Nature, Life and Body-Mind

“The more an organism learns-the more that is, the former terms of a historic process are retained and integrated in this present phase-the more it has to learn, in order to keep itself going; otherwise death and catastrophe” (p. 214-215).

Dewey defines mind in a number of different ways, but he seems to almost always tie “mind” to “communication” and “language.”

“’mind’ is an added property assumed by a feeling creature, when it reaches that organized interaction with other living creatures which is language, communication.   Then the qualities of feeling become significant of objective differences in external things and of episodes past and to come.  This state of things in which qualitatively different feelings are not just had but are significant of objective differences, is mind” (p. 198).

 “with language they (qualities of organic action-feelings) are discriminated and identified” (p. 198).

“’Feeling’ is in general a name for the newly actualized quality acquired by events previously occurring upon a physical level, when these events come into more extensive and delicate relationships of interaction.  More specifically, it is a name for the coming to existence of those ultimate differences in affairs which mark them off from one another and give them discreteness; differences which upon the physical plane can be spoken of only in anticipation of subsequent realization, or in terms of different numerical formulae, and different space-time positions and contiguities” (p. 204).

Language is what allows qualities, feelings, and specific relationships to be identified, perhaps remembered, but certainly communicated and triangulated.

“Sense is distinct from feeling, for it has a recognized reference; it is the qualitative characteristic of something, not just a submerged unified quality or tone.  Sense is also different from signification.  The latter involves use of a quality as a sign or index of something else, as when the red of a light signifies danger…” (p. 200).

“Whenever a situation has this double function of meaning, namely signification and sense, mind, intellect is definitely present” (p. 200).

So I think that mind exists to varying degrees.  Intellect being a property of mind on a relatively high degree.  If we consider that communication happens in ways other than human speech, feeling could be communicated without the presence of intellect.

“Apart from communication, habit-forming wears grooves; behavior is confined to channels established by prior behavior.  In so far the tendency is towards monotonous regularity.  The very operation of learning sets a limit to itself, and makes subsequent learning more difficult.  But this holds only of a habit, a habit in isolation, a non-communicating habit.  Communication not only increases the number and variety of habits, but tends to link them subtly together, and eventually to subject habit-forming in a particular case to the habit of recognizing that new modes of association will exact a new use of it” (p. 214).

Here I believe Dewey is suggesting that language and communication allow us to examine our habits, our customs, our “modes of life” and to consider changes or modifications.  I believe this application of mind is the beginning of “wide-awakness” or what Thoreau calls “Living deliberately.”  I would argue that this is accomplished incompletely, I don’t think we have the ability to habitually recognize all of our habits; in some cases we will never get out of the groove of prior behavior.

“The more an organism learns-the more that is, the former terms of a historic process are retained and integrated in this present phase-the more it has to learn, in order to keep itself going; otherwise death and catastrophe” (p. 214-215).

“The world seems mad in preoccupation with what is specific, particular, disconnected in medicine, politics, science, industry, education.  In terms of a conscious control of inclusive wholes, search for those links which occupy key positions and which effect critical connections is indispensible.  But recovery of sanity depends upon seeing and using these specifiable things as links functionally significant in a process” (p. 224).

“We know that locomotives and aeroplanes and telephones and power-plants do not arise from instinct or the subconscious but from deliberately ascertained perceptions of connections and orders of connections.  Now after a period in which advance in these respects was complacently treated as proof and measure of progress, we have been forced to adopt pessimistic attitudes, and to wonder if this ‘progress’ is to end in the deterioration of man and the possible destruction of civilization.  Clearly we have not carried the plane of conscious control, the direction of action by perception of connections, far enough” (p. 225).

I think Dewey is arguing that we have so impressed ourselves with the realizations of what we can create when we become aware of connections and orders of connections that we have been blinded to see the effects in the bigger picture.  I think of the popularity of the automobile and its design based on burning petroleum, and the lack of foresight connecting the pollution from automobiles to our environment.  So long as we strive for progress, and not progress for something, or the awareness of progress at the expense of… then we are cutting ourselves short of what is needed to avoid death and catastrophe, this is madness.   “Recovery of sanity depends upon seeing and using these specifiable things as links functionally significant in a process.”  And that makes me think of my arguments for arts education.