John Dewey's Pragmatism: Philosophy & Education Explained

[00:00:13]before we get to John Dewey let me just round out what we were saying about American pragmatism generally and William James in particular we were seeing some similarities between whiteheads process philosophy and James is a kind of pragmatism will find more still in John Dewey but similarities because of their rejection of Descartes and foundationalism because of their concern for the primacy of concrete experience rather than some artificial abstract view of what experience is such as you find in John Locke the organic model where individual events are all interrelated into one whole process those things in common I think between pragmatism and Whitehead the big difference between the two traditions is the methodological naturalism of the pragmatists begun by charles sanders pers remember the handout and his conception of the fixation of belief but pretty explicit as well in William James when he talks of pragmatism as a method of settling philosophical disputes how Oh essentially by checking the empirical consequences of a theory do they occur it's a validation by experimental confirmation of a hypothesis which is the notion of scientific method that pers had so James is bringing that into philosophy it means then that philosophy is going to be limited to what has significance for concrete experience for what has practical consequences and James had a book published a book under the title radical empiricism radical empiricism the point being that John Locke wasn't radical enough and in radical empiricism he operates you see with a pragmatic theory of meaning the only meaningful disputes those which have practical consequences pragmatic theory of meaning and so he refuses to discuss any issue related to sub stratum or substance mind substance matter substance so forth it's unrelated to experience makes no difference similarly he refuses to get into bait into debates over metaphysical monism versus metaphysical pluralism materialism versus idealism and you begin to wonder if the whole theoretical the whole range of theoretical issues in philosophy is being abandoned well it's this sort of thing that radical empiricism theory of meaning which I think underlay the comment I mentioned to you last time from one of my graduate professors introducing a seminar who said that his mind pragmatism and positive both amounted the same thing and both of them are dead-end streets because they both have a theory of meaning the pragmatic theory of meaning and then the positivist theory of meaning that we'll be seeing later which restrict what is mentally significant cognitively significant to what has certain kinds of empirical consequences of a verifiable sort you'll see and here in James it's radical pragmatism in the positivist it's what a are called the elimination of metaphysics you'll read Mayer's chapter by that title when we get into positivism so James then has has that note this tendency to look for empirical consequences to verify by empirical consequences comes out in an essay of his called the will to believe the will to believe which you're likely to read in philosophy of religion for instance what James is doing is responding to a piece by an earlier writer a wk Clifford a piece called the ethics of belief in which Clifford argued that if there is not a weight of evidence for one view rather than another a weight of argument then it's morally irresponsible to make a decision you withhold judgment there's the old evidential this line of John Locke you see you have to proportion your belief to the evidence and if there is no greater degree of evidence for one than another that's significant then withhold assent William James responded in his work on the will ee f-- that withholding assent isn't always possible there are some momentous options choices that are forced on us in the realities of life concrete experience you think so in the absence of that evidential is to demand how you're going to decide and his point is that you ask yourself in terms of the consequences of the two beliefs for concrete experience which for James with this psychological background means for your psychological well-being so that if one belief promises more for you psychologically than the other then that is sufficient grounds for exercising the will to believe you'll see the voluntary ascent that has stood that sa has stood as one of the classic repudiation zuv the evidential ystem and of John Locke you think the other is I think the thing coming out of the Scottish realist influence on contemporaries of ours like Alvin Plantinga who says to the evidential ystem and I don't see any reason to believe that in other words where's the evidence for the evidential is demand nothing because he's trying to say there are certain beliefs which come so naturally spontaneously we really have no choice about withholding police so William James in in that piece you see it at sea his method at work he has another essay in which he talks of tough and tender minded philosophers psychological differences you'll see so that if they pay off the cash value for concrete experience psychological and so he thinks that tough-minded philosophers will believe some things they'll die in de empiricism so on and so forth determinism so forth tender minded philosophers are believed other things the more whole personal context of belief now while that sounds as if it's pretty relativistic is it the fact is if you're looking at the psychology of belief the nature of a personality does affect it you know I wonder if cards massive critique that some of you have fallen in love with could ever have been written by California hippie you see that was the work of a Prussian bachelor whose life was so organized that the neighbors set their clocks by when he walked down the street who is universally and the laid-back California lifestyle would hardly produce that sort of work well those of you who take the cart seminar next year with my friend Stu Hackett will see similarities between his type of psychological makeup and a critique and Furies I mean dear Stu he's so organized utterly meticulously when he went to India to study Hindu philosophy some years ago he always had a nervous breakdown because they were so disorganized the relationship between psychology and personality is a fascinating thing and of course if you want to overcome that psychological dependence obviously you need some you know more Universal points of reference you want to know what is generic human nature you'll see rather than what is this particular type keep in mind that the the opposite of relative is universal and there are many many factors that influence what a person believes and things some of the Meridian syncretic different personality types a Sun a cultural some are generically human is he and to get beyond the relative to the universal you have to get the generically human and what comports what comes naturally for the generically you which I take it is the sort of thing that Agustin was doing when he says about the heart being restless until and see he thinks that generically here well we'll find similarities between that sort of thing and existentialism some sorts of existentialism as well the primacy of the practical you see involves human subjectivity the whole person our inwardness as well as the consideration of objective factors and in James particularly that's element well maybe that's enough about James to to illustrate at what he's doing any any comments or are we ready for the big D Dewey okay Joey sounds fairly recent when I say he was born in 1859 and died in 1952 I think he's the first one at home with compassed mid-century 1952 Dewey is representative not only of pragmatism which is basically a method method of dealing with philosophical and other questions but he's are also representative of what I can what I like to call evolutionary naturalism and that is to say he's a philosophical naturalist everything is explicable in terms of physical processes the kind of naturalism he espouses is very much informed by Darwin's theory of natural selection this evolutionary naturalism of his is a step from the evolutionary idealism in which he began philosophically evolutionary idealism with the notion of historical process unfolding to war more complex forms of life physical social cultural to more and more concrete experience now in in this sigh volution Airy naturalism of his you you find these three key concepts which I think will help you to see very quickly what he's doing in the various topics he tackles in his philosophical writings and of course he tackles pretty well all of these just in reconstruction the book you're reading his concept of experience first of all is much closer to the concept you find in Whitehead and James than it is to the concept of experience in John Locke so wide head James Dewey there are three of a kind to a certain extent experience includes affective experience the psychological emotional well that was the case with Whitehead and James but it also includes social and cultural experience and as you read his book you perhaps wonder to yourself if he is an influence by riders in the sociology of knowledge because he's talking about all of the social and cultural influences in the shaping of philosophy in fact if Whitehead is talking about the influence of Natural Science on philosophy Dewey is talking about the influence of social change on philosophy you think and whichever one you think of notice how vastly different that is from Descartes stove he did room in which there are no influences from outside yes he the stove heated room becomes symbolic of so much the isolated individual and the privacy of his own mind shutting out every external influence historical or anything else you think such an abstraction from life well concrete experience then is a very very broad sort of thing he speaks of a fluid experience fluid experience and as if it's a constant flowing process of which you're hardly conscious it's so fluid remember at the time I first read Dewey and came across the notion of fluid experience I had a 46 Dodge which had what was then called fluid drive what was fluid drive well I'm not quite sure but it was some I think a step towards automatic transmission because the the change was so much smoother that you were hardly conscious of changing though you still changed it manually a fluid drive you're hardly conscious of going from one move moment or one situation to another the one flows into the other fluid drive fluid experience for doing but fluid experience which is really just a product of habit obituary havior z-- habitual responses is interrupted by what Dewey calls problems situations problems situation and it's only problems situations which stir thought you see the role of intelligence of intellect is in the resolution of problem situations otherwise you go along habitually without thinking you know do you think about what you're doing when you drive or you do do just really think about what to do when you get into a problem situation I remember driving in Seattle and if you've ever driven in Seattle you know there are some very steep hills with stop signs at the top it's almost as bad as driving in some parts of San Francisco you know you've seen the pictures of the hill that goes round and round and round yeah well they have ones that go up straight with stop signs at the top now how do you you know normally behave that way if you grow up driving in flat peak country around here problems that you ancient you think of several alternatives and then do what I've done on such occasions from time to time pull on the emergency brake and then push in the clutch and change gear and gradually release the emergency brake hoping that you apply enough gas to get it over the top you know well the point is that fluid experience is interrupted by problem situations which demand thought you come up with ideas I know it out there hey let's try that and so it's experimental thinking you think experimenting with ideas in order to resolve problems now if you love looking for dialectical situations a problem situation is a dialectical situation there's a thesis and antithesis and a synthesis the C thesis is the fluid experience that is interrupted by the antithesis in a problem situation some threatening situation thesis antithesis and what you're looking for in coming up with the right idea is a synthesis which will enable you to embrace the thesis of the antithesis and move on to the next the synthesis becomes the thesis for the next so the the dialectic in says right there well intelligence then as problem solving in the course of habitual experience which leads to his functionalist psychology the functionalist psychology is in simple terms the theory that all of our mental processes psychological processes simply functions of bodily need functions of biological need so our desires biologically based functions than organism that's trying to adjust to and to its environment trying to respond to something in the environment desire reason is a function of the organism that has developed reflecting on how to adjust to environment and sometimes that reason is involved in modifying desires in the light of what you find out about the problems that you wish you don't need to worry it's going to be all right look and look and look and look at that and growth is not a steady movement towards a fixed goal but an ongoing evolutionary process in which various experiences are being incorporated into the ongoing experience which is the self functionalist psychology and you can look at something of that and pages or 83 to 86 for instance pages 5 & 6 early on where he insists that we're creatures of desire rather than of intellect basically functionalist psychology okay and that is where you begin to see underlying all of this the concept of experience and the psychology his theory of natural selection you'll find in chapter 3 he explicitly rejects any fixity of species because he recognizes that the traditional view of fixity of species is simply an extension of Aristotle's fixed forms fixed essences yeah I I think frankly he's right that fixity of species is simply a continuation of an Aristotelian tradition he rejects any real Universal sending rejecting real universals he rejects intrinsic final causes of a fixed sort tell us there are no fixed ends to pursue in ethics or anything else there are no fixed laws of thought how we think is simply a tool for adjustment in a changing world and the laws of thought of simply arisen as tools that have proved successful and that adjustment so his point is then that philosophy is not pure theory it arises in a practical context it feeds back into a practical context concrete experiences its entire matrix not Theory for theories sake well those three concepts I think sum up what you can call if you like the theoretical core of do is think have to be careful how you say theoretical with doing but the theoretical core is thinking this is the grand hypothesis which generates lesser hypotheses in regards to mr. Balaji philosophy of mind and cetera etcetera for which he thinks there is experimental confirmation applications all right run through those and we can rather quickly I already said that he he talks of experimental thinking and I don't need to say why again it's simply the application of scientific method to everything and so he he talks of naturalizing whoops nature Isaac naturalizing epistemology in fact to this day that you have come across books and philosophical articles about naturalised epistemology and the idea of naturalized epistemology really begins with doing music he wants an epistemology which rather than prescribing how we should know instead of a prescriptive epistemology he wants one which describes the nature of inquiry if you like in its natural environment which is the practical demands of concrete experience naturalized epistemology which means that the pistil mala G is going to be descriptive of the way in which inquiry operates according to the theory of natural selection so the evolutionary thing in informs what he's doing accordingly he embraces the operational list view of scientific concepts very explicitly in 1925 percy Bridgman the Harvard physicist had published a book called the logic of physics in which he had developed the operational list view which I think had been hinted at by others before but it was Bridgman who developed it systematically and do we adopt it operational ISM is simply the view that the meaning of a theoretical concept in science has to do with what is empirically observable when you perform certain operations it's an operational meaning an operational definition operational definition yeah we find all the time in talking about how to how we should go about things people will come up with theories with proposals educational theories curricular ideas and the question is how do you operationalize it the same is true with political policy a candidate might come forth with some wonderful idea and then somebody asks now how you're going to operationalize this now you see it work here is the pragmatic theory of meaning William James because if you want to know what theoretical concept means you ask what are its practical consequences what happens when you operationalize it so operational ISM is simply an application of the pragmatic theory of meaning to philosophy of science the example that that I like is from mineralogy where Mohs hardness scale that is to say the talking about the hardness of minerals the concept of hardness Mohs hardness scale supposedly tells you about the hardness of minerals at least the relative hardness one mineral in comparison with another that's all it does tell you why because in that operation of using Mohs hardness scale what you do is to rub two minerals against each other and the one which leaves a mark is by definition harder than the one which is marked so what is hardness relative stretchability that's an operational definition of hardness it's not telling you a hardness does no take it back it's not telling you what hardness is nothing at all about the essence of hardness it's about what hardness does when you perform a certain operation as so operational ISM then in philosophy of science and this obviously is akin to the instrumentalist view of science instrumentalism is the view that science isn't telling us about the nature of reality it's simply giving us useful knowledge that we can use for further enquiry or for developing applications of science now you ask science majors why they go into science why they're going to have scientific careers you'll find an awful lot of them will say well because of what I can do with it if you're not just learning a living but doing medicine doing engineering doing environmental work and so forth the applied science now instrumentalism is saying that this is really what science is about you see scientific theories shouldn't be taken to tell us about the nature of reality scientific theories are simply useful instruments for what we call Applied Sciences now you're getting there under the question of what's the relationship between theory and practice theory and practice the way some people talk about a liberal arts education you would think that education was a purely instrumental value not concerned with the real essence of things what it is to be human what's the nature of reality so instrumentalism is regarded as a version of anti realism in science as a scientific realism is the view that science tells us about reality scientific anti-realism is the view that science does not tell us about reality and dewey is one of the main contributors to scientific anti-realism in that sense but notice his reasons for that knowledge is a function of a biological organism adjusting to environment in adjusting to an environment - opposes problem you don't need to know about the efference of reality you don't need an excessive bundle of theory all you need is some ideas about how to resolve the problem and so rather than talking about traditional formal logic he speaks of experimental logic the logic of experimental thinking he has a book entitled logic which has no syllogisms in it logic is about experimental thinking you see he has a little book very pot level how we think which really says how we think at this pop way this problem-solving like alright you're driving along the highway problems situation there's a farm wagon pulling out of a side road ahead of you on the road what are you going to do ideas flash through your mind break number 1 swerve number 2 10 off the road or llegará number 3 throw up your hands and hope the airbag opens before you know now in normal behavior no sooner to those ideas come into your mind then one of them looms large is the thing you're going to do why you draw on funded experience yeah you have a whole fund of experience from having driven for a while you see from past episodes you extrapolate to this one so what you do is to gem on the brake and swerve and get off the highway all at once now maybe some situations where you really have to experiment with the ideas and he tells of a case where somebody is going for a job interview the path leads through a wooded area across a bridge over a creek and vents into town well the guy gets the bridge and finds it's broken down it's out no bridge what's he going to do if he goes back and around with a road he'll be late for his job interview if he works his way upstream in the hope of finding another bridge that's a possibility the experiments in his mind with that mental experiments let's see how far is that other bridge up there how long would it take me to get there and then when I've gotten over to get back and okay mental experiments other alternative is to try a long jump across the creek yes well he's not sure if that'll work so what he does is to practice with you long drums on the side to see how far he can make you think that'll do it let's try any way you think and experimental confirmation what is an idea you see you come up with an idea what is an idea it's not some representations some copy in secondary quality terms of some primary quality objects no and ideas are hypotheses it's a plan for action tentative and you draw on past experience you experiment with it to see if it'll resolve the problem and a good idea is one that works how do you make it work but putting it into action what is it to verify very faction verification is maintaining it true you make it true and it's only true when you get you get your job interview on time without muddled olia so experimental thinking this is the way he talks about epistemology he repudiates to be for practical purposes he repudiates Spectator empiricism john locke tabula rasa passively receiving ideas nonsense he repudiates any subject object dualism you know where the mind is out here gaining mental representations of what's out there no he repudiates all of that because they all divorce thought from action theory from practice it is the utility of an idea that matters truth is not some objective thing fixed for all time independent of the observer truth is simply the utility the workability of an idea okay so that's the application to logic epistemology clear enough see why he's going that way a philosophy of mind well little more to be said after the note about functionalist psychology plainly he is rejecting any substance theory of mind or soul he has no least he sees no mind-body problem if mind is not a separate entity all he's prepared to talk about in relationship to philosophy of mind is various what we call mental functions mental is an adjective that is to say certain biological functions that involve consciousness is all that the word mental is referred um value theory here he has a number of important writings he has a fairly early book called the theory of valuation and then another called human nature and conduct and here he regards values simply as ideas values are ideas in what sense well values are ideal outcomes ideal outcomes that emerge in problem situations that is to say you don't value avoiding that farm wagon until the situation arises then you need biologically you need to avoid it and out of the biological need is the valuing do is not interested in value in the sense of what is intrinsically and eternally valuable he's only interested in value in the sense of what is actively valued values are what is valued and you value what you value in problem situations you don't realize it otherwise in other words some values are ideas which give rise to other ideas about resolving the problem situation there are no intrinsically good ends no intrinsically good ends you remember how Aristotle to find the good as intrinsically good the supreme good embracing all other goods intrinsically good not good for the sake of something else well what do we wants to insist on is a means in continuum that is to say the end the ideal involves in itself the means to the end but when that end is achieved remember it becomes the thesis for a new antithesis so that end itself is a means simply to furtherance there is nothing that is just an end intrinsically end fixed end when you get there you got there that's it period is never a period it's all process and so there are no moral absolutes there is no supreme good the values emerged with unsatisfied needs values or instruments for survival values are not in some intrinsic sense moral goods they're non moral goods survival is a non moral thing nothing and yet it becomes loaded with value in certain problem situations ethics then has to do with how to solve problems and achieve would we desire how to solve problems and achieve what we desire this is an instrumentalist ethic he calls it that instrumentalism in ethics and do his work on ethics was one of the major factors that fed into the development two or three decades ago of situation ethics which was popularized in a book by that title written by Joseph Fletcher unrelated to another Fletcher of Fame around here Joseph let Jarrett Harvard blog on situation ethics maintained that yes every moral situation has to be addressed individually there are no general moral rules no fixed guideline Universal moral principles each situation has to be resolved in a way that is satisfying to the persons involved he had it a few more ingredients but that's the pragmatic ingredient and it's very plainly do his thing with a few existential monks involved so his value of theory at that point education yeah in education you would want to look at his book democracy and education democracy and education he sees the function of education is learning to live learning to live that is to say education to provide you with the necessary instrumentalities for problem solving for problem solving learning is not so that you have things to contemplate all your life reading Plato Milton whatever learning is not an attempt to instill fixed values the heritage of values from the past to the ages no that's not the value of learning that's classical education education is rather a preparation for successful adjustment to environment problem oriented student oriented rather than discipline oriented or historically oriented or just intellectually oriented I think in American education we've since duly developed sort of a combination of classical traditions and his emphasis on learning that provides life skills and for reasons I think that our view of things has tended to incorporate some of Dewey's concerns without going the whole hog I think we still have fixed points of reference application to religion and here the important book of his is called a common face common face if there are no fixed truths or values then religion isn't simply an attempt to transmit certain truths and that's what is it it's not about static ideals religion is again a tool for life adjustment the same theme run all the way through he is not so much interested in a religion or different religions as in the adjective religious which refers to a quality in an attitude to life a religious attitude is one of loyalty to the ideals of the community loyalty to the ideals of the community now why that well two reasons one is the etymology of the word religion which means to retie or if you like reunite and so religion has a function of reuniting individuals within a community by virtue of loyalty to certain intangible ideals of a conventional or traditional sort not fixed Anita in other words religion is important because of its instrumentality not because it's true but because of its instrumentality and in this context the word God is not a name of a being but is a symbol for the ideals that the community perceives the pursuit of God the said of the ideals of the comedian and he would argue that this is the lowest common denominator in all historical religions the lowest common denominator of all historical religions he's not singling out a belief singling out an attitude and after all religions are practiced as community United around the concerns of that faith so what do we is saying about religion is really the essence of religious humanism and Dewey was one of the original signers of the humanist manifesto which in the 1930s declared that the universe is self existing man is a part of nature as emerged as a result of continuous process men's religious culture is the product of a gradual development due to interaction with the natural environment science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values religious humanism considers the complete realization of human personality satisfaction and so forth to be the end of life and so forth and I have copies of that humanist manifesto which you can pick up as you leave which you can read as you will very interesting document the secular humanism of the 70s and 80s is simply they later descendant of this religious humanism is naturalistic religion get it naturalistic religion where God means what do he says namely it's a symbol for ideals no more and very often it's a naturalistic humanism which you find nowadays in unitarian circles unitarianism historically was a kind of theism you see as against trinitarianism but increasingly unitarianism and the unity movement is simply naturalistic humanism with the espousal of certain values actually the moral values social values espoused are often very fine so that it's the religious dimension that is the naturalistic amount well okay we'll pick up on this next time some commentary on John Dewey