Prospects for psychophysiological problem solving: brain activity, psyche and phenomena of consciousness
Analysis of the current condition of the psychophysical problem. The opinion of F. Krik and T. Nagel regarding the inability to substantiate the connection between the psyche and brain activity, indicates the inadequacy of our concepts about psyche, consciousness, and activity of the brain, and therefore requires a radical revision of their content. The attempt to demonstrate how such new concepts can be developed has been made. The basis for such development is supposed to be the understanding of the psyche as a way of reality reflection, necessary for the regulation of behavior and activity that has developed in Russian psychology, mainly, the understanding of the brain as a corporal body that has taken over this function in the process of evolution. The idea of the cerebral “embodiment” of reality and the acts of its sensory-perceptual cognition in addition to the physiological mechanisms of consciousness due to which their content, become apparent to a person as a subject of cognition and activity is developed. Sechenov's non-Cartesian theory of brain reflex activity, Spinoza's monistic mind-body theory, Franz Brentano's theory of intentional acts of consciousness, G. Edelman's and A.M. Ivanitsky's conception about recursive reentrant activity of sensory perceptual brain areas as a consciousness mechanisms are involved in the discussion. Developed general provisions are made more concrete by examining the neurophysiological mechanisms of the reflection of space and its phenomenal representation in the human mind.