E NCYCLOPAEDIA OF P HILOSOPHY OF E DUCATION

Pragmatism, Ethics and Education

Ruth Anna Putnam Wellesley College Pragmatism is a method of philosophizing rather than a set of doctrines. It was founded by Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) in a paper, now lost, read to a group of young intellectuals in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1872. That paper formed the basis of what was to become a series of ve papers called Illustrations of the Logic of Science (See Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, vol. 3. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, l986, pp. 242-338) published in 1878. These papers constitute an exposition and defense of the method of science, i.e. of any empirical or experimental method of inquiry. Peirce argues that this is the method one ought to use if one wants ones beliefs to agree with the facts. One wants this agreement because a belief is what one is prepared to act upon, and only actions based on beliefs that agree with the facts promise to lead to the desired outcomes. In the second paper of the series Peirce introduced what became known as the Pragmatic Maxim. Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conceptions to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of these objects. (op. cit., p. 266) Once again, one sees that the Pragmatic outlook is forward looking, looking toward effects or future events rather than to the past. Peirces essays attracted little attention, but after William James (1842-1910) reintroduced Pragmatism in 1898, it became a major philosophical movement in the United States of America. Both Peirce and James, in different years, gave lectures on Pragmatism. James suggested as a reformulation of the Pragmatic Maxim, . . . to develop a thoughts meaning, we need only determine what conduct it is tted to produce; that conduct is for us its sole signicance. ( William James, Essays in Philosophy. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, l978, p.124) While Peirce had been interested in the maxim primarily as a method for analyzing scientic and philosophical concepts, James used it to determine the signicance of philosophical and religious propositions. For example, he argued passionately that only a belief in indeterminism a belief that alternative futures are real possibilities, one of which will be actualized by ones own choice - could give one the moral energy to act as one ought regardless of ones feelings. However, I do not here wish to dwell on the differences between Peirce, James

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M. Peters, P. Ghiraldelli, B. Zarni , A. Gibbons (eds.) c Encyclopaedia of Philosophy of Education http://www.ffst.hr/ENCYCLOPAEDIA

and the third of the great classical Pragmatists, John Dewey (1859-1952). What is important here is rather how the Pragmatist perspective, shared by all of them differs from the dominant philosophical approach. While Aristotle regarded human beings equally as rational and as social beings, modern philosophy under the inuence of Descartes has emphasized almost exclusively the rational side. Human beings are regarded as reasoning and knowing animals, not as feeling and acting ones. The result is the spectator view: human beings are taken to be mere passive observers of the universe. This gives rise, in ways I cannot here develop, to skepticism both concerning the existence and nature of the external world and concerning the existence of other minds. In contrast, the Pragmatists, regardless of their doctrinal differences, all understand that human beings are within nature rather than looking at nature from the outside. They all agree that human beings interact with nature, and they all agree that human intelligence is social. For James, and even more so for Dewey, this led to the development of a moral psychology and a value theory which, in turn, led in Deweys case to the development of a philosophy of education. Let us then turn to these developments. Dewey introduced a distinction between valuing and evaluating, or between prizing and appraising. That we value something, positively or negatively, shows itself in how we act toward that thing, in our holding on to it, trying to preserve it, taking care of it, or in our shunning it, attempting to get rid of it, trying to destroy it. The basis of such valuation may be an immediate reaction - of bodily pleasure or pain, of aesthetic delight or disgust, of fear or sadness, or it may be the result of a process of evaluation. The newborns cry in response to hunger or other discomfort is an organic response, but in fortunate circumstances it leads some adult to provide relief. Thus the baby learns to cry when it wants something. In a very rudimentary way, one may say that the baby has evaluated crying and found it serviceable. As the child learns to speak, it is also taught to ask politely for what it needs or wants rather than to cry; it is forced to re-evaluate crying. Because it interacts with its environment, including signicantly its human environment, the child develops certain habits, it grows into the customary morality of its society. Adults habitually observes the (often unstated) rules of this morality, habitually have certain attitudes, and habitually attempt to instill these modes of acting and feeling in the children under their care. James and Dewey emphasized the importance of habit both in the smooth function of individual lives and for the stability of society. Nevertheless, just as one discovers that not all ones wants can be satised, that one must choose to pursue some goals while abandoning others, so one discovers that the customary morality into which one was socialized fails to give satisfactory answers to all lifes problems. Thus one must replace habitual responses by deliberate ones, customary by reective morality (this terminology is due to Dewey). Moral philosophy is not a substitute for reective morality; it is rather the result of reection on an abstract level. The normative theories of the philosophers serve to draw our attention to features of moral situations that we may otherwise overlook, but they do not provide recipes for the solution of moral problems. How then should we deal with moral problems?

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Pragmatists are consequentialists but not Utilitarians. Bentham had argued that anything valued was either a (bodily) pleasure or the reduction of a (bodily) pain, or else a means to such a state. Consequently, Utlitarians held that the right action in any given situation was the action that would most likely lead to the greatest balance of pleasure over pain for all those affected. Against this James pointed out that our immediate valuings are not limited to bodily pains and pleasures; rather we enjoy music and dislike noise; we enjoy certain views, both natural and the products of art; we enjoy certain activities for their own sake. Indeed we have moral sentiments; the contemplation of certain actions or states of affairs will ll us with disgust or admiration, etc. It is, therefore, impossible to reduce all values to a common denominator. Hence to say that one should maximize the good, while it is not false, is rather empty. Moral choice cannot be reduced to a simple calculus, hedonic or otherwise. There is another reason why serious moral choice cannot be reduced to a calculation. When one is confronted with incompatible goals, when one has to choose how to live and what to live for, what is at stake, both James and Dewey have argued, is not a difference of quantity [of good], but what kind of person one is to become, what sort of self is in the making, what kind of a world is making. ( John Dewey, the Middle Works, 1899-1924, vol. 14: Human Nature and Conduct 1922. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988, p. 150) What is meant here is not a sickly preoccupation with the state of ones soul but rather a realistic awareness that different ways of living (different careers, for example, or different family arrangements) will foster certain virtues while neglecting others, will expose one to certain temptations but not to others, etc. Thus a knowledge of ones own strengths and weaknesses will play a role in making a wise choice. Though there is in serious moral choice an existential moment, there is also much room for deliberation, and when the issue concerns public policy on some level or other, deliberation dominates. One nds oneself in a situation, Dewey called it a problematic situation, in which the outcome is not determined. What will happen depends on what will be done, but what is to be done is not clear. One proposes a tentative goal. One investigates the resources available and the obstacles to be overcome in order to reach this goal; here a knowledge of causal relationships is indispensable. One rehearses in ones imagination various courses of action, one reacts emotionally to the contemplated consequences of the alternatives. Sympathy plays an indispensable role at this point. Dewey takes it for granted that good persons aim at the common good, but he warns that one will miss this aim unless one is able to feel imaginatively what others feel and to respond sympathetically to those imagined feelings. What then is the common good? There is, of course, no simple answer. Human beings need friends, harmonious family relations, the ability to participate in political processes. They need to live in a society in which the arts and sciences ourish; they need the social conditions for individual growth. Dewey does not want a paternalistic welfare state but a democratic socialism. In accordance with these ideas, Dewey devoted time and energy to many of the social

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problems of his day. Above all, professionally and very effectively, he addressed issues in the education of children. His ideas on this subject were most fully developed in his book Democracy and Education (John Dewey, The Middle Works, vol. 9: 1916. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980). Dewey held that methods of education that had been developed in a pre-industrial and pre-democratic societies were not suitable to educate the citizens of a democratic society. In terms of the distinction made earlier between customary and reective morality, traditional education with its emphasis on basic skills and knowledge of certain facts inculcates in the child habits corresponding to customary morality. In contrast, Dewey holds that educating citizens of a democracy should endeavor to shape the experiences of the young so that instead of reproducing current habits, better habits shall be formed, and thus the future adult society be an improvement on the current one. (John Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 85) This means that the child needs to learn how to learn. Rote learning and the passive absorption of material presented by the teacher will not accomplish this. Human beings learn by constructing hypotheses and testing them in practice. This is as true of so simple a hypothesis as this apple is ripe to be tested by biting into it, as it is of the most advanced scientic theory. And it is equally true of value judgments, including, signicantly, political judgments. Just as scientic progress requires the free exchange of views among scientists, so social progress requires the free exchange of views among citizens. Dewey considered it important that the school should do its utmost to break down social barriers between boys and girls, rich and poor, children of different origins. But ideas do not arise spontaneously, they arise in response to experience, and, as we already noted, for Dewey experience is an interaction between the experiencer and the environment. In Deweys view, the teacher is to prepare for the children experiences that relate the material to be learned to their familiar world, experiences that do not present ready-made conclusion but rather require that the children experiment, form their own hypotheses and test them. If these principles sound familiar, it is because they are more or less realized in science education, especially in secondary schools and on the college and university levels. But whether these principles are to guide elementary school education continues to be a hotly debated issue. Yet technical and scientic change occurs now so rapidly that in order to be a well-informed citizen and a productive member of society one must be able to continue to learn. Learning how to learn is the most important skill our children can acquire. Because of these changes, the social scene, too, is in constant ux. Learning to be exible, to be willing to listen to a variety of view points, and to regard social policies as experiments that one is ready to modify if things dont work out as one had hoped, these are the habits of mind that a Pragmatist education will attempt to foster. For Dewey a community improves as its members come to have more and more interests in common and as it comes to be more and more open to intercourse with other communities. These are the social conditions for continued individual growth, one might say: for a lifelong education.

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Encyclopaedia of Philosophy of Education

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