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Lecture notes, cheat sheets
Zoopsychology. Human psyche (lecture notes)
Directory / Lecture notes, cheat sheets Table of contents (expand) Topic 7. Human psyche 7.1. The evolution of the human psyche in phylogenesis. The origin of labor activity, social relations and articulate speech At the earliest stages of evolution, man, paying attention to the differences and similarities in the behavior of animals, tried to realize his attitude to the animal world. This fact is supported by the special role that man assigned to the behavior of animals, reflecting it in various rituals, fairy tales, and legends. Legends and rituals of this type were created independently on different continents and were of great importance in shaping the consciousness of primitive man. Much later, with the emergence of scientific thinking, the problems of animal behavior, its psyche, the search for a "soul" became an integral part of many philosophical concepts. Some ancient thinkers recognized the close relationship between man and animals, placing them on the same level of mental development, while others categorically denied the slightest connection between human mental activity and similar animal activity. It was the ideological views of ancient scientists that determined the interpretation of the behavioral and mental activity of animals for many centuries. The subsequent surge of interest in the mental activity of man in comparison with the mental activity of animals was associated with the development of evolutionary doctrine. Ch. Darwin and his followers one-sidedly emphasized the similarity and kinship of all mental phenomena, from lower organisms to man. Darwin categorically denied the fact that there are any differences between the human psyche and the psyche of animals. In his works, he very often attributed human thoughts and feelings to animals. Such a one-sided understanding of the genetic relationship between the psyche of an animal and a person was criticized by V.A. Wagner. Wagner insisted that it is not the psyche of man and animals that should be compared, but the psyche of the forms inherent in the previous and subsequent group of animals. He pointed to the existence of general laws of the evolution of the psyche, without the knowledge of which it is impossible to understand human consciousness. Only such an approach, according to this scientist, could reliably reveal the prehistory of anthropogenesis and correctly understand the biological prerequisites for the emergence of the human psyche. At present, we can judge the process of anthropogenesis, as well as the origin of human consciousness, only indirectly, by analogy with living animals. But we should not forget that all these animals have gone through a long path of adaptive evolution and their behavior has been deeply imprinted by specialization to the conditions of existence. Thus, in higher vertebrates, in the evolution of the psyche, a number of lateral branches are observed that are not related to the line leading to anthropogenesis, but reflect only the specific biological specialization of individual groups of animals. For example, in no case should one compare the behavior of human ancestors with the behavior of birds or the behavior of many highly developed mammals. Even the living primates most likely followed a regressive path of evolution, and all of them are currently at a lower level of development than the human ancestor. Any, even the most complex, mental abilities of monkeys, on the one hand, are entirely determined by the conditions of their life in the natural environment, their biology, and on the other hand, they only serve to adapt to these conditions. All these facts should be remembered when searching for the biological roots of anthropogenesis and the biological prerequisites for the emergence of human consciousness. From the behavior of the now existing monkeys, as well as other animals, we can only judge the direction of mental development and the general laws of this process on the long path of anthropogenesis. Origin of work activity. It is well known that the main factors in the development of human consciousness are labor activity, articulate speech and the social life created on their basis. At the present stage, the most important task for animal psychologists is to study the ways of development of human labor activity using the example of the use of tool activity by higher animals. Labor has been manual since its inception. The human hand is primarily an organ of labor, but it also developed thanks to labor. The development and qualitative transformations of the human hand occupy a central place in anthropogenesis, both physically and mentally. The most important role is played by its grasping abilities - a phenomenon quite rare in the animal world. All biological prerequisites for labor activity should be sought in the characteristics of the grasping functions of the forelimbs of mammals. In this regard, a reasonable question arises: why did monkeys, and not other animals with grasping forelimbs, become human ancestors? This problem was studied for a long time by K.E. Fabry, studying in a comparative aspect the relationship between the main (locomotor) and additional (manipulative) functions of the forelimbs in monkeys and other mammals. As a result of numerous experiments, he came to the conclusion that the antagonistic relationship between the main and additional functions of the forelimbs plays an important role in the process of anthropogenesis. The ability to manipulate arose at the expense of basic functions, in particular, fast running. In most animals with prehensile forelimbs (bears, raccoons), manipulative actions fade into the background, they are, as it were, an unimportant appendage, without which the animal, in principle, can live. Most of these animals lead a terrestrial lifestyle, and the main function of their forelimbs is motor. The exception is primates. Their primary form of locomotion is climbing by grasping branches, and this form constitutes the main function of their limbs. With this method of movement, the muscles of the fingers are strengthened, their mobility increases, and most importantly, the thumb is opposed to the rest. This structure of the hand determines the ability of monkeys to manipulate. Only in primates, according to Fabry, the main and additional functions of the forelimbs are not in antagonistic relationships, but are harmoniously combined with each other. As a result of a harmonious combination of locomotion and manipulative actions, the development of motor activity became possible, which elevated monkeys above other mammals and later laid the foundation for the formation of specific motor capabilities of the human hand. The evolution of the primate hand proceeded simultaneously in two directions: 1) increasing flexibility and variability of grasping movements; 2) increasing the full grasp of objects. As a result of this bilateral development of the hand, the use of tools became possible, which can be considered the first stage of anthropogenesis. Simultaneously with progressive changes in the structure of the forelimbs, there were also profound correlative changes in the behavior of human ancestors. They develop musculoskeletal sensitivity of the hand, which after a while will acquire leading importance. Tactile sensitivity interacts with vision, there is an interdependence of these systems. As vision begins to partially transfer its functions to skin sensitivity, hand movements with its help are controlled and corrected, become more accurate. In the animal kingdom, only monkeys have a relationship between vision and hand movements, which is one of the most important prerequisites for anthropogenesis. Indeed, without such interaction, without visual control over the actions of the hands, it is impossible to imagine the origin of even the simplest labor operations. The interaction of vision and tactile-kinesthetic sensitivity of the hands is concretely embodied in the extremely intense and diverse manipulative activity of monkeys. Many Soviet zoopsychologists (N.N. Ladygina-Kots, N.Yu. Voitonis, K.E. Fabry, and others) studied the labor activity of monkeys. As a result of numerous experiments, it was revealed that both lower and higher monkeys carry out a practical analysis of the object in the course of manipulation. For example, they try to break the object that fell into their hands, examine its various details. But in higher apes, in particular in chimpanzees, there are also actions for the synthesis of objects. They may try to twist individual parts, twist them, twist them. Similar actions are observed in great apes and in the wild, when building nests. In addition to constructive activity, in some monkeys, in particular chimpanzees, some other types of activity are distinguished that manifest themselves when manipulating objects - these are orienting-observing, processing, motor-playing, tool activities, as well as preserving or rejecting an object. The objects of orienting-examining, processing and constructive activity are most often objects that cannot be used for food. Tool activity in chimpanzees is rather poorly represented. This separation of the forms of various activities can be explained by analyzing the characteristics of the life of these monkeys in natural conditions. The orienting-observing and processing activity occupies a large place in the behavior of chimpanzees, which is explained by the variety of plant foods and the difficult conditions in which one has to distinguish between edible and inedible. In addition, the food items of monkeys can have a complex structure, and in order to reach the edible parts (extract insect larvae from stumps, remove the shell from tree fruits), it will take effort. The constructive activity of chimpanzees, in addition to nest building, is very poorly developed. In conditions of captivity, these monkeys can twist twigs and ropes, roll balls of clay, but this behavior is not aimed at obtaining the final result, but on the contrary, most often it turns into a destructive one, into the desire to break something, to unravel. This type of behavior is explained by the fact that under natural conditions the tool activity of a chimpanzee is extremely poorly represented, since the monkey does not need this type of behavior to achieve its goals. Under natural conditions, tools are used extremely rarely. Cases have been observed of extracting termites from their buildings with twigs or straws, or collecting moisture from depressions in a tree trunk with a chewed clump of leaves. In actions with twigs, the most interesting circumstance is that before using them as tools, chimpanzees (as in the experiments of Ladygina-Kots described earlier) break off the leaves and side shoots that interfere with them. Under laboratory conditions, chimpanzees can form quite complex tool actions. This serves as proof that the data obtained under experimental conditions testify only to the potential mental abilities of monkeys, but not to the nature of their natural behavior. The use of tools can be considered an individual, and not a specific feature of the behavior of monkeys. Only under special conditions can such individual behavior become the property of the entire group or pack. One should constantly bear in mind the biological limitations of anthropoids' tool actions and the fact that here we are clearly dealing with the rudiments of former abilities, with an extinct relic phenomenon that can fully develop only in the artificial conditions of a zoopsychological experiment. It can be assumed that the use of tools was much better developed among fossil anthropoids - the ancestors of man - than among modern anthropoid apes. According to the current state of tool activity in the lower and higher apes, we can judge the main directions of the labor activity of our fossil ancestors, as well as the conditions in which the first labor actions originated. The prerequisite for labor activity was, apparently, the actions performed by modern anthropoids, namely, the cleaning of branches from leaves and side knots, the splitting of a torch. But among the first anthropoids, these tools did not yet act as tools, but rather were a means of biological adaptation to certain situations. According to K.E. Fabry, objective activity in ordinary forms could not go beyond biological laws and go into labor activity. Even the highest manifestations of manipulative (tool) activity in fossil apes would forever remain nothing more than forms of biological adaptation, if the immediate ancestors of man did not undergo fundamental changes in behavior, analogs of which Fabry discovered in modern apes under certain extreme conditions. This phenomenon is called "compensatory manipulation". Its essence lies in the fact that in a laboratory cage, with a minimum of objects of study, a noticeable restructuring of manipulatory activity is observed in monkeys, and the animal begins to "create" much more objects than in natural conditions, where there are plenty of objects for ordinary destructive manipulation. In cage conditions, when objects for manipulation are almost completely absent, the normal manipulation activity of monkeys is concentrated on those few objects that they can have (or are given to them by the experimenter). The natural need of monkeys to manipulate numerous diverse objects is compensated in an environment sharply depleted in subject components by a qualitatively new form of manipulation - compensatory manipulation. Only as a result of fundamental restructuring of objective actions, in the process of evolution, could labor activity develop. If we turn to the natural conditions of the origin of mankind, it can be noted that they were actually characterized by a sharp depletion of the habitat of our animal ancestors. Tropical forests were rapidly shrinking, and many of their inhabitants, including monkeys, found themselves in sparse or completely open areas, in an environment that was more monotonous and poor in objects for manipulation. Among these monkeys were also forms close to the human ancestor (Ramapithecus, Paranthropus, Plesianthropus, Australopithecus), and also, obviously, our immediate Upper Pliocene ancestor. The transition of animals, the structure and behavior of which was formed in the conditions of forest life, to a qualitatively different habitat was associated with great difficulties. Almost all anthropoids are extinct. In the new habitat conditions, those anthropoids gained an advantage, in which, on the basis of the original way of moving through the trees, bipedalism developed. Animals with free forelimbs found themselves in a biologically more advantageous position, since they were able to use their free limbs for the development and improvement of tool activity. Of all the anthropoids of open spaces, only one species survived, which later became the ancestor of man. According to most anthropologists, he was able to survive in changing environmental conditions only through the successful use of natural objects as tools, and then the use of artificial tools. It should not be forgotten, however, that tool activity was able to fulfill its saving role only after a profound qualitative restructuring. The need for such a restructuring was due to the fact that manipulative activity (vital for the normal development and functioning of the motor apparatus) in a sharply depleted environment of open spaces had to be compensated. Forms of "compensatory modeling" arose, which eventually led to a high concentration of elements of the psychomotor sphere, which raised the tool activity of our animal ancestor to a qualitatively new level. The further development of labor activity cannot be imagined without the use of various tools, as well as the emergence of special tools. Any object used by an animal to solve a specific task can serve as a direct tool, but a tool must certainly be specially made for certain labor operations and requires knowledge of its future use. This type of tool is made in advance, before its use becomes necessary. The making of tools can only be explained by foreseeing the occurrence of situations in which it is indispensable. In modern monkeys, any tool is not assigned its special meaning. The object serves as a tool only in a specific situation, and, losing the need for use, it also loses its significance for the animal. The operation performed by the monkey with the help of a tool is not fixed behind this tool; outside of its direct application, it treats it indifferently, and therefore does not permanently store it as a tool. The manufacture of tools and their storage presupposes the foreseeing of possible causal relationships in the future. Modern monkeys are not able to comprehend such relationships even when preparing a tool for direct use in the course of solving a problem. Unlike monkeys, man keeps the tools he makes. Moreover, the tools themselves preserve human methods of influencing natural objects. Even when made individually, a tool is a public item. Its use was developed in the process of collective work and secured in a special way. According to K. Fabry, “every human tool is the material embodiment of a certain socially developed labor operation.” [32] The emergence of labor radically rebuilt the entire behavior of anthropoids. From the general activity aimed at the immediate satisfaction of a need, a special action is singled out, not directed by a direct biological motive and gaining its meaning only with the further use of its results. This change in behavior marked the beginning of human social history. In the future, social relations and forms of action that are not directed by biological motives become fundamental for human behavior. The manufacture of a tool (for example, hewing one stone with the help of another) requires the participation of two objects at once: the first, to which changes are made, and the second, to which these changes are directed and which as a result becomes a tool of labor. The impact of one object on another, which could potentially become a tool, is also observed in monkeys. However, these animals pay attention to the changes that occur with the object of direct influence (the tool), and not to the changes that occur with the processed object, which serves as nothing more than a substrate. In this respect, monkeys are no different from other animals. Their instrumental actions are directly opposite to the instrumental actions of a person - for him, the most important changes occur with the second object, from which, after a series of operations, a tool of labor is obtained. Hundreds of thousands of years have passed from the creation of the first tools of labor like the hand ax of Sinanthropus to the creation of various perfect tools of labor of a modern type human (neoanthrope). But it should be noted that already at the initial stages of the development of material culture, one can see a huge variety of types of tools, including composite ones (heads of darts, flint inserts, needles, spear throwers). Later, stone tools appeared, such as an ax or a hoe. Along with the rapid development of material culture and mental activity since the beginning of the Late Paleolithic era, the biological development of man has sharply slowed down. Among the most ancient and ancient people, the ratio was reversed: with an extremely intensive biological evolution, expressed in a great variability of morphological features, the technique of making tools developed extremely slowly. There is a well-known theory of Ya.Ya. Roginsky, which was called "a single jump with two turns". According to this theory, simultaneously with the emergence of labor activity (the first turn), the most ancient people developed new socio-historical patterns. But along with this, biological laws also acted on the ancestors of modern man for a long time. The gradual accumulation of a new quality at the final stage of this development led to a sharp (second) turn, which consisted in the fact that these new social patterns began to play a decisive role in the life and further development of people. As a result of the second turn in the late Paleolithic, modern man arose - a neoanthropist. After its appearance, biological laws finally lost their leading significance and gave way to social laws. Roginsky emphasizes that only with the advent of the neoanthrope do social patterns become a truly dominant factor in the life of human groups. If we follow this concept, the first human labor actions were carried out in the form of a combination of compensatory manipulation and instrumental activity enriched by it, as mentioned in his works by Fabry. After a long time, the new content of objective activity acquired a new form in the form of specifically human labor movements that are not characteristic of animals. Thus, at first, the outwardly uncomplicated and monotonous objective activity of the first people corresponded to the great influence of biological laws inherited from the animal ancestors of man. Ultimately, as if under the cover of these biological laws, labor activity arose, which formed a person. The problem of the emergence of social relations and articulate speech. Already at the very beginning of working life, the first social relations arose. Labor was originally collective and social. Since their appearance on earth, monkeys have lived in large herds or families. All biological prerequisites for human social life should be sought in the objective activities of their ancestors, carried out in conditions of a collective way of life. But it is necessary to remember one more feature of work activity. Even the most complex instrumental activity does not have the character of a social process and does not determine the relations between members of the community. Even in animals with the most developed psyche, the structure of the community is never formed on the basis of tool activity, does not depend on it, much less is not mediated by it. Human society does not obey the laws of group behavior of animals. It arose on the basis of other motivations and has its own laws of development. K.E. Fabry wrote about this: “Human society is not simply a continuation or complication of the community of our animal ancestors, and social patterns are not reducible to the ethological patterns of life of a herd of monkeys. Social relations of people arose, on the contrary, as a result of the breakdown of these patterns, as a result of a radical change in the very essence herd life and emerging work activity." [33] For a long time, N.I. Voitonis. His numerous studies were aimed at studying the peculiarities of the structure of the herd and the herd behavior of various monkeys. According to N.I. Voitonis and NA Tych, the need for monkeys in a herd way of life originated at the lowest level of primate evolution and flourished in modern baboons, as well as in great apes living in families. In the animal ancestors of man, the progressive development of gregariousness also manifested itself in the formation of strong intra-herd relationships, which, in particular, turned out to be especially useful when hunting together with the help of natural tools. From the direct ancestors of a person, adolescents obviously had to learn the traditions and skills that had been formed in previous generations, learn from the experience of older members of the community, and the latter, especially males, should not only show mutual tolerance, but also be able to cooperate, coordinate their actions. All this was required by the complexity of joint hunting with the use of various objects (stones, sticks) as hunting tools. At the same time, at this stage, for the first time in the evolution of primates, conditions arose when it became necessary to designate objects: without this, it was impossible to ensure the coordination of actions of herd members during joint hunting. According to Fabry, a special phenomenon, which he called "demonstrative manipulation", played a great role in the early stages of the formation of human society. In a number of mammals, cases are described when some animals observe the manipulative actions of other animals. This phenomenon is most typical for monkeys, which in most cases react briskly to the manipulative actions of another individual. Sometimes animals tease each other with objects of manipulation, often manipulation turns into games, and in some cases into quarrels. Demonstration manipulation is characteristic mainly of adult monkeys, but not of cubs. It contributes to the fact that individuals can become familiar with the properties and structure of the object manipulated by the "actor" without even touching the object. Such acquaintance is made indirectly: someone else's experience is assimilated at a distance by observing the actions of others. Demonstrative manipulation is directly related to the formation of "traditions" in monkeys, which has been described in detail by a number of Japanese researchers. Such traditions are formed within a closed population and cover all its members. In a population of Japanese macaques living on a small island, a gradual general change in eating behavior was found, which was expressed in the development of new types of food and the invention of new forms of its pre-processing. The basis of this phenomenon was the play of cubs, as well as demonstrative manipulation and imitative actions of monkeys. Demonstration manipulation combines communicative and cognitive aspects of activity: observing animals receive information not only about the manipulating individual, but also about the properties and structure of the object being manipulated. According to K.E Fabry, “demonstrative manipulation served in its time, obviously, as the source of the formation of purely human forms of communication, since the latter arose along with labor activity, the predecessor and biological basis of which was the manipulation of objects in monkeys. At the same time, it was the demonstration manipulation creates the best conditions for joint communicative and cognitive activity, in which the main attention of community members is focused on the objective actions of the manipulating individual.” [34] An important milestone in anthropogenesis, which largely changed the further course of evolution, was the development of articulate speech at a certain stage in social relations. In modern monkeys, the means of communication, communications are distinguished not only by their diversity, but also by their pronounced addressing, an inciting function aimed at changing the behavior of members of the herd. But unlike the communicative actions of a person, any communicative actions of monkeys do not serve as an instrument of thinking. The study of the communicative abilities of monkeys, especially apes, has been carried out for a long time and in many countries. In the USA, scientist D. Premack tried for a long time to teach chimpanzees human language using various optical signals. Animals developed associations between individual objects, which were pieces of plastic, and food. In order to receive a treat, the monkey had to choose the desired one from various objects and show it to the experimenter. The experiments were based on the “sample selection” technique developed by Ladygina-Kots. Using these methods, reactions to categories of objects were developed and generalized visual images were formed. These were representations such as “more” and “smaller,” “same” and “different,” and comparisons of different types, which animals below anthropoids are most likely incapable of. This and similar experiments clearly demonstrated the exceptional abilities of great apes for generalizations and symbolic actions, as well as their great ability to communicate with a person that arises under conditions of intensive training on his part. However, such experiments do not prove that anthropoids have a language with the same structure as that of humans. The chimpanzees literally “imposed” human language instead of trying to make contact in the language of this primate. In this sense, experiments of this kind are unpromising and cannot lead to an understanding of the essence of the language of an animal, since they give only a phenomenological picture of artificial communication behavior that outwardly resembles the operation of human language structures. The apes developed only a system of communication with humans, in addition to the many systems of human-animal communication that he created since the time of the domestication of wild animals. According to K.E. Fabry, who has been studying the problem of the language of great apes for a long time, “despite the sometimes amazing ability of chimpanzees to use optical symbolic means when communicating with humans and, in particular, to use them as signals of their needs, it would be a mistake to interpret the results of such experiments as evidence of an allegedly fundamental identity "the language of monkeys and human language or to derive from them direct indications of the origin of human forms of communication. The illegality of such conclusions follows from an inadequate interpretation of the results of these experiments, in which conclusions about the patterns of their natural communication behavior are drawn from the behavior of monkeys artificially formed by the experimenter." [35] As Fabry noted, “the question of the semantic function of animal language is still largely unclear, but there is no doubt that not a single animal, including apes, has conceptual thinking. As has already been emphasized, among the communicative means of animals there are many “symbolic” components (sounds, poses, body movements, etc.), but there are no abstract concepts, no words, articulate speech, no codes denoting the objective components of the environment, their qualities or the relationship between them outside a specific situation. Such a fundamentally different way of communication from animals could only appear during the transition from the biological to the social plane of development." [36] The language of animals in the general sense is a very conditional concept, in the early stages of development it is characterized by a large generalization of the transmitted signals. Later, during the transition to a social way of life, it was the conditionality of signals that served as a biological prerequisite for the emergence of articulate speech in the course of their joint labor activity. At the same time, only emerging social and labor relations could fully develop this prerequisite. According to most scientists, the first language signals carried information about the subjects included in the joint labor activity. This is their fundamental difference from the language of animals, which informs primarily about the internal state of the individual. The main function of animal language is social cohesion, recognition of individuals, location signaling, danger signaling, etc. None of these functions goes beyond biological patterns. In addition, the language of animals is always a genetically fixed system, consisting of a limited number of signals, defined for each species. In contrast, human language is constantly enriched with new elements. By creating new combinations, a person is forced to constantly improve the language, study its code values, learn to understand and pronounce them. The human language has come a long way of development in parallel with the development of human labor activity and the change in the structure of society. The initial sounds accompanying labor activity were not yet genuine words and could not denote individual objects, their qualities or actions performed with the help of these objects. Often these sounds were accompanied by gestures and were woven into practical activities. It was possible to understand them only by observing the specific situation during which these sounds were uttered. Gradually, of the two types of information transfer - non-verbal (using gestures) and voice - the latter became a priority. This marked the beginning of the development of an independent sound language. However, innate sounds, gestures, facial expressions have retained their significance since primitive people and have come down to our days, but only as an addition to acoustic means. Nevertheless, for a long time the connection of these components remained so close that the same sound complex could designate, for example, the object pointed to by the hand, the hand itself, and the action performed with this object. A lot of time passed before the sounds of the language were quite far removed from practical actions and the first genuine words arose. Initially, obviously, these words denoted objects, and only much later did words denoting actions and qualities appear. Subsequently, the language began to gradually move away from practical activities. The meanings of words became more and more abstract, and language increasingly acted not only as a means of communication, but also as a means of human thought. At their inception, speech and social and labor activity constituted a single complex, and its separation radically influenced the development of human consciousness. K. Fabry wrote: “The fact that thinking, speech and social and labor activity constitute a single complex in their origin and development, that human thinking could develop only in unity with social consciousness, constitutes the main qualitative difference between human thinking and the thinking of animals. The activity of animals, even in its highest forms, is entirely subordinate to natural connections and relationships between the objective components of the environment. Human activity, which grew out of the activity of animals, has undergone fundamental qualitative changes and is no longer subject to so much natural as social connections and relationships. This is social- labor content and reflect the words and concepts of human speech." [37] Even in higher animals, the psyche is capable of reflecting only spatio-temporal connections and relations between the objective components of the environment, but not deep causal relationships. The human psyche is on a completely different level. It is able to directly or indirectly reflect social ties and relationships, the activities of other people, its results - this is what allowed a person to comprehend even cause-and-effect relationships that are inaccessible to observation. As a result, it became possible to reflect objective reality in the human brain outside the direct relationship of the subject to it, i.e., in the human mind, the image of reality no longer merges with the experience of the subject, but the objective, stable properties of this reality are reflected. Most major psychologists tend to think that the development of human thinking to its present level would be impossible without language. Any abstract thinking is linguistic, verbal thinking. Human knowledge presupposes the continuity of acquired knowledge, the ways of their fixation, carried out with the help of words. Animals are deprived of the possibility of both verbal communication and verbal fixation of acquired knowledge and their transmission to offspring with the help of language. This, firstly, determines the limit of the thinking and communication capabilities of animals, and secondly, characterizes the biological, purely adaptive role of their communication. Animals do not need words to communicate; they can do just fine without them, living in a narrow circle limited by biological needs and motivations. Communication of a person without words, which are the highest, ideal objects of thinking abstracted from things, is impossible. Thus, there is a clearly defined line between the intellect of an animal and the consciousness of a person, and thus this line also passes between an animal and a person in general. The transition through it became possible only as a result of an active, radically different impact on nature in the course of labor activity. This activity, performed with the help of tools, mediated the relationship of its performer to nature, which served as the most important prerequisite for the transformation of the preconscious psyche into consciousness. The first elements of a mediated relationship to nature can be traced back to the manipulative actions of monkeys, especially during compensatory manipulation and in tool actions, as well as in demonstrative manipulation. But, as was discussed above, in modern monkeys even the highest manipulative actions serve other reasons and are not capable of further developing into complex labor activity. Genuine tool actions that took place among the ancestors of modern man are situationally determined, therefore their cognitive value is extremely limited by the specific, purely adaptive meaning of these actions. These instrumental actions received their development only after the merging of compensatory manipulation with instrumental actions, when attention is switched to the object being processed (future tool), which occurs during labor activity. It was this indirect attitude to nature that allowed man to reveal the essential internal interdependencies and laws of nature that were inaccessible to direct observation. The next important stage in the development of human consciousness was the formation of social labor activity. At the same time, it became necessary to communicate with each other, which led to the consistency of joint labor operations. Thus, articulate speech was formed simultaneously with consciousness in the process of labor activity. Despite the fact that the historical development of mankind is fundamentally different from the general laws of biological evolution, which psychologists have repeatedly emphasized in their works, it was the biological evolution of animals that created the biological basis and prerequisites for an unprecedented transition in the history of the organic world to a completely new level of development. This can be seen by carefully examining all the stages in the development of the mental activity of animals. Without the development of the simplest instincts, their long-term improvement as a result of evolution, without the lower stages of the development of the psyche, the emergence of human consciousness would also be impossible. Authors: Stupina S.B., Filipechev A.O. << Back: General characteristics of the psyche of animals. The evolution of the psyche (General characteristics of the mental activity of animals. Levels of development of the sensory psyche. Perceptual psyche. The problem of intelligence in animals) >> Forward: Ethology (Ethology as one of the areas of study of the psyche of animals. Ethology at the present stage of development)
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