home / Relationship/ The image of a person’s world is being formed. Beyond consciousness: methodological problems of non-classical psychology

A person’s image of the world is formed. Beyond consciousness: methodological problems of non-classical psychology

Leontyev A.N. IMAGE OF THE WORLD
Favorite psychologist. works, M.: Pedagogy, 1983, p. 251-261.
As is known, psychology and psychophysiology of perception are characterized by perhaps the largest number of studies and publications, an immensely huge number of accumulated facts. Research is carried out at a variety of levels: morphophysiological, psychophysical, psychological, epistemological, cellular, phenomenological (“phonographic” - K. Holzkamp) (Holzkamp K. Sinnlliehe Erkenntnis: Нistorischen Upsprung und gesellschaftliche Function der Wahrnehmung. Frankfurt/Main, 1963. ), at the level of micro- and macroanalysis. The phylogenesis, ontogenesis of perception, its functional development and the processes of its restoration are studied. A wide variety of specific methods, procedures, and indicators are used. Different approaches and interpretations have become widespread: physicalist, cybernetic, logical-mathematical, “model”. Many phenomena have been described, including some absolutely amazing ones that remain unexplained.

But what is significant is that, according to the most authoritative researchers, there is now no convincing theory of perception capable of covering accumulated knowledge and outlining a conceptual system. The pitiful state of the theory of perception, despite the wealth of accumulated concrete knowledge, indicates that there is now an urgent need to reconsider the fundamental direction in which research is moving.

This means that every thing is primarily posited objectively - in the objective connections of the objective world; that it - secondarily - also posits itself in subjectivity, human sensuality, and in human consciousness (in its ideal forms). This must also be the basis for the psychological study of the image, the processes of its generation and functioning.

Animals and humans live in an objective world, which from the very beginning appears as four-dimensional: three-dimensional space and time (motion). The adaptation of animals occurs as an adaptation to the connections that fill the world of things, their changes in time, their movement; that, accordingly, the evolution of the senses reflects the development of adaptation to the four-dimensionality of the world, i.e. provides orientation in the world as it is, and not in its individual elements.

I say this because only with this approach can many facts that elude zoopsychology be comprehended because they do not fit into traditional, essentially atomic, schemes. Such facts include, for example, the paradoxically early appearance in the evolution of animals of the perception of space and the estimation of distances. The same applies to the perception of movements, changes in time - the perception, so to speak, of continuity through discontinuity. But, of course, I will not touch on these issues in more detail. This is a special, highly specialized conversation.

Turning to human consciousness, I must introduce one more concept - the concept of fifth quasi-dimension, in which the objective world is revealed to man. This - semantic field, system of meanings.

The introduction of this concept requires a more detailed explanation. The fact is that when I perceive an object, I perceive it not only in its spatial dimensions and time, but also in its meaning. When, for example, I glance at a wristwatch, then, strictly speaking, I do not have an image of the individual features of this object, their sum, their “associative set.” This, by the way, is the basis for criticism of associative theories of perception. It is also not enough to say that I have a picture of their form, as Gestalt psychologists insist on this. I perceive not the form, but an object that is a watch.

Of course, if there is an appropriate perceptual task, I can isolate and realize their form, their individual features - elements, their connections. Otherwise, although all this is included in invoice image, in his sensual fabric, but this texture can be curled up, blurred, replaced, without destroying or distorting the objectivity of the image. The thesis I have expressed is proven by many facts, both obtained in experiments and known from everyday life. For psychologists concerned with perception there is no need to list these facts. I will only note that they appear especially clearly in image-representations.

The traditional interpretation here consists of attributing properties such as meaningfulness or categoricality to perception itself. As for the explanation of these properties of perception, they, as R. Gregory correctly says (Gregory R. Reasonable Eye. M., 1972), at best remain within the boundaries of the theory of G. Helmholtz.

The general idea I defend can be expressed in the following provisions. The properties of meaningfulness and categoricality are the characteristics of a conscious image of the world, not immanent in the image itself. Let me express this differently: meanings appear not as what lies in front of things, but as what lies behind them. the appearance of things- in the known objective connections of the objective world, in various systems in which they only exist and only reveal their properties. Meanings thus carry a special dimensionality. This is dimension intrasystem connections of the objective objective world. It is its fifth quasi-dimension.
^ Let's summarize

The thesis I defend is that in psychology the problem of perception should be posed as the problem of constructing a multidimensional image of the world, an image of reality, in the individual’s consciousness. That, in other words, the psychology of image (perception) is concrete scientific knowledge about how, in the process of their activities, individuals build an image of the world - the world in which they live, act, which they themselves remake and partially create. This is also knowledge about how the image of the world functions, mediating their activities in the real world.

Here I must interrupt myself with some illustrative digressions. I remember an argument between one of our philosophers and J. Piaget when he came to us.

“You get it,” said this philosopher, turning to Piaget, “that the child, the subject in general, builds the world with the help of a system of operations.” How can one take such a point of view? This is idealism.

“I don’t support this point of view at all,” answered J. Piaget, “on this problem my views coincide with Marxism, and it is completely wrong to consider me an idealist!”

- But how, in this case, do you claim that for a child the world is such as its logic constructs?

J. Piaget never gave a clear answer to this question.

The answer, however, exists, and it is very simple. We are really building, but not the World, but the Image, actively “scooping” it, as I usually say, from objective reality. The process of perception is the process, the means of this “scooping out”, and the main thing is not how, with the help of what means this process occurs, but what is obtained as a result of this process. I answer: the image of the objective world, objective reality. The image is more adequate or less adequate, more complete or less complete... sometimes even false...

Let me make one more, completely different kind of digression.

The fact is that the understanding of perception as a process through which the image of the multidimensional world is built, with each link, act, moment, each sensory mechanism, comes into conflict with the inevitable analyticism of scientific psychological and psychophysiological research, with the inevitable abstractions of a laboratory experiment.

We isolate and study the perception of distance, discrimination of shapes, constancy of color, apparent movement, etc. and so on. Through careful experiments and precise measurements, we seem to be drilling deep but narrow wells that penetrate into the depths of perception. True, we are not often able to lay “communication passages” between them, but we continue and continue this drilling of wells and extract from them a huge amount of information - useful, as well as of little use and even completely useless. As a result, entire waste heaps of incomprehensible facts have now formed in psychology, which mask the true scientific relief of problems of perception.

It goes without saying that by this I do not at all deny the necessity and even inevitability of analytical study, the isolation of certain particular processes and even individual perceptual phenomena for the purpose of in vitro research. You simply cannot do without this! My idea is completely different, namely that by isolating the process under study in an experiment, we are dealing with some abstraction, therefore, the problem of returning to the integral subject of study in its real nature, origin and specific functioning immediately arises.

In relation to the study of perception, this is a return to the construction of an image in the individual’s consciousness external multidimensional world, peace like him There is, in which we live, in which we act, but in which our abstractions themselves do not “dwell”, just as, for example, the so thoroughly studied and carefully measured “phi-motion” does not dwell in it (Gregory R. Eye and Brain. M., 1970, pp. 124 – 125).

Here I come to the most difficult, one might say, critical point in the train of thought I am trying out.

I want to immediately express this point in the form of a categorical thesis, deliberately omitting all the necessary reservations.

This thesis is that the world in its separation from the subject is amodal. We are talking, of course, about the meaning of the term “modality”, which it has in psychophysics, psychophysiology and psychology, when we, for example, talk about the form of an object, given in visual or tactile modality or in modalities together.

In putting forward this thesis, I proceed from a very simple and, in my opinion, completely justified distinction between properties of two kinds.

One is those properties of inanimate things that are revealed in interactions with things (with “other” things), that is, in the “object-object” interaction. Some properties are revealed in interaction with things of a special kind - with living sentient organisms, i.e. in the “object-subject” interaction. They are found in specific effects depending on the properties of the subject's receiving organs. In this sense they are modal, i.e. subjective.

The smoothness of the surface of an object in the “object-object” interaction reveals itself, say, in the physical phenomenon of reducing friction. When palpated with the hand, the modal phenomenon is a tactile sensation of smoothness. The same property of the surface appears in the visual modality.

So, the fact is that one and the same property - in this case, the physical property of the body - causes, when influencing a person, impressions that are completely different in modality. After all, “shine” is not like “smoothness,” and “dullness” is not like “roughness.” Therefore, sensory modalities cannot be given a “permanent registration” in the external objective world. I emphasize external, because man, with all his sensations, also belongs to the objective world, there is also a thing among things.

The properties that we become aware of through sight, hearing, smell, etc., are not absolutely different; our self absorbs various sensory impressions, combining them into a whole as "joint" properties. This idea has become an experimentally established fact. I mean the study by I. Rock (Rock I., Harris Ch. Vision and touch. - In the book: Perception. Mechanisms and models. M., 1974, pp. 276-279.).

In his experiments, subjects were shown a square of hard plastic through a reducing lens. “The subject took the square with his fingers from below, through a piece of material, so that he could not see his hand, otherwise he could understand that he was looking through a reducing lens... We... asked him to report his impression of the size of the square... Some We asked subjects to draw as accurately as possible a square of the corresponding size, which requires the participation of both vision and touch. Others had to select a square of equal size from a series of squares presented only visually, and still others from a series of squares, the size of which could only be determined visually. touch...

The subjects had a certain holistic impression of the size of the square... The perceived size of the square... was approximately the same as in the control experiment with visual perception alone."

So, the objective world, taken as a system of only “object-object” connections (i.e. the world before animals and humans), is amodal. Only with the emergence of subject-object connections and interactions do multivariate and, moreover, changing from species to species (I mean biological species) modalities arise.

This is why, as soon as we abstract ourselves from subject-object interactions, sensory modalities fall out of our descriptions of reality...

The image is fundamentally a product not only of the simultaneous, but also successional combination, fusion. None of us, getting up from our desk, would move our chair so that it hits a book display if we know that the display case is behind this chair. The world behind me is present in the picture of the world, but is absent in the actual visual world.
^ Some general conclusions

1. The formation of a person’s image of the world is his transition beyond the limits of the “directly sensory picture.” An image is not a picture!

2. Sensuality, sensory modalities are becoming more and more “indifferent.” The image of the world of a deaf-blind person is not different from the image of the world of a sighted-hearing person, but is created from a different building material, from the material of other modalities, woven from a different sensory fabric. Therefore, it retains its simultaneity, and this is a problem for research!

4. Sensory modalities form the obligatory texture of the image of the world. But the texture of the image is not equivalent to the image itself! This is how in painting the object shines through behind the strokes of oil. When I look at the depicted object, I don’t see strokes, and vice versa! The texture, the material, is removed by the image, and not destroyed in it.

The image, the picture of the world, includes not the image, but what is depicted (representation, reflection is revealed only by reflection, and this is important!).

The concept of “image of the world” was introduced by A.N. Leontiev, considering problems of perception. In his opinion, perception is not only a reflection of reality; it includes not only a picture of the world, but also concepts in which objects of reality can be described. That is, in the process of constructing an image of an object or situation, the main importance is not individual sensory impressions, but the image of the world as a whole.

Development of the concept of “image of the world” by A.N. Leontiev is associated with his general psychological theory of activity. According to A.V. Petrovsky, the formation of the image of the world occurs in the process of interaction of the subject with the world, that is, through activity.

Psychology of the image, in the understanding of A.N. Leontiev, this is specifically scientific knowledge about how, in the process of their activities, individuals build an image of the world - the world in which they live, act, which they themselves remake and are partially aware of; this is also knowledge about how the image of the world functions, mediating their activities in the objective real world. He noted that the image of the world, in addition to the four dimensions of the reality of space-time, also has a fifth quasi-dimension - the meaning of what is reflected for the subject in the known objective intrasystem connections of the objective world.

A.N. Leontyev, speaking about the “image of the world,” wanted to emphasize the difference between the concepts of “world of images” and “image of the world,” as he was addressing researchers of perception. If we consider other forms of emotional reflection of the world, then we could use other terms, such as, for example, “the world of experiences” (or feelings) and “the experience (feeling) of the world. And if we use the process of representation to describe this concept, then we can use the concept of “representation of the world.”

Further discussion of the problem of the “image of the world” led to the emergence of two theoretical positions. The first position includes the concept that every mental phenomenon or process has its own carrier, subject. That is, a person perceives and experiences the world as an integral mental being. When modeling even individual aspects of the functioning of private cognitive processes, cognitive processes are taken into account. The second provision complements the first. According to him, all human activity is mediated by his existing individual picture of the world and his place in this world

V.V. Petukhov believes that the perception of any object or situation, a specific person or abstract idea is determined by a holistic image of the world, and it is determined by the entire experience of a person’s life in the world, his social practice. Thus, the image (or representation) of the world reflects that specific historical - ecological, social, cultural - background against which (or within which) all human mental activity unfolds. From this position, the activity is described from the point of view of the requirements that, when performing it, are placed on perception, attention, memory, thinking, etc.

According to S.D. Smirnov, the real world is reflected in consciousness as an image of the world in the form of a multi-level system of a person’s ideas about the world, other people, himself and his activities. The image of the world is “a universal form of knowledge organization that determines the possibilities of cognition and behavior management.”

A.A. Leontyev identifies two forms of the image of the world:

1. situational (or fragmentary) - i.e. an image of the world that is not included in the perception of the world, but is completely reflective, distant from our action in the world, in particular, perception (as, for example, during the work of memory or imagination);

2. non-situational (or global) - i.e. an image of an integral world, a kind of scheme (image) of the universe.

From this point of view, the image of the world is reflection, that is, comprehension. The image of the worldview of A.N. Leontiev considers it as education related to human activity. And the image of the world as a component of personal meaning, as a subsystem of consciousness. Moreover, according to E.Yu. Artemyeva, the image of the world is born simultaneously in both consciousness and the unconscious.

The image of the world acts as a source of subjective certainty, allowing one to unambiguously perceive objectively ambiguous situations. The system of apperceptive expectations that arises on the basis of the image of the world in a specific situation influences the content of perceptions and ideas, generating illusions and errors of perception, as well as determining the nature of the perception of ambiguous stimuli in such a way that the actually perceived or represented content corresponds to the holistic image of the world, the semantic structures structuring it and the resulting interpretations, attributions and predictions regarding a given situation, as well as current semantic attitudes.

In the works of E.Yu. Artemyev’s image of the world is understood as an “integrator” of traces of human interaction with objective reality.” From the position of modern psychology, the image of the world is defined as an integral multi-level system of a person’s ideas about the world, other people, about himself and his activities, a system “that mediates, refracts through itself any external influence." The image of the world is generated by all cognitive processes, being in this sense their integral characteristic.

The concept of “image of the world” is found in a number of works by foreign psychologists, among whom the founder of analytical psychology, K.G. Cabin boy. In his concept, the image of the world appears as a dynamic formation: it can change all the time, just like a person’s opinion about himself. Every discovery, every new thought gives the image of the world new contours.

S.D. Smirnov deduces the main qualities inherent in the image of the world - integrity and consistency, as well as complex hierarchical dynamics. S.D. Smirnov proposes to distinguish between nuclear and surface structures of the image of the world. He believes that the image of the world is a nuclear formation in relation to what appears on the surface as a sensually (modally) formed picture of the world."

The concept of “picture of the world” is often replaced by a number of terms - “image of the world”, “scheme of reality”, “model of the universe”, “cognitive map”. In the research of psychologists, the following concepts are correlated: “picture of the world”, “model of the world”, “image of the world”, “information model of reality”, “conceptual model”.

The picture of the world includes a historical component, a person’s worldview and attitude, holistic spiritual content, and a person’s emotional attitude to the world. The image reflects not only the personal, worldview and emotional component of the personality, but also a special component - the spiritual state of the era, ideology.

The picture of the world is formed as an idea of the world, its external and internal structure. The picture of the world, in contrast to the worldview, is a collection of ideological knowledge about the world, a collection of knowledge about the objects and phenomena of reality. To understand the structure of the picture of the world, it is necessary to understand the ways of its formation and development.

G.A. Berulaeva notes that in the conscious picture of the world there are 3 layers of consciousness: its sensory tissue (sensory images); meanings, the carriers of which are sign systems formed on the basis of the internalization of objective and operational meanings; personal meaning.

The first layer is the sensory fabric of consciousness - these are sensory experiences.

The second layer of consciousness consists of meanings. The carriers of meaning are objects of material and spiritual culture, norms and patterns of behavior enshrined in rituals and traditions, sign systems and, above all, language. The meaning records socially developed ways of acting with reality and in reality. The internalization of operational and subject meanings based on sign systems leads to the emergence of concepts (verbal meanings).

The third layer of consciousness is formed by personal meanings. Objective content carried by specific events, phenomena or concepts, i.e. what they mean for society as a whole and for the psychologist in particular may differ significantly from what the individual discovers in them. A person not only reflects the objective content of certain events and phenomena, but at the same time records his attitude towards them, experienced in the form of interest and emotion. The concept of meaning is associated not with context, but with subtext, appealing to the affective-volitional sphere. The system of meanings is constantly changing and developing, ultimately determining the meaning of any individual activity and life in general, while science is primarily concerned with the production of meanings.

So, the image of the world is understood as a certain aggregate or ordered multi-level system of a person’s knowledge about the world, about himself, about other people, which mediates and refracts through itself any external influence.

The image of the world is a personally conditioned, initially unreflected, holistic attitude of the subject to himself and to the world around him, carrying within himself the irrational attitudes that a person has.

The mental image contains hidden personal significance, the personal meaning of the information imprinted in it.

The image of the world is largely mythological, that is, it is real only for the person whose image it is.

The concept of “image” is a significant category of psychology (A.N. Leontiev, S.D. Smirnov, S.L. Rubinshtei, etc.). The image is the initial link and at the same time the result of any cognitive act. Modern researchers understand the image as a cognitive hypothesis comparable to objective reality. The image of the world is functionally and genetically primary in relation to any specific image or individual sensory experience. Hence, the result of any cognitive act will not be a separate image, but a changed image of the world, enriched with new elements. This means that the concept of the image of the world embodies the idea of integrity and continuity in the origin, development and functioning of the cognitive sphere of the individual. And the image of the world acts as a multi-level holistic system of a person’s ideas about the world, other people, himself and his activities.

The image of the world is the subject of study of many sciences interested in human knowledge. Over the centuries, the image of the world has been built, revealed and discussed by thinkers, philosophers, and scientists from various points of view. The picture of the image of the world allows us to better understand a person in all his connections and dependencies on the world around him. The category of the image of the world is significant for revealing the characteristics of human consciousness through the context of ethnic groups, cultures, mentalities, etc. Various approaches to understanding the image of the world reveal its dependence on various external and internal variables.

The concept of world-view was formulated by Robert Redfield and is associated primarily with his name. According to Redfield’s definition, “an image or picture of the world” is a vision of the universe, characteristic of a particular people, these are the ideas of members of society about themselves and about their actions, their activity in the world, it studies a person’s view of the outside world.

Redfield argues that there is no single national picture of the world. In one culture there are several cultural traditions: in particular, the cultural tradition of “schools and temples” (as Redfield calls it - a large tradition) and the tradition of a village community (a small tradition). Accordingly, the traditions (“pictures of the world”) of different communities are different. Based on this, we can say that the “picture of the world” studies the view of a member of a culture on the outside world.

Image and/or picture of the world are fairly developed categories of Russian psychology. Research in this direction was carried out by E.Yu. Artemyeva, G.A. Berulava, B.M. Velichkovsky, V.P. Zinchenko, E.A. Klimov, A.N. Leontyev, V.S. Mukhina, V.F. Petrenko, V.V. Petukhov, S.D. Smirnov and many others.

The image of the world is a holistic, multi-level system of a person’s ideas about the world, about other people, about himself and his activities. This concept embodies the idea of integrity and continuity in the origin, development and functioning of the sphere of cognitive personality. By defining the content of the concept “image of the world,” we mean the totality of a person’s ideas about the world, reflecting the subject-object relations of the material and ideal substances (visible and assumed) inhabiting this world in time and space.

According to Rubinstein, the image of the world is a specific human activity, superimposed on the life, theoretical and practical experience of a person, developing into a special psychological integrity.

The image of the world forms the meaningful side of human consciousness and, together with it, has emotional and cognitive unity. The cognitive-emotional plane of consciousness is determined by the adequacy of the picture of the world to the needs, interests and values of a person, i.e., by the system of his subjective evaluative criteria. In other words, cognitive processes are necessarily integrated with emotional ones.

Possession of a complete and accurate image of the world is the main wealth of a person, the main capital, which cannot be bought with all the wealth of the world, nor conquered by defeating other peoples and states. The complete image of the world includes such personal characteristics as:

1. Friendship is a personal relationship between people, determined by spiritual closeness and common interests. Due to the fact that emotional experiences play a very important role in friendship, its formation and development depends on the frequency of contacts, belonging to the same group, and joint activities. If youth friendship, characterized by emotional attachment, is based primarily on joint activities, then with age a genuine need for another person as an individual is formed, based on the development of the need to realize oneself, to correlate one’s experiences with the experiences of another person. On this basis, an intensified search for a friend is carried out, and the possibility of idealizing him arises. For an adult, the grounds for friendship are more differentiated, since friendly feelings can be localized in love, family or parental relationships.

2. Aspiration is a motive that is not presented to the subject in its objective content, due to which the dynamic side of activity comes to the fore.

3. Initiative is a manifestation of activity by a person that is not stimulated from the outside and is not determined by circumstances beyond his control.

5. Will – a person’s ability to achieve his goals in the conditions of overcoming obstacles. The basis for the implementation of volitional processes is the characteristic mediation of human behavior through the use of socially developed tools or means. It is the basis for the process, which has significant individual variations, of conscious control over certain emotional states or motives. Due to this control, the ability to act contrary to strong motivation or to ignore strong emotional experiences is acquired. The development of will in a child, beginning in early childhood, is carried out through the formation of conscious control over immediate behavior when mastering certain rules of behavior.

6. Desire – desire and willingness to act in a certain way.

As well as functional mechanisms such as:

7. Decisiveness – readiness to move on to practical actions, a formed intention to perform a certain act.

8. Self-confidence is a person’s readiness to solve quite complex problems, when the level of aspirations does not decrease only due to fear of failure. If the level of ability is significantly lower than that required for the intended action, then overconfidence occurs.

9. Perseverance is a personal quality. Characterized by the ability to overcome external and internal obstacles in achieving the task.

10. Attention is the process of organizing information coming from outside in terms of the priority of the tasks facing the subject. There are voluntary attention, caused by setting a conscious goal, and involuntary attention, represented by an orienting reflex that occurs when exposed to unexpected and new stimuli. The effectiveness of attention can be determined by the level of attention (intensity, concentration), volume (breadth, distribution of attention), speed of switching and stability.

11. Concentration – the concentration of a person’s attention.

An important role is played in compiling a complete picture of the world by vital signs such as:

12. Activity is a concept that indicates the ability of living beings to produce spontaneous movements and change under the influence of external or internal stimuli - irritants.

13. Escapism is a person’s escape from reality into the world of fantasy and dreams.

14. Interest is an emotional state associated with the implementation of cognitive activity and characterized by the incentive of this activity.

The picture of the world is built according to the type of model - Man does not capture element by element and passively the “material inventory” of the external world and does not apply those primitive methods of dividing the world into elements that first come to mind, but imposes on it those operators that model this world, “casting "model into successively refined and deepened "forms". This process of mental modeling of the world is actively implemented under all conditions. Moreover, action is possible only when the subject, through his existing picture of the world and its simultaneous transformation, isolates discrete problem situations from continuous reality. It is with the division of continuous reality into some conditional segments (situations) that Yu.M. Lotman connects the meaning and purpose of actions. "What has no end has no meaning. Meaning is associated with the segmentation of non-discrete space."

The image of the World (model of the world), thus, must have “...an internal excess of space.” This excess is a condition for adequate division of reality, a source of meaning and goal formation. Due to the uniqueness of every person’s life, the image of the world is always individual. Naturally, it is constantly adjusted in accordance with new information, but at the same time, the main features remain unchanged for a long time.

The structure of the image of the world includes values, meanings and a system of space-time coordinates. It is customary to view the image of the world as a static formation, as a passive repository of knowledge. How can the temporal be preserved in concepts and representations? The concepts of birth and death, beginning and end, emergence and disappearance, creation and destruction are formed in a person gradually, starting from early childhood. Together with the concepts of rhythm, movement, speed, acceleration, anticipation and immobility and many others, they are part of the arsenal of temporary concepts that allow the subject to grasp and understand the picture of the world.

It is important to consider the living functioning of the image of the world during the execution of an action in a situation. The image of the world is realized in action. The projection of the image of the world onto perception gives emotional accentuations, semantic, motivational differentiations in grasping the current situation. Each situation has its own changes.

It is necessary to remember the influence of the image of the world on the mental work of the subject.

""We oppose the one-dimensionality, linearity and homogeneity of time in the model of the image of the world. It is necessary to find a way to combine spatial, temporal and semantic. The idea of heterogeneity of time and semantic differentiations in cognitive maps of time."

The image of the world can be considered as an organized system of personal cognitions of an organism that constitute a model or image of reality (that is, “the image in which things exist”). This suggests that personality cognitions are directly based on cognitive structure, and indirectly based on mental and psychological structures. This further suggests that images of the world tend to be “encapsulated,” that is, they are smaller than the whole of reality. The image of the world has the property of openness, that is, it is capable of changes as the subject develops and self-develops.

A. Leontiev’s work emphasizes “a person’s image of the world is a universal form of organizing his knowledge, which determines the possibilities of cognition and behavior control.”

In the theory of activity, the integrity of the image of the world is derived from the unity of the objective world reflected in it and the systematic nature of human activity. The active nature of the image of the world is manifested in its presence, along with the coordinates of space and time characteristic of the physical world, of a fifth quasi-dimension: a system of meanings that embodies the results of cumulative social practice. Their inclusion in the individual act of cognition is ensured by the participation of a holistic image of the world in the generation of cognitive hypotheses, which act as the starting point in the construction of new images.

The continuous generation of an interconnected system of cognitive hypotheses that meet external stimuli is an expression of the active nature of the image of the world - as opposed to traditional ideas about cognitive images as arising as a result of reflexive processes - reactive, unfolding in response to external influences.

The image of the world and concepts close to it - a picture of the world, a model of the universe, a scheme of reality, a cognitive map, etc. – have different contents in the context of different psychological theories.

The image of the world as a cognitive map

Research into the model of the world, as a reflection of a person’s subjective experience, was undertaken primarily within the framework of the cognitive direction, in connection with the problem of perception, storage and processing of information in the human mind. The main function of consciousness is defined as knowledge of the world, which is expressed in cognitive activity. At the same time, the volume and type of processing of active information coming from the external environment depends on the subject’s assumption regarding the nature of the perceived object, on the choice of the method of describing it. The collection of information and its further processing is determined by the cognitive structures available in the subject’s mind – “maps” or “schemas” with the help of which a person structures perceived stimuli.

The term “cognitive map” was first proposed by E. Tolman, who defined it as an indicative scheme - an active structure aimed at searching for information. W. Neisser noted that cognitive maps and schemas can manifest themselves as images, since the experience of an image also represents a certain internal aspect of readiness to perceive an imaginary object. Images, according to W. Neisser, are “not pictures in the head, but plans for collecting information from a potentially accessible environment.” Cognitive maps exist not only in the field of perception of the physical world, but also at the level of social behavior; any choice of action involves anticipation of a future situation.

The image of the world as semantic memory

The issue of representing the world to a person was also considered in studies of the processes of memorization and storage of information, and the structure of memory. Thus, episodic memory is contrasted with semantic memory, understood as a certain subjective thesaurus that a person possesses - organized knowledge about verbal symbols, their meanings and relationships between them, as well as the rules and procedures for their use. Semantic memory stores the generalized and structured experience of the subject, which has two levels of organization: categorical (pragmatic), which allows one to determine whether the concept of an object belongs to a certain semantic class and its relationship to other objects of the same class, and syntagmatic (schematic), describing simultaneously existing relationships between objects or a sequence of actions.

The image of the world as a system of meanings and a field of meaning

The concept of “image of the world” in Russian psychology began to be actively discussed by A.N. Leontyev, who defined it as a complex multi-level formation with a system of meanings and a field of meaning. “The function of the image: self-reflection of the world. This function of nature’s “intervention” into itself through the activity of subjects, mediated by the image of nature, that is, the image of subjectivity, that is, the image of the world<…>. A world that reveals itself through a person to himself.

A.N. Leontyev noted that the problem of the psyche should be posed in terms of constructing in the individual’s mind a multidimensional image of the world as an image of reality. Based on the theoretical views of A.N. Leontyev, in the conscious picture of the world three layers of consciousness can be distinguished: 1 – sensory images; 2 – meanings, the carriers of which are sign systems formed on the basis of the internalization of objective and operational meanings; 3 – personal meaning.

The first layer is the sensory fabric of consciousness - these are sensory experiences that “form the obligatory texture of the image of the world.” The second layer of consciousness consists of meanings. The carriers of meaning are objects of material and spiritual culture, norms and patterns of behavior enshrined in rituals and traditions, sign systems and, above all, language. The meaning records socially developed ways of acting with reality and in reality. The internalization of objective and operational meanings based on sign systems leads to the emergence of concepts. The third layer of consciousness forms personal meanings. That is, what an individual puts into specific events, phenomena or concepts, the awareness of which may significantly differ from the objective meaning. Personal meaning expresses the “meaning-for-me” of life objects and phenomena and reflects a person’s biased attitude towards the world.

A person not only reflects the objective content of certain events and phenomena, but at the same time records his attitude towards them, experienced in the form of interest and emotion. The system of meanings is constantly changing and developing, ultimately determining the meaning of any individual activity and life in general.

The image of the world as a whole

A.N. Leontyev revealed the differences between the image of the world and the sensory image: the first is amodal, integrative and generalized, and the second is modal and always specific. He emphasized that the basis of the individual image of the world is not only the sensory, but the entire sociocultural experience of the subject. The psychological image of the world is dynamic and dialectical; it is constantly changing with new sensory perceptions and incoming information. It is noted that the main contribution to the process of constructing an image of an object or situation is made not by individual sensory impressions, but by the image of the world as a whole. That is, the image of the world is a background that precedes any sensory impression and realizes it as a sensory image of an external object through its content.

The image of the world and existential consciousness

V.P. Zinchenko developed the idea of A.N. Leontyev about the reflective function of consciousness, including the construction of emotionally charged relationships to the world, to oneself, to people. V.P. Zinchenko identified two layers of consciousness: existential, including the experience of movements, actions, as well as sensory images; and reflective, combining meanings and meanings. Thus, everyday and scientific knowledge correlates with meanings, and the world of human values, experiences, and emotions correlates with meaning.

Image of the world and human activity

According to S.D. Smirnov, the image of the world is primary in relation to sensory impressions from the perceived stimulus; any emerging image, being a part, an element of the image of the world as a whole, does not so much form but confirm and clarify it. “This is a system of expectations (expectations) that confirms the object - hypotheses on the basis of which the structuring and objective identification of individual sensory impressions takes place.” S.D. Smirnov notes that a sensory image taken out of context in itself does not carry any information, since “it is not the image that orients, but the contribution of this image to the picture of the world.” Moreover, to construct an image of external reality, the primary thing is the actualization of a certain part of the already existing image of the world, and the clarification, correction or enrichment of the actualized part of the image of the world occurs secondarily. Thus, it is not the world of images, but the image of the world that regulates and directs human activity.

The image of the world is a fundamental condition of the mental life of the subject

However, many researchers offer a broader understanding of the image of the world; its representation at all levels of human mental organization. So, V.V. Petukhov distinguishes in the image of the world basic, “nuclear” structures, reflecting deep connections between man and the world, independent of reflection, and “superficial” ones, associated with conscious, purposeful knowledge of the world. The idea of the world is defined as a fundamental condition of the mental life of the subject.

The image of the world as an “integrator” of human interaction with reality

E.Yu. Artemyeva understands the image of the world as an “integrator” of traces of human interaction with objective reality. She builds a three-level system model of the image of the world.

The first level – the “perceptual world” – is characterized by systematic meanings and modal perceptual, sensory objectivity.

The second level – “picture of the world” – is represented by relationships, and not by sensory images, which retain their modal specificity.

The third level – “image of the world” – is a layer of amodal structures that are formed during processing of the previous level.

The image of the world and the life path of the individual

In the works of S.L. Rubinshteina, B.G. Ananyeva, K.A. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya and others, the image of the world is considered in the context of a person’s life path, through the system of cognition of being in the world. It is revealed that the formation of an image of the world occurs in the process of a person’s cognition of the world around him and comprehension of significant events in his life. The world for a person appears in the specifics of the reality of existence and the developing “I” of a person.

World image and lifestyle

S.L. Rubinstein characterizes man as a subject of life, in his own existence and in relation to the world and other people, emphasizing the integrity, unity of man and the world. The world, in his understanding, is “a set of people and things communicating with each other, or more precisely, a set of things and phenomena related to people,<…>an organized hierarchy of different ways of being”; “a set of things and people, which includes what relates to a person and what he relates to by virtue of his essence, what can be significant for him, what he is aimed at.” That is, a person as a whole is included in relationships with the world, acting, on the one hand, as a part of it, and on the other, as a subject cognizing and transforming it. It is through a person that consciousness enters the world, being becomes conscious, acquires meaning, becoming the world - a part and product of human development. In this case, not only human activity plays an important role, but also contemplation as an activity to understand the world.

As a strictly human way of existence, a person identifies “life”, which manifests itself in two forms: “as the real causality of another, expressing the transition to another... and, secondly, as an ideal intentional “projection” of oneself - inherent only in a specifically human way of life” .

S.L. Rubinstein identified two layers, levels of life: involvement in direct relationships and reflection, comprehension of life. S.L. Rubinstein emphasized the importance of not only the relationship “man - world”, but also the relationship of a person with other people, in which the formation of consciousness and self-awareness occurs. “In reality, we always have two interconnected relationships - man and being, man and another person<…>these two relationships are interconnected and interdependent.”

By correlating the content of his life with the lives of other people, the meaning of life is revealed to a person. The world in the works of S.L. Rubinstein is considered in its infinity and continuous variability, which is reflected in the understanding of the specifics of his knowledge and human interaction with him. “The property of the world appears in their dynamic, changing relationship to man, and in this regard, not the last, but the main, decisive role is played by the worldview, a person’s own spiritual appearance.” Ideas S.L. Rubinstein are significant for understanding the problem of a person’s life path through the context of understanding his image of the world and himself in the world.

The image of the world is a person’s worldview in the context of the realities of life

For us, a special place for understanding the phenomenon of the image of the world is occupied by the concept of development and existence of personality by V.S. Mukhina. The problem of the image of the world is considered here, on the one hand, when discussing the development of the internal position of the individual and his self-awareness, and on the other hand, when considering the ethnic characteristics of the picture of the world. In any case, this problem is discussed in the context of the relationship between the internal space and self-awareness of the individual with the peculiarities of the realities of existence.

According to the concept of V.S. Mukhina, a person builds his worldview, his ideology on the basis of an internal position, through the formation of a system of personal meanings in the context of the peculiarities of the realities of his life. Historically and culturally determined realities of human existence are divided into:

1 – reality of the objective world;

2 – reality of figurative-sign systems;

3 – reality of social space;

4 – natural reality.

Worldview in this regard is presented as a generalized system of a person’s views on the world as a whole, on the place of humanity in the world and on one’s individual place in it. Worldview according to V.S. Mukhina is defined as a person’s understanding of the meaning of his behavior, activities, position, as well as the history and prospects for the development of the human race. The meaningful filling of the image of the world in the process of development of the individual and his self-awareness is mediated by a single mechanism of identification and isolation. The idea of the world is formed in the context of a certain culture in which a person was born and raised. It is noted that “the picture of the world is built in the child’s consciousness primarily under the influence of those positions that are characteristic of adults influencing the child’s consciousness.” Thus, consideration of the features of the image of the world must be carried out in conjunction with the realities of human development and existence.

The structure of self-awareness – the image of oneself in the world

V.S. Mukhina revealed that in the internal psychological space of a person born into this world, through identification, self-awareness is built, which has a structure that is universal for all cultures and social communities. “The structure of a person’s self-awareness is built within the system that generates it - the human community to which this person belongs.” In the process of growing up, the structural links of self-awareness, thanks to a single mechanism of personality development, identification and isolation, acquire a unique content, which at the same time carries the specifics of a particular sociocultural community. The structural links of self-awareness, the content of which is specific in various ethnic, cultural, social and other conditions, are essentially the image of oneself in the world and act as the basis for the vision of the world as a whole.

We can conclude that the image of the world forms the meaningful side of human consciousness and, together with it, has emotional and cognitive unity. Changes occurring in the world, transformations of the realities of human existence meaningfully change the content of the structural links of a person’s self-awareness and modify the image of the world. At the same time, the structure of self-awareness and the image of the world act as a stable system of connections between a person and the world, allowing him to maintain integrity and identity with himself and the world around him.

As is known, psychology and psychophysiology of perception are characterized by perhaps the largest number of studies and publications, an immensely huge number of accumulated facts. Research is conducted at a variety of levels: morphophysiological, psychophysical, psychological, theoretical-cognitive, cellular, phenomenological (“phenographic” - K. Holzkamp) 2 , at the level of micro- and macroanalysis. The phylogenesis, ontogenesis of perception, its functional development and the processes of its restoration are studied. A wide variety of specific methods, procedures, and indicators are used. Different approaches and interpretations have become widespread: physicalist, cybernetic, logical-mathematical, “model”. Many phenomena have been described, including absolutely amazing ones that remain unexplained.

In the psychology of perception, physiological idealism, parallelism and epiphenomenalism, subjective sensationalism, and vulgar mechanism are essentially preserved in an implicit form. The influence of neopositivism is not weakening, but increasing. Reductionism poses a particularly great danger to psychology. destructive the very subject of psychological science. As a result, outright eclecticism triumphs in works that claim to cover a wide range of issues. The pitiful state of the theory of perception despite the wealth of accumulated concrete knowledge testifies

1 Leontyev AM. Selected psychological works: In 2 vols. M.: Pedagogy,
1983. T.I.S. 251-261.

2 See Holzkamp K. Sinnliehe Erkenntnis: Historischen Upsprung und gesellschaftliche
Function der Wahrnehmung. Frankfurt/Main, 1963.

Leontyev A, N. Image of the world

That there is now an urgent need to reconsider the fundamental direction in which research is moving.

Of course, all Soviet authors proceed from the fundamental principles of Marxism, such as the recognition of the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of spirit, consciousness, and psyche; from the position that sensations and perceptions are a reflection of objective reality, a function of the brain. But we are talking about something else: about the embodiment of these provisions in their specific content, in the practice of research psychological work; about their creative development in the very, figuratively speaking, flesh of perception research. And this requires a radical transformation of the very formulation of the problem of the psychology of perception and the rejection of a number of imaginary postulates that, by inertia, are preserved in it. The possibility of such a transformation of the problem of perception in psychology will be discussed.

The general point that I will try to defend today is that the problem of perception must be posed and developed How the problem of the psychology of the image of the world.(I note, by the way, that the theory of reflection in German is Bildtheorie, i.e., the theory of the image.) Marxism poses the question: “... sensation, perception, representation and in general the consciousness of a person,” wrote Lenin, “is taken as the image of the objective reality" 1.

Lenin also formulated an extremely important idea about the fundamental path along which a consistently materialist analysis of the problem should follow. This is the path from the external objective world to sensation, perception, image. The opposite path, Lenin emphasizes, is the path that inevitably leads to idealism 2 .

Animals and humans live in an objective world, which from the very beginning appears as four-dimensional: three-dimensional space and time (movement), which represents “objectively real forms of being” 3.

This position should by no means remain for psychology only a general philosophical premise, which supposedly does not directly affect the specific psychological study of perception, the understanding of its mechanics.

1 Lenin V.I. Floors, collection op. T. 18. pp. 282-283

2 See ibid. P. 52.

3 Ibid. P. 181.

532 Subject

Nizmov. On the contrary, it makes you see many things differently, not the way it has developed within the framework of bourgeois psychology. This also applies to understanding the development of sense organs during biological evolution.

From the above Marxist position it follows that the life of animals from the very beginning takes place in a four-dimensional objective world, that the adaptation of animals occurs as an adaptation to the connections that fill the world of things, their changes in time, their movement; that, accordingly, the evolution of the senses reflects the development of adaptation to the four-dimensionality of the world, i.e. provides orientation in the world as it is, and not in its individual elements.

Turning to man, to man's consciousness, I must introduce one more concept - the concept of the fifth quasi-dimension in which the objective world opens to man. This - semantic field, system of meanings.

The introduction of this concept requires a more detailed explanation.

The fact is that when I perceive an object, I perceive it not only in its spatial dimensions and time, but also in its meaning. When, for example, I glance at a wristwatch, then, strictly speaking, I do not have an image of the individual features of this object, their sum, their “associative set.” This, by the way, is the basis for criticism of associative theories of perception. It is also not enough to say that I first of all have a picture of their form, as Gestalt psychologists insist on this. I perceive not the form, but an object that has a watch.

The thesis I have expressed is proven by many facts, both obtained in experiments and known from everyday life. For psychologists concerned with perception there is no need to list these facts. I will only note that they appear especially clearly in image-representations.

The traditional interpretation here consists of attributing properties such as meaningfulness or categoricality to perception itself.

Leontyev A, N. Image of the world

As for the explanation of these properties of perception, they, as R. Gregory 1 correctly says, at best remain within the boundaries of the theory of G. Helmholtz. Let me note right away that the deeply hidden danger here lies in the logical necessity of ultimately appealing to innate categories.

The general idea I defend can be expressed in two propositions. The first is that the properties of meaningfulness and categoricality are characteristics of the conscious image of the world, not immanent in the image itself, his consciousness. They, these characteristics, express the objectivity revealed by the total social practice, idealized in a system of meanings that each individual finds as existing-outside-him- perceived, assimilated - and therefore the same as what is included in his image of the world.

Let me express this differently: meanings appear not as what lies in front of things, but as what lies behind the appearance of things- in the known objective connections of the objective world, in various systems in which they only exist and only reveal their properties. Meanings thus carry a special dimensionality. This is dimension intrasystem connections of the objective objective world. She is his fifth quasi-dimension!

Let's summarize.

The thesis I defend is that in psychology the problem of perception should be posed as the problem of constructing a multidimensional image of the world, an image of reality, in the individual’s consciousness. That, in other words, the psychology of image (perception) is concrete scientific knowledge about how, in the process of their activities, individuals build an image of the world - the world in which they live, act, which they themselves remake and partially create; this is also knowledge about how the image of the world functions, mediating their activities in objectively real world.

Here I must interrupt myself with some illustrative digressions. I remember an argument between one of our philosophers and J. Piaget when he came to us.

“You succeed,” said this philosopher, turning to Piaget, “
that the child, the subject in general, builds the world with the help of a system of operations. How
Is it possible to take this point of view? This is idealism.

“I don’t support this point of view at all,” answered J. Piaget, “in
on this problem my views coincide with Marxism, and are completely wrong
It’s correct to consider me an idealist!

But how, in this case, do you claim that for a child the world
is this how its logic constructs it?

J. Piaget never gave a clear answer to this question. The answer, however, exists, and it is very simple. We are really building, but not the World, but the Image, actively “scooping out” it, as I usually say,

1 See Gregory R. Intelligent eye. M., 1972.

534 Topic 7. Man as a subject of knowledge

From objective reality. The process of perception is the process, the means of this “scooping out”, and the main thing is not how, with the help of what means this process occurs, but what is obtained as a result of this process. I answer: the image of the objective world, objective reality. The image is more adequate or less adequate, more complete or less complete... sometimes even false...

Let me make one more, completely different kind of digression.

It goes without saying that by this I do not at all deny the necessity and even inevitability of analytical study, the isolation of certain particular processes and even individual perceptual phenomena for the purpose of studying them in vitro. You simply cannot do without this! My idea is completely different, namely that by isolating the process under study in an experiment, we are dealing with some abstraction, therefore, the problem of returning to the integral subject of study in its real nature, origin and specific functioning immediately arises.

In relation to the study of perception, this is a return to the construction of an image in the individual’s consciousness external multidimensional world, peace as he is, in which we live, in which we act, but in which our abstractions themselves do not “dwell”, just as, for example, the so thoroughly studied and carefully studied “phi-movement” does not live in it.

Here again I am forced to make a digression.

For many decades, research in the psychology of perception dealt primarily with the perception of two-dimensional objects - lines, geometric shapes, and generally images on a plane. On this basis, the main direction in the psychology of the image arose - Gestalt psychology.

1 See Gregory R. Eye and brain. M., 1970. S. 124-125

Leontyev A.N. Image of the world

At first it was singled out as a special “quality of form” - Gestalt-qualitat; then in the integrity of the form they saw the key to solving the problem of the image. The law of “good form”, the law of pregnancy, the law of figure and background were formulated.

This psychological theory, generated by the study of flat images, turned out to be “flat” itself. Essentially, it closed the possibility of the “real world - mental gestalt” movement, as well as the “psychic gestalt - brain” movement. Meaningful processes turned out to be replaced by relations of projectivity and isomorphism. V. Köhler publishes the book “Physical Gestalts” 1 (it seems that K. Goldschtein wrote about them for the first time), and K. Koffka already directly states that the solution to the contradiction of spirit and matter, psyche and brain is that the third is primary and this third is Gestalt - form. A far from best solution is proposed in the Leipzig version of Gestalt psychology: form is a subjective a priori category.

How is the perception of three-dimensional things interpreted in Gestalt psychology? The answer is simple: it consists in transferring the laws of perception of projections on a plane to the perception of three-dimensional things. Things in the three-dimensional world thus appear to be closed by planes. The main law of the field of perception is the law of “figure and ground”. But this is not a law of perception at all, but a phenomenon of perception of a two-dimensional figure on a two-dimensional background. It does not refer to the perception of things in the three-dimensional world, but to some of their abstraction, which is their contour 2. In the real world, the certainty of an integral thing appears through its connections with other things, and not through its “contour” 3.

In other words, with its abstractions, Gestalt theory replaced the concept of objective peace concept fields.

It took years in psychology to experimentally separate and contrast them. It seems that this was done best by J. Gibson, who found a way to see the surrounding objects, the surrounding environment as consisting of planes, but then this environment became illusory and lost its reality for the observer. It was possible to subjectively create precisely the “field”; however, it turned out to be inhabited by ghosts. Thus, in the psychology of perception, a very important distinction arose: the “visible field” and the “visible world” 4.

In recent years, in particular in studies conducted at the Department of General Psychology, this distinction has received a fundamental theoretical

1 Kdhler W. Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und stationaren Zustand. Brounschweig, 1920.

2 Or, if you prefer, a plane.

3 That is operations of selection and vision of form.

4 See Gibson J.J. The Perception of the Visual World. L.; N.Y., 1950.

536 Subject 7. Man as a subject of knowledge

tic lighting, and the discrepancy between the projection picture and the objective image is a fairly convincing experimental 1 justification 2 .

I settled on the Gestalt theory of perception because it particularly clearly shows the results of reducing the image of the objective world to individual phenomena, relationships, characteristics, abstracted from the real process of its generation in the human mind, a process taken in its entirety. It is necessary, therefore, to return to this process, the necessity of which lies in the life of a person, in the development of his activity in an objectively multidimensional world. The starting point for this must be the world itself, and not the subjective phenomena caused by it.

Here I come to the most difficult, one might say, critical point in the train of thought I am trying out.

I want to immediately express this point in the form of a categorical thesis, deliberately omitting all the necessary reservations.

This thesis is that the world in its distance from the subject is amodal. We are talking, of course, about the meaning of the term “modality”, which it has in psychophysics, psychophysiology and psychology, when we, for example, talk about the form of an object given in visual or tactile modality or in modalities together.

In putting forward this thesis, I proceed from a very simple and, in my opinion, completely justified distinction between properties of two kinds.

One is those properties of inanimate things that are revealed in interactions with things (with “other” things), i.e. in object-object interaction. Some properties are revealed in interaction with things of a special kind - with living sentient organisms, i.e. in the “object-subject” interaction. They are found in specific effects depending on the properties of the subject's receiving organs. In this sense they are modal, i.e. subjective.

So, the fact is that one and the same property - in this case, the physical property of the body - causes, by influencing a person, a complete

1 It was also possible to find some objective indicators that subdivide the visible field
and objects, a picture of the object. After all, the image of an object has such a characteristic
as a measurable constancy, i.e. coefficient of constancy. But as soon as
the objective world escapes, transforming into a field, so the field reveals it
aconstancy. This means that by measurement we can separate the objects of the field and the objects of the world.

2 Logvinenko AD., Stolik V.V. Study of perception under field inversion conditions
vision // Ergonomics. Proceedings of VNIITE. 1973. Vol. 6.

Leontyev A.I. Image of the world

Chennault's impressions are different in modality. After all, “shine” is not like “smoothness,” and “dullness” is not like “roughness.” Therefore, sensory modalities cannot be given a “permanent registration” in the external objective world. I emphasize external because man, with all his sensations, also belongs to the objective world, there is also a thing among things.

Engels has one remarkable idea that the properties that we learn about through sight, hearing, smell, etc., are not absolutely different; that our self absorbs various sensory impressions, combining them into a whole as "joint"(Engels italics!) properties. “To explain these different properties, accessible only to different sense organs... is the task of science...” 1.

120 years have passed. And finally, in the 60s, if I’m not mistaken, the idea of merging in a person these “joint”, as Engels called them, split by sense organs properties has become an experimentally established fact.

I mean the study by I.Rock 2.

In his experiments, subjects were shown a square of hard plastic through a reducing lens. “The subject took the square with his fingers from below, through a piece of material, so that he could not see his hand, otherwise he could understand that he was looking through a reducing lens... We... asked him to report his impression of the size of the square... Some We asked the subjects to draw a square of the corresponding size as accurately as possible, which requires the participation of both vision and touch. Others had to choose a square of equal size from a series of squares presented only visually, and still others had to choose from a series of squares whose size could only be determined by touch...

The subjects had a certain holistic impression of the size of the square... The perceived size of the square... was approximately the same as in the control experiment with visual perception alone.”

So, the objective world, taken as a system of only “object-object” connections (i.e. the world without animals, before animals and humans), is amodal. Only with the emergence of subject-object connections and interactions do 3 modalities arise that are multivariate and, moreover, vary from type to type.

This is why, as soon as we abstract from subject-object interactions, sensory modalities fall out of our descriptions of reality.

1 Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 20. P. 548.

2 See Rock I., Harris C. Vision and touch // Perception. Mechanisms and models. M.,
1974. pp. 276-279.

3 I mean the zoological species.

538 Topic 7. Man as a subject of knowledge

From the duality of connections, interactions "0-0" and “OS”, provided they coexist, and the well-known duality of characteristics occurs: for example, such and such a part of the spectrum of electromagnetic waves and, say, red light. At the same time, one should not just miss that both characteristics express “the physical relationship between physical things” 1 .

A further naturally arising question is the question about the nature, origin of sensory modalities, about their evolution, development, about the necessity, non-randomness of their changing “sets” and different, to use Engels’s term, “combinations” of properties reflected in them. This is an unexplored (or almost unexplored) problem in science. What is the key approach (provision) for an adequate solution to this problem? Here I must repeat my main idea: in psychology it should be solved as a problem of the phylogenetic development of the image of the world, because:

(1) an “indicative basis” for behavior is necessary, and this is an image,

(2) this or that way of life creates the need for a corresponding
th orienting, controlling, mediating image of it into an object
nom world.

Briefly speaking. We must proceed not from comparative anatomy and physiology, but from ecology in its relation to the morphology of sensory organs, etc. Engels writes: “What is light and what is not light depends on whether the animal is nocturnal or diurnal” 2 .

Particularly important is the question of “combinations”,

1. The combination (of modalities) becomes, but in relation to
feelings, image; she is his condition 3. (Like an item - a “property node”,
so the image is a “node of modal sensations.”)

2. Compatibility expresses spatiality things like
mu existence of them).

3. But it also expresses their existence in time, therefore the image
fundamentally there is a product not only of the simultaneous, but also successively-

1 Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 23. P. 62.

2 Marx K., Engels F. Op. T.20. P. 603.

3 B.M. Velichkovsky drew my attention to one study dating back to the early
infancy: Aronson£., Rosenbloom S. Space perception in early infancy:
perception within a common auditory visual space // Science. 1972. V. 172. P.1161-1163.
One experiment examined a newborn's reaction to bending and
talking mother. The fact is that if the sound comes from one side and the mother's face
is on the other, then there is no reaction. Similar data, both psychological and
biological, allow us to talk about perception as a process of image formation. We are not
we can start with the elements of perception, because the formation of an image presupposes
togetherness. One property cannot characterize an object. The subject is a "node"
properties". A picture, an image of the world, arises when the properties are “tied in a knot”, from this
development begins. First, a relation of compatibility arises, and then fissionability
shared with other properties.

Leontyev A.N. Image of the world

th combining, merging 1. The most characteristic phenomenon of combining viewpoints is children's drawings!

General conclusion: every actual influence fits into the image of the world, i.e. into some “whole” 2.

When I say that everything relevant, i.e. now the property influencing the perceptual systems “fits” into the image of the world, then this is not an empty, but a very meaningful position; it means that:

(1) the boundary of an object is established on the object, i.e. department
it occurs not on the sensory, but at the intersections of the visual axes.
Therefore, when using a probe, a shift in sensitivity occurs 3. This
means it doesn't exist objectification of sensations, perception For the Cree
tic of “objectification”, i.e. attributing secondary characteristics to real ones
world, lies a critique of subjective idealistic concepts. Otherwise
In saying that, I stand by the fact that It is not perception that posits itself in the object, but
item- through activities- puts himself in the image. Perception
and there is his “subjective position”. (Position for the subject!);

(2) inscription into the image of the world also expresses the fact that the object is not
consists of “sides”; he acts for us as single continuous;
discontinuity is only its moment*. The phenomenon of the “core” of the subject appears
ta. This phenomenon expresses objectivity perception. Processes
acceptances are subordinate to this core. Psychological proof: a) c
the brilliant observation of G. Helmholtz: “not everything that is given in sensation
enters into the “image of representation”” (equivalent to the fall of the subjective
idealism in the style of Johannes Müller); b) in the phenomenon of additions to pseudo-
scopic image (I see edges coming from suspended in space
plane) and in experiments with inversion, with adaptation to optical distortion
wives' world.

So far I have touched upon the characteristics of the image of the world that are common to animals and humans. But the process of generating a picture of the world, like the picture of the world itself, its characteristics change qualitatively when we move on to man.

1 None of us, getting up from the desk, will push back the chair so that it
hit a book display if he knows that the display is behind this chair. World
behind me is present in the picture of the world, but is absent in the actual visual world.
Because we do not have panoramic vision, the panoramic picture of the world does not disappear, it
It just appears differently.

2 See Uexkull V., Kriszat G. Streifziige durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen.
Berlin, 1934.

3 When the probe probes an object, the sensor moves from the hand to
tip of the probe. Sensitivity there... I can stop probing this object with a probe
move your hand slightly along the probe. And then the sensitivity returns to the fingers, and
the tip of the probe loses its sensitivity.

4 “Tunnel effect”: when something interrupts its movement and, as a consequence of its
influence, it does not interrupt its existence for me.

540 Topic 7. Man as a subject of knowledge

In humans the world acquires a fifth quasi-dimension in its image. In no case is it subjectively ascribed to the world! This is a transition through sensuality beyond the boundaries of sensuality, through sensory modalities to the amodal world. The objective world appears in meaning, i.e. the picture of the world is filled with meanings.

Deepening knowledge requires the removal of modalities and consists in such a removal, therefore science does not speak the language of modalities, this language is expelled from it. The picture of the world includes the invisible properties of objects: a) amo-distant- discovered by industry, experiment, thinking; b) "supersensible"- functional properties, qualities, such as “cost”, which are not contained in the object’s substrate. They are represented in meanings!

Here it is especially important to emphasize that the nature of meaning is not only not in the body of the sign, but also not in formal sign operations, not in operations of meaning. She - in the entirety of human practice, which in its idealized forms is included in the picture of the world.

Otherwise, it can be said this way: knowledge and thinking are not separated from the process of forming a sensory image of the world, but enter into it, adding to sensuality. [Knowledge is included, science is not!]

Some general conclusions.

1. The formation of a person’s image of the world is his transition beyond
"directly sensory picture." An image is not a picture!

2. Sensuality, sensory modalities are increasingly “indifferent”
" The image of the world of a deaf-blind person is no different from the image of the world of a sighted-hearing person.
go y but created from a different building material, from the material of other mo
ranges, woven from a different sensual fabric. Therefore he saves
its simultaneity, and this is a problem for research!

3. “Depersonalization” of modality is not at all the same as
impersonality of the sign in relation to the meaning.

Sensory modalities in no way encode reality. They carry it within themselves 1 . That is why the disintegration of sensuality (its perversion) gives rise to the psychological unreality of the world, the phenomenon of its “disappearance”. This is known and proven.

4. Sensory modalities form the obligatory texture of the image
for peace. But the texture of the image is not equivalent to the image itself! So in painting
behind the strokes of oil the object shines through. When I look at the picture
new object - I don’t see the strokes, and vice versa! Texture, material is removed
image, and is not destroyed in it.

1 I am always saddened to read on the pages of modern psychological literature such statements as “coding in such and such sensations.” What does it mean? Conditionally transferred? There is no relationship. It is established, imposed by us. No coding needed! The concept is not suitable!

Leontyev A.N. Image of the world

The image, the picture of the world, includes not the image, but the depicted (only reflection reveals imagery, reflection, and this is important!).

So, the inclusion of living organisms, the systems of processes of their organs, their brains in the objective, objective-discrete world leads to the fact that the system of these processes is endowed with content different from their own content, content belonging to the objective world itself.

The problem of such “endowment” gives rise to the subject of psychological science!

In the works of researchers dealing with the problems of forming an image of the world, there is no established conceptual apparatus; there are a number of categories that do not have a single interpretation. Appeal to the sphere of formation of the image of the world is found in various fields of knowledge: psychology, pedagogy, philosophy, ethnology, cultural studies, sociology, etc. The category “image of the world” is found relatively recently and is designated as a “snapshot” of the work of consciousness, as the source of the emergence of images.

In the field of psychology, the theoretical development of the category “image of the world” is presented in the works of G.M. Andreeva, E.P. Belinskaya, V.I. Brulya, G.D. Gacheva, E.V. Galazhinsky, T.G. Grushevitskaya, L.N. Gumileva, V.E. Klochko, O.M. Krasnoryadtseva, V.G. Krysko, B. S. Kukushkina, Z.I. Levina, A.N. Leontyeva, S.V. Lurie, V.I. Matisa, Yu.P. Platonova, A.P. Sadokhina, E.A. Sarakueva, G.F. Sevilgaeva, S.D. Smirnova, T.G. Stefanenko, L.D. Stolyarenko, V.N. Filippova, K. Jaspers et al.

The concept of “image of the world” was first introduced in psychology by A.N. Leontyev, he defined this category as a mental reflection taken in the system of connections and relationships of the subject with the world around him. In his works, the image of the world is considered as a holistic, multi-level system of a person’s ideas about the world, other people, himself and his activities. A.N. Leontyev studied the process of the emergence of the image of the world, explaining it by its active nature, which defines the image as the moment of its movement. The image arises only in activity and is therefore inseparable from it; the problem of generating an objective image of the world is a problem of perception, “the world in its distance from the subject is amodal.”

Based on the provisions of A.N. Leontyev, his research N.G. Osukhova builds through the prism of a person’s subjective image of the world, comparing it with the concept of “myth” in the cultural sense that this term has acquired today. She defines the image of the world as “a person’s individual myth about himself, other people, the life world during his life.” This researcher considers this category as a holistic mental formation, noting that it exists at the cognitive and figurative-emotional level. Considering the components included in the image of the world, N.G. Osukhova identifies the “image of the Self” as a system of ideas and a person’s attitude towards himself during his life, including everything that a person considers to be his. In addition, the image of another person, the image of the world as a whole and the psychological time of the individual are considered.

A.N. Leontyev, revealing the structure of the image of the world, made a conclusion regarding its multidimensionality. Moreover, the number of dimensions was determined not only by three-dimensional space, but also by the fourth - time, and the fifth quasi-dimension, “in which the objective world is revealed to man.” The explanation of the fifth dimension is based on the fact that when a person perceives an object, he perceives it “not only in its spatial dimensions and in time, but also in its meaning.” It is with the problem of perception of A.N. Leontyev connected the construction of a multidimensional image of the world in the consciousness of the individual, his image of reality. Moreover, he called the psychology of perception specific scientific knowledge about how, in the process of their activities, individuals build an image of the world “in which they live, act, which they themselves remake and partially create; this knowledge is also about how the image of the world functions , mediating their activities in the objectively real world." .

Considering the dimensionality of the human image of the world, V.E. Klochko emphasizes its multidimensionality, revealing it as follows: “A multidimensional image of the world, therefore, can only be the result of a reflection of a multidimensional world. The assumption that the human world has four dimensions, and others are added to the image, making it multidimensional, is without any basis ". First of all, it is difficult to imagine the very process of introducing new dimensions to the emerging image. In addition, the main thing will be lost: the ability to explain the mechanism of selectivity of mental reflection. Dimensions characteristic of a person (meanings, meanings and values) represent objects included in the human world and are qualities of the objects themselves. This ensures their difference from the infinite set of objective phenomena, which simultaneously influence the human senses, but do not penetrate into consciousness, thereby determining both the content of consciousness at each moment of time and its value-semantic saturation" (55 ).

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