What is life from the psychological point of view: a historical evolutionary approach to the psychophysical problem

The psychophysical problem is analyzed in the context of progressive evolution of complex purposeful living systems. The authors argue that psychological phenomena cannot be reduced to physiological brain processes, explaining potential dangers of the hypothesis of the identity of mental and neurobiological representations of multidimensional reality, which leads to the effect of simplifying of life and complicates the dialogue between neurobiology, cogitology and psychology. Special attention is paid to evolutionary meaning of adaptive and pre-adaptive tasks giving rise to various forms of mental representation of reality, including consciousness as "anticipation of the unanticipatable". The authors look at relations of different forms of representation of reality and the supporting neurobiological nets arguing that among sciences studying the nature of life psychology is a science of stability and variability of complex systems looking into laws of accumulating pre-adaptive potential of life and its personalization.