John Dewey's logical theory Part 6

[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.

[134] _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II, p. 449.

[135] _Psy. Rev._, Vol. II, p. 15 f.

[136] _Ibid._, p. 24 f.

[137] _Ibid._, p. 24.

CHAPTER V

THE EVOLUTIONARY STANDPOINT

Dewey's psychology is linked up with his logical theory, as has already been suggested, through the interpretation of the thought-process as a mode of adjustment involving inference. This conception of thought implies, of course, that thought is an instrument of adaptation, and this in turn suggests that the organ of reflection is a product of evolutionary forces operating on the individual and on the race. In the period now to be reviewed Dewey, for the first time in his career, displays an active and intense interest in evolutionary theory, especially as applied in the fields of ethics and psychology.

An article published in the _Monist_, in 1898, on "Evolution and Ethics,"[138] deserves special attention. The central thought of the article is to be found in the following pa.s.sage: "The belief that natural selection has ceased to operate [in the human sphere] rests upon the a.s.sumption that there is only one form of such selection: that where improvement is indirectly effected by the failure of species of a certain type to continue to reproduce; carrying with it as its correlative that certain variations continue to multiply, and finally come to possess the land. This ordeal by death is an extremely important phase of natural selection, so called.... However, to identify this procedure absolutely with selection, seems to me to indicate a somewhat gross and narrow vision. Not only is one form of life as a whole selected at the expense of other forms, _but one mode of action in the same individual is constantly selected at the expense of others_. There is not only the trial by death, but there is the trial by the success or failure of special acts--the counterpart, I suppose, of physiological selection so called."[139] We have here a refinement upon the doctrine of natural selection. The keynote of Dewey's new psychology is a process of selection constantly occurring within the individual organism. He points out that, in dealing with man, we have a highly adaptable, not merely a highly adapted animal. "It is certainly implied in the idea of natural selection that the most effective modes of variation should themselves be finally selected."[140] The capacity to vary, or adapt, is highly developed in man. Through these variations, the organism is able to react against the environment, changing its character quite completely. The environment of the modern human is tremendously complicated by his reaction upon it. "The growth of science, its application in invention to industrial life, the multiplication and acceleration of means of transportation and intercommunication, have created a peculiarly unstable environment."[141] Under these conditions, the ability of the individual to adapt himself to changing circ.u.mstances is largely determined by his degree of flexibility in the selection of right acts and responses. "In the present environment, flexibility of function, the enlargement of the range of uses to which one and the same organ, grossly considered, may be put, is a great, almost the supreme, condition of success."[142] The human mind is to be interpreted as a highly developed organ whose special function is to make adaptation more flexible and response more varied and discriminating. "That which was 'tendency to vary' in the animal is conscious foresight in man. That which was unconscious adaptation and survival in the animal, taking place by the 'cut and try'

method until it worked itself out, is with man conscious deliberation and experimentation."[143]

This view of consciousness is worked out on the basis of an evolutionary metaphysics. Man is viewed as an organism, placed amid the changing whirl of things, stimulated into action by his needs and wants, adapting himself to conditions, making the situation over, or meeting it habitually where he can and suffering the consequences where he cannot make the necessary adjustment. If this be taken, as would seem, for the ultimate truth about reality and man's place in it, it must be called a metaphysics. Against this background Dewey's logical theory is developed. The most important result, from the standpoint of the student of mind and spirit, is the reduction of self-conscious reflection to the position of a nervous function of the organism. The purely theoretical evidence by which this position is sustained should be subjected to closer scrutiny than can be undertaken in this limited s.p.a.ce.

The purpose of reflection, then, is to enable man to adapt himself to his environment, understanding by the environment the whole of the reality which surrounds him. The test of the mind and its newly projected modes of response [ideas] lies in its ability to meet the demands of the situation. The capacities and limits of mind are determined by the purpose for which it was evolved; it can enable a man to deal more effectively with his environment; it can do nothing else.

It cannot speculate on the nature of reality as such, nor voyage on long journeys in search of truth! Its business is practical, here and now.

Its problems are always set for it by circ.u.mstances, and these circ.u.mstances are concrete and specific. There is no such thing as adaptation at large or in general.

The business of mind is to have, and to continually reconstruct, useful habits. So Dewey a.s.sures the American Psychological a.s.sociation in 1899, in an address on "Psychology and Social Practice."[144] We must recognize, he says, "that the existing order is determined neither by fate nor by chance, but is based on law and order, on a system of existing stimuli and modes of reaction, through knowledge of which we can modify the practical outcome."[145] Psychology uninterpreted, he says, will never provide ready-made materials and prescriptions for the ethical life. "But science, both physical and psychological, makes known the conditions upon which certain results depend, and therefore puts at the disposal of life a certain method of controlling them."[146] These statements show the extent to which Dewey's view of knowledge has come to be controlled by biological conceptions.

The evolutionary method is investigated in considerable detail in the next article to be considered, which was published in two parts in the _Philosophical Review_, 1902, under the t.i.tle, "The Evolutionary Method as Applied to Morality."[147]

The fact that some philosophers deny the importance of the evolutionary method for ethics, holding that morality is purely a matter of value, and that the evolutionary method tends only to obscure differences of value, makes it necessary to inquire into the import and nature of this method. "Anyway," Dewey says, "before we either abuse or recommend genetic method we ought to have some answers to these questions: Just what is it? Just what is to come of it and how?"[148]

The experimental method in science has at least some of the traits of a genetic method. The nature of water, for instance, cannot be determined by simply observing it. But experiment brings to light the exact conditions under which it came into being and therefore explains it.

"Through generating water we single out the precise and sole conditions which have to be fulfilled that water may present itself as an experienced fact. If this case be typical, then the experimental method is ent.i.tled to rank as genetic method; it is concerned with the manner or process by which anything comes into experienced existence."[149]

Some would deny this, on the ground that a genuinely historical event occupies a particular place in a historical series, from which it is inseparable, while in experimental science the sets or pairs of terms are not limited to any particular place in a historical series, but occur and recur. "Water is made over and over again, and, so to speak, at any date in the cosmic series. This deprives any account of it of genuinely historic quality."[150] Again, it might be said in opposition to treating the experimental method as a genetic method, that it is interested in individual cases not as such, but as samples or instances.

The particular case is only an ill.u.s.tration of the general relation which is being sought.

It will turn out in the course of the discussion, Dewey says, that, although science deals with origins, it is not, in strictness, a historical discipline. The distinction between the historical and other sciences is based on an abstraction, which has been introduced for the sake of more adequate control. It is only by abstraction that we get the pairs of facts that may show up at any time, and by abstraction we attribute to them a generalized character. The facts, in themselves, are historic.

There is no such thing as water in general, but water is just this water, at this time, in this place, and it never shows itself twice, never recurs. The scientist must deal, therefore, with particular historic cases of water, and with their specific origins. "Experiment has to do with the conditions of production of a specific amount of water, at a specific time and place, under specific circ.u.mstances: in a word, it must deal with just _this_ water. The conditions which define its origin must be stated with equal definiteness and circ.u.mstantiality."[151] The instance has as definite a place in an historical series as has Julius Caesar. But the difference in treatment of the water and Caesar is due to the difference in interest. "Julius Caesar served a purpose which no other individual, at any other time, could have served. There is a peculiar flavor of human meaning and accomplishment about him which has no subst.i.tute or equivalent. Not so with water. While each portion is absolutely unique in its occurrence, yet one lot will serve our intellectual or practical needs just as well as any other."[152] For this reason the specific case of water is not dealt with on its own account, but only as giving insight into the processes of its generation in general. In this way the difference arises between the generalized statements of physical science and the individualized form demanded in historical science. The abstract character of the physical result is recognized by the hypothetical form of judgment in modern logic; if certain conditions, then certain consequences. But the counterpart of this must not be forgotten, that every categorical proposition applies to an individual. Experimental propositions, therefore, have an historical value. "They take their rise in, and they find their application to, a world of unique and changing things: an evolutionary universe."[153] The recognition of the historical character of experimental science does not in any way derogate from its value, but, properly understood, gives a deeper insight into its significance. It should be observed that here also Dewey treats thought, hypothesis, as coming 'after something, and for the sake of something.'

This attempt to justify the historical method by showing that it is implied in physical experiment is of dubious value. Its net result would seem to be the conclusion that every fact may be dealt with either as a historical fact or as a datum for physical science. Even here, however, Dewey slurs over certain difficulties which demand close scrutiny. The treatment of individuality is most unsatisfactory. While each portion or instance of water is itself, and has its own unquestionable uniqueness, no case is a mere particular, but each is a true individual, which means that it is, as it occurs, an instance of a general phenomenon. While the scientist must deal with specific cases of water, he has no regard for their particularity, but chooses them as instances, and is from first to last occupied with their typical characteristics. The historian, also, selects relevant and representative instances, in so far as his history is interpretative and not mere narrative.

A merely factual account of a series of events is not science, and never could be.

Dewey now turns to the ethical field, with the purpose of showing that the historical method in ethics does for this science precisely what the experimental method does for other sciences. "History offers to us the only available subst.i.tute for the isolation and for the c.u.mulative recombination of experiment. The early periods present us in their relative crudeness and simplicity with a subst.i.tute for the artificial operation of an experiment: following the phenomenon into the more complicated and refined form which it a.s.sumes later, is a subst.i.tute for the synthesis of the experiment."[154] Hydrogen and oxygen are the historical antecedents of water, whose synthesis the scientist observes, and so the more primitive forms of conduct are the elements which the moralist traces in their process of becoming fused into the present social fabric. Primitive social practices cannot be artificially isolated, like the physical elements, but they can be traced to their historical origins, and their interweaving towards present complex conditions can be observed.

The historical method is subject to two misunderstandings, Dewey says, one by the empiricists and materialists, the other by the idealists. The former, having isolated the primitive facts, suppose them to have a superior logical and existential value. "The earlier is regarded as somehow more 'real' than the later, or as furnishing the quality in terms of which the reality of all the later must be stated."[155] The later is looked upon as simply a recombination of the earlier existences. "Writers who ought to know better tell us that if we only had an adequate knowledge of the 'primitive' state of the world, if we only had some general formula by which to circ.u.mscribe it, we could deduce down to its last detail the entire existing const.i.tution of the world, life, and society."[156] The primitive elements, however, take on new qualities on entering into new combinations. Water is more than hydrogen and oxygen. There is a similar process intervening between the earlier and the later in the moral field, of which the primitive state and the present are merely end terms. Actual study must take account of the whole process.

The idealistic fallacy is of the opposite nature. It takes the final term of the process to be exclusively real. "The later reality is, therefore, to him the persistent reality in contrast with which the first forms are, if not illusions, at least poor excuses for being....

It is enough for present purposes to note that we have here simply a particular case of the general fallacy just discussed--the emphasis of a particular term of the series at the expense of the process operative in reference to all terms."[157] The true reality is the whole process, which is represented in empiricism only by the primitive terms, and in idealism only by the end terms. Only a historical method can deal with it in its entirety.

In summing up the advantages of the historical method, Dewey says that it gives a complete account of the origin and development of ethical ideas, opinions, beliefs, and practices. "It is concerned with the origin and development of these customs and ideas; and with the question of their mode of operation after they have arisen. The described facts--yes; but among the facts described is precisely certain conditions under which various norms, ideals, and rules of action have originated and functioned."[158] Dewey finds it irritating that the facts thus singled out should be treated as mere facts, apart from their significance. The historical method employs description, to be sure, but it also aims at interpretation. "The historic method is a method, first, for determining how specific moral values (whether in the way of customs, expectations, conceived ends, or rules) came to be; and second, for determining their significance as indicated in their career."[159]

It is true, as Dewey holds, that the historical method may furnish a basis for interpretation, as well as description. But the mere scrutiny of what has happened will not reveal the elements, nor determine their significance. The historian must approach his material with something more than his eyes. But there are many historical methods. Which shall be used in dealing with the development of morals?[160] Chemistry, for instance, in interpreting the fusion of hydrogen and oxygen into water, employs a system of atoms related to each other in a mathematical order, and something similarly definite must underlie the study of morals. The historical method, in general, needs no defence, but since it takes many forms, great care must be exercised in its application. Dewey seems to ignore these difficulties.

Dewey's argument now leads him to a comparison of the evolutionary methods with the intuitional and empirical methods in ethics. In making the comparison, he does not propose to raise the question of fact concerning the existence of intuitions. The question to be confronted is rather a logical one, concerning the validity of beliefs. "Under what conditions alone, and in what measure or degree, are we justified in arguing from the existence of moral intuitions as mental states and acts to facts taken to correspond to them?"[161]

The answer is that the existence of a belief argues nothing as to its validity. The intuitionist takes his belief as a brute fact, unrelated to objective conditions. The 'inexpugnable' character of the belief cannot establish its validity, because the life of a single individual occupies but a brief span in the continuity of the social life in which the belief is embedded. Beliefs last for generations, and then very often disappear. "What guarantee have we that our present 'intuitions'

have more validity than hundreds of past ideas that have shown themselves by pa.s.sing away to be empty opinion or indurated prejudice?"[162] Intuitionism has no way of guaranteeing its beliefs.