THE PHILOSOPHY OF JOHN DEWEY

Transcription

1 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JOHN DEWEY

2 THE PHILOSOPHY OF JOHN DEWEY A CRITICAL EXPOSITION OF HIS METHOD, METAPHYSICS, AND THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE by ROBERT E. DEWEY MARTINUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE /1977

3 ( by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague. Netherlands A /I rights reserved. including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form ISBN-I3: e-isbn-i3: DOl: / TYPESET IN GREAT BRITAIN

4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgments ix xiii Chapter I. PHILOSOPHER OF METHOD I. Dewey's view of philosophy 2 2. Dewey's instrumentalist theory of knowledge 8 3. Dewey's emphasis on method in ethics, social philosophy, education, religion. and logic IO a. Ethics II b. Social philosophy 14 c. Education 19 d. Religion 24 e. Logic 27 Conclusion 29 Chapter II. METHOD AND THE INSTRUMENTALIST VIEW OF MAN 30 I. Dewey's description of the empirical method 31 a. The distinction between primary and secondary experience 31 b. The ambiguity of "primary experience" 34 c. The incompatibility of Dewey's two conceptions of primary experience Dewey's philosophical starting point: man's primary experience as a unity of activity, undifferentiated by thought~istinctions Dewey's instrumentalist view of man and its relationship to his recommendation of the empirical method 43 a. Man as problem-solver and instrumentalist thinker 44 b. Man as social 46 c. Man as moral 48 Conclusion 50 Chapter III. SCIENTIFIC VIEW OF MAN FOUNDATIONS OF THE INSTRUMENTALIST I. Biology 2. Psychology 3. Social theories a. General background: Comte, Hegel, Bacon, and Concorcet

5 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS b. Empirical support from the social sciences 74 (I) Anthropology 74 (2) Sociology and social psychology: the stimulus of Mead, Small, and Thomas 78 Conclusion 84 Chapter IV. THE INSTRUMENTALIST VIEW OF THE WORLD 86 J. Dewey's view of metaphysics Dewey's view of the world 89 a. Change, plurality, and contingency 90 b. Naturalism vs. supernaturalism Nature and empirical method 96 Chapter V. CHANGE 101 J. Structure and process Dewey's view as an alternative to the quest for substance and essence \06 3. The dual role of events I \0 a. Events as the uninterpreted data of immediate experience I IO b. Events as the ultimate constituents of nature 113 c. A dilemma reflecting opposing tendencies in Dewey's thought 116 Chapter VI. CONTINGENCY 119 J. Dewey's reasons for believing that there is contingency in nature 120 a. Direct support 120 (I) Testimony of unsophisticated experience 120 (2) Biology: The theory of evolution 121 (3) Physics: Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy 122 b. Indirect support 123 (I) Contingency as a condition of fundamental distinctions 124 (2) Contingency as a condition of experienced world features 125 (3) Contingency as a condition of the phases in human behavior 126 (4) Contingency as a condition for the employment of scientific method Further clarification of Dewey's case for contingency and assessment of its significance 129 a. Difficulties in ascertaining the meaning of "contingency" 129 b. Human freedom, choice, and responsibility 131 c. The meaning of "contingency" in decision-making contexts 136 d. Some limits to Dewey's views when considered in judicial and investigative contexts 139 e. Conclusion 141 Chapter VII. KNOWLEDGE 142 J. Dewey's attack on the spectator view of knowledge 142 a. The instrumentalist view of thought 144 b. Experimental methods of inquiry 145 c. Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy Dewey's view of knowledge: its applications and limits 150 a. Experimental types of knowing 151 b. Non-experimental types of knowing 155 c. Conclusion 163

6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter VIII. TOWARD A BROADER EMPIRICISM I. Review of themes and difficulties in Dewey's philosophy 2. The quest for essence Bibliography vii

7 PREFACE John Dewey ranks as the most influential of America's philosophers. That influence stems, in part, from the originality of his mind, the breadth of his interests, and his capacity to synthesize materials from diverse sources. In addition, Dewey was blessed with a long life and the extraordinary energy to express his views in more than 50 books, approximately 750 articles, and at least 200 contributions to encyclopedias. He has made enduring intellectual contributions in all of the traditional fields of philosophy, ranging from studies primarily of interest for philosophers in logic, epistemology, and metaphysics to books and articles of wider appeal in ethics, political philosophy, religion, aesthetics, and education. Given the extent of Dewey's own writings and the many books and articles on his views by critics and defenders, it may be asked why there is a need for any further examination of his philosophy. The need arises because the lapse of time since his death in 1952 now permits a new generation of scholars to approach his work in a different spirit. Dewey is no longer a living partisan of causes, sparking controversy over the issues of the day. He is no longer the advocate of a new point of view which calls into question the basic assumptions of rival philosophical schools and receives an almost predictable criticism from their entrenched positions. His works have now become classics. Accordingly, there is no longer the kind of pressure to take sides for or against Dewey in ongoing disputes. Rather, one can, in more leisurely pace, look back upon his works and seek to assess their contribution with less passion. As with any classical philosopher, one wishes to press through the technicalities of his expression and to state the essentials of his position clearly. One needs to inquire into the sources of his thought, so that his views may be placed in historical continuity and contrast with those of his predecessors and contemporaries. One wants to know if his total outlook is consistent or contains unresolved, internal problems. And one wonders if the disagreements between the author and his presumed opponents are as great as they appeared at the time of active controversy. Without pretending to perform these tasks completely, the present work is intended to make some contribution in all of these directions.

8 x PREFACE While the essentials of a philosopher's position may be analyzed in different and fruitful ways, I have chosen to concentrate upon Dewey's views concerning the empirical method (Chapters I and 11), the nature of man (Chapters II and III), the nature of the world (Chapters IV-VI), and the nature of knowledge (Chapter VII). Dewey urges distinctive themes with respect to these topics and each theme is a fundamental one in his general position. In working with Dewey's ideas, my first aim is to state his view in a way as free of technical terminology as possible and his reasons for holding it. Hence, most of the chapters have an expository section which seeks both to clarify basic propositions and to assemble his reasons for holding a position. Thus, in Chapter I, I have utilized Dewey's writings in nearly every field of philosophy to show what a strong case can be made for the contention that the essentials of his philosophy rest upon one commitment only, namely, to employ the empirical method in every field of inquiry. In Chapter II, I then seek to state what Dewey means by the empirical method and to examine some of its presuppositions. In terms of exposition, the most difficult chapter to handle was Chapter VI concerning Dewey's view that there is contingency in nature. When one runs through the corpus of Dewey's writings, one finds a surprising number of reasons offered to support his position. I have sought to gather these reasons in an organized fashion, so that the reader may see in the space of a few pages both the importance which Dewey attached to this view and the power of his case for it. I have then tried to state what the term, "contingency," means for Dewey-a task which at first sight seems hopelessly complex in view of Dewey's variable usages of the term. By noting that Dewey looks at the world from the standpoint of someone who must make decisions about how to act, I contend that we can understand what he has to say and that there is a sensible explanation for his different usages. Throughout the expository sections of this book, I have worked primarily with Dewey's own writings, for they are the ultimate sources of evidence as to what he has said. For this reason, the reader will not find many references to secondary sources. I am indebted, however, to the studies of Dewey's philosophy by May Brodbeck, Richard J. Bernstein, Neil Coughlan, George Dykhuizen, W.T. Feldman, George R.. Geiger, Sidney Hook, Thomas R. Martland, Jr., Edward C. Moore, Ernest Nagel, John Herman Randall, Jr., Joseph and Sidney Ratner, Andrew J. Reck, Darnell Rucker, A. H. Somjee, H. S. Thayer, Morton White, and to many persons who have written articles about Dewey and especially to the various authors who contributed both to John Dewey: His Thought and Influence, edited by John Blewett and to the Guide to the Works of John Dewey, edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Although expounding the fundamentals of an author's view in terms which are not tied to the particular terminology of a given philosophical school is important, much more can be gained in understanding a philosopher's

9 PREFACE XI thought if one is made aware of his sources, if one is led to see difficulties within his system, and if one can provide some explanation of these difficulties. In this book, I have been much more concerned with these matters than with exposition. In fact, exposition has been used primarily as a preliminary device to work into these broader issues. To be more specific, my approach to Dewey's philosophy is fundamentally sympathetic. Hence, my position is not that of someone committed to another school of thought. Rather, I have been led to the criticisms which are set forward in two ways. First, in attempting to state his thought clearly, I have been forced to note that, at times, there are crucial ambiguities in Dewey's use of key terms. These ambiguities are of special importance in considering what Dewey has to say about the empirical method (Cf. Chapter II) and what he has to say about the nature of events (Cf. Chapter V). Second, and more important, in attempting to state the relationship between his views on fundamental topics, I have found confticting intellectual tendencies which are not resolved by Dewey. In view of my sympathy for his philosophy, recognition of the opposing tendencies was difficult to accept. For a long time, I attributed the problems here to my own lack of understanding. Then, I chanced to read Arthur O. Lovejoy's Preface to his Essays in the History of Ideas. Lovejoy noted that conflicting themes are to be expected when one deals with the work of a seminal and synthetic mind. He then made the following observations: Many expositions of an author's views and his reasonings seem to me not merely over-simplified but over-unified. It appears often to be assumed that his thinking, in general or at least on a particular subject or question, is all-of-a-piece; or, if the expositor himself observes some innner discrepancies, some cross-currents in his author's mental processes, he tends to minimize them or to ignore them altogether, selecting for exclusive presentation only what he considers (sometimes quite erroneously) the most "important," or the most "permanently valuable," or the "most characteristic," idea, or consistent scheme of ideas, of the author. But it is only the narrowest or the dullest minds that are--if any are--completely in harmony with themselves; and the most important and most characteristic thing about many a great author is the diversity, the often latently discordant diversity, ofthe ideas to which his mind is responsive, and which manifest themselves at one and another point in what he writes. 1 Lovejoy's comments immediately struck me as potentially helpful in understanding what appeared to be internal problems within Dewey's philosophy. Further reflection has confirmed those first intuitions. As a result. one of the major themes of this work is that some of the important difficulties in Dewey's thought can be traced to his not fully harmonizing the diversity of ideas with which he was working. For example, Chapters I through IV may be viewed as a unit designed to elicit one major set of confticting tendencies. I Arthur O. Lovejoy, Essays in the History of Ideas (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1948), p. xiv.

10 xii PREFACE In Chapter I, I have marshalled the evidence for the plausible contention that Dewey regarded his philosophy as committed primarily to the empirical method without presupposing the truth of any specific views about the nature of man or the world. By next examining what he meant by the empirical method, I argue that he does have a basic commitment to a definite view about the nature of man rooted in specific biological, psychological, and social theories. Furthermore, there are relationships between his view about empirical method and his views about the nature of the world. In Chapter V, I note another set of conflicting tendencies between Dewey's empiricism and realism. From a broad perspective, these various oppositions reflect a more general tension between his theory of knowledge and his metaphysics. While I regard scholarly work which seeks the historical sources of an author's thought as important and illuminating, Chapter III is the only section of this book moving in that direction. There, I do seek to describe the scientific foundations of Dewey's view of man. My primary interest in this material, however, is not to lay before the reader the results of new research, since much of this information is available in Dewey's own writings and in the works of other scholars. My intent is to show that Dewey's philosophy does involve a basic commitment to particular scientific theories, despite a strong opposing tendency on his part to say that he is committed only to scientific method and that he is willing to accept whatever theories gain acceptance by the use of that method. Having elicited various problems in Dewey's philosophy in the course of stating what he means by some of his basic themes and how these themes are related, I am concerned in the later chapters of this book to discover ways in which these difficulties may be surmounted without surrendering a fundamental sympathy for Dewey's orientation. In Chapters VI and VII, I argue that the most serious difficulties about Dewey's assertions concerning contingency in nature and knowledge as experimental arise from the easily correctable error of over-generalizing from contexts where his statements are appropriate to contexts where they are not. Finally, in the concluding chapter, I argue that the most fundamental difficulties in his philosophy stem from his having continued the traditional quest to find the "essence" of things. Since Dewey himself had a strong tendency to criticize the quest for essence, I am urging that we extend this tendency more thoroughly than he did. If this step is taken, the way will then be clear to formulate a broader empiricism in the spirit of Dewey's philosophy-a step which will permit reconciling much of Dewey's thought with that of some of his major opponents.

11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In the course of writing this book, I have been most appreciative of the stimulation provided by numerous teachers, colleagues, and students. I am particularly grateful to O.K. Bouwsma and Charles H. Patterson who first taught me philosophy, to C.1. Lewis who converted me to pragmatism, to Mortimer Adler who gave me the opportunity to read widely in the works of Dewey, to Oliver A. Johnson who once planned to collaborate with me on a book dealing with Dewey's metaphysics, and to Maurice Mandelbaum who encouraged my developing tendencies to be critical in the acceptance of pragmatism. Of my students, the work on Dewey's philosophy by Lowell Nissen and Robert Wetzel has been most helpful. I am also most grateful to the American Philosophical Society for supporting work on this book by a summer fellowship from the Johnson Fund and to the University of Nebraska Research Council for support in the form of two summer fellowships and a one-semester leave of absence. The time provided by these grants was the midwife which brought the manuscript to birth. F or assistance in the final preparation of the manuscript, I express my particular thanks to Glenda Benzel, Joseph Kucera, Lorraine Lienemann, Debora Palmer, and Phy11is Schwartzman, with special appreciation for the work of Arlene Rash, typist supreme. Finally, for those who may be curious as to whether I should acknowledge a genetic inheritance from John Dewey himself, the facts are as follows. Most of the Deweys in the United States are descendants of Thomas Dewey who emigrated to Dorchester, Massachusetts from England between 1630 and Eventually settling in Windsor, Connecticut, Thomas Dewey had several children, including Josiah born in 1641 and Jedidiah born in John Dewey is a direct descendant of Jedidiah; I am a direct descendant of Josiah. As the following book will testify, my philosophical kinship is closer than my genetic relationship.