p Before discussing the essence of consciousness let us recall that man’s conscious, spiritual activity includes his thoughts and emotions, will and character, sensations, ideas, views, etc.

p What is the nature and the source of all these phenomena?

p Natural science and philosophy traversed a long and hard road before they were able to answer this question correctly. Contemporary science has proved that consciousness is a product of the long evolution of matter. Matter and nature have always existed, while man is a result of a relatively later development of the material world. It took millions upon millions of years before the development of matter resulted in the emergence of society and with it, man capable of thinking. Consciousness is a product of nature, a property of matter, though not of all of it, but only of highly organised matter, the human brain.

p Consciousness, having arisen as a result of the development of matter, is inseparably bound up with it. It is indivisible from thinking matter, the brain, whose attribute it is. 58 The celebrated Russian physiologists Ivan Sechenov (1829-1905) and Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) established that all mental activity is based on definite material processes, namely, physiological processes, which transpire in the human brain, particularly in the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres. Disturbance of the normal activity of the brain, its lesion caused by disease, injury of other causes, leads to a sharp derangement in man’s thinking, to a mental disorder.

p Drawing on numerous experimental data, Pavlov concluded that “psychical activity is the result of the physiological activity of a certain mass of the brain”.

p Pavlov’s doctrine of higher nervous activity confirms the fundamental thesis of dialectical materialism concerning the dependence of consciousness on matter. It convincingly demonstrates that the brain and physiological processes in it are the substratum (basis) of human consciousness and the material conditions without which thinking is impossible.

p But is the human brain alone enough for the functioning of consciousness? Can it think by itself, independent of the influence of the surrounding world upon it?

p No, by itself the brain is incapable of thinking. Consciousness is inseparably bound up with man’s material environment, and it cannot function without the influence of this environment. Visual, auditory, olfactory and other sensations arise in the brain only under the influence of objectively existing objects with their intrinsic colours, smells, sounds and other properties. These objects and their properties act on the sense organs and the resultant irritation is transmitted along the nerve channels to the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres where the respective sensations arise. Sensations create perceptions, ideas and also concepts and other forms of thought. All of them represent only images, more or less exact reflections of objectively existing objects and phenomena. Outside of them these images cannot arise in man’s consciousness. This means that ability to reflect the material world is the specific distinction of consciousness as a property of the brain.

p Needless to say, not only images of existing objects and phenomena arise in man’s consciousness, but also images of things which are not yet in existence. For instance, man creates images of future buildings, machines and many other 59 artificial things, and also images of future social order, etc. But these images arise on the basis of reflection of what already exists, on the basis of the knowledge of the surrounding objective reality, its potentialities and trends of development.

Thus, in answer to the question about the nature of consciousness we can say that man’s consciousness is a special property of highly organised matter, the brain, to reflect material reality.