CORNELL STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

No. 11

JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY
BY
DELTON THOMAS HOWARD, A.M.

FORMERLY FELLOW IN THE SAGE SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY

A THESIS
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
Cornell University in Partial Fulfilment of the
Requirements for the Degree of Doctor
of Philosophy

NEW YORK
LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.
1919

PRESS OF
THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY
LANCASTER, PA.

PREFACE

It seems unnecessary to offer an apology for an historical treatment of Professor Dewey's logical theories, since functionalism glories in the genetic method. To be sure, certain more extreme radicals are opposed to a genetic interpretation of the history of human thought, but this is inconsistent. At any rate, the historical method employed in the following study may escape censure by reason of its simple character, for it is little more than a critical review of Professor Dewey's writings in their historical order, with no discussion of influences and connections, and with little insistence upon rigid lines of development. It is proposed to "follow the lead of the subject-matter" as far as possible; to discover what topics interested Professor Dewey, how he dealt with them, and what conclusions he arrived at. This plan has an especial advantage when applied to a body of doctrine which, like Professor Dewey's, does not possess a systematic form of its own, since it avoids the distortion which a more rigid method would be apt to produce.

It has not been possible, within the limits of the present study, to take note of all of Professor Dewey's writings, and no reference has been made to some which are of undoubted interest and importance. Among these may be mentioned especially his books and papers on educational topics and a number of his ethical writings. Attention has been devoted almost exclusively to those writings which have some important bearing upon his logical theory. The division into chapters is partly arbitrary, although the periods indicated are quite clearly marked by the different directions which Professor Dewey's interests took from time to time. It will be seen that there is considerable chance for error in distinguishing between the important and the unimportant, and in selecting the essays which lie in the natural line of the author's development. But, valeat quantum, as William James would say.

The criticisms and comments which have been made from time to time, as seemed appropriate, may be considered pertinent or irrelevant according to the views of the reader. It is hoped that they are not entirely aside from the mark, and that they do not interfere with a fair presentation of the author's views. The last chapter is devoted to a direct criticism of Professor Dewey's functionalism, with some comments on the general nature of philosophical method.

Since this thesis was written, Professor Dewey has published two or three books and numerous articles, which are perhaps more important than any of his previous writings. The volume of Essays in Experimental Logic (1916) is a distinct advance upon The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays, published six years earlier. Most of these essays, however, are considered here in their original form, and the new material, while interesting, presents no vital change of standpoint. It might be well to call attention to the excellent introductory essay which Professor Dewey has provided for this new volume. Some mention might also be made of the volume of essays by eight representative pragmatists, which appeared last year (1917) under the title, Creative Intelligence. My comments on Professor Dewey's contribution to the volume have been printed elsewhere.[1] It has not seemed necessary, in the absence of significant developments, to extend the thesis beyond its original limits, and it goes to press, therefore, substantially as written two years ago.

I wish to express my gratitude to the members of the faculty of the Sage School of Philosophy for many valuable suggestions and kindly encouragement in the course of my work. I am most deeply indebted to Professor Ernest Albee for his patient guidance and helpful criticism. Many of his suggestions, both as to plan and detail, have been adopted and embodied in the thesis, and these have contributed materially to such logical coherence and technical accuracy as it may possess. The particular views expressed are, of course, my own. I wish also to thank Professor J. E. Creighton especially for his friendly interest and for many suggestions which assisted the progress of my work, as well as for his kindness in looking over the proofs.

D. T. Howard.

Evanston, Illinois,
June, 1918.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] "The Pragmatic Method," Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 1918, Vol. XV, pp. 149-156.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I "PSYCHOLOGY AS PHILOSOPHIC METHOD"

Dewey's earliest standpoint in philosophy is presented in two articles published in Mind in 1886: "The Psychological Standpoint," and "Psychology as Philosophic Method."[2] These articles appear to have been written in connection with his Psychology, which was published in the same year, and which represents the same general point of view as applied to the study of mental phenomena. For the purposes of the present study attention may be confined to the two articles in Mind.

Dewey begins his argument, in "The Psychological Standpoint," with a reference to Professor Green's remark that the psychological standpoint is what marks the difference between transcendentalism and British empiricism. Dewey takes exception to this view, and asserts that the two schools hold this standpoint in common, and, furthermore, that the psychological standpoint has been the strength of British empiricism and desertion of that standpoint its weakness. Shadworth Hodgson's comment on this proposal testifies to its audacity. In a review of Dewey's article, he says: "If for instance we are told by a competent writer, that Absolute Idealism is not only a truth of experience but one attained directly by the method of experiential psychology, we should not allow our astonishment to prevent our examining the arguments, by virtue of which English psychology attains the results of German transcendentalism without quitting the ground of experience."[3]

Dewey defines his psychological standpoint as follows: "We are not to determine the nature of reality or of any object of philosophical inquiry by examining it as it is in itself, but only as it is an element in our knowledge, in our experience, only as it is related to our mind, or is an 'idea'.... Or, in the ordinary way of putting it, the nature of all objects of philosophical inquiry is to be fixed by finding out what experience says about them."[4] The implications of this definition do not appear at first sight, but they become clearer as the discussion proceeds.

Locke, Dewey continues, deserted the psychological standpoint because he did not, as he proposed, explain the nature of such things as matter and mind by reference to experience. On the contrary, he explained experience through the assumption of the two unknowable substances, matter and mind. Berkeley also deserted the psychological standpoint, in effect, by having recourse to a purely transcendent Spirit. Even Hume deserted it by assuming as the only reals certain unrelated sensations, and by trying to explain the origin of experience and knowledge by their combination. These reals were supposed to exist in independence of an organized experience, and to constitute it by their association. It might be argued that Hume's sensations are found in experience by analysis, and this would probably be true. But the sensations are nothing apart from the consciousness in which they are found. "Such a sensation," Dewey says, "a sensation which exists only within and for experience, is not one which can be used to account for experience. It is but one element in an organic whole, and can no more account for the whole, than a given digestive act can account for the existence of a living body."[5]

So far Dewey is merely restating the criticism of English empiricism that had been made by Green and his followers. Reality, as experienced, is a whole of organically related parts, not a mechanical compound of elements. Whatever is to be explained must be taken as a fact of experience, and its meaning will be revealed in terms of its position and function within the whole. But while Dewey employs the language of idealism, it is doubtful whether he has grasped the full significance of the "concrete universal" of the Hegelian school. The following passage illustrates the difficulty: "The psychological standpoint as it has developed itself is this: all that is, is for consciousness or knowledge. The business of the psychologist is to give a genetic account of the various elements within this consciousness, and thereby fix their place, determine their validity, and at the same time show definitely what the real and eternal nature of this consciousness is."[6]

Consciousness (used here as identical with 'experience') is apparently interpreted as a structure made up of elements related in a determinable order, and having, consequently, a 'real and eternal nature.' The result is a 'structural' view of reality, and the type of idealism for which Dewey stands may fittingly be called 'structural' idealism. This type of idealism does, in fact, hold a position intermediate between English empiricism and German transcendentalism. But it would not commonly be considered a synthesis of the best characteristics of the two schools. 'Structural' idealism is, historically considered, a reversion to Kant which retains the mechanical elements of the Critique, but fails to reckon with the truly organic mode of interpretation in which it culminates. As experience, from Kant's undeveloped position, is a structure of sensations and forms, so Dewey's 'consciousness' is a compound of separate elements or existences related in a 'real and eternal' order.

Dewey illustrates his method, in the discussion which follows, by employing it, or showing how it should be employed, in the definition of certain typical objects of philosophical inquiry. The first to be considered are subject and object. In dealing with the relation of subject to object, the psychological method will attempt to show how consciousness differentiates itself, or 'specifies' itself, into subject and object. These terms will be viewed as related terms within the whole of 'consciousness,' rather than as elements existing prior to or in independence of the whole in which they are found.

There is a type of realism which illustrates the opposite or ontological method. It is led, through a study of the dependence of the mind upon the organism, to a position in which subject and object fall apart, out of relation to each other. The separation of the two leads to the positing of a third term, an unknown x, which is supposed to unite them. The psychological method would hold that the two objects have their union, not in an unknown 'real,' but in the 'consciousness' in which they appear. The individual consciousness as subject, and the objects over against it, are elements at once distinguished and related within the whole. All the terms are facts of experience, and none are to be assumed as ontological reals.

Subjective idealism, Dewey continues, makes a similar error in failing to discriminate between the ego, or individual consciousness, and the Absolute Consciousness within which ego and object are differentiated elements. It fails to see that subject and object are complements, and inexplicable except as related elements in a larger whole. The individual consciousness, again, and the universal 'Consciousness,' are to be defined by reference to experience. It is not to be assumed at the start, as the subjective idealists assume, that the nature of the individual consciousness is known. The ego is to be defined, not assumed, and this is the essence of the psychological method.

So far, two factors in Dewey's standpoint are clearly discernible. In the first place, all noumena and transcendent reals are to be rejected as means of explanation, and definition is to be wholly in terms of experienced elements, as experienced. In the second place, experience is to be regarded as a rational system of related elements, while explanation is to consist in tracing out the relations which any element bears to the whole. The universal 'Consciousness' is the whole, and the individual mind, again, is an element within the whole, to be explained by tracing out the relations which it bears to other elements and to the whole system. It is not easy to avoid the conclusion that Dewey conceives of 'consciousness' as a construct of existentially distinct terms.

Dewey does not actually treat subject and object, individual and universal consciousness, in the empirical manner for which he contends. He merely outlines a method; and, while this has a negative bearing as against transcendent modes of explanation, it has little content of its own. But in spite of Dewey's lack of explicitness, it is evident that he tends to view his 'objects of philosophical inquiry' as so many concrete particular existences or things. The idea that they can be empirically marked out and investigated seems to imply this. But subject, object, individual, and universal are certainly not reducible to particular sensations, even though it must be admitted that they have a reference to particulars. These abstract concepts had been a source of difficulty to the empiricists, because they had not been able to reduce them to particular impressions, and Dewey's proposed method appears to involve the same difficulty.

In his second article, on "Psychology as Philosophic Method," Dewey proposes to show that his standpoint is practically identical with that of transcendental idealism. This is made possible, he believes, through the fact that, since experience or consciousness is the only reality, psychology, as the scientific account of this reality, becomes identical with philosophy.

In maintaining his position, Dewey finds it necessary to criticise the tendency, found in certain idealists, to treat psychology merely as a special science. This view of psychology is attained, Dewey observes, by regarding man under two arbitrarily determined aspects. Taken as a finite being acting amid finite things, a knowing, willing, feeling phenomenon, man is said to be the object of a special science, psychology. But in another aspect man is infinite, the universal self-consciousness, and as such is the object of philosophy. This distinction between the two aspects of man's nature, Dewey believes, cannot be maintained. As a distinction, it must arise within consciousness, and it must therefore be a psychological distinction. Psychology cannot limit itself to anything less than the whole of experience, and cannot, therefore, be a special science dependent, like others, upon philosophy for its working concepts. On the contrary, the method of psychology must be the method of philosophy.

Dewey reaches this result quite easily, because he makes psychology the science of reality to begin with. "The universe," he says, "except as realized in an individual, has no existence.... Self-consciousness means simply an individualized universe; and if this universe has not been realized in man, if man be not self-conscious, then no philosophy whatever is possible. If it has been realized, it is in and through psychological experience that this realization has occurred. Psychology is the scientific account of this realization, of this individualized universe, of this self-consciousness."[7]

It is difficult to understand exactly what these expressions meant for Dewey. Granting that the human mind is both individual and universal, what objection could be raised against the study of its individual or finite aspects as the special subject-matter of a particular science? All the sciences, as Dewey was aware, are abstract in method. Dewey's position appears to be that the universal and individual aspects of consciousness are nothing apart from each other, and must be studied together. But 'consciousness' in Dewey's view is, in fact, two consciousnesses. Reality as a whole is a Consciousness, and the individual mind is another consciousness. A problem arises, therefore, as to their connection. Dewey affirms that, unless they are united, unless the universal is given in the individual consciousness, there can be no science of the whole, and therefore no philosophy. The epistemological problem of the relation of the mind to reality becomes, accordingly, the raison d'être of his method. The problem was an inheritance from subjective idealism. It may be pointed out that there is some similarity between Dewey's standpoint and Berkeley's. Both conceive of consciousness as a construct of elements, and Dewey's 'Consciousness in general' holds much the same relation to the finite consciousness that the Divine Mind holds to the individual consciousness in Berkeley's system. The similarity between the two standpoints must not be overemphasized, but it is none the less suggestive and interesting.

In attempting to determine the proper status of psychology as a science, Dewey is led into a more detailed exposition of his standpoint. His position in general is well indicated in the following passage: "In short, the real esse of things is neither their percipi, nor their intelligi alone; it is their experiri."[8] The science of the intelligi is logic, and of the percipi, philosophy of nature. But these are abstractions from the experiri, the science of which is psychology. If it be denied that the experiri, self-consciousness in its wholeness, can be the subject-matter of psychology, then the possibility of philosophy is also denied. "If man, as matter of fact, does not realise the nature of the eternal and the universal within himself, as the essence of his own being; if he does not at one stage of his experience consciously, and in all stages implicitly, lay hold of this universal and eternal, then it is mere matter of words to say that he can give no account of things as they universally and eternally are. To deny, therefore, that self-consciousness is a matter of psychological experience is to deny the possibility of any philosophy."[9] Dewey assures us again that his method alone will solve the epistemological problem.

Self-consciousness, as that within which things exist sub specie æternitatis and in ordine ad universum, must be the object of psychology. The refusal to take self-consciousness as an experienced fact, Dewey says, results in such failures as are seen in Kant, Hegel, and even Green and Caird, to give any adequate account of the nature of the Absolute. Kant, for purely logical reasons, denied that self-consciousness could be an object of experience, although he admitted conceptions and perceptions as matters of experience. As a result of his attitude, conception and perception were never brought into organic connection; the self-conscious, eternal order of the world was referred to something back of experience. Dewey attributes Kant's failure to his logical method, which led him away from the psychological standpoint in which he would have found self-consciousness as a directly presented fact.

This criticism of Kant's 'logical method' fails to take account of the transitional nature of Kant's standpoint. Looking backward, it is easy enough to ask why Kant did not begin with the organic view of experience at which he finally arrived. But the answer must be that the organic standpoint did not exist until Kant, by his 'logical method,' had brought it to light. The Kantian interpretation of experience, in which, as Dewey asserts, conception and perception were never brought into organic relation, is a half-way stage between mechanism and organism. But how does Dewey propose to improve upon Kant's position? He will first of all put Kant's noumenal self back into experience, as a fact in consciousness. But how will this help to bring perception and conception into closer union? There seems to be no answer. Dewey's view appears to be that organic relations are achieved whenever an object is made a part of experience and so brought into connection with other experienced facts. 'Organic relation' is interpreted as equivalent to 'mental relation.' But mental relations are not organic because they are mental. It would be as easy to assert that they are mechanical. The test lies in the nature of the relations which are actually found in the mental sphere and the fitness of the organic categories to express them. Dewey's 'consciousness,' as has been said before, appears to be a structure, not an organism. Its parts are external to each other, however closely they may be related. An organic view of experience would begin with a denial of the actuality of bare facts or sensations, and would not waver in maintaining that standpoint to the end.

Hegel's advance upon Kant, Dewey continues, "consisted essentially in showing that Kant's logical standard was erroneous, and that, as a matter of logic, the only true criterion or standard was the organic notion, or Begriff, which is a systematic totality, and accordingly able to explain both itself and also the simpler processes and principles."[10] The logical reformation which Hegel accomplished was most important, but the work of Kant still needed to be completed by "showing self-consciousness as a fact of experience, as well as perception through organic forms and thinking through organic principles."[11] This element is latent in Hegel, Dewey believes, but needs to be brought out.

T. H. Green comes under the same criticism. He followed Kant's logical method, and as a consequence arrived at the same negative results. The nature of self-consciousness remains unknown to Green; he can affirm its existence, but cannot describe its nature. Dewey quotes that passage from the Prolegomena to Ethics in which Green says:[12] "As to what that consciousness in itself or in its completeness is, we can only make negative statements. That there is such a consciousness is implied in the existence of the world; but what it is we only know through its so far acting in us as to enable us, however partially and interruptedly, to have knowledge of a world or an intelligent experience." If, Dewey observes, Green had begun with the latter point of view, and had taken self-consciousness as at least partially realized in finite minds, he would have been able to make some positive statements about it. Dewey, however, has not given the most adequate interpretation of Green's 'Spiritual Principle in Nature.' This was evidently, for Green, a symbol of the intelligibility of the world as organically conceived, an order which could not be comprehended by the mechanical categories, but which was nevertheless real. As Green tended to hypostatize the organic conception, so Dewey would make it a concrete reality, with the further specification that it must be something given to psychological observation.

The chief point of Dewey's criticism of the idealists is that they fail to establish self-consciousness as an experienced fact; and, Dewey maintains, it must be so established if it is to be anything real and genuine. If it is anything that can be discussed at all, it must be an element in experience; and if it is in experience, it must be the subject-matter of psychology. It is inevitable, from Dewey's standpoint, that transcendentalism should adopt his psychological method.

In the further development of his standpoint, Dewey considers (1) the relations of psychology to the special sciences, and (2) the relation of psychology to logic. Dewey's conception of the relation of psychology to the special sciences is well illustrated in the following passage: "Mathematics, physics, biology exist, because conscious experience reveals itself to be of such a nature, that one may make virtual abstraction from the whole, and consider a part by itself, without damage, so long as the treatment is purely scientific, that is, so long as the implicit connection with the whole is left undisturbed, and the attempt is not made to present this partial science as metaphysic, or as an explanation of the whole, as is the usual fashion of our uncritical so-called 'scientific philosophies.' Nay more, this abstraction of some one sphere is itself a living function of the psychologic experience. It is not merely something which it allows: it is something which it does. It is the analytic aspect of its own activity, whereby it deepens and renders explicit, realizes its own nature.... The analytic movement constitutes the special sciences; the synthetic constitutes the philosophy of nature; the self-developing activity itself, as psychology, constitutes philosophy."[13]

The special sciences are regarded as abstractions from the central or psychological point of view, but they are legitimate abstractions, constituted by a proper analytic movement of the total self-consciousness, which specifies itself into the special branches of knowledge. If we begin with any special science, and drive it back to its fundamentals, it reveals its abstractness, and thought is led forward into other sciences, and finally into philosophy, as the science of the whole. But philosophy, first appearing as a special science, turns out to be science; it is presupposed in all the special sciences, and is their basis. But where does psychology stand in this classification?

At first sight psychology appears to be a special science, abstract like the others. "As to systematic observation, experiment, conclusion and verification, it can differ in no essential way from any one of them."[14] But psychology, like philosophy, turns out to be a science of the whole. Each special science investigates a special sphere of conscious experience. "From one science to another we go, asking for some explanation of conscious experience, until we come to psychology.... But the very process that has made necessary this new science reveals also that each of the former sciences existed only in abstraction from it. Each dealt with some one phase of conscious experience, and for that very reason could not deal with the totality which gave it its being, consciousness."[15] Philosophy and psychology therefore mainly coincide, and the method of psychology, properly developed, becomes the method of philosophy.

If psychology is to be identified with philosophy in this fashion, the mere change of name would seem to be superfluous. There would be no reason for maintaining psychology as a separate discipline. Perhaps Dewey did not intend that it should be maintained separately. In that case, the total effect of his argument would be to prescribe certain methods for philosophy. It seems necessary to suppose that Dewey proposed to merge philosophy in psychology, and make it an exact science while retaining its universality. "Science," he argued, "is the systematic account, or reason of fact; Psychology is the completed systematic account of the ultimate fact, which, as fact, reveals itself as reason...."[16] Self-consciousness in its ultimate nature is conceived of as a special fact, over and above what it includes in the way of particulars. Psychology, as the science of this ultimate fact, must at the same time be philosophy. The identification of the two disciplines depends upon taking the 'wholeness' of reality as a 'fact,' which can be brought under observation. This is a natural conclusion from Dewey's structural view of reality.

In taking up the subject of the relation of psychology to logic, Dewey remarks that in philosophy matter and form cannot be separated. "Self-consciousness is the final truth, and in self-consciousness the form as organic system and the content as organized system are exactly equal to each other."[17] Logic abstracts from the whole, gives us only the form, or intelligi of reality, and is therefore only one moment in philosophy. Since logic is an abstraction from Nature, we cannot get from logic back to Nature, by means of logic. We do, as a matter of fact, make the transition in philosophy, because the facts force us back to Nature. Just as in Hegel's logic, the category of quality, when pressed, reveals itself as inadequate to express the facts, and is compelled to pass into the category of quantity, so does logic as a whole, when pressed, reveal its inadequacy to express the whole of reality. The transition from category to category in the Hegelian logic is not an unfolding of the forms as forms, but results from a compulsion exerted by the facts, when the categories are used to explain them. Logic is, and must remain, abstract in all its processes, and its outcome (with Hegel, Geist) may assert the abstract necessity of one self-conscious whole, but cannot give the reality. "Logic cannot reach, however much it may point to, an actual individual. The gathering up of the universe into one self-conscious individuality it may assert as necessary, it cannot give it as reality."[18] Taken as an abstract method, logic is apt to result in a pantheism, "where the only real is the Idee, and where all its factors and moments, including spirit and nature, are real only at different stages or phases of the Idee, but vanish as imperfect ways of looking at things ... when we reach the Idee."[19]

Dewey has in mind logic as a science of the forms of reality taken in abstraction from their content. In reality, however, there can be no logic of concepts apart from their concrete application. Hegel certainly never believed that it was possible to abstract the logical forms from reality and study them in their isolation. As against a purely formal logic, if such a thing were possible, Dewey's criticism would be valid, but the transcendental logic of his time was not formal in this sense. The psychological method which Dewey offers as a substitute for the logical method escapes, he believes, the difficulties of the latter method. At the same time it preserves, in his opinion, the essential spirit of the Hegelian method. Dewey's comments show that he conceives his method to be a restatement, in improved form, of the doctrine of the 'concrete universal.' But the 'psychological method' and the method of idealism are, if anything, antithetical. An excellent summary of Dewey's theory is afforded by the following passage: "Only a living actual Fact can preserve within its unity that organic system of differences in virtue of which it lives and moves and has its being. It is with this fact, conscious experience in its entirety, that psychology as method begins. It thus brings to clear light of day the presupposition implicit in every philosophy, and thereby affords logic, as well as the philosophy of nature, its basis, ideal and surety. If we have determined the nature of reality, by a process whose content equals its form, we can show the meaning, worth and limits of any one moment of this reality."[20]

It would be useless to speculate upon the various possible interpretations that might be given of Dewey's psychological method. The most critical examination of the text will not dispel its vagueness, nor afford an answer to the many questions that arise. It does, however, throw an interesting light on certain tendencies in Dewey's own thinking.

Dewey's attempt to show that English empiricism and transcendentalism have a common psychological basis must be regarded as a failure. That the nature of the attempt reveals a misunderstanding, or fatal lack of appreciation, on the part of Dewey, of the critical philosophy and the later development of idealism by Hegel, has already been suggested. He does not appear to have grasped the significance of the movement from Kant to Hegel. Kant, of course, believed that the a priori forms of experience could be determined by a process of critical analysis, which would reveal them in their purity. The constitutive relations of experience were supposed by him to be limited to the pure forms of sensibility, space and time, and the twelve categories of the understanding, which, being imposed upon the manifold of sensations, as organized by the productive imagination, determined once and for all the order of the phenomenal world. His logic, therefore, as an account of the forms of experience, would represent logic of the type which Dewey criticized. But with the rejection of Kant's noumenal world, the critical method assumed a different import. It was no longer to be supposed that reality, as knowable, was organized under the forms of a determinate number of categories, which could be separated out and classified. Kant's idea that experience was an intelligible system was retained, but its intelligibility was not supposed to be wholly comprised in man's methods of knowing it. The instrumental character of the categories was recognized. Criticism was directed upon the categories, with the object of determining their validity, spheres of relevance, and proper place in the system of knowledge. Such a criticism, in the nature of things, could not deal with the forms of thought in abstraction from their application. Direct reference to experience, therefore, became a necessary element in idealism. At the same time, philosophy became a 'criticism of categories.' The method is empirical, but never psychological.

Dewey recognized the need of an empirical method in philosophy, but failed to show specifically how psychology could deal with philosophical problems. He appears to have conceived that sensation and meaning, facts and forms, were present in experience or 'Consciousness,' as if this were some total understanding which retained the elements in a fixed union and order. While, according to his method, the forms of this universal consciousness could not be considered apart from the particulars in which they inhered, they might be studied by a survey of experience, a direct appeal to consciousness, in which 'form and content are equal.' He seems to have held that truth is given in immediate experience. A study of reality as immediately given, therefore, to psychological observation, would provide an account of the eternal nature of things, as they stand in the universal mind. Dewey did not attempt a criticism of the categories and methods which psychology must employ in such a task. Had he done so, the advantages of a critical method might have occurred to him.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Vol. XI, pp. 1-19; pp. 153-173.

[3] "Illusory Psychology," Mind, Vol. XI, 1886, p. 478.

[4] "The Psychological Standpoint," Mind, 1886, Vol. XI, p. 2.

[5] Ibid., p. 7.

[6] Op. cit., p. 8 f.

[7] "Psychology as Philosophic Method," Mind, 1886, Vol. XI, p. 157.

[8] Ibid., p. 160. (Observe that this is a direct reference to Berkeley.)

[9] Op. cit.

[10] Op. cit., p. 161.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Third Edition, p. 54.

[13] Mind, Vol. XI, p. 166 f.

[14] Ibid., p. 166.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Op. cit., p. 170.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Op. cit., p. 172.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Op. cit.

CHAPTER II THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT

The "psychological method," as so far presented, is an outline which must be developed in detail before its philosophical import is revealed. For several years following the publication of his first articles in Mind Dewey was occupied with the task of working out his method in greater detail, and giving it more concrete form. His thought during this period follows a fairly regular order of development, which is to be sketched in the present chapter.

In 1887 Dewey published in Mind an article entitled "Knowledge as Idealisation."[21] This article is, in effect, a consideration of one of the special problems of the "psychological method." If reality is an eternal and all-inclusive consciousness, in which sensations and meanings are ordered according to a rational system, what must be the nature of the finite thought-process which apprehends this reality? In his previous articles Dewey had proposed the "psychological method" as an actual mode of investigation, and questions concerning the nature of the human thought-process naturally forced themselves upon his attention.

The thought-process is, to begin with, a relating activity which gives meaning to experience. Says Dewey: "When Psychology recognizes that the relating activity of mind is one not exercised upon sensations, but one which supplies relations and thereby makes meaning (makes experience, as Kant said), Psychology will be in a position to explain, and thus to become Philosophy."[22] This statement raises the more specific question, what is meaning?

Every idea, Dewey remarks, has two aspects: existence and meaning. "Recognizing that every psychical fact does have these two aspects, we shall, for the present, confine ourselves to asking the nature, function and origin of the aspect of meaning or significance—the content of the idea as opposed to its existence."[23] The meaning aspect of the idea cannot be reduced to the centrally excited image existences which form a part of the existence-aspect of the idea. "I repeat, as existence, we have only a clustering of sensuous feelings, stronger and weaker."[24] But the thing is not perceived as a clustering of feelings; the sensations are immediately interpreted as a significant object. "Perceiving, to restate a psychological commonplace, is interpreting. The content of the perception is what is signified."[25] Dewey's treatment of sensations, at this point, is somewhat uncertain. If it be a manifold that is given to the act of interpretation, Kant's difficulty is again presented. The bare sensations taken by themselves mean nothing, and yet everything does mean something in being apprehended. The conclusion should be that there is no such thing as mere existence. Dewey's judgment is undecided on this issue. "It is true enough," he says, "that without the idea as existence there would be no experience; the sensuous clustering is a condition sine qua non of all, even the highest spiritual, consciousness. But it is none the less true that if we could strip any psychical existence of all its qualities except bare existence, there would be nothing left, not even existence, for our intelligence.... If we take out of an experience all that it means, as distinguished from what it is—a particular occurrence at a certain time, there is no psychical experience. The barest fragment of consciousness that can be hit upon has meaning as well as being."[26] An interpretation of reality as truly organic would treat mechanical sensation as a pure fiction. But Dewey clings to 'existence' as a necessary 'aspect' of the psychical fact. The terms and relations never entirely fuse, although they are indispensable to each other. There is danger that the resulting view of experience will be somewhat angular and structural.

At one point, indeed, Dewey asserts that there is no such thing as a merely immediate psychical fact, at least for our experience. "So far is it from being true that we know only what is immediately present in consciousness, that it should rather be said that what is immediately present is never known."[27] But in the next paragraph Dewey remarks: "That which is immediately present is the sensuous existence; that which is known is the content conveyed by this existence."[28] The sensation is not known, and therefore probably not experienced. In this case Dewey is departing from his own principles, by introducing non-experienced factors into his interpretation of experience. The language is ambiguous. If nothing is immediately given, then the sensuous content is not so given.

The 'sensuous existences' assumed by Dewey are the ghosts of Kant's 'manifold of sensation.' The difficulty comes out clearly in the following passage: "It is indifferent to the sensation whether it is interpreted as a cloud or as a mountain; a danger signal, or a signal of open passage. The auditory sensation remains unchanged whether it is interpreted as an evil spirit urging one to murder, or as intra-organic, due to disordered blood-pressure.... It is not the sensation in and of itself that means this or that object; it is the sensation as associated, composed, identified, or discriminated with other experiences; the sensation, in short, as mediated. The whole worth of the sensation for intelligence is the meaning it has by virtue of its relation to the rest of experience."[29]

There is an obvious parallel between this view of experience and Kant's. Kant, indeed, transcended the notion that experience is a structure of sensations set in a frame-work of thought forms; but the first Critique undoubtedly leaves the average reader with such a conception of experience. It is unjust to Kant, however, to take the mechanical aspect of his thought as its most important phase. He stands, in the opinion of modern critics, at a half-way stage between the mechanism of the eighteenth century and the organic logic of the nineteenth, and his works point the way from the lower to the higher point of view. This was recognized by Hegel and by his followers in England. How does it happen, then, that Dewey, who was well-read in the philosophical literature of the day, should have persisted in a view of experience which appears to assume the externally organized manifold of the Critique of Pure Reason? Or, to put the question more explicitly, why did he retain as a fundamental assumption Kant's 'manifold of sensations'?

So far, Dewey has been concerned with the nature of meaning. He now turns to knowledge, and the knowing process as that which gives meaning to experience. Knowledge, or science, he says, is a process of following out the ideal element in experience. "The idealisation of science is simply a further development of this ideal element. It is, in short, only rendering explicit and definite the meaning, the idea, already contained in perception."[30] But if perception is already organized by thought, the sensations must have been related in a 'productive imagination.' Dewey, however, does not recognize such a necessity. The factor of meaning is ideal, he continues, because it is not present as so much immediate content, but is present as symbolized or mediated. But the question may be asked, "Whence come the ideal elements which give to experience its meaning?" No answer can be given except by psychology, as an inquiry into the facts, as contrasted with the logical necessity of experience.

Sensations acquire meaning through being identified with and discriminated from other sensations to which they are related. But it is not as mere existences that they are compared and related, but as already ideas or meanings. "The identification is of the meaning of the present sensation with some meaning previously experienced, but which, although previously experienced, still exists because it is meaning, and not occurrence."[31] The existences to which meanings attach come and go, and are new for every new appearance of the idea in consciousness; but the meanings remain. "The experience, as an existence at a given time, has forever vanished. Its meaning, as an ideal quality, remains as long as the mind does. Indeed, its remaining is the remaining of the mind; the conservation of the ideal quality of experience is what makes the mind a permanence."[32]

It is not possible, Dewey says, to imagine a primitive state in which unmeaning sensations existed alone. Meaning cannot arise out of that which has no meaning. "Sensations cannot revive each other except as members of one whole of meaning; and even if they could, we should have no beginning of significant experience. Significance, meaning, must be already there. Intelligence, in short, is the one indispensable condition of intelligent experience."[33]

Thinking is an act which idealizes experience by transforming sensations into an intelligible whole. It works by seizing upon the ideal element which is already there, conserving it, and developing it. It produces knowledge by supplying relations to experience. Dewey realizes that his act of intelligence is similar to Kant's 'apperceptive unity.' He says: "The mention of Kant's name suggests that both his strength and his weakness lie in the line just mentioned. It is his strength that he recognizes that an apperceptive unity interpreting sensations through categories which constitute the synthetic content of self-consciousness is indispensable to experience. It is his weakness that he conceives this content as purely logical, and hence as formal."[34] Kant's error was to treat the self as formal and held apart from its material. "The self does not work with a priori forms upon an a posteriori material, but intelligence as ideal (or a priori) constitutes experience (or the a posteriori) as having meaning."[35] Dewey's standpoint here seems to be similar to that of Green. But as Kant's unity of apperception became for Green merely a symbol of the world's inherent intelligibility, the latter did not regard it as an actual process of synthesis. Dewey fails to make a distinction, which might have been useful to him, between Kant's unity of apperception and his productive imagination. It is the latter which Dewey retains, and he tends to identify it with the empirical process of the understanding. Knowing, psychologically considered, is a synthetic process. "And this is to say that experience grows as intelligence adds out of its own ideal content ideal quality.... The growth of the power of comparison implies not a formal growth, but a synthetic internal growth."[36] Dewey, of course, views understanding as an integral part of reality's processes rather than as a process apart, but it is for him a very special activity, which builds up the meaning of experience. "Knowledge might be indifferently described, therefore, as a process of idealisation of experience, or of realisation of intelligence. It is each through the other. Ultimately the growth of experience must consist in the development out of itself by intelligence of its own implicit ideal content upon occasion of the solicitation of sensation."[37]

The difficulties of Dewey's original position are numerous. The relation of the self, as a synthetic activity, to the "Eternal Consciousness," in which meaning already exists in a completed form, is especially perplexing. Does the self merely trace out the meaning already present in reality, or is it a factor in the creation of meaning? It is clear that if the thinking process is a genuinely synthetic activity, imposing meaning on sensations, it literally 'makes the world' of our experience. But, on the other hand, if meaning is given to thought, as a part of its data, the self merely reproduces in a subjective experience the thought which exists objectively in the eternal mind. The dilemma arises as a result of Dewey's initial conception of reality as a structure of sensations and meanings. This conception of reality must be given up, if the notion of thought as a process of idealization is to be retained.

In 1888, Dewey's Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding appeared, and during the two years following he appears to have become interested in ethical theory, the results of his study beginning to appear in 1890. Dewey's ethical theories have so important a bearing upon his logical theory as to demand special attention. They will be reserved, therefore, for a separate chapter, and attention will be given here to the more strictly logical studies of the period.

The three years which intervened between the publication of the essay on "Knowledge as Idealisation" and the appearance of an article "On Some Current Conceptions of the term 'Self,'" in Mind (1890),[38] did not serve to divert Dewey's attention from the inquiries in which he had previously been interested. On the contrary, the later article shows how persistently his mind must have dwelt upon the problems connected with the notion of the self as a synthetic activity in experience.

The immediate occasion for the article on the Self was the appearance of Professor Andrew Seth's work, Hegelianism and Personality (1889). Dewey appears to have been influenced by Seth at an even earlier period,[39] and he now found the lectures on Hegel stimulating in connection with his own problems about thought and reality.

It will not be necessary to go into the details of Dewey's criticism of the three ideas of the self presented by Seth. Since it is Dewey's own position that is in question, it is better to begin with his account of the historical origin of these definitions, "chiefly as found in Kant, incidentally in Hegel as related to Kant."[40] Dewey turns to the 'Transcendental Deduction,' and follows Kant's description of the synthetic unity of apperception. "Its gist," he says, "in the second edition of the K.d.r.V., is the proof that the identity of self-consciousness involves the synthesis of the manifold of feelings through rules or principles which render this manifold objective, and that, therefore, the analytic identity of self-consciousness involves an objective synthetic unity of consciousness."[41] To say that self-consciousness is identical is a merely analytical proposition, and, as it stands, unfruitful. "But if we ask how we know this sameness or identity of consciousness, the barren principle becomes wonderfully fruitful."[42] In order to know reality as mine, not only must the consciousness that it is mine accompany each particular impression, but each must be known as an element in one consciousness. "The sole way of accounting for this analytic identity of consciousness is through the activity of consciousness in connecting or 'putting together' the manifold of sense."[43]

In the 'Deduction' of the first Critique, Dewey continues, Kant begins with the consciousness of objects, rather than with the identity of self-consciousness. Here also consciousness implies a unity, which is not merely formal, but one which actually connects the manifold of sense by an act. "Whether, then, we inquire what is involved in mere sameness of consciousness, or what is involved in an objective world, we get the same answer: a consciousness which is not formal or analytic, but which is synthetic of sense, and which acts universally (according to principles) in this synthesis."[44]

The term 'Self,' as thus employed by Kant, Dewey says, is the correlative of the intelligible world. "It is the transcendental self looked at as 'there,' as a product, instead of as an activity or process."[45] This, however, by no means exhausts what Kant means by the self, for while he proceeds in the 'Deduction' as if the manifold of sense and the synthetic unity of the self were strictly correlative, he assumes a different attitude elsewhere. The manifold of sense is something in relation to the thing-in-itself, and the forms of thought have a reference beyond their mere application to the manifold. In the other connections the self appears as something purely formal; something apart from its manifestation in experience. In view of the wider meaning of the self, Dewey asks, "Can the result of the transcendental deduction stand without further interpretation?" It would appear that the content of the self is not the same as the content of the known world. The self is too great to exhaust itself in relation to sensation. "Sense is, as it were, inadequate to the relations which constitute self-consciousness, and thus there must also remain a surplusage in the self, not entering into the make-up of the known world."[46] This follows from the fact that, while the self is unconditioned, the manifold of sensation is conditioned, as given, by the forms of space and time. "Experience can never be complete enough to have a content equal to that of self-consciousness, for experience can never escape its limitation through space and time. Self-consciousness is real, and not merely logical; it is the ground of the reality of experience; it is wider than experience, and yet is unknown except so far as it is reflected through its own determinations in experience,—this is the result of our analysis of Kant, the Ding-an-Sich being eliminated but the Kantian method and all presuppositions not involved in the notion of the Ding-an-Sich being retained."[47]

Dewey's interpretation of Kant's doctrine as presented in the 'Deductions' is no doubt essentially correct. But granting that Kant found it necessary to introduce a synthesis in imagination to account for the unity of experience and justify our knowledge of its relations, it must not be forgotten that this necessity followed from the nature of his presuppositions. If the primal reality is a 'manifold of sensations,' proceeding from a noumenal source, and lacking meaning and relations, it follows that the manifold must be gathered up into a unity before the experience which we actually apprehend can be accounted for. But if reality is experience, possessing order and coherence in its own nature, the productive imagination is rendered superfluous. Dewey, however, clings to the notion that thought is a "synthetic activity" which makes experience, and draws support from Kant for his doctrine.

Dewey now inquires what relation this revised Kantian conception of the self bears to the view advanced by Seth, viz., that the idea of self-consciousness is the highest category of thought and explanation. Kant had tried to discover the different forms of synthesis, by a method somewhat artificial to be sure, and had found twelve of them. While Hegel's independent derivation and independent placing of the categories must be accepted, it does not follow that the idea of self-consciousness can be included in the list, even if it be considered the highest category. "For it is impossible as long as we retain Kant's fundamental presupposition—the idea of the partial determination of sensation by relation to perception, apart from its relation to conception—to employ self-consciousness as a principle of explaining any fact of experience."[48] It cannot be said of the self of Kant that it is simply an hypostatized category. "It is more, because the self of Kant ... is more than any category: it is a real activity or being."[49]

Hegel, Dewey continues, develops only one aspect of Kant's Critique, that is, the logical aspect, and consequently does not fulfil Kant's entire purpose. "This is, I repeat, not an immanent 'criticism of categories' but an analysis of experience into its aspects and really constituent elements."[50] Dewey, as usual, shows his opposition to a 'merely logical' method in philosophy. He plainly indicates his dissatisfaction with the Hegelian development of Kant's standpoint. He is unfair to Hegel, however, in attributing to him a 'merely logical' method. Kant's self was, as Dewey asserts, something more than a category of thought, but it is scarcely illuminating to say of Kant that his purpose was the analysis of experience into its 'constituent elements.' Kant did, indeed, analyze experience, but this analysis must be regarded as incidental to a larger purpose. No criticism need be made of Dewey's preference for the psychological, as opposed to the logical aspects of Kant's work. The only comment to be made is that this attitude is not in line with the modern development of idealism.

The question which finally emerges, as the result of Dewey's inquiry, is this: What is the nature of this self-activity which is more than the mere category of self-consciousness? "As long as sensation was regarded as given by a thing-in-itself, it was possible to form a conception of the self which did not identify it with the world. But when sense is regarded as having meaning only because it is 'there' as determined by thought, just as thought is 'there' only as determining sense, it would seem either that the self is just their synthetic unity (thus equalling the world) or that it must be thrust back of experience, and become a thing-in-itself. The activity of the self can hardly be a third something distinct from thought and from sense, and it cannot be their synthetic union. What, then, is it?"[51] Green, Dewey says, attempted to solve the difficulty by his "idea of a completely realized self making an animal organism the vehicle of its own reproduction in time."[52] This attempt was at least in the right direction, acknowledging as it did the fact that the self is something more than the highest category of thought.

Dewey admits his difficulties in a way that makes extended comment unnecessary. He does not challenge the validity of the Hegelian development of the Kantian categories, but proposes to make more of the self than the Hegelians ordinarily do. This synthetic self-activity must reveal itself as a concrete process; that is one of the demands of his psychological standpoint. It is impossible to foresee what this process would be as an actual fact of experience.

Although the next article which is to be considered does not offer a direct answer to the problems which have so far been raised, it nevertheless indicates the general direction which Dewey's thought is to take. This article, on "The Present Position of Logical Theory," was published in the Monist in 1891.[53] Dewey appears at this time as the champion of the transcendental, or Hegelian logic, in opposition to formal and inductive logic. His attitude toward Hegel undergoes a marked change at this period. Dewey's general objection to formal logic is well expressed in the following passage: "It is assumed, in fine, that thought has a nature of its own independent of facts or subject-matter; that this thought, per se, has certain forms, and that these forms are not forms which the facts themselves take, varying with the facts, but are rigid frames, into which the facts are to be set. Now all of this conception—the notion that the mind has a faculty of thought apart from things, the notion that this faculty is constructed, in and of itself, with a fixed framework, the notion that thinking is the imposing of this fixed framework on some unyielding matter called particular objects, or facts—all of this conception appears to me as highly scholastic."[54] The inductive logic, Dewey says, still clings to the notion of thought as a faculty apart from its material, operating with bare forms upon sensations. Kant had been guilty of this separation and never overcame it successfully. Because formal logic views thought as a process apart from the matter with which it has to deal, it can never be the logic of science. "For if science means anything, it is that our ideas, our judgments may in some degree reflect and report the fact itself. Science means, on one hand, that thought is free to attack and get hold of its subject-matter, and, on the other, that fact is free to break through into thought; free to impress itself—or rather to express itself—in intelligence without vitiation or deflection. Scientific men are true to the instinct of the scientific spirit in fighting shy of a distinct a priori factor supplied to fact from the mind. Apriorism of this sort must seem like an effort to cramp the freedom of intelligence and of fact, to bring them under the yoke of fixed, external forms."[55]

In opposition to this formal, and, as he calls it, subjective standpoint in logic, Dewey stands for the transcendental logic, which supposes that there is some kind of vital connection between thought and fact; "that thinking, in short, is nothing but the fact in its process of translation from brute impression to lucent meaning."[56] Hegel holds this view of logic. "This, then, is why I conceive Hegel—entirely apart from the value of any special results—to represent the quintessence of the scientific spirit. He denies not only the possibility of getting truth out of a formal, apart thought, but he denies the existence of any faculty of thought which is other than the expression of fact itself."[57] At another place Dewey expresses his view of Hegel as follows: "Relations of thought are, to Hegel, the typical forms of meaning which the subject-matter takes in its various progressive stages of being understood."[58]

Dewey's defence of the transcendental logic is vigorous. He maintains that the disrespect into which the transcendental logic had fallen, was due to the fact that the popular comprehension of the transcendental movement had been arrested at Kant, and had never gone on to Hegel.

The objection made to Kant's standpoint is that it treated thought as a process over against experience, imposing its forms upon it from without. "Kant never dreams, for a moment, of questioning the existence of a special faculty of thought with its own peculiar and fixed forms. He states and restates that thought in itself exists apart from fact and occupies itself with fact given to it from without."[59] While Kant gave the death blow to a merely formal conception of thought, indirectly, and opened up the way for an organic interpretation, he did not achieve the higher standpoint himself. Remaining at the standpoint of Kant, therefore, the critic of the transcendental logic has much to complain of. Scientific men deal with facts, look to them for guidance, and must suppose that thought and fact pass into each other directly, and without vitiation or deflection. They are correct in opposing a conception which would interpose conditions between thought on the one hand and the facts on the other.

But Hegel is true to the scientific spirit. "When Hegel calls thought objective he means just what he says: that there is no special, apart faculty of thought belonging to and operated by a mind existing separate from the outer world. What Hegel means by objective thought is the meaning, the significance of the fact itself; and by methods of thought he understands simply the processes in which this meaning of fact is evolved."[60]

If Hegel is true to the scientific spirit; if his logic presupposes that there is an intrinsic connection of thought and fact, and views science simply as the progressive realization of the world's ideality, then the only questions to be asked about his logic are questions of fact concerning his treatment of the categories. Is the world such a connected system as he holds it to be? "And, if a system, does it, in particular, present such phases (such relations, categories) as Hegel shows forth?"[61] These questions are wholly objective. Such a logic as Hegel's could scarcely make headway when it was first produced, because the significance of the world, its ideal character, had not been brought to light through the sciences. We are now reaching a stage, however, where science has brought the ideality of the world into the foreground, where it may become as real and objective a material of study as molecules and vibrations.

This appreciation of Hegel would seem to indicate that Dewey has finally grasped the significance of Hegel's development of the Kantian standpoint. A close reading of the article, however, dispels this impression. Dewey believes that he has found in Hegel a support for his own psychological method in philosophy. It is scarcely necessary to say that Hegel's standpoint was anything but psychological. Dewey has already given up Kant; he will presently desert Hegel. A psychological interpretation of the thought-process in its relations to reality is not compatible with the critical method in philosophy.

In the next article to be examined, "The Superstition of Necessity," in the Monist (1893),[62] Dewey begins to attain the psychological description of thought at which he had been aiming. This article was suggested, as Dewey indicates in a foot-note, by Mr. C. S. Pierce's article, "The Doctrine of Necessity Examined," in the Monist (1892).[63] Although Dewey acknowledges his indebtedness to Pierce for certain suggestions, the two articles have little in common.

Dewey had consistently maintained that thought is a synthetic activity through which reality is idealized or takes on meaning. It is from this standpoint that he approaches the subject of necessity. The following passage reveals the connection between his former position and the one that he is now approaching: "The whole, although first in the order of reality, is last in the order of knowledge. The complete statement of the whole is the goal, not the beginning of wisdom. We begin, therefore, with fragments, which are taken for wholes; and it is only by piecing together these fragments, and by the transformation of them involved in this combination, that we arrive at the real fact. There comes a stage at which the recognition of the unity begins to dawn upon us, and yet, the tradition of the many distinct wholes survives; judgment has to combine these two contradictory conceptions; it does so by the theory that the dawning unity is an effect necessarily produced by the interaction of the former wholes. Only as the consciousness of the unity grows still more is it seen that instead of a group of independent facts, held together by 'necessary' ties, there is one reality, of which we have been apprehending various fragments in succession and attributing to them a spurious wholeness and independence. We learn (but only at the end) that instead of discovering and then connecting together a number of separate realities, we have been engaged in the progressive definition of one fact."[64]

Dewey adds to his idea that our knowledge of reality is a progressive development of its implicit ideality through a synthetic thought-process, the specification that the process of idealization occurs in connection with particular crises and situations. There comes a stage, he says, when unity begins to dawn and meaning emerges. Necessity is a term used in connection with these transitions from partial to greater realization of the world's total meaning. Necessity is a middle term, or go-between. It marks a critical stage in the development of knowledge. No necessity attaches to a whole, as such. "Qua whole, the fact simply is what it is; while the parts, instead of being necessitated either by one another or by the whole, are the analyzed factors constituting, in their complete circuit, the whole."[65] But when the original whole breaks up, through its inability to comprehend new facts under its unity, a process of judgment occurs which aims at the establishment of a new unity. "The judgment of necessity, in other words, is exactly and solely the transition in our knowledge from unconnected judgments to a more comprehensive synthesis. Its value is just the value of this transition; as negating the old partial and isolated judgments—in its backward look—necessity has meaning; in its forward look—with reference to the resulting completely organized subject-matter—it is itself as false as the isolated judgments which it replaces."[66] We say that things must be so, when we do not know that they are so; that is, while we are in course of determining what they are. Necessity has its value exclusively in this transition.

Dewey attempts to show, in a discussion which need not be followed in detail, that there is nothing radical in his view, and that it finds support among the idealists and empiricists alike. Thinkers of both schools (he quotes Caird and Venn) admit that the process of judgment involves a change in objects, at least as they are for us. There is a transformation of their value and meaning. "This point being held in common, both schools must agree that the progress of judgment is equivalent to a change in the value of objects—that objects as they are for us, as known, change with the development of our judgments."[67] Dewey proposes to give a more specific description of this process of transformation, and especially, to show how the idea of necessity is involved in it.

The process of transformation is occasioned by practical necessity. Men have a tendency to take objects as just so much and no more; to attach to a given subject-matter these predicates, and no others. There is a principle of inertia, or economy, in the mind, which leads it to maintain objects in their status quo as long as possible. "There is no doubt that the reluctance of the mind to give up an object once made lies deep in its economies.... I wish here to call attention to the fact that the forming of a number of distinct objects has its origin in practical needs of our nature. The analysis and synthesis which is first made is that of most practical importance...."[68] We tend to retain such objects as we have, and it is not until "the original subject-matter has been overloaded with various and opposing predicates that we think of doubting the correctness of our first judgments, of putting our first objects under suspicion."[69] Once the Ptolemaic system is well established, cycles and epicycles are added without number, rather than reconstruct the original object. When, finally, we are compelled to make some change, we tend to invent some new object to which the predicates can attach. "When qualities arise so incompatible with the object already formed that they cannot be referred to that object, it is easier to form a new object on their basis than it is to doubt the correctness of the old...."[70] Let us suppose, then, that under stress of practical need, we refer the new predicates to some new object, and have, as a consequence, two objects. (Dewey illustrates this situation by specific examples.) This separation of the two objects cannot continue long, before we begin to discover that the two objects are related elements in a larger whole. "The wall of partition between the two separate 'objects' cannot be broken at one attack; they have to be worn away by the attrition arising from their slow movement into one another. It is the 'necessary' influence which one exerts upon the other that finally rubs away the separateness and leaves them revealed as elements of one unified whole."[71]

The concept of necessity has its validity in such a movement of judgment as has been described. "Necessity, as the middle term, is the mid-wife which, from the dying isolation of judgments, delivers the unified judgment just coming into life—it being understood that the separateness of the original judgments is not as yet quite negated, nor the unity of the coming judgment quite attained."[72] The judgment of necessity connects itself with certain facts in the situation which are immediately concerned with our practical activities. These are facts which, before the crisis arises, have been neglected; they are elements in the situation which have been regarded as unessential, as not yet making up a part of the original object. "Although after our desire has been met they have been eliminated as accidental, as irrelevant, yet when the experience is again desired their integral membership in the real fact has to be recognized. This is done under the guise of considering them as means which are necessary to bring about the end."[73] We have the if so, then so situation. "If we are to reach an end we must take certain means; while so far as we want an undefined end, an end in general, conditions which accompany it are mere accidents."[74] The end of this process of judgment in which necessity appears as a half-way stage, is the unity of reality; a whole into which the formerly discordant factors can be gathered together.

Only a detailed study of the original text, with its careful illustrations, can furnish a thorough understanding of Dewey's position. Enough has been said, however, to show that this psychological account of the judgment process is a natural outgrowth of his former views, and that, as it stands, it is still in conformity with his original idealism. The article as a whole marks a half-way stage in Dewey's philosophical development. Looking backward, it is a partial fulfilment of the demands of "The Psychological Standpoint." It is a psychological description of the processes whereby self-consciousness specifies itself into parts which are still related to the whole. Looking forward, it forecasts the functional theory of knowledge. We have, to begin with, objects given as familiar or known experiences. So long as these are not put under suspicion or examined, they simply are themselves, or are non-cognitionally experienced. But on the occasion of a conflict in experience between opposed facts and their meanings, a process of judgment arises, whose function is to restore unity. It is in this process of judgment as an operation in the interests of the unity of experience, that the concepts, necessity and contingency, have their valid application and use. They are instruments for effecting a transformation of experience. This is the root idea of functional instrumentalism. It is apparent, therefore, that Dewey's later functionalism resulted from the natural growth and development of the psychological standpoint which he adopted at the beginning of his philosophical career.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Vol. XII, pp. 382-396.

[22] Ibid., p. 394.

[23] Op. cit., p. 383.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid., p. 384.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Op. cit., p. 385.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid., p. 388.

[30] Op. cit., p. 390.

[31] Ibid., p. 392.

[32] Op. cit.

[33] Ibid., p. 393.

[34] Ibid., p. 394.

[35] Ibid., p. 395.

[36] Op. cit.

[37] Ibid., p. 396. (The last sentence forecasts Dewey's later contention that knowing is a specific act operating upon the occasion of need.)

[38] Vol. XV, pp. 58-74.

[39] See Mind, Vol. XI, 1886, p. 170.

[40] Ibid., p. 63.

[41] Ibid.

[42] Ibid., p. 64.

[43] Op. cit.

[44] Ibid., p. 65.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Op. cit., p. 67.

[47] Ibid., p. 68.

[48] Op. cit., p. 70.

[49] Ibid., p. 71.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Op. cit., p. 73.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Vol. II, pp. 1-17.

[54] Op. cit., p. 4.

[55] Ibid., p. 12.

[56] Ibid., p. 3.

[57] Ibid., p. 14.

[58] Ibid., p. 13.

[59] Op. cit., p. 11.

[60] Ibid., p. 12 f.

[61] Op. cit., p. 14.

[62] Vol. III, pp. 362-379.

[63] Vol. II, pp. 321-337.

[64] The Monist, Vol. III, 1893, p. 364.

[65] Ibid., p. 363.

[66] Op. cit.

[67] Ibid., p. 364 f.

[68] Ibid., p. 367.

[69] Ibid., p. 366.

[70] Op. cit., p. 367.

[71] Ibid., p. 368.

[72] Ibid., p. 363.

[73] Op. cit., p. 372.

[74] Ibid.

CHAPTER III "MORAL THEORY AND PRACTICE"

Dewey's ethical theory, as has already been indicated, stands in close relation to his general theory of knowledge. Since it has been found expedient to treat the ethical theory separately, it will be necessary to go back some two years and trace it from its beginnings. The order of arrangement that has been chosen is fortunate in this respect, since it brings into close connection two articles which are really companion pieces, in spite of the two-year interval which separates them. These are "The Superstition of Necessity," which was considered at the close of the last chapter, and "Moral Theory and Practice," an article published in The International Journal of Ethics, in January, 1891.[75] This latter article, now to be examined, is one of Dewey's first serious undertakings in the field of ethical theory, and probably represents some of the results of his study in connection with his text-book, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics, published in the same year (1891).

The immediate occasion for the article is explained by Dewey in his introductory remarks: "In the first number of this journal four writers touch upon the same question,—the relation of moral theory to moral practice."[76] The four writers mentioned were Sidgwick, Adler, Bosanquet, and Salter. None of them, according to Dewey, had directly discussed the relation of moral theory to practice. "But," he says, "finding the subject touched upon ... in so many ways, I was led to attempt to clear up my own ideas."[77]

There seems to exist, Dewey continues, "the idea that moral theory is something other than, or something beyond, an analysis of conduct,—the idea that it is not simply and wholly 'the theory of practice.'"[78] It is often defined, for instance, as an inquiry into the metaphysics of morals, which has nothing to do with practice. But, Dewey believes, there must be some intrinsic connection between the theory of morals and moral practice. Such intrinsic connection may be denied on the ground that practice existed long before theory made its appearance. Codes of morality were in existence before Plato, Kant, or Spencer rose to speculate upon them. This raises the question, What is theory?

Moral theory is nothing more than a proposed act in idea. It is insight, or perception of the relations and bearings of the contemplated act. "It is all one with moral insight, and moral insight is the recognition of the relationships in hand. This is a very tame and prosaic conception. It makes moral insight, and therefore moral theory, consist simply in the everyday workings of the same ordinary intelligence that measures drygoods, drives nails, sells wheat, and invents the telephone."[79] The nature of theory as idea is more definitely described. "It is the construction of the act in thought against its outward construction. It is, therefore, the doing,—the act itself, in its emerging."[80]

Theory is practice in idea, or as foreseen; it is the perception of what ought to be done. This, at least, is what moral theory is. Dewey's demand that fact and theory must have some intrinsic connection, unsatisfied in the articles reviewed in the previous chapter, is met here by discovering a connecting link in action. Theory is "the doing,—the act itself in its emerging." The reduction of thought to terms of action, here implied, is a serious step. It marks a new tendency in Dewey's speculation. Dewey does not claim, in the present article, that his remarks hold good for all theory. "Physical science," he remarks, "does deal with abstractions, with hypothesis. It says, 'If this, then that.' It deals with the relations of conditions and not with facts, or individuals, at all. It says, 'I have nothing to do with your concrete falling stone, but I can tell you this, that it is a law of falling bodies that, etc.'"[81] But moral theory is compelled to deal with concrete situations. It must be a theory which can be applied directly to the particular case. Moral theory cannot exist simply in a book. Since, moreover, there is no such thing as theory in the abstract, there can be no abstract theory of morals.

There can be no difficulty, Dewey believes, in understanding moral theory as action in idea. All action that is intelligent, all conduct, that is, involves theory. "For any act (as distinct from mere impulse) there must be 'theory,' and the wider the act, the greater its import, the more exigent the demand for theory."[82] This does not, however, answer the question how any particular moral theory, the Kantian, the Hedonistic, or the Hegelian, is related to action. These systems present, not 'moral ideas' as explained above, but 'ideas about morality.' What relation have ideas about morality to specific moral conduct?

The answer to this question is to be obtained through an understanding of the nature of the moral situation. If an act is moral, it must be intelligent; as moral conduct, it implies insight into the situation at hand. This insight is obtained by an examination and analysis of the concrete situation. "This is evidently a work of analysis. Like every analysis, it requires that the one making it be in possession of certain working tools. I cannot resolve this practical situation which faces me by merely looking at it. I must attack it with such instruments of analysis as I have at hand. What we call moral rules are precisely such tools of analysis."[83] The Golden Rule is such an instrument of analysis. Taken by itself, it offers no direct information as to what is to be done. "The rule is a counsel of perfection; it is a warning that in my analysis of the moral situation (that is, of the conditions of practice) I be impartial as to the effects on me and thee.'"[84] Every rule which is of any use at all is employed in a similar fashion.

But this is not, so far, a statement of the nature of moral theory, since only particular rules have been considered. Ethical theory, in its wider significance, is a reflective process in which, as one might say, the 'tools of analysis' are shaped and adapted to their work. These rules are not fixed things, made once and for all, but of such a nature that they preserve their effectiveness only as they are constantly renewed and reshaped. Ethical theory brings the Golden Rule together with other general ideas, conforms them to each other, and in this way gives the moral rule a great scope in practice. All moral theory, therefore, is finally linked up with practice. "It bears much the same relation to the particular rule as this to the special case. It is a tool for the analysis of its meaning, and thereby a tool for giving it greater effect."[85] In ethical theory we find moral rules in the making. Ideas about morals are simply moral ideas in the course of being formed.

Dewey presents here an instrumental theory of knowledge and concepts. But it differs widely from the instrumentalism of the Neo-Hegelian school both in its form and derivation. Dewey reaches his instrumentalism through a psychological analysis of the judgment process. He finds that theory is related to fact through action, and since he had been unable to give a concrete account of this relationship at a previous time, the conclusion may be regarded as a discovery of considerable moment for his philosophical method. Dewey's instrumentalism rests upon a very special psychological interpretation, which puts action first and thought second. Unable to discover an overt connection between fact and thought, he delves underground for it, and finds it in the activities of the nervous organism. This discovery, he believes, solves once and for all the ancient riddle of the relation of thought to reality.

In the concluding part of the article Dewey takes up the consideration of moral obligation. "What is the relation of knowledge, of theory, to that Ought which seems to be the very essence of moral conduct?"[86] The answer anticipates in some measure the position which was taken later, as has been seen, in regard to necessity. The concept of obligation, like that of necessity, Dewey believes, has relevance only for the judgment situation. "But," Dewey says, "limiting the question as best I can, I should say (first) that the 'ought' always rises from and falls back into the 'is,' and (secondly) that the 'ought' is itself an 'is,'—the 'is' of action."[87] Obligation is not something added to the conclusion of a judgment, something which gives a moral aspect to what had been a coldly intellectual matter. The 'ought' finds an integral place in the judgment process. "The difference between saying, 'this act is the one to be done, ...' and saying, 'The act ought to be done,' is merely verbal. The analysis of action is from the first an analysis of what is to be done; how, then, should it come out excepting with a 'this should be done'?"[88] The peculiarity of the 'ought' is that it applies to conduct or action, whereas the 'is' applies to the facts. It has reference to doing, or acting, as the situation demands. "This, then, is the relation of moral theory and practice. Theory is the cross-section of the given state of action in order to know the conduct that should be; practice is the realization of the idea thus gained: in is theory in action."[89]

The parallel between this article and "The Superstition of Necessity" is too obvious to require formulation, and the same criticism that applies to the one is applicable to the other. "The Superstition of Necessity" is more detailed and concrete in its treatment of the judgment process than this earlier article, as might be expected, but the fundamental position is essentially the same. The synthetic activity of the self, the thought-process, finally appears as the servant of action, or, more exactly, as itself a special mode of organic activity in general.

From the basis of the standpoint which he had now attained Dewey attempted a criticism of Green's moral theory, in two articles in the Philosophical Review, in 1892 and 1893. The first of these, entitled "Green's Theory of the Moral Motive,"[90] appeared almost two years after the article on "Moral Theory and Practice." The continuity of Dewey's thought during the intervening period, however, is indicated by the fact that the first four pages of the article to be considered are given over to an introductory discussion which repeats in almost identical terms the position taken in "Moral Theory and Practice." Dewey himself calls attention to this fact in a foot-note.

There must be, Dewey again asserts, some vital connection of theory with practice. "Ethical theory must be a general statement of the reality involved in every moral situation. It must be action stated in its more generic terms, terms so generic that every individual action will fall within the outlines it sets forth. If the theory agrees with these requirements, then we have for use in any special case a tool for analyzing that case; a method for attacking and reducing it, for laying it open so that the action called for in order to meet, to satisfy it, may readily appear."[91] Dewey argues that moral theory cannot possibly give directions for every concrete case, but that it by no means follows that theory can stand aside from the specific case and say: "What have I to do with thee? Thou art empirical, and I am the metaphysics of conduct."

Dewey's preliminary remarks are introductory to a consideration of Green's ethical theory. "His theory would, I think," Dewey says, "be commonly regarded as the best of the modern attempts to form a metaphysic of ethic. I wish, using this as type, to point out the inadequacy of such metaphysical theories, on the ground that they fail to meet the demand just made of truly ethical theory, that it lend itself to translation into concrete terms, and thereby to the guidance, the direction of actual conduct."[92] Dewey recognizes that Green is better than his theory, but says that the theory, taken in logical strictness, cannot meet individual needs.

Dewey makes a special demand of Green's theory. He demands, that is, that it supply a body of rules, or guides to action which can be employed by the moral agent as tools of analysis in cases requiring moral judgment. It is evident in advance that Green's theory was built upon a different plan, and can not meet the conditions which Dewey prescribes. The general nature of Green's inquiry is well stated in the following summary by Professor Thilly: "The truth in Green's thought is this: the purpose of all social devotion and reform is, after all, the perfection of man on the spiritual side, the development of men of character and ideals.... The final purpose of all moral endeavor must be the realization of an attitude of the human soul, of some form of noble consciousness in human personalities.... It is well enough to feed and house human bodies, but the paramount question will always be: What kinds of souls are to dwell in these bodies?"[93] To put the matter in more technical terms, Green is concerned with ends and values. His question is not, What is the best means of accomplishing a given purpose, but, What end is worth attaining? Such an inquiry has no immediate relation to action. It may lead to conclusions which become determining factors in action, but the process of inquiry has no direct reference to conduct. Dewey, having reduced thought to a function of activity, must proceed, by logical necessity, to carry the same reduction into the field of theory in general. This he does in thorough style. His demand that moral theory shall concern itself with concrete and 'specific' situations is a result of the same tendency. Since action can only be described as response to a 'situation,' thought, as a function of activity, must likewise be directed upon a 'situation.' Conduct in general and values in general become impossible under his system, because there is no such thing as an activity-in-general of the organism. Ends, in other words, exist only for thought, when thought is interpreted as transcending action, and being, in some sense, self-contained. When thought is interpreted as a kind of 'indirect activity,' its capacity for metaphysical inquiry vanishes along with its independence.

It would have been more in keeping with sound criticism had Dewey himself taken note of the important divergence in aim and intent between his work and Green's. As a consequence of his failure to do so, he fails, necessarily, to do justice to Green's standpoint. The criticism which he directs against Green's moral theory may be briefly summed up as follows.

Green tends to repeat the Kantian separation of the self as reason from the self as want or desire. "The dualism between reason and sense is given up, indeed, but only to be replaced by a dualism between the end which would satisfy the self as a unity or whole, and that which satisfies it in the particular circumstances of actual conduct."[94] As a consequence of the separation of the ideal from the actual, no action can satisfy the whole self, and thus no action can be truly moral. "No thorough-going theory of total depravity ever made righteousness more impossible to the natural man than Green makes it to a human being by the very constitution of his being...."[95] Dewey traces this separation of the self as reason from the self as desire through those passages in which Green describes the moral agent as one who distinguishes himself from his desires (Book II, Prolegomena to Ethics). "The process of moral experience involves, therefore, a process in which the self, in becoming conscious of its want, objectifies that want by setting it over against itself; distinguishing the want from self and self from want.... Now this theory so far might be developed in either of two directions."[96]

In the first place, the self-distinguishing process may be an activity by means of which the self specifies its own activity and satisfaction. "The particular desires and ends would be the modes in which the self relieved itself of its abstractness, its undeveloped character, and assumed concrete existence.... The unity of the self would stand in no opposition to the particularity of the special desire; on the contrary, the unity of the self and the manifold of definite desires would be the synthetic and analytic aspects of one and the same reality, neither having any advantage metaphysical or ethical over the other!"[97] But Green, unfortunately, does not develop his theory in this concrete direction. The self does not specify itself in the particulars, but remains apart from them. "The objectification is not of the self in the special end; but the self remains behind setting the special object over against itself as not adequate to itself.... The unity of the self sets up an ideal of satisfaction for itself as it withdraws from the special want, and this ideal set up through negation of the particular desire and its satisfaction constitutes the moral ideal. It is forever unrealizable, because it forever negates the special activities through which alone it might, after all, realize itself."[98] In completing this argument Dewey refers to certain well-known passages in the Prolegomena to Ethics, in which Green states that the moral ideal is never completely attainable. Green's abstract conception of the self as that which forever sets itself over against its desires is, Dewey argues, not only useless as an ideal for action, but positively opposed to moral striving. "It supervenes, not as a power active in its own satisfaction, but to make us realize the unsatisfactoriness of such seeming satisfactions as we may happen to get, and to keep us striving for something which we can never get!"[99] The most that can be made of Green's moral ideal is to conceive it as the bare form of unity in conduct. Employed as a tool of analysis, as a moral rule, it might tell us, "Whatever the situation, seek for its unity." But it can scarcely go even as far as this in the direction of concreteness, for it says: "No unity can be found in the situation because the situation is particular, and therefore set over against the unity."[100]

Most students of Green would undoubtedly say that this account of his moral theory is entirely one-sided, and fails to reckon with certain elements which should properly be taken into account. In the first place, Green is defining the moral agent as he finds him, and is reporting what seems to him a fact when he says that the moral ideal is too high to be realized in this life. Having a spiritual nature, man fails to find satisfaction in the goods of natural life. Dewey should address himself to the facts in refuting Green's analysis of human nature. In the second place, with respect to Green's separation of the self as unity from the self as a manifold of desires, Dewey's criticism may be flatly rejected. Green raises the question himself: "'Do you mean,' it may be asked, 'to assert the existence of a mysterious abstract entity which you call the self of a man, apart from all his particular feelings, desires, and thoughts—all the experience of his inner life?'"[101] Green takes time to state his position as clearly as possible. He repudiates the idea of an abstract self apart from desire. The following passage is typical of his remarks: "Just as we hold that our desires, feelings, and thoughts would not be what they are—would not be those of a man—if not related to a subject which distinguishes itself from each and all of them; so we hold that this subject would not be what it is, if it were not related to the particular feelings, desires, and thoughts, which it thus distinguishes from and presents to itself."[102] It will be remembered also, that in moral action the agent identifies himself with his desires, or adopts them as his own, and the ability to do this is the chief mark of human intelligence. But man could not identify himself with his desires, or 'specify himself in them,' as Dewey says, did he not at the same time have the capacity to differentiate himself from them.

Dewey's further remarks on Green's ideal need not be followed in detail, since they rest upon a misapprehension of Green's purpose, and add little to what he has already said. Taking the moral ideal as something that can never be realized in this life, Dewey inquires what use can be made of it. He considers three modes in which Green might have given content to the ideal, as a working principle, and finds that it cannot be made, in any of these ways, to serve as a tool of analysis. Green was not prepared to meet these 'pragmatic' requirements. He did not propose his ideal as a principle of conduct, in Dewey's sense; he stated that, as a matter of fact, man is more than natural, and that, as such a being, his ideals can never be completely met by natural objects. How man is to act, in view of his spiritual nature, is a further question: but the realization which the individual has of his own spiritual nature must of necessity be a large factor in the determination of his conduct. The 'Spiritual Nature,' in Green's terminology, meant a 'not-natural' nature, and 'not-natural' in turn meant a nature that is not definable in mechanical or biological terms. Dewey's criticism, therefore, went wide of the mark.

In November, 1893, Dewey followed his criticism of Green's moral motive by a second article in the Philosophical Review on "Self-realization as the Moral Ideal."[103] It continues the criticism which has already been made of Green, but from a different point of departure.

The idea of self-realization in ethics, Dewey begins, may be helpful or harmful according to the way in which the ideas of the self and its realization are worked out in the concrete. The mere idea of a self to be realized is, of course, abstract; it is merely the statement of a problem, which needs to be worked out and given content. By way of introducing his own idea of self-realization, Dewey proposes to criticize a certain conception of the self which he finds in current discussion. "The notion which I wish to criticize," he says, "is that of the self as a presupposed fixed schema or outline, while realization consists in the filling up of this schema. The notion which I would suggest as substitute is that of the self as always a concrete specific activity; and, therefore, (to anticipate) of the identity of self and realization."[104] Such a presupposed fixed self is to be found in Green's "Eternally complete Consciousness."

The idea of self-realization implies capacities or possibilities. To translate capacity into actuality, as the conception of the fixed self seems to do, is to vitiate the whole idea of possibility. There must, then, be some conception of unrealized powers which will meet this difficulty. The way to a valid conception is through the realization that capacities are always specific. "The capacities of a child, for example, are not simply of a child, not of a man, but of this child, not of any other."[105] Whatever else capacity may be, whether infinite or not, it must be an element in an actual situation. As specific things, moreover, capacities reside in activities, which are now going on. The capacity of a child to become a musician consists in this fact: "Even now he has a certain quickness, vividness, and plasticity of vision, a certain deftness of hand, and a certain motor coördination by which his hand is stimulated to work in harmony with his eye."[106]

How do these specific, actual activities come to be called capacities? There is a peculiar psychological reason for this which James has pointed out, in his statement that essence "is that which is so important for my interests that, comparatively, other properties may be omitted."[107] When we pay attention to any activity, there is a natural tendency to select only that portion of it that is of immediate interest, and to exclude the rest as irrelevant. "In the act of vision, for example," Dewey tells us, "the thing that seems nearest us, that which claims continuously our attention, is the eye itself. We thus come to abstract the eye from all special acts of seeing; we make the eye the essential thing in sight, and conceive of the circumstances of vision as indeed circumstances; as more or less accidental concomitants of the permanent eye."[108] There is no eye in general; the eye is always given along with other circumstances which in their totality make up a concrete seeing situation. Nevertheless, we abstract the eye from other circumstances and set it up as the essence of seeing. But we cannot retain the eye in absolute abstraction, because the concrete circumstances of vision force themselves upon the attention. So we lump these together on the other side as a new object, and take as their essence the vibrations of ether. "The eye now becomes the capacity of seeing; the vibrations of ether, conditions required for the exercise of the capacity."[109] We keep the two abstractions, but try to restore the unity of the situation through taking one as capacity and the other as the condition of the exercise of capacity.

But we cannot stop even with this double abstraction. "The eye in general and the vibrations in general do not, even in their unity, constitute the act of vision. A multitude of other factors are included."[110] Preserving the original 'core' as capacity, we tend to treat all the attendant circumstances which occur frequently enough to require taking account of, as conditions which help realize the abstracted reality called capacity.

The discussion here is very much like that in "The Superstition of Necessity" (published in the same year), which was reviewed in the last chapter. Dewey calls attention to this connection in a foot-note, remarking that he has already developed at greater length "the idea that necessity and possibility are simply the two correlative abstractions into which the one reality falls apart during the process of our conscious apprehension of it."[111] The danger, Dewey says, is that the merely relative character of a given capacity may be overlooked, and that it may be ontologized into a fixed entity. This is the error, he thinks, into which Green fell. The ideal self, as that which capacity may realize, is ontologized into an already existent fact. Then we get a separation between the present self, as capacity, and the ideal self which is to be realized. The self already realized is opposed to the self as yet ideal. "This 'realized self' is no reality by itself; it is simply our partial conception of the self erected into an entity. Recognizing its incomplete character, we bring in what we have left out and call it the 'ideal self.' Then by way of dealing with the fact that we have not two selves here at all, but simply a less and a more adequate insight into the same self, we insert the idea of one of these selves realizing the other."[112] It is in this manner that error arises.

But what is the correct attitude toward the self? First of all, the self must be conceived as "a working, practical self, carrying within the rhythm of its own process both 'realized' and 'ideal' self. The current ethics of the self ... are too apt to stop with a metaphysical definition, which seems to solve problems in general, but at the expense of the practical problems which alone really demand or admit solution."[113] The first point of the argument is that the self activity is individual, concrete, and specific, here and now, and the second point is that if the self is to be talked of in an intelligent way it must be taken as something empirically given. "The whole point is expressed when we say that no possible future activities or conditions have anything to do with the present action except as they enable us to take deeper account of the present activity, to get beyond the mere superficies of the act, to see it in its totality."[114] The phrase, 'realize yourself,' is a direction for knowledge; it means, see the wider consequences of your act, realize its wider bearings.

Dewey says: "The fixed ideal is as distinctly the bane of ethical science today as the fixed universe of mediævalism was the bane of the natural science of the Renascence."[115] This is a strong statement, which indicates how wide was the gulf which now separated Dewey from Green, whom he formerly acknowledged as his master.

Dewey's interpretation of Green's ideal self is far from satisfactory, largely because of its lack of insight and appreciation. The reduction of thought to a 'form of activity' renders a purely theoretical inquiry impossible. The 'present activity,' the biological situation, becomes the measure of all things, even of thought. Ideals, in his own words, have nothing to do with present action, "except as they enable us to take deeper account of the present activity." Dewey's self and Green's are incommensurable. The former is the biological organism, with a capacity for indirect activity called thinking; the latter is a not-natural being, whose reality escapes the logic of descriptive science, because of the fulness of its content. Dewey's failure to understand this difference is significant. His acquaintance with Green seems to have been formal from the beginning, never intimate, and the articles just reviewed mark the end of Dewey's idealistic discipleship. His psychological idealism, in fact, was fundamentally antithetical to the Neo-Hegelianism which he had sought to espouse, and the development of his own standpoint brought out the vital differences which had been hidden from his earlier understanding. The idealism which seeks to view reality together and as a whole is forever incompatible with a method which seeks to interpret the whole in terms of one of its parts.

FOOTNOTES:

[75] Vol. I, pp. 186-203.

[76] Ibid., p. 186.

[77] Ibid.

[78] Op. cit., p. 187.

[79] Ibid., p. 188.

[80] Ibid.

[81] Ibid., p. 191 f.

[82] Op. cit., p. 189.

[83] Ibid., p. 194. Author's Italics.

[84] Ibid.

[85] Op. cit., p. 195.

[86] Ibid., p. 198.

[87] Op. cit.

[88] Ibid., p. 202.

[89] Ibid., p. 203.

[90] Philosophical Review, Vol. I, 1892, pp. 593-612.

[91] Op. cit., p. 596.

[92] Ibid., p. 597.

[93] History of Philosophy, p. 555.

[94] Philosophical Review, Vol. I, 1892, p. 598.

[95] Ibid.

[96] Ibid., p. 599.

[97] Ibid. Compare with the passage in "Psychology as Philosophic Method," Mind, Vol. XI, p. 9.

[98] Op. cit., p. 600.

[99] Ibid., p. 601.

[100] Ibid., p. 602.

[101] Prolegomena to Ethics, third ed., p. 103.

[102] Ibid., p. 104.

[103] Vol. II, pp. 652-664.

[104] Ibid., p. 653.

[105] Ibid., p. 655.

[106] Op. cit., p. 656.

[107] Ibid., p. 657.

[108] Ibid.

[109] Ibid., p. 658. Author's italics.

[110] Ibid.

[111] Op. cit., note.

[112] Ibid., p. 663.

[113] Ibid.

[114] Op. cit., p. 659.

[115] Ibid., p. 664.

CHAPTER IV FUNCTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

It now becomes necessary to review that period of Dewey's philosophical career which is marked by the definite abandonment of the idealistic standpoint, and the adoption of the method of instrumental pragmatism. It has already been seen that there is a close connection between the "functionalism" which now begins to appear, and the "Psychological Standpoint" set forth in the preceding pages of this review. It is not possible, however, to account for all the elements which contribute to this development. Dewey was active in many fields and received suggestions from many sources. It seems best, in dealing with this period, to "follow the lead of the subject-matter" and avoid a priori speculation on the factors which determined the precise form of Dewey's mature standpoint in philosophy.

Dewey had always kept in mind the idea that the synthetic activity whereby self-consciousness evolves the ideality of the world must operate through the human organism. He had frequently referred to Green's saying that the Eternal Self-Consciousness reproduces itself in man, and to similar notions in Caird and Kant; but he had never considered, in a detailed way, how the organism might serve as the vehicle for such a process. His ethical theory, with its analysis of individuality into capacity and environment, tended to bring the body-world relationship into the foreground, and the idea that theory is relative to action tended to emphasize still more the relation of thought to the bodily processes. Dewey finally discovers the basis upon which the synthetic activity of the self, the thought process, may be described empirically and concretely. Organism-in-relation-to-environment becomes the key-stone of his theory of knowledge. Thought is interpreted as a function of the organism, biologically considered, and the biological psychology which results from this mode of interpretation is commonly known as 'functional psychology.'

The functional psychology is presented in a series of articles in the Philosophical Review and the Psychological Review, published between 1894 and 1898. The most important of these is "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," published in the Psychological Review in 1896.[116] Since it is the only article in the series which gives a complete view of the theory, it will be made the basis for the discussion of the functional theory of psychology.

The reflex arc concept in psychology, Dewey says, recognizes that the sensory-motor arc is to be taken as the unit of nerve structure, and the type of nerve function. But psychologists do not avail themselves of the full value of this conception, because they still retain in connection with it certain distinctions which were used in the older psychology. "The older dualism between sensation and idea is repeated in the current dualism of peripheral and central structures and functions; the older dualism of body and soul finds a distinct echo in the current dualism of stimulus and response."[117] These rigid distinctions must be set aside, and the separated elements must be viewed as elements in one sensory-motor coördination. Each is to be defined, not as something existing by itself, but as an element functioning in a concrete whole of activity. Thus, if we are to study vision, we must first take vision as a sensory-motor coördination, the act of seeing, and within the whole we may then be able to distinguish certain elements, sensations, or movements, and define them according to their function in the total act of seeing. The reflex arc idea, as commonly employed, takes sensation as stimulus, and movement as response, as if they were actually separate existences, apart from a coördination. Response is said to follow sensation, but it is forgotten that the sensation which preceded was correlated with a response, and that the response which follows is also correlated with sensation. Sound, for instance, is not a mere sensation in itself, apart from sensory-motor coördination. Hearing is an act, and while sound may, for purposes of study, be abstracted from the total, it is not, in itself, independent of the total act of hearing.

"But, in spite of all this, it will be urged, there is a distinction between stimulus and response, between sensation and motion. Precisely; but we ought now to be in a condition to ask of what nature is the distinction, instead of taking it for granted as a distinction somehow lying in the existence of the facts themselves."[118] The distinction which is to be made between them must be made on a teleological basis. "The fact is that stimulus and response are not distinctions of existence, but teleological distinctions, that is, distinctions of function, or part played, with reference to reaching or maintaining an end."[119] There are two kinds of teleological distinction that can be made between stimulus and response, or rather, the teleological interpretation has two phases.

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.

A discussion of the period now under consideration would not be complete without reference to certain articles which supplement the essay discussed above. The first of these is an article on "The Psychology of Effort," published in the Philosophical Review in 1897.[123]

It is not proposed to follow the argument of this article in detail, but to center attention upon those parts of it, especially the concluding pages, which have a special interest in connection with the subject under discussion. Dewey returns, in this article, to the situation of effort at adjustment; to the situation in which an effort is made to determine the proper response to a stimulus. The opening pages are devoted, in the first place, to a discussion of the distinction between conscious effort and the mere expenditure of energy or effort as it appears to an outsider, and, in the second place, to maintaining, by means of examples, the proposition that the sense of effort is sensationally mediated. "How then does, say, a case of perception with effort differ from a case of 'easy' or effortless perception? The difference, I repeat, shall be wholly in sensory quale; but in what sensory quale?"[124]

The conscious sense of effort arises, Dewey answers, when there is a rivalry or conflict between two sensational elements in experience. "In the case of felt effort, certain sensory quales, usually fused, fall apart in consciousness, and there is an alternation, an oscillation, between them, accompanied by a disagreeable tone when they are apart, and an agreeable tone when they become fused again."[125] These two sets of sensory elements have each a significance in terms of adjustment; one of them is a correlate of a habit, or fixed mode of response, and the other is an intruder which resists absorption into, or fusion with, the dominant images of the current habit or purpose. The same idea of a natural tendency to persist in a habitual mode of regarding things was met with in the last two chapters, and is qualified here by the addition of the idea that each sensory element represents a typical mode of response on the part of the organism. Dewey illustrates his notion by the case of learning to ride a bicycle. "Before one mounts one has perhaps a pretty definite visual image of himself in balance and in motion. This image persists as a desirability. On the other hand, there comes into play at once the consciousness of the familiar motor adjustments,—for the most part, related to walking. The two sets of sensations refuse to coincide, and the result is an amount of stress and strain relevant to the most serious problems of the universe."[126] In another passage, which brings out even more clearly the rivalry of the two sets of sensations, he says: "It means that the activity already going on (and, therefore, reporting itself sensationally) resists displacement, or transformation, by or into another activity which is beginning, and thus making its sensational report."[127]

The sense of effort, then, reduces itself to an awareness of conflict between two sensational elements and their motor correlates. "Practically stated, this means that effort is nothing more, and also nothing less, than tension between means and ends in action, and that the sense of effort is the awareness of this conflict."[128]

The important aspect of Dewey's argument, for the present discussion, is that awareness reduces to these sensational elements and their attributes. Throughout the article Dewey is opposing his sensational view of the sense of effort to what he calls the 'spiritual' or non-sensational view, which supposes that the sense of effort is something purely psychical, which accompanies the expenditure of physical energy. The consciousness of effort, Dewey says, is not something added to the effort, but is itself a certain condition existing in the sensory quales.

This provision would make it necessary to identify consciousness, and, therefore, conscious inference, with the tensional situation which has been described. This being granted, all that pertains to conscious inference, all the methods and categories of science, would be applicable only in such situations of stress and strain; they would appear simply as instruments for effecting a readjustment; they would be employed exclusively in the interests of action. This is the direction in which Dewey is tending. No criticism of this treatment of judgment need be made at this time, beyond pointing out that it presents itself, at first sight, as an awkward and indirect mode of describing the relations between organic activity and intelligence, and between psychology and logic.

Nothing has so far been said of the historical sources of Dewey's theory, and these may be briefly considered. There are at least two sources which must be taken into account: the James-Lange theory of the emotions, and the Neo-Hegelian ethical theory. The latter has already been considered to some extent, as it manifests itself in Dewey's own ethical theory, but its relation to his psychology has not been indicated. In his text-book, the Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics (1891), Dewey advanced certain ideas for which he claimed originality, at least in treatment. Among these was the analysis of individuality into function including capacity and environment.[129]

Bradley appears to have been the first among English philosophers to introduce that synthesis of the internal and external, of the intuitional and utilitarian modes of judging conduct, which became characteristic of Neo-Hegelian ethics. The synthesis, of course, is Hegelian in temper, and the Ethical Studies are much more suggestive, in general method, of the Philosophie des Rechts than of any previous English work. Utilitarianism tended to judge the moral act by its external, de facto results; intuitionism, on the contrary, attributed morality to the will of the agent. The former found morality to consist in a certain state of affairs, the latter in a certain internal attitude. According to the synthetic point of view, these opposed ethical systems are one-sided representations of the moral situation, each being true in its own way. To state the matter in another form, the moral act has a content as well as a purpose. "Let us explain," says Bradley. "The moral world, as we said, is a whole, and has two sides. There is an outer side, systems and institutions, from the family to the nation; this we may call the body of the moral world. And there must also be a soul, or else the body goes to pieces; every one knows that institutions without the spirit of them are dead.... We must never let this out of our sight, that, where the moral world exists, you have and you must have these two sides."[130] Dewey expresses the same idea in a more detailed fashion. "What do we mean by individuality? We may distinguish two factors—or better two aspects, two sides—in individuality. On one side it means special disposition, temperament, gifts, bent, or inclination; on the other side it means special station, situation, limitations, surroundings, opportunities, etc. Or, let us say, it means specific capacity and specific environment. Each of these elements apart from the other, is a bare abstraction, and without reality. Nor is it strictly correct to say that individuality is contributed by these two factors together. It is, rather, as intimated above, that each is individuality looked at from a certain point of view, from within and from without."[131] It is a fact, empirically demonstrable, according to Dewey, that body and object, intention and foreseen consequence, interest and environment, attitude and objectivity, are parts of one another and of the whole moral situation. Each is relative to the other. "It is not, then, the environment as physical of which we are speaking, but as it appears to consciousness, as it is affected by the make-up of the agent. This is the practical or moral environment."[132] When this relation of the inner to the outer is taken literally and universally, we have the essence of the functional psychology. Organism-in-relation-to-environment becomes the catch-word of instrumental pragmatism.

The other source of Dewey's psychology, which is now to be considered, is the James-Lange theory of the emotions. The connection here is more obvious, but perhaps not so vital, as in the case of the ethical theory. From the numerous references which Dewey made to James's Principles of Psychology (1890), it is evident that he was much impressed with this work. The theory of emotion there presented seems to have had a special interest for him; so much so that he made it the subject of two articles in the Psychological Review, in 1894 and 1895, under the general title, "The Theory of Emotion."[133] These studies bear a very close relation to the article on "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (1896), the standpoint being essentially the same, although developed in reference to a technical problem. Some indications may be given here of the relationships which they bear to the James-Lange theory on the one side, and functional psychology on the other. The James-Lange theory is itself concerned with order and connection between emotional states, perceptions, and responses. James says: "Our natural way of thinking about these coarser emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My theory, on the contrary, is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion."[134] It is all a question, James says, of the order and sequence of these elements, and his contention is that the bodily changes should be interposed between the two mental states. This is the question with which Dewey's functional psychology is also concerned, the relation of response to stimulus, and the manner in which a stimulus is determined by a reaction 'into it.' Dewey's theory rises so naturally out of James's theory of the emotions as to seem but little more than its universal application.

This connection is revealed in several passages in Dewey's study of the emotions. It is said, for instance, that the emotional situation must be taken as a whole, as a state, for instance, of 'being angry.' The several constituents of the state of anger, idea or object, affect or emotion, and mode of expression or behavior, are not to be taken separately, but all together as elements in one whole.[135] Another characteristic doctrine appears in the affirmation that the emotional attitude is to be distinguished from other attitudes by certain special features which it possesses. Particularly, it involves a special relation of stimulus to response.[136] Again, there is a tendency to translate meaning in terms of projected activity. "The consciousness of our mode of behavior as affording data for other possible actions constitutes an objective or ideal content."[137]

It is enough, perhaps, to reveal these two sources as probable factors in the development of Dewey's psychological method. No speculation upon them is necessary. At most, they were merely contributory to Dewey's thought, and by fitting in with his previous ideas enabled him to give a more concrete presentation of his psychological theory than would otherwise have been possible.

FOOTNOTES:

[116] Vol. III, pp. 357-370.

[117] Ibid., p. 357.

[118] Op. cit., p. 365.

[119] Ibid.

[120] Ibid., p. 366, note.

[121] Op. cit., p. 370.

[122] Ibid., p. 368.

[123] Vol. VI, pp. 43-56.

[124] Op. cit., p. 46.

[125] Ibid., p. 48.

[126] Op. cit., p. 50.

[127] Ibid., p. 52.

[128] Ibid., p. 51.

[129] Op. cit., p. viii.

[130] Ethical Studies, p. 160 f.

[131] Outlines of Ethics, p. 97.

[132] Ibid., p. 99.

[133] Vol. I, pp. 553-569; Vol. II, pp. 13-32.