Lecture Notes on Dewey's
Reconstruction in Philosophy
(Beacon Press, 1985)
Last modified May 3, 2007 Contact: Dr. Jan Garrett This is a merely a teaching aid. Its recommended use is to check your understanding after you read the text and work out on your own answers to the Study Questions provided elsewhere on this site. It is not for direct citation in scholarly work or student papers. (There is no careful attempt, as there should be in scholarly essays and articles, to distinguish direct quotation from paraphrase.)
Chapters 4, 6 and 7 (Selections) only.
Chapter IV 1. What was the shared view of traditional philosophy concerning the limitations of experience? It never rises above the level of the particular, contingent and the probable. It can never reach universal, necessary and certain authority and direction.
2. How did the empiricists agree with traditional philosophy? They admitted the correctness of these assertions. (76)
3. In what sense did they depart from "transcendentalists"? They mounted a sceptical attack on some of the pretensions of the traditional view and, in Locke's case, asserted that it could guide us modestly in conduct. (78) The reference to Locke cannot apply to his ideal of a demonstrative science in ethics but to the use of judgment in establishing probable connections between one kind of event and another.
4. How is Dewey about to go beyond empiricism? (78) It is now possible to make claims for experience as a guide in science and conduct which the older empiricism could not and did not make.
5. Of what was the ancient notion of experience (empeiria) a product? Actual ancient Greek experience, what is now called trial and error. (79)
How did Plato and Aristotle understand experience? (79-80) The attempts and the sensations resulting gradually build up in memory. Irregular variations get canceled, common features are selected, reinforced, and combined. A habit of action is built up, along with a generalized picture. We come to recognize objects as instances of a certain kinds, marked by universal characteristics of whole species.
Similarly, regularities are established in conduct. Craftsmen learn to classify problems into certain types and simultaneously to treat these types of problem with a corresponding type of solution.
(This account closely follows Aristotle's Metaphysics book i.)
6. In ancient thought, what do conceptions and principles do relative to experience? Conceptions and principles leave experience behind, they do not seek to rectify its deficiencies. Experience itself is defective and irremediable. (81)
7. What is the primary significance of the philosophical empiricism initiated by Locke? It was disintegrative in intent. It wanted to remove the burden of blind custom, imposed authority, and accidental associations. It thought the best way to free people from the burden was through a natural history of the origin and growth of ideas (a genetic account of their development). Having shown the origin of objectionable beliefs, it hoped to remove their force. The "malice" of Locke, etc. was aimed at institutions which had lost their usefulness--a point which Santayana's reference to "malice" does not appreciate. (82)
8. What does empiricism produce that seems to require the rationalistic idealism of Kant and his successors? An account of the origin of ideas leaves "natural" ideas--such as substance, cause and effect--in the same disintegrated condition as the allegedly artificial ones. Now Reason--e.g., the Kantian a priori--must be resorted to in order to provide sufficient order to the chaos of particular sense impressions. (83)
9. What conception of psychology has been reversed by the development of biology? In the 18th and much of the 19th century psychology has largely a passive conception of human experience. The mind is passive in the reception of ideas of sense, and its activity is limited to the combining of the ideas received. Volition, action, emotion and desire are dependent upon sensation, and therefore essentially passive themselves. (84)
10. What does psychology now say that the dominant psychology of the eighteenth and nineteenth century didn't say? All living creatures, including human beings, are engaged in the transformation of their environments. The higher the life form, the more important the active reconstruction of the medium. (84)
What does D tell us about the relation of experience to (active) doing and (passive) undergoing? Experience is primarily a matter of doing, i.e., of acting on the environment and undergoing the consequences of that action. (86-87)
11. What important consequences for philosophy follow--what is the basic category?
The interaction of organism and environment, resulting in some adaption which secures utilization of the latter.
How does knowledge fit in here?
Relegated to a derived position, secondary in origin. "Not something separate and self-sufficing, but involved in the process by which life" is maintained and developed.
How do the sense-impressions change their role? They are regarded as stimuli to action. (87)
12. According to Dewey, what are sensations as conscious elements? An interruption in a course of action previous entered on.
Do they belong in the sphere of knowing or elsewhere? (88) Elsewhere.
Explain. They belong under the heading of immediate stimulus and response. They indicate a problem, the need for some readjustment. They are shocks of change, signals to redirection of action.
How was the rationalist (Kantian idealist) right about sensations? It is right to deny that sensations as such are true elements of knowledge.
How wrong? Sensations are not parts of any knowledge, superior or inferior, but provocations, incitements, challenges towards inquiry which is supposed to terminate in knowledge. (89-90)
13. How does the new conception of experience liberate us from a hopeless task left us by classical empiricism? Philosophy is no longer has the "hopeless problem of finding a way in which separate grains of sand may be woven into a strong and coherent rope--or into the illusion and pretense of one." (90)
14. Do we need the Kantian idealist machinery of a priori concepts and categories [imposed by the mind upon the otherwise chaotic sensuous manifold that enters via the senses, according to Kant]? No, we no longer need it. (90-91)
15. What is the true "stuff" of experience? Adaptive courses of action, habits, connections of doing and undergoing (91)
What does experience "carry within itself"? Principles of connection and organization
What "affords the basis" for the development of "intelligence as an organizing factor within experience"? Organization intrinsic to life, all the way down to the level of the amoeba--its activity refers to its surroundings and to what comes before and goes after (91)
16. What is a more empirical source of categories than the Kantian a priori? The communication and feedback which a child has with her parents and other intimates in the earliest years of her life. (92)
17. What radical change occurs in the conception of experience? "It has ceased to be empirical and become experimental."
Dewey is making a distinction which is often ignored. It is typically assumed that since observation occurs in modern scientific inquiry as it did in premodern natural inquiry, that experience in both cases are the same. But Dewey rightly points out that there is a major difference. Modern inquiry deliberately manipulates nature to see what will happen. (94-95)
"The very fact of experience includes the process by which it directs itself in its own betterment." (94-95)
What is now the relation between science ("reason") and experience? The former is not laid from above upon experience, but is suggested and tested in experience. . . (95)
What has been achieved by the application of the new insight in technological fields? employed in the development of inventions to expand and enrich experience. [note technological optimism] (95)
18. To what is the name intelligence given? "Concrete suggestions arising from past experiences, developed and matured in the light of the needs and deficiencies of the present, employed as aims and methods of specific reconstruction, and tested by success or failure in accomplishing this task of readjustment." (96)
19. What is the new conception of reason, according to Dewey? It is experimental intelligence.
(A) It is conceived on the model of science, and used in the creation of the social arts.
(B) It projects [aims at] a better future and assists man in its realization.
(C) Its operation is always subject to test in experience. (96-97, several points to be noted in this passage)
20. What criticisms does Dewey make of "historic rationalism"? It has tended to use reason as an agency of justification and apologetics. It has taught that evils and defects disappear in the bigger picture of things. Things seem evil but aren't really so when seen rationally. (97)
21. How has the modern world often suffered from philosophy? Philosophy has offered only an arbitrary choice between hard and fast opposites--disintegrating analysis vs. rigid synthesis; trivialization of the past v. complete conservatism; dissolution of experience into indivisible elements not susceptible to stable organization v. clamping down by fixed categories.
What happens when men are thrown back upon "common sense"? They fall back on faith, intuition, compromise; routine, the force of some strong personality, strong leadership or the pressure of immediate circumstances. Dewey appears to anticipate the rise of fascism first in Italy (1920's), then in Germany and Spain (1930's).
How has the liberal and progressive movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth century been harmed? It lacked method commensurate with its practical aspirations. (100-101)
22. What would the philosophical reconstruction which Dewey advocates achieve?
It would relieve people of having to choose between an impoverished and truncated experience, on the one hand, and an artificial and impotent reason, on the other hand. (101)
Chapter 7: Moral Reconstruction 1. How did ethical theory begin? Traditional morality was breaking down. Philosophers like Plato created an ethical theory which served as a partial substitute or reinforcement for traditional morality.
What kind of objects and laws did it supply? A new standard as fixed and eternal as morals were traditionally thought to be. (172)
2. What does ethics seem to think it needs to discover? A single, fixed pattern of life or a single fixed law or duty.
Give examples of the ways in which this assumption is worked out? Loyalty or obedience to a higher power or authority--in the divine will (various medievals); the will of the secular ruler; the maintenance of institutions in which the purpose of superiors is embodied (Plato's Republic?); the rational consciousness of duty (Kant); in goods such as self-realization (Aristotle), holiness, happiness (Aristotle), the greatest aggregate of pleasures (hedonism). (161-62)
3. How does ethics relate to the hierarchical structure of feudal society? As feudal society is structured on the principle of a top-down hierarchy, so traditional ethical theory operates in a top-down fashion. The task of moral philosophy is to discover the ideal pattern or fixed law, clarify it, defend it, and proceed (in top down fashion) to apply it to particular cases. Feudal social structure went along with the intellectual picture of a closed and, from the Moon on up anyway, unchanging cosmos. (162)
4. What challenge does modern natural science bring to the feudal view? The view of a closed cosmos has been destroyed by modern science, and with it, in Dewey's opinion, an essentially static picture of the universe. By increasing our ability to gain knowledge about processes here on earth, science turns to the concrete, the particular, and away from the universal and unchanging. (162)
5. What does Dewey counterpose to traditional ethics concerning goods and laws? "A plurality of changing, moving individualized ends" and "principles, criteria and [moral] laws as intellectual instruments for analyzing individual or unique situations." (162-63)
6. What is the primary significance of the morally ultimate character of the situation? It transfers the weight and burden of morality to intelligence.
What does Dewey seem to mean by intelligence? The ability to observe the details of a situation (characterized by conflicting desires and alternate apparent goods), to analyze it into its factors, clarify the obscure elements . . . to consider the patterns of action that suggested themselves and anticipate the probable and possible consequences of each of them. In other words, a multifaceted ability to define and solve problems. (163-64)
7. What virtues must be cultivated along with intelligence? Wide sympathy, keen sensitiveness, persistence in the face of the disagreeable, balance of interests. (164)
8. To what does the theory of fixed ends inevitably lead? Into the bog of disputes that cannot be settled--if there is one summum bonum, what is it? (166) Shall we arrange the particular goods into a hierarchy--how shall we decide what goes above what?
What suffers from the results of this preoccupation? The special moral perplexities that occupy ordinary mankind go unaddressed. (166-67)
9. What grammatical point does Dewey use to emphasize the situational nature of values? He claims that goods like health and justice are best indicated by adverbs. To say that one seeks justice is to say that he seeks to live justly. (167)
10. In what way do general ideas about justice and other goods have value? They have value because they promote a fitting response to individual situations. (168-69)
11. In the contrast between "artistic" and "mechanical," what does the former word connote? The word "artistic" connotes sensitivity to context required by all intelligent choice, including choices of a more obviously ethical sort. (168-69)
12. Is there any such thing as the good? No, according to Dewey. When do goods exist? Only when there is something to be done. (170-71)
13. Why does Dewey criticize the traditional distinction between instrumental and intrinsic good? "Carried into practice it has an import that is tragic. Historically it has been the source and origin of a hard and fast difference between ideal goods on the one side and material goods on the other." (170-71)
Dewey claims that this conception has reinforced the rigid class structure of society. Aristotle is a good example. In sketching his ideal state, he proposed that the laboring masses be excluded from participation in civic activity. Their manual labor was needed by the state, so they had to be kept around, but their exercise of this labor, because it was a burden and good only for its consequences, distorted their lives and by implication their morals. The key assumption was that manual labor is inherently burdensome and thus merely instrumental.
In modern times, the split continues to have pernicious effects. Taking it for granted, people devoted to the perfection of the mind withdraw as much as possible from activity involving material things; business and even politics then are left to persons less concerned with intelligence and decency. Result, says Dewey, "the brutalization of ordinary life."
14. In what ways are we to reinsert intrinsic value into the material life? We must see production of goods as a moral service to people who will use them. Economic ends "must acquire ideal and intrinsic value. Esthetic, religious and other 'ideal' ends are now thin and meager or else idle or luxurious b/c of the separation from 'instrumental' or economic ends." (171-72)
15. Why does Dewey attack the traditional distinction between natural and moral goods (roughly the same as the Stoic distinction between preferred indifferent things and goods)? (172) Moral goods, such as virtue and justice, cannot be detached from their consequences; yet the split between natural and moral goods seems to do just that. Dewey is less concerned than the Stoics w ere with the question of how an individual could retain his integrity if a tyrant threatened him with torture or death. Rather he is more concerned that it will be unclear what the virtuous or morally best course of action is unless one projects possible courses of action and, so far as one can based on the best evidence, anticipates the likely consequences.
Part of the difference lies in the fact that ancient Greek and Roman society seemed more static to the Stoics than modern society does to us and to Dewey. The Stoics thought that the determination of appropriate action was not all that difficult, as it was, in any case, bound up with traditional roles. This idea of an easy determination of appropriate action presupposes relatively fixed roles. But in modern society, roles are more fluid and more likely to be chosen themselves.
16. What happens to the sharp distinction between science and ethics, or science and the humanities, when "the experimental logic [is] carried into morals"? It breaks down. Science helps us recognize particular problems and develop plans to reduce their severity. (172-73)
What does Dewey call "the greatest dualism which now weighs humanity down"? The split between the material, the mechanical and the scientific [, on the one side,] and the moral and ideal [on the other] (173)
17. How does reason in ethics now take on flesh? In the methods by which needs and conditions, obstacles and resources, of situations@ are analyzed in detail, and plans for addressing problems are worked out. (174)
How should we treat moral mistakes? As lessons in wrong methods of using intelligence and instructions as to a better course in the future. (175)
18. What approach to moral evaluation does Dewey propose that "makes one severe in judging himself and humane in judging others"? The view that the criterion is not whether one has reached a certain point or not, but in what direction he or she is moving. "The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better." (176)
19. What sort of "end" does Dewey seem to advocate? "Honesty, industry, temperance, justice are not goods to be possessed . . . [but] directions of change in the quality of experience. Growth itself is the only moral end." (177)
20. How should we reconceive the problem of evil? As the practical problem of reducing, alleviating, as far as may be removing the evils of life. (177)
How does Dewey understand optimism? The view that this is already the best of all possible worlds, not needing our efforts to make it better. Optimism makes people complacent or blind and callous to the sufferings of the less fortunate.
What is meliorism? The view that however bad things may be, they can be improved. It encourages the use of individual and collective intelligence to discover how to remove obstacles in the way of a better life. (177-78)
21. Where is happiness found? Only in success.
What does he seem to mean? in the sense of "succeeding, getting forward, moving in advance . . . an active process, not a passive outcome . . . [which] includes overcoming of obstacles, the eliminations of sources of defect and ill." Beauty, in the sense of esthetic sensitivity and enjoyment, is part of happiness. (179-80)
22. What did utilitarianism have right? It regarded as important the study of cause-effect relationships and thinking carefully about consequences before making choices.
What two criticisms does Dewey make of utilitarianism? First, it assumes a fixed principle or end: the fixed end of producing the greatest balance of pleasure over pain for everyone concerned. Everything else that is good is reduced to the level of a mere means. Moreover, utilitarianism conceives its fixed end as the sum of private pains and pleasures. It reinforces attitudes that make "business" a way of piling up the means of private enjoyments, not a way to perform social service or an occasion of self-fulfillment through creative problem solution. (180-83)
23. How does Dewey understand education? A passage from the worse to the better. (184-85)
24. What view of education does Dewey attack? The view that education is just a preparation for adulthood (which reduces it to a means). Also, he attacks the view that the purpose of education is the creation of a fully independent, self-sufficient adult. We ought not to overstate the independence of the adult or the dependence of the child. (185-86)
25. What, according to Dewey, is the job of government, business, and religious institutions? The test of all the institutions of adult life is the effect in furthering continued education. The listed institutions have the job "to set free and develop the capacities of human individuals without regard to race, sex, class or economic status." (186)
Chapter 6: The Reconstruction of Logic (Selections) 1. What views of logic does Dewey reject? The view that logic is purely formal; the view that it is concerned with the inherent thought structures of the universe (Hegel); the view that it is concerned with successive approaches of human thought to this objective thought structure (Lotze, Bosanquet)
Given that thinking is the way in which deliberate reorganization of experience is secured, what is logic? Clarified and systematized formulation of the procedures of thinking such as will enable the desired reconstruction to occur more economically and effectively. (134-35) Logic is both empirical and normative.
2. Upon what empirical material is logic based? The history and past practices of human thinking. Anthropology, the study of myth, legend, linguistics and grammar, rhetoric and formal logical compositions all tell us how people have thought.
What record is of special importance in the development of a contemporary logic? The record of the growth of the various sciences. (135-36)
3. How can empirical study of logic yield logical norms? Some sorts of thinking are shown by experience to have gone nowhere, or worse than nowhere--into systematic delusion and mistake, while others have produced fruitful and enduring discoveries. Thinking as it empirically is flagrantly exhibits cases of failure and success. (136)
4. From what does thinking take its departure? From specific conflicts in experience that occasion perplexity and trouble. (138-39)
What three conditions essentially make thinking impossible? A life of ease and ready omnipotence; when action is readily hemmed in by authority--rank and file soldiers have their thinking done for them by their commanders; similarly the situation of factory operatives on the assembly line. (139)
8. With what does specific and wide observation of fact always correspond? To some vague sense of the meaning of the difficulty, i.e., what it signifies in subsequent experience. (142)
How does Dewey understand an idea here? To frame an idea is to become aware of meaning. (143)
See also what he says about "ideas, meanings, conceptions" (144).
So far as ideas are not fancies, framed by emotionalized memory for escape and refuge, they are precisely anticipations of something still to come aroused by looking into the facts of a developing situation. . . . Ideas, meanings, conceptions . . . are suggestions of something that may eventuate . . . platforms of response to what is going on.9. What does intelligent thinking mean? A growth of freedom in action, an emancipation from chance and fatality. (144)
10. How are notions, theories, systems to be regarded? As hypotheses, as bases for actions which test them, not as finished structures never to be altered.
In what does their value reside? In their capacity to work as shown in the consequences of their use. (145)
12. What misconception about instrumentalism (Dewey's view that thinking is instrumental) does Dewey take up and reject? Instrumentalism does not mean that thinking exists for the sake of attaining some private, one-sided advantage upon which the inquirer has set his or her heart. (145-46)
14. What is the only guarantee of impartial disinterested inquiry? The social sensitiveness of the inquirer to the needs and problems of those with whom he is associated (in the broader society). (147-48)
15. What advantage do intellectual tools have in comparison with nonintellectual tools? They are highly generalized tools, more flexible in adaptation to unforeseen uses, employed in unanticipated problems. (149)
16. In what does the value of abstraction lie? Something has been released from one experience for transfer to another.
Distinguish and relate abstraction and generalization? Abstraction sets free some factor [from the concrete circumstances of its origin] so that it may be used [in new circumstances]. Generalization is the use. (151)
What is the role of deduction? It exercises a healthy control on generalization. (151)
17. How does Dewey agree with nominalism and conceptualism? Nominalism holds that kinds exist only in words; conceptualism that kinds exist only in ideas and words. These views stated that classifications exist only for the sake of economy and efficiency in reaching ends.
Where did they go wrong? They denied or ignored the active or doing side of experience. (152-53)
20. How does Dewey (and pragmatist philosophy) understand truth? If ideas succeed in their task of solving problems, they are reliable, sound, valid, good, and true. If they fail to clear up confusion, if they increase confusion, they are false. "That which guides us truly is true." Dewey regards the adverbial form as basic here. "Truly" or "falsely" connotes how the idea, plan, claim guides us. "In the quality of activity induced by it lies all its truth and falsity." (155-57)
21. What is a common mistake regarding this pragmatist conception of truth? The pragmatists say that true ideas are those which prove themselves capable of solving problems, or satisfying the needs of a situation. This is distorted into the thesis that pragmatist see ideas as contributing to emotional satisfactions, private comforts, a meeting of purely personal needs. But the kind of satisfaction which pragmatists have in mind includes public and objective conditions. The usefulness of a true idea is a thoroughgoing social usefulness. (157)
22. What is the chief obstacle to the reception of this notion of truth? The view that existence is divided into two realms, a higher one of perfect being and a lower one of seeming. According to this view, truth and falsity are considered to be fixed, ready-made properties of things themselves; Supreme Reality is true being; notions are true to the extent that they agree with Supreme Reality. (158-59)
Chapter 7: Moral Reconstruction 1. How did ethical theory begin? Traditional morality was breaking down. Philosophers like Plato created an ethical theory which served as a partial substitute or reinforcement for traditional morality.
What kind of objects and laws did it supply? A new standard as fixed and eternal as morals were traditionally thought to be. (161)
2. What does ethics seem to think it needs to discover? A single, fixed pattern of life or a single fixed law or duty.
Give examples of the ways in which this assumption is worked out? Loyalty or obedience to a higher power or authority--in the divine will (various medievals); the will of the secular ruler; the maintenance of institutions in which the purpose of superiors is embodied (Plato=s Republic?); the rational consciousness of duty (Kant); in goods such as self-realization (Aristotle), holiness, happiness (Aristotle), the greatest aggregate of pleasures (hedonism). (161-62)
3. How does ethics relate to the hierarchical structure of feudal society? As feudal society is structured on the principle of a top-down hierarchy, so traditional ethical theory operates in a top-down fashion. The task of moral philosophy is to discover the ideal pattern or fixed law, clarify it, defend it, and proceed (in top down fashion) to apply it to particular cases. Feudal social structure went along with the intellectual picture of a closed and, from the Moon on up anyway, unchanging cosmos. (162)
5. What does Dewey counterpose to traditional ethics concerning goods and laws? "A plurality of changing, moving individualized ends" and "principles, criteria and [moral] laws as intellectual instruments for analyzing individual or unique situations." (162-63)
6. What is the primary significance of the morally ultimate character of the situation? It transfers the weight and burden of morality to intelligence.
What does Dewey seem to mean by intelligence? The ability to observe the details of a situation (characterized by conflicting desires and alternate apparent goods), to analyze it into its factors, clarify the obscure elements . . . to consider the patterns of action that suggested themselves and anticipate the probable and possible consequences of each of them. In other words, a multifaceted ability to define and solve problems. (163-64)
7. What virtues must be cultivated along with intelligence? Wide sympathy, keen sensitiveness, persistence in the face of the disagreeable, balance of interests. (164)
8. To what does the theory of fixed ends inevitably lead? Into the bog of disputes that cannot be settled--if there is one summum bonum, what is it? (166) Shall we arrange the particular goods into a hierarchy--how shall we decide what goes above what?
What suffers from the results of this preoccupation? The special moral perplexities that occupy ordinary mankind go unaddressed. (166-67)
9. What grammatical point does Dewey use to emphasize the situational nature of values? He claims that goods like health and justice are best indicated by adverbs. To say that one seeks justice is to say that he seeks to live justly. (167)
10. In what way do general ideas about justice and other goods have value? They have value because they promote a fitting response to individual situations. (168-69)
11. In the contrast between Aartistic@ and Amechanical,@ what does the former word connote? The word Aartistic@ connotes sensitivity to context required by all intelligent choice, including choices of a more obviously ethical sort. (168-69)
12. Is there any such thing as the good? No, according to Dewey. When do goods exist? Only when there is something to be done. (170-71)
13. Why does Dewey criticize the traditional distinction between instrumental and intrinsic good? "Carried into practice it has an import that is tragic. Historically it has been the source and origin of a hard and fast difference between ideal goods on the one side and material goods on the other." (170-71)
Dewey claims that this conception has reinforced the rigid class structure of society. Aristotle is a good example. In sketching his ideal state, he proposed that the laboring masses be excluded from participation in civic activity. Their manual labor was needed by the state, so they had to be kept around, but their exercise of this labor, because it was a burden and good only for its consequences, distorted their lives and by implication their morals. The key assumption was that manual labor is inherently burdensome and thus merely instrumental.
In modern times, the split continues to have pernicious effects. Taking it for granted, people devoted to the perfection of the mind withdraw as much as possible from activity involving material things; business and even politics then are left to persons less concerned with intelligence and decency. Result, says Dewey, "the brutalization of ordinary life."
16. What happens to the sharp distinction between science and ethics, or science and the humanities, when "the experimental logic [is] carried into morals"? It breaks down. Science helps us recognize particular problems and develop plans to reduce their severity. (172-73)
What does Dewey call "the greatest dualism which now weighs humanity down"? The split between the material, the mechanical and the scientific [, on the one side,] and the moral and ideal [on the other] (173)
17. How does reason in ethics now take on flesh? In the methods by which needs and conditions, obstacles and resources, of situations@ are analyzed in detail, and plans for addressing problems are worked out. (174)
How should we treat moral mistakes? As lessons in wrong methods of using intelligence and instructions as to a better course in the future. (175)
18. What approach to moral evaluation does Dewey propose that "makes one severe in judging himself and humane in judging others"? The view that the criterion is not whether one has reached a certain point or not, but in what direction he or she is moving. "The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better." (176)
19. What sort of "end" does Dewey seem to advocate? "Honesty, industry, temperance, justice are not goods to be possessed . . . [but] directions of change in the quality of experience. Growth itself is the only moral end." (177)
20. How should we reconceive the problem of evil? As the practical problem of reducing, alleviating, as far as may be removing the evils of life. (177)
How does Dewey understand optimism? The view that this is already the best of all possible worlds, not needing our efforts to make it better. Optimism makes people complacent or blind and callous to the sufferings of the less fortunate.
What is meliorism? The view that however bad things may be, they can be improved. It encourages the use of individual and collective intelligence to discover how to remove obstacles in the way of a better life. (177-78)
21. Where is happiness found? Only in success.
What does he seem to mean? in the sense of "succeeding, getting forward, moving in advance . . . an active process, not a passive outcome . . . [which] includes overcoming of obstacles, the eliminations of sources of defect and ill." Beauty, in the sense of esthetic sensitivity and enjoyment, is part of happiness. (179-80)
22. What did utilitarianism have right? It regarded as important the study of cause-effect relationships and thinking carefully about consequences before making choices.
What two criticisms does Dewey make of utilitarianism? First, it assumes a fixed principle or end: the fixed end of producing the greatest balance of pleasure over pain for everyone concerned. Everything else that is good is reduced to the level of a mere means.
Moreover, utilitarianism conceives its fixed end as the sum of private pains and pleasures. It reinforces attitudes that make "business" a way of piling up the means of private enjoyments, not a way to perform social service or an occasion of self-fulfillment through creative problem solution. (180-83)