John Dewey's logical theory Part 5

[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 a.n.a.lysis 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 coordination. 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 coordination, 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 coordination. 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 coordination. 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 a.s.sumed 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 coordinations. Looking, for instance, is a sensory-motor coordination which is the stimulus or antecedent of another coordinated act, running away. The first coordination pa.s.ses into the second, and the second may be viewed as a modification or reconst.i.tution 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 coordinations, 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 coordination, some of whose members have come into conflict with each other. It is the temporary disintegration and need of reconst.i.tution 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 coordination, does not readily pa.s.s into its following coordination, 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 const.i.tute 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 coordination 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 coordination is disturbed by conflicting factors, and the separation of stimulus from response arises only as a means for bringing unity into the coordination. 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 fict.i.tious. 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 a.n.a.lyzed, 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 ill.u.s.trates 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 pa.s.sage, 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 att.i.tude. 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 inst.i.tutions 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, att.i.tude 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 t.i.tle, "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 coa.r.s.er 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 pa.s.sages 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 const.i.tuents 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 att.i.tude is to be distinguished from other att.i.tudes 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 const.i.tutes 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: