Alexander Surmava The new definition of psyche based

Alexander Surmava The new definition of psyche based on ideas of ü Spinoza, ü Vygotsky, ü Ilyenkov

Those who have done the groundwork in solving Ernst Haeckel’s “The Riddle of the Universe“ 1632 - 1677 1896 - 1934 1924 - 1979

The problem was formulated in XVII century by Rene Descartes as psychophysical problem. The essence of psychophysical problem is how an independent from any natural causality free will can resist the mechanic causality of a human’s body, how human’s “soul” or “thinking substance” can interact with human’s body or “extensive substance” to give the last a possibility to overcome its innate natural limits and gives a human a quality of universality.

The psychophisical problem was cracked by Spinoza found a very simple solution to it, brilliant in its simplicity for our day as well as his: the problem is insoluble only because it has been wrongly posed. There is no need to rack one’s brains over how the Lord God ‘unites’ ‘soul’ (thought) and ‘body’ in one complex, represented initially (and by definition) as different and even contrary principles allegedly existing separately from each other before the ‘act’ of this ‘uniting’ (and thus, also being able to exist after their ‘separation’; which is only another formulation of thesis of the immortality of the soul, one of the cornerstones of Christian theology and ethics). In fact, there simply is no such situation; and therefore there is also no problem of ‘uniting’ or ‘co-ordination’. There are not two different and originally contrary objects of investigation body and thought, but only one single object, which is the thinking body of living, real man (or other analogous being, if such exists anywhere in the Universe), only considered from two different and even opposing aspects or points of view. Living, real thinking man, the sole thinking body with which we are acquainted, does not consist of two Cartesian halves ‘thought lacking a body’ and a ‘body lacking thought’. In relation to real man both the one and the other are equally fallacious abstractions, and one cannot in the end model a real thinking man from two equally fallacious abstractions. That is what constitutes the real ‘keystone’ of the whole system, a very simple truth that is easy, on the whole, to understand. “Dialectical logic” Evald Ilyenkov

According to Spinoza “thinking” and “extension” must be understood as attributes of one and the same subject. So they can’t be in mutual causal relationship. As Spinoza express this in his “Ethics” (Proposition 2, Part III) Body cannot determine mind to think, neither can mind determine body to motion or rest or any state different from these, if such there be. Cause thinking extension Cause Just as profile of a human’s head can’t be a cause of its face and vice versa.

When we consider a thinking in the most universal sense it is obvious that the subject of those attributes is Deus sive Substantia sive Natura (Substance = God = Nature). We can imagine it this way: thinking extension

Or more accurately - this way: thinking extension

But when we try to deal with a finite modus of thinking say with a human being, what we have to imagine as a real subject which has two attributive projections: thinking and extension? thinking extension ?

“Physiologically acting brains” - that is the answer of Ludvig Feierbach and a long row of following researchers “thinking” or all subjective experienced phenomenology Ludvig Feierbach XIX “extension” or all objective physiological processes Modern researchers XXI

A thinking body - a human or animal body acting in accordance with the objective shapes of material world. “thinking” or all subjective experienced phenomenology ~1930 “extension” or all objective physical movement of subject in the material world correlating it with the objects of the latter ~1970

If so the psychology haven’t search nonexistent psycho-physical and even less present psycho-physiological causalities as psycho-physiologists are used to do but try to investigate the specific character of movement of live creature possessing the psyche in contrast to mechanically acting machines.

1813 -1878 Claude Bernard - a famous French physiologist and pathologist in his XIX century defined a life as an irritable process. The living organism reacts on a external stimulus with specific reaction so as the form of reaction has nothing to do with the form (shape) of stimulus but is fully depends on the construction of reacting organism. Thus we can estimate Claude Bernard as one of classics of so called S-R, or Stimulus -Reactive approach.

1896 - 1966 A hundred years later Nikolai Bernstein – a great Russian physiologist put forward the genius idea that we cannot comprehend the life if we will try to understand it as a passive, Stimulus-Reactive process. Не estimated the Cartesian as well as Pavlov’s reflex arc as egregiously limited case in real life process and was the first who formulated the principals of object oriented or PREDMET activity. Thus he laid the foundation of a new consistently monistic materialistic physiology and psychology and in his latest works proclaimed a necessity of building a new biology – a biology of activity. Now a 40 years after his death we can see that his ideas substantially passed ahead of his time.

Unfortunately Alexei N. Leont'ev who started ascending from an abstract definition of life to concrete idea of human consciousness has taken as a germ cell of his theoretic movement Cloud Bernard’s comprehension of life as a passive “S-R” process instead of consistent Bernstein’s activity approach. It was Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov who probably predetermined Leontiev’s choice.

Meanwhile starting from above-mentioned principals we tried to formulate a consistent definition of life comprehended as an active process. § Firstly, a living organism, in order to avoid being passive only in relation to its object but to be “active, striving or passionate” (A. N. Leont’yev) needs no external compulsion, cause or incitement (stimulus) in order to direct its activity to the object but it develops its activity spontaneously. In other words, it acts as one must in relation to his object of passion. § Secondly, the very object of a living organism is not an accidental external thing but it is a thing determined by the organism itself as an object of its “passionate striving”. § Thirdly and lastly, active subject-matter operation of a living organism is not a certain stir determined just from within but a known action according to the form of an object (predmet) as understood by Spinoza and Ilyenkov.

We have underline, that listed above principles are constituting theoretic definition of life as it is. In the most brief form they will look this way 1. 2. 3. Activity (operation), in contrast to the principle of passiveness (contemplation), characterizes the following three qualities: Not reactivity, but spontaneity; Not an abstractly external object, but an object positioned by vital activity of the subject itself, i. e. productivity; Not an immanent “stir” but an action according to the form (to the shape) of an object.

Spontaneity The first and the most abstract characteristic of life is its spontaneous activity. Absence of this spontaneity is equal to death. A living thing doesn’t need any special invitation to be active. To live is to be active. A living creature deprivated from its spontaneous activity will die. In contrast with it mechanic or chemic objects will remain their mechanic or chemic properties being isolated for any time from mechanic and chemic interaction.

Predmet (object) positioning or productivity § For living subject does exist only those part of environment which can be positioned by its spontaneous activity. § So called “visual field” is not presented to passive subject as a gift of his sensuality, but must be positioned as an object (predmet) field by means of its special activity. Thus a rat being put into new cage running to and fro investigating the new space, marking the floor by its odorous footsteps in order to position those abstractly external circumstances as its predmet, or predmet field. § So does a woman decorating a new flat and positioning it as her family nest. § Consequently the object (predmet) doesn’t exist as such before its meeting with acting subject. As well as subject doesn’t exist as subject before the act of positioning of his object (predmet). Thus frequently mentioned by Leont’ev “an extraordinary act of meeting of subject with its object” is nothing more than old Cartesian tale.

Action congruent to the form (shape) of an object. 1829 -1905 § The first steps in comprehension a psychic form of activity as a mean to accommodate a movement of animal to the form (shape) of its objective circumstance was done by Russian physiologist Ivan Setchenov and zoologist Nikolai Severtsev. 1866 -1936 Lately this idea was elaborated in AT by Alexei Leont'ev and Alexander Zaporozhets as an idea of perceptive activity plastically accommodating the object’s shape. 1903 - 1979 1905 – 1981

The unity of listed above three principles: spontaneity, productivity and objectivity (predmetnost’) gives us a theoretic definition of life as it is. All unicellular organisms meet the requirements of our definition, but have we any reason to believe that their activity can be estimated not merely as live but as psychic as well?

Back to antique Greece Both Leont’ev and Zaporozhets following in this case after Vygotsky strongly distinguished between extra somatic or behavioral activity and intro somatic or functional activity. They insisted that psyche is something essentially connected with extra somatic, object oriented or “predmet” activity. On the contrary they estimated the intro somatic or functional activity of an organism as a vegetative level of activity that is inherited from vegetable ancestry of animals. The naïve idea that vegetables are in ancestry relation to the animals they adopted from Aristotle with his distinction of three type of soles: vegetable, animal and rational.

The “stomach-ache” problem If Leont’ev and Zaporozhets are right in their presuppositions a banal stomach-ache turns into serious problem for psychological activity theory. The perception of say a triangle one can consider as an active vital movement accommodating the shape of triangle. But what one have to consider under stomach-ache? It’s well known that tooth-ache is not congruent to it’s cause – a dentist's drill. Can we conclude from it that the AT matches only for pure cognitive processes?

What is an elementary unit of activity? Is it an individual? or its organ? Like this?

What is an elementary unit of activity? Surely the elementary unit of activity must be an alive body organ, not a ham taken from butcher shop : -). We can assume that when we deal with a multicellular organism we have to consider each motor element (muscle fiber) or group of elements (muscle spindle) dealing as a indivisible whole against its object (predmet) as an elementary unit of activity. Meanwhile speaking about an activity we have to point an object, predmet of this activity.

What is an object of activity of an elementary unit? It’s obvious that a dumbbell is a predmet of an organism as a whole. But is it a predmet of each of two muscles (I mean flexor muscle as well as protractor)? SURELY NOT!

Reflective relation Both muscles - flexor muscle as well as protractor has nothing to do with the weight of dumbbell (that weight of cares lies on the shoulders of an organism as a whole). Both muscles are dealing only with its reciprocal antagonist. Thus the relations connecting the reciprocal subactive units of living organism we define as a reflective relation.

Reflective relation Concerning the elementary units of activity we define them as subactive in contrast to activeness as such of an organism as a whole. Thus we distinguish the basic form of vital activity – an object oriented or predmet activity – and, starting from multicellular animas, the derivative form of activity a reflective activity which acts against the oppositely directed activity of another motor unit of the same organism.

A new definition of psyche We reveal a psychic or an animal type of vital activity where successive external object oriented activity of an organism is sublated simultaneous predmet activity of its living sub-units, living organs related to each other with some morpho-genetic or reflective relationships.

A new definition of psyche § An objective operation of such an organism is not only a movement on the shape of the predmet field, not only abstractly “external” action but it also necessarily is a reflective relation directed to itself, especial “internal” activity. That is the reason why perception of any external object is affectively colored and ever given to an animal not as its purely external objective activity but as its sensible (perceptible) form and internal bodily selfperception. § “Human soul perceives any external body as actually existing only through the concept of the conditions of its own body” (Spinoza, 1957, p. 407). To put it differently, sensation is not a precise mould of an object but it is reflective by its very nature.

To the identity of affect and intellect § Life of an organism realizing both active and reflective relationships in the process of its vital activity presents a fundamentally integral vital process where its structural elements are not isolated and fixed morphological units – cells or multi-cellular organisms – and much less abstract physiological processes. They are active objective processes not indifferent to each other, actively interacting with each other, determining each other so that they become a single dialectical ensemble in the end. § Life of such an organism, as viewed from its relation to the objective world, presents an extra- or intra-corporeal objective perception, “an action on the shape of an object”, in terms of Spinoza and Ilyenkov, or an intellect. Life taken in relation of an organism to itself is an interoceptive selfperception representing a sensitive texture of an objective image, a self-oriented reflective activity, or an affect.

Volvox the most primitive organism possesing psyche § § The most elementary organism known to the science in which, according to the above- given criterion, psychics could and should be assumed is Volvox, a colonial green alga shaped like a hollow sphere. Its cells joined together with thin protoplasmic cross-pieces possess outwardly oriented flagella a coordinated operation of which allows the whole organism to move actively in the aquatic habitat. Each of the cells of Volvox feeds on quite independently while the total objective activity of the whole organism mediate by reflective relation of its sub-active elements, i. e. cells, provides for locomotion of the whole organism oriented on the gradient of its objective field. Such organisms (irrespective of the fact whether they are auto- or heterotrophic, i. e. whether we consider them to be either plants or animals) according to the above-cited definition, can supposedly have a sensibility, or an elementary psyche. Its content is presented by some slightly differentiated sense of the objective field expressed in the form of equally slightly differentiated general corporeal self-perception or the affect.

The evolutionary roots of Zigmund Freud’s phenomenons § § Hidra The next more highly organized animal surely worthy of consideration in the evolutionary and psychological context is a hydra. It is a typical example of the coelenterates leading a fixed mode of life. Its external objective activity is performed by a great number of tentacles and by extension and contraction of all its body whereas its internal activity is implemented by ciliary movement of some entodermic cells and again by extension and contraction of all its body providing for circulation of the contents of the gastrovascular cavity which is necessary for adequate digestion. Thus a hydra implements its extra- and intracorporeal activities by the same mechanism, i. e. contraction of the muscular fibers lying at the base of the entodermic cells and oriented along the body of the hydra and entodermic cells forming circular muscular fibers. Activity of these muscular fibers in their relation to the external world produces something like locomotive and manipulative mobility while in relation to the contents of the gastrovascular cavity it forms the gastrovascular peristalsis.

The solution of the “stomach-ache” problem Thus the semi comic “stomach-ache” problem comes to its easy solution. The opposition of “behavior” and “functioning” is not an opposition of object, predmet or animal and vegetable visceral activity, but mealy a distinction between phylogeneticly new predmet activity and phylogeneticly old one. The former represent the substrate of fine external perceptions. The latter – the substance of obscure internal self sensations as well as affectivity as such.

A psyche as “jazz band” We can estimate an animal organism as an ensemble of sub activeness which simulates to jazz band improvising its music, jazz band where each musician improvise its part issue from the mutual artistic task. Not a philharmonic orchestra where each musician plays the predetermined part according the score.

The distinction between an animal and a human beeng A scheme of coordination of sub active muscles of the legs and trunk is inborn to foal. This scheme appears as a result of multi age evolution. So a yang foal “knows” how to make use of its legs and soon after his birth he stands and follows his mother. That is possible because the horses’ as well as all other animal species’ habitat is something stable and elaborated by evolution means of object activity remains effective for each newborn individual.

The distinction between an animal and a human beeng ? But who knows where will live tomorrow this newborn child? Thus all inborn schemes of predmet activity will be extremely ineffective. The speed of development of human culture is so much bigger than the one of natural evolution, that a human being has nothing to do but inherit all his psychic abilities in a substantially new not natural but entirely culture form.

A visceral stage During he first two months as well as during 9 prenatal months of its life a leading baby’s activity is entirely visceral. A life is substantially object or predmet oriented process but the only peristalsis including the “peristalsis” of hart, vascular and gastrointestinal system and a sucking as its special case can be characterized as predmet process while the movement of hands and legs on this stage can be estimated as subactive. Leading role of visceral activity on the early stage of ontogenesis recapitulates its role in the early stages of evolution. Meanwhile this stage is preparing to the most important event in its life - the establishing of basically new – extra somatic reflective relation to another human being.

The “complex of animation” Its only extra-corporeal object positioned in the act of sucking is another human being, usually the mother of a newborn. Any adult who acts at this stage as a universal object for the baby (including his mother), cannot be differentiated by the latter from himself. Consequently, the relation of a baby to another human being is at the same time both objective and reflexive relationship. The end of a newborn period is marked by the split of this primordial identity. Abstract sub-activity of the eyes of a baby is focused on the meaningful center of his mother’s face, on the triangle of her eyes and lips; the sucking lips of the baby (we repeat, that sucking is nothing but a modus of the same peristalsis) just for an instant stop its egoistic self-seeking activity and spontaneously greet the mother with its first wide social smile positioning the same in answer.

The human development Thus another human being proves to be its first and universal object. So for the first time a thousand volt arc of the inter-subjective field begins to burn between the baby and another human being. At this stage, justly termed as “an animation complex”, this inter-subjective field is still void, it has no external objectivity whatever. The baby and the adult enjoy the pure affect of their “emotional communication ”, meeting and finding each other. But this field would comprise very soon all totality of the cultural objects beginning with the proper organic corporeity of the baby and the things the mode of action with which is set by culture. In the beginning , they would be presented as the organs of another human being not distinguished from those of the baby and so able to attract some affective activity of the baby directed to another human being. This is the activity which is formed, individually appropriated and interiorized by the baby (actually as a system of the internal, reflexive and affective relationships ) in accordance with the cultural norms and standards, ideal senses and meanings presented in their total common and separate animated activity with another human being and consequently as an ideal form of the cultural things per se.

To be continued : -)