41)Consciousness, language and communication.

Consciousness is a subjective image of the objective world

Language is as old as consciousness.Human speech, along with human consciousness, broke away from the situation, and that was a "communicative rev­olution", which gave rise to our consciousness and made the ideal element reproducing objective reality in a mediated fashion the con­tent of our speech. The essence of language is manifested in its dual function: it serves as a means of communica­tion and as an instrument of thought. Speech is activity, the very pro­cess of communication, of exchange of thoughts, feelings, wishes, goal-settings, a process which is realized through language, i.e. a definite system of communicative means. Language is a system of content-related, meaningful forms.Storing the spiritual values of society, being a material form of the condensation and storage of the ideal moments of human consciousness, language acts as a mechanism of social heredity. Language and consciousness form a contradictory unity. Lan­guage influences consciousness: its historically evolved norms, dis­tinctly different in each nation, stress different features in identical objects. For instance, the style of thought in German philosophical literature is different from that of French literature —a fact largely determined by the features of the national languages of these peo­ples. But the dependence of thought on language is not absolute, as some idealistically minded linguists assume; thought is largely deter­mined by its links with reality, while language can only partialy modify the form and style of thought.Language also influences consciousness in the sense that it exer­cises a kind of coercion, "tyranny" over thought, directing its move­ment along the channels of linguistic forms, driving, as it were, the variable, individually unique and emotionally coloured thoughts into the common framework of these forms. ВЕРСИЯ 2:

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

Cardinal characteristic of Cons – goal setting

Also Cons is:

1) the property of highly – organized matter.

2) the generator of man’s goal-directed activity

3) the highest form of reflection

4) the product of the social-hystorical development.

Language is as old as consciousness. Animals do not have consciousness in the human sense, neither do they have language equivalent to human language. The few things that animals have to communicate to one another may be communicated without speech. The content of animal communication is always a situation existing at the given moment. Human speech was a "communicative rev­olution”.

The essence of language is manifested in its dual function: it serves as a means of communica­tion and as an instrument of thought. Speech is activity, the very pro­cess of communication, of exchange of thoughts, feelings, wishes, goal-settings, a process which is realized through language, i.e. a definite system of communicative means. Language is a system of content-related, meaningful forms

Language and consciousness form a contradictory unity. Lan­guage influences consciousness: its historically evolved norms, dis­tinctly different in each nation, stress different features in identical objects.