But all his special statements refer to particular processes only, so I will report him, in pluralistic terms. No biological processes are treated of in this literature, except as incidental to ethical discussion, and the ethical discussions would carry us too far afield. Consciousness is functionally active in readjustment. In perfectly I adapted' , situations, where adjustments are fluent and stereotyped, it exists in minimal degree. Only where there is hesitation, only where past habit will not run, do we find that the situation awakens explicit thought.
Thought is thus incidental to change in experience, to conflict between the old and new.
The situation must be reconstructed if activity is to be resumed, and the rejudging of it mentally is the reconstruction's first stage. The nucleus of the Studies in Logical Theory becomes thus an account of the judging process. In psychological terms we may say, in explanation of the judging process, that some stimulus to action has failed to function properly as a stimulus, and that the activity which was going on has been interrupted. Response in the accustomed way has failed. In such a case there arises a division in experience into sensation content as subject and ideal content as predicate.