Consciousness and language in modern philosophy. Expression in the language of social consciousness - the beginning

Essence and types of language:

“Language can be either natural or artificial. Natural language is understood as the language of everyday life, which serves as a form of expression of thoughts and a means of communication between people. An artificial language is created by people for any narrow needs. Language is a social phenomenon. According to its physiological basis, the language acts, according to Professor I.P. Pavlov, in the function of the second signal system. The linguistic sign, being by its physical nature conditional in relation to what it denotes, is nevertheless ultimately conditioned by the process of cognition of reality. Language is a means of fixing and preserving the accumulated knowledge and transferring them from generation to generation. Thanks to language, the existence and development of abstract thinking is possible. The presence of language is a necessary tool for the generalizing activity of thinking. However, language and thought are not identical. Once having arisen, the language is relatively independent, having specific laws that are different from the laws of thinking. Therefore, there is no identity between a concept and a word, a judgment and a sentence, and so on. In addition, language is a certain system, “structure”, with its own internal organization, outside of which it is impossible to understand the nature and meaning of a linguistic sign”23.

Hegel:

“Language is considered as a product of the intelligentsia, consisting in the fact that its representations are manifested in some external element”24.

Comment:

Thus, for Hegel, language is objectified thinking. Man is in direct contact with the world of natural phenomena as a sentient being as a subject of sensibility. Exit to mediation, i.e. in reflection, reflection is achieved, according to Hegel, only through the introduction of a special, semiotic objectivity, words and terms in which the stability and general content of sensory impressions are fixed. E.V. Ilyenkov said that in language and thanks to it, a secondary plan of thinking is created, replacing the original sensory contact - the direct interaction of the cognizing subject and objects of nature.

Neopositivists:

“In the 1940s and 50s. in England and the United States, a trend in neopositivism arose - linguistic philosophy. The founders and adherents of this trend were Ryle, J. Austin, J. Wisdom, M. Black, P. Malcolm and others. Its main concept of philosophical analysis of natural language was developed by J.E. Moore on the basis of the later teachings of Wittgenstein, in particular, his theory of linguistic meaning "as use". Basically sharing the critical "anti-metaphysical" position of the logical positivists in relation to the "traditional" ways of philosophizing, representatives of linguistic philosophy explained differently the cause of philosophical errors, which they found not in the conscious exploitation by "metaphysicians" of inaccuracies and ambiguous forms of expression, but in the very the logic of the language, its "deep grammar", which generates paradoxical sentences (such as: "It's raining, but I don't believe in it") and all sorts of linguistic "traps". From the point of view of Wittgenstein and some of his followers from the University of Cambridge, philosophical fallacies are eliminated by clarifying and describing in detail the natural (paradigmatic) ways of using words and expressions, including words in their organically inherent contexts of human communication (“language games”), introducing as a criterion the meaningfulness of the requirement that any used word assume the possibility of its antithesis, the implementation of nominalist criticism of the tendency to unify various cases of use, and other techniques. At the same time, unlike logical positivists, supporters of linguistic philosophy did not call for the "improvement" of natural language along the lines of formalized logical languages ​​or the languages ​​of science. One of the schools of this direction has developed a purely "therapeutic" interpretation of the goals and objectives of philosophy, drawing closer in this respect to psychoanalysis. Another group of linguistic philosophers - the so-called. The Oxford school of "ordinary language" - sought, first of all, to create a positive concept of language activity. They developed original ideas, will put into circulation a new categorical apparatus for the analysis of speech communication (the theory of “speech acts” by Austin), descriptions of the ways of using psychological concepts (Ryle), identification of the “conceptual scheme” of language and cognition (Strawson) and analysis of moral statements ( R. Heer)...”25

Leontiev A.N.:

“...[we deform various bodies and visually perceive the deformation infer their relative hardness]. Following this path, we can, further, construct a scale of the hardness of bodies and single out such objective units of hardness, the use of which is capable of giving an accurate knowledge of a given property, independent of constantly fluctuating thresholds of sensations. For this, however, the experience of practical actions must be reflected in such a form in which their cognitive result can be consolidated, generalized and transmitted to other people. Such a form is the word, the linguistic sign. Initially, the knowledge of properties that are inaccessible to direct sensory reflection is an unintended result of actions aimed at practical goals ... The cognitive result of such actions, transmitted to other people in the process of verbal communication, is included in the system of knowledge that constitutes the content of the consciousness of the collective, society.

The linguistic form of expression and consolidation of the results of initially externally objective cognitive activity creates a condition due to which, in the future, individual links of this activity can be performed only in speech, verbal terms. Since the speech process primarily performs a cognitive function, and not the function of communication, its external sound ... side is increasingly reduced, there is a transition from loud speech to speech "to oneself", "in the mind" - to internal verbal mental activity ”26.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND SPEECH

Course work



Introduction

Chapter 1. Consciousness

1The concept and structure of consciousness

2Problems of the emergence of consciousness

Chapter 2

1 The concept of speech. Her types

2 Speech functions

3 Consciousness and speech

Conclusion

Bibliography


Introduction


The origin of consciousness and speech is associated with the transition of our ape-like ancestors from the appropriation of ready-made objects to labor, to the manufacture of artificial tools, to human forms of life and social relations growing on its basis. The transition to consciousness and speech represents the greatest qualitative leap in the development of the psyche.

New opportunities in the study of consciousness were discovered by L. S. Vygotsky, who developed the theory of the cultural and historical development of higher mental functions. He proceeded from the fact that in the transition from animals to man, the nature of the interaction of man with nature changes. One of the essential characteristics of this interaction is mediation, which is manifested in the use of tools. Since consciousness is a reflection of the world around man, his ideal being, the main difference from the psyche of animals lies in the use of special psychological tools - signs that rebuild the entire system of mental functions. Signs are carriers of certain meanings, which are a generalized reflection of reality. The structure of his consciousness will depend on how a person generalizes various contents. Thus, the characteristic of generalization processes is one of the essential features of consciousness. It should be noted that consciousness for L. S. Vygotsky acts primarily as a means of influencing oneself, as something that rebuilds the psyche and behavior of a person as a whole; the psychological tool does not change anything in the object. Thanks to the mastery of these tools, the mental processes of a person acquire an arbitrary character, which is manifested primarily in the phenomena of purposefulness.

The further development of the psychological concept of consciousness in Soviet psychology took the path of studying the mechanisms of its generation. A. N. Leontiev, S. L. Rubinshtein and others showed that consciousness is not only a theoretical, but also a practical relationship to being. It was studied how the real life activity of the subject generates consciousness, and then is rebuilt under its influence.

In recent years, in Russian psychology, the attention of researchers has been drawn to such a characteristic of consciousness as its sociality. A number of works show how specifically human features of the psyche grow out of the social existence of a person.

The provisions on the nature, mechanisms and structure of consciousness, developed in domestic psychology, create a real basis for studying the problem of the ontogenesis of consciousness.

The purpose of this course is to consider all aspects of the development of consciousness under the influence of speech and communication.

The object of study of our coursework is human consciousness.

The subject of the study is the features of the formation of consciousness, the process of establishing the influence of speech on the development of consciousness.

To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:

Consider the definition of the concepts of "consciousness", "communication", "speech";

To characterize the processes and mechanisms of consciousness;

Reveal the patterns of development of consciousness and consider speech as a factor influencing its development.

The problem of consciousness, being the most important psychological problem, has invariably attracted the attention of researchers at all stages of the development of psychological science.

In this paper, we will try to outline the main stages in the development of human consciousness, briefly describe the factors influencing the development of human consciousness. We will rely on the arguments and research of various scientists, give specific life examples.

Chapter 1 Consciousness


1 The concept and structure of consciousness


Consciousness is a specifically human form of ideal reflection and spiritual assimilation of reality. Idealistic philosophy interprets consciousness as something that does not depend on the objective world and creates it.

Objective idealism (Plato, Hegel, and others) transforms consciousness into a divine, mysterious essence, divorced from both man and nature, seeing in it the fundamental principle of all that exists. Subjective idealism (Berkeley, Mach, and others) considers the consciousness of the individual, torn out of all social ties, as the only reality, and all objects as a set of ideas of an individual person. Materialism understands consciousness as a reflection of reality and connects it with the mechanisms of higher nervous activity.

The views of the pre-Marxian materialists were limited: they interpreted man as a natural, biological being, ignored his social nature, practical activity, turned consciousness into a passive contemplation of the world (Contemplation).

The specific features of the Marxist understanding of consciousness are as follows:

consciousness is social in nature. It arises, functions and develops as a component of the practical activity of a social person;

Man thinks with the help of the brain. The activity of the highly organized nervous system of the brain is a condition for the emergence and development of human consciousness;

consciousness is objective, i.e. directed towards life. To know, to master the subject, to reveal its essence - this is the meaning of consciousness;

consciousness includes not only a reflection of the objective world, but also a person's awareness of his mental activity (Self-Consciousness);

At the same time, consciousness is not reducible either to thinking or to acts of self-consciousness, but encompasses both the abstracting activity of thinking and productive imagination. In addition, consciousness includes intuition and human emotions, will, conscience, etc. consciousness is closely related to language. In it, it finds its material embodiment. Materialized in language, the products of the activity of consciousness can be passed on to subsequent generations. Language is only one of the forms of materialization of consciousness, it is also embodied in objects of culture - products of labor, works of art, etc.;

along with the theoretical reflection of reality, consciousness includes the value attitudes of the individual, his social orientations;

there are differences between ordinary consciousness (by which people are guided in everyday life) and scientific consciousness, between individual consciousness and social consciousness, expressing the interests of classes, groups, society as a whole. Forms of social consciousness - science, art, morality, etc. - irreducible to individual consciousness;

the function of consciousness is not only to correctly orient a person in the surrounding reality, but also to contribute to the transformation of the real world through the display.

So, consciousness is the totality, the focus of man's mental functions;

Sensations, concepts, perceptions, thinking form the core of consciousness. But they do not exhaust the entire structural completeness of consciousness: it also includes the act of attention as its necessary component. Properties of consciousness: universality - any phenomena can be reflected in consciousness; selectivity - consciousness chooses 1 element as its object; objectivity - reflects as it should; goal-setting - to think before thinking; activity; creation .

In a broad sense, the concept of the unconscious is a set of mental processes, operations and states that are not represented in the mind of the subject. In a number of psychological theories, the unconscious is a special sphere of the mental or a system of processes that are qualitatively different from the phenomena of consciousness. The term "unconscious" is also used to characterize individual and group behavior, the real goal, the consequences of which are not realized.

Freud plays an important role in the theory of the unconscious. In general terms, the human psyche is represented by Freud as split into two opposing spheres of the conscious and the unconscious, which are essential characteristics of the personality. But in Freud's personality structure, both of these spheres are not represented equally: he considered the unconscious to be the central component that makes up the essence of the human psyche, and the conscious - only a special instance that builds on top of the unconscious. According to Freud, the conscious is not the essence of the psyche, but only such a quality of it that "may or may not be attached to its other qualities."

Freud also subjects the unconscious itself to analytical dismemberment. Here Freud makes an important point about the existence of two forms of the unconscious. This is - firstly, the hidden, "latent" unconscious, i.e. something that has gone out of consciousness, but may later “emerge” in consciousness; secondly, it is the repressed unconscious, i.e. those mental formations that cannot become conscious because some powerful invisible force counteracts them.


2 The problem of the emergence of consciousness


As the organization of matter became more complex and life appeared on Earth, the simplest organisms, as well as plants, developed the ability to “respond” to the influence of the external environment and even assimilate (process) the products of this environment (for example, insectivorous plants). This form of reflection is called irritability. Irritability is characterized by a certain selectivity - the simplest organism, plant, animal adapts to the environment.

Many millions of years passed before the ability of sensation appeared, with the help of which a more highly organized living being, on the basis of the formed sense organs (hearing, sight, touch, etc.), acquired the ability to reflect individual properties of objects - color, shape, temperature, softness, humidity, etc. This became possible because animals have a special apparatus - the nervous system, which allows you to activate their relationship with the environment.

The highest form of reflection at the level of the animal kingdom is perception, which allows you to embrace the object in its integrity and completeness. The psyche, as a result of the interaction of the brain with the outside world, and mental activity allowed animals not only to adapt to the environment, but also, to a certain extent, to show internal activity in relation to it and even change the environment. The emergence of the psyche in animals means the emergence of non-material processes. Studies have shown that mental activity is based on unconditioned and conditioned reflexes of the brain. The chain of unconditioned reflexes is a biological prerequisite for the formation of instincts. The presence in highly organized animals of sensations, perceptions, impressions , experiences , the presence of an elementary (concrete, subject ) thinking is the basis for the emergence of human consciousness.

Consciousness is the highest form of reflection of the real world, peculiar only to people and a function of the brain associated with speech, which consists in a generalized and purposeful reflection of reality, in a preliminary mental construction of actions and anticipation of their results, in reasonable regulation and self-control of human behavior. The "core" of consciousness, the way of its existence is knowledge. Consciousness belongs to the subject, to the person, and not to the surrounding world. But the content of consciousness, the content of a person's thoughts is this world, one or another of its aspects, connections, laws. Therefore, consciousness can be characterized as a subjective image of the objective world.

Consciousness is, first of all, the awareness of the nearest sensually perceived environment and the awareness of a limited connection with other persons and things that are outside the individual who is beginning to become conscious of himself; at the same time it is an awareness of nature.

Man differs from the animal in that with the transition to socio-historical existence, to work and to the forms of social life associated with them, all the main categories of man radically change.

Isolation in the human mind of the reflected reality as objective, on the other hand, highlights the inner world of a person, his experiences and the possibility of developing self-observation on this basis.

The reason underlying the humanization of human animal-like ancestors is the emergence of labor and the formation of human society on its basis. “Labor created man himself,” says Engels, “and his consciousness.”

The emergence and development of labor led to a change and humanization of the brain, the organs of its external activity and the sense organs. “First, work, and then, along with it, articulate speech, were the two most important stimuli, under the influence of which the brain of a monkey gradually turned into a human brain, which, for all its resemblance to a monkey, far exceeds in size and perfection,” writes Engels. The human hand was also able to achieve its perfection through labor.

Under the influence of labor and in connection with the development of the brain, the human senses improved. If we compare the maximum volumes of the skull of great apes and the skull of primitive man, it turns out that the brain of the latter exceeds the brain of the most highly developed modern species of monkeys by more than two times (600 cm3 and 1400 cm3).

The difference in the size of the brain of monkeys and man is even sharper if we compare its weight; the difference here is almost 4 times: the weight of the orangutan brain is 350 g, the human brain weighs 1400 g.

The human brain, in comparison with the brain of higher apes, has a much more complex, much more developed structure.

Already in Neanderthal man, as shown by casts made from the inner surface of the skull, new fields are clearly distinguished in the cortex, not completely differentiated in anthropoid apes, which then reach their full development in modern man. Such, for example, are the fields designated (according to Brodman) by the numbers 44, 45, 46 - in the frontal lobe of the cortex, fields 39 and 40 - in its parietal lobe, 41 and 42 - in the temporal lobe.

The sense of touch became more precise, the human eye began to notice more than the eye of the most far-sighted bird. Hearing developed, which became able to perceive and distinguish the sounds of articulate human speech.

The development of the brain and sense organs had an inverse effect on labor and language, giving impetus to their further development.

All this led to a change in the anatomical and physiological characteristics of a person: an upright gait appeared, the formation of mobile and adapted to grip the upper limbs. This contributed to the ability to perform complex labor operations.

The emergence of labor was prepared by the entire previous course of development. A gradual transition to an upright gait, the rudiments of which are clearly observed even in the existing anthropoid apes, and in this regard the formation of especially mobile forelimbs adapted for grasping objects, more and more freed from the function of walking, which is explained by the way of life that animal ancestors led. man - all this created the physical prerequisites for the ability to perform complex labor operations.

Labor is a process that connects man with nature, the process of man's influence on nature. It is characterized by two interrelated features: the use and manufacture of tools, and it is also a joint labor activity. Therefore, a person enters into interaction not only with nature, but also in certain relationships with other people - members of this society. Through relationships with other people, a person also relates to nature itself.

The rudiments of tool activity in the form of the use of external means are also present in some animals, for example, the use of a stick in anthropoid apes. Their difference from humans cannot be reduced only to their external form or the fact that animals use their "tools" less often than primitive people. These external means of labor differ qualitatively from the true instruments of human labor. These differences can only be revealed by considering the activities in which they are included.

The "tool" activity of animals is not performed collectively and does not determine the relation of communication between the individuals who carry it out. Communication is never built on the basis of their production activities, does not depend on it and is not mediated by it.

Human labor is originally a social activity based on the cooperation of individuals, involving the division of labor functions. Labor connects the participants of labor activity among themselves, mediates their communication. This is of great importance for the development of the human psyche.

Already in the early stages of the development of human society, there is a division of the process of activity between its individual participants. For example, some are responsible for maintaining the fire and processing food on it, while others are responsible for obtaining this food.

Participants in a collective hunt are divided into pursuers of game and those who are waiting for it in a siege and attack. There is a decisive change in the structure of the activity of individuals, its participants.

Each team member is responsible for a specific area of ​​activity. For example, the activity of a beater who participates in a collective primitive hunt is motivated by the need for food or clothing, which is provided for him by the skin of an animal. The result of the beater's activity is the frightening and direction of the herd towards other hunters hiding in ambush. On this, the activity of this hunter stops. The rest is done by other participants of the hunt. By itself, the frightening of the game does not and will not lead to the satisfaction of the needs of the beater, since his activity is aimed at a different result. It turns out that the subject of the action and the motive here do not coincide.

Processes, the subject and motive of which do not coincide, are called activities. The activity of the beater is hunting, and the frightening of game is his action.

The division of activity into actions is possible only under the conditions of a joint collective process of influencing nature. The product of this joint collective impact on nature leads to the satisfaction of the needs of both the individual and the entire primitive tribe. Separation of the object and motive of activity is the result of singling out individual operations from a complex multi-phase activity.

Separation of the subject of activity and its motives is possible only under conditions of a joint collective process of influencing nature. This is the result of the ongoing isolation from the complex and multi-phase, but unified activity of individual operations. These separate operations are transformed into an independent action for the individual, although in relation to the collective process they remain one of his private actions.

Due to the fact that hunting is a process consisting of several actions, the person who scares the game so that other members of this collective can catch it receives his share of the prey from their hands - part of the product of the joint labor activity. Therefore, the activity of other people forms the basis of the specific structure of the activity of the human individual. From this we can conclude that, in terms of the way it arises, the connection of the motive with the subject of action reflects not natural, but objective social connections. The actions of the beater are possible only if the relationship between the expected result of the action he committed and the end result of the entire hunting process - an ambush attack on a fleeing animal, its killing and consumption is reflected. This connection appears before a person in the form of real actions of other participants in labor. Their actions give meaning to the subject of the beater's action. Also, the actions of the beater justify the actions of hunters who lie in wait for game.

Together with the birth of an action, a reasonable meaning arises for a person of what his activity is aimed at. The activity of people is now separated for their consciousness from objects. Accordingly, nature itself stands out for them and appears in its relation to the needs of the collective, to their activities. Food is perceived as an object of a certain activity: search, hunting, cooking. Consequently, it can stand out not only due to certain needs, but also “theoretically”, can be kept in the mind and becomes an idea.

Studying human consciousness and emphasizing its connection with the activity in which it is not only manifested, but also formed, one cannot abstract from the fact that a person is a social being, his activity is a social activity and his consciousness is a social consciousness. Human consciousness is formed in the process of communication between people. The process of spiritual, conscious communication between people, taking place on the basis of joint practical activity.


Chapter 2


1 The concept of speech. Her types


Speech opens the consciousness of another person in a peculiar way, making it accessible to multifaceted and subtlest nuanced influences. Being included in the process of real practical relations, the general activity of people, speech through a message (expression, impact) includes a person's consciousness in it. Thanks to speech, the consciousness of one person becomes a given for another.

The main function of consciousness is the awareness of being, its reflection. This function is performed by language and speech in a specific way: they reflect being, denoting it. Speech, like language, if we take them first in their unity, is a signifying reflection of being. But speech and language are both the same and different. They denote two different aspects of a single whole.

Speech is the activity of communication - expression, influence, communication - through language, speech is language in action. Speech, both one with language and different from it, is the unity of a certain activity - communication - and a certain content, which designates and, designating, reflects being. More precisely, speech is a form of existence of consciousness (thoughts, feelings, experiences) for another, serving as a means of communication with him, and a form of a generalized reflection of reality, or a form of existence of thinking [?6 ].

Speech is a language functioning in the context of individual consciousness. In accordance with this, the psychology of speech is distinguished from linguistics, which studies language; at the same time, the specific object of the psychology of speech is determined, in contrast to the psychology of thinking, feelings, etc., which are expressed in the form of speech. Generalized meanings fixed in the language, reflecting social experience, acquire in the context of individual consciousness in connection with the motives and goals that define speech as an act of the individual's activity, individual meaning or meaning, reflecting the speaker's personal attitude - not only his knowledge, but also his experiences in that their inseparable unity and interpenetration, in which they are given in the consciousness of the individual. Just as individual consciousness is different from social consciousness, psychology from ideology, so speech is different from language. At the same time, they are interconnected: just as individual consciousness is mediated by social consciousness, human psychology is mediated by ideology, so speech, and with it the speech thinking of an individual, are conditioned by language: only through the forms of social thinking deposited in the language can an individual formulate his own thought in his speech.

Speech, the word are a specific unity of sensory and semantic content. Every word has a semantic - semantic - content that makes up its meaning. The word denotes an object (its qualities, actions, etc.), which it generally reflects. The generalized reflection of the subject content constitutes the meaning of the word. But meaning is not a passive reflection of the object in itself as a "thing in itself", outside of practically effective relations between people. The meaning of a word, which generally reflects an object included in the real effective social relationships of people, is determined through the function of this object in the system of human activity. Formed in social activities, it is included in the process of communication between people. The meaning of a word is the cognitive attitude of human consciousness to an object, mediated by social relations between people.

Speech is a special, most perfect form of communication, peculiar only to man. This communication involves two parties - the speaker and the listener. The speaker chooses the words necessary to express his thoughts and connects them according to the rules of grammar, and pronounces them through the organs of speech. Hearing - perceives. Both should have the same rules and means of conveying thought [ ?2]. According to the multitude of its functions, speech is a polymorphic activity, i.e. in its various functional purposes is presented in different forms and types. In psychology, two forms of speech are mainly distinguished:

External;

Internal.


2. Functions of speech


Speech has a socio-historical nature. People have always lived and live collectively, in society. Public life and the collective work of people make it necessary to constantly communicate, establish contact with each other, influence each other. This communication is done through speech. Thanks to speech, people exchange thoughts and knowledge, talk about their feelings, experiences, intentions.

Communicating with each other, people use words and use the grammatical rules of a particular language. Language is a system of verbal signs, a means by which communication is carried out between people. Speech is the process of using language to communicate between people. Language and speech are inextricably linked, they represent a unity, which is expressed in the fact that historically the language of any nation was created and developed in the process of speech communication between people. The connection between language and speech is also expressed in the fact that language as an instrument of communication exists historically as long as people speak it. As soon as people stop using this or that language in speech communication, it becomes a dead language. Such a dead language has become, for example, Latin.

Cognition of the laws of the surrounding world, the mental development of a person is accomplished through the assimilation of knowledge developed by mankind in the process of socio-historical development and fixed with the help of language, with the help of written speech. Language in this sense is a means of consolidating and transmitting from generation to generation the achievements of human culture, science and art. Each person in the learning process assimilates the knowledge acquired by all mankind and accumulated historically [?7 ].

Thus, speech performs certain functions:

impact;

messages;

expressions;

designations.

The function of influence lies in the ability of a person through speech to induce people to certain actions or to refuse them. The function of influence in human speech is one of its primary, most basic functions. A person speaks in order to influence, if not directly on behavior, then on thoughts or feelings, on the consciousness of other people. Speech has a social purpose, it is a means of communication, and it performs this function in the first place, since it serves as a means of influence. And this function of influence in human speech is specific. The sounds made by animals as "expressive" ones also perform a signal function, but human speech, speech in the true sense of the word, is fundamentally different from those sound signals that animals make. The call made by a sentinel animal or the leader of a pack, herd, etc., can serve as a signal for other animals to take flight or attack. These signals are instinctive or conditioned reflex reactions in animals. An animal, uttering such a signal cry, does not emit it in order to notify others of impending danger, but because this cry breaks out of it in a certain situation. When other animals take flight at a given signal, they also do so not because they “understood” the signal, understood what it means, but because after such a cry the leader usually takes flight and the animal is in danger. situation; thus, a conditioned reflex connection was created between screaming and running; it's a connection between running and screaming, not what it stands for [?6 ].

The function of the message is to exchange information (thoughts) between people through words, phrases.

The function of expression lies in the fact that, on the one hand, thanks to speech, a person can more fully convey his feelings, experiences, relationships, and, on the other hand, the expressiveness of speech, its emotionality significantly expand the possibilities of communication. The expressive function in itself does not determine speech: speech is not identical with any expressive reaction. Speech exists only where there is semantics, a meaning that has a material carrier in the form of sound, gesture, visual image, etc. But in man the most expressive moments pass into semantics. Every speech speaks about something, i.e. has some object; any speech at the same time refers to someone - to a real or possible interlocutor or listener, and any speech at the same time expresses something - one or another attitude of the speaker to what he is talking about, and to those to whom he actually or mentally drawn. The core or outline of the semantic content of speech is what it means. But living speech usually expresses immeasurably more than it actually means. Thanks to the expressive moments contained in it, it very often goes beyond the limits of the abstract system of meanings. At the same time, the true concrete meaning of speech is revealed to a large extent through these expressive moments (intonation, stylistic, etc.). Genuine understanding of speech is achieved not only by knowing the verbal meaning of the words used in it; the most important role in it is played by the interpretation, the interpretation of these expressive moments, revealing that more or less secret inner meaning that the speaker puts into it. The emotional-expressive function of speech as such is fundamentally different from the involuntary and meaningless expressive reaction. The expressive function, being included in human speech, is rebuilt, entering into its semantic content. In this form, emotionality plays a significant role in human speech. It would be wrong to completely intellectualize speech, turning it only into an instrument of thinking. It has emotional and expressive moments that appear in rhythm, pauses, intonations, in voice modulations and other expressive, expressive moments that are always present to a greater or lesser extent in speech, especially in oral speech, affecting, however, in writing. speech - in the rhythm and arrangement of words; expressive moments of speech are further manifested in the stylistic features of speech, in various nuances and shades [?6 ].

The functions of expression and influence can be combined into a function of communication, which includes the means of expression and influence. As a means of expression, speech is combined with a number of expressive movements - with gestures, facial expressions. Animals also have sound as an expressive movement, but it becomes speech only when it ceases to accompany the affected state of a person and begins to designate it.

The designation function (significative) consists in the ability of a person through speech to give objects and phenomena of the surrounding reality names that are unique to them. The significative function distinguishes human speech from animal communication. A person's idea of ​​an object or phenomenon is associated with a word. Mutual understanding in the process of communication is based, therefore, on the unity of the designation of objects and phenomena, perceiving and speaking [ ?4]. You can also highlight another function of speech - the function of generalization, which is associated with the fact that the word denotes not only a separate, given object, but also a whole group of similar objects and is always the bearer of their essential features.

So, in a person's speech, it is possible to single out various functions by psychological analysis, but they are not aspects external to each other; they are included in the unity within which they determine and mediate each other. Thus, speech performs its message function on the basis of its semantic, semantic, denoting function. But not to a lesser, but to an even greater extent and vice versa - the semantic function of designation is formed on the basis of the communicative function of speech. Essentially social life, communication gives the cry a function of meaning. Expressive movement from emotional discharge can become speech, acquire meaning only because the subject notices the effect that it has on others. The child first makes a cry because he is hungry, and then uses it to be fed. Sound first performs the functions of designation objectively, serving as a signal for another. It is only due to the fact that he performs this function in relation to another that he is realized by us in his significance, acquires significance for us. Initially reflected in the mind of another person, speech acquires meaning for ourselves. So in the future - from the use of the word we establish more and more precisely its meaning, at first little realized, according to the meaning in which it is understood by others. Understanding is one of the constituent moments of speech. The emergence of speech outside of society is impossible, speech is a social product; intended for communication, it arises in communication. Moreover, the social purpose of speech determines not only its genesis; it is also reflected in the internal, semantic content of speech. The two main functions of speech - communicative and significative, due to which speech is a means of communication and a form of existence of thought, consciousness, are formed one through the other and function one in the other. The social nature of speech as a means of communication and its denoting nature are inextricably linked. In speech, in unity and internal interpenetration, the social nature of man and his inherent consciousness are represented.


2.3 Consciousness and speech

consciousness speech thinking communication

Studying human consciousness and emphasizing its connection with the activity in which it is not only manifested, but also formed, one cannot abstract from the fact that a person is a social being, his activity is a social activity and his consciousness is a social consciousness. Human consciousness is formed in the process of communication between people. The process of spiritual, conscious communication between people, taking place on the basis of joint practical activity, is carried out through speech. Therefore, the proposition about the social character of human consciousness receives concrete realization in the recognition of the unity of speech or language and consciousness. “Language,” wrote K. Marx, “is practical, existing for other people, and only and thereby also existing for myself, real consciousness.” In close connection with the unity of consciousness and activity, the most essential fact for psychological research is thus the unity of consciousness and language.

To a large extent, thanks to speech, the individual consciousness of each person, not limited to personal experience, his own observations, through the medium of language is fed and enriched by the results of social experience; observation, and the knowledge of all men is, or can, through speech, become the property of everyone. Speech, at the same time, opens the consciousness of another person in a peculiar way for us, making it accessible to multifaceted and subtlest nuanced influences. Being included in the process of real practical relations, the general activity of people, speech through a message (expression, impact) includes a person's consciousness in it. Thanks to speech, the consciousness of one person becomes a given for another. The main function of consciousness is the awareness of being, its reflection. This function is performed by language and speech in a specific way: they reflect being, denoting it. Speech, like language, if we take them first in their unity, is a signifying reflection of being. But speech and language are both the same and different. They denote two different aspects of a single whole. Speech is the activity of communication - expression, influence, communication - through language; speech is language in action. Speech, both one with language and different from it, is the unity of a certain activity - communication - and a certain content, which designates and, designating, reflects being. More precisely, speech is a form of existence of consciousness (thoughts, feelings, experiences) for another, serving as a means of communication with him, and a form of a generalized reflection of reality, or a form of existence of thinking.

Speech is a language functioning in the context of individual consciousness. In accordance with this, the psychology of speech is distinguished from linguistics, which studies language; at the same time, the specific object of the psychology of speech is determined, in contrast to the psychology of thinking, feelings, etc., which are expressed in the form of speech. Generalized meanings fixed in the language, reflecting social experience, acquire in the context of individual consciousness in connection with the motives and goals that define speech as an act of the individual's activity, individual meaning or meaning, reflecting the speaker's personal attitude - not only his knowledge, but also his experiences in that their inseparable unity and interpenetration, in which they are given in the consciousness of the individual. Just as individual consciousness is different from social consciousness, psychology from ideology, so speech is different from language. At the same time, they are interconnected: just as individual consciousness is mediated by social consciousness, human psychology is mediated by ideology, so speech, and with it the speech thinking of an individual, are conditioned by language: only through the forms of social thinking deposited in the language can an individual formulate his own thought in his speech. Speech, the word are a specific unity of sensory and semantic content. Every word has a semantic - semantic - content that makes up its meaning. The word denotes an object (its qualities, actions, etc.), which it generally reflects. The generalized reflection of the subject content constitutes the meaning of the word. But meaning is not a passive reflection of the object in itself as a "thing in itself", outside of practically effective relations between people. The meaning of a word, which generally reflects an object included in the real effective social relationships of people, is determined through the function of this object in the system of human activity. Formed in social activities, it is included in the process of communication between people. The meaning of a word is the cognitive attitude of human consciousness to an object, mediated by social relations between people.

Thus, speech does not primarily display an object in and of itself outside of human relations, in order to then serve as a means of spiritual communication between people outside of real practical relations to objects of reality. The significance of the subject in real activity and words in the process of communication are presented in speech in unity and interpenetration. The bearer of meaning is always the sensory image given in perception or representation - auditory (sound), visual (graphic), etc. But the main thing in a word is its meaning, its semantic content. The material, sensual bearer of meaning is usually as if obscured and almost not realized; in the foreground is usually always the meaning of the word. Only in poetry does the sound of the word play a more significant role; but apart from this, only in exceptional cases, when, due to some special conditions, the word seems to be meaningless, its sensual carrier, its sound, comes to the fore in consciousness. Usually all our attention is focused on the semantic content of speech. Its sensory basis functions only as a carrier of this semantic content.

Proceeding from the correlation of meaning and sign, it can be conditionally said that the sensual carrier of meaning in a word performs the function of a sign in relation to the meaning, and the word, thus, is the unity of meaning and sign. However, only in a very relative and conditional sense can the sensible bearer of meaning be recognized as a sign of this meaning, because by a sign in the literal, precise sense they understand something that does not have its own internal meaning - some external sensible given, which turns into a conditional substitute or a label for something else. So, if we agree to mark in the margins of a book or manuscript with one cross the places that we need for one purpose, and with two crosses others that we want to highlight in connection with another work, then these crosses, used completely independently of any internal meaning cross, are in this case purely conventional signs. But in a word, between its sensual and semantic side, there is usually a much closer, inner connection. This connection appears already in the phoneme: the phoneme is not just a sound, but a sound is a semantic distinguisher, that is, a sound processed in a certain way in the system of a given language specifically as a carrier of a certain semantic, semantic content. In the historical formation and development of speech, for the most part, we have non-sounds, which are first presented as purely sensual givens and then turn by us into signs of definite meanings; in fact, these sounds appear in speech as carriers of certain meanings. When the meaning of the word then changes and a new word is introduced to designate a new concept, usually even here we are not dealing with complete arbitrariness, with pure convention. For the most part, in these cases, we are dealing with the transfer and transformation of a meaning that has already been associated with a given form. Thus, even the external side of the word goes beyond the limits of the sign, due to the fact that the word has an internal meaning, with which its external sensory side is most closely connected in the course of the historical development of language. It is all the less possible - as is often done - to interpret the word as a whole as a conventional sign: the sign is arbitrarily established by us; the word has its own history, by virtue of which it lives a life independent of us.

This provision must be especially emphasized in all its fundamental significance, as opposed to the psychology of speech, which tries to reduce the word as a whole to the role of a conventional sign. rather than reflecting the subject. In this case, the internal connection in content is lost between the object and the word: the word as a sign and the object oppose each other as two essentially unrelated given entities that externally correlate with each other, since one purely conditionally turns into a substitute for the other; the connection between the word as a sign and the object that it designates inevitably acquires a purely conventional character, since the sign as such, having no internal meaning that reflects the object in its semantic content, is essentially objectively not connected with the object in any way. In reality, the meaning of the word - this is its own semantic content, which is a generalized reflection of the subject. Since the word is a reflection of the subject, an internal connection is established between the word and the subject in essence, according to the common content. That is why the word ceases to be only a sign, as it inevitably becomes when the meaning of the word is taken beyond its limits. The connection of a word with an object is not "real", pre-established by nature, but ideal; but it is not conventional, not conditional, but historical. A sign in the specific sense of the word is a conditional label, arbitrarily established by us; the word has its own history, a life independent of us, during which something can happen to it, which depends not on how we "agreed" to interpret it, but on the subject content in which the word includes us. The volume and conditions of functioning in the process of communication, communication and understanding are also different for a genuine word as a historical formation of a language and a conventional sign. The connection of a word with an object is the main and determining one for its meaning; but this connection is not direct, but indirect - through the generalized semantic content of the word - through a concept or image. A more or less significant role in the generalized semantic content of a word can be played - especially in poetic language - by a linguistic image, which cannot simply be identified with a visual given as such, since a linguistic image is always already a meaningful image, the structure of which is determined by relations that are essential for its meaning.

The meaning and subject correlation of a word, which in a number of theories are divided as two heterogeneous and opposed functions (denoting and nominative or nominative and demonstrative, indicative, etc.), are actually two links in a single process of the emergence and use of the meaning of a word: the subject relatedness of a word is carried out through its meaning; at the same time, an indication of the subject relatedness of a word is itself nothing more than the lowest or initial stage of revealing its meaning - not sufficiently generalized to be included in a relatively independent special conceptual context of some system of concepts and thus isolated from random connections in which the generalized content value in one case or another is given. In those cases when - at higher levels of generalization and abstraction - the meaning of words seems to be isolated from sensually given objectivity, it is again revealed in the derivative conceptual objectivity of a particular scientific field (scientific "subject" - arithmetic, algebra, geometry, etc.). etc.). As a result, the operation with concepts, the meanings of words, begins, as it were, to take place on two different planes or planes: on the one hand, in the conceptual plane, the definition of the meaning of a word by means of its relation to other concepts, and on the other hand, its assignment to objects of reality in order to its implementation and, at the same time, the qualifications of the relevant subjects. However, in essence, we are talking about two, although differentiable, but fundamentally ultimately homogeneous operations - the disclosure of meaning in an objective context - in one case, sensually represented reality, in the other - given indirectly in terms of conceptually formalized definitions. Only in the mystified conception of "objective idealism" do these two planes completely fall apart, and the concept is opposed to reality as a world of "ideal being" completely independent of it. In reality, in order to reveal the meaning, it is necessary first of all to establish its objective relatedness, and in order to establish the objective relatedness of the meaning, it is necessary to establish the conceptual content of the corresponding sensually given object. The meaning of each word in its conceptual definiteness is correlated with a certain context to which it essentially belongs. At the same time, there is always a complex of other possible contexts, limited by the meaning itself, in which the word can function according to its semantic content. In these new contexts, a word can acquire a new semantic content by adding additional semantic content associated with it, but going beyond its limits, over its meaning. This change in the meaning of a word by means of an add-on leads to the fact that the word acquires in a given context or situation a meaning different from its meaning. At the same time, the use of the word in different or changing contexts leads, in the end, to the fact that the new content is not only built on top of it, but is included in it and, transforming it, is fixed in it in such a way that it enters into the proper meaning of the word and retained by him outside of this context. So, in the process of using a word, its meaning is not only realized, but also modified either by the superstructure method, which leads to the formation around the invariant core of the meaning of a mobile, from case to case changing, semantic sphere of the meaning of the word in its given use, or by the method of transformation and new bookmarking of the meaning words, leading to a change in the meaning itself. In the general theory of speech, which we have thus briefly outlined, two propositions must be specially singled out in view of their great fundamental significance.

Speech, the word is not a conventional sign, its meaning is not outside of it; word, speech have a semantic, semantic content - a meaning that is a generalized denoting definition of its subject. The relationship of a word as a signifier to the object it designates is a cognitive relationship. 2 The signifying reflection of an object in the meaning of a word, like reflection in general, is not a passive process. We cognize and realize reality by influencing it; we cognize the objective meaning that is formed in the word, influencing the object and revealing its function in the system of social activity. The word arises in communication and serves for communication.

On the basis of communicative relations between people, the cognitive function turns into a specific denoting function.

For a behaviorist, meaning comes down to the bare use of an object (meaning as a set of uses of an object according to J. Watson) outside of its generalizing awareness. For the introspectionist, the meaning of a word is reduced to an internal meaning, outside the uses of the object, outside its real function on an effective plane. In reality, the meaning of a word, on the one hand, is formed in the process of generalized awareness of its use, and on the other hand, by its generalized social significance, which is formed on the basis of social practice, the meaning regulates the use of an object in the actions of an individual. From these two provisions it follows that it would be fundamentally wrong to imagine that the meaning of the word first arises in the contemplative attitude of the individual consciousness to the object, and then it enters into circulation, starting to fulfill its function as a means of communication between people; first, a generalization is singled out in the meaning of the word, and then communication takes place on this basis. In reality, however, the word can serve as a generalization because it arises in active and conscious communication. Involving an object in an activity that is always really carried out in a person as a social activity, a person extracts from it a meaning that takes shape in a word that, arising in communication, serves to communicate.

The semantic nature of human speech makes it possible to use it for conscious communication by designating one's thoughts and feelings for communicating them to another. This semantic, significative (denoting) function, necessary for communication, was formed in communication, more precisely, in the joint social activity of people, including their real, practical and ideal communication accomplished through speech, in the unity and interpenetration of one and the other.

The function of communication or message - the communicative function of speech - includes its functions as a means of expression and as a means of influence. The emotional function of speech belongs to its genetically primary functions. This can be concluded by the fact that in aphatic disorders it lasts the longest. When in aphasic diseases the genetically later and higher in its level "intellectual" speech is upset, the emotional components of speech, "emotional" speech (X. Jackson) is sometimes preserved. So, some patients are not able to say or even repeat the words of a song, but are able to sing it.

The expressive function in itself does not determine speech: speech is not identical with any expressive reaction. There is speech only where there is semantics, a meaning that has a material carrier in the form of a sound, gesture, visual image, etc. But in a person, the most expressive moments turn into semantics.

Every speech speaks of something, that is, it has some kind of object; any speech at the same time refers to someone - to a real or possible interlocutor or listener, and any speech at the same time expresses something - this or that attitude of the speaker to what he is talking about, and to those to whom he actually or mentally drawn. The core or outline of the semantic content of speech is what it means. But living speech usually expresses immeasurably more than it actually means. Thanks to the expressive moments contained in it, it very often goes beyond the limits of the abstract system of meanings. At the same time, the true concrete meaning of speech is revealed to a large extent through these expressive moments (intonation, stylistic, etc.). Genuine understanding of speech is achieved not only by knowing the verbal meaning of the words used in it; the most important role in it is played by the interpretation, the interpretation of these expressive moments, revealing that more or less secret inner meaning that the speaker puts into it. Speech as a means of expression is included in the totality of expressive movements - along with gesture, facial expressions, etc. Sound as an expressive movement is also found in animals. In different situations, under different conditions, animals make sounds, each of which is more or less uniformly associated with a particular situation. Each cry is an expression of a certain affective state (anger, hunger, etc.). These instinctive expressive movements of animals are not yet speech - even in those cases when the cries emitted by the animal convey its excitement to others: the animal only infects others with its emotional excitement, and does not report it. They lack a denoting function.

As long as a cry is only an expressive movement that accompanies an affective-emotional state, for someone who has established and realized the connection that exists between them, it can become a sign, a sign of the presence of this state. But a sound becomes a speech, a word only when it ceases only to accompany the corresponding affective state of the subject, but begins to designate it. The emotionally-expressive function of speech as such is fundamentally different from the involuntary and meaningless expressive reaction. The expressive function, being included in human speech, is rebuilt, entering into its semantic content. In this form, emotionality plays a significant role in human speech.

It would be wrong to completely intellectualize speech, turning it only into an instrument of thinking. It has emotionally expressive moments that appear in rhythm, pauses, intonations, in voice modulations and other expressive, expressive moments that are always present to a greater or lesser extent in speech, especially in oral speech, affecting, however, in writing. speech - in the rhythm and arrangement of words; expressive moments of speech are further manifested in the stylistic features of speech, in various nuances and shades. Living human speech is not only a "pure" form of abstract thinking; it is not limited to a collection of values. It usually expresses the emotional attitude of a person to what he is talking about, and often to the one to whom he is addressing. It can even be said that the more expressive the speech, the more it is speech, and not just the language, because the more expressive the speech, the more the speaker, his face, himself appears in it.

Being a means of expression, speech is also a means of influence. The function of influence in human speech is one of its primary, most basic functions. A person speaks in order to influence, if not directly on behavior, then on thoughts or feelings, on the consciousness of other people. Speech has a social purpose, it is a means of communication, and it performs this function in the first place, since it serves as a means of influence. And this function of influence in human speech is specific. Human speech, speech in the true sense of the word, is fundamentally different from the sounds that animals make. The call made by a sentinel animal or the leader of a pack, herd, etc., can serve as a signal for other animals to take flight or attack. These signals are instinctive or conditioned reflex reactions in animals. An animal, uttering such a signal cry, does not emit it in order to notify others of impending danger, but because this cry breaks out of it in a certain situation. When other animals take flight at a given signal, they also do so not because they “understood” the signal, understood what it means, but because after such a cry the leader usually takes flight and the animal is in danger. situation; thus, a conditioned reflex connection was created between screaming and running; it is a connection between running and screaming, not what it stands for.

The signal mimicry of animals may result in one or another reaction of other animals; but the means of conscious behavior, with the help of which the subject is able to exert an influence corresponding to the goal set by him, can only be speech, which means something, has a certain meaning. In order to be included in speech, the signal function of expressive movements must be reorganized on a semantic basis; an involuntary signal must acquire a conscious meaning. Speech in the true sense of the word is a means of conscious influence and communication, carried out on the basis of the semantic content of speech - this is the specificity of speech in the true sense of the word. Not a single scientist has been able to ascertain the presence of such a significative connection in any animal. All attempts by N. Kellogg and R. Yerks to teach speech to monkeys ended in complete failure. The designation function is absent in animals.

In his experiments, V. Koehler, having given buckets of paints and brushes to monkeys, created the most favorable conditions for revealing in animals the ability to create an image of an object. The monkeys painted the surrounding objects with great pleasure, they smeared all the walls, but not once, with the most careful observation, Koehler managed to ascertain that the animals considered the products of their daubing as an image, as signs of something else. They did not have a pictorial drawing; sign function was missing. In his study, L. Butan stated that three different cries of the gibbon corresponded to different hunger intensity, and not to different types of food that was given to the monkey. The same cry was used at a certain degree of hunger, whatever food was given to the gibbon, and different cries at different degrees of hunger and the same food. Each cry was, therefore, an expression of the same affective state, and not a designation of objective circumstances or items.

So, in a person's speech, it is possible to single out various functions by psychological analysis, but they are not aspects external to each other; they are included in the unity within which they determine and mediate each other. Thus, speech performs its message function on the basis of its semantic, semantic, denoting function. But not to a lesser, but to an even greater extent and vice versa - the semantic function of designation is formed on the basis of the communicative function of speech. Essentially social life, communication gives the cry a function of meaning. Expressive movement from emotional discharge can become speech, acquire meaning only because the subject notices the effect that it has on others. The child first makes a cry because he is hungry, and then uses it to be fed. Sound first performs the functions of designation objectively, serving as a signal for another. It is only due to the fact that he performs this function in relation to another that he is realized by us in his significance, acquires significance for us. Initially reflected in the mind of another person, speech acquires meaning for ourselves. So in the future - from the use of the word we establish more and more precisely its meaning, at first little realized, according to the meaning in which it is understood by others. Understanding is one of the constituent moments of speech. The emergence of speech outside of society is impossible, speech is a social product; intended for communication, it arises in communication. Moreover, the social purpose of speech determines not only its genesis; it is also reflected in the internal, semantic content of speech. The two main functions of speech - communicative and significative, due to which speech is a means of communication and a form of existence of thought, consciousness, are formed one through the other and function one in the other. The social nature of speech as a means of communication and its denoting character are inextricably linked. In speech, in unity and internal interpenetration, the social nature of man and his inherent consciousness are represented. Any real concrete speech or utterance of a person is a certain specific activity or action of him, which proceed from certain motives and pursue a certain goal. In the context of these motives and goals of the speaker, the objective meaning or meaning of his statement acquires a new meaning: behind the objective content of what the speaker said, stands what he had in mind, what he wanted to express - to make one feel, or understand, what Why did he say all this? The subject text turns out to be provided with more or less rich and expressive subtext. The personal context thus formed determines the meaning of speech as the utterance of a given person. Based on its objective meaning, this personal meaning of speech can either converge or diverge from it, depending on the goals and motives of the speaker and their relationship to the content of his speech. Speech should usually solve some more or less conscious task of the speaker and be an action that has some effect on those to whom it is addressed, although sometimes speech is actually more or less a process, the course of which is involuntarily determined by not quite conscious motives. . In order for speech to become a fully conscious action, it is necessary first of all that the speaker clearly realize the problem that his speech must solve, that is, first of all, its main goal. However, understanding the task that speech must solve involves not only understanding the goal, but also taking into account the conditions in which this goal must be realized. These conditions are determined by the nature of the subject in question and the characteristics of the audience to which it is addressed. Only when the goal and conditions are taken into account in their correlation does a person know what and how to say to him, and can build his speech as a conscious action that can solve the problem that the speaker has set for himself.


Conclusion


Based on the results of this course work, we can draw the following conclusions:

Consciousness is the highest form of reflection of the real world, peculiar only to man. Consciousness is associated with articulate speech, logical generalizations, abstract concepts.

Consciousness is a function of the most complex material, physiological system - the human brain.

The "core" of consciousness, the way of its existence is knowledge.

The formation of consciousness is associated with the emergence of labor. ... Labor, says Engels, created man himself The need for labor in the process of communication caused the appearance of language. Man differs from animals in the presence of language as a system of codes denoting objects and their relations, with the help of which objects are introduced into known systems or categories. This system of codes leads to the formation of abstract thinking, to the formation of "categorical" thinking. Labor and language had a decisive influence on the formation of human consciousness.

Conscious experience plays a big role in determining our attitude towards action.

Consciousness has a multicomponent structure, but, nevertheless, it is a single whole.

Consciousness has the ability to influence the reality surrounding it. It is active.

Human consciousness is not something permanent. In the course of historical development, individual mental processes can be restructured. Therefore, consciousness must be considered in its change and development, in its essential dependence on the way of life of people, which is determined by the existing social relations and the place that a given person occupies in these relations.

The emergence of consciousness outside of society is impossible. The main condition for the emergence and development of consciousness is the appropriate level of biological organization, the presence of a social environment and collective work.

Language and speech are not the same. Speech is a secondary formation of language. This is the way the language is used. To a large extent, thanks to speech, the individual consciousness of each person, not limited to personal experience, his own observations, through the medium of language is fed and enriched by the results of social experience; observation, and the knowledge of all men is, or can, through speech, become the property of everyone.

In recent years, psychologists have paid increased attention to the problem of consciousness. The main progress in this area has been achieved through the study of psychological processes occurring in the absence of consciousness. One example is the "blind spot" that occurs in the visual field when the occipital cortex is damaged, when people can still unconsciously recognize visual objects. Such unconscious processes are constantly present in our lives when, for example, we retrieve information from memory without noticing it. Another common example of unconscious processes are automatisms. These phenomena proved that consciousness acts as a monitor that allows us to rise above habitual, patterned movements, to correct our actions in accordance with changed circumstances.


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An essential feature of language as a social phenomenon is its ability to reflect and express social consciousness. At first glance, this sign may seem insignificant, since other phenomena that serve society can also reflect public consciousness. Machines that serve society undoubtedly reflect social consciousness to a certain extent, since their creation is unthinkable without taking into account and using a certain amount of knowledge accumulated by society. The basis and superstructure serving the general<419>stvo, also reflect the public consciousness. However, the distinctive property of the language is that it is essentially the only means of reflecting and expressing public consciousness in its entirety.

It should be noted that the problem of reflecting social consciousness in language is often avoided in special linguistic works, as well as in courses on general linguistics. Attempts to solve it in the history of linguistics often led to gross errors of a vulgar sociological nature. All this is explained by the fuzzy definitions of the essence of social consciousness, which is often found in popular textbooks on dialectical materialism and in works of a popular nature.

Marxism teaches that social consciousness is a reflection of social being. “Materialism,” notes V. I. Lenin, “generally recognizes objectively real being (matter), regardless of consciousness, sensation, experience, etc. of mankind. Consciousness is only a reflection of being, at best an approximately true (adequate, ideally accurate) reflection of it. It is not difficult to understand that Lenin used the term "consciousness" in the broad sense of the word as a reflection of being as a whole. Marx and Engels used the term “consciousness” in the same broad sense: “Language is as ancient as consciousness; language is practical, existing also for other people, and only thereby also existing for me, a real consciousness.



Despite the presence of clear definitions of the essence of social consciousness, which we find in the works of the classics of Marxism, in our special philosophical literature there are many vague definitions of this most important epistemological category. Social consciousness is often mixed up with ideology, thinking, etc.

It can be noted with satisfaction that such vagueness of definitions in our special philosophical and historical literature is beginning to be overcome. In a broader sense, social consciousness includes not only ideological forms, but also natural sciences - all knowledge (both social and natural). Such an interpretation of the content of social consciousness is justified by the fact that ideas about the life of nature and ideas about the life of society are not ideas of some separate isolated individuals, but social ideas, since knowledge of nature and society is comprehended by the collective efforts of many generations. So, for example, V. F. Zybkovets in his book “The Pre-Religious Epoch” gives the following definitions of consciousness in general and social consciousness in particular: “Consciousness is the content of thinking. Consciousness is the social and personal practice of people in a mediated, generalized reflected form, that is, in the form of concepts. Social consciousness is a living reflection of social life, a general characteristic of the level of the entire spiritual development of human society at a historically specific moment. "Worldview - a general understanding of being".

“Public consciousness, notes V. V. Zhuravlev, contains parts that differ in their attitude to the ideological superstructure of society. Some elements of social consciousness are included in the superstructure (political, legal, philosophical, religious and other views), others are not included (natural sciences and technical sciences). Viewed from this angle, social consciousness is a unity of superstructural and non-superior aspects, class and non-class elements.

The collection “Forms of Social Consciousness” gives a special explanation of the role of various ideas in their relation to the base and superstructure: “Public consciousness, dividing along one line into social psychology and ideology, along the other line is divided into a number of forms. These include: political ideas, legal, moral, artistic, religious, philosophical. These forms of consciousness are ideological forms and are part of the superstructure. But not all ideas are included in the superstructure. Of course, all ideas without exception have their roots in the development of productive forces. But, for example, technical ideas do not reflect changes in the forces of production in the same way as, say, legal ideas. If the former reflect these changes directly<421>but, then the latter reflect them indirectly, through changes in economic relations, and therefore are superstructural.

Having made the division of various forms of consciousness into superstructural and non-superstructural ones, one should always keep in mind a certain conventionality of this division. In fact, all forms of consciousness can to some extent contain elements of superstructural and non-superstructural elements. The natural sciences, in their most general conclusions, become an integral part of the worldview.

Further, all forms of social consciousness carry out not only social-class, but also cognitive functions. And this means that they include a set of previously developed research skills, techniques, methods of processing factual material. Finally, any form of social consciousness has a system of already established concepts and categories. Considered as forms of thought, these categories also cannot be attributed to the class aspect of social consciousness.

Moreover, some philosophers argue that the system of scientific knowledge and various kinds of ideological forms does not exhaust the entire content of social consciousness. Its structure is more complex. Social consciousness also includes the consciousness of people that arises in the process of their usual, everyday practice - the so-called everyday consciousness.

In order to create a complete understanding of the essence of social consciousness, it would also be useful to consider the interpretation of the essence of consciousness in psychology.

Psychology considers consciousness as the highest function of the brain, peculiar only to man and associated with speech, consisting in a generalized and abstracted generalization of reality, in preliminary mental construction of actions and anticipation of the results of activity, in self-control and reasonable regulation of human behavior.

In psychology, consciousness is understood as the whole spiritual world of a person from elementary sensations to higher impulses and complex intellectual activity. The psychological approach to consciousness is characterized by understanding it as a process. The content of this process lies in the person's awareness of the external world and himself. As a result of interaction with the surrounding reality in the process of ontogenetic development, in the course of communication with other people, a person reflects this reality, gains knowledge about it. Unlike animals, in which knowledge merges with their life activity, a person separates knowledge from what is reflected in them, and from the one who reflects them. This separation is possible due to the fact that the results of human cognitive activity are objectified in the language.

The totality of knowledge about the environment, obtained by a person directly and as a result of the assimilation of the accumulated by mankind and fixed in the language, is a necessary prerequisite for understanding objective reality and the emergence of consciousness as a kind of specific education. Thus, knowledge constitutes the core of consciousness, its core.

Objective reality is not realized through sensations. Psychological phenomena perform this function only by being included in the system of accumulated knowledge, acquired experience, when correlated with what was the interaction of a person with objective reality.

Consciousness is a new quality of psychological processes that arises in a person in connection with the socially organized activities of people, with their labor. The ability of a person to theoretical generalizations, expressed in language, makes it possible to a large extent to replace individual human experience with the “experience of the species” - the experience of previous generations of people.

Due to the social nature of the language created by society, human thinking also acquires a social character. Each person thinks in the same categories that the people around him think, uses the same concepts that<423>used by all speakers of that language. Language thus becomes one of the primary conditions for the existence of society.

It should be emphasized that not all the content of human experience becomes public domain. For cognition, for progressive practice, those results of thinking that correctly reflect objective reality are most essential. It can be assumed that throughout the centuries-old history of mankind, in the process of man's struggle for existence, consciously, and often completely spontaneously, what was vitally necessary and practically useful was selected and generalized.

The social nature of thinking is manifested at each stage of social development, thanks to it, a spiritual connection is also realized between different stages.

It would be wrong to assert that in the public life of people there is only public consciousness, public thinking, and there is nothing individual. In reality, social consciousness is created, developed and enriched by individuals. The spiritual wealth of society, art, everything that has been accumulated by science and technology, exist only through individual consciousness. The consciousness of society functions only through the consciousness of individual, concrete living people. The whole system of ideal human relations is dead until it is experienced by a feeling, thinking individual. Only in the individual sensory-practical action of a person, only in his psyche, in his perceptions, ideas, in his visual-direct forms of reflection, does the entire social system of knowledge correlate with objective reality. Through the individual being of the individual, society cognizes, understands and transforms the world.

Thinking reflects objective reality on the basis of and through practice. The practice of society is inextricably linked with the activities of the individual, individual practice.

Practice mediates the link between thinking and individual practice. Different types of thinking are dependent on different types of practice - individual (individual thinking), social (general human thinking), the practice of a group (group thinking). Individual, group and universal thinking are correlated as individual, especially and universal. However, being inextricably linked, individual and social practice are relatively independent.

It would, of course, be naive to assume that the system of material means of language is a mirror image of everything that is in the public mind. The conceptual sphere is always more mobile than the sphere of means of material expression. In different languages, you can find many tricks, constructions, etc., which at present no longer have any logical justification, but nevertheless exist in the language. A well-known example is the fact that in Russian, as in many other languages, the category of grammatical gender is preserved in inanimate objects. At present no one is able to explain why river is feminine, and Island or shore - to the male. It can be assumed that once these categories had a certain logical justification, but at present its meaning has already been lost.

First past. temp. in the Mari language has two varieties - a variety that does not have an indicator љ , and a variety with exponent љ , For example ludym"I read" and onchi-sh-ym"I watched". Once an indicator љ, apparently had some specific meaning, which was lost over time. However, the indicator s is preserved up to the present.

“Language ... - rightly notes G. O. Vinokur, - has the ability to preserve its once emerged material orb<425>organization as a vestige for a very long time after the stage of cultural development that gave rise to it has ended ... Structures inherited from the past adapt very easily to new conditions.

In connection with the problem of the relationship between language and social consciousness, some methodological distortions should be pointed out. in solving this problem.

One such perversion is the hypostasis of the role of language. Language is portrayed as the creator of reality, shaping human consciousness. A typical representative of this theory is the famous German linguist of the first third of the 19th century. Wilhelm Humboldt.

Language, according to Humboldt, is inherent in the nature of the people themselves and is necessary for the development of their spiritual powers and the formation of a worldview. Language is, as it were, an external manifestation of the spirit of the people, the language of the people is its spirit. The structure of languages ​​among different peoples is different, because the spiritual characteristics of peoples are also different; language, whatever form it may take, is always the spiritual embodiment of individual folk life. Both the objects of the external world and the activity excited by internal causes simultaneously affect a person with many of their signs. But the mind strives to reveal the common in objects, it divides and unites, and sees its highest goal in the formation of more and more embracing unities. Through subjective activity, an object is formed in thinking. The whole language as a whole is located between a person and the nature that influences him internally and externally. Since the perception and activity of a person depend on his ideas, his attitude to objects is entirely determined by language.

Humboldt's ideas are largely developed by modern neo-Humboldtians, of whom the most prominent representative is Leo Weisgerber. Just like Humboldt, Weisgerber declares language to be a mental "intermediate world" (Zwischenwelt), which is the result of the interaction of the world of things and the world of consciousness. According to Weisgerber, language is something that covers all phenomena, linking them into a single whole. No commonality of life is alien to language. Language itself creates the surrounding world. Language is an image, a picture of the world, a worldview of the people (Weitbild). The difference in languages ​​is the difference in the very views of the world, and, naturally, for people of different nationalities the world looks different. Words do not presuppose separate objects as such, but order the variety of objects from a certain point of view. It all depends on the worldview, on the point of view of the world. The most successful definition of language, writes Weisgerber, says that language (German, English) is a verbal process.<426>of the world, carried out by the language community (German, English). Language classifies and organizes the material obtained as a result of the influence of the external world on our senses, which give only a distorted, inadequate idea of ​​the world. Language techniques form the linguistic image of the world, the conceptual side of the language.

In the closest connection with the views of Wilhelm Humboldt and his followers is also the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Language, according to E. Sapir, serves as a guide to the perception of "social reality". The facts show that the real world is largely unconsciously built on the linguistic norms of a given society. “We see, hear or otherwise perceive reality in this way and not otherwise because the linguistic norms of our society predispose to a certain selection of interpretations ...” “We are never able to go beyond the forms of reflection and the way of transmitting relations predetermined by the forms of our speech".

The same views were later developed in the works of B. Whorf. “Our linguistically determined mental world not only correlates with our cultural ideals and attitudes, but captures even our, in fact, subconscious actions in the sphere of its influence and gives them some typical features” . Raising the question of what was primary - the norms of the language or the norms of culture, Whorf answers it as follows: “Basically, they developed together, constantly influencing each other. But in this mutual influence, the nature of language is the factor that limits the freedom and flexibility of this mutual influence and directs its development along strictly defined paths.

The epistemological roots of W. Humboldt's theory should be sought in Hegel's philosophy. The folk spirit in Humboldt's theory is reminiscent of Hegel's absolute idea, which has an equally active role. The whole world, according to Hegel, represents the reincarnation of the absolute idea. Similarly, everything in language, according to Humboldt's theory, is a reincarnation and a reflection of the folk spirit.

In the theory of Humboldt and his followers, of course, not everything is vicious. The continuum of the objective world in each language is really divided in different ways. It can even be assumed that linguistic forms do, to a certain extent, have some kind of regulatory or other influence on the process of thinking, although this problem requires a deep and comprehensive study. On the whole, however, the views of Humboldt, Weisgerber, Sapir and Whorf cannot be accepted, since they completely do not take into account many important provisions, which boil down to the following: 1) The objects and phenomena of the surrounding world are the source of concepts.<427>Any language in its genesis is the result of a person's reflection of the surrounding world, and does not represent a self-sufficient force that creates the world. 2) The language is adapted to a large extent to the peculiarities of the physiological organization of a person, but these features arose as a result of a long adaptation of a living organism to the surrounding world. 3) Unequal segmentation of the continuum of the surrounding world occurs during the period of primary nomination. It is explained by the heterogeneity of associations and differences in the linguistic material that has been preserved from previous eras. In addition, it may depend on the influence of other languages, etc. 4) W. Humboldt and his followers do not take into account in languages ​​the presence of such a phenomenon as the combinatorics of various language means, which allows expressing any concept that is not expressed in a particular language. The conclusion that the structure of the language expresses the specific thinking of a given people is in itself wrong. 5) It has now been proven that the forms and categories of thought are the same in all peoples.

Supporters of the psychological direction in linguistics, hypostasizing the role of the individual, refuse the concept of a national language. “Real being has the language of each individual,” says Acad. A. A. Shakhmatov. - The language of a village, city, region, people turns out to be a well-known scientific fiction, an average conclusion from a known number of individual languages. The general social basis of language, arising from the nature of social consciousness, is in fact denied in this statement.

There are a significant number of theories of the psychological direction, which consider the essence of human language in an extremely one-sided way. According to G. Steinthal, for example, the individual psyche is the source of language, and the laws of language development are psychological laws. Like Steinthal, W. Wundt considered language to be a fact of the psychology of peoples, or "ethnic psychology". The main engine of linguistic creativity, according to K. Vossler, is linguistic taste - a special kind of artistic taste. The ideas of Benedetto Croce are in many respects close to Vossler's. And for him, language is an aesthetic phenomenon. The main, key term of his concept is "expression" (expression). Every expression is basically artistic. Hence linguistics, as the science of expression, coincides with aesthetics.

Ferdinand de Saussure went to the other extreme. Saussure proceeds from the distinction of three aspects of language: language-speech (lan guage), language as a system of forms (langue) and an individual speech act - utterance (parole). Language (langue) is a system of normatively identical forms. Language is not an activity of the speaking person, it is a product that the person passively<428>registers. The utterance (parole), on the other hand, is individual. The system of language is an external fact for any consciousness, consciousness does not depend on it.

Criticizing Saussure, VV Voloshinov rightly notes that the speaker's consciousness does not work with the language as a system of normatively identical forms. Such a system is only an abstraction obtained with great difficulty, with a certain cognitive and practical attitude. Language is intimately intertwined with speech; an innovation introduced by an individual can profoundly affect the language system.

In connection with the foregoing, it would be appropriate to dwell on some of the methodological perversions committed in their time by N. Ya. Marr and his followers. We are talking about the theory of class language and its superstructural character. The thesis about the class character of language was first put forward by N. Ya. Marr and further developed by some of his followers. N. Ya. Marr wrote: "There is no language that would not be class and, consequently, there is no thinking that would not be class."

Proponents of the class theory of language do not take into account that language is not an ideological product, but a way of expressing thoughts of any content. The categories underlying the system of material means of expressing the connections between words are absolutely neutral with respect to any kind of class character. The meaning of the absolutely predominant number of words included in the vocabulary of any language is ideologically neutral. It is for this reason that language is equally suitable for expressing judgments of a purely ideological nature, as well as for expressing judgments devoid of an ideological character. This property stems entirely from the peculiarities of the communicative function of the language - to be a universal means of communication. Language by its nature is not class and cannot be class. Cases are known when individual dialects seem to be assigned to classes. Thus, for example, in tsarist Russia the peasantry acted as the bearer of territorial dialects, while the upper stratum of the bourgeoisie used the literary language. A similar phenomenon is observed at the present time in a number of countries around the world. However, these facts in themselves do not in the least disprove the thesis of the non-class nature of language, since the attachment of territorial dialects to the peasant class was caused by the non-immanent class essence of the language. It happened due to certain historical circumstances.

The statement of N. Ya. Marr and some of his followers about the superstructural nature of the language is also untenable. N. Ya. Marr generally identified the development of language with the development of economic formations. “Changes of thinking,” notes in one of his works<428>N. Ya. Marr, these are three systems for constructing sound speech, which in their totality stem from various economic systems and social structures that correspond to them: 1) primitive communism, with a synthetic speech structure with polysemantic words, without distinguishing between basic and functional meaning; 2) a social structure based on the allocation of various types of economy with a social division of labor, i.e., with the division of society according to professions, the stratification of a single society into production and technical groups representing the primitive form of workshops, when they were accompanied by a structure of speech that highlights parts of speech, and in a phrase - various sentences, in sentences - its various parts, etc., and others with different functional words, subsequently turning into morphological elements, with a distinction in words of basic meanings and with an increase in them next to the main functional meaning; 3) an estate or class society with a technical division of labor, with a morphology of an inflectional order.

The above opinion marks a complete misunderstanding of the peculiarities of the historical development of languages, ignorance of the fact that the emergence of grammatical forms or the difference in their linguistic design is causally not related to the peculiarities of the economic structure of society. Marr also did not understand the true nature of social consciousness, reducing all its constituent elements to class and superstructural elements.

Dialectical materialism teaches that the laws of reflection are of an objective nature, that is, they act independently of the conscious motives of people, regardless of whether people know these laws or not.

This thesis is in full accordance with the indication of K. Marx, who considered the process of thinking as a "natural process". “Since the process of thinking itself grows out of certain conditions, it is itself natural process, then really comprehending thinking can be only one and the same, differing only in degree, depending on the maturity of development and, in particular, the development of the organ of thinking. Everything else is nonsense."<430>

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THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Moscow region

Moscow region

Branch "Kotelniki"

"Department": natural and human sciences

TEST

discipline: "Philosophy"

on the topic: "Consciousness and language"

Completed by: 1st year student

full-time education gr. ET-11

Nefedova V.V.

Checked: Ph.D.

Sciences, Associate Professor

Ignatenko T.I.

Kotelniki-2012

THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Moscow region

State educational institution of higher professional education

Moscow region

International University of the Nature of Society and Man "Dubna"

Branch "Kotelniki"

Task fortest

discipline: "Philosophy"

Initial data for the work: Consider and study the concepts of consciousness and speech, and establish a connection between these concepts.

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Introduction

Chapter 1 Consciousness

1. The concept of consciousness

2. The concept of social consciousness and its relationship with individual consciousness

3. Ordinary and scientific consciousness

Chapter 2

1. The concept of language

2. Language features

Chapter 3. Consciousness and Language

1. Connection of consciousness and language

Introduction

From the point of view of general semantics, language determines the structure of thought and, through it, the structure of reality itself. Language is far from being just an "expression" of thoughts, writes S. Hayakawa; in fact, it determines the nature of reality. Thus, Hayakawa denies the fact that thoughts reflect objective reality, and language is a means of expressing thoughts. The world without language is a primary, formless, chaotic interweaving of all kinds of stimuli (experiences of the subject). Only language gives this chaotic stream of stimuli some definiteness, dissection, regular dependence, structure. At the same time, general semantics absolutize the conditional (arbitrary) nature of language, and since language, from their point of view, determines the structure of reality, it means that the picture of the world is the result of a convention, the fruit of an arbitrary agreement of people. In this essay, we will analyze in detail the concepts of consciousness and language, and establish their integral relationship between them.

Chapter 1 Consciousness

1. conceptconsciousness

Social consciousness is a set of ideas, theories, views, ideas, feelings, beliefs, emotions of people, moods in which nature, the material life of society and the entire system of social relations are reflected. Social consciousness is formed and develops along with the emergence of being, since consciousness is possible as a product of social relations. But a society can also be called a society only when its basic elements, including social consciousness, have developed. Society is the material-ideal reality.

Consciousness is the highest form of reflection of objective reality peculiar only to man, a way of his relation to the world and to himself, which is a unity of mental processes actively involved in man's understanding of the objective world and his own being. Consciousness consists of sensory images, objects that are a sensation or representation and therefore have meaning and meaning, knowledge as a set of sensations imprinted in memory, and generalizations created as a result of higher mental activity, thinking and language. Consciousness is a special form of human interaction with reality and its management.

The structure of consciousness includes the most important cognitive processes, with the help of which a person constantly enriches his knowledge. Such processes may include sensations and perception, memory, imagination and thinking. With the help of sensations and perceptions, with a direct reflection of the stimuli affecting the brain, a sensory picture is formed in the mind, as it appears to a person at a given moment. Memory - allows you to renew images of the past in the mind, imagination - to build figurative models of what is the object of needs, but is currently missing. Thinking - provides problem solving by using generalized knowledge. Violation, disorder, not to mention the complete disintegration of any of these mental cognitive processes, inevitably becomes a disorder of consciousness.

The second characteristic of consciousness is the distinct difference between subject and object fixed in it, i.e. of what belongs - the "I" of a person and his not - "I". Man, for the first time in the history of the organic world, separated from it and opposed himself to the environment, continues to preserve in his mind this opposition and difference. Man is the only one among living beings who is able to realize self-knowledge, i.e. turn mental activity to the study of oneself. A person makes a conscious self-assessment of his actions and himself as a whole. The separation of “I” from not “I”, this is the path that a person goes through in childhood, is carried out in the process of a person’s self-consciousness.

The third characteristic of consciousness is the provision of goal-setting human activity. The functions of consciousness include the formation of the goals of the activity, while its motives are added up and weighed, volitional decisions are made, taking into account the progress of the actions, and the necessary adjustments are made to it, etc.

Finally, the fourth characteristic of consciousness is the inclusion of a certain relationship in its composition. “My attitude to my environment is my consciousness,” wrote K. Marx. The world of feelings inevitably enters the consciousness of a person, where the complex objective and, above all, social relations in which a person is included are reflected. Emotional assessments of interpersonal relationships are presented in the human mind. And here, as in many other cases, pathology helps to better understand the essence of normal consciousness. In some mental illnesses, a violation of consciousness is characterized precisely by a disorder in the sphere of feelings and relationships.

2. The concept of social consciousness, its relationship with individual consciousness

Social consciousness is a set of ideas, theories, views, ideas, feelings, beliefs, emotions of people, moods, which reflect nature, the material life of society and the entire system of social relations. Social consciousness is formed and develops along with the emergence of social being, since consciousness is possible only as a product of social relations. But a society can also be called a society only when its main elements, including social consciousness, have developed. Society is a material-ideal reality. Consciousness is not only personal, individual, but also includes a social function. The structure of social consciousness is complex, and is in dialectical interaction with the consciousness of the individual. In the structure of social consciousness, such levels as theoretical and everyday consciousness are distinguished. The first forms - social psychology, and the second - ideology.

Ordinary consciousness is formed spontaneously in the daily life of people. Theoretical consciousness reflects the essence, patterns of the surrounding and social world. Public consciousness appears in various forms: socio-political views and theories, legal views, science, philosophy, morality, art, religion. The differentiation of social consciousness in its modern form is the result of a long development. Primitive society corresponded to primitive consciousness. Mental labor was not separated from physical labor, and mental labor was directly woven into labor relations, into everyday life. The first in the historical development of man were such forms of social consciousness as morality, art, and religion. Then, as human society develops, the whole spectrum of forms of social consciousness arises, which is allocated to a special sphere of social activity.

Consider the individual forms of social consciousness:

Political consciousness is a systematization, a theoretical expression of public views on the political organization of society, on the forms of the state, on relations between various social groups, classes, parties, on relations with other states and nations.

Legal consciousness in a theoretical form expresses the legal consciousness of society, the nature and purpose of legal relations, norms and institutions, issues of legislation, courts, prosecutors. Sets as its goal the approval of a legal order corresponding to the interests of a particular society;

Morality - a system of views and assessments that regulate the behavior of individuals, a means of educating and strengthening certain moral principles and relationships;

Art is a special form of human activity associated with the development of reality through artistic images;

Religion and philosophy are the most distant forms of social consciousness from material conditions. Religion is older than philosophy and is a necessary stage in the development of mankind. Expresses the surrounding world through a system of worldview based on faith and religious postulates.

Public and individual consciousness are in close unity. Social consciousness is interindividual in nature and does not depend on the individual. For specific people, it has an individual character. Every individual throughout his life, through relationships with other people, through training and education, is influenced by social consciousness, although he does not treat this influence passively, but selectively, actively.

Social norms of consciousness spiritually influence the individual, form his worldview, moral attitudes, aesthetic ideas. Public consciousness can be defined as a public mind that develops and functions according to its own laws.

The views of the individual, which most fully meet the interests of the era and time, after the completion of individual existence, become the property of society. For example, the work of outstanding writers, thinkers, scientists, etc. In this case, individual consciousness, manifested in the work of a particular person, acquires the status of social consciousness, replenishes and develops it, giving it the features of a certain era. Consciousness cannot be derived from the process of reflection of the objects of the natural world alone: ​​the relation "subject - object" cannot give rise to consciousness. To do this, the subject must be included in a more complex system of social practice, in the context of social life. Each of us, coming into this world, inherits a spiritual culture, which we must master in order to acquire a proper human essence and be able to think like a human being. We enter into a dialogue with the public consciousness, and this consciousness that opposes us is a reality the same as, for example, the state or the law. We can rebel against this spiritual life, but just as in the case of the state, our rebellion can turn out to be not only senseless, but also tragic if we do not take into account those forms and methods of spiritual life that objectively oppose us. In order to transform the historically established system of spiritual life, one must first master it. Social consciousness arose simultaneously and in unity with the emergence of social being. Nature as a whole is indifferent to the existence of the human mind, and society could not only arise and develop without it, but even exist for a day or an hour. Due to the fact that society is an objective - subjective reality, social being and social consciousness are, as it were, “loaded” with each other: without the energy of consciousness, social consciousness is static and even dead.

But, emphasizing the unity of social being and social consciousness, one should not forget their difference, their specific disunity. The historical relationship of social being and social consciousness in their relative independence is realized in such a way that if in the early stages of the development of society social consciousness was formed under the direct influence of being, then in the future this influence became more and more indirect - through the state, political and legal relations and etc., while the reverse influence of social consciousness on being acquires, on the contrary, an increasingly direct character. The very possibility of such a direct impact of social consciousness on social being lies in the ability of consciousness to correctly reflect being.

Consciousness, as a reflection and as an active creative activity, is a unity of two inseparable sides of the same process: in its influence on being, it can both evaluate it, revealing its hidden meaning, predict, and transform it through the practical activity of people. And so the public consciousness of the era can not only reflect being, but also actively contribute to its restructuring. This is the historically established function of social consciousness, which makes it an objectively necessary and really existing element of any social structure. The powerful transformative power of social consciousness is capable of influencing all being as a whole, revealing the meaning of its evolution, predicting prospects. In this regard, it differs from the subjective (in the sense of subjective reality) finite and limited by man individual consciousness. Concerning consciousness, such a scientist as Helvetius also wrote. In his opinion, “feelings are the source of all our knowledge ... We have three main means of research: observation of nature, reflection and experiment. Observation collects facts, reflection combines them, experience tests the result of combinations…. every sensation of ours entails a judgment, the existence of which, being unknown, when it has not riveted our attention to itself, is nonetheless real. The power of the social whole, over the individual, is expressed here in the obligatory acceptance by the individual of the historically established forms of spiritual assimilation of reality, those methods and means by which the production of spiritual values ​​is carried out, that semantic content that has been accumulated by mankind for centuries and outside of which it is impossible for the formation of personality.

Individual consciousness is the consciousness of a hotel individual, reflecting his separate being and through it, to one degree or another, social being. Public consciousness is a set of individual consciousnesses. Along with the peculiarity of the consciousness of individual individuals, it carries the general content inherent in the entire mass of individual consciousnesses. As the total consciousness of individuals, developed in the process of their joint activity, communication, social consciousness can be decisive only in relation to the consciousness of a given individual. This does not exclude the possibility of individual consciousness going beyond the limits of the existing social consciousness.

Each individual consciousness is formed under the consciousness of individual being, lifestyle and social consciousness. At the same time, the individual way of life of a person plays the most important role, through which the content of social life is refracted. Another factor in the formation of individual consciousness is the process of assimilation by the individual of social consciousness. Thus, it is necessary to distinguish between two unequal sides in the mechanism of formation of individual consciousness: the subject's independent awareness of being and his assimilation of the existing system of views. Individual consciousness - the consciousness of the human individual (primary), it is defined in philosophy as subjective consciousness, as it is limited in time and space. Individual consciousness is determined by individual being, arises under the influence of the consciousness of all mankind.

Two main levels of individual consciousness;

1) Initial (primary) - "passive", "mirror". It is formed under the influence of the external environment, external consciousness on a person. The main forms of the concept and consciousness in general. The main factors in the formation of individual consciousness: the educational activity of the environment, the educational activity of society, the cognitive activity of the person himself.

2) Secondary - "active", "creative". Man organizes and transforms the world. The concept of intelligence is associated with this level. The end product of this level and consciousness in general are ideal objects that appear in human heads. Basic forms: goals, ideals, faith.

Between the first and second there is an intermediate "semi-active" level. The main forms: the phenomenon of consciousness - memory, which is selective, it is always in demand, opinions, doubts.

3. Ordinary and scientific consciousness

Ordinary consciousness is the lowest level of social consciousness, its integral part, a subsystem of social consciousness. It reflects simple, visible relations between people, between people and things, man and nature. Everyday practice of people makes it possible to establish at the empirical level separate causal relationships between phenomena, allows you to build simple conclusions, introduce new concepts, and discover simple truths. However, at the level of everyday consciousness it is impossible to penetrate deeply into the essence of things, phenomena, to rise to deep theoretical generalizations. In the first period of people's lives, ordinary consciousness was the only and main thing. As society develops, a need arises for deeper generalizations, and ordinary consciousness becomes insufficient to meet the increased needs. Then there is theoretical consciousness. Arising on the basis of everyday consciousness, it directs people's attention to the reflection of the essence of the phenomena of nature and society, prompting a deeper analysis of them. Through ordinary consciousness, theoretical consciousness is connected with social being.

Theoretical consciousness makes people's lives more conscious, contributes to a deeper development of social consciousness, since it reveals the natural connection and essence of material and spiritual processes.

Ordinary consciousness is made up of ordinary knowledge and social psychology. Theoretical consciousness carries scientific knowledge about nature and society. Ordinary knowledge is knowledge of the elementary conditions of people's existence, which allows a person to navigate in his immediate environment. This is knowledge about the use of simple tools, simple natural phenomena, the norms of relations with each other.

We have formed a limited and incorrect idea of ​​the mass consciousness, which was interpreted as a low-grade, primitive part of the everyday consciousness of a certain part of the working people, and above all, young people. But mass consciousness is a more complex phenomenon. According to sociologists, each person is a member of at least 5-6 only small and at least 10-15 large and "medium" formal and informal groups. This mass of people, being a real, natural community, is united by some real (albeit short-term) social process, carries out common activities, and demonstrates joint behavior. Moreover, the phenomenon of mass itself does not arise if there is no such common, joint activity or similar behavior.

Scientific consciousness is a systematized and rational reflection of the world in a special scientific language, based and confirmed in the practical and factual verification of its provisions. It reflects the world in categories, laws and theories.

Chapter 2. Language

1. The concept of language

Each of us from the moment of birth receives a language as a ready-made, existing set of means, rules, norms of people's communication. He uses them in order to communicate his thoughts to another in the form of written or oral speech. When speech is built according to the rules of the language, it becomes understandable to another person. Our speech is our individual ability to use language as a coherent set of socially significant means of communication. “The gift of speech” (an expression of the outstanding linguist F. Saussure) is an ability that “grows” from the mental and bodily depths of a person, has a pronounced biogenetic dependence and uses language. Without going into details of the distinction between speech and language, let us point out the commonality of their connections rooted in history, culture, society, human communication, in the human psyche and body. Speech is an individual act of addressing a person to language as a social and cultural phenomenon. It assumes the combinatorial ability of a speaking person, his ability to use language to express sensual images, thoughts, emotions, will, memory. Speech is provided by the resources of the human speech organs, which allow articulating and pronouncing sounds and sound combinations. The free combination of signs and arranging them in the desired sequence - statements made orally or in writing - is the main purpose of speech. That is why they say that without speech there is no language, although the opposite is also true: without language it is impossible to judge a person's speech ability. The needs of people's communication dictate compliance with the formal and normative requirements of the language in speech: orthographic (writing), phonological (pronunciation), syntactic (sentence organization), semantic (meanings of words and other elements of the language) and pragmatic (features of using the language in specific situations). Speech formation of acts or processes of consciousness is carried out by means of phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics of the language.

2. Language features

The nominative function of the language realizes the ability of the word to name, recognize and communicate information about objects. Let us make a reservation right away that the nomination becomes possible thanks to the representative and intentional resources of language and consciousness. Naming an object, we simultaneously represent it in some word or phrase, point to it or its properties. The meaning of each word is knowledge, information that summarizes the set of objects, properties or relationships that it denotes. For example, the word "house" can generalize any buildings as human dwellings. The words "I", "you", "that", "this", "there", "then", etc. contain generalized indications of attitude to some objects (for example, “this house”, “that person”). The instrumental and cognitive possibilities of a word directly depend on its communicative merits. After all, naming presupposes not just the final result of cognition, but an act of communication, the transmission of a message. In the history of human communication, the meaning of a word can change, the word becomes polysemantic or becomes synonymous with other words.

The nomination reveals the action of pragmatic factors that define and concretize the attitude of a person to what is indicated by this name for the purposes of everyday life, knowledge and communication. Through the nomination, the conscious activity of a person acquires a generally significant status of means and forms of communication. The nominative means of the language make it possible to carry out: firstly, the cognitive function of determining the conceptual form of consciousness, and secondly, the communicative function of coordinating this conceptual form with the requirements of communication. Such conciliatory work involves the formation of speech structures of consciousness in accordance with the phonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic requirements of the language. As noted by L.S. Vygotsky, thought is not simply expressed in the word, but is accomplished in it. The structure of nomination, or naming, always unfolds into verbal communication. It is consistent with the competence of a person, his awareness of the subject area, which is called the given word.

The breadth and depth of the nomination are indispensable conditions for the correctness of the meaning of words and sentences. Behind the name can be hidden states of delusion of consciousness, incorrect or illusory perception, errors in conscious actions, and even the intention to hide the truth. Two settings affect the nomination. One of them is expressed by an opinion-assessment, and the other - by an opinion, an assertion or an assumption. For example, when nominating, the word “consider” can express an opinion-evaluation or value judgment containing the meaning of true or false (“I believe that you were wrong”). Whereas the word “think” or “believe” expresses an opinion-suggestion and gives the statements in which it occurs, the meaning of conjecture or plausibility, for example, “I think (I believe) that he had reasons for being late.” The relationship between the speaker and the listener is determined by the general context of the speech situation of communication with its inherent spatial and temporal limitations.

In real speech, the situation of naming differs, for example, from the situation of narration (literary, historical, documentary, etc.). If you are in a naming situation, for example, describing the sequence of your own or someone else's actions, then you cannot neglect the “logic of life” behind them, i.e. you need to observe such a sequence of your actions or the actions of another, in which, for example, "a sleeping student would not be walking down the street."

The expressive function of language in the conscious activity of a person is carried out by many means. Of course, the expressive possibilities of the language use the resources of its representative, intentional and nominative abilities. After all, with the help of linguistic means, we express any of our relations with the world, with other people, with previous and future generations. But the point is not only that language is a universal means of expressing everything that a person encounters in his life. In addition to the general purpose of language as a means of expression, it is necessary to point out the expressive specific role that it plays in relation to the structures of consciousness.

First of all, it concerns the expression of the emotional world of consciousness, experiences. A person is always in a situation where he must give preference to one linguistic means of expressing his motives in relation to others. Through emotional words and phrases, a person expresses his attitude to what he says, evaluates and overestimates. Note that the word expressing emotion does not coincide in its structure with the structure of emotion. But through it you can sometimes convey the subtlest nuances of emotional experiences. The language has rich possibilities for conveying human moods, its positive and negative shades. Emotional speech involves a variety of linguistic means. These can be evaluative or value judgments, simple emotional exclamations (for example, interjections like “oh!” or “eh!”), signs of sadness, sadness, surprise, curiosity, etc.

Expressing acts and states of consciousness, the word "lives" in the very linguistic consciousness of a rich life. The semantic image of words is formed, changed and enriched throughout their history and culture of use in various societies. Participating in the speech formation of consciousness, the word "drags" the entire load of its past meanings. In the cognitive possibilities of the word intersect, converge all of its past and present properties. At such an intersection, new possibilities for the meaning of the word fit somewhere, in the form of which specific sensory images, mental operations, emotions, expressions of will, any other processes, states or structures of consciousness are realized.

Chapter 3. Consciousness and Language

1. Connection of consciousness and language

Consciousness is inextricably linked with language and arises simultaneously with it. But there is a certain relationship between consciousness and language. Language is a way of existence of consciousness. The connection of consciousness with language is manifested in the fact that the emergence and formation of individual consciousness is possible if a person is included in the world of verbal language. Together with speech, the individual learns the logic of thinking, begins to talk about the world and about himself. The richer the content of a person's spiritual world, the more he needs linguistic signs to convey it. A change in language is an indication of a change in consciousness. Language is a system of signs through which a person cognizes the world and himself. A sign is a material object that reproduces the properties of another object. It is possible to distinguish natural (verbal, oral, written speech, sounds, gestures) and artificial, arising on the basis of the natural (language of logic, mathematics, music, painting) system of signs of the language.

The language has the following features:

One of the conditions for the possibility of the formation and objectification of the individual's consciousness is the ability to declare one's independent existence through language. In verbal communication, a person acquires the ability to consciousness and self-awareness. The content of consciousness directly depends on the space of verbal communication. The specificity of the national language has an impact on the nature and content of the national culture. For example, European languages ​​are focused on a rational attitude to the world and contain fewer words to convey an emotional state, an inner experience. The difference between consciousness and language lies in the fact that a thought is a reflection of objective reality, and a word is a way of fixing and transmitting thoughts. Language promotes mutual understanding between people, as well as a person's awareness of his actions and himself. The following types of speech can be distinguished:

The word, as a unit of language, has external sound (phonetic) and internal semantic (semantic) sides. Among non-linguistic signs, there are signs-copies (prints), signs-signs, signs-signals, signs-symbols. There are also specialized (symbol systems in mathematics, physics, chemistry, linguistics) and non-specialized languages ​​(Esperanto). In the process of the historical development of the language, the language of science was formed, which is distinguished by accuracy, rigor, and unambiguity of concepts, which contributes to the accuracy and clarity of formulations. In social and humanitarian knowledge, the use of an artificial language is difficult.

One of the main directions in the development of modern man is associated with his sign-symbolic activity. Therefore, modern philosophy is necessarily a linguistic (linguistic) philosophy.

Conclusion

So, having considered schematically the main material forms of existence of consciousness, we must say that these forms are not the only ones. There are and can exist other material forms of existence of consciousness. However, what has been said is enough for the purpose of the study in this connection to be achieved.

At the same time, the aspects of the category of consciousness and its material forms of existence that have been studied so far concern only external definitions of consciousness. Further ascent must reproduce consciousness in its essence and modifications of this essence, that is, its immediate content, as a dialectical process.

With the help of linguistic means, we express any of our relations with the world, with other people, with previous and future generations. But the point is not only that language is a universal means of expressing everything that a person encounters in his life. Although one of the main directions of development of modern man is associated with his sign-symbolic activity. Therefore, modern philosophy is necessarily a linguistic (linguistic) philosophy.

In addition to the general purpose of language as a means of expression, it is necessary to point out the expressive specific role that it plays in relation to the structures of consciousness.

From all the above, I conclude that language is an integral part of consciousness. At the same time, one simply cannot exist without the other. Otherwise, the social existence of mankind is simply impossible.

Bibliographic slist of used literature

1. Avtonomova N.S. Reason, reason, rationality. - M.: Nauka, 1988.

2. Alekseev P.V., Panin A.V. Philosophy. Textbook. - M.: TEIS. - 1996.

3. Wittgenstein L. On reliability // Questions of Philosophy, 1991, No. 2.

4. Dubrovsky D.I. Information, consciousness, brain. - M.: Higher school, 1980.

5. Karavaev E.F. "Philosophy". M.: Yurayt-Izdat, 2004.-520s.

6. Migalatiev A.A. "Philosophy". - M.: UNITI - DANA, 2001. - 639s

7. Seminar classes in philosophy: Textbook, ed. K.M.Nikonov. - M.: Higher school, 1991.

8. A.G. Spirkin. Fundamentals of Philosophy: Textbook for universities. - M., Politizdat, 1998.

9. Introduction to philosophy: a textbook for universities V. 2 Part 2 under the general editorship. I.T. Frolova. - M.: Politizdat, 1989.

10. Fundamentals of philosophy. Part 2. Social Philosophy: Textbook. - Publishing house Tom un-ta. Perm. dept. 1991.

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The formation and development of consciousness is provided by the main cultural mechanisms, including activity and practice, tradition and education, communication and language. The very structure of the I is admissible only as a semiotic-communicative occasional. Speech and language are the same natural human ability as eating, drinking and walking. Actively using language and speech, a person does not notice it among the ordinary and familiar.

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A certain progress in the study of the genesis of the language is associated with the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure(1857-1913), who proposed to distinguish between language and speech, which became one of the foundations of modern linguistics. According to de Saussure, language acts as a closed structure of a social nature that regulates the utterances of individuals, constituting in its totality a speech that has an individual nature and serves for individual self-expression and communication. Since ancient times, in the Western European tradition, language and speech were separated. In this case, either speech was reduced to language, or language to speech.

The ancient classical paradigm represented by Plato considers language as a complex of names of things. Language connects the world of ideas with the identical world of things, i.e. performs the function of expressing the essence of things and representing reality. This is a strict structure of the connection of words, a name and the object marked by it. Plato's concept involves the interpretation of language not as a function of interpersonal interpretation, but only as a repeated tool of thought.

The Stoics, along with the signifier, also distinguished the object and the signified, representing three interrelated aspects of the speech act. The signifier is the sound complex of speech, the object is the external substratum, and the signified is the semantic content expressed by sound, or in the terminology of the Stoics, the “expressible”, which we comprehend in the process of communication. Epicurus proposed not to talk about the strict correspondence of the word and the thing. Language no longer denotes things so much as it expresses a person's impressions of things connected with them. Between thought and sound there is a “signified”, abstract content of speech in unity with the sound form.

So, we see the emphasis on language in Plato and the attention to speech in the Stoics. In the 20th century, logical atomism proposed the concept of language, in which a universal language expressing the world corresponds to transcendental consciousness. The "late" Wittgenstein defended a concept close to the stoic one: everyday language "hides", "disguises", "disguises" thoughts.

The connection between language and pre-linguistic experience in Husserl is mediated by reduction, which presupposes the appearance of a speaking subject. This reduction has its introspection in the structure of the sign. An "empty" sign is not a thing, but only points to a thing and does not exist by itself. Language signs are "expressions". The speaker, giving meaning to the signs, performs the act of "giving meaning" or the execution of the language. Later, for him, language appears as a kind of method of seeing objects, as a “body of thought”, with the help of which others also represent things.

Of course, we must get rid of the illusion that language as a system of signs is indifferent to its content. The latter can be expressed in language, speech, writing, system of symbols. In this case, thought arises before language, which is needed only as a means of expression. In reality, this relationship between thinking and language is much more complicated and becomes clear when its genesis is clarified. The language system arises at a certain level of development of the vocal apparatus, the correlation between hearing and voice, the ability to extract polysemantic sounds and their variation.

Language is not a function of the speaker. Language presents itself as a whole creation, over which the speaker has no power. As Jung, Sartre and Lacan rightly point out, a person is not a speaker, but a spoken person, language controls the subject. Language is such a formation that a person cannot arbitrarily create or change it. This construction is realized as a result of the silent "contract" of the collective of communication participants and manifests itself through the established vocabulary used by the members of the community. Everyone uses the language, and it is common to all, and therefore not controlled by the person who possesses it. The desire to limit the use of words or introduce new ones into circulation is subject only to society itself in the process of its development.

Speech expresses an act of will and reason of any subject of communication; it includes the totality of everything that people say. Speech includes automated and conscious components, combinations of words and vocabulary, acts of phonation (voicing), proficiency in grammar and speech skills. This functional system depends on auditory, visual and motor analyzers. Therefore, speech activity is heterogeneous, original and individual, it is characterized by liveliness, emotionality and expressiveness. If language does not depend on our arbitrariness, then speech is always arbitrary and entirely in our will.

Naturally, historically, speech arises before language: its formation and development occurs as a result of speech, and its norms are prescribed and fixed in the course of people's speech communication. Speaking and listening makes it possible to conclude an agreement on the semantic load and arrangement of words in the language, to choose the principles of the “language game”, adhering to which we achieve mutual understanding. Consequently, language is at once both a product and an instrument of speech.

Even the Stoics considered language to be an example of a sign system. There is no direct connection between language and thing. There is an odd relationship between them. The linguistic sign connects the concept, i.e. the idea of ​​a thing, and the acoustic image, i.e. mental "impression" of sound. This is nothing more than a motor memory that recorded the activity of the speech organs during the utterance of this sound. In other words, a linguistic sign is a two-faced mental formation, consisting of a concept and a sound image.

Note that the sign connects the concept and the acoustic image, because in the everyday use of the word, under the sign is meant exactly the sounding word. For example, the word "moon" as a sign of the moon, although the sign denotes a combination of sound and thought. It is this integrity that de Saussure proposes to keep behind the “sign”, while the concept is the “signified”, and the acoustic image is the “signifier”. So, let's fix it: the sign is the unity of the signified (concept) and the signifier (acoustic image). This connection is arbitrary, since it implies the connection of any signifier with any signified. Taken separately, the signified and the signifier are unstable and indefinite formations. We can connect any thought with any sound. This is how it happens. In one language - bread, in another - bread, in the third - brot. It is important that others agree with this connection of sound with thought.

So, M.K. Petrov distinguishes three types of culture: personal-nominal, professional-nominal, and universal-conceptual. Accordingly, they are characteristic: 1) for primitive communities, where knowledge is encrypted by the name of the god - the patron of the collective; 2) for traditional societies of the East; 3) modern Western states. The basis of such a typology is "social heredity" - that is, the successive recreation by people of specific features, skills, abilities, guidelines. In the role of the "social gene" is a sign with its gift to consolidate and retain meaning for a long time. The essential characteristic of a sign is a concise record of images of socially imperative activity. The adequate action of sociocodes is guaranteed by the mechanisms of communication, translation and transmutation (introduction of new knowledge, mechanisms and discoveries).

Foucault in Words and Things reveals three main "epistems" in the history of Western thought. The main reason for isolating and comparing these "epistems" is the peculiarity of the signifying mechanism, the connection between "words" and "things" and the change of language in the history of culture: language as coinciding with the world during the Renaissance, language as an unambiguous means of formulating thought in classical rationalism and language in his independent existence in the modern age. Language from a medium of thinking and judgment turns into a phenomenon that has its own existence and history, a kind of collective habit, fixed in tradition. Tradition opposes attempts of unauthorized change, but signs are reborn under the influence of a number of factors. They can relate to both the sound and the meaning of the word. There are many examples of how, with the constancy of the sound of a word, its meaning changes or, with the invariance of the meaning, the sound shifts. All changes of this kind eventually receive recognition and become traditional for this or that society.

Linguistics also deals with such an important problem as the study of the everyday life of a formed language.