CONSCIOUSNESS AS A VITAL FUNCTION 293 



nervous conduction, and it has its own anatomical con- 

 figuration of parts of the reacting nervous system, the 

 same as do the simpler physiological processes of con- 

 duction, etc. 



Dewey's discussion of experience (1925, chap, i) 

 suggests an instructive parallel between the process 

 of living in general and experience as we have it. 

 All living is interaction between organism and en- 

 vironment, and one of these factors cannot be re- 

 garded as more essential or more fundamental than 

 the other, though for special purposes we may fix at- 

 tention for the moment on one of them. The analysis 

 is logical; in the vital process these factors are insepar- 

 able. Similarly, na'ive experience is a unitary datum 

 whose separation into subjective and objective is per- 

 haps a later sophistication. Rosenow (1925) has ex- 

 pressed a similar idea in these words: 



The distinction between awareness and action is valid logi- 

 cally, but invalid phenomenologically. The distinction has arisen 

 because in the practical exigencies of life we usually describe 

 what we have experienced, not our modes of experiencing — we 

 discuss what we have seen, not the behavior of seeing. The dis- 

 tinction is valid and useful, just as the distinction between the 

 pitch and the intensity of a sound is valid and useful even though 

 the two are inseparable aspects of a single phenomenon. 



On the relation between brain and mind, Sellars 

 (1922) says: 



I hold consciousness to be physical in the sense that it is an 

 internal character of the functioning brain, though it is not a 

 complete physical thing to be known externally by the sense- 



