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Classics in the History of Psychology -- James (1904c)
Classics in the History of Psychology
An internet resource developed by
Christopher D. Green
York University,
Toronto, Ontario
ISSN 1492-3713
(Return to index)
The Chicago
School[1]
By William James (1904)
First published in Psychological
Bulletin, 1, 1-5.
Posted
January 2002
The rest of the
world has made merry over the Chicago man's legendary saying that 'Chicago hasn't had time: to get round to culture yet,
but when she does strike her, she'll make her hum.' Already the prophecy is fulfilling itself in
a dazzling manner. Chicago has a School of Thought! -- a
school of thought which, it is safe to predict, will figure in literature as
the School of Chicago for twenty-five years to come. Some universities have plenty of thought to
show, but no school; others plenty of school, but no thought. The University of Chicago, by its Decennial, Publications, shows real
thought and a real school. Professor
John Dewey, and at least ten of his disciples, have collectively put into the
world a statement, homogeneous in spite of so many coöperating
minds, of a view of the world, both theoretical and ~practical, which is so
simple, massive, and positive that, in spite of the fact that many parts of it yet
need to be worked out, it deserves the title of a new system of
philosophy. If it be as true as it is original, its publication must be
reckoned an important event. The present reviewer, for one, strongly suspects
it of being true. [p. 2]
The briefest characterization is all that will be attempted here. Criticism from various quarters will doubtless
follow, for about the new system as a bone of contention discussion is bound to
rage.
Like Spencer's philosophy, Dewey's is an evolutionism; but unlike
Spencer, Dewey and his disciples have so far (with the exception of Dewey's
admirable writings on ethics) confined themselves to establishing certain
general principles without applying them to details. Unlike Spencer, again, Dewey is a pure
empiricist. There is nothing real,
whether being or relation between beings, which is not direct matter of
experience. There is no Unknowable or Absolute behind
or around the finite world. No Absolute, either, in the sense of anything eternally
constant; no term is static, but everything is process and change.
Like Spencer, again, Dewey makes biology and psychology continuous.
'Life,' or 'experience,' is the fundamental conception; and whether you take it
physically or mentally, it involves an
adjustment between terms. Dewey's favorite word is 'situation.' A situation implies at least two factors, each
of which is both an independent variable and a function of the other variable. Call them E (environment) and O (organism)
for simplicity's sake. They interact and
develop each other without end; for each action of E upon O changes
O, whose reaction in turn upon ·E changes E, so that E's new action upon O gets
different, eliciting a new reaction, and so on indefinitely. The situation gets perpetually 'reconstructed,'
to use another of Professor Dewey's favorite words,
and this reconstruction is the process of which all reality consists.
I am in some doubt as to whether, in the last resort, Dewey thinks monistically or pluralistically of this reality. He often talks of 'experience' in the
singular as if it were one universal process and not' a collective name for
many particular processes. But all his special statements refer to particular
processes only, so I will report him in pluralistic terms.
No biological processes are treated of in this literature, except as
incidental to ethical discussion, and the ethical discussions would carry us
too far afield.
I will confine myself [p. 3] therefore to the psychological or
epistemological doctrines of the school.
Consciousness is functionally active in readjustment. In perfectly 'adapted' situations, where
adjustments are fluent and stereotyped, it exists in minimal degree. Only where
there is hesitation, only where past habit will not run, do we find that the
situation awakens explicit thought.
Thought is thus incidental to change in experience, to conflict between
the old and new. The situation must be reconstructed if activity is to be resumed,
and the rejudging of it mentally is the reconstruction's
first stage. The nucleus of the Studies
in Logical Theory becomes thus an account of the judging process.
"In psychological terms we may say, in explanation of the judging process, that some stimulus to action has failed to function
properly as a stimulus! and that the activity which
was going on has been interrupted.
Response in the accustomed way has failed. In such a case there arises a
division in experience into sensation content as subject and ideal content as predicate. In other words, *** upon failure of the accustomed
stimulus to be adequate *** activity ceases, and is resumed in an integral form
only when a new habit is set up to which the new or altered stimulus is
adequate. It is in this process of
reconstruction that subject and predicate appear." The old subject(the that of the situation) stands for the
interrupted habit, the new subject (the that with the new what added)
stands for the new habit begun. The predicate is thus essentially hypothetical -- the
situations to which the use of it leads may have quickly to be reconstructed in
turn. In brief, S is a stimulus intellectually irritating; P is an
hypothesis in response; SP is a
mental action, which normally is destined to lead or pass into action in a wider
sense. The sense of 'objectivity' in the
S emerges emphatically only when the P is problematic and the
action undefined. Then only does the S arrest attention, and its contrast with the self become acute. 'Knowing,' therefore, or the conscious
relation of the object to the self, is thus only an incident in the wider
process of 'adjustment,' which includes unconscious adjustments as well . [p. 4]
This leads Professor
Dewey and his disciples to a peculiar view of ' fact.' What is a fact? A fact
and a theory have not different natures, as is usually supposed, the one being
objective, the other subjective. They
are both made of the same material, experience-material namely, and their
difference relates to their way of functioning solely. What is fact for one epoch, or for one
inquirer, is theory for another epoch or another inquirer. It is 'fact' when it functions steadily; it
is 'theory' when we hesitate. 'Truth' is thus in process of formation like all
other things. It consists not in
conformity or correspondence with an externally fixed archetype or model. Such a thing would be irrelevant even if we
knew it to exist. Truth consists in a
character inclosed within the 'situation.' Whenever a situation has the maximum of
stability, and seems most satisfactory to its own subject-factor, it is true
for him. If accused here of opening the
door to systematic protagoreanism, Professsor[sic]
Dewey would reply that the concrete facts themselves are what keep his
scepticism from being systematic in any practically objectionable sense.
Experience is continually enlarging, and the object-factors of our situations
are always getting problematic, making old truths unsatisfactory, and obliging
new ones to be found. The object-factors
moreover are common to ourselves and others; and our truths have to be-mated
with those of our fellow men. The real
safeguard against caprice of statement and indetermination
of belief is that there is a 'grain' in things against which we can't
practically go. But as the grain creates
itself from situation to situation, so the truth creates itself pari passu, and there is no eternally standing system of
extra-subjective verity to which our judgments, ideally and in advance of the
facts, are obliged to conform.
There are two great
gaps in the system, which none of the Chicago writers
have done anything to fill, and until they are filled, the system, as a
system, will appear defective. There is
no cosmology, no positive account of the order of physical fact, as contrasted
with mental fact, and no account of the fact (which I assume the writers to
believe in) that different subjects share a common object-world. These lacunae can hardly be [p. 5] inadvertent
-- we shall. doubtless soon see them filled in some way
by one or another member of the school.
I might go into much
greater technical detail, and I might in particular make many a striking
quotation. But I prefer to be
exceedingly summary, and merely to call the reader's attention to the
importance of this output of Chicago University. Taking it en gros, what strikes me
most in it is the great sense of concrete· reality with which it is
filled. It seems a promising via
media between the empiricist and transcendentalist tendencies of our
time. Like empiricism, it is
individualistic and phenomenalistic; it places truth in
rebus, and not ante rem.
It resembles transcendentalism, on the other hand, in making value and fact
inseparable, and in standing for continuities and purposes in things. It employs the genetic method to which both schools
are now accustomed. · It coincides remarkably with the simultaneous movement in
favor of 'pragmatism' or 'humanism' set up quite
independently at Oxford by Messrs. Schiller and Sturt. It probably has a. great future, and is
certainly something of which Americans may be proud. Professor Dewey ought to gather into another
volume his scattered essays and addresses on psychological and ethical topics, for now that his philosophy is systematically
formulated, these throw a
needed light.
Footnotes
[1] 1. Studies in Logical Theory, John
Dewey, with the coöperation of members and fellows of the
Department of Philosophy. The Decennial Publications, second series, Volume XI., Chicago.
The University of Chicago Press, 1903. 2. The Definition of the
Psychical, George H. Mead. 3. Existence,
Meaning and Reality, A. W. Moore. 4. Logical Conditions of a Scientific
Treatment of Morality, John Dewey. 5. The Relations of Philosophy to
Philosophy, James Rowland Angell. Reprints from Volume III. of the
first series of Decennial Publications, ibid., 1903.
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