12.2. Role of Practical Activity, Communication and Speech in Formation and Development of Consciousness

Consciousness and the objective world are opposites which form a unity. The basis of this unity is praxis, man's sensuous object-re­lated activity. This is the activity that gives rise to the need for a psy­chical, conscious reflection of reality.

The phenomenon of consciousness is directly connected with such property of matter as reflection. But consciousness appears to be a social form of reflection. That is why consciousness is the key notion in philosophy, sociology and psychology and it defines man’s ability of an ideal reflection of the reality and also the mode and forms of such a reflection.

The consciousness of modern man is a product of world history, the sum total of practical and cognitive activity of countless generations throughout the centuries. In order to understand its es­sence, it is necessary to establish its origins. Consciousness does not only have a social history. It also has a natural pre-history, the formation of its biological prerequisites in the course of the evolution of animal psyche. It took twenty million years to create the conditions for the emergence of Homo sapiens. Without this evolution, the appear­ance of human consciousness would have been a real miracle.

The decisive role of labor operations in the formation of man and his consciousness was materially expressed in the fact that the brain as an organ of consciousness developed simultaneously with the development of the hand as an organ of labor. It was the hand, the "receiving" organ that gave instructive lessons to other sense organs, such as the eye. The actively operating hand taught the head to think even before it be­came a tool doing the will of the head which plans practical actions in advance.

Along with the emergence of labor, man and human society evolved. Collective labor presupposed cooperation among people "and thus a division, however elementary, of labor actions among its participants: some kept up the fire, others prepared food, still others hunted, there were those who dug up roots, etc. A division of labor effort is only possible if the participants perceive, in one way or another, the connection between their actions and those of the other members of the collective, and thus their bearing on the at­tainment of the ultimate goal. The formation of the consciousness of man is linked with the emergence of social relations which signify the subordination of the individual's life to a socially fixed system of needs, duties, and disciplined conduct, all expressed in and regu­lated by language, historically shaped customs and mores.

But it would have been just as miraculous if psyche had developed in liv­ing organisms in the absence of the property of reflection inherent in all matter.

Reflection is the universal capacity of matter to reproduce some features and relations of the object that is reflected. The capacity for reflection, as well as the character of its manifestation, depends on the level of the organization of matter. Reflection in inorganic nature, in the plant world, in the animal kingdom, and finally in man, has qualitatively different forms.

Reflection in all the diversity of its forms, beginning with the simplest mechanical traces and ending with human reason, occurs in the pro­cess of interaction between different systems of the real world. As a general case, reflection is an informational reproduction of the properties of the object being reflected. In the broadest philosophical sense, information is being reflected in an­other, or other being, as Hegel would say. Information is an objec­tive aspect of the processes of nature, and as such it is universal. Everything in the world is in direct or mediated interaction, tending to infinity, of everything with everything else — everything carries in­formation about everything else.

Numerous observations of the behaviour of animals, birds and insects show that they possess an amazing capacity for anticipatory reflection. Animal behaviour is realized through the organs, created by the evolution, which provide information about the surrounding things and processes (the sense organs), and also through control and direction of behaviour in accordance with the information re­ceived. The psyche receives double information in the form of sen­sations and perceptions: first, information about the properties and relations of external things, and second, information about their re­levance to the organism's life.

The development of psyche is inseparable from the emergence of new forms of behaviour, connected with the concepts of instinct, skill, imitation and learning.

Since man has a historical origination then consequently the phenomenon of consciousness is adequately and fully understood in the context of the development of the material world. The whole historical development of man was no other than a development of man’s consciousness.

That is why outstanding philosopher of the Modern Ages Spinoza defined consciousness as the substance attribute that is as an indispensable, essential and integral property of matter.

Thus, the material world in its development naturally reaches such form of self-reflection as consciousness is. That is why the ideal is the subjective form of the objective reality, the reflection of the external world in the forms of man’s activity, consciousness and will. Consciousness can never be something different but the perceived and realized being and the human being is a real process of а man’s life. In this sense consciousness does not determine being but being determines consciousness. Our sensations, our consciousness are only images of the external world. They are our reflection.

As a universal property of all material objects a reflection is a change, a reaction, a mould of any object or phenomenon, which interacts with other objects or phenomena. This reaction is always in a certain conformity or similarity to this or that side of the object, which has an effect upon another object.

Since consciousness is exclusively a social phenomenon, then it is born only in the social form of the material motion. A social form of the material motion is the practical activity of the society in general and a man as a component of the productive forces.

The content of consciousness is realized in practice, in one way or another. For this it assumes the character of an idea. An idea is not only knowledge of what exists, but also the planning of that which ought to be. It is also a concept oriented to­wards practical realization.

It is closely linked with practical activity, with the needs arising under the impact of the external world. Reflected in the mind, needs become goals.

A goal is an idealized need that has found its object, a subjective image of the object of activity whose ideal form anticipates the result of such activity.

Goals are formed on the basis of mankind's total experiences and manifested in their highest forms as social, ethical and aesthetic ideals. The ability for goal-setting is a specifically human capacity, a cardinal charac­teristic of consciousness. Consciousness would be a mere luxury if it were devoid of goal-setting, i.e. of the ability for mental transforma­tion of things in accordance with social needs. The basis of the goal-setting activity is dissatisfaction with the world and the need to change it. Man's goals thus arise out of social praxis, out of the objective world, and pre­suppose its existence.

Thus, the principal peculiarity of social practice is its universality, and consciousness as the universal form of reflection of the world can come into being only on universal grounds.

At the same time the theory of reflection runs into some difficulties, which have real meaning by solving problems of consciousness and cognition.

Consciousness in its advanced forms is a social-cultural product.

If we compare the IQ of the babies who were brought up in a family and children’s home, then the difference between them will be great. The children brought up in families are more mature.

Man is an open system of necessities and he satisfies them in a specific human way of culture being. Man himself creates the conditions of his existence. In this process labour and communication, the appearance of speech and language play an important role. M. Heidegger had a very good reason to call language being’s home. Man expresses himself with the help of a language; he is understood through his speech, pronunciation and attentive listening.

Whenever men start to make tools they are distinguished in nature. Labour is the process of objects exchange between man and nature, it is the organic base of human cooperation and partnership. Man’s activity stipulates and controls that exchange of things.

But not only labour, practical activity forms the basis of consciousness. Any creative activity (scientific, poetic, artistic, religious and so on) is also an important factor of the development of consciousness.

The basic feature that distinguishes man’s practical activity from the animals’ one is that man conquers the world, subjugates it according to his needs. Thus man is able to master a countless number of activity forms. An animal is programmed by nature for the only one form of activity and can never learn any other. In this respect man subordinates the surrounding world to himself, but an animal adapts to it. Man can live in any circumstances, but an animal can live only in those circumstances, which are programmed to live in biologically. Animals are unable to understand and master the incompatible circumstances with their natural needs. That is just the reason why a man unlike an animal is a universal creature. Man understands his needs, and an animal acts according to its instincts. Since social practice has a conscious character, then consciousness is an ideal tool. Yet man’s practice is impossible without understanding of a set goal.

Recognition of the active and creative character of consciousness is a necessary requirement of the Marxist understanding of the human personality: people are products and creators of history. It is not consciousness by itself that is connected with reality but ac­tual individuals practically transforming the world. Activeness is in­herent not only in the individual but also in the social consciousness, above all in progressive ideas which, taking a grip on the masses, become a material force.

There are two forms of consciousness: individual and social.

In addition, these forms are not absolutely isolated from each other – there is no individual consciousness without the social one, and vice versa. But it is also wrong to interpret social consciousness as a sum of “individual consciousnesses”. So we cannot take individual consciousness as a separated “extract” of social consciousness either – they are the identity of opposites that mutually stipulate and enrich each other.

At the same time the object-practical foundation of consciousness origin is manifested in a detection of consciousness activity concerning being – consciousness reflects not only being, but it appears to be the conditions of its active reproduction. Thus, during the process of social vital activity – material and “spiritual” production – the process of mutual stipulation of consciousness and being is uninterrupted – not only being produces consciousness, but also consciousness produces being. That is why the question about the primacy of being with respect to consciousness is worthwhile only with the aspect of what originated from what historically. In the real course of lifetime consciousness and being are constantly interchanged one into another – consciousness becomes a foundation of society and man’s vital activity. Therefore the difference of consciousness from the other forms of reflection lies in the fact that it appears to be a condition of man’s conscious activity in the realization of his needs.

Man's spiritual world can be neither felt nor seen, nor heard, nor discovered by any apparatus or chemical reagents. No one has so far found either the dullest or the brightest thought directly in the brain. Thought (the ideal) has no existence in the physical or physio­logical sense of the word. At the same time thoughts and ideas are real. They exist. An idea cannot therefore be regarded as something unreal. Its reality, however, is not material but ideal. It is our inner world, our individual, personal consciousness, as well as the entire world of "superpersonal" spiritual culture of mankind. It is a question of a special type of reality here.