Humanity and Its Being as an Object of Philosophical Understanding

Consciousness as a Fundamental Property of Humanity

Throughout the historical development of philosophical views on humanity, three essential principles have emerged that characterize the species’ essence: the presence of consciousness, purposeful activity, and sociability.

To explore these significant traits more deeply, we will first examine the phenomenon of consciousness, whose unique characteristics give rise to a variety of concepts interpreting its origin. Among these, the most prevalent include the religious perspective, which posits that human consciousness is a divine gift; the unified informational field theory, which sees consciousness as a vivid manifestation of universal informational processes; the dualistic view, asserting that two principles—material and ideal—underlie all world processes, with consciousness representing the manifestation of the spiritual essence of existence; and the evolutionary theory, which argues that consciousness is the result of the gradual development of living organisms, culminating in the emergence of the bearer of consciousness—humankind.

We will delve deeper into the latter theory, as it is the most substantiated. Contemporary science indicates that the emergence of consciousness is a link in the self-development process of complex material formations. The conditions for the emergence of consciousness arose from the inception of life and the subsequent evolution of one branch of living organisms toward increasing complexity and refinement of regulatory mechanisms governing their interactions with the environment. This process is characterized as the evolution of forms of reflection.

Reflection involves the ability of certain material systems to reproduce within their structure the properties of those systems that influence them. This reflective property is inherent to all matter. Objects and phenomena exist in a universal relationship and interaction; thus, by influencing one another, they induce various changes in the form of certain "traces." The forms of reflection depend on the specificity and structural organization of the interacting bodies.

In inanimate nature, passive reflection occurs: any material system passively "adapts" to external influences, altering its internal structure under the direct energetic impact of the environment. In living organisms, reflection takes on an active character. The primary stages of the evolution of regulatory-reflective mechanisms in living beings on the path to the prerequisites for the emergence of human consciousness are as follows: irritability—the capacity of unicellular organisms for the simplest specific reactions; sensitivity—the ability to experience sensations, which is characteristic only of animals; reflection based on the nervous system; and finally, the immediate basis for the formation of human consciousness lies in the psyche of higher animals, associated with the complexity of their nervous systems, which enables active exploratory behavior within an internal psychic field.

It is important to note that the concept of "psychic" encompasses a broader scope than that of "consciousness." The psyche of a person encompasses both conscious and unconscious elements, which are in constant interaction.

Consciousness is attributed solely to the most advanced form of material organization—the human brain, which serves as the organ of consciousness; outside the human brain, consciousness does not exist. In recent decades, numerous discoveries have been made in the study of the brain, particularly the functional asymmetry of its hemispheres. The right hemisphere is responsible for the function of perceiving the world through images, while the left is associated with abstract thinking.

The relationship between consciousness and the brain warrants attention. The very process of the brain's functioning is a neuro-dynamic, physiological, bioelectric, and biochemical process, the outcome of which is consciousness. The phenomena of consciousness primarily consist of images—information regarding objects in the external world. For instance, perceiving a table represents an image of an external object, which signifies certain information about it. These images are immaterial; they lack physical characteristics. They are ideal. The physiological processes occurring in the brain serve as carriers of an image of something, of some object, but these processes themselves are not the images. The brain's representation of the image is a code, an excited nerve cell, which exists physically (objectively) but is experienced subjectively. When a person receives an image of an object, they are unaware of what occurs within their brain. They receive only the result of these internal processes as an ideal object.

The presence of a brain is a necessary but insufficient condition for consciousness. Consciousness is not reducible solely to the physiological processes of the brain, although it cannot exist outside them. It is fundamentally a social-historical product, arising and evolving within the collective activity of people, in the course of their labor and communication. By engaging in these processes, people produced corresponding representations, directives, and norms, which, along with their emotional nuances, comprise the content of consciousness as a specific form of reflection.

It must be emphasized that in the genealogy of consciousness, the social and biological are intricately intertwined, as they are in the nature of humanity as a whole. In the early stages of human evolution and consciousness development, biological evolution predominated; however, at a certain phase, it transformed into a secondary factor, with societal-historical activity taking on a defining role.

A fundamental characteristic of human existence in the world is not mere adaptation to the environment, as seen in animals, but the transformation of nature in accordance with evolving needs through labor. Labor assumes a collective, socially organized character, carried out based on complex, historically conditioned forms of communication among people. Consciousness emerged as a spiritual regulatory factor of this mode of existence. It developed concurrently with humanity's emergence as a social-historical being, during which the purely animal forms of psychic activity transformed into human psyche. In other words, the process of becoming human involved the disintegration of the instinctual basis of animal psychology and the formation of mechanisms for conscious activity. Consciousness endowed humans with the capacity for transformative activity, as well as the ability for complex non-biological forms of behavior, sociability, and the accumulation and transmission of information facilitated through language.

Language embodies a specific system of communication means. Various forms of language exist: oral, written, and internal. In language, our thoughts and feelings materialize into a sensory-perceptible form—such as graphic signs—and thereby, from individual possession, they become the shared heritage of others. Through language, consciousness is formed and develops as a societal phenomenon, a spiritual product of social life. The inextricable connection between consciousness and language is revealed in several aspects: first, consciousness cannot exist without the material basis of language; second, from the very beginning, language has served as a means of transmitting social information and facilitating human communication; third, it is an instrument of thought, a condition for manipulating the ideal content of consciousness; and, moreover, through language, humanity preserves and accumulates the fruits of cognitive activity.

The regulation of specifically human ways of life necessitated the formation of distinct forms of psychic activity: collective representations expressing norms, values, socially significant meanings, and societal experience; the development of will as a psychological capacity for self-regulation based on socially significant meanings; the abilities for goal-setting and understanding the underlying patterns of the world as conditions for its practical transformation (the problem of knowledge, as one of the most important in philosophy, will be the subject of separate exploration). Thus, the knowledge of the laws of objective reality, the capacity to formulate goals and methods of practical action, and the ability to anticipate the emergence of that which does not yet exist in reality define the creative nature of consciousness.

Consciousness, as the inner world of humanity, possesses a complex structure that has traditionally been explored by philosophy and psychology. In examining this structure, one must grasp the inherent conventionality and relativity of any internal divisions; thus, a clear and unambiguous boundary between thought and will does not exist within human consciousness. Nevertheless, scholars typically delineate three primary realms of consciousness: the cognitive, the emotional, and the motivational-volitional.

The cognitive sphere encompasses not only knowledge about the world but also the very cognitive capacities of human beings—both sensory and abstract thinking. Sensations, perceptions, representations, and concepts—essentially cognitive images and the operations upon them (thinking)—form the core of consciousness. Intuition also occupies a significant place in cognition; it is the ability to grasp truth directly, unmediated by evidential justification. Attention and memory are integral components of cognitive capabilities.

In consciousness, cognitive images are not merely represented; rather, it is also an experience of what is perceived, embodying a certain attitude (either positive or negative evaluation) towards that which is reflected. This constitutes the emotional sphere, which harbors emotions, moods, and affects.

The motivational-volitional sphere is represented by the motives, interests, goals, and needs of individuals; the active character of consciousness is defined by will.

The highest level of consciousness is self-consciousness—the capacity for individuals to make their own consciousness the object of examination. This unique phenomenon is inherent solely to humanity. Self-consciousness represents the activity of the human soul, its orientation toward its inner essence, its reflection upon the conditions in which it exists, the contemplation of its own spiritual processes, a critical analysis of its emotional states, and a consideration of the methods of its thought and their social significance.

The formation of self-consciousness is socially conditioned. A person develops the ability to see oneself, as it were, from the outside through interactions with others, assimilating the evaluations provided by those around them, who serve as a kind of “mirror.” Thus, an individual's relation to themselves is necessarily mediated by their relationship to another person.

Philosophy's engagement with self-consciousness as a distinct domain of the subjective world traces back to Socrates, with his principle: “Know thyself.” He was among the first philosophers to comprehend that an individual's awareness of the surrounding world is insufficient without a parallel process of self-awareness. This notion is beautifully encapsulated by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince: “Then judge yourself,” said the king to the little prince, “that is the hardest thing. To judge yourself is much more difficult than to judge others. If you can judge yourself rightly, then you are truly wise.”

In addition to processes governed by human will, there are actions that occur unconsciously and are not under one’s control. The unconscious represents a specific level of mental processes, operations, and states characterized by the spontaneity of emergence and progression, a lack of evident cause, conscious control, and regulation. It is expressed through intuition, premonition, creative inspiration, sudden insights, memories, dreams, and hypnotic states. The 20th century witnessed significant contributions to the study of the unconscious from scholars like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, among others.

Consciousness is a unique phenomenon of reality. As an internal factor of human activity, in its content and possibilities, it extends far beyond mere life needs; it manifests as a reflection of human spiritual activity, a means of controlling and regulating one’s relationships with reality. The role of consciousness in the life of an individual and society is evident in several fundamental functions:

• Cognitive: forming idealized images of the surrounding world and creating a mental representation of that world;
• Goal-setting: forming an image of the result of activity, developing personal objectives and ideals;
• Constructive-creative: transforming knowledge and information through thinking, intuition, imagination, and fantasy;
• Control-regulatory: consciously observing and adjusting one’s actions in accordance with socially significant meanings;
• Predictive: anticipating future developments of events;
• Evaluative: determining the significance of various phenomena based on ideal standards and norms;
• Communicative: facilitated by language as a means of human interaction, where words become the possession of others, enabling the exchange of thoughts, experiences, feelings, and ideas.

Thus, consciousness can be defined as a higher function, unique to humans and related to language, which involves the generalized and purposeful, active reflection of reality, the preliminary mental construction of actions and the anticipation of their outcomes, and the rational regulation and self-control of human behavior.