From  http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Dewey/Dewey_1896.html   

What is the reality so designated? What shall we term that which is not sensation-followed-by-idea-followed-by-movement,. but which is primary; which is, as it were, the psychical organism of which sensation, idea and movement are the chief organs? Stated on the physiological side, this reality may most conveniently be termed coördination. This is the essence of the facts held together by and subsumed under the reflex arc concept. Let us take. for our example, the familiar child-candle instance. (James, Psychology, Vol. I, p. 5.) The ordinary interpretation would say the sensation of light is a stimulus to the grasping as a response, the burn resulting is a stimulus to withdrawing the hand as response and so on. There is, of course, no doubt that is a rough practical way of representing the process. But when we ask for its psychological adequacy, the case in quite different. Upon analysis, we find that we begin not with a sensory stimulus. but with a sensori-motor coördination, the optical-ocular, and that in a certain sense it is the movement which is primary, and the sensation which is secondary, the movement of body, head and eye muscles determining the quality of what is experienced. In other words, the real beginning is(359) with the act of seeing; it is looking, and not a sensation of light. The sensory quale gives the value of the act, just as the movement furnishes its mechanism and control, but both sensation and movement lie inside, not outside the act. 

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