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 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 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
coordinations. Looking, for instance, is a sensory-motor coordination
which is the stimulus or antecedent of another coordinated act, running
away. The first coordination 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 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 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
coordination, does not readily pass 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 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 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 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.
[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.