John Dewey's logical theory

by Delton Thomas Howard

In the first place, it may be assumed that all of man's activity furthers some general end, as, for instance, the maintenance of life. Then man's activity may be viewed as a sequence of acts, which tend to further this end, and on this basis we may separate out stimulus and response. "It is only when we regard the sequence of acts as if they were adapted to reach some end that it occurs to us to speak of one as stimulus and the other as response. Otherwise, we look at them as a mere series."[120] In these cases the stimulus is as truly an act as the response, and what we have is a series of sensory-motor coördinations. Looking, for instance, is a sensory-motor coördination which is the stimulus or antecedent of another coördinated act, running away. The first coördination passes into the second, and the second may be viewed as a modification or reconstitution of the first.

But this external teleological distinction between sensation and response is not so important as the distinction now to be made. So far only fixed coördinations, habitual modes of action, have been considered. But there are situations in which habitual responses and fixed modes of action fail: situations in which new habits are formed. In these situations there arises a special distinction between stimulus and response, for in these formative situations the stimuli and responses are consciously present in experience as such. "The circle is a coördination, some of whose members have come into conflict with each other. It is the temporary disintegration and need of reconstitution which occasions, which affords the genesis of, the conscious distinction into sensory stimulus on one side and motor response on the other."[121] The distinction which arises between stimulus and response is a distinction of function within the problematical situation. Suppose that a sound is heard, the character of which is uncertain, and which, as a coördination, does not readily pass into its following coördination, or habitual response. The sound is puzzling, and moves into the center of attention. It is fixed upon, abstracted, studied on its own account. In that event, the sound may be spoken of as a sensation. As a sensation, it is the datum of a reflective process of thought, or conscious inference, whose aim is to constitute the sound a stimulus, or, in other words, to find what response belongs to it. When this response is determined the problem is done with and sensory-motor unity is achieved.

The stimulus, in these cases, is simply "that phase of activity requiring to be defined in order that a coördination may be completed."[122] It is not any particular existence, and is not to be taken as an element apart from others, having an independent existence. But the conscious process of attending to the sensation and finding a response to it arises only when coördination is disturbed by conflicting factors, and the separation of stimulus from response arises only as a means for bringing unity into the coördination. The sensation, then, is that element which is to be attended to; upon which further response depends. This phase of the teleological interpretation defines each element by the part which it plays in the reflective process.

If this brief summary of the article is difficult to comprehend, a reading of the original text will do little towards making it more intelligible. The doctrine presented there, however, is simple and coherent enough when its bearings and purpose are once understood, and, at the risk of being over-elaborate, it seems advisable to attempt some remarks on the general bearing and applications of the theory.

It must be remembered that Dewey is seeking an interpretation of the thought process which shall reveal it as an actual fact of experience. A thought which is apart from experience and not in it, which is shut up to the contemplation of its own mental states is, by its definition, non-experienced. It is, like Kant's 'productive imagination,' formative of experience, but not a part of it. Dewey holds to the belief that experience must be explained in terms of itself; he would do away with all transcendental factors in the explanation of reality. But modern psychological theory, Dewey believes, tends to shut thought in to the contemplation of its own subjective states, and thus gives it an extra-experiential status. A stimulus is said to strike upon an end organ, which sends an impulse to the cortex and there gives rise to a sensation which, as the effect of a stimulus, is representative of the real, but not real in itself. Thought, again, interprets the sensation, and sends out a motor impulse appropriate to the situation. These mental states and the thought which interprets them are, in Dewey's mind, wholly fictitious. The problem, then, is to give an account of the perceptual processes which shall eliminate the artificial states of mind and present mental operations as natural processes.

The difficulty with customary psychological explanation is that it breaks the reflex arc of the nervous system into three parts whose relations are successive and causal rather than simultaneous and organic. There is not first a stimulus, then perception, then response; these processes are supplementary, not separate. Or, from another point of view, psychological explanation must begin with a whole process which, when analyzed, is seen to contain the three moments or phases: stimulus, sensation, and response. The whole process is primary and actual, the abstracted phases are secondary and derivative.

With the disappearance of the mechanical interpretation of the perceptual process, mental states vanish. Representative perceptionism is thus done away with, together with all the problems which it generates.

The position of conscious, or reflective thought, in Dewey's scheme, is especially interesting. This mode of thought is not constantly operative, but arises only in situations of stress and strain, when habitual modes of response break down. A dualism is established between reflective thought and the habitual life processes. Dewey does not take the ground that these processes are supplementary, as he had done in the case of stimulus, sensation, and response. It will be remembered that Dewey had defined judgment, in his logical and ethical writings of an earlier period, as a special activity operating in critical situations. This conception of judgment is now carried over into his psychology, and given a biological basis. It is worth noting that this view of judgment was worked out in logical terms before it was reinforced by biological data. Nevertheless, it is through biology that Dewey is able to give his interpretation of the thought process that empirical concreteness which he demanded from the beginning, but achieved very slowly.

The value of the functional psychology, considered merely as psychology, is undeniable. It is, in fact, a natural and almost inevitable step in the development of psychological theory. Dewey's achievement consists in the establishment of an organic mode of interpretation in psychology, intended to displace the mechanical interpretation. The mechanical causal series is displaced by an organic system of internally related parts. Dewey, however, does not display any interest in the logical aspects of his doctrine. He takes the biological situation literally, as a fact empirically given, and to be accepted without criticism.