Why our behavior is purposeful. Purposeful Behavior

Needs. There are needs for food, water, sexual satisfaction, thermal comfort, elimination of pain. Under different conditions, these needs give rise to a variety of emotions. From this point of view, there is no emotion of love in her human sense. Love is a kind of need, a very complex need, shaped by the influences of the social environment, ethics and worldview of a given society. Depending on the circumstances, love generates emotions of joy, delight, gratitude, resentment, sadness, indignation.

If we exclude man, then the diverse needs of living organisms come down to one thing - to maintain their individual and species existence. The presence of needs is due to the very nature of the living and many are innate. In addition to hunger, thirst, sexual desire, innate needs include sleep, maintaining one's integrity, caring for offspring, receiving external information, training the muscular system and internal organs, maintaining a certain state internal environment.

The conditions of upbringing are capable of significantly changing the degree and forms of manifestation of innate needs (in a monkey, replacing her own mother with a doll forms her neglect of her offspring, etc.).

Every need has its subjective and objective measure.

The emergence of the fundamental needs of living beings is associated with the initial shifts in internal chemistry. It is believed that a shift in the exchange of the tricarboxylic acid cycle) represents the initial link in the hungry state of higher mammals (Ugolev). This shift is perceived by the receptors of the food area of the brain and the periphery. Great importance has signaling from the stomach. Artificial filling of the stomach requires an increase in direct electrical stimulation of the hunger center in the brain to produce eating behavior. Violation of the water-salt balance excites specialized cells of the hypothalamus. This causes the muscles in the upper pharynx and esophagus to contract. Contracting, muscles irritate sensitive nerve endings, which leads to a feeling of thirst (Deryabin).

attraction- there is a purposeful need addressed to objects external environment that can ensure its satisfaction, and are a motive for goal-directed behavior ( motivation).

In many cases, the drives are innate. But in higher animals, especially in humans, it becomes necessary to close new conditional connections in order for the need to find a goal. A hungry child, up to a certain age, responds to the need for food by crying, and not by searching for food.

Any action is necessarily a movement pursuing a specific goal (purposeful behavior). Creature satisfies its immediate needs by interacting with the environment. There are two types of such interaction - contact and remote.

With contact, the influence has already begun, and the purpose of the action is to prolong or weaken its effect. With remote interaction, a living system operates with the very source of useful or harmful influences. Hence the possibility of both proactive interaction and complete prevention of impact.

Remote action is divided into 3 categories:

1. An action aimed at mastering a useful object.

2. Action aimed at avoiding danger.

3. Action to eliminate factors that impede the satisfaction of needs (struggle).

irritation or external stimulus.

Behavior definitions vary from person to person. Here are some of them:

Behavior is one of the means of adaptation to external conditions and to their

changes;

Behavior is what an animal or person does;

Behavior - coordinated muscular activity;

Behavior - response to changes in the external or internal environment of the body;

Behavior is an adaptive, adaptive reaction of the body, etc.

Approaches to the classification of types of behavior are also different. Psychologists associate behavior with the nature of the individual, temperament, the nature of attitudes and motives; ethologists divide according to the nature of the behavior itself - defensive, protective, sexual, food-procuring; by the nature of the orientation of behavior - tropisms, taxises; by stages - preparatory, final, etc. Clinicians distinguish agnosia, apraxia - behavioral disorders that cannot be explained from the standpoint of the reflex theory.

Life is a change of many motivated behavioral manifestations. From the point of view of physiology, purposeful behavior is a type of behavior aimed at the implementation of a specific motivation.

According to Descartes, the quantum of behavior is the reaction. The FS theory takes as an element of behavior an elementary behavioral act - a quantum of behavior. In this regard, there are 3 types of behavior:

1. Purposeful behavior aimed at satisfaction of motivation (CP).

2. Purposeful action (CA) - a set of ways to achieve the goal, stage and element of the CP.

3. Purposeful act (TA) - the minimum quantum of behavior, the minimum act that provides the minimum result leading to the goal.

According to Sudakov:

F life = CPU sum = CD sum = CA sum.

The purposeful activity of all living beings is built on a single principle: need - motivation - purposeful behavior - satisfaction of needs - evaluation of the result of an action.

The central architecture of a behavioral act unfolds over time, albeit a very short one (milliseconds).

1 stage - Afferent synthesis. . Based biological need arises biological motivation. These are the innate mechanisms of the brain. They themselves can build behavior, without afferent signals (instincts). The higher evolutionarily, the less specific gravity purely innate mechanisms in the implementation of purposeful reactions. Nevertheless, at the first stages of postnatal life, there are forms of behavior due to innate mechanisms.

Biological motivations in the formation of behavior use genetic memory - the search for a nipple, medicinal herb, etc.) Higher animals and humans use another component - the action of the environment (situational afferentation). It has been shown in experiments on monkeys that if the lateral hypothalamus is irritated, then the hunger center can be stimulated (hunger motivation is imposed). If the whole flock is fleeing from danger, then stimulating the hunger center does not have the usual effect. This means that external conditions are more imperative.

Another experience. The rabbit learns to pull the ring - with food reinforcement, and receives food only after switching on against the background of a situational stimulus - a buzzer. Then such a rabbit is implanted with an electrode in the lateral hypothalamus. When irritated outside the chamber, he eats, and the chamber is stimulated with the same current

effective only when there is a buzzer. In a person, the environment also suppresses biological motivations (a person is on the podium).

The construction of a purposeful behavioral act at the stage of afferent synthesis is carried out with the interaction of motivational and situational excitations and is built according to the dominant principle. Leading is more important in the biological and social relations motivation. For a person, as a rule, social influences are more leading.

Along with genetic memory, individual memory. It is formed by repeatedly satisfying a need. An example is a dynamic stereotype, when memory itself is a stimulus for purposeful behavior.

The response depends on the significance of the signal. The assessment of this significance occurs even in a dream, since the brain does not sleep, only consciousness is turned off. However, with unconscious assessment, the brain works locally, there is no generalization of responses. Thus, neurophysiologically, the difference between the conscious and the subconscious is in the degree of generalization of excitation. Consciousness is a new quality that requires the activation of the entire central nervous system.

When we work, we do not feel the environment, but these excitations exist, although they do not reach consciousness (clothing, chair, noise in the room) - I said and you felt it, because. attention was switched to these stimuli and they reached the sphere of consciousness). Consciousness provides focus on main goal, but everything that prepares these reactions is carried out on a subconscious level.

If we talk about the central mechanisms of goal-directed behavior, then the first stage of the formation of FSCP - afferent synthesis - is carried out at the subconscious level. Consciousness is connected later, at the level of decision-making or in case of mismatch between the action acceptor and its result.

Automatic reactions are carried out at the subconscious level. The more automated the behavioral act, the more the memory determines the activity (subconscious performance of the action, work on the conveyor, walking, etc.). Favorite place in the hall, favorite way home, reading environment, etc. - the body tends to stereotypy, as it requires less energy.

The fourth component of afferent synthesis is starting afferentation last straw for pre-launch integration to show up). Any stimulus and time can act as a starting afferent (the end of the lecture - and everyone runs to the dining room).

The following mechanisms are used in the process of afferent synthesis:

1) ascending activating influences of the subcortex on the cortex;

2) mechanisms of multiple convergence of excitations on cortical neurons;

3) dominant mechanisms.

All these excitations practically converge on any neurons, but more so on neurons of the frontal lobe.

At the stage of afferent synthesis, several issues are resolved: what to do?" and " when to do"?". The stage of afferent synthesis ends with the decision to act, and the decision-making already leads, in turn, to the formation of a model of action and its implementation. The stage of afferent synthesis is the stage of doubt, at which the enumeration of excitations takes place, emotions are formed (according to Simonov).

Stage 2 - Decision-making.. At the decision-making stage, the animal directs behavior in one direction, a rigid line of behavior is outlined, and it is freed from unnecessary degrees of freedom. A talented brain is one that can quickly discard excess information and make an accurate decision! In order to be able to do this, at this stage, the regulatory apparatus of the FSCP analyze information about the state of all potential actuators, all organs and muscles that could be involved in the implementation of the CPU. The so-called. " effector integral"- state picture executive bodies. Depending on the results of such an analysis, an answer is formed to the question " how to do?", in what sequence to include individual quanta of behavior.

For example, a monkey is sitting on a branch that wants to get a banana located above. Theoretically, she can do this by engaging any of her four limbs. But if one of them is occupied by a cub, and the second one is holding on to a branch, then there are only two degrees of freedom to choose from. Naturally, the choice will also depend on the height at which the desired fruit hangs. As a result, the decision "what to do?" will be on the tongue nerve impulses mean "pick a banana hanging from the top branch", "when to do it?" - "immediately!", and "how to do it? - "Rise on the right hind limb and pick a banana with the right front." At the same time, a neural image of a model of future action will be formed in the brain.

All this purposeful behavior, however, can be broken down into its constituent elements (purposeful actions - 1) stand up; 2) disrupt); and into individual even smaller quanta of action - behavioral acts that make up the action. Each of these elements has its own intermediate result, which is controlled by the regulatory apparatus based on the evaluation of the feedback from the working organs involved in the action.

Stage 3 - Forming an action result acceptor. . This is a very important device in a purposeful action. The experience of the 30s of Anokhin: if a dog develops conditioned reflex bell + meat powder, and then replace it with fresh meat ("surprise"), then the dog looks in surprise, sniffs, runs to the experimenter, looks for meat powder, etc. - only then begins to eat meat. This means that in the brain the reinforcement model with all its parameters did not match the result. If an eagle's egg is marked with a stone of the same shape, then he will notice the substitution only if he lifts the stone (weight mismatch).

At the core physiological mechanisms acceptor of the result of the action - convergence on the same neurons of command impulses and reverse afferentation from the result.

4 stage - behavior.. The behavior ends when the model matches the result. According to Anokhin, in this case the body is rewarded with the help of the apparatus of positive emotions (pleasure). If there are errors in the result, the orienting-exploratory reaction is turned on and intensified negative emotion. The control apparatus makes adjustments to the behavior and it continues until a signal is received to satisfy the need. Then the FSCP ceases to operate, and information about the progress of satisfaction of the need enters the memory apparatus (learning).

In his economic activity, a person, as K. Marx noted, "realizes ... his conscious goal, which, like a law, determines the method and nature of his actions and to which he must subordinate his will." In this case, the goal acts as an "ideal, internally motivating motive for production." It clearly follows from this that the problems of modeling (and, in particular, quantitative description) of goals and goal-directed behavior are key in the construction of economic and mathematical models. Purposefulness of behavior distinguishes the elements economic system from elements of physical, chemical, etc. systems , , , , , , , , , .

The problems of teleology are extensive and have a rather long history (see, for example, , , , , , etc.). Our tasks include the analysis of only such methodological questions as: how can one distinguish purposeful behavior from behavior that does not act as such; is it possible to identify the goal of an economic agent (an individual, a team of workers, an industrial enterprise, a wholesale trade base, the country's economy as a whole) by observing its behavior for a sufficient time; what are the possibilities for measuring the values of the utility function of an economic agent and what is the minimum information about it that cannot be dispensed with when planning; Are there utility functions that have certain specific properties, and how can the yes and no answers to these questions be interpreted?

Despite the fact that teleology is one of the oldest scientific disciplines(it originated in pre-Socratic times, when science was not yet separated from myth), there is no consensus on what should be the answers to these questions. The Galilean-Baconian tradition of natural science refused to include teleological statements among the "legitimate" scientific statements, treating them as remnants of the mythological consciousness that oppose the "standard" cause-and-effect description of phenomena. A standard scientific and investigative description is one in which the causes of the present are in the past, and in no case in the future, , , . The assertion that the future can influence the past is logically contradictory. But as an idea of final causes, the teleological explanation of phenomena and processes in animate and inanimate nature was dominant for a long time.

The terms "goal directed behavior" have at least two meanings: "goal directed behavior" and "goal directed behavior". The statement that an object moves towards a goal, is directed towards a goal, etc., does not contain any teleology; in this case we are talking just about answering the question where this object is moving. The situation is different with the statement that the object is directed by the target. The goal here acts as a certain external in relation to the object cause of its movement. Thus, in Aristotle's physics, a stone thrown upward falls to the Earth because it tends to take its natural position. The main question with this approach is why or for what? This question is equivalent to the question, what is the function of an object, phenomenon, process, etc. According to Aristotle, everything “is done ... for the sake of something, therefore, by nature exists for the sake of it.”

Thus, teleology acts as the basis of a functional approach to the description of reality. At the same time, all phenomena, objects, processes are permeated with mutual utility: "one arises for the sake of the other." For example, “in plants, useful parts arise for a specific purpose ... leaves for the protection of the fruit ... roots do not grow up, but down for nutrition,” etc.

All these explanations on the basis of an appeal to the goal and benefit were rejected by the science of modern times as, according to

1 And yet, for heuristic purposes, such a statement is sometimes discussed even by physicists, for example, R. Feynman's electrons flying from the future into the past and therefore seeming to be protons. essence of the matter, explaining nothing, since teleological and functional explanations contain nothing but a statement of fact and unverifiable statements about the purpose of , , , .

The futility of the teleology of external goals was clearly shown in the parodic aphorism of F. Engels: “cats were created in order to devour mice, mice to be devoured by cats, and all nature to prove the wisdom of the creator.”

G. Leibniz, who did not consider it necessary to break with the scientific heritage of Aristotle and the medieval scholastics, took a special position on this (as well as on many other) issues. One of the main themes in Leibniz's work was the idea of the harmony of the world: the existing world is the best possible world. In more modern terms, this means that the object behaves optimally, in the best way in some sense. For example, a falling stone falls optimally in the sense that from the set of possible falling trajectories it chooses the one on which the minimum of the action , , is reached. This phrase has a palpable anthropomorphic tinge: the object "looks" possible options his behavior and "chooses" the one that best suits the goal; or someone or something outside the object looks at its possible trajectories and chooses the one that saves the action. The possibility of choice, free will are attributed not only to rational beings, but also to inanimate matter, such as stone or electron Leibniz's thesis of pre-established harmony in relation to the world as a whole and to socio-economic phenomena in particular, basically did not meet with support; known, for example, is the devastating criticism of this thesis by Voltaire.

Anthropomorphism was also completely unacceptable for mechanics, physics and other sciences of inanimate nature.

In addition, the assertion that the actually observed trajectory is the best possible one cannot be verified, since the real trajectory cannot be compared with possible, but unobservable ones. Nevertheless, variational principles were intensively developed (Maupertuis, Hamilton, Jacobi, Lagrange, Fermat, etc. , , ). Ultimately, on the basis of these principles, the same trajectories were obtained as as a result of solving causal equations (for example, Newton's equations), although in a number of cases variational principles led to a simpler and more elegant mathematical formulation of the problem than the construction of causal equations. This circumstance legitimized their existence, but basically only as a heuristic procedure, a convenient mathematical technique.

In a broader aspect, the point of view on teleology as a good heuristic principle in a number of cases was formulated by I. Kant. In accordance with this point of view, the final causes were expelled from ontology, but in terms of methodology it was permissible to draw an analogy between the behavior of organisms, communities, organizations - systems different nature- and conscious purposeful human behavior. As a result, the statement that an object (for example, a stone) moves along the best possible trajectory was perceived not literally, but as a kind of metaphor.

The need for even a weak methodological teleology in the spirit of I. Kant was then called into question by the results of C. Darwin on the theory of evolution. Using the two key terms "blind variation" and "selective selection", he described the seemingly purposeful evolution of living matter without recourse not only to ontological teleology (final causes, functionalism), but also without recourse to methodological ontology. The adaptability (purposefulness) of really existing systems is explained simply by the fact that unadapted systems are eliminated and die out. Aspiration to some goal turns out to be illusory.

In biology, the theory of Ch. Darwin is currently being refined and supplemented; but in general scientific terms, the scheme for describing changes as a result of random, non-directional influences and selective selection of their results has become generally recognized (virtual particles, auto-regulation systems, including random search actions, etc.).

AT economics and more widely - in the socio-economic sciences, this scheme is reflected in the theories of competition: inefficient economic agents (socio-economic systems) are not competitive and are eliminated by stronger rivals. In the most extreme forms, these ideas were reflected in the doctrines of the so-called social Darwinism,1 which provoked criticism from K. Marx and F. Engels.

The relegation of teleology to the background and even its complete displacement from many areas of science, the predominance of standard cause-and-effect descriptions based on the thesis of a total regularity in the world, however, led to a number of difficulties and to many speculations on these difficulties. Thus, R. Stammler saw a contradiction between the Marxist thesis about the historical necessity and laws of the socialist revolution and the thesis about the need for conscious activity in this direction: why help the accomplishment of an event that will inevitably come? who would think of organizing a party to help lunar eclipse? .

Within the framework of mechanistic materialism, mechanistic causality, such paradoxes are indeed insoluble. An essential point is a person's awareness of his place in the world, his active change for his own purposes on the basis of knowledge of the laws governing him; sort of detachment from existing world. “The animal, according to K. Marx, is directly identical with its life activity. It does not distinguish itself from its life activity. It is this life activity. Man, on the other hand, makes his very life activity the object of his will and his consciousness ... This is not such a certainty with which he directly merges into one. In this sense, one should understand the words of V. I. Lenin: “The human mind not only reflects the objective world, but also creates it.”

Activity public man- the transformation of natural material and social relations - purposeful. Even “the worst architect differs from the best bee from the very beginning in that, before building a cell out of wax, he has already built it in his head,” says K. Marx in the 1st volume of “Capital” .- At the end of the labor process the result is obtained, which already at the beginning of this process was in the mind of the worker, that is, ideally. An analysis of economic activity makes no sense without an assessment of the purposefulness of this activity, even if we are talking about a separate, individual economy. All the more important are the problems of setting realistic goals, describing them quantitatively, measuring the degree to which they are achieved, etc., in a planned economy.

Refers to "On Systemic Neurophysiology"

Purposeful Behavior

The Internet is full of sites with guru-instructions on how to be able to set a goal for yourself and adamantly follow it into a pink future, not worrying too much, but only correctly performing certain mantras and driving your psyche into some kind of "special" state. No author of any of these theories appears to have any idea of the essence of what he casually and lightly calls a goal, but this does not in the least prevent very confident persuasion, and many seminars are offered that promise to teach how to set and achieve goals.

The article will reveal that in the mechanisms of the psyche ki, which is the essence of the externally observed manifestation of the psyche ki: "goal".

Considerable confusion is introduced by the fact that the word “purpose” arose and got washed away when it was not clear what exactly generates those outwardly observable manifestations of the psyche, which give reason to say that the subject has a goal. And this is one of those superficially defined, but generally shared abstractions, among all others, with which they tried to somehow characterize the manifestations of the psyche: emotions, sensations, feelings, will, motivations, etc.

“The doctrine of purpose” (teleology) has been known for more than one millennium and at first proceeded from ideas about the purposes of God, which, as it were, should be distinguished from the physical causality of events in the world. And in fact: any goal of the subject externally (objectively, from the point of view of physical description) is in no way distinguished from the chains of causality (processes of interactions): if someone threw a stone, then physically everything is described only by interactions, and the psyche is non-material. But after all, the passage of certain processes that made the stone fly in a certain direction is clearly controlled by something, however, no more than that, as a crack in the stone is "controlled" by the strong heating of the sun and is provoked by unevenness in the structure of the stone. In the evolution of forms of matter, such local, non-thermodynamic formations arise, in some cases having advantages over other forms in that they are more stable in a certain integral state, overcoming destructive influences, and this singled out such forms, some of which we call living beings and , moreover, they singled out rational beings possessing those qualities that we call will and showing the purposefulness of their actions.

This question of purposefulness, the quality of its differences from causality and property, has been worrying thinkers for several millennia. The attempt to define "living" as having a "purpose" requires a definition of what a "purpose" is, to define something in relation to which it is correct to ask the question: "for what?" (which in itself is vague, for example, it is quite possible to ask why the buses go, although the buses themselves have no purpose). So, in the article Information as the basis of life

Purposeful action differs from the spontaneous flow of events primarily in that it increases the likelihood of a "goal event" occurring. How much this probability will increase depends on the skill of the performer, on the degree of his awareness of the ways to achieve the goal and on the availability of the necessary resources at his disposal. But, regardless of this, any purposeful action is characterized precisely by an increase in the probability of achieving the goal, and this value makes it possible to judge its effectiveness.

One can imagine situations where this is not the case. For example, setting the goal to walk along a narrow plank over an abyss and, precisely because of the fear and awareness of the riskiness of the goal, to fall, while in an unconscious, somnambulistic state, one can easily pass.

The most important thing in a purposeful action is the mechanism that implements it. Such a mechanism can be called an "operator". In artificial devices, this is a machine made by a person, or some other structure made by living beings, and in living organisms, this is the body itself, its body, its structure, its skills and ability to use the available resources to achieve its goal.. - i.e. the goal is determined through "live" :)

In the textbook Purposeful Behavior and Description of Purpose:

The main problem that was solved in the pioneer work of N. Wiener, A. Rosenbluth and D. Bigelow in 1943 “Behavior, purposefulness and teleology ”(see in, pp. 285-294), was not so much in pointing out the importance of the concept purposefulness and in the classification behavior on the basis of this concept, how much in the formulation (albeit inaccurate) of the operational definition purposefulness and purposeful behavior. This definition is contained in the following phrase: “We can assume that any purposeful action requires negative feedback." It follows from this that, in order to answer the question of whether this system purposefully it is necessary to establish, firstly, the presence or absence of a feedback channel in the system and, secondly, whether feedback is used to correct behavior.

... E. Nagel's less physicalist definition seems to be, in fact, equivalent. According to E. Nagel, a system consisting of several independent elements (processes, objects, subsystems, individuals, etc.) in a certain state G (manifesting property G, implementing a method behavior Sit. P.), purposeful if it, being removed from the state G as a result of an arbitrary or due to the action of an extra-systemic cause of a change in one of the elements of the system, will change in the direction of G as a result of the compensating effect of the remaining elements of the system. In this case, it is not assumed that the system will necessarily return to the state G (reach goals G).

A very simple, but nevertheless very effective, operational definition of expedient behavior, due to M. L. Tsetlin, which is equally suitable for both deterministic and stochastic systems. According to M. L. Tsetlin, the system behaves expediently if, in situations of choice, it provides a lower average penalty for “inadequate” behavior, than the average penalty obtained in the case of an equiprobable choice of actions (, see also , ). There is also no reference in the definition to " behavior, purpose directed"; it is operational in the sense that to establish whether a behavior is purposeful can be based on observation of the real behavior systems. Statements about purposefulness in the sense of e M. JI. Tsetlin is quite verifiable.

M. Mesarovich proved a theorem, which in the general theory of systems is analogous to K. Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Let there be system (5.1). We introduce the notation: X0 and X is the set of admissible inputs of the system; Y0 c: Y is the set of desirable outputs and Yr a Y is the set of undesirable outputs. We call system (5.1) consistent if

YO(\Y1=0, (5.3)

and complete if fulfilled

YoUY^Y. (5.4)

The theorem of M. Mesarovic says: the system for which the sets Yi and X0 (the set of undesirable outputs and the set of admissible inputs) are either incomplete or inconsistent.

This the theorem imposes, in particular, restrictions on the observability of goals and the possibilities descriptions(as well as creations) focused systems, behavior which cannot be adequately described in terms of blind variation and selective selection. This restriction is total. In this sense, the opposition of limited formal thinking to some kind of informal, human thinking is unjustified. T. Shandy was never able to fully describe his life - he did not have enough time for this. The one who declares "I am lying" creates a problem not only for logicians - he himself cannot attribute valency to his statement. Full reflection on the goals of the species: "the goal of choice goals choice goals... etc." impossible in the same way as a computer program that composes its own text.

It can be seen how attempting to define the word "purpose" (as well as the word "life") without a predetermined limit to the use of this definition leads to the same hopelessness as trying to define the word "God". Such a definition will never be correct and applicable in practice (see Symbols, definitions, terms. and Methodology of statements and ethics discussions -). Therefore, in the article such a boundary of use will be set - according to the presence of certain mechanisms of personal adaptability in an individual. Such mechanisms are what, in external observation, we call consciousness and what is quite unambiguously identified at the level of mechanisms. At the same time, within the framework of such mechanisms, a characteristic combination of the dominant relevance of the problem and execution conscious actions to address it, which at the level of mechanisms will be specified below.

The concept of a goal (not to be confused with "target", etc. words that overlap the meaning) is associated with the behavior of those creatures that have a mechanism for adapting their behavior depending on changing conditions in the form of an ability 1) develop new behavior and 2) check desirability its consequences for itself. A falling brick or even a gliding maple helicopter has no personal relation to what happens to it, they have no purpose, they simply obey the causality of the surrounding conditions in interaction with their own qualities and do not interfere with it in any way. new feature which did not exist before, and it appeared only when it came into contact with the undesirable or desirable impact of new conditions. This is how the causality of such a being differs from indifferent causality and can conditionally differ, allowing us to call the being purposeful. Desirability or undesirability is also a convention for an external observer, but characterized by the presence in the adaptability mechanism of that element recognizing these qualities, which can influence the formation of a new quality of interaction with the environment, changing the interaction either towards avoidance or towards active participation in interaction. The presence of such a mechanism of personal adaptability is the restriction on the use of the word "goal". A snail cannot have a goal, and a crow and a person in many cases ( conscious attitude) - maybe, manifesting itself in acts of purposeful behavior change in new conditions, but in old, already familiar goals, a goal is not needed because there are already developed qualities that are quite acceptable for these conditions.

Such an approach makes the definition of the word "goal" correct enough for practical use (as opposed to subjective reflection of the self, philosophizing), and allows it to unambiguously designate manifestations of quite definite mechanisms of the psyche. The word "goal" correlates with the presence of an activity dominant of predominantly high significance, which maintains the relevance of the unsolved problem. This dominant occurs at the moment of interruption of the phase of automatism to realize that, being very important, it has such great novelty (conditions that are very different from those in which this automatism was developed) that experience suggests critically large doubts about the desirability of the result if you continue to behave habitually. manner. The importance of obtaining a result is so high for this individual that even if there is no time for reflection, this phase remains active, supported by high significance and forming the direction of creative actions to solve the problem (motivation), achieve the desired result.

In the most general sense goal - an abstraction to denote the manifestations of the psyche, characteristic of the dominant (self-sustaining by its relevance) motivation of the actual task, when the intention to find a solution is realized.

This formulation succinctly uses such concepts as "psyche", "dominant", "motivation", "intention", which are described in About systemic neurophysiology About systemic neurophysiology materials on systemic neurophysiology and here can be briefly disclosed as follows.

Psychic ka - that which manifests itself objectively as the ability of personal adaptability to new conditions, subjectively - as subjectivized images of current awareness, and that has mechanisms that allow the subject to find new behaviors in new conditions(see Organization of the mechanisms of the psyche).

Dominant- supported by actual significance and prevailing among other topics excitation interrupted for awareness of the phase of the chain of behavioral automatism.

Motivation- always conscious, the most (un)desirable and confident in the given conditions (slightly different from the usual, i.e. there is a novelty that caused the awareness of the phase of automatism being performed) predictable course of action, which may come into conflict with previous experience, causing a strong-willed effort for its implementation.

It is worth noting that motivation is not just a need,and the provocative direction in achieving the desired, i.e. that context of all prognostic options that inclines towards a certain group of desirable outcomes of such options. For example, no matter how intense the pain, the motivation to certain actions will arise only when a sufficient chance of effectiveness (obtaining the desired) is predicted. Desirable without a certain focus - is not motivation. The desire to get rid of pain must have past experience such a possibility, and then it motivates finding ways of deliverance, when there are some forecasts of the possibility of this, otherwise there will be a state of passive humility with the existing.

Realizing Intention- quite weighted, i.e. meaningful to a high degree of certainty, on measured decision, performed or waiting for the trigger stimulus (delayed until the moment it can be performed), with a high enough certainty of the desirability of the consequences(forecast risk under the circumstances), i.e. a confident decision to do something at the right opportunity.
The condition that the intention must already be fully prepared for implementation (or is already being implemented or the right moment is expected to do so) separates from the presumed intention, hesitation and declarations (subjective or in communication with other individuals) of how good it would be to solve the problem. This radically limits the conditions for applying the definition.
So, a cat, stalking prey, has the goal of stalking, but not yet attacking it, and if a dog suddenly appears instead of a mouse, instead of the intention to attack, the goal will appear - to run away. At the same time, the cat realized more common goal- get food, i.e. there is a hierarchy of goals associated with a hierarchy of emotional contexts that form nested dominants of relevance depending on the specifics of current conditions. A more general goal is fulfilled as a sequence of components, depending on the conditions and understanding of the situation. This complexity well illustrates the fact that the concept of "goal" - artificially arises from the need to describe the correspondence of a long-used word and adaptability mechanisms that do not need such concretization.

In fact, the goal is formed on the basis of previous experience by predicting what, according to this experience, under given circumstances (combinations of specific features of conditions) has a fairly confident assessment of the possibility of obtaining the desired result and some ideas about what actions such a result can be obtained. . Such a forecast can be called goal-forming.

Confidence in the success of achieving the goal may be illusory, it will not be fulfilled in reality, bringing disappointment, but with each attempt, the experience and skills of achieving the desired, achieving the goal are being improved more and more, forecasts are becoming more and more adequate to reality.

So, finding a goal is determined by the motivation of the decision actual problem, which can become dominant for a long time to find an acceptable solution. And the goal is an ongoing intention to find a working variant of successful behavior (a plan for a system of trial behavior) within the framework of such motivation and / or implement it. A goal that can be implemented in practice makes it possible to make an assessment of how desirable the obtained result is and to correct the skills of using forecasts for goal setting and creative problem solving.

Primary, most important goals form one or even several constantly active dominants of primary relevance (they are either not extinguished during sleep or are very easily activated again by provocative stimuli of perception).

For the emergence of a dominant, it is necessary that the perception of the current subjectivized (previously realized and having a connection with significance - the meaning of the image in the given conditions) image of perception-action , , , to which conscious attention has shifted, in predictive subexcitations, should lead to an assessment: in such circumstances it is necessary find a new solution. It is worth distinguishing between the motivational dominant - as a constantly active subjective image of an actual problem and the contextual influence of the system of significance, inclining to switch the emotional context a to satisfy this need (for example, the release of neurotransmitters and hormones, switching to sexual behavior).

And it is also worth distinguishing between those old subjective images that in the new conditions become unacceptable and require volitional effort to do something contrary to the old notions. This is not a fully formed motivational dominant, but only a discrepancy between the former automatism and new realities, which may not give rise to a decision to find a way out, but when comprehending such discomfort, it can also become the dominant of an internal psychological conflict, which, of course, also requires a solution, and the goal can be to find a solution (there is some hope that a solution is possible) and then the goal is to put that solution into practice, rather than just passively accepting it. Thus, the already formed dominant of the actual problem is contrasted with the intention to find a solution and the dominant of the passive statement of a hopeless, but actual problem. The first is manifested as the fact that a person has a goal, the second - as the presence of a mental problem.

In the most natural way (at ease, not by artificial methods of "motivation"), the goal arises when it is required to find a new solution and there is hope for success. You can't fool yourself: the moment of such a situation should be significant enough for the subject, and not just declared, otherwise laziness will not allow the dominant of the problem to arise and make it a target. It is almost impossible to bring in significance from without, only knowing that it would be good, one must have an active desire for it. Of course, there are many ways to self-motivate, such a skill can be developed, but any methods should directly affect the personal system of significance, and not just declare how it should be. So, it is useless to try to learn a foreign language if you do not have a personal interest in it or a personal urgent need.

Goals should not be set artificially, but they arise from natural state"strategic orientation" in some important, urgent activity - as an urgent need to solve a problem. This strategy of behavior arises as a result of a formed worldview, a system of personal interests that directly follows the development of personal skills.

That is why the victory of communism failed, and we all do not live in a bright and reasonable future, which cannot be built by any revolutions and artificial planting of some values.

For every person who develops the area of application of some skills, this is accompanied by a research interest - to expand and deepen their capabilities. In the most general terms, this gradually develops into the form of the most common system interrelated understanding - worldview, which serves as the basis for the emergence of motivation for the development of individual research interests and the need to solve current pressing problems.

If at first the child simply has an interest due to the orienting reaction, he stretches out his hand to an unfamiliar object that attracted his attention, then, having become accustomed to the object, noticing its interconnections with other objects that also attracted attention, an area of understanding of this system of interconnections is formed and the possibility of using them for themselves to obtain the desired result. Education subject area human activity and research follows from this and each individually. The general research interest of this subject area on the basis of the worldview (including the development of methodology and research) forms a strategy that is the context of the tactics of specific research acts.

The dominant motivation of an unsolved problem is the basis of a brilliant state. In the article Creativity and inspiration:

The state of brilliant creativity is, first of all, the constant being in a state of comprehension of the idea of creativity that has captured it, the constant and dominant activity of the brain (dominant), which is not extinguished even in a dream, it is so significant and constantly nourished by the activity of almost any other areas of perception. It does not arise suddenly and out of nowhere, but is the result of a persistent study of some problem that is very important for the researcher (love can also be such a problem).

But in itself, such a dominant activity does not set a goal, it only provokes a focus on where the goal can be formed, and until this happens, the manifestation of this dominant can be designated with the appropriate word: "dream". Such a dominant can be self-sustaining for a very long time, but in no way lead to practical action or even thinking about the possibility of practical actions, but it can give rise to many waking dreams (prognostic chains of images of situations that sequentially unfold according to the dream mechanism), fed by any new impressions in perception, somehow related to the theme of the dream. In their passive contemplation, dreams differ from active creative finding of solutions. But with each new waking dream, a baggage of such passively meaningful comparisons with previous experiences accumulates, which can give hope and an opportunity to re-evaluate the dream as accessible for implementation. And if this happens, then many of the desirability estimates already attached to the dream may turn out to be in a depressing discrepancy with the reality received.

Needs. There are needs for food, water, sexual satisfaction, thermal comfort, elimination of pain. Under different conditions, these needs give rise to a variety of emotions. From this point of view, there is no emotion of love in its human sense. Love is a kind of need, a very complex need, shaped by the influences of the social environment, ethics and worldview of a given society. Depending on the circumstances, love generates emotions of joy, delight, gratitude, resentment, sadness, indignation.

If we exclude man, then the diverse needs of living organisms come down to one thing - to maintain their individual and species existence. The presence of needs is due to the very nature of the living and many are innate. In addition to hunger, thirst, sexual desire, innate needs include sleep, maintaining one's integrity, caring for offspring, obtaining external information, training the muscular system and internal organs, and maintaining a certain state of the internal environment.

Every need has its subjective and objective measure.

The emergence of the fundamental needs of living beings is associated with the initial shifts in internal chemistry. It is believed that a shift in the exchange of the tricarboxylic acid cycle) represents the initial link in the hungry state of higher mammals (Ugolev). This shift is perceived by the receptors of the food area of the brain and the periphery. In this case, signaling from the stomach is of great importance. Artificial filling of the stomach requires an increase in direct electrical stimulation of the hunger center in the brain to produce eating behavior. Violation of the water-salt balance excites specialized cells of the hypothalamus. This causes the muscles in the upper pharynx and esophagus to contract. Contracting, the muscles irritate sensitive nerve endings, which leads to a feeling of thirst (Deryabin).

attraction- there is a purposeful need addressed to the objects of the external environment that can ensure its satisfaction, and are a motive for purposeful behavior ( motivation).

Any action is necessarily a movement pursuing a specific goal (purposeful behavior). A living being satisfies its essential needs by interacting with the environment. There are two types of such interaction - contact and remote.

With contact, the influence has already begun, and the purpose of the action is to prolong or weaken its effect. With remote interaction, a living system operates with the very source of beneficial or harmful influences. Hence the possibility of both proactive interaction and complete prevention of impact.

Remote action is divided into 3 categories:

1. An action aimed at mastering a useful object.

2. Action aimed at avoiding danger.

3. Action to eliminate factors that impede the satisfaction of needs (struggle).

irritation or external stimulus.

Behavior definitions vary from person to person. Here are some of them:

Behavior is one of the means of adaptation to external conditions and to their

changes;

Behavior is what an animal or person does;

Behavior - coordinated muscular activity;

Behavior - response to changes in the external or internal environment of the body;

Behavior is an adaptive, adaptive reaction of the body, etc.

Life is a change of many motivated behavioral manifestations. From the point of view of physiology, purposeful behavior is a type of behavior aimed at the implementation of a specific motivation.

1. Purposeful behavior aimed at satisfaction of motivation (CP).

2. Purposeful action (CA) - a set of ways to achieve the goal, stage and element of the CP.

3. Purposeful act (TA) - the minimum quantum of behavior, the minimum act that provides the minimum result leading to the goal.

According to Sudakov:

F life = CPU sum = CD sum = CA sum.

The purposeful activity of all living beings is built on a single principle: need - motivation - purposeful behavior - satisfaction of needs - evaluation of the result of an action.

The central architecture of a behavioral act unfolds over time, albeit a very short one (milliseconds).

1 stage - Afferent synthesis. . Based on the biological need arises biological motivation. These are the innate mechanisms of the brain. They themselves can build behavior, without afferent signals (instincts). The higher evolutionarily, the smaller the proportion of purely innate mechanisms in the implementation of purposeful reactions. Nevertheless, at the first stages of postnatal life, there are forms of behavior due to innate mechanisms.

effective only when there is a buzzer. In a person, the environment also suppresses biological motivations (a person is on the podium).

The construction of a purposeful behavioral act at the stage of afferent synthesis is carried out with the interaction of motivational and situational excitations and is built according to the dominant principle. The leading one is more biologically and socially important motivation. For a person, as a rule, social influences are more leading.

Along with genetic memory, individual memory. It is formed by repeatedly satisfying a need. An example is a dynamic stereotype, when memory itself is a stimulus for purposeful behavior.

When we work, we do not feel the environment, but these excitations exist, although they do not reach consciousness (clothing, chair, noise in the room) - I said and you felt it, because. attention was switched to these stimuli and they reached the sphere of consciousness). Consciousness provides focus on the main goal, but everything that prepares these reactions is carried out on a subconscious level.

The following mechanisms are used in the process of afferent synthesis:

1) ascending activating influences of the subcortex on the cortex;

2) mechanisms of multiple convergence of excitations on cortical neurons;

3) dominant mechanisms.

All these excitations practically converge on any neurons, but more so on neurons of the frontal lobe.

Stage 2 - Decision-making.. At the decision-making stage, the animal directs behavior in one direction, a rigid line of behavior is outlined, and it is freed from unnecessary degrees of freedom. A talented brain is one that can quickly discard excess information and make an accurate decision! In order to be able to do this, at this stage, the regulatory apparatus of the FSCP analyze information about the state of all potential actuators, all organs and muscles that could be involved in the implementation of the CPU. The so-called. " effector integral" - a picture of the state of the executive bodies. Depending on the results of such an analysis, an answer is formed to the question " how to do?", in what sequence to include individual quanta of behavior.

For example, a monkey is sitting on a branch that wants to get a banana located above. Theoretically, she can do this by engaging any of her four limbs. But if one of them is occupied by a cub, and the second one is holding on to a branch, then there are only two degrees of freedom to choose from. Naturally, the choice will also depend on the height at which the desired fruit hangs. As a result, the decision "what to do?" in the language of nerve impulses will mean “pick a banana hanging on the top branch”, “when to do it?” - “immediately!”, and “how to do it? - "Rise on the right hind limb and pick a banana with the right front." At the same time, a neural image of a model of future action will be formed in the brain.

All this purposeful behavior, however, can be broken down into its constituent elements (purposeful actions - 1) stand up; 2) disrupt); and into individual even smaller quanta of action - behavioral acts that make up the action. Each of these elements has its own intermediate result, which is controlled by the regulatory apparatus based on the assessment of the feedback from the working organs involved in the action.

Stage 3 - Forming an action result acceptor. . This is a very important device in a purposeful action. Anokhin's experience in the 1930s: if a dog develops a conditioned reflex to a bell + meat powder, and then replaces it with fresh meat ("surprise"), then the dog looks with surprise, sniffs, runs to the experimenter, looks for meat powder, etc. .P. - only then begins to eat meat. This means that in the brain the reinforcement model with all its parameters did not match the result. If an eagle's egg is marked with a stone of the same shape, then he will notice the substitution only if he lifts the stone (weight mismatch).

The basis of the physiological mechanisms of the acceptor of the result of an action is the convergence on the same neurons of command impulses and reverse afferentation from the result.

4 stage - behavior.. The behavior ends when the model matches the result. According to Anokhin, in this case the body is rewarded with the help of the apparatus of positive emotions (pleasure). If there are errors as a result, an orienting-exploratory reaction is turned on and negative emotion is intensified. The control apparatus makes adjustments to the behavior and it continues until a signal is received to satisfy the need. Then the FSCP ceases to operate, and information about the progress of satisfaction of the need enters the memory apparatus (learning).

A neobehavioristic term intended to serve the same semantic function as the more mentalistic term intention. Namely, goal-directed behavior is a response, or set of responses, that can only be interpreted in terms of achieving a known goal. E.K. Tolman once remarked, "Behaviour reeks of intent." He was right, of course, but for orthodox behaviorists it would be much more convenient if he said: "Behavior reeks of purposefulness." So poetic.

Watch value Purposeful Behavior in other dictionaries

Behavior- At positive evaluation.
Impeccable, impeccable, immaculate (obsolete), well-behaved (obsolete), decent, prudent, decent (obsolete), delicate, ........
Dictionary of epithets

Behavior Wed.- 1. A set of actions and actions in relation to others. 2. The ability to behave in accordance with the established rules of the order. 3. The reaction of the body to this or ........
Explanatory Dictionary of Efremova

Behavior- behavior, pl. no, cf. A set of deeds and actions, a way of life. Impeccable behaviour. line of conduct. || Action pattern. My behavior, I know, is unforgivable........
Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

Unconventional Behavior- - behavior that is illegal or contrary to generally accepted political norms.
Political vocabulary

Behavior- - interaction of the subject with the environment, mediated by external (motor) and internal (mental) activity; in in practical terms- observable, amenable to ........
Political vocabulary

Behavior Deviant- (‹ lat. deviatio deviation) - 1) an act, an action of a person that does not correspond to the officially established or actually established norms in a given society (standards, ........
Political vocabulary

Behavior Political- - a form of participation of the individual, the social community of people in the exercise of political power, the protection of their political interests. There are two main types of political...
Political vocabulary

Behavior Electoral- a kind of political participation. Its orientation is influenced, first of all, by the identification of a particular voter with a particular social group........
Political vocabulary

Political Behavior- (POLITICAL BEHAVIOR) - human thoughts and activities related to the management process. includes internal reactions (thought, perception, judgment, attitude, belief), and ........
Political vocabulary

Political Consciousness, Political Behavior- Political consciousness is a system of knowledge, ideas, values of an individual, group, society. Political consciousness can also be defined as a reflection in the minds of people........
Political vocabulary

Role Behavior- - the actual behavior of the subject in the course of the execution of a certain social role. In relation to the norms of the performance of this role, it can be conformist (follows the norms), ........
Political vocabulary

Spontaneous Political Behavior of the Masses- is disorganized and relatively unusual behavior a large number people Subjects of such behavior: 1) crowd, 2) "collected public" and 3) "unassembled" ........
Political vocabulary

Dysfunctional Behavior- (Suboptimization)

A decision whose implementation leads to an increase in the current profit of the responsibility center, but at the same time causes a decrease in the profit of the enterprise as a whole.
Economic dictionary

Information Carrying Behavior- - language (hypertext), which is
a complex of space-time mappings, indicated in image-concepts
Economic dictionary

Behavior- -I; cf.
1. The totality of the actions and actions of someone, creating a holistic view of the lifestyle of someone. Nervous p. saboteur. Calling n. sightseers. Female........
Explanatory Dictionary of Kuznetsov

Careless Behavior— See Reckless Behavior
Economic dictionary

Opportunistic Behavior- is the behavior of a person, consisting in the desire
implement your own
interests, which is accompanied by manifestations of deceit (O. Williamson). Known........
Economic dictionary

Responsibility of the State for the Conduct of Individuals- - in public international law - a problem that has not yet received a final resolution, which is based on the
the fact that
State actions are...
Economic dictionary

Cost Behavior— Change or no change in the amount of a line item due to changes at the business transaction level.
Economic dictionary

Behavior Careless- an offense that is directed against a person and can be both intentional and unintentional.
Economic dictionary

Behavior Consumer- characteristic
set of actions of consumers, revealing them
goals and objectives in consumption, their
preference, size
demand for certain
products........
Economic dictionary

Enterprise Behavior- - a description of the functioning of the enterprise in environment, suggesting a meaningful (purposeful) nature of his actions
Economic dictionary

Behavior of Cost (Costs)- - mathematically expressed dependence of the value of costs on changes in the level business activity(volume of production or sales); used in management accounting.
Economic dictionary

Behavior of Employees in the Organization— ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
planning,
management, target policy and
funding, is under
influence and influences itself ........
Economic dictionary

Behavior Economic- the image, method, nature of the economic actions of citizens, workers, managers, production teams in certain emerging conditions of economic activity, life.
Economic dictionary

Control Oriented Behavior- - the desire of employees to invest more effort in those areas of activity that are controlled and verified by management, and to neglect activities in those areas ........
Economic dictionary

Consumer Behavior- a set of features and indicators characterizing
consumer actions, including their consumer
preference,
demand
goods and
services,........
Economic dictionary

Lawful Conduct- - the behavior of people that complies with the prescriptions of legal norms or does not contradict the norms of law. Such behavior is socially necessary and socially useful.
Economic dictionary

Profit Oriented Behavior- - striving for profit on the basis of the most beneficial use economic resources or combinations thereof in a competitive situation.
Economic dictionary

Rent-Oriented Behavior- is any
type of activity to receive
income from a legal monopoly position. As a rule, this
usurpation of rights to
redistribution of public resources.
Economic dictionary