12.4. Consciousness and Self-Consciousness

Directing the cognitive activity to its self consciousness becomes self-consciousness, whereupon consciousness appears to be means of distinguishing man from the world community, the way to have a look at his own self “from outside” and also to acquire the characteristics of “an inner man”, a peculiar and unique creature – existence.

The expression “self-consciousness” can mean different things. In the sense “consciousness of self” it refers to the awareness a subject (of experience) has of itself i.e. of the typical referent of the pronoun. It is not merely a grasp of the entity that happens to be myself, but an awareness of myself known as myself. The philosophical issues here revolve around how such awareness is generated and what its logical structure is. Alternatively, self-consciousness can be “experience of the items in one’s consciousness or the contents of consciousness” like sensations, thoughts, feelings etc. This leaves open the possibility of such awareness being a result of the special faculty of introspection. However, there is a use of self-consciousness that refers to the “self-intimation” of every conscious state and in this sense it means the “ability of a conscious state to become an object to itself”. The philosophical problem here is to cash out in epistemic and metaphysical terms the metaphor of “phosphorescence” that is generally used to capture this reflexivity of consciousness.

Consciousness cannot exist without self-consciousness.

Man thinks and knows himself. He realizes what he does, thinks, and feels. Both historically and in the course of his individual perfection man is first aware of objects and his own practical actions, and at a higher level of development, of his thoughts about objects and actions. He realizes himself as a per­sonality. Self-consciousness presupposes the singling out and dif­ferentiation of man, of his own self from everything that surrounds him. Self-consciousness is the realization by man of his actions, emo­tions, thoughts, motives of behavior, interests, and position in society. An essential role in the formation of self-consciousness is played by the sensations of man's own body, of his movements and actions. Man can only become himself in interaction with other people, with the world, through his practical activity and communication. The formation of self-consciousness is socially conditioned not only through direct communication between people and their reciprocal evaluations but also through the formulation of society's imperatives imposed on the individual, through his realization of the rules for mutual relations. A human being realizes himself not just through other human beings but also through the material and spiritual cul­ture created by them. Labour products are mirrors, as it were, in which we see our radiant essences: a child, says Hegel, throws peb­bles in a river and admires the spreading ripples as something that he can see as his own creation.

Self-consciousness is closely linked with such a spiritual phe­nomenon as reflexion (these concepts are sometimes used as sy­nonyms). Reflexion is a principle of human consciousness which guides man towards a conscious realization of his own spiritual and intellectual processes, towards a frequently critical analysis of his spiritual and psychical states with due attention to all the contradic­tions in the orientation of the emotions, impulses and thoughts; re­flexion is contemplation of the devices used in thought processes and of their social significance. The levels of reflexion may vary widely from elementary self-awareness to profound meditation on the meaning of man's being and its moral content. In cognizing him­self, man never remains the way he was before. Self-consciousness did not arise as a kind of spiritual mirror for idle self-admiration. It appeared in response to the call of the social conditions of life which demanded of each individual from the very beginning that he evaluate his deeds, words and thoughts in the light of definite social norms. Life's harsh lessons have taught man self-control and self-regulation. Regulating his actions and anticipating their results, the self-conscious man assumes full responsibility for them.

So, consciousness is a specific manifestation of a man’s spiritual vital activity connected with cognition, which makes the sense of reality known. It obtains an object-linguistic form of knowledge. It is an activity-directed, but not substantive phenomenon that is accomplished in directive acts – intentions to the outer world and results into a qualitatively-diversed and language-objectified system of knowledge. The latter obtain the ontological status of objects – material or ideal, real or probable, present or past (future), concrete-empirical or abstract and general, real or imaginary (fictitious, illusory, and fantastic). Being directed onto the real world cognitively, consciousness transforms its natural and psychical parameters into an ideal world.

A comprehensive understanding of consciousness will likely require theories of many types. One might usefully and without contradiction accept a diversity of models that each in their own way aim respectively to explain the physical, neural, cognitive, functional, representational and higher-order aspects of consciousness. There is unlikely to be any single theoretical perspective that suffices for explaining all the features of consciousness that we wish to understand. Thus a synthetic and pluralistic approach may provide the best road to future progress.

Basic concepts and categories:

Consciousness is the highest function of the brain characteristic only of man and connected with speech, a function whose essence is a generalized and purposeful re­flection of reality, anticipatory mental construction of actions and foreseeing their results, and rational regulation and self-control of be­haviour.

Іdeal is the philosophical category denoting the non-material, subjective and spiritual nature of consciousness; it is the image of the objective reality in the forms of man’s activity, his consciousness and will.

Reflexion is a principle of human consciousness which guides man towards a conscious realization of his own spiritual and intellectual process, towards a frequently critical analysis of his spiritual and psychical states with due attention to all the contradictions in the orientation of the emotions, impulses and thoughts; reflexion is contemplation of the devices used in thought processes and of their social significance.

Self-consciousness is the realization by man of his actions, emotions, thoughts, and motives of behavior, interests and position in a society.

Social consciousness is a spiritual part of the historical process; not just a mere totality of some individual consciousnesses, but it is the integral spiritual phenomenon, that has a certain inner structure and includes various levels (theoretical and everyday consciousness, ideology and social psychology) and forms of consciousness (political and law competence, morality, religion, art, philosophy, science). It is the ensemble of generalized notions, theories, emotions, modes and traditions; the intellectual and spiritual reality – part of social being.

Thinking is the process of thought, the information activity, which finds out the necessary links, regularities, and development tendencies of the world of phenomena with the help of abstraction, estimation and typification. It exceeds the bounds of an empirical contemplation connected with the modeling of possible situations and that is why is able to plan actions and foresee their results.

Mind and intelligence are two basic stages of cognition: at the first one, objects are disintegrated into their constituent elements, parts and moments for their detailed mastering; at the second one, they are joined and systematized on the basis of a certain principle.

Language is a social product, which is produced by a community to fulfill the needs of communication and fixed in the memory of the community members and in the texts made by the means of the given language. It is the material form of the realization of a thinking process.