Lectures on Ethics, 1900 - 1901: John Dewey

Section III. Image, Sensation, Feeling, and Attention

SECTION III Image, Sensation, Feeling, and Attention 1. Feeling, Sensation, and Image January 25, 19011 IT SEEMS DESIRABLE to discriminate between a sensation and a feeling. A sensation always involves a certain greater amount of recognition than a feeling. I should call sound, recognized as a sound, a sensation. But we all have what we call impressions, vague feelings not located in any particular part of the body, and generally a feeling of something being wrong. That preliminary condition to its being a sound or color or particular thing, I should say was feeling. That becomes sensation the moment attention is called to it sufficiently to call for definite location. Sensation is always cognitive. When I use the term 'a sensation' you can always supply the term 'perception'. Any difference between them is simply one of degree. A sound is sensation and the sound ofa watch is perception. But the sound itselfis perceptive as compared with mere vague impressions or a feeling of uneasiness yet undefined. * * * 1. Dewey held a question session, omitted here, on Jan. 24. In the discussion he refers to 'image' in the sense of George Herbert Mead's "working image." See George Herbert Mead, "The Definition of the Psychical," Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago, III (1903), pp. 77-112; "Images in Sensation," Journal ofPhilosophy, I (1904), pp. 604-7; "The Function of Imagery in Conduct," in Mind, Self, and Society from the Standpoint ofa Social Behaviorist (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1934), pp. 337-46. 120 Psychology of Ethics 121 Question: Do conscious recognition of a sensation and of an image develop together? The conscious recognition of cover and box as cover and box is the conclusion of a process of dissociation whereby those elements are left standing out in the mind as objective. We find that that perceptive center is the center of a large number ofmotor reactions which radiate from it and the interest is rather in what happens when these motor responses take place than in dwelling on the properties of the object. The process becomes perceptive only when there is some reason for dwelling on that, when therefore the overt motor reactions are to a certain extent inhibited. You can think ofa certain type ofcharacter who goes offtoo quickly. Any suggestion sets him right off. He never takes time to understand or examine anything. You must tell him constantly to stop and think. That is practically what is meant by this process of dissociation or inhibition. Instead ofacting at once to the stimulus, one must stop and think, and see what kind of stimulus it is in order to see what the profitable or advantageous mode of reaction is. In the first place, then, there must be some motive for dwelling on this center so as for the time being to isolate it from its motor associates. From the other side, isolation means that they are being suppressed. In the second place that motive will be the necessity of getting a more adequate center or stimulus of action. You do not absolutely inhibit, keep forever in the contemplative attitude. That attitude is not an end in itself. It is because the immediate associates are not adequate under the circumstances and that they have to inspect the stimulus long enough to find out its real character and therefore what line of motor response is better, finally, to take. * * * Going back to the specific case in question of the tension between the tendency of the hand and eye activity to act separately and to act together, notice how the image and perception work together, each giving the basis for building up the other so there is a continual alternation from one to the other. This conflict is, on its psychical side, the image. That image will be very indefinite and vague, both on its visual and motor side. I do not see that there is any reason for supposing that at the outset there can be any definite image either visual or motor. The image will be in the condition of a vague feeling that there is something there, the feeling that there is something to do [that is] more interesting if it could only be found. That image, however vague, if it is an image, operates to some extent to control conduct or realize itself. It cannot do this directly. 122 John Dewey In this case, for example, the...