John Dewey (1859-1952)

1. John Dewey (1859-1952) Common Sense and Scientific Inquiry

2. Purpose • Dewey argues that the separation of common sense and scientific/philosophical inquiry is misguided. • The purpose of this article is to show that scientific/philosophical inquiry should be understood as having a common origin and they should be reintegrated.

3. Division of the Article 1. What is Common Sense? 2. Common Sense vs. Scientific Inquiry 3. Situation 4. The problem of the relation between common sense and scientific inquiry. 5. History 6. Goals

4. 1. What is Common Sense? Common sense works within a cultural environment • We live and act in a cultural environment • This entails: customs, traditions, occupations, interest, and purpose. • Language also establishes the limits and possibilities of meaning and significance.

5. Common sense • Common sense takes place in cultural environments • Common sense inquiries are dependent on cultural factors (they arise as a result of them) and try to resolve issues associated with the cultural world. • Problems are concerned with “use and enjoyment”.

6. Theoretical vs. Practical • Common sense inquiries are practical insofar as their end is the resolution of a social/political/cultural or economic problem. • Scientific/philosophical inquiries are theoretical insofar as inquiries are to obtain knowledge (and truth) for its own sake and not for the resolution of some further problem.

7. More on Common Sense • Common sense is the everyday reasoning humans (including children) use to accomplish the practical objectives of everyday life. • Oxford Dictionary: “Good sound practical; combined tact and readiness in dealing with the ordinary affairs of life.” • Good sense is good judgment

8. Good sense is good judgment • Power of sagacity • Power of discernment • Power to distinguish the relevant from the irrelevant • The power to choose what ought to be done and what ought not be done in the ORDINARY AFFAIRS OF LIFE.

9. Common Senses of a community • “The general sense, feeling, judgment of mankind or a community.” • Common sense as a body of settled truths • “Common” takes on the meaning of general or accepted by many. • Every culture has its “body of settled truths” in its customs, traditions, language system and interpretations. • They are regulative and normative of specific beliefs and judgments

10. Universally common? • “It is possible, today (1938), along with our knowledge of the enormous differences that characterize various cultures, to find some unified deposit of activities and of meanings in the “common sense and feeling of mankind,: especially in matters of basic social cohesion.(447)” • Both definitions can be reduced to the notion that they are concerned with “THE ORDINARY AFFAIRS OF LIFE.”

11. Use and Enjoyment • “use and enjoyment” is the way humans are fundamentally connected to the world. • Common sense inquiries are directed toward this end. • Common sense therefore is concerned with the QUALITATIVE.

12. CS -> U/E -> Qualitative • It is by discernment of qualities that the fitness and capacity of things and events for use is decided. • Enjoyment (and suffering) are also concerned the qualitative character or nature of things.

13. Common Sense vs. Scientific Inquiry CS within a culture Science • Content and beliefs of CS fluctuate. • Procedures or methods of CS fluctuate. • Having been considered as permanent. • Have been considered as immutable

14. Common Sense and Science Common Sense Science • Qualitative • Teleological (use and enjoyment; ends and values) • Mathematical, non-qualitative • Elimination of final causes, only efficient causes

15. 3. Situation • We never experience a single object or event, but rather an object within a contextual whole. • The objects or events experienced always exists within a contextual connection. • This context is called a situation.

16. Dewey • “ In actual experience, there is never any such isolated singular object or event; an object or event is always a special part of , phase or aspect, of an environing experienced world- a situation” 451. • Total complex environment • Field

17. Situation • Objects and events always exist in a field (or within a framework) that entails place, function and purpose (use and enjoyment). • To isolate and abstract these events from their unique situation is to misinterpret them or assign to them a less true or real meaning and significance than they actually have.

18. Universe of Experience • Dewey, “The universe of experience surrounds and regulates the universe of discourse but never appears as such within the latter.”452.

19. Two evils of “frameworking” • The 1st evil of “frameworking” is not to have any frame work at all. In this case, observed fact lead us to no conclusions and cannot advance knowledge. • The 2nd evil of “frameworking” is to have to rigid and strict a of a frame work in advance to the facts. This will lead us to MISS out on important observations. • Dewey, “Everything is forced into the predetermined conceptual and theoretical scheme.”

20. Avoiding the Evils of “Frameworking” • “The way, and the only way, to escape, these two evils , is sensitivity to the quality of a situations a whole.” • Dewey argues that being open to the interpretations of events and objects as parts of the greater environment, will allow us to better discern and interpret realty.

21. 4. Problems concerning the relation between common sense and scientific inquiry. • As Dewey has argued in the “Quest for Certainty” the problem of the division of practice and theory begins with the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. • They bequeathed to the philosophical tradition a very general structure of things in which science and practice are viewed as qualitatively distinct and totally separate. • Along with this distinction come the corresponding distinctions between reason and the senses, the mind and the body, etc.

22. 5. History: Modernity and the New Science • While Pragmatists criticize modernity for their search for certainty and rationalism, Dewey points out that modernity also had another completely opposite side. • It was during modernity that science turned to the body (perception/empiricism) and to the practical observations of the natural world to answer its scientific concerns.

23. Modernity and Empiricism • Medicine (human health) • Copernicus (observations) • Galileo (observations) • Newton (nature) • Dewey, “At every point in the practice of scientific inquiry, the old separation between experience and reason, between theory and doing, was destroyed.”458

24. 6. Intercommunication between common sense and science • “But the most revolutionary change it [common sense] has ever undergone is that effected by the infiltration and incorporation of scientific conclusions and methods into itself”

25. Science and common sense • Common sense if directly related to the situations involved in our everyday lives, to the practical concerns of human beings in their quest for practical results of use and enjoyment. • How has science been incorporated into the common sense world?

26. Science in the common sense world • Electricity and light • Transportation • Television • Health care • Forensics • Military weapons • Satellites • Cell phones • Internet

27. Dewey • “To relate in detail the ways in which science has affected the area of common sense in respect to the relationships of person to person, group to group, people to people, would be to relate the story of story of social change in the past few centuries.” 459

28. Dewey • “Application of science in revolutionizing the forces and conditions of production, distribution and communication have of necessity tremendously modified the conditions under which human beings live and act in connection with one another, whether the conditions be those of interchange and friendly association or of opposition and war.” 459 • THIS WAS WRITTEN IN 1938! • If Dewey would have known about the Internet, Face book and You Tube, what do you think he would say?

29. What needs to be done? • Dewey claims that common sense remains divided and should be unified. • First, there is the common sense of the past that has been ushered into the logic of pure mathematics, completely detached from worldly matters. • Second, there is the common sense of modern science that is empirical and completely directed at improving human life.

30. Dewey • “It is for this reason that it is here affirmed that the basic problem of present culture and associated living is that of affecting integration where division now exists. The problem cannot be solved apart from from a unified logical method of attack and procedure. The attainment of unified method means that the fundamental unity of the structure of inquiry in common sense and science be recognized, their difference being one in the problems with which they are directly concerned, not in their respective logics [theories of inquiries].” 462.