John Dewey’s Emergent Naturalism: Conditions and Transfigurations

This essay proposes a synoptic way of understanding the various dynamic "fields" that are ordered constituents of John Dewey's emergent naturalism. For Dewey, experience is always situated within and interactive with a greater context. With this basic idea in mind, I offer an exposition of the most general set of emerging contexts featured throughout Dewey's mature philosophy, and demonstrate how larger environmental fields stand as the conditions for those fields that are lesser in contextual scope. It will not be my focus to fully explicate the functional range of each field. Rather, I set out an emergent ordering of the most general fields that Dewey develops throughout a broad range of his works.From the outset, it should be noted that Dewey never provides a systematic exposition of the various dynamic fields featured in his work. Yet, Dewey did, in various works, imply a particular emergent ordering of these experiential contexts. I take my essay to bring this emergent order to light.11 Non-Cognitive Emergent Fields: Nature, Experience, Mind, Subconscious, and ConsciousnessBefore beginning my analysis, it will be useful to give some shape to what we might mean by "emergentism" or a system of "emergent naturalism," as well as to what we might mean by the idea of an existential "field." At least for the purposes of my analysis, "emergent naturalism" denotes the sense that there are no ultimate separations in our world, and that all things "emerge" or are refined and enriched from the most basic patterns found in "nature." The term "field" denotes the expansive, dynamic, and evolving contexts within which phenomena occur and interrelate. By treating something (e.g. "consciousness") as a field, as opposed to a discrete phenomenon or function, we imply a nexus of associated phenomena or functions that interact with all other fields within a larger comprehensive system. Fields as such overlap or interpenetrate other fields. These existential and experiential fields are never to be thought of as having absolute bounds, nor should they be thought of as mutually exclusive; in Dewey's preferred sense of the word they correspond where correspondence is understood in the colloquial sense of being conversant and interactive.The spatial metaphor implied by "field" fits comfortably within Dewey's larger program. Dewey often employs spatial metaphors to describe various contexts for experience; he writes of "fields," "backgrounds," and "foregrounds." Further, Dewey utilizes spatial comparatives in relating such contexts to each other; he might posit that context X is wider than or smaller than context Y. While a unidirectional taxonomy of experiential contexts is incompatible with Dewey's overall philosophical program, Dewey did seem to understand our world in terms of dynamic fields that stand as the contextual conditions for experience. Further, these dynamic contexts are not to be understood as equal in scope; nature, for example, necessarily denotes a larger context than, e.g., consciousness. Throughout the remainder of this essay, I develop the idea that Dewey's mature philosophy focuses on six emergent fields, situated in the following order:1. Nature: All that there is. Nature is a process that is the sum total of all conditions.2. Experience/Culture: The sum of human endeavor.3. Mind: The system of accumulated human meanings.4. Subconscious: A localized collection of personally acquired "habits."5. Consciousness: An active awareness marked by having a felt experience of "ideas" and "perceptions."6. Cognitive thought: An active, focused treatment of ideas and perceptions in light of a problematic object.Nature stands as the largest environmental field; there is nothing apart from nature. Yet, it is clear that Deweyan nature is far from being some sort of a monolithic essence. It is a productive plurality, an evolving framework full of conflicting phenomena, disequilibriums, and tensions. …