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CHAPTER IV

THE SIGNIFICANCE AND FUNCTION OF

CONSCIOUSNESS

1. THE FUNCTIONAL VIEW OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

It has already been intimated that the conscious processes are intimately bound up with the activities of the cortical centers. We know from abundant evidence, which need not be given here, that this is true. Is it an accidental fact that these are at the same time the centers which function in terms of consciousness and in terms of variation and reconstruction of reaction processes? If we take the biological point of view, we can hardly regard the coincidence as one without any functional significance; for we have come to view all special characteristics of an organism as interrelated and as functioning together within one whole for the furthering and maintaining of the life process. Though we may not be able to explain satisfactorily either to the materialist or to the idealist the ultimate relation between conscious processes and the physiological processes of the brain, yet we may consistently hold that the two sets of activities are functionally related. In the third type of sensori-motor circuit, cortical activities and conscious processes are functionally related as inseparable phases of one whole of adjustment activity the perfection of which demands both.

2. CONSCIOUSNESS THE FACTOR OF VARIATION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF REACTION.

Conscious processes fall within the process of reaction only at the point of central redirection of impulses. We have seen that they come into that particular sensori-motor

circuit in which the central redirection occurs in the cortex, a mechanism which affords the largest possibility of variation and reconstruction of motor responses. This ought to suggest to us that if we are trying to interpret the special significance and function of consciousness, we should view it as par excellence the factor of variation of reactions whereby reconstructions are effected and new and more perfect adjustments between the organism and its environment are attained.

3. CONDITIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

If consciousness is the factor of variation and reconstruction of reactions, then we should naturally not expect it to appear in the life of an organism except where variation is on the one hand possible and on the other needed or useful. There are classes of organisms of the lower type whose modes of reaction are practically fixed at birth or very soon after birth. They are capable of little or no modification. The methods of activity of these organisms have been organized in advance of their actual experience of needs into modes of procedure, called instinctive, which are adapted to the realization of certain groups of fundamental needs common to the species and which can be met, or satisfied, in an environment of a certain kind. In so far as these modes of reaction are fixed, they are under the control of the lower brain centers, and there is no chance for consciousness to function in their reconstruction; in so far as they meet the needs of the organism mechanically there is no need of consciousness. Organisms in which this sort of predetermined adjustment can be at all adequate are limited to very simple and very general classes of needs. If their fixed modes of reaction fail to meet these needs at any time, they have no remedy, but must inevitably perish.

We conclude, then, that if already organized and existing modes of reaction, whether reflex, instinctive, or habitual,

fail to meet the needs of the organism, this is the condition either for the appearance of consciousness,1 or for the more active functioning of conscious processes, provided always that there is sufficient plasticity of the organism to permit of modification and reconstruction of its motor processes. 4. SPECIAL APPLICATION TO THE HUMAN BEING.

(1) Man's special need of conscious processes.

The human being furnishes most fully of all living creatures the precise conditions for the appearance and functioning of consciousness in a very large degree in his life. He is born exceedingly plastic in structure, and this plasticity continues through a very long period of infancy and even into maturity. This makes the possibility of variation from predetermined modes of activity very great. Another necessary consequence of this remarkable plasticity is that at the outset the individual cannot have many definitely organized modes of reaction. The chicken can within a day or two pick at a crumb with great accuracy and precision. But the small child cannot at several years of age eat a piece of bread and butter without smearing his face. And the child of kindergarten age has great difficulty in putting on his wraps and in buttoning his clothes. The human being starts out with an exceedingly limited number of things which he can do; almost everything has to be learned. He has few established motor coördinations in the form of instinctive modes of reaction. He has many tendencies to action, which we may call impulses rather than instincts.2 His needs cannot be met by organized modes of activity determined in advance by heredity. From the very start his natural equipment fails to meet his demands, and in so far as they are not anticipated by parental love, there is the demand for the functioning of consciousness to organize and control his activities in such ways as to satisfy his natural impulses.

Cf. Angell, Psychology, pp. 63-66.

2 See Chapter VII for discussion of impulse and instinct.

(2) Possibility of Great Delicacy of Adjustment.

The human being starts out more helpless than any other animal, but he has the advantage in the long run. Because he starts out with fewer definitely instinctive modes of behavior, organized and determined in advance, or in the mere process of physical growth, and consequently expresses his natural tendencies in terms of more elementary muscular processes, aimless, uncoördinated, and unorganized; he has left to him the possibility of organizing his modes of reaction in his own lifetime in the light of his own specific experiences and in such forms as will meet his particular needs. An analogy may help to make this point clear. When a building comes into your possession as an inheritance, it may be roughly adapted to your needs, but in so far as it is not so adapted, it is very difficult to modify it to suit your needs in any very delicate and thoroughgoing fashion. But if you were given the elements of the structure, the bricks and the timbers and the boards, you could combine them in ways to suit yourself and make the rising structure one which should be more specifically adapted to meet your needs. While this analogy is too mechanical to be applied closely, yet it will give an idea of what we mean by saying that the human being, starting with more elementary, uncoördinated, and unorganized reaction processes, can through the function of consciousness ultimately organize his methods of action in such ways as will put him into more delicate adjustment with his environment than would be possible on the basis of a larger inheritance of already organized reaction processes.

5. CONSCIOUSNESS THE FACTOR OF INDIVIDUAL CONTROL. (1) The idea of control.

What we have already said about the function of consciousness has involved implicitly something of the idea of control over the environment. Particularly what has been said about the more delicate individual adjustment effected

through the conscious processes of the human being has implied the thought of individual control. As the idea of control is essential to the movement of our thought as a whole, it may be well to work it out more explicitly at this point.

a. Adjustment not involving control.

Adjustment involves change of some sort. Some adjustments are affected primarily through changes of a physiological and structural nature in the organism itself. Such is the case when the animal grows a thicker coat of hair and puts on a heavier layer of fat in the autumn and is thus adjusted to the severer cold of winter. Most of the special adjustments of lower animal life are of this character. Permanent changes have been wrought in structure through a series of generations by the process of natural selection, which have made the animals better adapted to live in their specific environment. Or the modification may be one which is due to temporary causes, as in the case of the hardening of the skin on the hands of the laboring man, which adapts him to the task of handling rough things without harm to the delicate structures lying below the outer skin.

Now change itself is not identical with control, even when adjustment is affected. In these cases of adjustment through physiological and structural change in the organism itself we do not have what we are going to call cases of control. If there could properly be said to be control involved, we should have to locate the control primarily in the environment. The environment here is the compelling factor and the organism always yields to some extent whatever be the method of adjustment.

b. Meaning of control.

But there are types of adjustment in which the change effected is primarily a change wrought in the environment. The organism is the compelling factor and the environment yields, undergoing such reconstruction as may be necessary

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