Existence, Ideas and Consciousness

focal trait of a shifting object of consciousness (as such)
Bearcamp River Trail, April 24, 2011

In Chapter 8 the traits of living creatures are considered in connection with the conscious aspect of behavior and  experience, the quality of immediacy attaching to events when they are actualized in experience by means of organic and social interactions. The difference and the connection of mind and consciousness is set forth. The meanings that form mind become consciousness, or ideas, impressions, etc., when something within the meanings or in their application becomes dubious, and the meaning in question needs reconstruction. This principle explains the focal and rapidly shifting traits of the objects of consciousness as such. A sensitive and vital mental career thus depends upon being awake to questions and problems;  consciousness stagnates and becomes restricted and dull when this interest wanes (p. 8).

In the discussions of the last chapter the word° "consciousness" was avoided. It is a word of unsettled signification (p. 226).

I used the experience and photo record above to get around the problems Dewey mentions with "consciousness" as such.   The word "consciousness" did not occur to me at all.    The experience of walking on the trail, encountering the  sight above, and taking the picture which has a bright, sun focus and then a fringing out into shadow—and yes it was changing while I waited to get the picture— I can look at the photo and then read through Dewey's overview of Chapter 8 finding it connects quite well to what I actually experienced.   The picture is one possible denotation of my consciousness. 


As you cited but I went back a few sentences further in the text:

For the immediately given is always the dubious; it is always a matter for subsequent events to determine, or assign character to. It is a cry for something not given, a request addressed to fortune, with the
pathos of a plea or the imperiousness of a command. It were, conceivably, "better" that nature should be finished through and through, a closed mechanical or closed teleological structure, such as philosophic schools have fancied. But in that case the flickering candle of consciousness would go out.

The immediate perceptibility of meanings, the very existence of ideas, testifies to insertion of the problematic and hazardous in the settled and uniform, and to the meeting, crossing and parting of the substantial, static, and the transitive and particular (pp, 262-63).

This I think is a kind of "cry" for the place, nuances, and possible significance of the "immediate" in experience.   It's also the starting point of a kind of reasoned inference (which is, I think for Dewey what we call "science").  If nothing was unsettled....what would we need to know or inquire into?    And this, like many other passages in  chapter 8 are directly related to the Maxine Greene essay "Toward Wide-Awakness".    There's recognition of the "plane of consciousness" leading to perceptions (which is not just mental activity but some version of, mind-body,  thought and action in the world) and then recognition and honoring of the "problematic" (which is the triumphant note on which her essay ends). Better yet, it's the arts that do this best for Greene.  And funny, where is Dewey headed in his text chapter?   


It's my intention, probably on Tuesday to made some additions and write some comments into your piece on Chapter 8.   

The immediately  given is a request addressed to fortune.