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 passage: "The belief that
natural selection has ceased to operate [in the human sphere] rests upon
the assumption 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 circumstances 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 space.
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 circumstances, and these
circumstances 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 assures the American Psychological Association 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 title, "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 entitled 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 illustration 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 circumstances: in a
word, it must deal with just _this_ water. The conditions which define
its origin must be stated with equal definiteness and
circumstantiality."[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 substitute 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 substitute for the isolation and for the cumulative
recombination of experiment. The early periods present us in their
relative crudeness and simplicity with a substitute for the artificial
operation of an experiment: following the phenomenon into the more
complicated and refined form which it assumes later, is a substitute 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 circumscribe it, we could
deduce down to its last detail the entire existing constitution 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 passing away to be empty opinion or indurated
prejudice?"[162] Intuitionism has no way of guaranteeing its beliefs.
The evolutionary method, on the other hand, is able to determine the
validity of beliefs. "The worth of the intuition depends upon genetic
considerations. In so far as we can state the intuition in terms of the
conditions of its origin, development, and later career, in so far we
have some criterion for passing judgment upon its pretensions to
validity.... But if we cannot find such historic origin and functioning,
the intuition remains a mere state of consciousness, a hallucination, an
illusion, which is not made more worthy by simply multiplying the number
of people who have participated in it."[163] Certain savage races, for
instance, possessed moral intuitions which made the practice of
infanticide an obligation. But the fact that it was universally held
does not establish its validity. It must be condemned or justified by
the results to which it led.
Dewey's criticism of intuitionism scarcely does justice to that method,
whatever may be its inherent weakness. There doubtless have been
thinkers who held that truth is revealed to the reason of man in its
naked purity, in the shape of apodictic intellectual principles. But
even in the case of so extreme a position as that of Kant, there are
important qualifying considerations to be taken into account. There is
no reason to suppose that moral judgment, as Kant conceived it, was
excluded from the consideration of relevant data, such as the knowledge
of actual effects produced by given courses of conduct. His position
seems to have been, not that moral judgment lacked specific content, but
that reason took something with it to the moral situation. The
intuitionists may have over-estimated the original endowment of the
mind, but it must be admitted with them that the mind which approaches
the moral situation empty of concepts cannot make moral decisions. If
man is to hold no beliefs except those proved valid by experience, how
can there be any to validate? Intelligence must have the capacity to
frame beliefs in the light of its past knowledge, and its acts of
judgment, consequently, presuppose a test of the validity of ideas which
belongs to intelligence as such, and not to history taken abstractly.
Beliefs are adapted to their objects in the making, and on this account
are usually found to have had some justification, even where set aside.
'A principle that is suitable for universal legislation already
presupposes a content.'
Dewey next considers the relation of the evolutionary methods to
empiricism. "Empiricism," he says, "is no more historic in character
than is intuitionalism. Empiricism is concerned with the moral idea or
belief as a grouping or association of various elementary feelings. It
regards the idea simply as a complex state which is to be explained by
resolving it into its elementary constituents. By its logic, both the
complex and the elements are isolated from an historic context.... The
empirical and the genetic methods thus imply a very different
relationship between the moral state, idea, or belief, and objective
reality.... The empirical theory holds that the idea arises as a reflex
of some existing object or fact. Hence the test of its objectivity is
the faithfulness with which it reproduces that object as copy. The
genetic theory holds that the idea arises as a response, and that the
test of its validity is found in its later career as manifested with
reference to the needs of the situation that evoked it."[164]
Only a method that takes the world as a changing, historical thing, can
deal with the adaptation of morality to new conditions. "Both empiricism
and intuitionalism, though in very different ways, deny the continuity
of the moralizing process. They set up timeless, and hence absolute and
disconnected, ultimates; thereby they sever the problems and movements
of the present from the past, rob the past, the sole object of calm,
impartial, and genuinely objective study, of all instructing power, and
leave our experience to form undirected, at the mercy of circumstance
and arbitrariness, whether that of dogmatism or scepticism."[165]
In evaluating the article as a whole, it must be said that Dewey's study
is not productive of definite results. The history of the past can
undoubtedly offer to the student a mass of data that is interesting and
instructive. The importance of this or that belief, or its value, can be
gauged by the results which it is known to have produced. But when, in
this day and age, the moralist sets out to find the principles which
shall guide his own conduct, the history of morals is of no more
importance than the observations of every day life, which reveal the
consequences of conduct in the lives of men about him. But more
particularly, it should be added, an estimate of present moral action
depends, not upon truth uttered by the past, but upon truth discovered
and interpreted by an intelligence which surveys the past and makes it
meaningful. The past in itself is nothing; thought alone can create real
history.
Another article, published by Dewey in the _Philosophical Review_ in
1900, "Some Stages of Logical Thought," illustrates the employment of
the genetic method in a more specific way.[166] In his introductory
remarks, Dewey says: "I wish to show how a variety of modes of thinking,
easily recognizable in the progress of both the race and the individual,
may be identified and arranged as successive species of the relationship
which doubting bears to assurance; as various ratios, so to speak, which
the vigor of doubting bears to mere acquiescence. The presumption is
that the function of questioning is one which has continually grown in
intensity and range, that doubt is continually chased back, and, being
cornered, fights more desperately, and thus clears the ground more
thoroughly."[167] Dewey finds four stages of relationship between
questioning and dogmatism: dogmatism, discussion, proof, and empirical
science; and he seeks to show how each stage involves a higher degree of
free inquiry. "Modern scientific procedure, as just set forth, seems to
define the ideal or limit of this process. It is inquiry emancipated,
universalized, whose sole aim and criterion is discovery, and hence it
makes the terminus of our description. It is idle to conceal from
ourselves, however, that this scientific procedure, as a practical
undertaking, has not as yet reflected itself into any coherent and
generally accepted theory of thinking...."[168]
It is not necessary to comment on Dewey's stages of thought. The
similarity of this division to Comte's theological, metaphysical and
scientific stages of explanation will be apparent. Dewey's remarks on
the logic of the scientific stage, however, are interesting. "The simple
fact of the case is," he says, "that there are at least three rival
theories on the ground, each claiming to furnish the sole proper
interpretation of the actual procedure of thought."[169] There is the
Aristotelian logic, with its fixed forms; the empirical logic, which
holds "that only particular facts are self-supporting, and that the
authority allowed to general principles is derivative and second
hand;"[170] and finally there is the transcendental logic, which claims,
"by analysis of science and experience, to justify the conclusion that
the universe itself is a construction of thought, giving evidence
throughout of the pervasive and constitutive action of reason; and
holds, consequently, that our logical processes are simply the reading
off or coming to consciousness of the inherently rational structure
already possessed by the universe in virtue of the presence within it of
this pervasive and constitutive action of thought."[171]
None of these logics, Dewey finds, is capable of dealing with the
actual procedure of science, because none of them treats thought as a
doubt-inquiry process, but rather as something fixed and limited by
conditions which determine its operations in advance. Dewey asks: "Does
not an account or theory of thinking, basing itself on modern scientific
procedure, demand a statement in which all the distinctions and terms of
thought--judgment, concept, inference, subject, predicate and copula of
judgment, etc. _ad indefinitum_--shall be interpreted simply and
entirely as distinctive functions or divisions of labor within the
doubt-inquiry process?"[172]
Seven years before, Dewey had been an ardent champion of the
transcendental logic, on the ground that it was progressive, and he
contrasted it most favorably with the formal logics which treat thought
as a self-contained process. Now, however, he has a new insight. Logic
must be reinterpreted in the light of the evolutionary or biological
method. We shall see how this is accomplished in the next chapter.
To the student of the history of philosophy, Dewey's treatment of the
genetic and historical methods must seem seriously inadequate. The
idealist, moreover, will feel that Dewey should have taken note, in his
criticism of the idealistic standpoint, of the fact that Hegelianism was
from first to last a historical method; that the German idealists gave
the impulse to modern historical research, and provoked a study of the
historical method whose results are still felt. But in turning away from
idealism, Dewey has no word of appreciation for this aspect of the
Hegelian philosophy.
When the truth is boiled down, it appears that Dewey's historical
method, in so far as he had one, was based on biological evolutionism.
He had no interest in any other form of historical interpretation.
FOOTNOTES:
[138] Vol. VIII, pp. 321-341. The article is a criticism of Huxley's
essay with the same title.
[139] _Ibid._, p. 337. Italics mine.
[140] _Op. cit._, p. 338.
[141] _Ibid._, p. 340.
[142] _Ibid._
[143] _Ibid._ It should be observed that this conclusion is reached on a
purely theoretical basis.
[144] Printed in the _Psychological Review_, Vol. VII, 1900, pp.
105-124.
[145] _Ibid._, p. 123.
[146] _Ibid._, p. 124.
[147] Vol. XI, pp. 107-124; 353-371.
[148] _Ibid._, p. 108.
[149] _Ibid._, p. 109.
[150] _Ibid._
[151] _Op. cit._, p. 110.
[152] _Ibid._, p. 111.
[153] _Op. cit._, p. 112.
[154] _Ibid._, p. 113.
[155] _Op. cit._, p. 114.
[156] _Ibid._, p. 116.
[157] _Ibid._, p. 118.
[158] _Op. cit._, p. 355.
[159] _Ibid._, p. 356.
[160] See Bosanquet's _Logic_, second edition, Chapter VII, and
especially page 240.
[161] _Philosophical Review_, Vol. XI, p. 357.
[162] _Ibid._, p. 360.
[163] _Ibid._, p. 358.
[164] _Op. cit._, p. 364 f.
[165] _Op. cit._, p. 370.
[166] Vol. IX, pp. 465-489.
[167] _Op. cit._, p. 465.
[168] _Ibid._, p. 486 f.
[169] _Ibid._, p. 487.
[170] _Ibid._
[171] _Ibid._
[172] _Op. cit._, p. 489.