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"Current interest of philosophers in philosophic naturalism gives Dewey’s arguments renewed significance, which is not remarkable because after all, they were consciously developed in the wake of, and in response to Darwin. The thesis being proffered here is that when Dewey’s ethical naturalism is viewed in its proper evolutionary context, its substantial nature is revealed.
While the thinking of many respected philosophers was unaffected by Darwin’s explanations [...] it is Dewey who argues that Darwin’s account of the origins of intelligence portends significant changes in philosophic thought, which require the reconstruction of philosophy and its methods. The practice of philosophy by non-Darwinian thinkers (such as Russell and Wittgenstein) was reluctant, to say the least, about including scientific findings within philosophic accounts of knowledge, morality, and reality. This non-Darwinian philosophic thought takes philosophy to be prior to, and independent of, the constantly shifting conclusions of scientific inquiry. Philosophic conclusions are taken to be, if drawn from sound arguments, more enduring than the sensory-based generalizations of science, because philosophic thought comes from the mind, which is seen to be a permanent and dependable source of eternal truth." (pp.149-150)
"Dewey goes on to claim that there is an “absolutist and totalitarian element involved in every form of anti-naturalism...”. The current philosophic interest in naturalism is in the tradition of Dewey’s thinking and is aware of his arguments.
Many philosophers who have been interested in Dewey’s arguments and conclusions, long since his last thoughts were published, still have not identified the central driving aspect of his work, which emanates from, and is continuous with, the basic principles of evolution – principally, natural selection. While Dewey does make it clear that he is drawing from Darwin’s explanation, he does not always present the background details to show how he is moving from evolution theory to his philosophic theses." (p.150)
"Natural selection is a basic process in evolution that eliminates those living individuals who cannot compete in the struggle for existence long enough to reproduce their genomes in a next generation. In more general terms, evolution occurs over the set of entities that: (1) vary among themselves ; (2) can replicate themselves; and (3) are under selection pressure. A common belief is that these genomic changes occur because of mutations (errors occurring when the DNA makes copies of itself), but there are other ways in which genomes modify themselves. As our ancestors struggled for existence, somewhere along the way they developed mind, and consciousness discovered itself. These abilities, not possessed by other animals, seem to have come about through the ignoble process of genetic drift – a random clustering of genetic patterns that took our DNA in one direction rather than others.
We are at ease with the notion that when intelligence evolved through natural selection, it greatly assisted those hominids in their struggle for survival. It is important not to overlook the point that mindedness did not arrive on the scene in the form by which we know it today. As Dewey observes, “traditional theories regard mind as an intruder from without, into the natural development,” when in fact there “is neither a sudden jump from the merely organic to the intellectual, nor is there a complete assimilation of the latter to the primitive modes of the former.” It is not a sudden jump, at least not until we get down to the genetic level where genes are known to jump, because evolution always builds upon what exists. There is no backward assimilation, because “rational operations grow out of organic activities, without being identical with that from which they emerge.”
What evolution presented to our ancestors was transformed to enhance its use, but to say much more than this is to venture into the extensive literature concerned with the nature and origins of reflective consciousness. We can say that early mindedness was judged by natural selection in terms of its ability to continue to develop, and that there is a continuity of development from natural selection in the pre-minded period to our more fully-minded era ; the biological and philosophic explanation of this continuity is a work in progress.
Dewey is clear that science has a role in philosophizing, which some of his contemporaries surely found as misguided thinking. According to Dewey, “the exclusion of the inconsistent is far from being identical with a positive test which demands that only what has been scientifically verifiable shall provide the entire content of philosophy.” This may seem an overstatement in that not even the logical empiricists would go that far. [...]
Dewey’s ideas belong to this contemporary inquiry. In Human Nature and Conduct Dewey sets forth an analysis of the relationships among impulses, habits, and conduct. He writes of the “plasticity of impulses,” which in contemporary terms is the claim that, in the case of Homo sapiens, genetic preparedness is not a fixed determiner of our actions. The conclusions in that volume, with a few updates in terminology, could have come from a recent publication. I think that the detail of his arguments about the relationship among what we call genetic preparedness, genetic plasticity, and deliberate action is contributory to current discussions of this content. Mind is much of what the brain does." (pp.151-152)
"Genetic drift gave us the ability to imagine multiple responses to patterns recognized, and to project the consequences of these possible actions. Dewey holds that the significance of reflective intelligence is its ability to continually reorganize, reconstruct, and transform itself. When the consequences of these transformations are the added “meaning of experience” and the increased “ability to direct the course of subsequent experience,” Dewey says that growth is taking place. He says that, “Since in reality there is nothing to which growth is relative save more growth, there is nothing to which education is subordinate save more education.” What Dewey means by ‘education’ is the reorganizing, reconstructing, and transforming of the self by the self – what is sometimes called personal development, as opposed to teaching or schooling.
Several pages later, Dewey says, “... the educational process has no end beyond itself; it is its own end....” Growth is the highest value in the whole scheme of human values, and it should never be compromised or negotiated away because of other priorities; Dewey is arguing there are no priorities that can supersede growth in individual or social import. Note that this interpretation of the basis of Dewey’s ethical naturalism is not found in the commentary on Dewey’s philosophic views, especially reviews of his ethical theory, which has led to an under-appreciation of his thought. It is inappropriate and unproductive to review these, but a statement by Alan Ryan is worth attention:
Dewey made the first fatal step by putting into circulation a romantic and Rousseauist conception of the child and the child’s growth as the be-all and end-all of education and then more fatally by erecting a framework – the obsessive harping on “growth” ... that other people would clothe with the idea of “life adjustment.”
What is taken to be excessive harping on growth is actually Dewey’s appeal to his central ethical value. Since reference to the romantic conception of children is imbedded in the statement cited, it should be pointed out that if Dewey’s readers were aware of the post-Darwinian context of his thought, they would see (even without having read Human Nature and Conduct) that the idea of growth as the unfolding of latent powers, child-centered teaching, or life adjustment education, that is, any form of teaching as education (drawing out that which is nascent within) is contradicted by just about everything Dewey has written.
In 1930, Dewey commented that “Democracy and Education was for many years that in which my philosophy, such as it is, was most fully expounded....” This statement indicates that he no longer took Democracy and Education, published in 1916, to be his best statement of his philosophy. It is clear in Democracy and Education that he considers growth to be the only standard by which we can judge growth, which obviously suggests an evolutionary connection. He also develops the relationship between growth and democracy, which he sees as an ethical concept.
In the 1932 Ethics (written two years after his remark about Democracy and Education), it is obvious that the analysis of growth in Democracy and Education is being more fully developed. In section five of the 1932 Ethics, titled “Responsibility and Freedom,” Dewey gives an excellent analysis of growth. “Being held accountable by others is, in every instance, an important safeguard and directive force in growth.” This more developed analysis is centered on the self, because it is the self that does the growing." (pp.152-153)
"Dewey says that there is always the “opportunity and a need” to move forward. “[T]he good person is precisely the one who is most conscious of the alternative, and is the most concerned to find openings for the newly forming or growing self....” It does not matter how good we have been, we become “bad” at the point where we fail “to respond to the demand for growth. Any other basis for judging the moral status of the self is conventional. In reality, direction of movement, not the plane of attainment and rest, determines moral quality.” While only a few lines of this major work have been cited, it is clear that the growth of individuals is the center of his ethical thesis.
While many philosophers may have thought that Democracy and Education and Dewey’s other writings about education were applicational, and not some of Dewey’s main philosophic works, it is unfortunate that many educators, who were and are seriously concerned with the proper directions for human growth, took the opposite view and thought that all Dewey had to say to them was in his educational writings. I cannot recall seeing a paper or book in philosophy of education that drew from the content of the 1932 Ethics. Abraham Edel and Elizabeth Flower, two honored philosophers knowledgeable in philosophy of education, wrote the introduction to the 1932 Ethics for the Dewey project at Southern Illinois University. They refer to many of Dewey’s writings, but Democracy and Education is not mentioned. There is reason to think that they do not see the connection between Dewey’s conception of growth, and how it relates Democracy and Education to the 1932 Ethics. Yet, in the last section of the later Ethics Dewey says, “It is in the quality of becoming that virtue resides. We can set up this and that end to be reached, but the end is growth itself. To make an end a final goal is but to arrest growth.”." (p.154)
"Dewey’s account is an implicit rejection of the popular so called ethical principle that we can do anything we want as long as we do not hurt anyone else. Under Dewey’s argument, this notion opens the way to unethical conduct, because it evades recognition of the requirement that we should attend to our own growth. Furthermore, as we shall see, if a large percentage of any society, community, or culture were to embrace that principle, those people would be draining the moral content from the concept of democracy.
The idea that growth as a moral value was developed and defended within the context of Darwin’s theory might lead some to wonder if evolution shows us that survival, not growth, is the ultimate end. Is that not the lesson of evolution ?
Survival has obvious value, but the notion of survival becomes more and more ambiguous as there is growth in mindedness. We would say that physical and sociopolitical conditions are unacceptable when the consciously held goal of any cultural group is biological survival or what we would call mere survival – which, of course, it is for many people around the world. Even for people surviving biologically, inadequate nutrition makes growth impossible. Moral requirements are not satisfied just because their vital signs reveal that they are alive.
If we think of the past in which our ancestors were small mammals avoiding the large feet of the dinosaurs, and then imagine their evolution forward to us, the only advantage creatures with minds have ever had is their reflective intelligence. As a species, mindedness is what and why we are." (p.155)
"As Dewey suggests, the shibboleths we tend to put forth as characteristics of democracy, such as freedom, liberty, equality and so forth, lead us to “mushy sentimentalism or else to extravagant and fanatical violence,” which undermines the meaning of the concept. This occurs because of our tendency to look to the mechanisms of government for the parts from which democracy is assembled. The error is in omitting any reference to its being a certain kind of community that forms because of the moral attitudes possessed by the people therein." (pp.155-156)
"A significant achievement of Democracy and Education is the social analysis of democracy in terms of the moral conception of growth. If we conclude that intellectual and emotional growth are the primary values in moral theory, inquiry is then focused on the identification of the complex conditions for its enhancement or maximization. When we get down to the hard pan of thought (to use Dewey’s expression) about sociopolitical institutions, we find that the analysis is basically about the proper relationship between individuals and society.
Growth is intimately related to social structure, and if individual growth is a moral value, the social conditions that promote it are the defining characteristics of moral social structures. Dewey’s analyses of these characteristics give rise to two questions: “How numerous and varied are the interests which are consciously shared ?” and “How full and free is the interplay with other forms of association ?” Dewey claims that these questions may be used as instrumentalities to determine “the worth of any given mode of social life.” In his discussion of the evaluations of social forms that follows the presentation of these two questions, it is clear that Dewey is using the concept of growth in these evaluations, though he does not explicitly state that he is so doing. His view of democracy at that point emerges when he notes that the two questions “both point to democracy.”
It has always seemed clear to me that Dewey’s analysis of desirable social structures or forms of interaction is based on the concept of growth that he develops earlier. Many of those who have written about his ideas over the years see him as presenting an account of democracy, yet they do not place his concept of growth in its proper relationship to his concept of democracy. In Democracy and Education, Dewey does present an analysis of democracy that goes well beyond the more mechanistic ideas of majority rule and universal suffrage, but a more thorough or complete analysis of democracy would come sixteen years later.
In his 1932 Ethics, Dewey concludes that democracy is not found in the rules and procedures of government, but in individuals. What was missing in Democracy and Education is the point that democracy is ultimately in the growing self. If we reflect for a moment on his conclusion, we see that democratic societies function as well as they do, not because they have discovered just the right rules for social interaction, but because a sufficient number of its members place certain values ahead of narrow self-interests. What are these values ? To understand Dewey’s argument that democracy is ultimately to be found in our attitudes and motivations, it is helpful to identify a major and familiar opponent of this conclusion." (p.156)
"One view of the individual-society relationship holds that individuals are more or less complete in and of themselves, and that the influences of society on the individual are basically negative. Advances in technology moved European labor and production away from agrarian feudalism, which led manufacturers and traders to attempt to free themselves from the numerous laws and traditions that limited trade with other nations. The theory of natural rights supports this separation, and as Dewey points out, “government was taken to be the great enemy of liberty; interference with human industry engaged in satisfaction of human needs was taken to be the chief cause why progress was retarded and why a reign of harmony of interests and peace did not exist.” Concomitantly, these arguments gave rise to the “conception of the individual as something given, complete in itself, and of liberty as a ready-made possession of the individual, only needing the removal of external restrictions in order to manifest itself.”
That this conception of individualism went too far in the separation of individuals from society is to be expected, in that the goal was to separate the bearers of natural rights from their previous status as property of the crown. It presents an account of the nature of individuals as being the basic or primary ontological units of social reality, while the relationships among individuals are seen as being of only secondary significance.
This classical liberal stream of liberalism (the other was the humanitarian movement that developed in reaction to social conditions, such as those described in Dickens’ novels) can be traced to the present neoconservative (known outside of the United States as neoliberal) view of proper economic and social policy. Five years before the publication of the later Ethics, Dewey wrote that the images we have of individuals voting and of majority rule reinforce the idea of “untrammeled individual sovereignty making the state.”
From the early classical liberals to the current neoconservatives, we are “presented with the spectacle of a pulverizing of established associations into the desires and intentions of atomic individuals.” While Dewey holds that it is the individual or the self that reconstructs experience so as to become more autonomous, this did not make individuals separate and primary while “social arrangements were considered secondary and artificial” – including political institutions and human-made laws.
In the later Ethics, Dewey comments that when individual persons are taken to be ontologically primary, and their relationships with each other are viewed as secondary to that primacy, “it was almost inevitable that moral theory should become preoccupied with the question of egoistic versus altruistic motivation. Consequently, “some check on this ruthless individualism” was required to counter the principle that in “economic theory and practice ... each man was actuated by an exclusive regard for his own profit....”." (pp.156-157)
"As Dewey sees it, the “ultimate significance” of these statements is “to make us realize the fact that regard for self and regard for others” is even more important than the social relationships that help shape the self, because there is “a more normal and complete interest: regard for the welfare and integrity of the social groups of which we are a part.” When we think in moral terms, the regard for the character of the group or groups within which we form social relationships is even more important than are the individuals and their interpersonal relationships.
This regard for the well-being of social groups is a shared consciousness that is most meaningfully expressed and experienced in joint or cooperative actions toward the solution of problems of shared concern. As Dewey says,
Whenever there is conjoint activity whose consequences are appreciated as good by all singular persons who take part in it, and where the realization of the good is such as to effect an energetic desire and effort to sustain it in being just because it is a good shared by all, there is in so far a community. The clear consciousness of a communal life, in all its implications, constitutes the idea of democracy.
What gives Dewey the warrant to assert this view in a society in which the popularity of classical liberalism always seems to constitute the belief of a significant portion of the electorate ? The answer is, of course, the moral priority of the concept of growth. The classical liberal view has no need of such a concept, which led to an extreme, almost self-centered individualism. This emphasis on social relationships and the rejection of the conclusion that individuals are complete unto themselves, gets Dewey labeled as “socialist” in the one dimensional analysis of neoliberals.
Dewey gives extensive criticisms of the classical liberal world-view, but the thesis that individuals develop apart from and prior to society is incomepatible with the facts of the matter. We know that the brains of newborn children have already been formatted in significant ways by the mother’s experiences, while the fetus is in utero. Further, this factual omission leads neoliberals to incorrect conclusions about freedom, namely, all that is needed for “freedom from oppressive legal and political measures” is “some metaphysical doctrine of free will, plus an optimistic confidence in natural harmony.” We hear of this natural harmony when neoliberals are expressing their faith in the “free market” as a self-correcting entity.
The requirement that we form and sustain a conscious and active concern for the well-being of our social groups is not something that is typically included in the meaning of ‘democracy’, because we tend to think of democracy as a set of rules that we embrace that necessarily involve “the state.” Dewey is not pursuing a perfect society; rather, he seeks to characterize a more perfect union of individuals, which for him, means a union that supports the growth of every individual.
This consciousness of the welfare and integrity of society does not emanate from government. Governments do not and cannot make us democratic. It is our conscious concern that gives direction to our conduct, and produces democratic participation." (pp.157-158)
"How do we achieve equality ? Equal treatment of all will not work, for as Aristotle says, there is nothing as unequal as the equal treatment of unequals [...]
Many of those who see themselves as working toward diversity and equality never internalized this point, which means that their conception of equality typically turns out to be simple-mindedly mechanical and false to the biological, psychological, and social-relationship facts, “and impossible of realization.” So, some defective notion of equality gets forced, in a mindless, non-reflective fashion. This artificial pursuit of equality tries to make sure that no one comes up short in the meting out of benefits. The concept of equal treatment, when it is not understood within the context of growth, always becomes sameness ; even worse, it can be used by those who operate with anti-democratic attitudes to protect and enhance their own cut of those benefits.
These comments might be taken as laying a foundation for some argument that an honest meritocracy demands competition among individuals, but such a construal misses Dewey’s point quoted above. There never was and there never will be a collection of individuals who are equal in any characteristic germane to why they form a social group, or otherwise. In sports, this is an accepted fact, and sporting events have not become unpopular because of it.
Individuals can lose sight of the fact (or have never thought of it in the first place) that when equality, in its fully moral sense, is a characteristic of their social group, it becomes a major contributing element to the growth of each individual. The fact that some excel while others work a little more slowly does not matter, because everyone benefits when a large majority of the group members possess a democratic attitude toward the character and well-being of the group itself.
Divisiveness sets in, as Dewey notes, when a significant number of group members judge the situation as competitive and feel that they cannot compete.
Their response is to destroy the character of the social group by leading as many individuals as possible to “dissolution and anarchy” within the society or group in which they find themselves. Their fear of their own lack of ability, or of the inequalities by making everyone “average and vulgar.” Apparently, what Dewey describes in 1932 has developed to the point where it is a major topic of study in social science; that is, there seems to be a growing literature concerned with what is referred to as “mobbing,” which occurs when the more competent, creative, and mission-oriented individuals are driven away – another area in which Dewey’s analyses are relevant in the 21st century. When one or more group members are perceived as a threat, they are subjected to various maneuvers to get them either out of the group or neutralized as competitors. When they are successful in their efforts to remove these kinds of perceived inequalities, often while espousing their affection for democracy, the democratic character of the group, in Dewey’s sense, is destroyed.
Why, at this late stage of our experience with democracy and equality, do we find these ideas nebulous in concept and application ? The answer seems to be that we do not appreciate the significance of Dewey’s argument that what underlies these concepts is the moral notion of communities, which are communities whose members possess a conscious regard for growth. So how does Dewey see the positive meaning of equality ? :
Liberty is that secure release and fulfillment of personal potentialities which take place only in rich and manifold association with others; the power to be an individualized self making a distinctive contribution and enjoying in its own way the fruits of association. Equality denotes the unhampered share which each individual member of the community has in the consequences of associated action. It is equitable because it is measured only by need and capacity to utilize, not by extraneous factors which deprive one in order that another make take and have.
As a general principle, when unbounded individual competition is introduced into a group, the kinds of associations constitutive of a community are inhibited, sometimes severely.
This does not mean that all competition should be minimized in all social relationships, because, for example, athletic competitions, whether individual or in teams, present opportunities for growth. More generally, occasions where individuals can exercise their abilities in pursuit of objectives requiring the contributions of others offer us a “release and fulfillment of personal potentialities” because they occur “in rich and manifold association with others.” Through all sorts of activities, we can realize “the power to be an individualized self,” which can make an obvious and significant contribution to a social group or society, all the while enjoying “the fruits of association.” Some enjoyments result from individual enterprise, but some are only realizable as “consequences of associated action.”
Associated action is a requirement if growth is maximized. Such action does not obtain when group members are all pursuing their own growth or other ends as isolated selves – even if each of them is individually consciously considering the welfare and integrity of the group, for example, by voting or contributing to candidates. The greatest degree of democracy is achieved when there is a conscious and associated effort to form or structure society in ways that allow it to serve as an instrumentality that supports and promotes the growth of all members through numerous and diverse associated actions.
“We agree to leave one another alone (within limits),” as Dewey says, “more from recognition of evil consequences which have resulted from the opposite course rather than from any profound belief in its social beneficence.”
We might even say that confusions about the concept of equality can undermine democratic associations by leading people to participate less, out of self-defense." (pp.159-161)
"Perhaps another dimension of Dewey’s relevance to the 21st century is just over the horizon. Dewey develops his philosophic naturalism around the moral centrality of growth, which is a continuing transformation of our reflective intelligence. If Dewey were writing today, I think some of his attention would be focused on what genetic enhancement might mean for the nature of intelligence and how we use it. As more is learned about how the genome and epigenome code for various attributes, surely the questions, “Can we make ourselves more intelligent ?” or “Is it possible to improve human consciousness ?” will be taken seriously. We know that intelligence is somehow a function of such things as neurotransmitters, second messengers, and neuron receptors ; these are the means by which our brains produce mind, thought, consciousness etc. Notice how the products of science are entering epistemology – one of Dewey’s main themes.
From the view of philosophic naturalism, the conception of intellectual growth and the conditions for its continuous development can serve as the basis for assessing the desirability of the alternative enhancements that this research will make possible. The decisions that we make in that regard are decisions about the course of our continued evolution as a species. The task of philosophy will be to keep the relevant moral inquiry from falling behind this vibrant area of scientific research. Dewey’s concept of growth will have a role in the analyses and evaluations of future philosophers." (p.161)
-Jerome A. Popp, "John Dewey’s Ethical Naturalism", Contemporary Pragmatism, Vol. 5, No. 2 (December 2008), 149–163.
