If doctrine is everything, and doctrine is then derived from method, and method comes down to psychology, then psychology itself combines consciousness, experience, and knowledge into a “richness of relations” which need to be examined and studied, to borrow from Dewey. But what is more important than the origin of these relations is the manner in which these relations develop. Whether these relations originate from experience or sensation is not the central issue. What is central to these relations is the “unity of subject and object” or rather the unity between the individual self and the external world. And in the end, all of it is relative. One’s consciousness, experience, and knowledge is relative to another, and as a result, no one can claim a monopoly on objectivity and truth in the very end.
Moreover, consciousness is always dependent “on something not itself.” However, this predicament of dependence on something other than individual consciousness ends up being the solution for us. To borrow from Dewey: “And this is the solution: a real not related to consciousness, but which has produced both consciousness itself, and the objects which as known are relative to consciousness.” There is the “undoubted relativity of all existence” on one hand, and the “undoubted dependence of our own consciousness” upon the real on the other hand. Arguably, there is no external material world that is independent of the mind. Knowledge is a “state of mind.” The world is “presented” to our minds through experience and the senses. Knowledge of the world amounts to knowledge of the mind.
Nevertheless, Dewey divides individual consciousness into two kinds. For one, there is “object consciousness” or the consciousness of the external world. And second, there is “subject consciousness” or the individual ego and individual mind. But object consciousness is still consciousness, which means that the external world is still a product or dimension of the individual mind. To borrow from Dewey: “The subject swallows up the object.”
But it is still the case that consciousness is divided into halves and consciousness “segregates” itself into “two antithetical halves” while the process of object consciousness vanishing into subject consciousness repeats itself over and over again through experience and the acquisition of knowledge. One side or one half of consciousness cannot be “subtracted” from the other. It is undeniable that one side or one half cannot be subtracted from the other. Yet, we assume that the scope of psychology can only consist of subject consciousness “minus” the external world or object world. That is a flawed assumption, as Dewey contended. He wrote:
“Consciousness may, and undoubtedly does, have two aspects – one aspect in which it appears as an individual, and another in which it appears as an external world over against the individual. But there are not two kinds of consciousness, one of which may be subtracted from the whole and leave the other. They are but consciousness in one phase, and how it is that consciousness assumes this phase, how it is that this division into the individual and the external world arises for consciousness (in short, how consciousness in one stage appears as perception) – that is precisely the business of Psychology to determine.”
Dewey then noted that the manner in which it assumes this phase of division is through the relations between the two halves of consciousness. In other words, there is a relation between individual consciousness on one hand and “universal consciousness” on the other hand. The evolution of individual consciousness is in essence the evolution in its relationship with universal consciousness. There is an underlying unity between both forms or halves of consciousness. The two are not necessarily opposed to one another. Consciousness is both individual and universal. But Dewey does not go into how consciousness is both individual and universal at the same time. Nevertheless, individual consciousness can in fact take up and assume a “universal standpoint” to borrow from Dewey. Individual consciousness is always in the process of assuming a universal standpoint. It is becoming universal. The ontological standpoint focuses on the nature of consciousness. But one cannot assess the nature of consciousness before presupposing that individual consciousness can enter into a process of becoming universal. Consciousness has to first become universal before one can assess what the nature of consciousness is. In sum, and to conclude: “The individual consciousness is but the process of realization of the universal consciousness through itself.”
Adam A. Azim 