PEDAGOGICAL EXPERIENCE AND THEORY OF MEANING IN DEWEY AND WITTGENSTEIN Dissertation for the Degree of Ph. D. MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY SCOTT R. VAUGHN 1976 100 This is to certify that the thesis entitled PEDAGOGICAL EXPERIENCE AND THEORY OF MEANING IN DEWEY AND WITTGENSTEIN presented by Scott R. Vaughn has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph.D. degree in Secondarj Education and Curriculum ' Dam October 22, 1976 0-7 639 ABSTRACT PEDAGOGICAL EXPERIENCE AND THEORY OF MEANING IN DEWEY AND WITTGENSTEIN B)’ Scott R. Vaughn Philosophy of education is frequently character- ized as the application of philosophical methods and doctrines to educational problems. Such a view of the relationship between philosoPhy and education does not show sufficient appreciation of the role of educational experience in the resolution of philosophical problems. The careers of both John Dewey and Ludwig Wittgenstein provide support for the thesis that experience with and understanding of the practice of education can contri- bute to the reformulation and solution of difficult and persistent philosophical problems. Chapter II provides a survey of the main theories which have been deve10ped to account for the philosophi- cal problem of meaning. It includes descriptions of referential ideational, behavioral and use theories of meaning. The third chapter describes the revolt against formalism in American social thought which characterized Scott R. Vaughn the intellectual climate of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also includes an account of John Dewey's role in the program conducted at the Laboratory School of the University of Chicago and an argument in support of the claim that the Laboratory School was representative of the larger reform movements of the period. Chapter IV describes the post-World War I attempts by the Social Democratic party to reform the elementary school system of Austria and illustrates Ludwig Wittgenstein's active participation in that reform movement. Chapter V begins with an argument that the pro- gram of the Laboratory School of the University of Chicago and the Austrian School reform movement shared important characteristics, goals and methods. It also includes arguments in support of the claim that interpre- tations of Dewey and Wittgenstein's philosophical works should, but generally do not, include serious consider— ation of the philosophical importance of their educa- tional experience. The final substantive chapter presents an argu- ment in support of the claims that (l) the concepts of occupations as employed in Dewey's philosophy and the forms of life as employed in Wittgenstein's work are similar notions and (2) both concepts originated in the Scott R. Vaughn educational contexts described in the previous chapters. It concludes with an argument that those concepts are central to the use theories of meaning developed by both philosophers. PEDAGOGICAL EXPERIENCE AND THEORY OF MEANING IN DEWEY AND WITTGENSTEIN BY ,L‘A \" Scott RtiVaughn A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Secondary Education and Curriculum 1976 Copyright by SCOTT R. VAUGHN 1976 To Cara, Lisa and Jennifer 0n the giddy swing . Tiny girl-child Clutching tight Her spray of blossoms. - Issa ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It would be impossible for me to acknowledge all of those who provided assistance and encouragement to me in the course of writing this dissertation. I sincerely thank all of the dear friends and fine teachers who labored with me and hope that the product is worthy of their efforts. To George Ferree who has given more than can possibly be acknowledged, I humbly offer my deepest gratitude. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . 1 II. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM: THEORIES OF MEANING . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Referential Theories of Meaning . . . 10 Ideational Theories of Meaning . . . 15 Behavioral Theories of Meaning . . . l8 Meaning and Use . . . . . . . . 22 III. AMERICAN PROGRESSIVISM, THE REVOLT AGAINST FORMALISM AND EDUCATIONAL REFORM . . . . 24 The Progressive Movement . . . . . 24 The Revolt Against Formalism in American Thought . . . . . . 26 Progressivism in American Education . 31 IV. SOCIALIST REFORM AND THE NEW EDUCATION IN AUSTRIA . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Kindesgemassheit--Schooling and the Nature of the Child . . . . . $9 Selbsttatigkeit--Self-activity . . . 61 BodenstEndigkeit--The Accustomed Environment . . 64 Gesamtunterricht--Integrated Instruc- tion . . . 65 Arbeitsgemeinschaften--Cooperative Activity . . . . . . . . . 68 ‘V. EDUCATION AND PHILOSOPHY . . . . . . 73 Education and Philosophy: Dewey . . 77 Education and Philosophy: Wittgenstein . . . . . . . 88 iv Chapter Page VI. OCCUPATIONS, FORMS OF LIFE AND MEANING . . 106 Occupations . . . . . . . . . 106 Forms of Life . . . . . . . . . 114 Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . 135 VII. SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . 143 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Am I doing child psychology?--I am making a connection between the concept of teaching and the concept of meaning. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel I recall one conversation with Dewey during the latter years of his life. . . . We had been talking about the ways in which a concern for the practical problems of education forced the administrator~to answer questions which were actually questions in philosophy. . It was a familiar Deweyan view that the reasons stu- dents and teachers should be mutually involved in working out their own educational plans was net only for the exper- ience they could gain in the practice of democracy, but for the insight they could reach in the study of human values and social philosophy. Harold Taylor, "Introduction" to Dykhuizen's Life and Mind of’JOhn Dewey Educators and philosophers who attempt to do philo- sophical analyses of the practical problems of education typically tend, I believe, to view their task as one of identifying and clarifying the ways in which philosophi- cal insights, distinctions and methods can be employed to improve educational practice. The literature of the philosophy of education is replete with examples of this point of view. One well-known author, for example, recom- mends that we understand philosophy of education to be "those problems of philosophy that are of direct relevance to educational theory."1 Another devotes several pages of his introduction to the philosophy of education to a con- sideration of the "Applications of Philosophy to Educa- 2 Even those who see the relationship between phi- tion." losophy and education as a more complex affair, seldom, if ever, make more than a passing reference to the impor- tance of the contributions made by educational practice to an understanding of philosophical problems. Brauner and Burns, for example, argue that ". . . philosophy and education are mutually reconstructive; they give to and take from one another . . ." but they illustrate this mutually reconstructive relationship with the observation that ". . . education would soon be as lost as a blind man without his seeing-eye dog if it were parted from 3 They provide the reader with no clue as to philosophy." what philosophy might suffer if it were parted from edu- cation. This view of the nature and mission of educational philosophy, common though it may be in current profes- sional circles, contrasts sharply with the view adopted 1D. J. O'Connor, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957), pp. 14-15. 2George F. Kneller, An Introduction to the Phi- losophy of Education (New York: John Wiley 6 Sons, Inc., 1964), pp. 20-31. 3Charles J. Brauner and Hobert W. Burns, Problems in Education and Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965), p. 20. in this paper. I will show that accounts of the phi- losophy of education, which emphasize the primacy of philosophy over education, do not do justice to the com- plex interplay and exchange which takes place between educational and philosophical elements when the practi- cal problems encountered in an educational context are approached as philosophical problems. I will show that the views briefly described above are deficient in that they do not show sufficient appreciation of the contri- butions that experience with and understanding of the practical affairs of education can make in the reconstruc- tion and solution of philosophical problems. In fact, I will show that, in at least some cases, philosophy owes more to education than education owes to philosophy. Specifically, I will illustrate the validity of the claim thatthere are instances in which the relationship between philosophy and education cannot be seen as one in which the solutions to problems in technical philosophy provide models for the solution of educational ones; but that, quite to the contrary, should be seen as one in which the solutions to problems generated in an educational context provide models for the solution of difficult and per- sistent problems in technical philosophy. The problems associated with the question of what it is for a linguistic expression to have meaning, along with a set of related questions, represent, without a doubt, difficult and persistent problems in technical phi- losophy. What follows will be an argument to show that the careers of both John Dewey and Ludwig Wittgenstein provide support for the thesis that experience with and understanding of the practice of education can assist a philosopher in reformulating and solving philosophical problems of this sort. I will attempt to show that in both cases the participation of these philosophers in educational reform movements as well as their practical experience as teachers made significant contributions to their work in the philosophy of language, especially in their work on the concept of meaning. I will not be arguing the thesis that practical experience in educational matters is either a necessary or a sufficient condition for the successful reconstruc- tion and solution of any philosophical problem. I will be arguing the more limited thesis that there are instances where the perspectives and insights that result from a careful consideration of problems generated in educational practice are crucial in the reconstruction of technical problems in philosophy which have proved resis- tant to solution when approached from other perspectives. This thesis is ambiguous in one respect. It can be interpreted as the claim that there is some unique perspective which can be identified as educational, and that having this perspective can help one see more clearly what is involved in certain philosophical issues. Alter- natively, it can be interpreted as the claim that if some specific views, as opposed to a general educational per- spective, of the nature and purpose of the educational enterprise (e.g., views about what constitutes learning) are held by a philosopher,then his educational experience may be instrumental in producing a perspective which leads to some valuable and productive new ways of seeing some philosophical problem. The latter formulation of the thesis is, I believe, the only defensible one, and repre- sents the thesis I hope to defend. In order to defend this thesis, I will defend the following claims: 1. John Dewey and Ludwig Wittgenstein approached, reconstrUcted and proposed solutions to the problems asso- ' ciated with the theory of meaning in much the same way. 2. Dewey and Wittgenstein were involved in edu- cational reform movements which endorsed similar goals and dictated similar educational methodologies and cur- ricula on similar grounds. 3. Dewey and Wittgenstein were able to recon- struct and propose the similar solutions to the problems associated with the theory of meaning which they did prOpose by way of perspectives and insights gained in the context of their similar experience with educational matters. The argument to establish these points will pro- ceed in the following fashion. In Chapter II I will pro- vide a brief account of the nature of the philosophical problems involved. Chapter III will be a descriptive account of the Progressive reform movements in the United States with special emphasis on the Dewey School. Chapter IV will survey the social democratic reform movements which occurred in Austria following World War I with special emphasis on the educational elements of those reforms. In Chapter V I will demonstrate the extent of involvement by John Dewey and Ludwig Wittgenstein in those movements and attempt to show that in each case those experiences exerted a significant influence on the course of their philosophical development. Chapter VI will illustrate and elaborate this general point by providing an argument that Dewey's use of the concept "occupations" and Wittgenstein's use of the concept "forms of life" may be traced back to and grounded in their educational exper- iences. I will also present an argument for the view that the two concepts are similar in certain key respects. This chapter will conclude with an argument that Dewey's 'views on meaning are similar to those of Wittgenstein. (Shapter VII will present a summary of the arguments pre- :sented in defense of the thesis as well as the conclu- sions . CHAPTER II THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM: THEORIES OF MEANING Now answers to this highly abstract question, What are meanings? have, in recent decades, bulked large in philosophical and logical discussions. Preoccupation with the theory of meaning could be described as the occupational disease of twentieth-century Anglo-Saxon and Austrian philosophy. Gilbert Ryle, ”Theory of Meaning" Only one who has familiarity with the literature_ of the subject can even begin to be aware of how con- fusing, obfuscating, and boring in its multiplicity of elaborations the word "meaning" has become. John Dewey, "Importance, Significance and Meaning" It is a central claim in this dissertation that both Dewey and Wittgenstein were able to reconstruct and find solutions for some difficult and persistent problems in technical philosophy and that their similar experiences with educational matters assisted them in that reconstruction. Little needs to be done to show ‘that the problems associated with the concept of meaning llave a long history. As Gilbert Ryle observes, in dis- c:ussing questions about the concept of meaning, . many of these issues were explicitly canvassed . in certain of Plato's later Dialogues, and in the logical and other works of Aristotle. Some of them, again, were 7 dominant issues in the late Middle Ages and with Hobbes; and some of them . . . stirred uneasily inside British epistemology between Locke and John Stuart Mill.1 The persistence and difficulty of these philosophical problems is not the primary issue here but a survey of some of the attempts which have been made to solve them is necessary in order to understand the nature of the problems faced bwaewey and Wittgenstein. Any discussion of the theory of meaning immedi- ately runs up against a confusing array of opinion, not only about the theoretical issues involved, but even in the terminology used to talk about those issues. 0gden and Richards, in their classic work The Meaning of Meaning, identify no fewer than sixteen definitions of meaning, all of which, they state, have been held by reputable students of meaning. Other attempts to bring some order to the discussion of meaning categorize com— peting theories under the rubrics of "denotation theories," "causal theories" and "image theories."3 1Gilbert Ryle, "The Theory of Meaning," in Philosophy and Ordinary Language, ed. Charles E. Caton (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963), pp. 128- 129. ' 2C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language Upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1923), pp. 186-187. 3G. H. R. Parkinson, ed., The Theory of Meaning (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 3-5. Still others subsume competing theories under the cate-' gories of "'Fido'-Fido theories" and "causal theories."4 William P. Alston makes the observation that "the literature of this subject contains a bewildering diversity of approaches, conceptions, and theories .," but he also argues that most of these ". can be grouped into three types . . . 'referential,‘ 'ideational,‘ and 'behavioral."'5 Alston's analysis includes an account of the central claims involved in each of these major approaches to the theory of meaning. The account of meaning theories used here to discuss the nature of the problems faced by Dewey and Wittgenstein draws in large part from his analysis of the issues. The first point which needs to be clarified is that of the way in which the philosophical problem of meaning is to be specified. Alston identifies several senses of 'mean' and its cognates which, he argues, are distinct from the relevant philosophical sense. He offers, for example, the expression "That is no mean accomplishment," as an instance of the use of mean where the sense of the word is that of 'insignificant' and the 4Daniel M. Taylor, Explanation and Meaning: An .Introduction to Philosophy (Cambridge: University Press, 1970), Chapters 10 and 11. sWilliam P. Alston, Philosophy of Language (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964), p. 11. a 10 expression "I mean to help him if I can," as one in which the sense is 'intend.‘ In all, Alston identifies nine different senses of 'mean' and its cognates which are distinct from the sense relevant to his discussion of the problem of meaning; those senses are 'cruel,’ 'results in,' 'significance,‘ 'explanation,‘ 'implies,' 'refers to' and 'indicates reliably' in addition to 'insignifi— cant' and 'intend.'6 Alston illustrates the sense of 'mean' which is involved in the problem with the sentence "'Procrastinate' means put things off," and he represents the problem, which he calls the problem of linguistic meaning, with these questions; "What are we saying about a linguistic expression when we specify its meaning?," "What is linguistic meaning?" and "How is the concept of linguistic meaning to be analyzed?"7 The problem then is that of linguistic meaning and the attempts which have been made to solve it will be discussed under the headings of referential, ideational and behavioral theories. Referential Theories of Meaning Referential theories base their answer to the question "What are we saying about a linguistic expres- sion when we specify its meaning?" on a quite common and thoroughly unobjectionable notion; that is, language is 6Ibid., p. 10. 71bid., pp. 10-11. 11 regularly used to talk about things. By extending this commonplace observation theorists have built up an entire theory of meaning. Referential theories, in all of their various forms, have at least this much in common; they insist that every meaningful expression is about some- thing and that the expression is related to the thing in much the same way that a name is related to the thing named. In its most basic form this theory of meaning asserts, without qualification, that the meaning of an expression is what it refers to, stands for or names. You have, for example, a dog named 'Fido.‘ According to this version of the referential theory of meaning, the meaning of 'Fido' (the dog's name) is Fido (the dog); similarly, the meaning of 'water' is water (the stuff you drink and wash with). In the same fashion, the meaning of any and all linguistic expressions is the thing referred to or named. This form of the theory is faced with a number of substantial difficulties in work- ing out a complete and detailed answer to the problem of meaning. There are, for example, instances in which it can be shown that linguistic expressions with different meanings refer to one and the same thing; there are also cases in which the same expression has more than one referent but not more than one meaning. 12 Bertrand Russell's example, "Scott is the author of Waverley," is a classic example of a case where expressions differ in meaning but have the same referent. In this case both of the expressions ('Scott' and 'the author of Waverley') refer to Sir Walter Scott. But if we were to substitute one of the expressions for the other, the product would not be an informative state- ment equivalent in meaning to the original; this would be the result if the expressions were equivalent in meaning. Instead the product would be an uninformative statement of identity-—either "Scott is Scott" or "The author of Waverley is the author of Waverley." Not only is it the case that linguistic expres- sions having the same referent sometimes have different meanings; itis also the case that expressions having the same meaning sometimes have different referents. Take, for example, the expressions called "indexical terms" ('I,‘ 'you,' 'here,' 'this' and others) which depend on certain contextual conditions to determine their referents yet have a single meaning. As Alston observes: When Jones utters the word 'I,‘ it refers to Jones; when Smith utters it, it refers to Smith. But this fact doesn't mean that 'I' has different meanings correspond- ing to these differences. . . . The word has a single meaning--the speaker. And it is because it always has this meaning that its referent systematically varies with variations in the conditions of utterance. 8Ibid., p. 13. 13 Faced with difficulties of this magnitude the basic ver- sion of the referential theory has been modified, by incorporating a sense-reference distinction, in an attempt to preserve the primary claim of the theory; i.e., that every meaningful expression stands for or refers to something else and that to specify the mean- ing of an expression is to specify the referential relationship between the expression and that for which it stands. The main modification of the basic theory that the meaning of an expression is the thing referred to is the contention that the meaning of an expression is con- stituted by the relationship of referring, naming or designating. On this modified account to say that an expression has meaning is to say that the expression is related to something in the world in such a way that it stands for, refers to or names that thing. The meaning of an expression is no longer identified with the referent but the referential relationship is specified as a necessary condition for an expression to be mean- ingful. The primary unit could be single words, seen as names, or sentences, seen as representations of situa- tions, but the central point of the approach remains the same on either account; to specify the meaning of a linguistic expression is to specify the relationship 14 that holds between that expression and the thing to which it refers.9 Alston argues that, in several respects, refer- ential theories are deficient answers to the question of meaning. He criticizes and argues against their contention that every meaningful expression must have a referent; and describes the difficulties involved in deciding just what the referent of any particular expression might conceivably be. He concludes his critique of referential theories by repeating his endorsement of the basic insight upon which refer- ential theories are built but by arguing that: . . . in the referential theory, this insight is ruined through oversimplification. The essential connection of language with "the world," with what is talked about, is represented as a piecemeal correlation of meaningful linguistic units with distinguishable com- ponents of the world. In short, he argues that referential theories are faced with grave deficiencies which cannot be solved within the framework of the theory and that we must look else- where for a comprehensible account of meaning. 9See Jerzy Pelc, Studies in Functional Logical Semiotics of Natural Language (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), pp. 58-60 for a discussion of what he calls the distinction between ". . . THEORIES OF THE MEANING OF A de facto SINGLE WORD and the THEORIES OF THE MEANING OF A de facto SENTENCE." 10Alston, p. 19. 15 Ideational Theories of Meaning Just as referential theories are based on the truism that linguistic expressions are sometimes used to talk about things in the world, ideational theories are an outgrowth of the equally true observation that linguistic expressions are sometimes used to talk about or express thoughts and experiences. The classic statement of the theory was made by John Locke in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. There he argued that "The use . . . of words is to be sensible marks of ideas; and the ideas they stand for are their proper 11 The central claim made and immediate signification." by those endorsing an ideational theory is that to say of an expression that it has a certain meaning is to say that the expression is associated with or used to indicate a definite idea in the mind of the speaker. In this sense ideational theories are similar to refer- ential ones; they accept the notion that meaningful expressions must stand for something else, but believe that the referents of expressions are properly ideas, not objects. This seems to mean that ideas and meaningful expressions stand in a one to one correspondence, in the sense that for each meaningful expression there must be some distinct and identifiable idea in the speaker's 111bid., p. 22. 16 mind which corresponds to that particular expression. Alston identifies the following conditions which would have to hold for the ideational theory to work: 1. the idea must be present in the mind of the speaker, and 2. the speaker must be producing the expression in order to get his audience to realize that the idea in question is in his mind at that time. Finally, 3. inso- far as communication is successful, the expression would have to call up the same idea in the mind of the hearer. 2 It should be explicitly mentioned here that the point of speaking at all, according to this theory, is to tell others what you are already thinking about. Thought is seen as being prior to and independent of language, and words are seen as getting connected up with thoughts by aprocess of association. Jerzy Pelc argues that there are both pyscho- logical and non-psychological versions of ideational theories of meaning. The version described above requires that ideas be psychological states of mind-- images, or something of that sort. Since, on that theory, thought precedes language and language func- tions to communicate thought, ideas must be interpreted as psychological states, images or something closely resembling images. Pelc contends that a number of thinkers who have held ideational theories of meaning have not intended such an interpretation of 'idea.' They have, he argues, identified ideas, not with 12Ibid., pp. 23-24. 17 psychological states but with something other than the actual mental experiences of the speaker.13 Although there is some point in identifying such variations in the basic doctrine, it is not clear that such variations are significant for the purposes of explicating the central notions of ideational meaning theories so long as they retain the central claim of the theory; i.e., that any meaningful expression must be regularly associated with and stand for a definite idea (however interpreted). Just so long as that central claim is endorsed, the ideas involved (which are the meanings of the expressions) must be identifiable apart from any reference to the expressions involved. That is, no appeal can be made to the expression in order to decide which idea is involved. But, as Alston argues, ". . . the more we push 'idea' in the direction of such identifiability, the clearer it becomes that words are not related to ideas in the way required by the theory."1‘4 Faced with such problems and the requirement that we rely on introspection to discover the meaning of an expres- sion, it is not surprising that many theorists would turn to behavioral techniques to assist them in the remaining task of attacking this problem. 13Pele, pp. 62-63. 14Alston, p. 25. 18 Behavioral Theories of Meaning Alston discusses two versions of the attempt to explicate what is involved in specifying the meaning of an expression by focusing attention on the publicly observable aspects of the situations in which communi- cation occurs. The first, which he describes as rela- tively crude, is an attempt to analyze the concept of meaning in terms of the concepts of stimulus and response as employed in behavioral psychology. The second, which he describes as relatively sophisticated, is an attempt to analyze the concept of meaning in terms of the dispo— sition to respond in certain ways to the utterance of an expression. The first type of behavioral theory of meaning asserts that meaning is the situation in which an expres- sion is uttered and the response elicited from the hearer by the utterance of the expression. Alston identifies the requirements which must be met in order for the theory to hold in the following passage: . . . there must be features that are common and peculiar to all the situations in which a given expression is uttered in a given sense and there must be features common and peculiar to all the responses that are made to the utterance of a given expression in a given sense. Furthermore, these common elements must be actually employed as criteria for assigning the sense in question to that expression. 151bid., p. 26. 19 Basically, the stimulus-response theory yields an answer to the question "What are we saying about a linguistic expression when we specify its meaning?" which could be stated: When we specify the meaning of a linguistic expression we are specifying the features of the situ— ation in which that expression is uttered along with the features of the responses by the hearer to its utterance which are characteristic of all and only the utterances of that expression. Alston criticizes this version of behavioral theories on virtually every count. He argues that those uniformities which characterize all of the situations in which an expression is uttered do not characterize only those situations, but also characterize the situations in which other expressions are uttered. Even if we were to look simply for situational features common to most of the occasions when an expression is uttered, we still would find, he argues, that the ". . . uniformities hold equally well for quite different sentences with quite different meanings."16 Uniformities in response that could be construed as an element in the meaning of an expression also prove elusive. Alston illustrates this with a description of the variety of responses which might be elicited by the utterance of the imperative sentence "Come in now" when 161bid., p. 27. 20 uttered by a parent to a child. His examples range from total compliance through no response at all, including nine quite different responses. Since imperatives con- stitute the most plausible case for these theories and it is difficult to find a uniform response which con- stitutes the meaning, or part of the meaning, of most imperative expressions, the assertion that the meaning of a linguistic expression is constituted by situational uniformities and uniformities of response is, to say the least, seriously compromiSed. The second type of behavioral theory attempts to avoid these problems by construing meaning in terms of behavioral dispositions rather than actual situational uniformities and regularities in actual overt behavior by those who hear the expression uttered. On this account the meaning of a linguistic expression can best be explicated by identifying those actions which a hearer of the expression in question is regularly dis- posed to do. That is, whatever the child in the example used above might in fact do, if he is disposed to comply with the parent's request "Come in now," then the mean- ing of that expression is explicated by specifying the relevant actions, i.e., stopping play and coming into the house, which the expression uttered disposes the child to do. There might, of course, be other consider- ations which result in non-compliance but the disposition 21 to act elicited by hearing that particular expression constitutes its meaning. The problem, of course, is to distinguish those considerations which are not relevant to the meaning of the expression from those which are relevant. The attractiveness of the activity the child is engaged in is not relevant even though it might very well be the decisive factor in whether or not the child complies with the parent's request or not. If behavior, either pure and simple or construed dispositionally, is to serve as a criterion of the meaning of an expression, then the distinction between relevant and irrelevant factors in behavior cannot be drawn by any appeal to the meaning of the expression. That is, the behavioral theory, if true, eliminates the possibility of our say- ing that the attractiveness of the activity is irrele- vant because "Come in now" is a request for compliance. As a consequence of these and other problems Alston concludes that both versions of the behavioral theory of meaning are deficient. He observes that: . . we will be unable to find situation and response features that are distributed in the way the theory requires. Meaning simply does not vary directly with the kinds of factors highlighted in these theories.17 171bid., p. 30. 22 Meaning and Use Alston's analysis of the three primary traditions in the philosophical debate about what constitutes an acceptable theoretical solution to the problem of lin- guistic meaning leaves us with little hope of actually finding such a solution. Nevertheless, he offers us some hope of finding such a solution with his own theory which explores ". . . the possibility of exhibiting the meaning of a linguistic expression as a function of the way in which it is used by speakers of the language."18 This approach, on his view, has great promise since to the extent that this analysis is, or can be made to be, adequate, it has the great merit of showing just how the fact that a linguistic expression has the mean- ing it has is a function of what users of the language do with that expression.19 I will say no more of Alston's theory of meaning and use at this point; the central focus of a later chapter will be an analysis of various theories of meaning and use along with an attempt to demonstrate that both Dewey and Wittgenstein's views belong in that group of theories. This chapter has concentrated on philosophical issues but for now I will turn from philosophy to edu- cational reform. In the next two chapters I will be concerned with educational reform movements in both the 18Ibid., pp. 32-33. 19lbid., p. 39. 23 United States and Austria. Then I will return to the philosophical issues and the argument that those educa- tional reform movements exercised a significant influence on the way in which Dewey and Wittgenstein approached those issues. CHAPTER III AMERICAN PROGRESSIVISM, THE REVOLT AGAINST FORMALISM AND EDUCATIONAL REFORM . our culture must be consonant with realistic science and with machine industry, instead of a refuge from them. And while there is no guaranty that an education which uses science and employs the controlled processes of industry as a regular part of its equipment will succeed, there is every assurance that an educational practice which sets science and industry in opposition to its ideal of culture will fail. Natural science has in its applications to economic production and exchange brought an industry and a society where quantity alone seems to count. It is for education to bring the light of science and the power of work to the aid of every soul that it may discover its quality. For in a spiritually democratic society every individual would realize distinction. Cul- ture would then be for the first time in human history an individual achievement and not a class possession. John Dewey, "American Education and Culture" The Progressive Movement Several forces were involved in bringing about the fundamental changes which were taking place in Amer- ican culture between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the century. Urbanization and immigration were combining to produce significant changes in both the distribution and composition of the population. At the same time, economic relations were in the process of fundamental redefinition as industrial modes of organi- zation became increasingly dominant in production. 24 25 Basic and fundamental changes were being wrought in vir- tually every element of social and cultural life. The increasing tendency to consolidation on the part of busi- ness corporations, the catastrophic fluctuations of the economy as evidenced in a series of panics and depres- sions, the emergence of fledgling labor organizations, and the growth of urban slums and political machines all attest to the thoroughness of the transformation which took place in American life during this period. Historians have provided a number of accounts of the ways in which American reformers attempted to adjust their institutions to this shift from a rural-agrarian to an urban-industrial society. Those accounts are too extensive to recount here but it is sufficient for my purposes to point out first, that political, religious, economic and judicial, as well as educational, institu- tions were faced with a significantly altered set of circumstances; second, that those changed circumstances were seen by many as having an adverse effect on the quality of life lived by the American people; and, finally, that the movement known as "Progressivism" represented a variety of divergent attempts to bring about institutional adjustments to those changes-- adjustments which it was believed would improve the quality of life as lived by individual Americans. 26 Progressive reformers were active in virtually every area of American life. Novelists, intellectuals and journalists authored books, exposes and tracts to assist and encourage reform minded politicians in their attempts to develop reform programs designed to combat the evils of the new urban-industrial society. Theo- logians such as Walter Rauschenbusch were busily attack- ing the religious doctrines which had provided support for the old order and justifications for its inequities. The law was coming under the close scrutiny and attack of reform jurists the likes of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Roscoe Pound. Scholars at Columbia University, the new German-style graduate school at Johns Hopkins and the John D. Rockefeller endowed University of Chicago were chipping away at the doctrine Eric F. Goldman has called "Conservative Darwinism" and erecting in its place the "Reform Darwinism" which was to provide the intellectual grounds and justification for progressive reform. The Revolt Against Formalism in American Thought Morton White's Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against Formalism provides us with an account of the intellectual and academic aspects of the broadly based reform movements which were taking place in late ‘ 1Eric F. Goldman, Rendezvous with Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform (New York: Vintage Books Inc., 1956). 27 nineteenth and early twentieth century America. American intellectuals of this period were to be found, he argues, . ranging themselves . . . against formalism, since they had become convinced that logic, abstraction, deduc- tion, mathematics, and mechanics were inadequate to social research and incapable of containing the rich, moving, living current of social life.2 He argues that the leading intellectual developments of the period--pragmatism, instrumentalism, institution- alism, economic determinism and legal realism-~shared a common philosophical ground in their revolt against formalism; that each of the movements was suspicious of excessively formal approaches, each attempted to come to grips with a comprehensive social reality and each was preoccupied with ". . . the moving and vital in social life."3 The leading figures in this intellectual rebel- lion-~John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others--were out ". . . to mop up the rem- nants of formal logic, classical economics and juris- prudence in America, and to emphasize that the life of science, economics, and law was not logic but experience in some streaming social sense.“4 2Morton White, Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against Formalism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), p. 11. 31bid. 41bid., pp. 11-12. 28 White's study focuses on the intellectual careers of just a few American thinkers of the period; those he believed representative of the most influential intel- lectual developments related to the reform movements. His argument includes an attempt to establish the claim that Dewey's instrumentalism, Veblen's institutionalism, Holmes' legal realism, Beard's economic determinism and Robinson's historical pragmatism each shared common fundamental suppositions of a philosophical nature.5 After noting the difficulties involved in defining the formalism against which his subjects were rebelling, White argues that this attack on formalism or abstractionism leads to two important positive elements in the thought of these men--"historicism" and what I shall call "cul- tural organicism." . . . By "historicism" I shall mean the attempt to explain facts by reference to earlier facts; by "cultural organicism" I shall mean the attempt to find explanations and relevant mate- rial in social sciences other than the one which is primarily under investigation.6 In short, each of these men not only advocated and ,employed evolutionary and historical methods in his own discipline (presuming that they even held to anything like the current concept of a professional discipline) but drew heavily from other disciplines in attacking SSee White's Introduction and first chapter for a discussion of what, on his view, makes a question or view philosophical. It would not make a substantial contribution to the present discussion to consider his views on the matter. 6White, p. 12. 29 problems in his own. Even in labeling their positions we find it necessary to explain what today would be called interdisciplinary terminology; Holmes was the advocate of sociological jurisprudence, Veblen the sociological student of economics and so on. So thor- ough was their commitment to historicism and cultural organicism that it could be said that they were ". . . all under the spell of history and culture."7 This intellectual revolution was the culmination of nineteenth century philosophical developments; the typical academic progressive was the product ". . . of the nineteenth century, following, being influenced by, reacting from its great philosophers of change and pro- 8 Their attempt to come to grips with the press- cess." ing problems of American life and to develop the evo- lutionary, historical and cultural methods which they believed were necessary to deal effectively with social life and experience led each of them to attack the leading figures in the tradition of the British Empiri- cists. Jeremy Bentham became the common enemy in their intellectual rebellion, as White observes: It is extremely important to take into account this aversion to British Empiricism. . . . Dewey attacked utilitarian ethics, psychology, and logic for failing to study the actual workings of the human mind; Veblen attacked the hedonic calculus as well as the failure to 71bid. 81bid., p. 13. 30 study economic institutions in their wider cultural set— ting; Beard opposed the analytical school for treating the Constitution as if it were axiomatized geometry rather than a human, social document; and Holmes regarded Austin's theory as an inaccurate account of law as it was practiced. American intellectuals had become convinced that the British tradition in philosophical, social, legal, eco- nomic and political thought functioned largely in sup- port of the conservative order in American society. They saw their primary task as one of developing aca- demic disciplines capable of dealing with the real stuff of social and economic life and bringing those disciplines to bear on the pressing problems that they saw in American society. So, the fundamental change during the last half of the century, the intellectual requirements for deal- ing with that change and the philosophical heritage of the century were all factors which contributed to the intellectual revolution taking place at the turn of the century. American thinkers in virtually every academic discipline were searching for methods and approaches which would enable them to provide a more accurate account of, say, economic arrangements and, in addition, allow them to more effectively use those disciplines in reforming those arrangements. 91bid., pp. 14-15. 31 The years following the Civil War were years of fundamental and disruptive change in virtually every aspect of American life. By the turn of the century, a diverse group of reformers were busily engaged in attempts to remediate the more obnoxious characteristics of their new urban-industrial society. The American academic community was actively involved in those attempts and many intellectuals were vigorously attack- ing formal procedures and theories in their disciplines on the grounds that any accurate and useful account of human activity must proceed in terms of historical, evolutionary and cultural modes of thought. It is in this broader context of progressive reform movements and the intellectual revolt against formalism that the progressive education movement must be placed.10 Progressivism in American Education At the beginning of the twentieth century America was in the process of completing the above- mentioned transition from a rural, agrarian nation to an urban, industrial one. While social and economic 10For two representative works, from many, which consider the ways in which progressive educators were involved in other progressive reform movements see Allen F. Davis, Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890-1914 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), and Sol Cohen, Progres- sives and Urban School Reform: The Public Education Association of New York City, 1895-1914 (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia Uni- versity, 1964). 32 conditions had been rapidly transformed during the nine- teenth century, the educational institutions of the nation had changed little since the 18605. The system of free common schools, designed to serve an agrarian society, continued to exist virtually unchanged in cur- riculum, methods and aims within the context of a radi- cally changed industrial one. In the eyes of many observers of the time the tradition bound schools of the nation ignored the existence of changed conditions and failed to meet the demands imposed by the new social order. In short, the narrow, traditional curriculum of most public schools had little relevance to life in an industrial society of the sort which had developed. A few scattered observers spoke out against this state of affairs as early as the 18705, but not until the late 18905 did the scattered criticism begin to take the form of a concerted effort to reform the schools. Critics pointed out the deplorable state of most school facilities and physical plants, the politi- cal corruption afflicting many city systems and the mul- titude of ways in which school practices bore little or no relationship to the lives of their students or the conditions in which they lived.11 Lawrence Cremin 11Lawrence A. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957 (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), pp. 20-22. 33 makes the following observation in his study of educa- tional reform. . . . progressive education began as part of a vast humanitarian effort to apply the promise of American life . . . to the puzzling new urban-industrial civil- ization that came into being during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The word progressive provides the clue to what it really was: the educational phase of American Progressivism writ large.12 Since it was an integral part of the larger movement for reform, it comes as no surprise to find that the impulse for progressive reform in matters of education encom- passed a diversity of loosely affiliated and often com- peting elements. The following account will emphasize John Dewey's views about early elementary education, focusing principally on his involvement in the work of the Laboratory School of the University of Chicago; some consideration will be given to Dewey's views of and rela- tions with other progressive educators but no special attempt will be made to provide a comprehensive account of the progressive education movement at large. It is important to identify two characteristic misinterpretations, or at least misleading interpreta- tions, of Dewey's thought before discussing his critique of American education at the turn of the century. The first type of misleading interpretation, as I will show, is rooted in a failure to take the full import of 121bid., p. viii. 34 Dewey's functional analysis into account. The second is rooted in a similar failure to fully comprehend the con- sequences of what I will call his contextualism. The first type of misinterpretation is found in Morton White's "The Philosopher and the Metropolis in America." There he argues that American philosophers have been, nearly without exception, anti-urban. In his concluding remarks about the position of Dewey and his followers he writes: The new parochialism was their proposal in the first quarter of the twentieth century for the solution of some of the problems created by urbanization. It was an effort to fill the emptiness of the great city in a nostalgic spirit. This was not a call to revive the unestranged spirit of the colonial provinces, but it shared with Royce's viewpoint the idea that the city was lacking something that older preurban American communities possessed, and which had to be re-created. As such, the new parochialism was not an effort to provide new forms of association for city dwellers, but rather an effort to revivify old ones and to plant them in a new urban context.13 Arguments of this sort tend to obscure the full import of Dewey's functionalism. Dewey's critique of societal ills is rooted in the contention that some instituti- tional arrangement or set of such arrangements is func- tionally unsatisfactory at a fundamental level. It was characteristic of Dewey to define an institutional . 13Morton White, Pragmatism and the American Mind: Essays and Reviews in Philosophy and Intellec- tual History (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), P- 27. 35 function and to illustrate historically the ways in which a diversity of agencies have functioned to meet some 14 Hence, a critique of urban life basic human need. would include an account of the functions which had been performed by various agencies in the context of a pre- dominately rural society which could no longer be per- formed by those same agencies in the context of a pre- dominately urban one. Reform, for Dewey, would consist in identifying agencies to perform those functions satis- factorily in the current context, not in attempting to revive the specific agencies which had performed them in the past. In another essay, Oscar Handlin argues that ".. . the realm of the classroom in the 18905 was totally set off from the experience of the child" and that Dewey ". . . whose own education as a boy was free of all such rigidity . . ." believed that ". . . the educator . . had to narrow the distance between the classroom and the 15 world outside it." This argument seems to me to hinge on the contention that social and economic change had 14See, for example, his argument in The Public and Its Problems where he writes ". . . to the patent objec- tion that the state is a very modern institution, it is replied that while modernity is a property of those struc- tures which go by the name of states, yet all history, or almost all, records the exercise of analogous functions. 15Oscar Handlin, "John Dewey's Challenge to Edu- cation," in Dewey on Education, ed. Reginald D. Archambault (New York: Random House, 1966), p. 29. 36 produced undesirable changes in the American school; changes which could and should be reversed by reinstat- ing educational practices common to schools before the industrialization and urbanization altered them, i.e., that Dewey believed his own education as a child to be satisfactory but education circa 1890 not to be and advo- cated educational reform On the basis of that judgment. While not entirely inaccurate, this obscures the full importance of Dewey's contextual approach.16 Dewey's argument for educational reform appears to me to rest not primarily upon claims about what schools did in 1870 or 1890 but upon claims about what schools might do, given a total social context, to perform functions which had, in previous contexts, been performed by other agencies. Reforms in schools, that is, might be made necessary by functional failures in agencies other than the schools and the problems which evidenced the necessity of such reform might not be, in any immediate sense, school prob- lems. Dewey's approach was not characteristically to select, e.g., an educational problem for analysis and argue for an educational solution to that problem. It was, by contrast, to attempt to isolate the functional failures in a troubled context and to identify agencies 16The term "contextual approach" is not entirely satisfactory but, for a variety of reasons, I think that it is better than "organic," "holistic” or "interdis- ciplinary." 37 which might adopt new functions thereby alleviating the problem. In short, Dewey's general approach to questions of reform was to analyze the current context which would yield clues to what functional deficiencies were involved in that context combined with a search for possible agen- cies in the current context which might be able to remed- iate those functional deficiencies. His analysis of the need for eduCational reform proceeds in just that fashion; he first identifies the functional deficiency—-what he calls the fundamental problem of education-~and then argues for a distinction between education and schooling. This distinction, Dewey feels, expedites the identifica- tion of the basic trouble and provides possible sources to remediate the problems. Dewey claims that his conception of the problem of education is of paramount importance in his theory of education; the problem is, he writes, that of ". . . har- monizing . . . individual traits with social ends and values" or the ". . . effective coordination of the factors which proceed from the make-up, the psychologi- cal constitution, of human beings with the demands and 17 opportunities of the social environment." He attempts 17Katherine Camp Mayhew and Anna Camp Edwards, The Dewey School: The Laboratory School of the University of Chicago, 1896-1903 (New York: Atherton Press, 1966), p. 465. 38 to distinguish his formulation of the problem from that of the proponents of child-centered education, who, he believed, gave insufficient attention to the social factors involved, as well as from that of the advocates of manual training and social adjustment who were not sufficiently aware of the individual factors. His argu- ment proceeds with the claim that such a harmony is only possible at all in virtue of the fact that ". . . the process of mental development is essentially a social process, a process of participation.”18 He elaborates this argument in greater detail in Democracy in Education where he argues that both the perpetuation of a society and the continued physical existence of its young depends on the successful conduct of education. He writes there that society exists through a process of transmission quite as much as biological life. This transmission occurs by means of communication of habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the younger. Without this com- munication of ideals, hopes, expectations, standards, opin- ions, from those members of society who are passing out of the group life to those who are coming into it, social life could not survive. and that . . . the human young are so immature that if they were left to themselves without the guidance of others, they 18Ibid., p. 467. 19John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Intro- duction to the Philosophy of Education (New York: The Free Press, 1966), p. 3. 39 could not acquire the rudimentary abilities necessary for physical existence.20 This, then, is the crucial problem for any educational endeavor in any society whatever; the formulation is com- pletely general since it does not take into account any particular social or specific individual factors. It includes no judgments about the legitimacy of any social factor and no position on what is, in fact, the psycho- logical constitution of the human being; it is an argu- ment to the effect that in any society, whatever its character, and whatever the nature of its individual members, the task of carrying out of education remains the same-~that of harmonizing individual traits with social ends and values. Given this account of the fundamental problem of education, it does not necessarily follow that the school is the sole, or even the primary, agency which could or should discharge the function of education. Schools are characterized by planned, intentional, formal instruction ("direct tuition" in Dewey's terms) as opposed to the Linformal education which takes place without any special devices or instructional materials in all social partici- pation and exchange. Specific institutions for formal, intentional instruction become necessary, on Dewey's view, as a society becomes more complex and the tasks 201bid., p. 4. 40 demanded by adult participation in that society become more technical. Unhappily, Dewey notes . there are conspicuous dangers attendant upon the transition from indirect to formal education. Sharing in actual pursuit, whether directly or vicariously in play, is at least personal and vital. . . . Formal instruction, on the contrary, easily becomes remote and dead-~abstract and bookish, to use the ordinary words of depreciation.21 This general account of Dewey's view of the function of education contains two points, then, which deserve spe- cial emphasis. First, Dewey's concept of education is much broader than his concept of schooling, i.e., a vari- ety of agencies other than the school perform an educa- tional function. Second, schooling, for Dewey, becomes more necessary as society becomes more complex and other agencies fail to perform adequately the function of inducting the young into full participation in adult life; nonetheless, schools, to the extent that they employ formal and direct methods of instruction, are ill suited means to this end. Faced with this dilemma Dewey recognized that the educational reformer was confronted with two dis- tinct but related tasks: (1) the reformer was required to identify those broader functions which were no longer being adequately performed by other institutions and might be adopted by the school,and (2) he had to develop new methods and means which would make the school an 21Ibid., p. 8. 41 effective agency in the performance of those new and broader functions. The problem was not simply, I repeat, that the schools were not doing well in 1890 what they had done well in 1860; as Dewey himself notes, A great deal of school material is irrelevant to the exper- ience of those taught and also manifests disrespect for trained judgment and accurate and comprehensive knowledge. In the earlier days of'our country these defects of school material were largely made good by the life of‘the young out of school. But the increase of urban conditions and mass production has cut many persons off from these sup- plementary resources. . . . 2 Since my purpose here is to compare Dewey's educational experience with that of Wittgenstein, I will not attempt to provide a comprehensive explication of the first step in Dewey's analysis--that of identifying the specific characteristics of American society in 1890 which made it necessary for schools to adopt new and broader edu- cational functions. My account will rather focus on Dewey's work at the Laboratory School since that work aptly illustrates the curricular and methodological reforms which Dewey advocated in order to make the school an agency more capable of performing those new tasks. What then, were the main features of the reform program initiated by Dewey and his associates at the University of Chicago?23 Some thirty years after the _ 22Mayhew and Edwards, p. 469, emphasis added. 23It is somewhat misleading to describe the Lab- an investigation of the overall influence which lMittgenstein's experience in the Austrian school reform m0\rement exercised on his philosophical thinking. H 24Mayhew and Edwards, The Dewey School, p. 464. 88 Education and Philosophy: Wittgenstein The previous section of this chapter began with a list of the chapters which would be included in a his- tory of Dewey's philosophical career. It was possible to do so in virtue of the fact that even though inter- pretations and critical assessments of his philosophy differ, sometimes substantially, the course of his phil- osophical development has not itself been a matter of philosophical controversy. This, unfortunately, is not so in Wittgenstein's case; not only do the various interpretations of his work differ drastically but the very question of whether his later work is a logical extension or a complete repudiation of his earlier work is itself controversial. In fact, interpretations of Wittgenstein's phi- losophy vary, in a word, wildly. He has been classified as, among other categories, a logical positivist, a linguistic analyst and an advocate of something called therapeutic positivism. His philosophical works have been compared with Zen Buddhism, symphonic music and the theatrical productions of Peter Handke. Practically everyone, including Schopenhauer and Kant, Kierkegaard and Tolstoy, Russell, Frege and Moore has been nominated as a primary source of influence on his philosophy. His main interests and primary subject matters have been 89 described variously as linguistic, psychological, logico- mathematical, mystical, epistemological, metaphysical (or anti-metaphysical) and ethical. In short, various commen- taries on Wittgenstein and his philosophy agree on little and disagree on much, including the extent to which his later work repudiates or develops his earlier work. Norman Malcolm's essay on Wittgenstein in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy presents what was for many years the most commonly accepted view of the history of Wittgenstein's phi1050phy. His work, Malcolm argues, falls rather neatly into two distinct periods with the early period represented by the Tractatus Logico- ' philosophicus and the later by the Philosophical Inves- tigations. Malcolm describes the Tractatus as ". . . a comprehensive work of extreme originality,"25 and a considerable part of the Investigations as ". . an attack, either explicit or implicit, on the earlier 26 work." From this point of view Wittgenstein's career appears to be . unique in the history of philosophy--a thinker pro- ducing, at different periods of his life, two highly original systems of thought, each system the result of many years of intensive labors, each expressed in an ZSNorman Malcolm. "Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef IJOhann," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc. and The Free Press and London: Collier Macmillan Pub- lishers, 1967), vol. 8, p. 329. 26Ibid., p. 33. 90 elegant and powerful style, each greatly influencing con- temporary philosophy, and the second being a criticism and a rejection of the first.27 Other accounts of the relationship between Wittgenstein's early and later work take issue with various elements of the one offered by Malcolm. Anthony Kenny, for example, identifies three positions which he believes were central ones in the Tractatus: (l) a metaphysical atomism with absolutely simple objects designated by names; (2) Wittgenstein's belief that formal logic provides a key to the essence of language; and (3) a picture theory of meaning. He claims that critics commonly draw contrasts between Wittgenstein's early and later work on each and every one of the three positions. He argues, however, that "the first of these contrasts seems to me accurate, the second partly accurate and partly misleading, and the third almost wholly misleading."28 K. T. Fann also argues for the position that there is greater continuity between Wittgenstein's early and later work than is allowed for in Malcolm's account. He distinguishes between a conception of the tasks of philosophy and the methods employed to perform those tasks and argues that _.¥ 27Ibid. 28Anthony Kenny, Wittgenstein (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 220. 91 Wittgenstein's later conception of the nature and tasks of philosophy can best be seen as a 'development' of his earlier views, while his later method should be regarded as the 'negation' of his earlier method.29 There is, at any rate, a variety of greatly divergent opinion about the degree of continuity in Wittgenstein's philosophy as well as a multitude of disputes over par- ticular interpretations of both the Tractatus and the Investigations. Since I do not intend to provide a comprehensive analysis of Wittgenstein's philosophical views, a survey of those opinions and disputes would contribute little or nothing to this discussion. I will, however, base my discussion of the impact of Wittgenstein's educational experience on his technical philosophy in large part on Stephen Toulmin's account of that philosophy. In an article written for Encounter magazine, Toulmin argues that several commonly accepted notions about Wittgenstein are misconceptions. He argues, in effect, that interpretations of Wittgenstein's work (e.g., the one offered by Malcolm) which emphasize the central importance of epistemological questions and see the Tractatus and the Investigations as blueprints for the philosophical movements of logical positivism and linguistic analysis misconstrue the central point and ¥ 29K. T. Fann, Wittgenstein's Conception of Phi- ZOSOphy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Cali- ornia Press, 1970), p. xiii. 92 purpose of his work. He offers and defends the following theses against such interpretations: Wittgenstein was never a positivist; He was never deeply concerned about epistemology; He was not a "linguistic philosopher"; There were not "two Wittgensteins," having different philosophical questions and concerns-~the author of the Tractatus, and the author of the Investigations; 5. There were not even two distinct Wittgensteins--one the technical philosopher, the other the "thinker."30 hump-I Toulmin states that misconceptions of Wittgenstein's views in the first four cases can be remedied largely by more careful attention to the textual evidence but the fifth is more deeply rooted and can be remedied only through a careful inquiry into the cultural and intel- lectual context in which Wittgenstein lived. A brief discussion of the first four points is in order before we turn to a more detailed discussion of the final one. Toulmin does not deny the obvious historical fact that the Tractatus became a central and important document in the logical positivist movement; he simply denies that it was well suited to play that role. The anti-metaphysical strand in Wittgenstein's thought, for example, was much more specific and less indiscriminate than the anti-metaphysical attitudes held by the members Of the Vienna Circle. As Toulmin observes: 30Stephen Toulmin, "Ludwig Wittgenstein," Encounter 32 (January 1969): 60. 93 For him, the word "metaphysics" was no blanket denuncia— tion, to be used cavalierly to sweep aside whatever was not "meaningful," or "factually verifiable," as of no importance. Rather, he used the word in a highly spe- cific sense--to designate the kind of philosophical dis- cussion which "obliterates the distinction between [i.e., confuses] factual and conceptual investigations" (Zettel, 458)--and his condemnation of metaphysics extended no further than this.31 Furthermore, Toulmin argues, Wittgenstein believed that only the unsayable, including metaphysics, has any real value; this is a far cry from the conclusion drawn by logical positivists. On the second point Toulmin argues that Wittgenstein's use of the term "atomic facts" in the ‘Tractatus, his association with Bertrand Russell and Russell's preface to the Tractatus (which was disavowed by Wittgenstein) all contributed to an epistemological interpretation which erroneously associated atomic facts with sense-data. Russell's program was that of ". . sifting out, and restating in their true 'logical forms,’ those beliefs which a rational man could regard as having “.32 a sound basis in 'hard data. Consequently Russell treated Wittgenstein's unit propositions as units of knowledge as well as units of language, but Wittgenstein himself was interested 31Ibid. 321bid., p. 61. 94 . . less with the foundations of knowledge than with the nature and limits of language. . . . The arguments of his Tractatus acquired significance for epistemology only if viewed through the spectacles of Russell or Mach; for then--and only then--could Wittgenstein's problem about the limits of the "sayable" be seen as dovetailing with Russell's epistemological question, "Seeing how our language relates to the world, what foundation can we then find for our knowledge of that external world?"33 In asserting that Wittgenstein was not a linguis- tic philosopher Toulmin is, again, not denying that the Investigations contributed to the movement in philosophy known as "linguistic analysis"; nor is he denying that Wittgenstein was centrally concerned with language and the way it operates in our lives. He is denying that Wittgenstein's immediate concern in philosophy was to develop an ideal language, like Carnap, or deve10p schemes for classifying and giving accounts of speech- acts, like J. L. Austin. Wittgenstein's interest, he argues, was ". . . in language as an element in a larger inquiry" and . . when we recognize the nature of Wittgenstein's deeper philosophical aims--to which his theories of language were subordinate—-we shall find that he was no more of a"linguistic philosopher" than (say) Plato, or Kant, or Schopenhauer.34 Toulmin stresses the continuity in Wittgenstein's philosophy against those who emphasize the differences between his earlier and later works. He argues that even ‘ 33Ibid., p. 62. 34Ibid. 95 though "at first sight, two books could hardly be less alike than the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investiga- tions" we should take the two books as successive attacks, using different methods, on one and the same group of "35 Those problems were, he argues, transcen- problems. dental ones taken up by Wittgenstein after Kant and Schopenhauer. The Kantian tasks of exploring the scope and limits of the reason and demonstrating the conse- quences of attempts to cross those limits were redefined first by Schopenhauer and finally restated by Wittgenstein as: "(1) exploring the 5cope--and the intrinsic limits-- of language; and (ii) demonstrating the consequences of our irrepressible tendency to run up against, and attempt to overlap, those unavoidable limits."36 Toulmin's final point concerns the view of Wittgenstein held by most of his colleagues and students at Cambridge. In another source he says of Wittgenstein's colleagues: It scarcely seems to have occurred to them that there might be more than a chance connection between the man who rejected all his traditional privileges as a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who was never seen around the town except wearing an open-necked shirt and one or two zipper-fastened parkas, and who insisted passion- ately--as a point of ethics rather than aesthetics--that the only kind of movies worth seeing were Westerns, and (on the other hand) the philosopher whose brilliant 35Ibid. 36Ibid., p. 63. 96 variations on the theories of Frege, Russell and G. E. Moore were doing so much to carry forward the English philosophical argument.3 The Encounter article attempts to remedy this misconcep- tion by arguing that a ". . . 'spiritual attitude' . . 38 informed the whole of Wittgenstein's work," a pervasive attitude which underlay his technical philosophy, intel- lectual preoccupations and way of life. This spiritual attitude included the view that the realm of facts and values were completely dissociated. Wittgenstein was preoccupied with ethico-religious matters, lived a life which demonstrated his ethical concerns and developed a philosophy which dismissed as irrelevant whatever could be stated in language. Be that as it may, my specific interest is in Toulmin's next step in his essay. He asks ". . . might we perhaps, penetrate behind this absolute dichotomy of facts and values, to some yet 39 deeper layer of thought," and his response provides us with a clue for our investigation. Toulmin's initial response to this question con- cludes that the dichotomy between facts and values appears to be the conclusion to any account of 37 pp. 20-21. Toulmin and Janik, Wittgenstein's Vienna, 38Toulmin, "Ludwig Wittgenstein," p. 64. 391bid. 97 Wittgenstein's philosophy, but he qualifies that response with the further observation that Wittgenstein's letters to Engelmann contain hints that some further investiga- tion might be warranted. He speculates that . we could follow up these hints in either of two directions, psychological or sociological--by looking more closely either at Wittgenstein's own personal make-up, or at the historical setting in which his mind was formed.40 After further discussion he rejects the psychological hypothesis but concludes that the sociological one might offer real possibilities for furthering our understanding of Wittgenstein. He does not pursue that idea further in the Encounter article but returns to it several years later with Wittgenstein's Vienna, written in collabora- tion with Allan Janik. This book begins with a comprehensive account of the cultural and intellectual atmosphere of Vienna during the period immediately preceding the First World War and the fall of the Monarchy. The authors describe a number of developments in a variety of different areas of intel- lectual and artistic activity, and conclude that . by the year 1900, the linked problems of communi- cation, authenticity and symbolic expression had been faced in parallel in all the major fields of thought and art. . . . So the stage was set for a philosophical critique of language, given in completely general terms.41 401bid. 41 p. 119. Toulmin and Janik, Wittgenstein's Vienna, 98 In the next step of their analysis Toulmin and Janik focus more explicitly on philosophical matters. They describe the first attempt to work out such a cri- tique and identify the three major philosophical tradi- tions which were available for such an undertaking as: (l) the neoempiricism of Ernst Mach, with its emphasis on "sense impressions" and natural science; (2) the Kantian analysis of "representation" and the "schemata," regarded as determining the forms of experience and judg- ment, and its continuation by the antiphilosopher Arthur Schopenhauer; and (3) the anti-intellectual approach to moral and aesthetic issues put forward by that other anti- philosopher, Sdren Kierkegaard, and echoed in the novels and essays of Leo Tolstoy.4 They argue that Fritz Mauthner's attempt to work out such a critique on Machian principles supported Kierkegaard's central ethical claim, ". . . namely, the view that 'the meaning of life'is not a matter for rational debate, cannot be given 'intellectual foundations,‘ and is in 43 essence a 'mystical'matter." But, they continue, since .Mauthner's analysis accomplished this by denying the pos- sibility of all genuine knowledge--not just ethical iknowledge--it was less than completely satisfactory. In 'view of these developments they conclude that the most pressing problem facing Vienna's intellectuals was that of developing a critique of language which would (I) avoid Mauthner's skepticism about logic and science 421bid. 431bid., p. 165. 99 by demonstrating how descriptive language is used to represent matters of fact and (2) continue to support Kierkegaard's ethical views. The third stage of their analysis is an inter- pretation of the Tractatus which emphasizes the neces- sity of reading it as a representative work of Viennese philosophy produced in the cultural and intellectual context of that society. According to this interpre- tation the Tractatus should be read as an attempt to solve the problem described above by using logical instruments developed by Frege and Russell. Those log- ical instruments . . permitted Wittgenstein to show how far ordinary factual or descriptive language can legitimately be thought of (even if only metaphorically) as getting its literal, straight forward meaning in the same kind of way as the "mathematical models" around which Hertz had built his account of scientific knowledge. Yet, in the last resort, the fundamental point of this whole cri- tique was to underline the ethical point that all ques- tions about value lie outside the scope of such ordinary factual or descriptive language.44 ESince my primary interest is that of investigating the :Eorces which influenced Wittgenstein's later work I will discuss his early work no further. Toward the end of his Encounter article, Toulmin raises, but does not answer, a historical question about the sources of Wittgenstein's later work. We do not yet have: the careful and comprehensive philosophical and 44Ibid., p. 196. 100 historical study which would illuminate the Investiga- tions in the way that Toulmin and Janik's work has illum- inated the Tractatus. Such a task goes far beyond the scope of this dissertation; I will, however, identify some of the possible sources of Wittgenstein's later work which warrant further inquiry and, in the following chapter, provide one extended example of the way in which his participation in the educational reform movement influenced his later work in philosophy. Biographical sketches of Wittgenstein and dis- cussions of his later philosophy usually mention Frank Ramsey, Piero Sraffa and WilliamJames as having influ- enced some aspect of his later work. Sraffa's method of "speculative anthropology" is said to have provided a model for Wittgenstein's later use of imaginative examples and hypothetical cultures. The pragmatic tendencies of his later work are attributed in part to his long dis- cussions with Frank Ramsey, a logician who was strongly influenced by C. S. Peirce. Those same pragmatic ten- dencies were reinforced by his reading of William James, whose work also supplied him with numerous examples of 45 psychological subject matter. Other names are some- times mentioned; Eduard Spranger, for example, is often cited as the source of the notion of forms of life. 45 pp. 45.-500 Fann, Wittgenstein's Conception of Philosophy, 101 But few of those who have written commentaries on Wittgenstein's later work have even attempted to provide any account of: (1) why Wittgenstein was influenced by, e.g., the work of William James; (2) the ways in which various sources of influence might be connected; or (3) the possible relevance of what Wittgenstein was attending to and doing between, say, 1920 and 1929. The Austrian educational reform movement clearly constitutes one context which might shed some light on these matters; nevertheless, the philosophical signifi- cance of the six years Wittgenstein spent as an elemen- tary school teacher is generally ignored. Only a few critics have considered those years to be of sufficient importance to warrant any consideration in their accounts of Wittgenstein's philosophical work. Bartley, for example, discusses Wittgenstein's teaching experience in some detail and argues that . . . he was, throughout the twenties, developing and revising some of the most technical aspects of his philosophy. Those who suppose that he dropped philos- ophy during this period only to be suddenly catapulted back into it again . . . are misinformed. Again, Wittgenstein was, in a manner he was not to repeat, a participant, acting throughout these six years in the Austrian school reform program. Here too he did not simply follow; he innovated educationally in an indi- vidual way that was to influence his technical philos- ophy.46 K. T. Fann also argues that "the effects of his teach- ing experience on his later philosophy is quite evident 46Bartley, Wittgenstein, p. 84. 102 47 in both his lectures and writings," and he illustrates that effect with several examples. In fact, he con- cludes, "It would not be an exaggeration to say that the early Wittgenstein's ivory tower view of language was brought down to earth by his elementary school pupils."48 As we saw earlier, both Karl Bfihler's work in developmental psychology and Eduard Burger's work in the theory of activity pedagogy were closely associated with the school reform program. Bartley argues that there are . striking similarities between some of Buhler's leading ideas and those of the later Wittgenstein. Among these.are: (1) their opposition to psychologi- cal and logical atomism; (2) in the place of atomism, a contextualism or configurationism; (3) a radical linguistic conventionalism built up in opposition to essentialist doctrines; (4) the idea of "imageless thought."49 I suspect that Bartley is in error about some of these claims but, accurate or not, he does not consider other ways in which Bfihler might well have influenced Wittgenstein. Bfihler's work does, in fact, treat of a number of subjects which are central preoccupations in Wittgenstein's later work. One book, for example, discusses, among other things, the following topics: .____. 47Fann, Wittgenstein's Conception of Philosophy, p. 44. 481bid., p. 45. 49Bartley, Wittgenstein, p. 149. 103 how the speech of children develops into meaningful communication; the various functions of speech; the importance of social factors in the development of language; and, the crucial role of games in the mental development of the child--including the development of 50 language. No one, on the other hand, has even attempted to investigate Burger's work either for doctrines which might have had some influence on Wittgenstein's later work or for subjects which might have been incorporated by Wittgenstein. Burger's work does contain extended discussions of subjects which at first glance corre- spond with many of Wittgenstein's later preoccupations, and the correspondence is close enough to warrant fur- ther investigation. Burger's system, for example, employs what he calls empirical, logical and technical heuristics and his Arbeitspadagogik illustrates each. of these in the teaching of geography. His empirical heuristics includes the methods used to promote the formation of concepts such as length and breadth; logi- cal heuristics encompasses the methods used to promote independent judgment; and technical heuristics deals with the methods used to promote expressional activity 50See, for example, Karl Bfihler, The Mental Development of the Child (London: Routledge 8 Kegan Paul.thd., 1930). 104 such as drawing, constructing models or using lan- guage.51 At least two aspects of Burger's work appears to warrant further investigation as possible sources of Wittgenstein's later work. First, the notion of indirect instruction is a central one in Burger's activity pedagogy. Using his heuristics, one does not instruct a child in how to use language, construct models to represent geographical features, make judgments or form concepts in a certain way; rather one employs methods which will lead the child to use language, construct models, make judgments or form concepts in a certain way. This view of indirect instruc- tion might very well have influenced Wittgenstein's think- ing on the nature of indirect communication--apart from the rather obvious observation that Wittgenstein employs a heuristic method of instruction in his later work. Pflflww Second, Burger's account of the technical heuristic treats the use of language as an activity which, like drawing, model construction and map making ". . . is a long series of related acts each of which brings in con- Cepts, jUdgments and will."52 At any rate, the Austrian school reform movement deserves more attention than it characteristically SlSee Schoenchen, The Activity School, Part 11. 52Ibid., p. 163. 105 gets in discussions of Wittgenstein's later views. I suspect that a comprehensive study would yield further information about Bfihler and Burger, and also shed some light on the character of the influence of, say, Ramsey and James by specifying more clearly what Wittgenstein was about when he wrote the Investigations} In the last few chapters I have described the Dewey school and the movement to reform education in Austria. I have argued in this chapter that there is good reason to take those educational contexts seriously when discussing the philosophical views of Dewey or Wittgenstein. In the chapter which follows I will illustrate that argument with an account of the origins and functions of Dewey's notion of occupations and Wittgenstein's notion of forms of life. CHAPTER VI OCCUPATIONS, FORMS OF LIFE AND MEANING I believe that education which does not occur through forms of life, forms that are worth living for their own sake, is always a poor substitute for the genuine reality and tends to cramp and to deaden. John Dewey, "My Pedagogic Creed" "So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false"?—-It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations Occupations Dewey was working out the main components of his philosophy of language and meaning at the same time that he was involved with the experiment in education at the Laboratory School of the University of Chicago. When the experiment began Dewey had been struggling for several years to find a way to incorporate his interest 1hr modern psychology into the philosophical framework of his absolute idealism. However, when he left Chicago in 1904, it was clear that the major outlines of his 106 107 instrumentalism had been worked out.1 The occupations which played such an important role in Dewey's experi- mental school doubtless had an impact upon the philo- sophical ideas which, by 1904, had largely displaced absolute idealism in Dewey's thought. In the section which follows I will show that (l) Dewey originally employed the notion of occupations as an educational device, (2) he later generalized occupations and advo- cated its use as an explanatory principle in psychology and (3) he further generalized the notion and employed it as a philosophical principle in his instrumentalist conception of logic. The occupations, it will be remembered, per- formed several functions in the laboratory school cur- riculum. They insured continuity of development by providing the child with appropriate and engaging activities which directed the child's impulses into intellectually and socially desirable ways of thinking and doing. They also insured greater continuity of experience by relating the learning activities of the school more closely to those the child encountered in 1See, for example, John Dewey et al., Studies in Logical Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1903). 108 everyday life.2 Dewey summed up the main features of the program and the occupations when he wrote: Attention may again be called to that of having the school represent a genuine community life; and to that of a study of the individual child, with a view of hav- ing his activities properly express his capacities, tastes and needs. Attention may again be called to the principle of indirect training, and the consequent neces- sary emphasis upon initiating the proper process rather than securing any immediate outward product. The occupations, in short, were the means by which the school was to provide the broadly educational experi- ences which were no longer provided through full par- ticipation in community activities. Our question is whether or not Dewey employed the notion of occupa- tions--or some functionally equivalent notion--in his later philosophical works. The answer, in a word, is: yes. In 1902 Dewey wrote an article in which he crit- icized the psychology of the day and advocated a new method for psychological studies. He argued that psy- chological investigations had produced a great deal of unconnected information about a variety of unrelated human traits but no coherent account of mind. He con- trasted this situation with that in the biological sci- ences where concepts were employed which represented 2Arthur G. Wirth, John Dewey as Educator: His Design for Work in Education (1894-1904) (New York: John Wiley 8 Sons, Inc., 1966), pp. 131-133. 3John Dewey, "Plan of Organization of the Uni- versity Primary School," The Early Works, vol. 5, p. 232. 109 the various elements of an organism in a related pat- tern. Psychologists would make comparable progress, he argued, only when they came to ". . . recognize that mind has a pattern, a scheme of arrangement in its con- 4 stituent elements." He recommended that psychologists undertake an evolutionary study of various social groups and cultures. He then states that this . . point of view commits us to the conviction that mind, whatever else it may be, is at least an organ of service for the control of environment in relation to the ends of the life process. lf’we search in any social group for the special functions to which mind is thus relative, occupations at once suggest themselves. Occupations determine the fundamental modes of activity, and hence control the formation and use of habits. These habits, in turn, are something more than practical and overt. "Apper- ceptive masses" and associated tracts of necessity conform to the dominant activities. The occupations determine the chief modes of satisfaction, the stan- dards of success and failure. Hence they furnish the working classifications and definitions of value; they control the desire processes. Moreover, they decide the sets of objects and relations that are important, and thereby provide the content or material of atten- tion, and the qualities that are interestingly signif— icant. The directions given to mental life thereby extend to emotional and intellectual characteristics. So fundamental and pervasive is the group of occupa— tional activities that it affords the scheme or pat- tern of the structural organization of mental traits. Occupations integrate special elements into a func- tioning whole. This call for a new approach to psychological investi- gation is based on a generalized application of the 4John Dewey, "Interpretation of the Savage Mind," in Philosophy, Psychology and Social Practice, ed. Joseph Ratner (New York: Capricorn Books, 1963), p. 283. 5Ibid., pp. 283-284. Italics mine. 110 notion of occupations. Dewey now advocates its use as an explanatory principle which will allow the psycholo- gist to give a coherent theory of mind. For the purposes of this account, two features of Dewey's essay deserve further comment: 1. He was generalizing the notion of occupa- tions in order to provide a different account of mind from the one he had previously endorsed rather than explicating the theory behind the laboratory school experiment. There is no evidence that the notion of occupations had any prior theoretical importance for Dewey apart from its role in the educational program. 2. The essay anticipates many of the themes which became central in Dewey's later philosophy. In the closing paragraph of the essay he writes: In conclusion, let me point out that the adjust— ment of habits to ends, through the medium of a proble- matic, doubtful, precarious situation, is the struc- tural form upon which present intelligence and emotion are built. It remains the ground pattern. This claim was to be the central thesis of later works such as How We Think, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, Human Nature and Conduct, Experience and Nature and others. Dewey argued in the 1902 essay that the central task of psychology should be seen as that of describing 61bid., p. 294. 111 ". . . the formation of mental patterns appropriate to agricultural, military, professional and technological and trade pursuits, and the reconstruction and overlay- 7 Just one year ing of the original hunting schema.” later he and several of his colleagues published the first comprehensive statement of instrumentalist philos- ophy, Studies in Logical Theory. In the introductory essay of that volume8 Dewey discussed the instrumental- ist conception of the methods, problems and subject matter of logic. Logic, he argued,. . deals with this question: How does one type of functional situation and attitude in experience pass out of and into another; for example, the technological or utilitarian into the aesthetic, the aesthetic into the religious, the religious into the scientific, and this into the socio-ethical and so on?9 This claim was part of an attack on those formulations of the central problem of logic which Dewey believed were grounded on metaphysical or epistemological require- ments. He argued that logic seen as a general account of the relation of thought to reality represented . an attempt to discuss the antecedents, data, forms, and objectives of thought, apart from reference to 71bid. 8John Dewey, "Thought and Its Subject-Matter: The General Problem of Logical Theory," Studies, pp. 1-22, reprinted in John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1916). 9Dewey, Experimental Logic, pp. 97-98. 112 particular position occupied and particular part played in the growth of experience. 10 Attempts to do this, he argued, produced ". . . results . not so much either true or false as they are radi- cally meaningless--because they are considered apart from limits."11 Against such views Dewey advocated an instru- mentalist account of logic; one which would (1) . . . strive to hit upon the common denomi- nator in the various situations which are antecedent . to thought . . .; (2) . . . attempt to show how typical features in the specific antecedents of thought call out typical modes of thought-reaction; (3) attempt to state the nature of the specific conse- quences in which thought fulfils its career. This view, that logic is the natural history of thought, is a further extension and more generalized application of the notion of occupations. Dewey argued, for example, that the instrumentalist approach made it possible to bring logical theory to terms with psychology conceived of as ". . . the natural history of the various attitudes and structures through which experiencing passes. . ."13 In fact he closed the essay with the following remark: . if it [philosophy] can define its work more clearly, it can concentrate its energy upon its own characteristic problem: the genesis and functioning 10Ibid., p. 85. 11lbid. 12Ibid., pp. 83-84. 13Ibid., p. 94. 113 in experience of various typical interests and occupa- tions with reference to one another.14 In summary, the 1902 and 1903 essays provided Dewey with a plan of attack as well as a conceptual framework for much of his later work. Taken together they propose (1) that mind (i.e., the way in which the emotional and intellectual elements of the psyche are related) is a function of the fundamental interests and occupations which characterize a society, and (2) that the singular task of philosophy is that of providing a general account of the genesis of various interests and occupations, their function in experience and their relationships with one another. If this conclusion is correct, then Dewey's later philosophical works should be taken as steps in carrying out this program, i.e., as providing a genetic account of how we think, how we inquire, how we experience art, how we value and so on as well as how our inquiring is related to our valuing, our experience of art to our reflection, and so on. The philosophical importance of the notion of occupations lies in its contribution to the method of analysis that Dewey employs in each of these subsequent works but he does not restate and defend it in each and 1Albid” p. 102. Italics mine. 114 15 O o 0 every case. That, however, 15 no mean contrlbutlon. A5 Dewey himself observed: Philosophy, defined as such a logic, makes no pretense to be an account of a closed and finished universe. Its business is not to secure or guarantee any partic- ular reality or value. Per Contra, it gets the signif- icance of a method.16 In this final stage then, Dewey applied the notion of occupations as a methodological principle for philo- sophical deliberation. In that capacity it functioned to define and delimit the subject matter and problems of philosophy. Forms of Life The expression "forms of life" has been the source of a great deal of debate and disagreement among critics of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. The extent of that disagreement can be seen, for example, in J. F. M. Hunter's account, "'Forms of Life' in 17 Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations." Hunter 15The term does not disappear from use altogether. Dewey continued to make use of it in all of his subsequent educational works and in others as well. See, for example, John Dewey, How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process (Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1933), pp. 5, 216-219; The Public and Its Problems (Denver: Alan Swallow, 1927), pp. 151- 164, esp. 160; and Logic: The Theor of Inquiry (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1 38), pp. 42-43. 16Dewey, Experimental Logic, p. 98. 17J. F. M. Hunter, "'Forms of Life' in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations," in Essays on Wittgenstein, ed. E. D. Klemke (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971). 115 describes three interpretations which he believes are in error but have been held and a fourth which he attempts to defend. My argument up to this point has been that Wittgenstein's teaching experience provides a context which can illuminate his philosophical work. If that view is accurate, then the educational program discussed earlier should provide us with some means of clarifying the meaning of the term 'forms of life' and a clearer picture of the role it played in Wittgenstein's philo- 50phica1 deliberations. I will summarize and utilize Hunter's views and then argue for an account of the expression based on one of the major themes of the Austrian educational reform program. Hunter describes the following three interpre- tations which he believes to be in error: 1. The view that a language game is a prime example of a form of life. A form of life, then, is ". . . something formalized or standardized in our life; "18 it is one of life's forms. According to this interpretation Wittgenstein used the term to emphasize the social nature of language games. 2. The view that a form of life is a collection, ()r package, of related behavioral dispositions, e.g., ". . . to have certain facial expressions and make cer- t:ain gestures, to do certain things like count apples ‘ 18Ibid., p. 275. 116 19 On this or help people, and to say certain things." interpretation Wittgenstein used the term to emphasize the fact that linguistic behavior is related to non- linguistic behaviors. 3. The view that a form of life ". . . has something important to do with the class structure, the values, the religion, the types of industry and commerce and recreation that characterize a group of people."20 Hunter argues that this account is not worthy of serious consideration. He writes, . I leave it to the reader to figure out whether there is any sense in which only those can hope who have mastered a complicated way of life, or in which a way of life can be used to settle doubts as to the reliability of paper and ink or memory.21 Curiously enough, he adds a footnote to this statement which reads: "See . . . Lectures on Religious Belief p. 58, where a way of life account is perhaps the only plausible one."22 Hunter also offers a fourth interpretation, an "organic account" which, he believes, is defensible. On that account forms of life are those things which are ,typical of a living being, i.e., something very broadly 19Ibid., pp. 275-276. 20Ibid., p. 277. lebid., p. 278. 22raid. 117 ". . . in the same class as the growth or nutrition of living organisms, or as the organic complexity which enables them to propel themselves about, or to react "23 If the in complicated ways in their environment. educational matters discussed in Chapter IV did influ- ence Wittgenstein's later work, we might be able to identify some educational doctrine which would help us to better understand his concept of forms of life. The Austrian school reform movement was based in large part on Eduard Burger's activity pedagogy. The concept of pedagogical activity, i.e., activity which both engages the child's interest and has instructional value, was a central one in Burger's theory. That con- cept incorporated a distinction similar to Dewey's dis- tinction between education and schooling. For example, Burger argued that pedagogical activities characterize_ much of the child's everyday experience outside of the school. And, like Dewey, he illustrated that claim by pointing to the learning which can take place as a child participates in the shared work which characterizes life 24 on a farm. The crucial point for the purpose of this discussion is that both approaches treat the school as 23Ibid. 24See Schoenchen, Activity School, p. 98; and Dewey, Early Works, vol. 5, pp. 258-259. 118 an agency to perform the function of mediating the bio- logical and the social; or, in Dewey's words, of harmo- nizing individual traits with social ends and values. Dewey generalized this idea to the point that the occupations became the subject matter of philosophi- cal investigation, i.e., the task of philosophy became that of giving a general account of, say, how we think, how that is related to the way we value and so on. It is my conviction that Wittgenstein did something similar with Burger's conception of activity pedagogy. If he did, then his analysis should include some account of the ways in which human activities are organized into_ broader, more comprehensive patterns. Furthermore, pedagogical activity encompassed both biological and . social factors in that it was designed to bridge they” gap between the nature of the child and the goals and values of society. That is, pedagogical activity had both biological and social aspects and if Wittgenstein employed a generalized version of that notion it too should have both biological and social aspects. The concept of forms of life is a likely prospect for such a generalized application and, if it is, the concept, 25 Eshould be interpreted as a way of life account, but 25Hunter, "'Forms of Life,'" p. 277. 119 one which treats all human activities as natural phe- nomena. Such an interpretation combines the way of life account criticized by Hunter with his own bio- logical account. There is some textual evidence that 'forms of life' does refer to comprehensive patterns ofthis sort, patterns relating constituent elements of human activity. Wittgenstein argues that concepts, or ways of looking at things, are the result of education and training even though they ". . . have their roots infin- 26 instinct." The pattern, organization or structure of those concepts constitutes what might be called a way of being in the world or a form of life. In a discussion of the language game of writing a series of signs according to a formation rule, he ways of the person learning the game . . . I wanted to put that picture before him and his acceptance of the picture consists in his now being inclined to regard a given case differently: that is, to compare it with this rather than that set of pic- tures. I have changed his way of'looking at things. 7 26Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel, eds. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), § 391. Compare this with Dewey's claim on p. 56 of Logic: "Language did not originate association, but when it supervened, as a natural emergence from previous forms of animal activity, it reacted to transform prior forms and modes of associated behavior in such a way as to give experience a new dimension." 27Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Part I, § 144. 120 And, in a discussion of what is involved in following a rule, he argues that concepts are the result of teach- ing. I shall explain these words to someone who, say, only speaks French by means of the corresponding French words. But if a person has not yet got the concepts, I shall teach him to use the words by means of example and practice. ' While discussing the concept of pain Wittgenstein makes the following remarks on the origins of concepts and the connection between concepts and education. I want to say: an education quite different from ours might also be the foundation for quite different concepts. I really want to say that scruples in thinking begin with (have their roots in) instinct. Or again: a language-game does not have its origins in consider- ation. Consideration is part of a language game. And that is why a concept is in its element within the language-game. Finally Wittgenstein makes the following remarks while discussing the grounds for our certainty that the earth is round. 'We are quite sure of it' does not mean that every single person is certain of it, but that we belong to a community which is bound together by science and education. 28Ibid., Part I, § 208. 29Wittgenstein, Zettel, § 387. 30Ibid., 5 391. 31Ludwig Wittgenstein, 0n Certainty, eds. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright (New York and Evanston: J 8 J Harper Editions, 1969), § 298. 121 Now I would like to regard this certainty, not as something akin to hastiness or superficiality, but as a form of life. (That is very badly expressed and prob- ably badly thought as well.) 2 These citations are at best suggestive but I believe them to be compatible with my contention that 'forms of life' is a generalized application of Burger'smh notion of pedagogical activity. In short there is rea- lon to believe that 'forms of life' should be interpreted according to my account from both textual and contextual sources; A more complete account would explicate Wittgenstein's distinction between training and teach- ing as well as his concept of instinct but those ques- tions lie beyond the scope of this dissertation. The final step of my proposed argument was that of looking into the theory of meaning associated with these views. We are now in a position to turn to that question. Meaning In Chapter II we discussed Alston's account of various answers to the question: "What are we saying about a linguistic expression when we specify its mean- ing"? We will now look briefly at Alston's account of meaning and the use of language and ask what character- istics, if any, his account shares with those which 32Ibid., 9 358. 122 are found in Dewey and Wittgenstein's works. Alston argues that . . many behavioral theories try to construe meaning solely in terms of the hearer's response. Even when something on the speaker's side is brought in . . . it is something about the situation . . . rather than any- thing about what the speaker is doing in that situation.33 He suggests that we should characterize . . the meaning of a linguistic expression as a func- tion of the way in which it is used by speakers of the language.34 I will argue that Dewey and Wittgenstein held views on this issue similar to the use theory of meaning advo- cated by Alston. The first problem one is likely to encounter when looking for a consistent account of meaning in Dewey's works is that he employs the term 'meaning' in a bewildering array of different sense--one is tempted to say indiscriminately. Late in his life Dewey wrote that 'meaning' is' a word so confused that it is better never used at all. More direct expressions can always be found. (Try for example, speaking in terms of "is," or "involves.") I)ewey's own use of the word in his previous phi1050ph- ical works no doubt contributed to the confusion sur- ‘rounding its use. In Experience and Nature, for ‘ 33Alston, Philosophy of Language, p. 32. 34Ibid., pp. 32-33. 35John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley, Knowing and the; Known (Boston: Beacon Press, 1949), p. 247. 123 example, he argued for each of the following claims: "Essence . . . is but a pronounced instance of mean- . 36 . . . . 1ng . . ."; ". . . every meanlng ls generlc or unl- versal . . .";37 "Meanings are rules for using and interpreting things . . .";38 "Meaning is objective as 39 and "Meanings are . . . modes of "40 well as universal"; natural interaction. . . In light of this it is not surprising to find that there are several interpretations of Dewey's views on meaning. One account claims that Dewey's position is a composite one which endorses the claims made in all three of the positions described by Alston. That critic also argues that . Dewey's use of "meaning" suggests that he was aware of at least two types of meaning: Common mean- ing which is related to ordinary language and which like the latter is highly connotative. . . . The other type of meaning, scientific, is denotative, sharp and well defined, and the linguistic forms are concrete.41 36John Dewey, Experience and Nature (New York: I)over Publications, Inc., 1929), p. 182. 371618., p. 187. 38Ibid., p. 188. 3grbid. 4”Ibid., p. 190. . 41Charles Tesconi, "John Dewey's Theory of Mean- 1n£§," Educational Theory 19 (Spring 1969): 166. 124 Another critic asserts what appears to be the claim that Dewey endorsed an ideational theory but turns out to be the claim that he held a behavioral one. He writes, We come now to the central explication of "meaning" in Dewey's theory: meaning as idea. Meaning in this sense is the non-overt or implicit response an organism makes to any other response, overt or implicit, which acts as stimulus. For example, when we say, "What does this mean for this organism?" we might as well say, "What implicit responses it the organism making as a result of this stimulus?"42 It is possible though to identify a theory of meaning in Dewey's work which avoids these rather crude character- izations. Such an interpretation would have to take several general characteristics of Dewey's approach to philo- sophical deliberation into account as well as the claims made in some little known publications. Fortunately, Dewey has provided us with a syn0ptic account of his phi- losophy in a response to his critics in 1939. Two of the general characteristics of his philosophy described there are of particular importance in reconstructing his theory of meaning--(1) his defense of the concept of situations and (3) his distinction between primary experience and discourse. With respect to (l) Dewey argued that the subject matter of philosophy requires some concept which is capable of providing 42Paul Wienpaul, "Dewey's Theory of Language and Meaning," in John Dewey: Philosopher of Science and Free- dom, ed. Sidney Hook (New York: Dial Press, 1950), p. 277. 125 . a viable alternative to an atomism which logically involves a denial of connections and to an absolutistic block monism which, in behalf of the reality of relations, leaves no place for the discrete, for plurality, and for individuals. He then repeats his well known argument that every exper- ience is an interaction which involves both the environ- ment and the organism and concludes, In other words, the theory of experiential situa- tions which follows directly from the biological— anthropological approach is by its very nature a via media between extreme atomistic pluralism and block universe monisms.44 The second point of interest is the distinction which Dewey makes between primary experience and dis- cursive experience. He writes that . one person cannot communicate an experience as immediate to another person. He can only invite that other person to institute the conditions by which the person himself will have that kind of situation the conditions for which are stated in discourse.45 And relative to this distinction, he argues that . telling is (i) a matter of discourse, and . (ii) all discourse is derived from and inherently refer- able to experiences of things in non-discursive experi- ential having. 46 Together these two claims emphasize Dewey's belief in the continuity of experience. Discourse grows out of 43John Dewey, "Experience, Knowledge and Value: .A Rejoinder," in The Philosophy of John Dewey, ed. Paul .Arthur Schilpp (New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1939), p. 544. 44Ibid. 45Ibid., p. 546. 46Ibid., pp. 546-547. 126 and refers back to primary experience and all experience, primary or derived, is an interaction of environing con- ditions (which include culture) and the organism. These two points are directly related to Dewey's analysis of language. The fundamental importance of language lies in the fact that, on one side, it is a strictly biological mode of behavior, emerging in natural continuity from earlier organic activities, while, on the other hand, it compels one individual to take the standpoint of other individuals and to see and inquire from a standpoint that . . . is com- mon to them as participants . . . in a conjoint undertaking.47 After arguing forcefully for the social importance of this biological mode of behavior, Dewey argues for two theses about meaning: (1) the meaning of linguistic symbols is not conventional but is established in asso- ciated behavior and (2) a word has meaning only within a system of related symbols. These claims require care- ful consideration since they are not, in many respects, 'what they seem to be. Dewey argues that ". . . the meaning which a (:onventional symbol has is not itself conventional."48 fie is making a distinction between a symbol (e.g., a vvord) and a sign (e.g., in the sense that smoke is a 47Dewey, Logic, p. 46. 481bid., p. 47. 127 sign of fire) and is asserting that the symbol is con- ventional but that the meaning is not. The immediate question one wants to raise about this claim is "What sort of a convention could determine the symbol without determining its meaning?" The distinction between symbol and sign follows Peirce after all and Alston for one claims that "it is commonly said that symbols (in Peirce's sense) are distinguished from other 'signs' by the fact that their significance is conventional."49 Yet we find Dewey claiming that the symbol itself is conventional but its meaning is not. What Dewey is actually arguing for is not this claim but the claim that the particular linguistic symbols used in a given language are arbitrary while the meaning of those symbols is established in conjoint use and action and hence is not arbitrary. He says, for example, "The particular existential sound or mark that stands for dog or justice in different cultures is arbitrary or conventional in the sense that although it 50 has causes there are no reasons for it. But "the physical sound or mark gets its meaning in and by a con- joint community of functional use, not by any explicit ”.51 convening in a 'convention. In short what appeared 49Alston, Language, p. 56. SODcwey, Logic, p. 47. 51Ibid., pp. 46-47. 128 to be an argument against linguistic conventionalism turns out to be an argument for a version of such a view. Dewey also claims that "any word or phrase has the meaning which it has only as a member of a constel- "52 This statement might lation of related meanings. lead one to conclude that Dewey is advocating the view that the meaning of a word or phrase is somehow deter- mined by its formal relations with other symbols in the system. But this is not the case, for in explaining this claim, Dewey points out that the system may be simply the language in common use. Its meanings hang together not in virtue of their examined relationship to one another, but because they are current in the same set of group habits and expec- tations. They hang together because of group activi- ties, group interests, customs and institutions. The point of this claim is simply that they do hang together not that their doing so can provide an account of the meaning of some element in the system. One further source of possible misinterpretation of Dewey's views on meaning remains to be discussed. It is located in the distinction which he makes between' symbols and signs and the relations which he attributes to them. Signs are things which have representative capacity, i.e., things which can signify, indicate, or 52161d., p. 49. 53Ibid., p. 50. 129 point to something else in the sense, say, that smoke is a sign of fire. Signs are of two kinds according to Dewey: (1) natural signs are those in which ". . . the representative capacity in question is attributed to things in their connection with one another . . .,"54 e.g., smoke is a sign of fire because fires usually smoke; and (2) artificial signs (or symbols) are those which ". . . are given representative function by social. agreement,”55 e.g., a flag is the symbol of a country because it is treated as such. Furthermore, the sounds and marks which constitute language are symbols, and their ". . . meaning depends upon agreement in social "56 use. Following this distinction Dewey offers a termi- nology which he intends to employ in his theory of inquiry: 1. 'Sign-significance' designates the kind of representative capacity which signs have; 2. 'Symbol-meaning' should be used to talk about the kind of representative capacity which symbols have; 3. 'Relation' designates ". . . the kind of 'relation' which symbol-meanings bear to one another as symbol-meanings"; 54Ibid., p. 51. 5516id., p. 52. 56Ibid., p. 51. 130 4. 'Reference' designates ". . . the kind of relation [symbol-meanings] sustain to existence"; 5. 'Connection' designates the ". . . kind of relation sustained by things to one another in virtue of which inference is possible."57 Now the danger of misinterpretation here lies in the tendency to conclude that since Dewey argues that symbols (symbol-meanings) refer "to existence" he is advocating a referential theory of meaning. He is not. For Dewey the meaning and the word are one (hence, symbol-meaning) and that unit, which may be used to refer to the facts of primary experience, is determined by agreement in action. There remains one final point which should be discussed and which will give us a clearer picture of Dewey's positive views on the question of meaning. He illustrates his distinction between 'relation,' 'refer- ence,‘ and 'connection' with reference to the proposi- tions of mathematical physics. He writes, The differences, when once pointed out, should be so obvious as hardly to require illustration. Consider, however, propositions of mathematical physics. (1) As propositions they form a system of related symbol- meanings that may be considered and developed as such. (2) But as propositions of physics, not of mere mathe- matics, they have reference to existence; a reference 57All quotes Ibid., p. 55. 131 which is realized in operations of application. (3) The final test of valid reference or applicability resides in the connections that exist among things. In short, even in mathematical physics the "referential capacity" of propositions is "realized" only through the operations by which they are applied to the physical world, i.e., they acquire a meaning only when used. Dewey argues for a number of particular theses about language and meaning but this point represents the central core of his thought on the matter. He claims, for example, that "the heart of language is not 'expres- sion' of something antecedent, much less expression of antecedent thought,"59 "language is always a form of action . . .,"60 "meanings are rules for using and interpreting things . . .,"61 and "as to be a tobl . . . is to have and endow with meaning, language, being the tool of tools, is the cherishing mother of all signifi- cance."62 Each of these claims could be explicated and related to the central claim of Dewey's views on meaning but I will leave that task for another time. That cen— tral claim was best expressed in one of Dewey's last articles when he wrote 58Ibid. 59Dewey, Experience and Nature, p. 179. 601bid., p. 184. 61Ibid., p. 188. 62Ibid. 132 . meaning has in philosophical usage become neither fowl, flesh, nor good red herring. Only one who has familiarity with the literature of the subject can even begin to be aware of how confusing, obfuscating, and boring in its multiplicity of elaborations the word "meaning" has become. But when one has recourse to the idiomatic usage of meaning: to mean is to intend, the suitability of meaning to name . . . artfully skilled ways of organized action is . . . evident. This interpretation of Dewey's theory of mean- ing has clear affinities with some interpretations of Wittgenstein's theory. K. T. Fann, for example, argues that Wittgenstein's later work showed a decidedly prag- matic temper, and he attributes that development to Wittgenstein's teaching experience and the influence of William James and Frank Ramsey. In fact he argues that the theory of meaning in the Philosophical Investigations was a . warning . . . against oversimplifying our concept of language. It is not one practice or one instrument, having one essential function and serving one essential purpose. Language is not one tool serving one purpose but a collection of tools serving a variety of purposes. What emerges from all these considerations is an instrumentalist (or pragmatic) conception of language. It is like a working machine which.§ft the job done--namely everyday activities of life. 63John Dewey, "Importance, Significance and Mean- ing," in John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley: A Philosoph- ical Correspondence, 1932-1951, eds. Sidney Ratner, Jules Altman, and James E. Wheeler (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1964), p. 668. 64Fann, Wittgenstein's Conception of Philosophy, pp. 70-71. There are, of course, various interpreta- tions of Wittgenstein's views on language and meaning. See for example Klemke, Essays on Wittgenstein; K. T. .Fann, ed., Wittgenstein, The Man and His Philosophy \ l \\ 1' .r ' 133 He also argues that ". . . Wittgenstein was interested in reminding us of another important feature of Ian- guage--i.e. its social nature."65 In one sense Fann's second point, i.e., that Wittgenstein wanted to remind us of the social nature of language, is redundant. An instrumentalist view of language is a view which emphasizes the social nature L/' of language. One of its central doctrines is that it. is through social use in the context of associated behavior undertaken to achieve commonly held ends that language acquires meaning. It is interesting to note that Fann attributes the pragmatic tendencies of Wittgenstein's later work largely to his teaching exper- ience. My analysis has helped us to understand more clearly how that could have happened; instrumentalism, after all, is not the philosophical position of the day for all elementary school teachers. Stephen Toulmin's account of Wittgenstein's work also lends support to my contention that there are significant similarities between Wittgenstein's later (New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1967); and George Pitcher, ed., Wittgenstein: The Philosophical Investi- gations (Garden City: Doubleday 8 Company, Inc., 1966), for collections which include representative samples of a range of interpretations. I will not survey the range of interpretive studies since (1) I feel the view I am employing is the most defensible and (2) my objective was to‘show that Dewey's views are similar to one major defensible interpretation of Wittgenstein's. 65Ibid., p. 72. 134 views and those of Dewey. I have described Dewey's view that the referential capacity of propositions-- he used the example of mathematical physics--is realized only in Operations of application. I argued that this meant that symbols acquire meaning by being put to use. Toulmin writes of Wittgenstein, Having taken it for granted, in the Tractatus, that the relationship between "simple signs" and that to which they corresponded could be immediately seen (even if it could not be stated) he had been too readily satisfied with a formal analysis of language as representation; and he had, as a result, paid too little attention to the steps by which formalized representations are put to use in real life linguistic behavior. Even in physics-—as Hertz had taught him--a mathematical sys- tem can be applied to scientific problems in the real world, only if we also have well-defined procedures for relating mathematical symbols with empirical magni- tudes or measurements. Having recognized the importance of the way in which representational systems are applied, . the crucial question now became, "By what proce- dures do men establish the rule-governed links they do between language, on the one hand, and the real world, on the other?" To arrive at a language suitable for the expres- sion of "propositions," accordingly, it is not enough for us to "make for ourselves pictures of facts." The expressions in our language acquire their specific meanings from the procedures by which we give them definite uses in our practical dealings with one another and with the world. 67 66Janik and Toulmin, Wittgenstein's Vienna, I). 222. 67Ibid., p. 223. 135 I have also argued that for Dewey meaning is determined by its use in social action and ultimately resides in artfully skilled ways of organized action. Similarly, as Toulmin argues, For the later Wittgenstein . . . the "meaning" of any utterance is determined by the rule-conforming, symbol-using activities ("language-games") within which the expressions in question are conventionally put to use; and these symbol-using activities in turn draw their significance from the broader patterns of activ- ities (or "forms of life") in which they are embedded and of which they are a constituent element.68 Summary Both Dewey and Wittgenstein employed generalized versions of concepts which were originally educational principles in their later philosophical work. Dewey generalized the notion of occupations and used it to define the characteristic problem of philosophy, namely, that of providing an account of ". . . the genesis and functioning in experience of various typical interests and occupations with reference to one another."69 Like- wise, Wittgenstein generalized the notion of pedagogical activity to that of forms of life, a concept which he then employed in a similar fashion to define the central problem of his philosophical investigations, namely, that of ". . . coming to recognize all the multifarious 68Ibid., p. 225. 69Dewey, Experimental Logic, p. 102. 136 ways in which 'forms of life' create legitimate contexts for 'language games,‘ and how these in turn delimit the scope and boundaries of the sayable."7O Furthermore these generalized educational concepts were important elements in their theories of meaning as use. p. 70Janik and Toulmin, Wittgenstein's Vienna, 225. CHAPTER VII SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS An analogous interpretation applies to the generality and ultimateness of philosophy. Taken literally, they are absurd pretensions; they indicate insanity. John Dewey, Democracy and Education I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that that's a tree," point- ing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: "This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy." Ludwig Wittgenstein, 0n Certainty I argued in Chapter I that many accounts of the relationship between philosophy and education fail to recognize the full importance of the contributions made by educational practice to an understanding of philo- sophical problems. I proposed to illustrate the impor- tance of educational practice with the philosophical careers of John Dewey and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Specif- ically I proposed to show that their participation in educational reform programs made significant contribu- tions to their work in the phi1050phy of language, esspecially in the theory of meaning. Furthermore, I Iaointed out that it would be necessary to defend the 137 138 following claims in order to establish this objective: (1) Dewey and Wittgenstein held similar theories of meaning; (2) they participated in similar educational programs; and (3) their experience in those similar edu- cational programs influenced their work in technical philosophy, especially their views on meaning. In Chapters III and IV I argued that the Dewey School program and the Austrian school reform program shared common objectives and employed similar methodo- logical and curricular principles. Specifically I showed that the two programs (1) were grounded in simi- lar views of psychology, (2) shared a common conception of the nature of the child, (3) shared similar views on the ways in which the school should be integrated with the larger social order, (4) were both based on an activity curriculum, and (5) both endorsed similar views on the nature of social and civic education. In Chapter V I argued in defense of the general claim that their educational experience should be care- fully considered when interpreting the philosophical positions endorsed by both Dewey and Wittgenstein. And I illustrated in Chapter VI this general claim by show- ing how they had generalized educational notions--occu- pations and pedagogical activity--and employed them in their analysis of language and meaning. Furthermore, .I argued for an interpretation of Dewey's views on 139 meaning which is similar to one of the standard inter- pretations of Wittgenstein's views. In short I have shown that (l) Dewey held a theory of meaning similar to one attributed to Wittgenstein, (2) they participated in similar educa- tional programs, and (3) since Dewey's concept of occu- pations and Wittgenstein's concept of forms of life were originally educational principles, their experience with educational matters contributed to their views on mean- ing. Their work in philosophy then provides instances which demonstrate the contribution of pedagogical exper- ience to the formulation and solution of philosophical problems. A number of questions remain which were barely touched upon here and which are deserving of further study. For example, I suggested in Chapter V that few of the commentaries on Wittgenstein's later philosophy attempt to provide any account of (1) why Wittgenstein was particularly influenced by, e.g., James' work, (2) the ways in which various sources of influence on his later work might be connected, and (3) the relevance of his teaching activities to his work in philosophy. I have said little about the first two points but I suspect that further and wider-ranging investigations of the Austrian reform movement, especially of Eduard Burger's work, would yield some answers to those 140 questions. It is interesting to note in this regard that Eduard Spranger, the author of Lebensformen and the most often cited source of the term 'forms of life,‘ was one of the most noted educational leaders in the German- speaking world for a full half century.1 Spranger was involved ". . . in the discussions of the 1920's on ele- mentary school, teaching training, university organiza- tion, voluntary adult education work and much else besides."2 Further comparative study of Wittgenstein and Dewey might identify and clarify other similarities in their views both in general approach and particular doctrines. A number of writers have pointed out the pragmatic tendencies of Wittgenstein's later work and others have argued for a general reassessment of Amer- ican pragmatism in light of its continental origins.3 The following possible similarities seem worthy of further investigation. Wittgenstein's argument that the aim of philo- sophical activity is that of dissolving philosophical 1Elof Akesson, "Eduard Spranger, 1882-1963," Paedagogica Historica 4 (1964): 279-288. 2Ibid., p. 284. 3See, for example, Sandra B. Rosenthal, "Recent Perspectives on American Pagmatism (Part One)," Trans- actions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 10 (Spring 1974): 76-93 and "Recent Perspectives on American Prag- matism (Part Two), Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 10 (Summer 1974): 166-184. 141 problems rather than advancing philosophical theses is a familiar one. He writes for example: When philosophers use a word--"know1edge," "being," "object," "I," "proposition," "name"--and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the lan- guage game which is its original home?-- What we do is to bring words back from their meta- physical to their everyday use. 4 We want to establish an order in our knowledge of the use of language: an order with a particular end in view; one out of many possible others; not the order.5 . . the clarity we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But that simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear.6 Dewey makes the following remarks in a similar vein while discussing his view of the autonomy of inquiry: What happens when distinctions which are indispens- able to form and use in an efficient conduct of inquiry . . are converted into something ontological . . . is exhibited . . . in the epistemological phase of modern philosophy.7 He points out that an instrumentalist logic refuses to convert functional distinctions between, e.g., subject and object, into ontological distinctions and concludes that upon the basis of this view the metaphysical problem which so divided Berkeley from Sir Isaac Newton, and 4Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Part I, § 116. SIbid., Part I, § 132. 6Ibid., Part I, § 133. 7Dewey and Bentley, Knowing and The Known, p. 324. 142 which has occupied such a prominent place in philosophy ever since . . . is not so much resolved as dissolved. David Pears has written of Wittgenstein that all his philosophy expresses his strong feeling that the great danger to which modern thought is exposed is domination by science, and the consequent distortion of the mind's view of itself. . . . the most interesting and fully developed result that the feeling produced was his later view of philosophy.9 Dewey expressed views similar to these in 1944 when he wrote: What influences me is, I suppose, a strong preju- dice against every theory of science that holds, expli- citly or by implication, that science is the superior mode of knowledge, save for a specifiable class of prob- lems and uses. 10 Not only are these views similar (at least on initial inspection) but I suspect that they come as a surprise to many students of both of these philosophers. At any rate I have shown that there are some similarities between Dewey and Wittgenstein and I sus- pect that further comparative study of their philosophies would enhance our understanding of both. Furthermore I have shown that their educational experiences influenced their technical work in philosophy and I suspect that further study of the educational contexts would also enhance our understanding of their philosophical views. 8Ibid., p. 327. Italics mine. 9David Pears, Ludwig Wittgenstein (New York: The Viking Press, 1969), p. 197. 10Ratner, Altman, and Wheeler, Dewey and Bentley: Correspondence, p. 222. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 143 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY A. Works by Dewey Both Milton H. Thomas, John Dewey: A Centennial Bibliography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962) and Jo Ann Boydston, ed., Guide to the Works of John Dewey (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970) are invaluable biblio- graphical sources for the study of John Dewey's works. The Boydston volume was produced in conjunction with and serves as a complement to the Collected Works which have been initiated with the five volume series The Early Works of John Dewey, 1882-1898 (Carbondale and Edwards- ville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972). Dewey, John. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: The Free Press, 1966. . Experience and Education. New York: Macmillan Co., 1938. . Experience and Nature. New York: Dover Pub- lications, Inc., 1929. . "Experience, Knowledge and Value: A.RejoinderJ' In The Philosophy of John Dewey. Edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp. New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1939. "From Absolutism to Experimentalism." In On Experience, Nature, and Freedom. Edited by Richard Bernstein. Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1960. . "General Principles of Work, Educationally Considered." The Elementary School Record 1 (February 1900): 12-15. . How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1933. 144 14S Dewey, John. "Importance, Significance and Meaning." In John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley: A Philosophi- cal Correspondence, 1921-1951. Edited by Sidney Ratner, Jules Altman, and James E. Wheeler. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1964. . "Interest in Relation to Training of the Will." The Early Works, 1882-1898. Vol. 5. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972. . "Interpretation of the Savage Mind." In Philosophy, Psychology and Social Practice. Edited by Joseph Ratner. New York: Capricorn Books, 1963. . Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1938. . "Meaning and Existence." Journal of Philos- ophy 25 (June 1928): 345-353. . "Plan of Organization of the University Pri- mary School." The Early Works, 1882-1898. Vol. 5. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972. . "Results of Child-Study Applied to Educa- tion." The Early Works, 1882-1898. Vol. 5. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972. . The Educational Situation. Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1902. . The Public and Its Problems. Denver: Alan Swallow, 1927. . The Quest for Certainty. New York: Minton, Balch and Co., 1929. . "Thought and Its Subject-Matter: The General Problem of Logical Theory." Studies in Logical Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1903. Reprinted in Essays in Experimental Logic. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1916. Dewey, John, and Bentley, Arthur F. Knowing and the Known. Boston: Beacon Press, 1949. 146 B. Works by Wittgenstein K. T. Fann, Wittgenstein's Conception of Philos- ophy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970) includes a comprehensive Bibliography of works by and about Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief (1938). Compiled from notes taken by Y. Smythies, R. Rhees, and J. Taylor; edited by Cyril Barrett. Oxford: Basil Blackwell; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. . 0n Certainty. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. New York and Evanston: J 8 J Harper Editions, 1969. . Philosophical Investigations. 3rd ed. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1958. . Preliminary Studies for the "Philosophical Investigations": Generally Known as the Blue and Brown Books. New York: Harper Torchbooks, Harper 8 Row, Publishers, 1965. . Zettel. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967. C. Other Works Akesson, Elof. "Eduard Spranger, 1882-1963." Paeda- gogica Historica 4 (1964): 279-288. Alston, William P. Philosophy of Language. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964. Baker, Melvin C. Foundations of John Dewey's Educational Theory. New York: King's Crown Press, 1955. Bartley, William Warren, III. Wittgenstein. New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1973. Bernstein. John Dewey. New York: Washington Square Press, 1967. 147 Benedikt, Heinrech. "The Spread of Industrialism." In The Austrian Empire: Abortive Federation? Edited by Harold J. Gordon, Jr. and Nancy M. Gordon. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Co., 1974. Brauner, Charles J., and Burns, Hobert W. Problems in Education and Philosophy. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965. Bfihler, Karl. The Mental Development of the Child. London: Routledge 8 Kegan Paul Ltd., 1930. Cohen, Sol. Progressives and Urban School Reform: The Public Education Association of New York City, 1895-1914. New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1964. Cremin, Lawrence A. The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957. New York: Vintage Books, 1964. Curtis, S. J., and Boultwood, M. E. A. A Short History of Educational Ideas. London: University Tutorial Press, 1953. Davis, Allen F. Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890- 1914. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. De Mauro, Tullio. Ludwig Wittgenstein: His Place in and Influence on the History of Semantics. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1967. Dengler, Paul L. "Austria." In Educational Yearbook of the International Institute of Teachers College, Columbia University. Edited by I. L. Kandel. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1937. Dottrens, Robert. The New Education in Austria. Edited by Paul L. Dengler. New York: The John Day Co., 1930. Dykhuizen, George. The Life and Mind of John Dewey. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973., Engel, S. Morris. Wittgenstein's Doctrine of the Tyranny of Language: A Historical and Critical Exami- nation. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971. 148 Fann, K. T. 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