Psychology of image A.N. Leontyev. Modern problems of science and education See what “Image of the World” is in other dictionaries


As is known, the psychology and psychophysiology of perception are characterized, perhaps, by the largest number research and publications, an immense amount 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.

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 that meets the requirements of dialectical-materialist methodology.

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 item itself 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 them creative development in the very flesh, figuratively speaking, 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.

General position which 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 .

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 (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.

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 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.

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.


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.

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 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” 1 .

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 outline 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: “visible field” and “ visible world" 4 .

IN last years, in particular in research conducted at the department 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.

The smoothness of the surface of an object in the “object-object” interaction reveals itself, say, in physical phenomenon 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 the same property - in this case physical property body - causes, influencing a person, completely

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 section of the spectrum electromagnetic waves and, say, a 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 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 at the sensory area, 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!]

Of course, all Soviet authors proceed from the fundamental tenets 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 and 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 nose psychology and the rejection of a number of imaginary postulates that are preserved by inertia. 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 as a problem of the psychology of the image of the world.(Note: By the way, the theory of reflection in German is Bildtheori, i.e. image.)

This means that every thing is primarily posited objectively - in the objective connections of the objective world; that it also posits itself secondarily in subjectivity, human sensuality, and in human consciousness (in its ideal forms). We must proceed from this in the psychological study of the image, the process of 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), which represents “objectively real forms of being”

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

Life of animals With from the very beginning takes place in the four-dimensional objective world, the adaptation of animals occurs as an adaptation to the connections that fill the world of things, their changes in time, their movement, which, accordingly, the evolution of the senses reflects the development of adaptation to the four-dimensionality of 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 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, first of all, 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 (1), at best remain within the boundaries of the theory of 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 "outside-it-existent"- 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 something that lies in front of things, but as something that 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.

It turns out,” this philosopher said, 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 as 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” 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 every link, act, moment, every 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, the distinction of forms, the constancy of color, apparent movement, etc., etc. By careful experiments and the most precise measurements, we seem to drill 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 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 measured “phi-motion” does not dwell in it (2).

Here again I am forced to make a digression.

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

At first it was singled out as a special “quality of form”; 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, and the law of figure and ground 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” (it seems that K. Goldstein 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 is the third there is a questalt - 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 abstraction of them, which is their outline*. In the real world, the certainty of an integral thing appears through its connections with other things, and not through its “outlining”**.

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 surrounding objects and 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.”

In recent years, in particular in studies conducted at the Department of General Psychology, this distinction has received fundamental theoretical coverage, and the discrepancy between the projection picture and the objective image has received a fairly convincing experimental justification (3).

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, that is, in the interaction “object - subject”. They are found in specific effects depending on the properties of the subject's receiving organs. In this sense, they are modal, that is, 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.

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 cloth, so that he could not see his hand, otherwise he might understand that he was looking through a reducing lens. We asked him to report his impression of the size of the square... We asked some subjects to draw a square of the appropriate 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 only one visual perception" (4).

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 multivariate and, moreover, changing from species to species (meaning zoological species) modalities arise.

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

From the duality of connections, interactions “O-O” and “O-S”, provided they coexist, the well-known duality of characteristics arises: 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”

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:

A) a “guideline basis” for behavior is needed, and this is an image;

B) this or that way of life creates the need for a corresponding orienting, controlling, mediating image of it in the objective world.

Briefly speaking. We must proceed not from comparative anatomy and physiology, but from ecology in its relation to the morphology of the sense organs, etc. Engels writes: “What is light and what is not light depends on whether the animal is nocturnal or diurnal” 13 .

The issue of “combinations” is especially important.

1. The combination (of modalities) becomes, but in relation to feelings, image; she is his condition. (Just as an object is a “node of properties,” so an image is a “node of modal sensations.”)

2. Compatibility expresses spatiality things as a form of their existence).

3. But it also expresses their existence in time, therefore the image is fundamentally a product of not only the simultaneous, but also successional combination, merger**. 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” 14 .

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

(1) the boundary of the object is established on the object, i.e., its separation occurs not at the sensory, but at the intersections of the visual axes. Therefore, when using a probe, a shift in sensitivity occurs. This means it doesn't exist objectification of sensations and perceptions! Behind the criticism of “objectification,” i.e., the attribution of secondary characteristics to the real world, lies a criticism of subjective idealistic concepts. In other words, I stand by the fact that It is not perception that posits itself in the object, but the object- through activities- puts himself in the image. Perception is its “subjective position.”(Position for the subject!);

(2) fitting into the image of the world also expresses the fact that the object is not made up of “sides”; he acts for us as single continuous; discontinuity is only its moment. The phenomenon of the “core” of the object appears. This phenomenon expresses objectivity perception. Perceptual processes obey this core. Psychological proof: a) in the brilliant observation of G. Helmholtz: “not everything that is given in sensation is included in the “image of representation” (equivalent to the fall of subjective idealism in the style of Johannes Muller); b) in the phenomenon of additions to the pseudoscopic image (I see edges coming from a plane suspended in space) and in experiments with inversion, with adaptation to an optically distorted 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.

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) amodal- discovered by industry, experiment, thinking; b) "supersensible"- functional properties, qualities, such as “value”, 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 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 another building material, from the material of other modalities, woven from a different sensual fabric. Therefore, it retains its simultaneity, and this is a problem for research!

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

Sensory modalities in no way encode reality. They carry it within themselves. 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 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. 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!).

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!

1. Gregory R. The Intelligent Eye. M., 1972.

2. Gregory R. Eye and brain. M., 1970, p. 124-125.

* Or, if you prefer, a plane.

**T. e. operations of selection and vision of form.

3. Logvinenko A.D., Stolin V.V. Study of perception in conditions of inversion of the zero of vision. - Ergonomics: Proceedings of VNIITE, 1973, vol. 6.

4. Rock I., Harris C. Vision and touch. – In the book: Perception. Mechanisms and models. M., 1974. pp. 276-279.

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.

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 Wildtheorie, i.e. theory of the image.)

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). It is necessary to proceed from this psychological research 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 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 every link, act, moment, every 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!).

Psychological Dictionary

Image of the World

The image of the world (author A.N. Leontiev -) is a methodological installation that prescribes the study of an individual’s cognitive processes in the context of his subjective picture of the world, as it develops in this individual throughout development cognitive activity. This is a multidimensional image of the world, an image of reality.
Literature.
Leontyev A.N. Psychology of image // Vestnik Mosk. un-ta. Ser. 14. Psychology. 1979, N 2, p. 3 - 13.

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Image of the world

From the book People Who Play Games [Book 2] by Bern Eric

Image of the world A child perceives the world completely differently than his parents. For children, this is a fairy-tale world full of monsters and wizards. All parents remember how their child woke up and screamed that a bear was walking in his room. Parents come, turn on the light and say affectionately:

Symbolism of physiology: body image and world image

From the book Anthropology of Extreme Groups: Dominant Relationships among Conscripts Russian Army author Bannikov Konstantin Leonardovich

Symbolism of physiology: the image of the body and the image of the world The anthropomorphic principle in cosmogony represents human body and the products of its vital activity as an allegory of the structural components of the world and the laws of their functioning. In some archaic myths

The image of the world and the development of the mind

From the book Structure and Laws of the Mind author Zhikarentsev Vladimir Vasilievich

The image of the world and the development of the mind Man relies on the image of the world while living on earth. The image of the world is a set of images regarding the state of the world, its structure and contents. A person loads these images into memory in childhood. It is estimated that by the age of five, a child absorbs 97% of

Image of the creation of the world

From the book Orthodox Dogmatic Theology author Pomazansky Protopresbyter Michael

Image of the creation of the world The world was created from nothing. It is better to say: brought into being from non-existence, as the Fathers usually express it, because if we say “from,” then, obviously, we are already thinking about material, but “nothing” is not material. However, it is conventionally accepted and quite acceptable to use this

In 1979, an article by A.N. was published. Leontiev “Psychology of the image”, in which the author introduced the concept of “image of the world”, which today has a very large descriptive potential for all areas of psychology. The concept was introduced to summarize the empirical data accumulated in perception studies. Just as the concept of “image” is integrative to describe the process of perception, so the concept of “image of the world” is integrative to describe all cognitive activity.

For adequate perception of an object, it is necessary to perceive the whole world as a whole, and to “fit” the perceived object (in the broad sense of the word) into the image of the world as a whole. Analyzing the texts of A.N. Leontiev, the following properties of the image of the world can be distinguished:

1) the image of the world is “predetermined” for a specific act of perception;

2) combines individual and social experience;

3) the image of the world fills the perceived object with meaning, that is, it determines the transition from sensory modalities to the amodal world. Meaning of A.N. Leontyev called the fifth quasi-dimension (except space-time) of the image of the world.

In our works, it has been experimentally proven that the subjective meaning of events, objects, and actions with them structures (and generates) the image of the world, which is not at all analogous to the structuring of metric spaces, affectively “contracts and stretches” space and time, places accents of significance, disrupts their sequence and inverts . Just as two points far apart on a flat sheet can touch if the sheet is folded in three-dimensional space, objects, events and actions far removed in time and space coordinates can touch in meaning, appear “before”, although they happened “after” in terms of space-time coordinates. This is possible because “the space and time of the image of the world” are subjective.

The generative functions of the image of the world provide the construction of many subjective “variants of reality.” The mechanism for generating and choosing a possible (forecast) is not only and not so much logical thinking, but rather the “semantics of possible worlds”, directed by the nuclear layer (goal-motivational complex) of the image of the world.

For further use, here are five definitions of the concept “image of the world” that we compiled earlier:

1. The image of the world (as a structure) is an integral system of human meanings. The image of the world is built on the basis of identifying what is significant (essential, functional) for the system of activities implemented by the subject). The image of the world, presenting the known connections of the objective world, determines, in turn, the perception of the world.



2. The image of the world (as a process) is an integral ideal product of consciousness, obtained through the constant transformation of the sensory tissue of consciousness into meanings.

3. The image of the world is an individualized cultural and historical basis of perception.

4. Image of the world – individual prognostic model of the world.

5. The image of the world is an integrated image of all images.

A.N. Leontiev and many of his followers described a two-layer model of the image of the world (Fig. 1), which can be represented in the form of two concentric circles: the central one - the core of the image of the world (amodal, structures), the peripheral (sensory design) - the picture of the world.

Rice. 1. Two-layer model of the world image

Due to the difficulties of operationalizing the study of the image of the world based on a two-layer model, a three-layer model was used in our work - in the form of three concentric circles: the nuclear inner layer (amodal goal-motivational complex), the middle semantic layer and the outer layer - the perceptual world (Fig. 2).

Rice. 2. Three-layer model of the world image

The perceptual world is the most mobile and changeable layer of the image of the world. Images of actual perception are components of the perceptual world. The perceptual world is modal, but it is also a representation (attitude, prediction and completion of the image of an object based on the predictive function of the image of the world as a whole), regulated by deeper layers. The perceptual world is perceived as a set of moving objects ordered in space and time (including one’s body) and the relationship to them. It is possible that one’s own body sets one of the leading systems of space-time coordinates.



The semantic layer is transitional between surface and nuclear structures. The semantic world is not amodal, but, unlike the perceptual world, it is integral. At the level of the semantic layer E.Yu. Artemyeva identifies meanings themselves as the relationship of the subject to the objects of the perceptual world. This integrity is already determined by the meaningfulness and significance of the semantic world.

The deep layer (nuclear) is amodal. Its structures are formed in the process of processing the “semantic layer”, however, there is not yet enough data to reason about the “language” of this layer of the image of the world and its structure. The components of the nuclear layer are personal meanings. In the three-layer model, the nuclear layer is characterized by the authors as a goal-motivational complex, which includes not only motivation, but the most general principles, criteria of attitude, and values.

Developing a three-layer model of the image of the world, we can assume that the perceptual world has areas of perception and apperception (zones of clear consciousness according to G. Leibniz), similar to Wundt’s zones. We did not choose the term “regions of apperception” and not “zones of apperception” by chance. This term emphasizes both the continuity of the ideas of Leibniz and Wundt, and the difference in the content of the term. Unlike W. Wundt, today we can point not to associative and voluntary, but to motivational, goal-oriented and anticipatory determinants of the allocation of areas of apperception. In addition, taking into account what was proven by S.D. Smirnov’s position that perception is a subjective activity, we can say that the identification of areas of apperception is determined not only by actual stimulation, but also by all previous experience of the subject, and is directed by the goals of actions practical activities and, of course, the determinants of cognitive activity itself. The areas of apperception are not at all continuous, as they were for Wundt. For example, in the experiments of U. Neisser it is clearly shown that when perceiving two superimposed video images, subjects can easily single out any of them according to the task, which is due to the anticipatory influence of the predictive functions of the image of the world.

Similar areas exist in the deep layers of the image of the world. It's possible that psychological mechanism changes in the perceptual world, and behind it - in deeper layers, is precisely the dynamics of the actualization of areas of apperception, the content of which in turn is determined by the motive (subject) of human activity. Parts of the perceptual world that are most often located in areas of intense perception, that is, associated with the subject of activity, are the most well structured and developed. If we imagine a model of a three-layer structure of the image of the world as a sphere in the center of which there are nuclear structures, the middle layer is the semantic layer, and the outer layer is the perceptual world, then the professional functional substructure is modeled as a cone, growing with its apex from the center of such a sphere (Fig. 3).

Rice. 3. Functional (activity) apperceptive subsystem of the image of the world

Stable activity-based functional subsystems of the image of the world are formed in any activity, but are especially clearly “manifested” when studying professional activity: a professional often demonstrates that he “sees,” “hears,” “feels” the features of his subject area (the knock of an engine, the joints of wallpaper, shades of color or sound, surface unevenness, etc.) are better than non-professionals not at all because he has better developed senses, but because the functional apperceptive system of the image of the world is “tuned” in a certain way.

Professional attitude towards objects and means of professional activity E.Yu. Artemyeva called the world of the profession. The basis of the proposed E.A. Klimov’s multifaceted structure of the professional’s image of the world lies in the thesis that professional activity– one of the factors for typing individual images of the world: 1. Images of the surrounding world among representatives of different types of professions are significantly different. 2. Society is quantized into different objects in different ways in the descriptions of professions of different types. 3. There are specific differences in the picture of subject-related gnosis of different types of professionals. 4. Different professionals live in different subjective worlds(emphasis mine – V.S.).

E.A. Klimov proposed the following structure of a professional’s image of the world (Table 1):

Table 1: Structure of a professional’s world image

The seventh plane is the most dynamic under normal conditions, the first is the least. A professional’s image of the world consists of well-defined systemic integrity, the collapse of which leads to the loss of professional usefulness of ideas.