Lecture
Reflection (from Late Latin reflexio, "a turning back") is the turning of a subject's attention onto themselves and their own consciousness, in particular onto the products of their own activity, as well as any reconsideration of them. Specifically — in the traditional sense — onto the content and functions of one's own consciousness, which include personal structures (values, interests, motives), thinking, mechanisms of perception, decision-making, emotional response, behavioral patterns, and so on.
According to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, reflection is what distinguishes humans from animals: thanks to it, a person can not merely know something, but also know that they know it.
According to Ernst Cassirer, reflection consists in "the ability to single out certain stable elements from the whole undifferentiated flow of sensory phenomena in order to isolate them and focus attention on them" .
One of the first psychologists to study reflection was A. Busemann (1925–1926), who interpreted it as "any transfer of an experience from the external world onto oneself" .
In psychological research, reflection appears in two ways:
Reflection, in one of its more modern interpretations, can be viewed as connected to the process of development of something (in particular, of practice, activity, thinking, consciousness, and so on) and as participating in that process by removing obstacles to its functioning.
In everyday usage, as well as in some psychological contexts, reflection refers to any thinking by a person aimed at examining and analyzing themselves and their own activity (a kind of self-analysis) — for example, their own states, actions, and past events. The depth of such reflection depends, among other things, on how interested the person is in this process, on their attention's ability to notice some things more and others less, which in turn can be influenced by their level of education, the development of their moral feelings and notions of ethics, their degree of self-control, and much else. It is believed that representatives of different social and professional groups differ in how they use reflection. In one version, reflection can be viewed as a conversation, a kind of dialogue with oneself. Reflection is also usually considered in connection with a person's capacity for self-development, and with that process itself.
Some specialized models in military affairs are also built on reflection (see Tactics, Strategy, Stratagems).
Reflection is both a subject of study and a tool applied in various fields of human knowledge and its use: philosophy, science studies, psychology, acmeology, management, pedagogy, ergonomics, conflict studies, and others.
One possible definition of reflection is the following: reflection is thought directed at thought (or directed at itself). Perhaps the essence of reflection lies not in the fact that it is thought, but in its being turned toward itself, and in the fact that in some approaches reflection may be regarded as a genetically secondary phenomenon that arises from practice[citation needed, 3531 days]. One opportunity for reflection to emerge arises when insurmountable difficulties appear in the functioning of a practice, as a result of which the practical norm is not fulfilled. Reflection, in that case, is practice going beyond its own limits, and in this sense it can be regarded as an alternate mode of being of practice — namely, as a procedure that removes a practical difficulty. Accordingly, reflection can lead to the development and renewal of practice, and hence it can be regarded not only as thought directed at itself, but also as the turning of practice toward itself[citation needed, 3531 days]. In this sense, reflection is derivative of practice.
In the psychology of creativity and creative thinking, reflection is interpreted as the process by which a subject makes sense of and reconsiders the stereotypes of their experience, which is a necessary precondition for the emergence of innovations. In this context it is customary to speak of a reflective-innovative process and of reflective-creative abilities (I. N. Semyonov, S. Yu. Stepanov), and also to distinguish different forms of reflection (individual and collective) and types (intellectual, personal, communicative, cooperative).
Introducing reflection into the context of psychological research and examining it from the standpoint of personal-semantic dynamics allowed researchers such as S. Yu. Stepanov and I. N. Semyonov to develop a conceptual model of the reflective-innovative process, as well as a methodology for studying it through a content- and meaning-based analysis of the discursive (verbal) thinking of an individual and a group while they solve creative tasks. Using this methodology for the empirical study of how reflection unfolds during an individual's solving of small creative tasks (so-called "insight problems") led to the identification of different kinds of reflection: on the intellectual plane — extensive, intensive, and constructive; on the personal plane — situational, retrospective, and prospective.
Examining the relationship between reflection, creativity, and a person's individuality allows one, in the view of E. P. Varlamova and S. Yu. Stepanov, to approach the study of the problem of a person's creative uniqueness and the role of reflection in its development.
In the work of a classic of philosophical thought such as E. Husserl, as A. V. Rossokhin notes, reflection turns out to be a "way of seeing" that is at the same time built into the very method of description, and moreover it is transformed depending on the object toward which it is directed (for example, reflection on fantasy must itself be a fantasy, and reflection on memory must itself be a memory) .
Traditionally (at least in Russian-language psychology, in particular starting with the work of I. N. Semyonov and S. Yu. Stepanov), four approaches to studying reflection are distinguished (in other words, four aspects of studying reflection) :
Personal reflection, in the traditional understanding, is a psychological mechanism for changing individual consciousness. According to A. V. Rossokhin, personal reflection is "an active, subjective process of generating meanings, based on the individual's unique ability to become aware of the unconscious (reflection of the non-reflexive) — inner work that leads to qualitative changes in value-and-meaning structures, to the formation of new strategies and methods of inner dialogue, and to the integration of the personality into a new, more integral state" .
Depending on the functions that reflection performs in various situations, A. V. Karpov and certain other researchers of it, such as A. S. Sharov, distinguish the following types of reflection :
In physics, the concept of reflection is used within the framework of quantum theory.
Several theoretical positions can be distinguished regarding the relationship between a physical observer, a measuring device, and the system being measured. According to one of them, quantum measurement is a special case of the interaction of quantum systems.
"For all practical purposes," quantum theory needs only to enumerate the probabilities of experimental outcomes — the theory's ability to predict the outcome of a future experiment from the results of past ones. One of the main difficulties in consistently implementing these ideas is the reversibility of time in the Schrödinger equation, its linearity and deterministic character, versus the irreversibility of time at the macroscopic level, and the origin of probabilities. These difficulties force some theorists to introduce the notion of a new process not derivable from the Schrödinger equation — the reduction of the wave function — which is sometimes linked to the consciousness of the observer ("The Second Observer," per the book by Yuri Karpenko ).
A second observer is necessary, according to Dieter Zeh[de], in the many-worlds interpretation, for the objectification and unity of the observed world.
The problem of the second observer is also mentioned by John von Neumann, who proved the necessity of introducing an observer into the measurement process.
Eugene Wigner discusses the problem associated with the second observer, arising after the introduction of the first observer into the measurement process.
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