John Dewey's Earlier Logical Theory

James Scott Johnston

Description

When John Dewey's logical theory is discussed, the focus is invariably on his 1938 book Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. His earlier logical works are seldom referenced except in relation to that later work. As a result, Dewey's earlier logical theory is cut off from his later work, and this later work receives a curiously ahistorical gloss. Examining the earlier works from Studies in Logical Theory to Essays in Experimental Logic, James Scott Johnston provides an unparalleled account of the development of Dewey's thinking in logic, examining various themes and issues Dewey felt relevant to a systematic logical theory. These include the context in which logical theory operates, the ingredients of logical inquiry, the distinctiveness of an instrumentalist logical theory, and the benefit of logical theory to practical concerns—particularly ethics and education. Along the way, and complicating the standard picture of Dewey's logic being indebted to Charles S. Peirce, William James, and Charles Darwin, Johnston argues that Hegel is ultimately a more important influence.
Introduction

Rapid History of Dewey’s Logic
Rapid Review of Dewey’s Earlier Logic
Review of interpretations of Dewey’s Earlier Logic
Chapter Summaries

1. Dewey’s Logical Education: From Early Essays to Essays in Experimental Logic

Introduction
Part One: Dewey’s Motives for Logical Theory
Part Two: Dewey’s Logical Education 1882–1902
Part Three: Dewey’s Logical Education 1903–1915

2. Dewey’s Logical Education: The Influence of Hegel

Part One: The Hegel Scholarship on Dewey
Part Two: The Question Concerning Hegel
Part Three: Dewey on Hegel
Part Four: What Dewey Takes from Hegel

3. Dewey’s Earliest Views on Logic

“Is Logic a Dualistic Science?” (1890)
“The Logic of Verification” (1890)
“The Present Position of Logical Theory” (1891)
“Some Stages of Logical Thought” (1900)
Conclusion

4. Studies in Logical Theory (1903)

The Preface
The Relationship of Thought and its Subject-Matter
The Antecedents and Stimuli of Thinking
Data and Meanings
The Objects of Thought
Conclusion

5. Practical Logics

Lectures on “The Logic of Ethics” (1900)
“Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality” (1903)
How We Think (1910)
Conclusion

6. Essays in Experimental Logic (1916)

The Introduction
Miscellaneous Essays
“The Logic of Judgments of Practice”
Conclusion

7. From Essays in Experimental Logic (1916) to Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938)

Introduction
The Existential Matrices of Inquiry
Scientific and Social Inquiry
Propositions and Inferences in Inquiry

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Philosophy
• History of philosophy
• Pragmatism
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438453460
• Langue: English

Extrait

JOHN DEWEY’S EARLIER LOGICAL THEORY
JOHN DEWEY’S EARLIER LOGICAL THEORY
James Scott Johnston
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2014 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production by Eileen Nizer
Marketing by Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johnston, James Scott.
John Dewey’s earlier logical theory / James Scott Johnston.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5345-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5346-0 (ebook)
1. Dewey, John, 1859–1952. 2. Logic. I. Title.
B945.D44J64 2014 160.92—dc23 2013047130
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction
Rapid History of Dewey’s Logic
Rapid Review of Dewey’s Earlier Logic
Review of interpretations of Dewey’s Earlier Logic
Chapter Summaries
1 Dewey’s Logical Education: From Early Essays to Essays in Experimental Logic
Introduction
Part One: Dewey’s Motives for Logical Theory
Part Two: Dewey’s Logical Education 1882–1902
Part Three: Dewey’s Logical Education 1903–1915
2 Dewey’s Logical Education: The Influence of Hegel
Part One: The Hegel Scholarship on Dewey
Part Two: The Question Concerning Hegel
Part Three: Dewey on Hegel
Part Four: What Dewey Takes from Hegel
3 Dewey’s Earliest Views on Logic
“Is Logic a Dualistic Science?” (1890)
“The Logic of Verification” (1890)
“The Present Position of Logical Theory” (1891)
“Some Stages of Logical Thought” (1900)
Conclusion
4 Studies in Logical Theory (1903)
The Preface
The Relationship of Thought and its Subject-Matter
The Antecedents and Stimuli of Thinking
Data and Meanings
The Objects of Thought
Conclusion
5 Practical Logics
Lectures on “The Logic of Ethics” (1900)
“Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality” (1903)
How We Think (1910)
Conclusion
6 Essays in Experimental Logic (1916)
The Introduction
Miscellaneous Essays
“The Logic of Judgments of Practice”
Conclusion
7 From Essays in Experimental Logic (1916) to Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938)
Introduction
The Existential Matrices of Inquiry
Scientific and Social Inquiry
Propositions and Inferences in Inquiry
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
T his book provides a coherent, cohesive statement on Dewey’s earlier logic. By earlier I mean Dewey’s logical theory from his earliest forays to the publication of Essays in Experimental Logic . Since Dewey’s first published paper dealing exclusively with logical theory was published in 1890, and the last (for our purposes) in 1916, the timeline is two and a half decades or 26 years. 1 Of course, Dewey’s greatest logical work and his fundamental achievement in the field came much later, in 1938, with the publication of Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (LW 12). 2 Several volumes have been written on Dewey’s Logic ; most of these are of recent vintage. 3 No volumes have been written on Dewey’s earlier logical theory, however. This is likely due to its supposed prefatory nature: Dewey himself remarked at the beginning of his later Logic , “[this work] is a mode of statement less open to misapprehension than the previous ones” (LW 12, Preface i). Dewey also claimed he stressed the essential nature of continuity and the issue of formal relations more fully in the later Logic (LW 12, Preface i). This has led most scholars to claim that Dewey’s 1938 Logic is his magnum opus .
And so it is. However, much that is found in the 1938 Logic is also in the early articles, papers, and books. Often, the 1938 Logic gets treated as an ahistorical document; as if Dewey’s logical thought had not been percolating for over 40 years. While the best scholarship on Dewey’s Logic is careful to note where Dewey drew his various ideas and concepts, these are treated only in the context of the 1938 Logic . 4 The effect of this has been to marginalize the history of Dewey’s logical development. And while this may seem to be a concern only for historians, it serves to blind us to the motive forces operating at various times and places in Dewey’s intellectual development.
The associated concern is of course, the marginalization of the earlier works themselves. These works, particularly Studies in Logical Theory (1903) and Essays in Experimental Logic (1916), are viable logical treatises in their own rights. Not only this, certain topics covered in these are either minimized or not repeated in the 1938 Logic . To give but one example, Dewey downplays the evolutionary development of the science of logic in the 1938 Logic , confining the substance of his earlier discussions to two chapters. However, in Studies in Logical Theory and Essays in Experimental Logic , this theme is placed in relief. 5 Evolutionary development was a key theme for Dewey at the turn of the (twentieth) century, and many of his earlier works evidenced this. 6
For the rest of the introduction, I will discuss briefly the central themes of Dewey’s earlier logical theory; the history of Dewey’s earlier logical theory; and some of the concerns Dewey’s interlocutors and many, if not most, critical interpreters have had with Dewey’s logical theory. Dewey’s historical relationship to individuals thought to have influenced him greatly with respect to his logical theory is then discussed in some detail. (All of these topics will receive much greater attention in the chapters to follow.) I will conclude this introduction with a summary of the chapters.
Rapid History of Dewey’s Logic
Dewey’s foray into logical theory began with the publication in 1890 of “Is Logic a Dualistic Science?” This was followed immediately by “The Logic of Verification” (1890). These essays demonstrate that Dewey was keen to attack what he saw as the dichotomy between formalist logical methods (meaning syllogistic methods) and the subject-matter they bear on. This “two worlds” logic was a holdover from rationalism and empiricism, yet found its way into the new logics of James Venn and R. H. Lotze—to name but two respected logicians writing at the end of the nineteenth century. To these, Dewey contrasted Hegel’s conception of methods (and categories) together with their subject-matter.
Dewey continued his criticisms of the new logic in an 1891 paper entitled, “The Present Position of Logical Theory.” Here, Dewey gave a fuller account of the new logic and its dualist nature. By 1900, Dewey had shed his neo-idealism, and the metaphors to describe the nature of logical theory were naturalist and evolutionary. However, the central features of logical theory—its context-boundedness; its responsiveness to the subject-matter at hand; its organic or holist (though not holism) character; and its processional rather than fixed nature, remained. Dewey followed this with two very important works published at the very beginning of the twentieth century; the first of these was “Some Stages of Logical Thought” (1900) and the other was “Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality” (1903). The former read the history of the development of logical theory through evolutionary lenses; the latter brought logical theory to the subject-matter of morals.
Dewey’s greatest achievement in logical theory up to this point was a publication produced for the tenth anniversary of the University of Chicago entitled, Studies in Logical Theory (1903). This publication was an edited volume with nine contributors, including Dewey. Dewey’s papers for the volume were groundbreaking. They caught the attention of William James, who praised them widely, and subsequent to his praise were reviewed by leading philosophical journals (and philosophers) in the United States and abroad. Studies in Logical Theory was novel in that it treated logical theory as the formal aspect of inquiry. It was not, however, novel for Dewey: almost all of his prior themes were evident in the articles he contributed to the volume.
By the second half of the decade, critics had begun to weigh in. Chief among the critics of Dewey’s logical theory at the time were C. S. Peirce, who privately grumbled he could not find any pragmatism in Dewey’s instrumentalism, and later, Bertrand Russell, who worried that Dewey’s instrumentalism was a philosophy for American industrialism. Neither thought Dewey treated formal logic with the accord it deserved. Questions and concerns regarding Dewey’s theory of knowledge also arose, which (because inquiry and formal logic were inextricably intertwined) forced Dewey to re-state many of his central logical themes. The so-called critical realists were active in this regard. This loose grouping of scholars formed to defend themselves from what they saw as a rampant (and false) idealism and subjectivism, and worried that pragmatism generally and Dewey’s instrumentalism in particular denied a place for brute facts. They were of course, correct. Lengthy debates carried out in the nation’s top philosophy journals through the following decade were the result of their concerns.
Dewey published Essays in Experimental Logic in 1916. This was a republication of Dewey’s essays in Studies in Logical Theory , together with several papers Dewey had written since, along with a new introduction for the book. While Studies served as the core of the new volume’s thesis, additional topics such as “judgments of practice,” together with responses to various criticisms (most notably, Bertrand Russell’s and the critical realists’) were prov