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[Chapter 8.] Relation of Individual Organ to Organism as Whole 65. Consciousness is always referred to an individual organ. The eye sees, the finger feels, etc. This is because consciousness is not located anywhere. The lower the consciousness, the more it is referred to the organism as a whole instead of any special organ. Really it is not the eye that sees, but the organism through it; that is, the organ is the organism specified or differentiated. What does this reference of value to some specific organ indicate? It means a balance between the specialization and interdependence. Or it means a balance between the stimulating and inhibitive forces ofnature. In absolutely undifferentiated organism, there could be no consciousness. The consciousness has more content to the degree in which there is the specialization of an organ on one side, and on the other that specialized organ stimulates other organs and is controlled by their controlled stimulation of it. 66. We brought out that consciousness is always referred to a particular organ. The content of consciousness thus referred expresses the organism as a whole. The "what" of consciousness is always the expression of the organism as a whole. The "that" of it is individual. The balance between individual organ and organism as a whole must be maintained. 67. Take as an illustration the perceptual development of consciousness of color. At outset the color consciousness is not defined in any sense. A child is not conscious ofany reference of it to his eye. The color is rather a thrill of the whole organism. So long as it is thus diffused, it lacks richness of content or meaning. In the next stage the child takes the red color as the adjective ofa ball which he is in the habit ofplaying with. New experience is marked off. In being thus defined, it has more, not less, of the value of other experiences in it. 68. In the next plane of development, the scientific man, red denotes a certain metal, sun as found by spectrum analysis: now the extent is very small. Being thus defined, it is saturated with all the rest ofscientific knowledge which man has. This illustrates the principle that the growth in definiteness means growth in specialization. And growth in richness ofcontent which is correlative with the above shows the extent to which the whole organism is expressing itself in the individual organ. The difference between mere seeing as stimulus to subsequent activity and scientific or aesthetic seeing is that in the last the seeing stimulates other organs which return on the seeing, stimulating it to con145 Lectures on Political Ethics trol and modify it. So any seeing in human consciousness necessitates such a coordination . 69. When there is seeing, and that stimulates other activities which react on the seeing again but does not control it, we get hallucination. The normal consciousness represents the balance between two extreme types: animal, where it is just serial with no interaction; and hallucination, where there is interaction, but no control. This also explains immoral action. All error is the same type, that is, failure to balance between immediate and mediate activities. The different organ stimulations are to re-stimulate the immediate organ without also controlling it. Psychical deafness and blindness are good illustrations of this principle . Man may see colors and forms but they are nothing to him, because the connection with other centers are atrophied and the reinforcements are gone. 70. Taking now individual and society as correlative with organ [and organism1in a biological organism: The ordinary theory is that the individual has his consciousness given to him. But this is not the case. His consciousness depends on how he can stimulate others and how again they react on him. Individual activity does not give consciousness by itself. Consciousness is interpretation of that activity by and through its social interaction or relationships. The individual is not conscious simply because he acts, but because he recognizes the place of the activity in the whole. While the consciousness is always the interpretation of impulse through its mediation, if we take the content of the mediation it is always social. 71. The growth of consciousness is due to the way A acts on B, C, etc., and how they react again on A. Learning to walk is of the same sort. In animal types ofconsciousness there is simply the serial type, but A would never absorb and make part of itself the return stimulations from Band C. The...

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