components, man, as long as he exists, fantasizes, argues and fights so much. And the content of the components is still far from being clarified, there is, in my opinion, not even a definition of the concept of “consciousness” that would have a perspective.
To work on a promising definition of the concept of “consciousness”, it is necessary to take as a basis the systemically structured definition of human mental activity as an orientation and research activity and develop it to the philosophical generalizations necessary to create a new model of the world order, in which the anthropocentric model will be included as part of the whole.
From my point of view, consciousness is a voluminous systemic and multi – level process of transformation and adaptation to specific conditions of human life of the energy and information that the brain receives from the energy-informational field of the material world.
It is this process that orients the individual person in the environment that directly surrounds him, and the specific person in his historical development. Orients in the broadest sense – geographical, moral, psychological, political and even civilizational, and, perhaps, first of all in civilizational, because civilization is a natural phenomenon.
The work of the brain with the energy information of the field is only a segment of the consciousness process. The brain does not create information, the brain converts the field information into thought, that is, into rational knowledge.
Rational knowledge and the conceptual language created on its basis are necessary for us to think, make decisions, create plans and communicate in all types of practical activities.
The main problem of consciousness in philosophy is the relationship between consciousness and being. This problem has 2 sides: 1)What was in the beginning: being or consciousness 2) is consciousness capable of knowing being
To be non-academic, we can say this: there is no problem of consciousness in philosophy. I'll make a reservation. In literate philosophy. What does literate philosophy mean? Philosophy is literate when it does not violate the syntax and grammar of the philosophical language (let's leave the content of the philosophical language at an intuitive level for now). So in literate philosophy, consciousness, or rather the experience of consciousness, is taken as a given. What happens. But this is not about the consciousness of psychology. Philosophy speaks of a special consciousness. For its designation, the following terms are used: transcendental consciousness, being consciousness, cosmic consciousness, consciousness as such, a sense of intense consciousness, etc. How do I set it? The whole difficulty is that it cannot be made the subject of analysis and consideration. You can only point (as in existentialism), expand, push in the direction of consciousness. Try the following: Look at your surroundings (the room you are in) as if “looking for the first time”. Such a view (ultimate view), within which you see something else (which you have not noticed or seen before), is consciousness in philosophy (the experience of consciousness). And philosophy does not discuss this experience, but extends it (makes it a stable experience).
The problem with consciousness is that it cannot be determined what it is.
Sometimes European tourists, arriving in some of the Asian countries, are surprised and ask: “Why does a huge elephant obey a small weak driver?”
They are told :” Because the elephant does not see itself from the outside. He doesn't realize his power.”
This is consciousness – self-awareness, looking at yourself from the outside, the ability to treat yourself CRITICALLY, an essential feature of a person as opposed to an animal. “Animals can't control their emotions, but humans can.” – (doctor Alexander Myasnikov) Humans can control emotions because the consciousness looks at the person who has this consciousness from the outside and controls him. Consciousness is a reflection that transcends itself, a reflection that comes out of the subject.
Consciousness is the inner world, as if separated from the soul, which is something abstracted. In general, I advise you to read” How to achieve knowledge of the higher worlds ” – Rudolf Steiner. It's a heavy book, but you can find the answer to a question in it.
There are many problems with consciousness, for example, the difficult problem of consciousness and the problem of the gap in explanation. Psychophysical, mind-body problem… – in the same piggy bank. Marxist philosophers also emphasized the problem of the relation of thinking to being. In general, it would be nice to have a generally accepted definition of consciousness, but there are a lot of problems with this. If we focus on a fashionable difficult problem, it sounds like this (in the formulation of S. F. Nagumanova): “how..> explain phenomenal consciousness if it cannot be reduced to physical properties?” Well, phenomenal consciousness refers to how our mental states are experienced in the first person, “how does it feel” to have an X experience? This is really a problem. When I, for example, see color, or feel pain, these states are private and indescribable, that is, another person cannot experience them: this will already be his feelings. These states are indescribable through something else and are not reducible to each other: I cannot describe to another person how I feel pain. I can only say, for example, “it feels like a shoe squeezing” and hope that the other person gets the same feeling from the shoe. Such reflections give rise to a number of philosophers to consider phenomenal consciousness as something fundamentally different from physical phenomena, something that relates only to the world of the psychic. There are many approaches to solve this problem. Personally, I like the information approach of D. Dubrovsky and the theory of the identity of consciousness and the brain.
Since I have long been interested in the nature of consciousness, I read and listen to a lot about it, which gives the impression that a serious ideological crisis is brewing in the field of studying man as a natural phenomenon, including his consciousness, both in specific sciences and in philosophical sciences that study consciousness.
A crisis is when the old answers are no good, but there are no new ones yet.
The information age in the experience of the activity of a specific person has accumulated so many new facts that are not described and explained by the traditional language of natural sciences and philosophy, formed in the anthropocentric model of the world, on which the entire culture of humanity is based. In this model, a person is at the center of the world, the brain is at the center of the person, andGod is taken out to unknown limits, and about the connections between these three components, man, as long as he exists, fantasizes, argues and fights so much. And the content of the components is still far from being clarified, there is, in my opinion, not even a definition of the concept of “consciousness” that would have a perspective.
To work on a promising definition of the concept of “consciousness”, it is necessary to take as a basis the systemically structured definition of human mental activity as an orientation and research activity and develop it to the philosophical generalizations necessary to create a new model of the world order, in which the anthropocentric model will be included as part of the whole.
From my point of view, consciousness is a voluminous systemic and multi – level process of transformation and adaptation to specific conditions of human life of the energy and information that the brain receives from the energy-informational field of the material world.
It is this process that orients the individual person in the environment that directly surrounds him, and the specific person in his historical development. Orients in the broadest sense – geographical, moral, psychological, political and even civilizational, and, perhaps, first of all in civilizational, because civilization is a natural phenomenon.
The work of the brain with the energy information of the field is only a segment of the consciousness process. The brain does not create information, the brain converts the field information into thought, that is, into rational knowledge.
Rational knowledge and the conceptual language created on its basis are necessary for us to think, make decisions, create plans and communicate in all types of practical activities.
The main problem of consciousness in philosophy is the relationship between consciousness and being. This problem has 2 sides: 1)What was in the beginning: being or consciousness 2) is consciousness capable of knowing being
To be non-academic, we can say this: there is no problem of consciousness in philosophy. I'll make a reservation. In literate philosophy. What does literate philosophy mean? Philosophy is literate when it does not violate the syntax and grammar of the philosophical language (let's leave the content of the philosophical language at an intuitive level for now). So in literate philosophy, consciousness, or rather the experience of consciousness, is taken as a given. What happens. But this is not about the consciousness of psychology. Philosophy speaks of a special consciousness. For its designation, the following terms are used: transcendental consciousness, being consciousness, cosmic consciousness, consciousness as such, a sense of intense consciousness, etc. How do I set it? The whole difficulty is that it cannot be made the subject of analysis and consideration. You can only point (as in existentialism), expand, push in the direction of consciousness. Try the following: Look at your surroundings (the room you are in) as if “looking for the first time”. Such a view (ultimate view), within which you see something else (which you have not noticed or seen before), is consciousness in philosophy (the experience of consciousness). And philosophy does not discuss this experience, but extends it (makes it a stable experience).
The problem with consciousness is that it cannot be determined what it is.
Sometimes European tourists, arriving in some of the Asian countries, are surprised and ask: “Why does a huge elephant obey a small weak driver?”
They are told :” Because the elephant does not see itself from the outside. He doesn't realize his power.”
This is consciousness – self-awareness, looking at yourself from the outside, the ability to treat yourself CRITICALLY, an essential feature of a person as opposed to an animal. “Animals can't control their emotions, but humans can.” – (doctor Alexander Myasnikov) Humans can control emotions because the consciousness looks at the person who has this consciousness from the outside and controls him. Consciousness is a reflection that transcends itself, a reflection that comes out of the subject.
That this is a very complex process…
Consciousness is the inner world, as if separated from the soul, which is something abstracted. In general, I advise you to read” How to achieve knowledge of the higher worlds ” – Rudolf Steiner. It's a heavy book, but you can find the answer to a question in it.
There are many problems with consciousness, for example, the difficult problem of consciousness and the problem of the gap in explanation. Psychophysical, mind-body problem… – in the same piggy bank. Marxist philosophers also emphasized the problem of the relation of thinking to being.
In general, it would be nice to have a generally accepted definition of consciousness, but there are a lot of problems with this.
If we focus on a fashionable difficult problem, it sounds like this (in the formulation of S. F. Nagumanova): “how..> explain phenomenal consciousness if it cannot be reduced to physical properties?” Well, phenomenal consciousness refers to how our mental states are experienced in the first person, “how does it feel” to have an X experience?
This is really a problem. When I, for example, see color, or feel pain, these states are private and indescribable, that is, another person cannot experience them: this will already be his feelings. These states are indescribable through something else and are not reducible to each other: I cannot describe to another person how I feel pain. I can only say, for example, “it feels like a shoe squeezing” and hope that the other person gets the same feeling from the shoe.
Such reflections give rise to a number of philosophers to consider phenomenal consciousness as something fundamentally different from physical phenomena, something that relates only to the world of the psychic.
There are many approaches to solve this problem. Personally, I like the information approach of D. Dubrovsky and the theory of the identity of consciousness and the brain.