The publication of this new edition has made it possible to rewrite completely the first chapter as well as to make a few minor corrections throughout the volume. The first chapter was intended as an introduction. It failed of its purpose; it was upon the whole more technical and harder reading than the chapters which it was supposed to introduce. It was also rather confused in mode of presentation, and at one important point in thought as well. It is hoped that its new form is both simpler and possessed of greater continuity. If the original intent is now better fulfilled, it is largely due to the help of kindly critics. I wish to record my especial indebtedness to Professor M. C. Otto of the University of Wisconsin and Mr. Joseph Ratner of Columbia University.
In addition to the complete revision of the first chapter, the new edition affords an occasion for inserting in these prefatory remarks what is not to be found in the earlier text; namely, a summary of the thought of the book in the order of its development. The course of the ideas is determined by a desire to apply in the more general realm of philosophy the thought which is effective in dealing with any and every genuine question, from the elaborate problems of science to the practical deliberations of daily life, trivial or momentous. The constant task of such thought is to establish working connections between old and new subject-matters. We cannot lay hold of the new, we cannot even keep it before our minds, much less understand it, save by the use of ideas and knowledge we already possess. But just because the new is new it is not a mere repetition of something already had and mastered. The old takes on new color and meaning in being employed to grasp and interpret the new. The greater the gap, the disparity, between what has become a familiar possession and the traits presented in new subject-matter, the greater is the burden imposed upon reflection; the distance between old and new is the measure of the range and depth of the thought required.
Breaks and incompatibilities occur in collective culture as well as in individual life. Modern science, modern industry and politics, have presented us with an immense amount of material foreign to, often inconsistent with, the most prized intellectual and moral heritage of the western world. This is the cause of our modern intellectual perplexities and confusions. It sets the especial problem for philosophy to-day and for many days to come. Every significant philosophy is an attempt to deal with it; those theories to which this statement seems to apply least are attempts to bridge the gulf by seeking an escape or refuge. I have not striven in this volume for a reconciliation between the new and the old. I think such endeavors are likely to give rise to casualties to good faith and candor. But in employing, as one must do, a body of old beliefs and ideas to apprehend and understand the new, I have also kept in mind the modifications and transformations that are exacted of those old beliefs.
I believe that the method of empirical naturalism presented in this volume provides the way, and the only way- although of course no two thinkers will travel it in just the same fashion-by which one can freely accept the standpoint and conclusions of modern science: the way by which we can be genuinely naturalistic and yet maintain cherished values, provided they are critically clarified and reinforced. The naturalistic method, when it is consistently followed, destroys many things once cherished; but it destroys them by revealing their inconsistency with the nature of things-a flaw that always attended them and deprived them of efficacy for aught save emotional consolation. But its main purport is not destructive; empirical naturalism is rather a winnowing fan. Only chaff goes, though perhaps the chaff had once been treasured. An empirical method which remains true to nature does not "save"; it is not an insurance device nor a mechanical antiseptic. But it inspires the mind with courage and vitality to create new ideals and values in the face of the perplexities of a new world.
The new introductory chapter (Chapter I) accordingly takes up the question of method, especially with respect to the relation that exists between experience and nature. It points to faith in experience when intelligently used as a means of disclosing the realities of nature. It finds that nature and experience are not enemies or alien. Experience is not a veil that shuts man off from nature; it is a means of penetrating continually further into the heart of nature. There is in the character of human experience no index-hand pointing to agnostic conclusions, but rather a growing progressive self-disclosure of nature itself. The failures of philosophy have come from lack of confidence in the directive powers that inhere in experience, if men have but the wit and courage to follow them.
Chapter II explains our starting point: namely, that the things of ordinary experience contain within themselves a mixture of the perilous and uncertain with the settled and uniform. The need for security compels men to fasten upon the regular in order to minimize and to control the precarious and fluctuating. In actual experience this is a practical enterprise, made possible by knowledge of the recurrent and stable, of facts and laws. Philosophies have too often tried to forego the actual work that is involved in penetrating the true nature of experience, by setting up a purely theoretical security and certainty. The influence of this attempt upon the traditional philosophic preference for unity, permanence, universals, over plurality, change and particulars is pointed out, as well as its effect in creating the traditional notion of substance, now undermined by physical science. The tendency of modern science to substitute qualitative events, marked by certain similar properties and by recurrences, for the older notion of fixed substances is shown to agree with the attitude of nai've experience, while both point to the idea of matter and mind as significant characters of events, presented in different contexts, rather than underlying and ultimate substances.
Chapters III and IV discuss one of the outstanding problems in philosophy-namely, the question of laws, mechanical uniformities, on one hand and, on the other, ends, purposes, uses and enjoyments. It is pointed out that in actual experience the latter represent the consequences of series of changes in which the outcomes or ends have the value of consummation and fulfillment; and that because of this value there is a tendency to perpetuate them, render them stable, and repeat them. It is then shown that the foundation for value and the striving to realize it is found in nature, because when nature is viewed as consisting of events rather than substances, it is characterized by histories, that is, by continuity of change proceeding from beginnings to endings. Consequently, it is natural for genuine initiations and consummations to occur in experience. Owing to the presence of uncertain and precarious factors in these histories, attainment of ends, of goods, is unstable and evanescent. The only way to render them more secure is by ability to control the changes that intervene between the beginning and the end of a process. These intervening terms when brought under control are means in the literal and in the practical sense of the word. When mastered in actual experience they constitute tools, techniques, mechanisms, etc. Instead of being foes of purposes, they are means of execution; they are also tests for differentiating genuine aims from merely emotional and fantastic ideals.
The office of physical science is to discover those properties and relations of things in virtue of which they are capable of being used as instrumentalities; physical science makes claim to disclose not the inner nature of things but only those connections of things with one another that determine outcomes and hence can be used as means. The intrinsic nature of events is revealed in experience as the immediately felt qualities of things. The intimate coordination and even fusion of these qualities with the regularities that form the objects of knowledge, in the proper sense of the word "knowledge," characterizes intelligently directed experience, as distinct from mere casual and uncritical experience.
This conception of the instrumental nature of the objects of scientific knowing forms the pivot upon which further discussion turns (Chapter V). That character of everyday experience which has been most systematically ignored by philosophy is the extent to which it is saturated with the results of social intercourse and communication. Because this factor has been denied, meanings have either been denied all objective validity, or have been treated as miraculous extra-natural intrusions. If, however, language, for example, is recognized as the instrument of social cooperation and mutual participation, continuity is established between natural events (animal sound, cries, etc.) and the origin and development of meanings. Mind is seen to be a function of social interactions, and to be a genuine character of natural events when these attain the stage of widest and most complex interaction with one another. Ability to respond to meanings and to employ them, instead of reacting merely to physical contacts, makes the difference between man and other animals; it is the agency for elevating man into the realm of what is usually called the ideal and spiritual. In other words, the social participation affected by communication, through language and other tools, is the naturalistic link which does away with the often alleged necessity of dividing the objects of experience into two worlds, one physical and one ideal.
Chapter VI makes the transition from this realization that the social character of meanings forms the solid content of mind to considering mind as individual or "subjective." One of the most marked features of modern thought as distinct from ancient and medieval thought is its emphasis upon mind as personal or even private, its identification with selfhood. The connection of this underlying but misinterpreted fact with experience is made by showing that modern as distinct from ancient culture is characterized by the importance attached to initiation, invention and variation. Thus mind in its individual aspect is shown to be the method of change and progress in the significances and values attached to things. This trait is linked up to natural events by recurring to their particular and variable, their contingent, quality. In and of itself this factor is puzzling; it accounts for accidents and irrationalities. It was long treated as such in the history of mankind; the individual characteristics of mind were regarded as deviations from the normal, and as dangers against which society had to protect itself. Hence the long rule of custom, the rigid conservatism, and the still existing regime of conformity and intellectual standardization. The development of modern science began when there was recognized in certain technical fields a power to utilize variations as the starting points of new observations, hypotheses and experiments. The growth of the experimental as distinct from the dogmatic habit of mind is due to increased ability to utilize variations for constructive ends instead of suppressing them.
Life, as a trait of natural organisms, was incidentally treated in connection with the development of tools, of language and of individual variations. Its consideration as the link between physical nature and experience forms the topic of the mind-body problem (Chapter VII). The isolation of nature and experience from each other has rendered the undeniable connection of thought and effectiveness of knowledge and purposive action, with the body, an insoluble mystery. Restoration of continuity is shown to do away with the mind-body problem. It leaves us with an organism in which events have those qualities, usually called feelings, not realized in events that form inanimate things, and which, when living creatures communicate with one another so as to share in common, and hence universalized, objects, take on distinctively mental properties. The continuity of nature and experience is shown to resolve many problems that become only the more taxing when continuity is ignored.
The traits of living creatures are then considered (Chapter VIII) in connection with the conscious aspect of behavior and experience, the quality of immediacy attaching to events when they are actualized in experience by means of organic and social interactions. The difference and the connection of mind and consciousness is set forth. The meanings that form mind become consciousness, or ideas, impressions, etc., when something within the meanings or in their application becomes dubious, and the meaning in question needs reconstruction. This principle explains the focal and rapidly shifting traits of the objects of consciousness as such. A sensitive and vital mental career thus depends upon being awake to questions and problems; consciousness stagnates and becomes restricted and dull when this interest wanes.
The highest because most complete incorporation of natural forces and operations in experience is found in art (Chapter IX). Art is a process of production in which natural materials are re-shaped in a projection toward consummatory fulfillment through regulation of trains of events that occur in a less regulated way on lower levels of nature. Art is "fine" in the degree in which ends, the final termini, of natural processes are dominant and conspicuously enjoyed. All art is instrumental in its use of techniques and tools. It is shown that normal artistic experience involves bringing to a better balance than is found elsewhere in either nature or experience the consummatory and instrumental phases of events. Art thus represents the culminating event of nature as well as the climax of experience. In this connection the usual sharp separation made between art and science is criticized; it is argued that science as method is more basic than science as subject-matter, and that scientific inquiry is an art, at once instrumental in control and final as a pure enjoyment of mind.
This recurrence to the topic of ends, or consummatory consequences, and of desire and striving for them, raises the question of the nature of values (Chapter X). Values are naturalistically interpreted as intrinsic qualities of events in their consummatory reference. The question of the control of the course of events so that it may yield, as ends or termini, objects that are stable and that tend toward creation of other values, introduces the topic of value-judgments or valuations. These constitute what is generically termed criticism. A return is made to the theme of the first chapter by emphasizing the crucial significance of criticism in all phases of experience for its intelligent control. Philosophy, then, is a generalized theory of criticism. Its ultimate value for life-experience is that it continuously provides instruments for the criticism of those values-whether of beliefs, institutions, actions or products-that are found in all aspects of experience. The chief obstacle to a more effective criticism of current values lies in the traditional separation of nature and experience, which it is the purpose of this volume to replace by the idea of continuity.
January, 1929, New York City.
JOHN DEWEY.