4 VIEWS ON MENTAL NATURE

Changes in the understanding of the world and man, which occurred in the VI. BC e., were decisive in the history of ideas about mental activity.

Animism is belief in a host of spirits (souls) hidden behind visible things, representing them as special “elements” or “ghosts” leaving the human body with the last breath in his life (for example, according to the philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras.) immortal, they have the opportunity to wander forever and move into the bodies of animals and plants. A fundamentally new approach expressed the doctrine, which replaced animism. This doctrine of the universal animateness of the world, called "hylozoism." one whole, endowed with life.

The hylozoist Heraclitus (the end of the 6th - the beginning of the 5th centuries BC) represented the cosmos in the form of “eternally living fire”, the soul (“psyche”) in the form of its sparkle. It included the soul in the general laws of natural being, developing according to the law (logos), the same as the cosmos, which is one for all being.

Democritus (460–370 BC) believed that the whole world consists of the smallest, invisible to the eye particles called atoms. He believed that man and all nature surrounding him are composed of atoms that form the body and soul. The soul, as Democritus believed, also consists of small atoms, but more mobile, since they must impart activity to an inert body. Democritus believed that the soul can be in the head (part reasonable), in the chest (part masculine), in the liver (part lusting) and in the senses.

Among the teachings of the Hippocrates school (460–377 BC) was the study of four fluids (blood, mucus, black bile, and yellow bile). From here, depending on which fluid is prevalent, he put forward a version of four temperaments:

1) sanguine type, when blood prevails;

2) phlegmatic type (mucus);

3) choleric type (yellow bile);

4) melancholic type (black bile). Alkmeon from Cretona (6th century BC) believed

that the brain is an organ of the soul. He found that from the hemispheres of the brain "two narrow lanes" go to the eye sockets. Alkmeon argued that there is a direct connection between the sense organs and the brain. Following Alkmeon, Hippocrates agreed that the brain is an organ of the psyche, believing that the brain is a kind of large gland. Today it is known that there is a single neuro-humoral regulation of behavior.

Plato (428–348 BC) believed that the soul is the guardian of human morality and that behavior should be prompted and controlled by reason, not feelings. He opposed Democritus and his theories, arguing the possibility of freedom of rational human behavior.

Aristotle (384–322 BC) believed that in the human body the physical and the spiritual form an inseparable whole. The soul, according to Aristotle, is not an independent entity, but a form, a way of organizing a living body.