Psychology of the image of A.N. Leontiev. Category "Image of the World" in modern psychology The science of thinking and the image of the world

As you know, the psychology and psychophysiology of perception are characterized by perhaps the largest number of studies and publications, an immense amount of accumulated facts. Research is carried out at various levels: morphophysiological, psychophysical, psychological, epistemological, cellular, phenomenological ("phenographic" - K. Holzkamp) 2 , at the level of micro- and macroanalysis. Phylogeny, ontogeny of perception, its functional development and processes of its recovery are studied. A wide variety of specific methods, procedures, indicators are used. Different approaches and interpretations have become widespread: physicalist, cybernetic, logical-mathematical, "model". Many phenomena are described, including absolutely amazing ones that remain unexplained.

But what is significant, according to the most authoritative researchers, now there is no convincing theory of perception that can cover the accumulated knowledge, outline a conceptual system that meets the requirements of dialectical materialist methodology.

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

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

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

Leontiev A, N. Image of the world

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

Of course, all Soviet authors proceed from the fundamental provisions of Marxism, such as the recognition of the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of spirit, consciousness, and the 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 concrete content, in the practice of research psychological work; about their creative development in the very, figuratively speaking, flesh of perception studies. 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 persist in it by inertia. The possibility of such a transformation of the problem of perception in psychology will be discussed.

The general proposition 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 in this way: reality" 1 .

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

This means that every thing is initially posited objectively - in the objective connections of the objective world; that it - secondarily - also posits itself in subjectivity, human sensibility, and in human consciousness (in its ideal forms). It is necessary to proceed from this in the psychological study of the image, the processes of its generation and functioning.

Animals, humans live in the objective world, which from the very beginning acts as a four-dimensional: three-dimensional space and time (movement), which is "objectively real forms of being" 3 .

This position should by no means remain for psychology only a general philosophical premise, allegedly not directly affecting the concrete psychological study of perception, the understanding of its mechanism.

1 Lenin V.I. Floors, coll. op. T. 18. S. 282-283

2 See ibid. S. 52.

3 Ibid. S. 181.

532 Topic

Nisms. On the contrary, it forces us to see many things differently, not in the way that has developed within the framework of bourgeois psychology. This also applies to understanding the development of the sense organs in the course of biological evolution.

It follows from the above Marxist position 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 sense organs 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 to the fact that only with this approach can many facts that escape from zoopsychology be comprehended, because they do not fit into traditional, in fact 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 - 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 the consciousness of man, I must introduce one more concept - the concept of the 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 in time, but also in its meaning. When, for example, I cast a glance at a wrist watch, then, strictly speaking, I have no image of the individual attributes of this object, their sum, their "associative set." This, by the way, is the basis of the criticism of associative theories of perception. It is also not enough to say that first of all I have a picture of their form, as the Gestalt psychologists insist on. I perceive not the form, but an object that is a clock.

Of course, in the presence of 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 curtailed, obscured, replaced without destroying or distorting the objectivity of the image.

The thesis I have stated is proved by many facts, both obtained in experiments and known from everyday life. It is not necessary for perceptual psychologists to enumerate these facts. I will only note that they appear especially brightly in images-representations.

The traditional interpretation here is to attribute to the perception itself such properties as meaningfulness or categoriality.

Leontiev A, N. Image of the world

As for the explanation of these properties of perception, they, as R. Gregory correctly says 1 , at best remain within the boundaries of Helmholtz's theory. I note at once that the deeply hidden danger here lies in the logical necessity to appeal in the final analysis to innate categories.

The general idea I am defending can be expressed in two propositions. The first is that the properties of meaningfulness, categoriality are the 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-its-existing- perceived, assimilated - and therefore the same as what is included in his image of the world.

Let me put it another way: meanings appear not as what lies before things, but as what lies before things. behind the shape of things- in the cognized objective connections of the objective world, in various systems in which they only exist, only reveal their properties. Values thus carry a special dimension. This is the dimension intrasystem connections of the objective objective world. She is the fifth quasi-dimension of it!

Let's summarize.

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

Here I must interrupt myself with some illustrative digressions. I recall a dispute between one of our philosophers and J. Piaget when he came to us.

You succeed, - said this philosopher, referring 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 stand on such a point of view? This is idealism.

I do not at all stand on this point of view, - answered J. Piaget, - in
on this problem, my views coincide with Marxism, and are completely wrong.
it is correct to consider me an idealist!

But how, then, do you assert that for a child the world
is what his logic constructs?

Piaget did not give a clear answer to this question. There is an answer, however, and a very simple one. 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 proceeds, 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 digression of a completely different kind.

The fact is that the understanding of perception as a process by which an image of a multidimensional world is built, by each of its links, acts, moments, 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 explore the perception of distance, the distinction of shapes, the constancy of color, apparent movement, and so on. etc. By careful experiments and precise measurements, we seem to be drilling deep but narrow wells that penetrate into the depths of perception. True, we do not often succeed in laying “communication channels” between them, but we continue and continue this drilling of wells and scoop out of them a huge amount of information - useful, as well as of little use and even completely useless. As a result, whole heaps of incomprehensible facts have now formed in psychology, which mask the true scientific relief of the problems of perception.

It goes without saying that by this I do not at all deny the necessity and even the inevitability of analytical study, the isolation of certain particular processes and even individual perceptual phenomena for the purpose of studying them in vitro. You just can't do without it! My idea is completely different, namely, that by isolating the process under study in the 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 mind of an individual. external multidimensional world, peace as he is, in which we live, in which we act, but in which our abstractions in themselves do not “dwell”, just as they do not, for example, the “phi-movement” studied in such detail and carefully worn out” 1 .

Here again I have 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 the psychology of the image arose - Gestalt psychology.

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

Leontiev 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 pre-gnancy, the law of figure and background were formulated.

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

And how is the perception of three-dimensional things interpreted in Gestalt psychology? The answer is simple: it lies in the transfer to the perception of three-dimensional things of the laws of perception of projections on a plane. Things of the three-dimensional world, thus, act as closed planes. The main law of the field of perception is the law of "figure and background". 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 refers not to the perception of things in the three-dimensional world, but to some of their abstraction, which is their contour 2 . In the real world, however, the definiteness of an integral thing emerges through its connections with other things, and not through its “contouring 3 .

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

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

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

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

2 Or, if you like, a plane.

3 i.e. operations of selection and vision of the form.

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

536 Topic 7. Man as a subject of knowledge

Thermal illumination, and the discrepancy between the projection picture and the objective image, is a fairly convincing experimental 1 substantiation 2 .

I settled on the Gestalt theory of perception, because it especially clearly affects 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, the process taken in its entirety. Therefore, it is necessary 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 should be the world itself, and not the subjective phenomena it causes.

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

I want to state this point right away in the form of a categorical thesis, deliberately omitting all the necessary reservations.

This thesis is that the world in its remoteness 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, for example, we are talking about the form of an object given in a visual or tactile modality, or in modalities together.

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 found in interactions with the same things (with "other" things), i.e. in the interaction "object-object". Some properties are revealed in interaction with things of a special kind - with living sentient organisms, i.e. in the interaction "object-subject". They are found in specific effects, depending on the properties of the recipient organs of the subject. In this sense, they are modal, i.e. subjective.

The smoothness of the surface of an object in the interaction "object-object" reveals itself, say, in the physical phenomenon of friction reduction. When palpated by hand - in the modal phenomenon of 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, the physical property of the body - causes, acting on a person, to commit

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

2 LogvinenkoAD., Stolik V.V. Study of perception under conditions of field inversion
vision // Ergonomics. Proceedings of VNIITE. 1973. Issue. 6.

Leontiev A.I. Image of the world

Chenneau'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, himself 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 1960s, if I am not mistaken, the idea of the fusion in man of these "joint", as Engels called them, splitting sense organs properties has become an experimentally established fact.

I mean the study of I. Rok 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 matter, 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 as accurately as possible a square of the appropriate size, which requires the participation of both sight and touch. Others had to choose 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 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 visual perception.”

So, the objective world, taken as a system of only "object-object" connections (ie the world without animals, before animals and humans), is amodal. Only with the emergence of subject-object relationships, interactions, various modalities arise, which, moreover, change from species to species.

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

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

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

3 I mean the zoological species.

538 Topic 7. Man as a subject of knowledge

From the duality of bonds, interactions "0-0" and "OS", subject to their coexistence, and the well-known duality of characteristics occurs: for example, such and such a section of the spectrum of electromagnetic waves and, say, red light. At the same time, one should not only lose sight of the fact that both characteristics express "a physical relationship between physical things" 1 .

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

(1) an "orienting basis" of behavior is needed, and this is an image,

(2) this or that way of life creates the need for an appropriate
its orienting, controlling, mediating image of it into an object
nome 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 non-light depends on whether the animal is nocturnal or daytime" 2 .

Of particular concern is the question of "combinations",

1. Combination (of modalities) becomes, but in relation to
feelings, image; she is his condition 3 . (As an object - a “property node”,
so the image is a "knot of modal sensations".)

2. Compatibility expresses spatiality things like shapes
mu of their existence).

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

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

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

3 B.M. Velichkovsky drew my attention to a study relating 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.
In one of the experiments, the reaction of a newborn to leaning and
talking mother. The fact is that if the sound comes from one side and the mother's face
is on the other side, there is no reaction. Similar data, both psychological and
biological, allow us to talk about perception as a process of formation of an image. We are not
we can start with the elements of perception, because the formation of an image presupposes
compatibility. One property cannot characterize an object. The subject is a "node
properties". A picture, an image of the world arises when the properties are "knotted", from this
development begins. First there is the relation of compatibility, and then of splitting
shared with other properties.

Leontiev A.N. Image of the world

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

General conclusion: any actual influence fits into the image of the world, i.e. into some "whole" 2 .

When I say that every topical, i.e. now acting on perceptive systems, the property “fits” into the image of the world, then this is not an empty, but a very meaningful position; it means that:

(1) the subject boundary is set on the subject, i.e. department
it occurs not at the sensory site, but at the intersections of the visual axes.
Therefore, when using the probe, the sensor shifts 3 . This
means it doesn't exist objectification of sensations For the Cree
type of "objectification", i.e. attributing secondary features to real
world, lies the critique of subjective-idealistic concepts. Otherwise
saying I stand on that it is not perception that posits itself in the object, but
thing- through activities- puts himself in the image. Perception
and there is his "subjective positing". (Position for the subject!);

(2) inscription in 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 object arises
that. This phenomenon expresses objectivity perception. Restoration processes
acceptances are subject to this core. Psychological evidence: a) c
G. Helmholtz's brilliant observation: “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 the edges going from the suspended in space
plane) and in experiments with inversion, with adaptation to the optical
women's world.

So far, I have dealt with 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 a person.

1 None of us, getting up from the desk, will move the chair so that it
hit a bookcase if he knows that the case is behind this chair. Peace
behind me is present in the picture of the world, but absent in the actual visual world.
From the fact that we do not have panoramic vision, the panoramic picture of the world does not disappear, it
it just performs differently.

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

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

4 "Tunnel effect": when something interrupts its movement and, as a consequence of its
impact, it does not interrupt its being for me.

540 Topic 7. Man as a subject of knowledge

In man the world acquires the fifth quasi-dimension in the image. It is by no means subjectively ascribed to the world! This is the transition through sensibility beyond the boundaries of sensibility, through sensory modalities to the amodal world. The objective world appears in meaning, i.e. the picture of the world is filled with meanings.

The deepening of 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 in it. The picture of the world includes invisible properties of objects: a) amo-distant- discovered by industry, experiment, thinking; b) "supersensible"- functional properties, qualities, such as "cost" that are not contained in the substrate of the object. They are represented in the values!

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 the operations of meaning. She - in the totality of human practice, which in its idealized forms enters the picture of the world.

Otherwise, it can be said like this: knowledge, thinking are not separated from the process of forming a sensual image of the world, but enter into it, adding to sensibility. [Knowledge enters, science does not!]

Some general conclusions.

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

2. Sensuality, sensual modalities are more and more "indifferent"
yatsya". The image of the world of the deaf-blind is not different from the image of the world of the sighted-hearing
go y but created from a different building material, from the material of other mo
distances, woven from a different sensual fabric. So he saves
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 sensibility (its perversion) gives rise to the psychological unreality of the world, the phenomenon of its "disappearance". This is known and proven.

4. Sensual modalities form the obligatory texture of the image
for peace. But the texture of the image is not equivalent to the image itself! So in painting
si behind the smears of oil, the object shines through. When I look at the image
ny subject - I do not see strokes, and vice versa! Invoice, material is removed
way, and not destroyed in it.

1 I always read with chagrin on the pages of modern psychological literature such statements as "coding in such-and-such sensations." What does it mean? Conditionally transferred? There is no relationship. It is established, imposed by us. No coding needed! Not a good concept!

Leontiev A.N. Image of the world

The image, the picture of the world, does not include the image, but the depicted (image, reflection opens only reflection, and this is important!).

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

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

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

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

Leontiev A, N. Image of the world

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

Animals, humans live in the objective world, which from the very beginning acts as a four-dimensional: three-dimensional space and time (movement), which is "objectively real forms of being" 3 .

1 Lenin V.I. Floors, coll. op. T. 18. S. 282-283

2 See ibid. S. 52.

3 Ibid. S. 181.

532 Topic

The introduction of this concept requires a more detailed explanation.

The traditional interpretation here is to attribute to the perception itself such properties as meaningfulness or categoriality.

Leontiev A, N. Image of the world

Let's summarize.

Here I must interrupt myself with some illustrative digressions. I recall a dispute between one of our philosophers and J. Piaget when he came to us.

I do not at all stand on this point of view, - answered J. Piaget, - in
on this problem, my views coincide with Marxism, and are completely wrong.
it is correct to consider me an idealist!

But how, then, do you assert that for a child the world
is what his logic constructs?

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

534 Topic 7. Man as a subject of knowledge

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

Here again I have to make a digression.

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

Leontiev A.N. Image of the world

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

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

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

2 Or, if you like, a plane.

3 i.e. operations of selection and vision of the form.

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

536 Topic 7. Man as a subject of knowledge

Thermal illumination, and the discrepancy between the projection picture and the objective image, is a fairly convincing experimental 1 substantiation 2 .

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

I want to state this point right away in the form of a categorical thesis, deliberately omitting all the necessary reservations.

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

So, the fact is that the same property - in this case, the physical property of the body - causes, acting on a person, to commit

2 LogvinenkoAD., Stolik V.V. Study of perception under conditions of field inversion
vision // Ergonomics. Proceedings of VNIITE. 1973. Issue. 6.

Leontiev A.I. Image of the world

I mean the study of I. Rok 2 .

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 visual perception.”

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

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

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

3 I mean the zoological species.

538 Topic 7. Man as a subject of knowledge

(1) an "orienting basis" of behavior is needed, and this is an image,

(2) this or that way of life creates the need for an appropriate
its orienting, controlling, mediating image of it into an object
nome world.

Of particular concern is the question of "combinations",

1. Combination (of modalities) becomes, but in relation to
feelings, image; she is his condition 3 . (As an object - a “property node”,
so the image is a "knot of modal sensations".)

2. Compatibility expresses spatiality things like shapes
mu of their existence).

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

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

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

Leontiev A.N. Image of the world

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

General conclusion: any actual influence fits into the image of the world, i.e. into some "whole" 2 .

When I say that every topical, i.e. now acting on perceptive systems, the property “fits” into the image of the world, then this is not an empty, but a very meaningful position; it means that:

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

4 "Tunnel effect": when something interrupts its movement and, as a consequence of its
impact, it does not interrupt its being for me.

540 Topic 7. Man as a subject of knowledge

Leontiev A.N. IMAGE OF THE WORLD
Fav. psychologist. works, M.: Pedagogy, 1983, p. 251-261.
As you know, the psychology and psychophysiology of perception are characterized by perhaps the largest number of studies and publications, an immense amount of accumulated facts. Research is carried out at various levels: morphophysiological, psychophysical, psychological, epistemological, cellular, phenomenological ("phonographic" - K. Holzkamp) (Holzkamp K. Sinnlliehe Egkenntnis: Historischen Upsprung und gesellschaftliche Function der Wahrnehmung. Frankfurt / Main, 1963. ), at the level of micro- and macroanalysis. Phylogeny, ontogeny of perception, its functional development and processes of its recovery are studied. A wide variety of specific methods, procedures, indicators are used. Various approaches and interpretations have become widespread: physicalist, cybernetic, logical-mathematical, "model". Numerous phenomena have been described, some of them quite astonishing and yet unexplained.

But here's what is significant, according to the most authoritative researchers, now there is no convincing theory of perception that can cover the accumulated knowledge, outline a conceptual system. The pitiful state of the theory of perception, with the wealth of accumulated specific knowledge, testifies to the fact that now there is an urgent need to reconsider the fundamental direction in which research is moving.

Animals, humans live in the objective world, which from the very beginning acts as a four-dimensional: three-dimensional space and time (movement). 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 sense organs reflects the development of adaptation to the four-dimensionality of the world, i.e. provides orientation in the world as it is, and not in its individual elements.

Turning to human consciousness, I must introduce one more concept - the concept of the fifth quasi-dimension, in which the objective world opens up 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 in time, but also in its meaning. When, for example, I cast a glance at a wrist watch, then, strictly speaking, I have no image of the individual attributes of this object, their sum, their "associative set." This, by the way, is the basis of the 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. I perceive not the form, but an object that is a watch.

Of course, in the presence of an appropriate perceptual task, I can single out 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 curtailed, obscured, replaced without destroying or distorting the objectivity of the image. The thesis I have stated is proved by many facts, both obtained in experiments and known from everyday life. It is not necessary for perceptual psychologists to enumerate these facts. I will only note that they appear especially brightly in images-representations.

The traditional interpretation here is to attribute to the perception itself such properties as meaningfulness or categoriality. 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 am defending can be expressed in the following propositions. The properties of meaningfulness, categorization are the characteristics of the conscious image of the world, not immanent in the image itself. Let me put it another way: meanings appear not as what lies in front of things, but as what lies behind the face of things- in the cognized objective connections of the objective world, in various systems in which they only exist, and only reveal their properties. Values thus carry a special dimension. This is the dimension intrasystem connections of the objective objective world. She is the fifth quasi-dimension of it.
^ Summing up

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

Here I must interrupt myself with some illustrative digressions. I am reminded of a dispute between one of our philosophers and J. Piaget when he visited us.

“What you get,” this philosopher said, addressing Piaget, “is that the child, the subject in general, builds the world with the help of a system of operations. How can you stand on such a point of view? This is idealism.

“I do not at all support this point of view,” answered J. Piaget, “in this problem my views coincide with Marxism, and it is absolutely wrong to consider me an idealist!”

– But how, then, do you assert that for a child the world is the way his logic constructs it?

Piaget did not give a clear answer to this question.

There is an answer, however, and a very simple one. 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 proceeds, 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 digression of a completely different kind.

We isolate and explore the perception of distance, the distinction of shapes, the constancy of color, apparent movement, and so on. etc. By careful experiments and precise measurements, we seem to be drilling deep but narrow wells that penetrate into the depths of perception. True, we do not often succeed in laying "communication lines" between them, but we continue and continue this drilling of wells and scoop out of them a huge amount of information - useful, as well as of little use and even completely useless. As a result, whole heaps of incomprehensible facts have now formed in psychology, which mask the true scientific relief of the problems of perception.

It goes without saying that by this I do not at all deny the need and even the inevitability of analytical study, the isolation of certain particular processes and even individual perceptual phenomena for the purpose of their study in vitro. You just can't do without it! My idea is completely different, namely, that by isolating the process under study in the 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 mind of an individual. external multidimensional world, world like him there is, in which we live, in which we act, but in which our abstractions in themselves do not "inhabit", as they do not, for example, in it the "phi-movement" so thoroughly studied and carefully measured (Gregory R. Eye and brain. M., 1970, pp. 124 - 125).

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

I want to state this point right away 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, for example, we are talking about the form of an object given in visual or tactile modality, or in modalities together.

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 found in interactions with the same things (with "other" things), i.e. in the interaction "object - object". Some properties are revealed in interaction with things of a special kind - with living sentient organisms, i.e. in the interaction "object-subject". They are found in specific effects, depending on the properties of the recipient organs of the subject. In this sense, they are modal, i.e. subjective.

The smoothness of the surface of an object in the interaction "object - object" reveals itself, say, in the physical phenomenon of friction reduction. When palpated by hand - in the modal phenomenon of 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, the physical property of the body - causes, acting on 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, himself 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 completely different; our self absorbs various sensory impressions, combining them into a whole as "joint" properties. This idea has turned into an experimentally established fact. I mean the study of I. Rock (Rock I., Harris C. Vision and touch. - In the book: Perception. Mechanisms and models. M., 1974, p. 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 matter, 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 as accurately as possible a square of the appropriate size, which requires the participation of both sight and touch.Others had to choose a square of equal size from a series of squares presented only visually, and still others 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 visual perception.

So, the objective world, taken as a system of only "object-object" connections (ie, the world before animals and humans), is amodal. Only with the emergence of subject-object relationships, interactions, various modalities arise, which, moreover, change from species to species (I mean the biological species.).

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

The image is fundamentally the product of not only the simultaneous, but also successive combinations, fusions. None of us, getting up from the desk, will move the chair so that it hits the bookcase, if he knows that the showcase is behind this chair. The world behind me is present in the picture of the world, but absent in the actual visual world.
^ Some general conclusions

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

2. Sensuality, sensual modalities are becoming more and more "indifferent". The image of the world of the deaf-blind is not different from the image of the world of the sighted-hearing, 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. Sensual modalities form the obligatory texture of the image of the world. But the texture of the image is not equivalent to the image itself! So in painting, an object shines through behind smears of oil. When I look at the depicted object, I see no 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, does not include the image, but the depicted (image, reflection is revealed only by reflection, and this is important!).

Of course, all Soviet authors proceed from the fundamental provisions of Marxism, such as the recognition of the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of spirit, consciousness, and the 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 concrete content, in the practice of research psychological work; about their creative development in the very, figuratively speaking, flesh of perception studies. And this requires a radical transformation of the very formulation of the problem of wear psychology and the rejection of a number of imaginary postulates that persist by inertia. The possibility of such a transformation of the problem of perception in psychology will be discussed.

The general proposition which 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.(I note By the way, that the theory of reflection in German is Bildtheori, that is, the image.)

This means that every thing is initially posited objectively - in the objective connections of the objective world; that it - secondarily posits itself also in subjectivity, human sensibility, and in human consciousness (in its ideal forms). It is necessary to proceed from this in the psychological study of the image, the process of generation and functioning.

Animals, humans live in the objective world, which from the very beginning acts as a four-dimensional: three-dimensional space and time (movement), which is "objectively real forms of being"

This proposition should by no means remain for psychology only a general philosophical premise, allegedly not directly affecting the concrete psychological study of perception, the understanding of mechanisms. On the contrary, it forces us to see many things differently, not as it has developed within the framework of Western psychology. This also applies to understanding the development of the sense organs in the course of 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 sense organs 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 the consciousness of man, I must introduce one more concept - the concept of the fifth quasi-dimension, in which the objective world opens up 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 in time, but also in its meaning. When, for example, I cast a glance at a wrist watch, then, strictly speaking, I have no image of the individual attributes of this object, their sum, their "associative set." This, by the way, is the basis of the 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.

The traditional interpretation here is to attribute to the perception itself such properties as meaningfulness or categoriality. As for the explanation of these properties of perception, they, as R. Gregory (1) rightly says about this, at best remain within the boundaries of the theory of G. Helmholtz. I note at once that the deeply hidden danger here lies in the logical necessity to appeal in the final analysis to innate categories.

The general idea I am defending can be expressed in two propositions. The first is that the properties of meaningfulness, categorization are the 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 "out-of-his-existence"- perceived, assimilated - and therefore the same as what is included in his image of the world.

Let me put it another way: meanings appear not as something that lies in front of things, but as something that lies behind the shape of things- in the cognized objective connections of the objective world, in various systems in which they only exist, only reveal their properties. Values thus carry a special dimension. This is the dimension intrasystem connections of the objective objective world. She is the fifth quasi-dimension of it!

Let's summarize.

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

Here I must interrupt myself with some illustrative digressions. I am reminded of a dispute between one of our philosophers and J. Piaget when he visited us.

You get, - this philosopher said, referring to Piaget, - that the child, the subject in general, builds the world with the help of a system of operations. How can you stand on such a point of view? This is idealism.

I do not at all adhere to this point of view, - replied J. Piaget, - in this problem my views coincide with Marxism, and it is absolutely wrong to consider me an idealist!

But how then do you assert that for the child the world is the way his logic constructs it?

Piaget did not give a clear answer to this question.

There is an answer, however, and a very simple one. We are really building, but not the World, but the Image, actively “scooping out” 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 proceeds, 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 digression of a completely different kind.

We single out and investigate the perception of distance, the distinction of forms, the constancy of color, apparent movement, etc., etc. With careful experiments and the most precise measurements, we seem to be drilling deep, but narrow wells that penetrate into the depths of perception. True, we do not often succeed in laying “communication channels” between them, but we continue and continue this drilling of wells and scoop out of them a huge amount of information - useful, as well as of little use and even completely useless. As a result, whole heaps of incomprehensible facts have now formed in psychology, which mask the true scientific relief of the problems of perception.

In relation to the study of perception, this is a return to the construction of an image in the mind of an individual. external multidimensional world, peace as he is, in which we live, in which we act, but in which our abstractions in themselves do not “dwell”, just as, for example, the so thoroughly studied and carefully measured “phi-movement” does not dwell in it (2).

Here again I have to make a digression.

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, the law of figure and background were formulated.

This psychological theory, generated by the study of flat images, turned out to be "flat" itself. In essence, it closed the possibility of the "real world - psychic gestalt" movement, as well as the "psychic gestalt - brain" movement. Meaningful processes turned out to be substituted by the relations of projectivity and isomorphism. V. Koehler 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 controversy of spirit and matter, psyche and brain is that the third is primary and this is the third there is a qestalt - form. Far from the best solution is offered in the Leipzig version of Gestalt psychology: form is a subjective a priori category.

And how is the perception of three-dimensional things interpreted in Gestalt psychology? The answer is simple: it lies in the transfer to the perception of three-dimensional things of the laws of perception of projections on a plane. Things of the three-dimensional world, thus, act as closed planes. The main law of the field of perception is the law of "figure and background". 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 refers not to the perception of things in the three-dimensional world, but to some of their abstraction, which is their contour*. In the real world, however, the definiteness of an integral thing emerges through its connections with other things, and not through its “contouring”**.

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

It took years in psychology to experimentally separate and oppose them. It seems that J. Gibson did this best of all at first, who found a way to see the surrounding objects, the surrounding environment as consisting of planes, but then this environment became ghostly, lost its reality for the observer. It was possible to subjectively create precisely the "field", it turned out, however, to be inhabited by ghosts. Thus, a very important distinction arose in the psychology of perception: 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).

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

I want to state this point right away in the form of a categorical thesis, deliberately omitting all the necessary reservations.

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 found in interactions with the same things (with "other" things), i.e., in the "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 recipient organs of the subject. In this sense, they are modal, that is, subjective.

Therefore, sensory modalities cannot be given a "permanent registration" in the external objective world. I emphasize external, because man, with all his sensations, himself 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 matter, 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... We asked some of the subjects to draw as accurately as possible a square of the appropriate size, which requires the participation of both sight and touch. Others had to choose 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 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 visual perception" (4).

Thus, the objective world, taken as a system of only "object-object" connections (ie, the world without animals, before animals and humans), is amodal. Only with the emergence of subject-object relationships, interactions, various modalities arise, which also change from species to species (meaning a zoological species).

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

From the duality of bonds, interactions "O-O" and "O-S", subject to their coexistence, the well-known duality of characteristics occurs: for example, such and such a section of the spectrum of electromagnetic waves and, say, red light. At the same time, one should not only lose sight of the fact that both characteristics express "a 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) an “orienting basis” of behavior is needed, and this is an image;

B) this or that way of life creates the need for an appropriate 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 non-light depends on whether the animal is nocturnal or diurnal."

The question of "combinations" is of particular interest.

1. Combination (of modalities) becomes, but in relation to feelings, an image; she is his condition. (Just as an object is a "knot of properties", so an image is a "knot of modal sensations".)

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

3. But it also expresses their existence in time, so the image is fundamentally a product not only of the simultaneous, but also successive combinations, mergers**. The most characteristic phenomenon of combining viewpoints is children's drawings!

General conclusion: any actual influence fits into the image of the world, i.e. into some "whole" 14 .

When I say that every actual, i.e., now acting on perceptive systems, property “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 the object is established on the object, i.e., its separation takes place not at the sensory site, but at the intersections of the visual axes. Therefore, when using the probe, the sensor shifts. This means that there is no objectification of sensations, perceptions! Behind the criticism of "objectification", that is, the attribution of secondary features to the real world, lies the 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 his “subjective positing”.(Position for the subject!);

(2) inscription in the image of the world also expresses the fact that the object does not consist of “sides”; he acts for us as single continuous; discontinuity is only its moment. There is a phenomenon of the "core" of the object. This phenomenon expresses objectivity perception. The processes of perception are subject to this nucleus. 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 Müller); 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.

The deepening of 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 in it.

The picture of the world includes invisible properties of objects: a) amodal- discovered by industry, experiment, thinking; b) "supersensible"- functional properties, qualities, such as "cost", which are not contained in the substrate of the object. They are represented in the values!

Some general conclusions

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

3. The "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 with them. That is why the disintegration of sensibility (its perversion) gives rise to the psychological unreality of the world, the phenomenon of its "disappearance". This is known and proven.

4. Sensual modalities form the obligatory texture of the image of the world. But the texture of the image is not equivalent to the image itself. So in painting, an object shines through behind smears of oil. When I look at the depicted object, I do not see strokes. The texture, the material is removed by the image, and not destroyed in it.

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

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

1. Gregory R. Reasonable eye. M., 1972.

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

* Or, if you like, a plane.

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

3. Logvinenko A. D., Stolin V. V. Study of perception under conditions of inversion of the field of vision. - Ergonomics: Proceedings of VNIITE, 1973, no. 6.

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

Although the concepts of "image of the world" and "picture of the world" are used in the works of psychologists, educators, and philosophers, the content of these categories is not separated in most psychological studies. As a rule, the “image of the world” is defined as a “picture of the world” (Abramenkova V.V., 1999; Kulikovskaya I.E., 2002), “a picture of the world order” (Aksenova Yu.A., 1997), a cognitive scheme (Pishchalnikova V.A.; 1998; Zinchenko V.P., 2003), predictive model (Smirnov S.D., 1985), “objective reality” (Karaulov Yu.N., 1996), etc.

In the context of our work, we will rely on the concept of "image of the world".

One of the very first definitions of the concept of "image of the world" can be found in geographical studies. The “image of the world” was defined here as a holistic understanding of the world by a person: “The ideas about the Universe and the place of the Earth in it, about its structure, about natural phenomena are an inseparable part of understanding the world as a single whole in all cultures, from primitive to modern times” (Melnikova E. A., 1998, p. 3).

Consider the features of the concept of "image of the world" in psychological research.

According to A.N. Leontiev, the concept of "image of the world" is associated with the perception "The psychology of the image (perception) is a concrete scientific knowledge of how, in the course of their activity, individuals build an image of the world - the world in which they live, act, which they themselves remake and partially create ; this knowledge is also about how the image of the world functions, mediating their activity in the objectively real world” (Leontiev A.N., 1983, p. 254).

From the point of view of many domestic researchers (Leontiev A.N., 1983; Smirnov S.D., 1985) and others, the “image of the world” has a sensual basis. For example, from the point of view of A.N. Leontiev, the image itself is sensual, objective: “every thing is initially posited objectively in the objective connections of the objective world; secondarily, it also posits itself in subjectivity, human sensibility, and in human consciousness ”(Leontiev A.N., 1983, p. 252).

Many studies point to the social nature of the "image of the world", its reflective nature. For example, S.D. Smirnov connects the origin of the “image of the world” with activity and communication “The first aspect of the active social nature of the image of the world is its genetic aspect - the origin and development of the image of the world in the course of mastering and developing activities and communication. The second aspect is that the very image of the world (at least at its nuclear levels) includes a reflection of that activity that allows you to highlight the properties of objects that are not detected by them when interacting with the senses ”(Smirnov S.D., 1985, p. 149).. The objective meaning and emotional and personal meaning of the image is given by the context of the activity, “actualized (in accordance with the tasks of the activity) part of the image of the world” (Smirnov SD, 1985, p. 143). The content of the “image of the world” is connected with the activity of the person himself. Activity allows a person to build an “image of the world” as a “prognostic model, or rather, an image of the world, continuously generating cognitive hypotheses at all levels of reflection, including in the language of “sensory modalities” (ibid., p. 168). Hypotheses are the material from which the "image of the world" is built. An important characteristic of the "image of the world" is its active and social nature (Smirnov S.D., 1985).

The "image of the world" has a holistic nature. From the point of view of S.D. Smirnov's "image of the world" reflects reality (ibid.). Thus, the “image of the world” from the point of view of S.D. Smirnov has a reflective character, in this context, consideration of the problem of the development of the "image of the world" is associated with incoming information.

I.A. Nikolaeva, considering the problem of the “image of the world”, highlights the concept of “social world” (Nikolaeva I.A., 2004, p. 9). Referring to V.A. Petrovsky, under the "social world" the researcher understands "the world of people, the world of relations" I - others ", the interpersonal relationships experienced by a person, which carry all levels of human social relations. In our context, those relationships with others that are carried out in the inner world of the individual with the “personalized other” are also recognized as interpersonal in our context. The image of the "social world" is the "top" structure of the image of the world, characterized by the following properties: the universality of formal characteristics; representation at different levels of consciousness; integrity; amodality of nuclear structures, their semantic nature; predictability - relative independence from the perceived objective and social situation "" The image of the social world includes two levels: "conscious, sensually designed, and deep, torn away from sensuality, sign, semantic level - a reflection of the world as a whole" (Nikolaeva I.A., 2004 , p. 9).

The "image of the world" includes not only the "social world". According to A. Obukhov, it contains "a basic, invariant part, common to all its carriers, and a variable one, reflecting the subject's unique life experience" (Obukhov A., 2003). The system of ideas about the world includes "a person's worldview in the context of the realities of being" (ibid.).

From the point of view of V.P. Zinchenko, the “image of the world” is “mediated by objective values, their corresponding cognitive schemes and amenable to conscious reflection, the reflection in the human psyche of the objective world” (Pishchalnikova V.A., 1998; Zinchenko V.P., 2003). In the context of the subject-activity approach, the "image of the world" is understood as a reflection of the real world in which a person lives and acts, at the same time being a part of this world. Reality, therefore, is perceived by a person only through the "image of the world", in a constant dialogue with him.

According to A.K. Osnitsky, the objective world is “a world objectified by all the predecessors, fellow human beings in culture” (Osnitsky A.K., 2011, p. 251). According to the scientist, the perception of the world should be a discovery for a person. In this, “representatives in the human mind” play an important role: “acceptable and preferred goals, mastered self-regulation skills, images of control actions, habitual assessments of experiencing successful and erroneous actions” (Osnitsky A.K., 2011, p. 254). In his mind, a person “operates with a socially defined system of values, which for the subject of activity in his own regulatory experience act as “values” (Osnitsky A.K., 2011, p. 255).

In many studies, the concept of "image of the world" correlates with the "picture of the world" (Leontiev A.N., 1983), (Artemyeva Yu.A., 1999), (Aksyonova Yu.A., 1997) and others.

From the point of view of V.V. Morkovkin, the picture of the world exists only in “the imagination of a person, which in many respects forms it independently, i.e. creates his own idea of reality ”(V.V. Morkovkin, cited by the book G.V. Razumova, 1996, p. 96).

According to Yu.N. Karaulova, the picture of the world is “an objective reality, subjectively reflected in the mind of an individual, as a system of knowledge about nature, society and man” (Yu.N. Karaulov, cited by G.V. Razumova, 1996, p. 59 ).

G.V. Razumova understands the picture of the world as reflected in the human mind "the secondary existence of the objective world, fixed and materialized in a kind of material form - language" (Razumova G.V., 1996, p. 12).

According to V.A. Maslova, the concept of a picture of the world (linguistic) “is based on the study of human ideas about the world. If the world is a person and the environment in their interaction, then the picture of the world is the result of processing information about the environment and the person. According to the researcher, the picture of the world, namely the linguistic one, is a way of conceptualizing the world “Each language divides the world in its own way, i.e. has its own way of conceptualizing it" (Maslova V.A., 2001, p. 64). The picture of the world "forms the type of human attitude to the world (nature, animals, oneself as an element of the world)", while the language "reflects a certain way perception and organization (“conceptualization”) of the world” (Maslova V.A., 2001, p. 65).

From the point of view of A.N. Leontiev's "picture of the world" is compared with the "fifth quasi-dimension". It is by no means subjectively ascribed to the world! It is a transition through sensibility beyond the boundaries of sensibility, through sensory modalities to the amodal world. The objective world appears in meaning, i.e. the picture of the world is filled with meanings” (Leontiev A.N., 1983, p. 260). The picture of the world in the studies of E.Yu. Artemyeva is presented as a transitional layer of “subjective experience”, which is divided according to the shape of the trace of activity. E.Yu. Artemyeva calls this layer semantic. “Traces of interaction with objects are fixed in the form of multidimensional relationships: traces are attributed by a subjective relationship (good-bad, strong-weak, etc.). Such relations are close to semantic - systems of "meanings". Traces of activity, fixed in the form of relationships, are the result of all three stages of the genesis of the trace: sensory-perceptual, representational, mental ”(Artemyeva E.Yu., 1999, p. 21) ..

In his studies, Yu.A. Aksenova, as an integral part of the “image of the world”, singles out the “picture of the world order”, which is understood as a system of “ideas about the constituent parts, organization and functioning of the surrounding world, about their role and place in it” (Aksenova Yu.A., 2000, p. nineteen). The content of the picture of the world order is compared here with the images of the world order. The picture of the world order of each person consists of integrated, single components: “special”, i.e. shared by a certain social or gender and age group of people, and "universal", i.e. those that exist in a person as a whole are universal ”(Aksyonova Yu.A., 1997, p. 19). The picture of the world consists of elements of inanimate and living nature, the human world "(man-made world: buildings, roads, equipment, transport, household items, culture, games)", "supernatural world (good, evil)", "abstract figures (points, straight lines, etc.)” (ibid., pp. 73-76).

I.E. Kulikovskaya in the structure of the picture of the world distinguishes the following types: “mythopoetic, philosophical, religious, scientific” In the picture of the world “the world of phenomena, nature and objects is represented, higher levels contain more and more abstract verbal judgments about social relations, one’s world of culture". The picture of the world includes various types of "(mytho-epic, philosophical, religious, scientific)" (Kulikovskaya I.E., 2002, p. 8)..

According to I.E. Kulikovskaya picture of the world is formed in the human mind as a result of worldview (Kulikovskaya I.E., 2002). Worldview includes worldview, worldinterpretation, worldview and worldtransformation. Understanding the world shows the attitude of a person to the outside world. Understanding the world is associated with comprehension, the search for "the meaning, causes and effects of phenomena, their explanation with the spiritual experience of society, the individual." Through the interpretation of the world, a person explains the world, "makes it adequate to the inner world of the individual and society, history." The perception of the world is connected with the sensual-emotional experience of “a person of his being in the world” (Kulikovskaya I.E., 2002, p. 9). The development of the "picture of the world" occurs in the process of training and education, relating oneself to society and its culture. Correlation with the world allows "the child to realize and feel like a particle of this world, deeply connected with it." In this case, culture is “a form of social heredity, as a certain order of things and events that “flows” through time from one era to another, allowing the world to be transformed on the basis of values” (ibid., p. 4). In this approach, the construction of a picture of the world is the result of relating oneself to social values. Consideration of these concepts only in the described context does not provide an opportunity to enter the understanding of the "image of the world" and "picture of the world" into the space of spirit and culture.

In these approaches, the "image of the world" develops as a result of the "mastering" of certain knowledge by a person. For example, from the point of view of A.N. Leontiev’s construction of the “image of the world” is connected with its active “scooping out” of the surrounding reality “We are really building, but not the World, but the Image, actively “scooping it out, 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 proceeds, 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 ... ”(Leontiev A.N., 1983, p. 255) ..

In his studies, E.Yu. Artemyeva connects the acceptance of the world by a person with the experience of experienced activities “... the world is accepted by a biasedly structured subject and the characteristics of this structuring are significantly related to the experience of experienced activities” (Artemyeva E.Yu., 1999, p. 11). E.Yu. Artemyeva connects subjective experience with the appearance of traces of activity. Traces of activities form systems that stably structure external phenomena. By their nature, these systems are close to semantic formations “The system of meanings is understood “as traces of activities recorded in relation to their objects” (Artemyeva E.Yu., 1999, p. 13). E.Yu. Artemyeva identifies models of subjective experience, which consist in constructing constructs that describe the generation of transformation and the actualization of activity traces.

The researcher identified three layers of subjective experience, which differ in the form of the trace of activity: the surface layer “corresponds to the first and second stages of genesis - sensory-perceptual and representational levels of reflection” (Artemyeva E.Yu., 1999, p. 21), semantic “traces of interaction recorded in the form of multidimensional relationships: the traces are attributed by subjective attitude (good - bad, strong - weak, etc.) "..." This layer is called the picture of the world "(Artemyeva E.Yu., 1999, p. 21), a layer of amodal structures "The deepest layer, correlated with the nuclear structures of the image of the world and formed with the participation and the most significant contribution of conceptual thinking" (E.Yu. Artemyeva, 1999, p. 21).

The “image of the world” is the deepest structure; this structure is “non-modal and relatively static, because is rebuilt only as a result of implementation (an act of current activity), which shifts meanings after achieving or not achieving the goal, if the goal is recognized by the filtering systems as significant enough” (Artemyeva E.Yu., 1999, p. 21).

From the point of view of E.Yu. Artemyeva, the relationship of the “image of the world” and the “picture of the world”, represent the relationship of “homorphism”, “the image of the world controls, reflecting part of its (in its own language) relations, and the picture of the world “transmits” to it relations synthesized by multimodal properties to objects associated with the subject of current activity” (Artemyeva E.Yu., 1999, p. 21). Thus, from the point of view of this approach, the dynamics of the relationship between the “image of the world” and the “picture of the world” is ultimately determined by current activity. The "image of the world" acts as a semantic formation that controls the picture of the world. E.Yu. Artemyeva points out the importance of the appearance of one’s own meaning: “An additional link is needed that processes the trace of the system, turning our “meaning” into “personal meaning” (Artemyeva E.Yu., 1999, p. 29). Nevertheless, the author considers the generation of "personal meaning" as a result of the influence of "traces of activity" (ibid., p. 30).

Thus, the above approaches considered by us represent the “image of the world” as a system of reflection of social relations, the culture of society, and the system of values. The "image of the world" is considered as a deep structure, which includes a system of ideas about the world (nature, phenomena of reality), etc., a system of meanings about the world. This system of ideas can be different depending on the peculiarities of gender and age characteristics, the experience of a person's activity in society, his cognitive activity.

In our opinion, the described relationship between the "image of the world" and the "picture of the world" is a mutual subordination, reflection, "homorphism". These are finite relations, since there is no possibility of access to the socio-cultural space in them. Here, the study of these concepts is carried out mainly from a cognitive point of view.

V.V. Abramenkova considers the problem of the picture of the world not only in the space of social relations: "The picture of the world is a syncretic object-sensory formation, acting not as a passive-reflective, but as an actively constructing principle - building a space of one's own relations with the outside world as certain expectations and requirements for it" (Abramenkova V.V., 1999, p. 48). Building a picture of the world presupposes “the creation by the child of a space of relations in an ideal plan, it involves the active involvement of the child in recreating connections with the surrounding reality as the construction of integral and harmonious (humane) relations” (Abramenkova V.V., 1999, p. 52).

V.V. Abramenkova points out that the mechanism of "formation of a child's relationship to the world, people and himself is the mechanism of identification (unification of oneself with other individuals - emotional connection - inclusion in one's inner world - acceptance as one's own norms, values, samples of a given individual or group)" ( ibid., p.53). According to the researcher, the identification mechanism “does not mean immersion either in one's own Self or in the Self of another person, but going beyond the field of communication and interaction with it. And then we find ourselves already in a three-dimensional space, where alienation turns into the ability of the subject to rise above the situation, and not be inside it ”(Abramenkova V.V., 1999, p. 57).

Based on this concept, we can conclude that the picture of the world is an actively constructing beginning of building a space of one's own relations, in which the ability to go beyond one's own "I" and "I" of another person arises. What is the reference point for this exit?

This going beyond oneself occurs when a person discovers the spiritual (socio-cultural) world.

The “sociocultural world” is presented by us as a value-semantic space that includes “sociocultural patterns” (Bolshunova N.Ya., 1999, p. 12). (This concept was considered by us in Section 1.1.).

The mystery of the discovery of the spiritual (socio-cultural) world is described by religiously oriented philosophers, writers as "revelation" (Zenkovsky V.V., 1992), as the highest grace (Florenskaya T.A., 2001), etc. The hero elder Zosima (from the work of F.M. Dostoevsky: “The Brothers Karamazov”) speaks about the sacrament, intimate communication with the spiritual world, in his teachings “Much on earth is hidden from us, but instead, we are given a secret intimate feeling of a living connection with the world higher and higher, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here, but in other worlds. That is why philosophers say that the essence of things cannot be comprehended on earth. God took seeds from other worlds and sowed them on the earth and nurtured His garden and everything that could sprout sprouted, but the nurtured one lives and lives only by the feeling of its contact with the mysterious worlds of others, if this feeling weakens or is destroyed in you, then the nurtured in you. Then you will become indifferent to life and hate it ”(Quoted according to the book O.S. Soina, 2005, p. 14)..

The discovery of the socio-cultural world is compared by Yu.M. Lotman with the discovery of "beyond reality" (Lotman Yu.M., 1992, p. 9). In the apophatic knowledge of God, the relationship between man and the World is presented as enlightenment “The most Divine knowledge of God is knowledge by ignorance, when the mind, gradually renouncing everything that exists, eventually comes out of itself and unites with the transcendental unity with the most luminous radiance, and then, in incomprehensible abyss of Wisdom, he achieves enlightenment ”(Quoted according to the book O.S. Soina, V.Sh. Sabirova, 2005, p. 40)..

The sociocultural world acts as an invisible semantic context of human life. Sociocultural “meanings” are discovered by a person intuitively, as “a kind of “voice”” (Bolshunova N.Ya., 2005, p. 71), the “voice” of the third (Bakhtin M.M., 2002, p. 336), set the situation “ future semantic event” (Lotman Yu.M., 1992, p. 28).

The movement of a person towards socio-cultural values contributes to the realization of "personal destiny, as a projection of the World" (Bolshunova N.Ya., 2005, p. 42). At the moment of dialogue with the World, an “infinity” (Nepomnyashchaya N.I., 2001, p. 51) of relations with the world opens up to a person, allowing a person to go beyond the “usual knowledge about the world and about himself” (Nepomnyashchaya N.I., 2001, p. 131). From the point of view of N.I. Nepomnyashchaya, the infinity (non-finiteness) of a person in the world allows “in the process of appropriation, and in the process of functioning, to go beyond the limits of the known, assimilated, including beyond the limits of oneself, to create something new, to create” (Nepomnyashchaya N.I., 2001, p. .21).

The discovery of the sociocultural world, from the point of view of N.Ya. Bolshunova, is a special “event” in which the experience of “ontologization of values as measures” takes place (Bolshunova N.Ya., 2005, pp. 41-42).

Based on our theoretical review of the problem related to the concept of the “image of the world”, we have drawn the following conclusions:

1) by the “image of the world” we mean an integral system of a person’s ideas about the world, other people, about himself and his activities in the world, accompanied by experience, i.e. they are experienced representations;

2) the "image of the world" is dialogical, has a complex structure, which includes the following components:

- "sociocultural world", includes sociocultural samples of values as measures presented in culture;

- "social world", includes those norms and requirements that exist in society;

- "objective world" (material, physical) - includes ideas about objects and phenomena of the natural and man-made material world, including natural-scientific ideas about the laws of its existence;

3) in the process of a genuine dialogue - a dialogue of "consent" with the World, a person is able to go beyond the boundaries of the usual ideas about the world and about himself.