Mental Activity of the Brain as a Special Highest Ideal-Material Form of Existence of Matter, Its Evolution from the Emergence of Language to Consciousness

The article discusses the dual ideal-material nature of the intracerebral models of the world and the dual nature of the processes that form them. The ideal-material activity of the brain requires its description in two conjugated languages: phenomena and objects of objective reality, their properties and relationships must be described in one language; in another language – neuro-cerebral embodiments of the content of the reflective activity of the brain from the point of view of the work of receptors, neurons, and neural networks. The study of consciousness requires the implementation of the principle of complementarity, just as it is implemented in the corpuscular-wave theory of light.

The knowledge of the soul contributes greatly to the knowledge of all truth, especially the knowledge of nature.
Aristotle

Introduction

The founders of Russian psychology of the Soviet period set themselves the ambitious task of overcoming the crisis of psychology and finding its true subject. The problem they solved was how, without questioning the unconditional reality of the existence of the mind and consciousness, to find a clear and legitimate place for them in human life. As is known, many scientists denied at that time and now deny the ontology of mental reality and reduced the mind to the physiological processes of the brain, for example, the followers of radical behaviorism, reflexology, and others. Through the efforts of many scientists in psychology and philosophy, a generally accepted understanding of the mind as a subjective reflection of objective reality, which is necessary for the regulation of successful behavior and activity, has developed. With this understanding, the mind acquires a completely clear place both in the world and in the behavior of living beings.

S.L. Rubinshtein in his fundamental work “Being and Consciousness” (Rubinshtein, 1957) outlined three vectors of incorporation of the mind into the system of the world:

(1) in relation to the external objective world and to the material processes of the organism itself, the mind acts as their reflection;

(2) in relation to the brain, the mind is its fundamental function;

(3) in relation to the material processes of behavior and activity, the mind is their internal regulator based on the representation of the world and the body’s own states.

B.F. Lomov wrote about the same triad of relationships that inscribe the mind into the system of the world (Lomov, 1984):

(1) the relation of reflection to reflected;

(2) the relation of reflection to its substrate (brain);

(3) the relation of reflection to behavior and activity (for example, the relation of a perceptual image to body movements, with the help of which a person acts on a reflected object). This is a behavior-regulating function of the mind.

Revealing the content of the first and second relations, B.F. Lomov emphasized that what is meant here is not only a measure of the adequacy of the image to the object, but also those processes that ensure the transformation of the energy of external stimuli into facts of the mind and consciousness. He rejects the rather widespread position that under the influence of external and internal stimuli, physiological processes first unfold in the brain, and the mind is their result or generation. Such a view is erroneous. In fact, each moment of the neurophysiological process is at the same time a moment of the mental process. Reflection and its substratum are connected to each other continuously and immutably. The one does not exist without the other. Three relations of the mind as a reflection of reality to the world and to behavior, identified by S.L. Rubinstein and B.F. Lomov, give a clear answer to the question why it is necessary for living beings and humans to have a psyche. The successes of modern neurophysiology and evolutionary epistemology lead many authors to the conclusion that from a theoretical point of view, the activity of the brain, no matter how complex the processes it is carried out, should consist in building a picture of the world surrounding a living being, and a picture of its own internal organic states. Since the picture of the world is its mental reflection, the reflective and behavior-regulating activity of the brain should be qualified as a mental activity or, more briefly, as the mind (Chuprikova, 2021).

The mental processes of the reflective and behavior-regulating activity of the brain are unique. They are qualitatively different from all other processes in nature (physical, chemical) and in the organism of living beings and humans (biological). Their uniqueness and qualitative originality lie in the fact that they embody in themselves the existing reality outside of them. Being from beginning to end one of the types of biological bodily processes, they are also carriers of another, existing reality outside of them. Thanks to the unique mental processes of the brain, the world, including the living being itself and all its relationships with the world, turns out to be literally “embedded” in the living being and reproduced in its own matter with greater or lesser accuracy and adequacy. The essence of the matter lies in the fact that not just material nerve impulses and their ensembles come to the executive organs of a living being from the nerve centers, but they embody (represented, reflected, recreated), sometimes with high accuracy, the qualitative and quantitative properties of the stimulations that initiates behavioral acts.

Method

In order to theoretically comprehend the unique nature of the mental processes of the brain, it makes sense to turn to the philosophical idea of the forms of existence of matter and to the content of the philosophical concept of “ideal”. The ideal in its materialistic interpretation is not “something” that goes beyond matter (Ilyenkov, 1979). According to Ilyenkov’s definition, the ideal is such a peculiar relation of objects, when one object, remaining itself, acts as a representative of another object. E.V. Ilyenkov emphasized that to be different, while remaining oneself, means to have, in addition to the real, also an ideal being. The results of the reflective mental processes of the brain are ideal in their content in relation to the world around the brain and to the brain itself, but at the same time they are purely material from beginning to end, like the bodily processes of the brain itself. So, they possess, if we follow E.V. Ilyenkov, both real-material and ideal being. This is a completely unique, qualitatively peculiar form of being (Ponomarev, 2010). Probably, here we can talk about a special higher ideal-material form of the existence of matter, which is not reducible to its physical, chemical, and biological forms and is not directly derived from them. This form of matter arose on the basis of its other forms as a necessary internal condition for the adaptive behavior of living beings in the world they live in. How could this have happened?

Results

3.1. Mental activity of the brain as a special highest ideal-material form of existence of matter

In order for behavior to be adaptive and successful, it must be consistent with the objective properties of the world, and this requires that living beings “know” these properties, reflect them. An understandable way of such a reflection was found in evolution. It consists in the fact that the properties and relations of the objective world, external to living beings, began to be duplicated (embodied, recreated) in certain processes that reflect the function of their own body and organization. Thus, the states of the body and organism of living beings, which perform the function of reflection, began to acquire content, which, although embodied in them, lies outside them, is, paradoxically, outside them in the world around them. Since the content of bodily processes of reflection is for living beings an internal representative of the existing world outside them, these processes themselves, following E.V. Ilyenkov, should be qualified as ideal-material, possessing, in addition to bodily material, also ideal being. Summing up, one can build the following chain of judgments and inferences. The immutable need for living beings to coordinate their behavior and life activity with the properties and relations of their external and internal environment required their reflection, led to the emergence of organs and processes that perform the function of reflection, and thus to the emergence on planet Earth of a new higher ideal-material form of the existence of matter.

3.2. The emergence of the nervous system and the brain performing the function of reflecting reality

At the dawn of the emergence of life, the first simplest organisms did not yet have morphologically formed specialized organs for the implementation of their various functions. Such organs appeared later in the course of progressive evolution. Specialized organs of digestion, respiration, blood circulation, excretion, reproduction, and movement arose. Among them, the nervous system with its developed brain took its rightful place. The nervous system took on the function of presenting to the body information about the outside world, about its own body and its organic states, and for organizing, on the basis of this information, adaptive behavior and the coordinated work of all organs and systems of the body. Receptors and sense organs appeared. Increasing demands for the integration of various receptors and sensory organs led to the emergence of the central nervous system and the brain (the higher part of the nervous system) and, finally, the cortex of its cerebral hemispheres. As a result of the work of receptors, the nervous system and the brain, which perform the function of reflecting reality, the brain of living beings develops internal pictures of the world around them and their own organic states, pictures that are ever richer and more complex in content at the highest stages of evolution.

3.3. Emergence of language and consciousness

In the course of evolution at the human level, an epoch-making event occurred in the development of the processes of reflecting reality. It consisted in the fact that for people, in addition to the world itself, the reflected contents of the internal pictures of this world were also involved in the sphere of reflection. This happened when the necessary mean was found. It was language with its verbal-sign signaling. The words of the language associate certain objects and phenomena of reality, reflected in the inner pictures of the world of people, with certain signs. Moreover, in each specific human community, the “sign-content” connections are more or less the same and constant. Therefore, by exchanging signs of the contents of the inner pictures of the world, people get the opportunity to transmit to others and receive from them information about these contents themselves, about what they see and hear, what they remember, what they think, what they want and feel. In order to implement such a verbally sign signaling of the contents of the inner pictures of the world, each individual person must him/herself have access to these contents. This is how human consciousness arises as analytically dissected knowledge mediated by language about the contents of the mind of both other people and one’s own (Chuprikova, 1985, 2015, 2021).

3.4. The fundamental difference between the reflective activity of the human brain in comparison with animals

The emergence of language, having revealed to people the content of each other’s inner world, at the same time led to a qualitative leap in their reflection of the objective world itself. Before man, information about the world received by the brain of living beings was based only on the indications of their sense organs and could not go beyond these indications. The situation is quite different at the human level. Having gained access to the contents of each other’s inner pictures of the world through language, people at the same time got the opportunity to know about the world itself much more than what their own sense organs could tell their brain. Having acquired a language, people began to see the world not only with their own eyes, but also with the eyes of other people, to hear the world not only with their own ears, but also with the ears of other people. The inner pictures of the world of each individual person began to include and accumulate a lot of information about the world, received not only by him/herself, but also by many other people. Thus, a qualitative change in the contents of the internal pictures of the world of people who have acquired a language has led to an almost infinite increase in the information about the world that the brain of each individual person has now begun to receive about it. People’s knowledge of the content of other people’s inner pictures of the world and knowledge of how this world itself is represented in their inner pictures was a necessary condition for their successful joint activities and collective forms of work. Without this knowledge, neither successful joint activity nor successful collective work is possible.

Conclusions

The internal pictures of the world, built by the brain of man and animals, reflect the objective reality, which is outside the living beings themselves and outside their brain. The content of these pictures in relation to objective reality is ideal in the sense that it is its reflected copy (or model).  At the same time, the ideal content of these internal pictures of the world from beginning to end is fully embodied in the dynamic and structural states of the brain, which is the organ of reality reflection. Therefore, we can talk about the dual nature of internal brain pictures (or models) of the world and the dual nature of the processes that build them. The internal pictures of the world of living beings and the processes that build them are ideal in one respect (in relation to the objective world), and in another they are material (as the state of their substratum, the brain). On this basis, they can be called ideal-material and in relation to them put forward the idea of a special higher ideal-material form of the existence of matter, irreducible to its physical,

chemical, and biological form. The idea put forward about the nature of the reflective processes of the brain allows us to understand the deep meaning contained in the well-known thesis of Aristotle that the soul is not a body, but something that belongs to the body (Aristotle, 1975).

This idea can also be considered a modern version of the solution of the psychophysiological problem proposed by B. Spinoza. According to Spinoza, the soul and the body are one and the same substance, one and the same “thing”, but viewed from the side of its different attributes (properties). From the side of the attribute of thinking (by which Spinoza understood knowledge in the broadest sense), this substance appears as a soul, and from the side of the attribute of extension, as a body (Spinoza, 1933). In the modern interpretation, Spinoza’s single substance, which appears either as the soul (spirit, the mind), or as the body, is the mental reflective and behavior-regulating activity of the brain of living beings. On the part of the extension attribute, this activity is played out in the space of receptors, neurons, neural networks, and brain ensembles. From the attribute of thinking, this is the cognitive activity of the brain. It provides living beings with information about the world around them and about their own bodily processes and states. The dual ideal-material activity of the brain requires its description in two different conjugated languages (Chuprikova, 2021). One language should describe what is reflected by the nervous system and the brain, namely, the phenomena and objects of objective reality, their properties and relationships. The second language should describe the neuro-cerebral manifestations of the contents of the reflective activity of the brain in terms of the work of receptors, neurons, neural networks, the work of different areas of the nervous system, and the brain. Thus, the study of the processes and laws of brain activity requires the implementation of the complementarity principle in the same way as it is implemented in the corpuscular-wave theory of light.

CRediT author statement:

The author has read and approved the final version and bears responsibility for all aspects of the publication.

Acknowledgments:

The author thanks Volkova E.V. for support and fruitful discussion of the manuscript.

References

1. On the soul. Works in 4 volumes. Vol. 1., M., 1975. [Aristotel’. O dushe. Sochineniya v 4-kh tomakh. Tom. 1., M., 1975].
2. Chuprikova, N. I. (1975). Mind and consciousness as a function of the brain. Moscow: Nauka [Chuprikova, N. I. Psikhika i soznaniye kak funktsiya mozga. Moskva: Nauka, 1975].
3. Chuprikova, N. I. (2015). Mind and mental processes (system of concepts of general psychology). M.: Publishing House “Languages of Slavic Culture” [Chuprikova, N.I. Psikhika i psikhicheskiye protsessy (sistema ponyatiy obshchey psikhologii). M.: Yazyki slavyanskoy kul’tury, 2015].
4. Chuprikova, N. I. (2021). Mental activity of the brain. Language and consciousness. In Search of Mental Reality and the Subject of Psychology. : Publishing House “Languages of Slavic Culture”. [Chuprikova, N. I. Psikhicheskaya deyatel’nost’ mozga, yazyk, i soznaniya. V poiskakh psikhicheskoy real’nosti i predmeta psikhologii. Izdatel’stvo «Yаzyki slavyanskikh kul’tur», 2021].
5. Ilyenkov, E. V. (1979). The problem of the ideal. Questions of Philosophy, 6, 128-140. [Il’yenkov, Ye.V. Problema ideal’nogo // Voprosy filosofii, 1979, № 6, s. 128-140.]
6. Ilyenkov, E. V. (1979). The problem of the ideal. Questions of Philosophy, 7, 143-158. [Il’yenkov, Ye. V. Problema ideal’nogo // Voprosy filosofii, 1979, № 7, s. 143-158.]
7. Lomov, B. F. (1984). Methodological and theoretical problems of psychology. Moscow: Nauka [Lomov, B. F. Metodologicheskiye i teoreticheskiye problemy psikhologii / B.F. Lomov. – Moskva: Nauka, 1984].
8. Ponomarev, Ya. A. (2010). The mind and intuition. Unpublished materials, verses, drawings, photographs, 56-211. M.: ARIS LLC [Ponomarev, Ya.A. Psikhika i intuitsiya. Neopublikovannyye materialy, stikhi, risunki, fotografii. M.: OOO «ARIS», 2010. S. 56-211].
9. Rubinstein, S. L. (1957). Being and consciousness. On the place of the mind in the general interconnection of the phenomena of the material     M.:  Publishing   House   of    the
   Academy of Sciences of the USSR. [Rubinshteyn, S.L. Bytiye i soznaniye. O meste psikhicheskogo vo vseobshchey vzaimosvyazi yavleniy material’nogo mira. M.: Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1957].
10. Spinoza, B. (1933). Ethics. M., L.: State Social and Economic Publishing House [Spinoza, B. Etika. M., L.: Gossotsekonomizdat, 1933].
11. Wecker, L.M. (1974). Mental processes. Vol. 1. Sensation and perception. L.: Publishing house of the Leningrad University [Veker, L. M. Psikhicheskiye protsessy: v 3 tomakh]. L.: Izd-vo LGU, 1974. T. 1. Oshchushcheniye i vospriyatiye].