John Dewey's logical theory

by Delton Thomas Howard

In an essay on "The Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality" in another volume of the Chicago Publications of 1903,[203] Dewey presents a positive statement of his logical theory which is an excellent supplement to the critical study of Lotze.

Science, Dewey remarks in introducing this essay, is a systematized body of knowledge. Knowledge may be taken either as a body of facts or as a process of arranging a body of facts; as results or the acquiring of results. The latter phase of science is the more important. "As used in this article, 'scientific' means regular methods of controlling the formation of judgments regarding some subject-matter."[204] In the scientific attitude, beliefs are looked upon as conclusions, and as conclusions they look in two directions. They look backward towards the ground from which they are empirically derived, and which renders them valid, and they look forward, as meaning, to being the ground from which further conclusions can be deduced. "So far as we engage in this procedure, we look at our respective acts of judging not as independent and detached, but as an interrelated system, within which every assertion entitles us to other assertions (which must be carefully deduced since they constitute its meaning) and to which we are entitled only through other assertions (so that they must be carefully searched for). 'Scientific' as used in this article thus means the possibility of establishing an order of judgments such that each one when made is of use in determining other judgments, thereby securing control of their formation."[205]

This view of science as an order of judgments requires a special treatment of the generic ideas, the 'conclusions,' or universals of science. The individual judgment, 'This, A, is B,' expresses an identity. But it is much better expressed in hypothetical form. "Identification, in other words, is secure only when it can be made through (1) breaking up the analyzed. This of naïve judgment into determinate traits, (2) breaking up the predicate into a similar combination of elements, and (3) establishing uniform connection between some of the elements in the subject and some in the predicate."[206] Identity exists amid relevant differences, and the more intimately the system of differents is understood, the more positive is the determination of identity. This will be recognized as the 'concrete universal' of the Hegelian logicians.

But, Dewey says, modern logicians tend to disregard judgment as act, and pay attention to it only as content. The generic ideas are studied in independence of their applications, as if this were a matter of no concern in logic. "In truth, there is no such thing as control of one content by mere reference to another content as such. To recognize this impossibility is to recognize that the control of the formation of the judgment is always through the medium of an act by which the respective contents of both the individual judgment and of the universal proposition are selected and brought into relationship to each other."[207] The individual act of judgment is necessary to logical theory, because the act of the individual forms the connecting link between the generic idea and the specific details of the situation. There must be some means whereby the instrumental concept is brought to bear upon its appropriate material. "The logical process includes, as an organic part of itself, the selection and reference of that particular one of the system which is relevant to the particular case. This individualized selection and adaptation is an integral portion of the logic of the situation. And such selection and adjustment is clearly in the nature of an act."[208]

This problem of the relation of the categories to their subject-matter is an acute one for Dewey, because of limitations placed upon thought. He decides that the idea must be, in some fashion, self-selective, must signify its own fitness to a given subject-matter. But it can only be self-selective by being itself in the nature of an act. It turns out that the generic idea has been evolved in connection with acts of judgment, and its own applicability is born in it. "The activity which selects and employs is logical, not extra-logical, just because the tool selected and employed has been invented and developed precisely for the sake of just such future selection and use."[209]

The logic and system of science must be embodied in the individual. He must be a good logical medium, his acts must be orderly and consecutive, and generic ideas must have a good motor basis in his organism, if he is to think successfully. This is the essence of Dewey's argument in the essay under discussion. The inference seems to be that logic cannot be separated from biology and psychology, since the act of knowing and the ideas which it employs have a physiological basis.

It is difficult to see, however, how such a standpoint could prove useful in the practical study of logic. Certainly little headway could be made toward a study of the proper use and limitations of the categories by an investigation of the human nervous system. And to what extent would physiology illuminate the problem of the relation of the generic ideas to their appropriate objects? Although Dewey decides that the relationship must have its ground in the motor activities of the organism, his conclusion has little empirical evidence to support it.

A practical, workable conception of the relations between generic ideas and their objects must be based on considerations less obscure. Why not be content to verify, by criticism, the truth that experience and thoughts about experience develop together, with the result that each theory, hypothesis, or method is applicable within the sphere where it was born? Why wait upon psychology for confirmation of a truth so obvious and important?

Bosanquet remarks: "Either one may speak as if reality were relative to the individual mind, a ridiculous idea ..., or one may become interested in tracing the germination and growth of ideas in the individual mind as typical facts indeed, but only as one animal's habits are typical of those of others, and we may slur over the primary basis of logic, which is its relation to reality. For mental facts unrelated to reality are no knowledge, and therefore have no place in logic."[210] Bosanquet emphasizes an important truth neglected by Dewey. Logic is not concerned with ideas as things existing in individuals, nor with conceptions as individual modes of response. Truth has little to do with the individual as such, though the individual might well concern himself about truth. Truth is objective, super-individual, and logic is the study of the objective verity of thought. The proposition, 'All life is from the living,' finds no premises in the nerve tissues of the scientist who accepts it. How does the proposition square up with reality or experience? That is the question, and it can only be answered by turning away from psychology to empirical verification, involving a critical test of the applicability of the thought to reality.