CHAPTER I "PSYCHOLOGY AS PHILOSOPHIC METHOD"

Dewey's earliest standpoint in philosophy is presented in two articles published in Mind in 1886: "The Psychological Standpoint," and "Psychology as Philosophic Method."[2] These articles appear to have been written in connection with his Psychology, which was published in the same year, and which represents the same general point of view as applied to the study of mental phenomena. For the purposes of the present study attention may be confined to the two articles in Mind.

Dewey begins his argument, in "The Psychological Standpoint," with a reference to Professor Green's remark that the psychological standpoint is what marks the difference between transcendentalism and British empiricism. Dewey takes exception to this view, and asserts that the two schools hold this standpoint in common, and, furthermore, that the psychological standpoint has been the strength of British empiricism and desertion of that standpoint its weakness. Shadworth Hodgson's comment on this proposal testifies to its audacity. In a review of Dewey's article, he says: "If for instance we are told by a competent writer, that Absolute Idealism is not only a truth of experience but one attained directly by the method of experiential psychology, we should not allow our astonishment to prevent our examining the arguments, by virtue of which English psychology attains the results of German transcendentalism without quitting the ground of experience."[3]

Dewey defines his psychological standpoint as follows: "We are not to determine the nature of reality or of any object of philosophical inquiry by examining it as it is in itself, but only as it is an element in our knowledge, in our experience, only as it is related to our mind, or is an 'idea'.... Or, in the ordinary way of putting it, the nature of all objects of philosophical inquiry is to be fixed by finding out what experience says about them."[4] The implications of this definition do not appear at first sight, but they become clearer as the discussion proceeds.

Locke, Dewey continues, deserted the psychological standpoint because he did not, as he proposed, explain the nature of such things as matter and mind by reference to experience. On the contrary, he explained experience through the assumption of the two unknowable substances, matter and mind. Berkeley also deserted the psychological standpoint, in effect, by having recourse to a purely transcendent Spirit. Even Hume deserted it by assuming as the only reals certain unrelated sensations, and by trying to explain the origin of experience and knowledge by their combination. These reals were supposed to exist in independence of an organized experience, and to constitute it by their association. It might be argued that Hume's sensations are found in experience by analysis, and this would probably be true. But the sensations are nothing apart from the consciousness in which they are found. "Such a sensation," Dewey says, "a sensation which exists only within and for experience, is not one which can be used to account for experience. It is but one element in an organic whole, and can no more account for the whole, than a given digestive act can account for the existence of a living body."[5]

So far Dewey is merely restating the criticism of English empiricism that had been made by Green and his followers. Reality, as experienced, is a whole of organically related parts, not a mechanical compound of elements. Whatever is to be explained must be taken as a fact of experience, and its meaning will be revealed in terms of its position and function within the whole. But while Dewey employs the language of idealism, it is doubtful whether he has grasped the full significance of the "concrete universal" of the Hegelian school. The following passage illustrates the difficulty: "The psychological standpoint as it has developed itself is this: all that is, is for consciousness or knowledge. The business of the psychologist is to give a genetic account of the various elements within this consciousness, and thereby fix their place, determine their validity, and at the same time show definitely what the real and eternal nature of this consciousness is."[6]

Consciousness (used here as identical with 'experience') is apparently interpreted as a structure made up of elements related in a determinable order, and having, consequently, a 'real and eternal nature.' The result is a 'structural' view of reality, and the type of idealism for which Dewey stands may fittingly be called 'structural' idealism. This type of idealism does, in fact, hold a position intermediate between English empiricism and German transcendentalism. But it would not commonly be considered a synthesis of the best characteristics of the two schools. 'Structural' idealism is, historically considered, a reversion to Kant which retains the mechanical elements of the Critique, but fails to reckon with the truly organic mode of interpretation in which it culminates. As experience, from Kant's undeveloped position, is a structure of sensations and forms, so Dewey's 'consciousness' is a compound of separate elements or existences related in a 'real and eternal' order.

Dewey illustrates his method, in the discussion which follows, by employing it, or showing how it should be employed, in the definition of certain typical objects of philosophical inquiry. The first to be considered are subject and object. In dealing with the relation of subject to object, the psychological method will attempt to show how consciousness differentiates itself, or 'specifies' itself, into subject and object. These terms will be viewed as related terms within the whole of 'consciousness,' rather than as elements existing prior to or in independence of the whole in which they are found.

There is a type of realism which illustrates the opposite or ontological method. It is led, through a study of the dependence of the mind upon the organism, to a position in which subject and object fall apart, out of relation to each other. The separation of the two leads to the positing of a third term, an unknown x, which is supposed to unite them. The psychological method would hold that the two objects have their union, not in an unknown 'real,' but in the 'consciousness' in which they appear. The individual consciousness as subject, and the objects over against it, are elements at once distinguished and related within the whole. All the terms are facts of experience, and none are to be assumed as ontological reals.

Subjective idealism, Dewey continues, makes a