a deweyan response to resolving incommensurate ends -- a response to henry w. stuart

Introduction

In this paper, I will explore the tensions between John Dewey’s ethics in his Supremacy of Method, and the critiques brought up by Henry W. Stuart. Stuart claims that Dewey is incorrect in claiming that there can possibly be a supremacy of method, since the meaningfulness of a result has to do with the result itself, rather than the method used to obtain it, and states that method is solely a skill to be used when problems emerge. When a solution is reached, method is just a form of inaction – it cannot be supreme in this state. Stuart reflects on Dewey’s supposed overlooking of the incommensurability of different ethical values or ends, and makes the case that Dewey’s theory of knowledge simply cannot be applied to ethics in the way Dewey claims. I argue that Stuart has misunderstood many of the premises laid out in Dewey’s theory of knowledge — most importantly, the idea surrounding the manipulation of one’s surroundings in order to alleviate conflict. Finally, I argue that Stuart has no good rebuttals to resort to, and that his critiques cannot be salvaged.

Dewey’s Theory of Knowledge and Supremacy of Method

In order to deconstruct Stuart’s critiques of Dewey’s Supremacy of Method, we must first grasp a clear picture of Dewey’s theory of knowledge. According to Dewey, both the rationalists and the classical empiricists have missed the mark on what it means to “know” something. Both schools believed that thought should be a reproduction or a correspondence of reality, placing the knower and the environment at odds with each other, while Dewey rejected this theory of knower as “spectator.”

In this chapter, Dewey considers the implications of experimental thinking (which “always includes intent and foresight”), which contrasts the ideas of idealists and traditional empiricists. Idealists believe that thought creates truth, and that our rationality structures this truth — “the real world is second to the world constructed in the mind.” Empiricists, on the other hand, believe that contact and sensory experiences with things in nature govern their truth — ideas are reflections of reality, but true reality lies in these sensations. Though these two conceptions of truth are quite different, they both depend on a common premise: reflective thought, which uses inferences, cannot bring reality to light. Both schools believe that thought should be a reproduction of reality but have different ways to test whether something is true. For empiricists, the test is sensory, and for idealism, the test lies in whether or not it is continuous with work that has previously been shown to mirror reality. Clearly, both believe that inference is real just so long as it reflects what has already been accepted as reality, but in thinking this, they must also believe that any new ideas that come about through inference (that do not necessarily cohere with accepted premises) are errors.

Dewey goes on to defend experimental empiricism, the idea that experiences and experiments should govern the data we look towards when we think of reality. He provides an example of the usefulness of this kind of empiricism through the framework of length and mass: it is widely accepted now that length should be defined through fixed units and fixed operations — we use units of fixed length and standardize our operations (placing the measuring unit end to end). Here, we can see that length is not just a property of one object individually. Rather, it is a property which relates objects to one another — we can ask: “is object A larger than object B,” for example. This is a form of making length into a ‘real’ concept. In another example, older textbooks define mass as a “quantity of matter,” but this terminology did not make much sense when it came to quantifying mass through experimentation, so we came up with standardized units. Again, this is a relational property: through this definition we can relate one object to another through the property of mass.

In contrast to experimental empiricism, classical empiricism’s over-reliance on sensory data has led to the critique that experience is seen as inferior to reason (with an absence of experience). While sensory qualities are important, they are only meaningful in terms of the implications of some act. To a scientist, seeing a specific color at a spot in a spectral band can be extremely important — this sensory data (of seeing the color) can lead to the act of discovering new scientific principles, new hypotheses, and new experiments surrounding why that color manifested itself in that location. However, for someone who is not a scientist, simply seeing this color may have no meaning — it is just a sensory experience, nothing more. The upshot here is to say that the meaning of the conclusions lie within the background assumptions and knowledge of the scientists. Dewey remarks that the rationalists were correct when they said that sensory qualities should be connected to ideas for any sort of true meaning to be achieved, but were wrong in believing that these ideas should come from the mind rather than experimentation.

Turning our attention now to idealists, who believe that we give concepts meaning through our thoughts, Dewey says that this is akin to turning bricks into a building in our minds, then saying we have created something real. While thinking can supply us with a plan or framework of thought to approach a problem, we need to act in reality to really know something. Here, Dewey is bringing in themes he explores more in his work on education, namely, active and passive learning. Dewey argues for an emphasis on active learning, where we need to act on and modify the environment in the real world (in a classroom, this can be done in the form of hands-on activities, active discussion, physical experimentation, etc.). This is in opposition to passive learning, where students simply listen to lectures in order to learn new material.

To Dewey, the knower is part of the environment, and the knower must use the process of inquiry to settle any problematic situation they might encounter. Here, a problematic (or “precarious,” as Dewey often interchangeably uses) situation is one where there is some level of doubt. In order to resolve this doubt, we turn to a specific method of inquiry where we need to transform our environment in order to change a sensory experience into a real idea about what the true nature of something is. Here, we define ideas in terms of the tests or experiments we are going to perform, and the validity of these ideas comes from the consequences and results of these tests in conjunction with previous findings. While the natural person hurriedly attempts to settle their doubt through any means possible (which can include jumping to conclusions and turning to authority or God to provide an answer), the scrupulous thinker takes pleasure in the feeling of doubt and enjoys the scientific process of attempting to settle it until a true method of settling the situation has been found.

We can see that Dewey views the scientific attitude as a kind of enjoyment of doubt, and the scientific method as a technique which converts this enjoyment into productive inquiry. Dewey says that we must also concede that scientific pursuit does not mirror all of reality, and that it instead seeks to explain some part of it (though, again, explaining does consist in reduplicating). The correct way to use the scientific method is not to agree with the “antecedent” state of scientific knowledge, but rather find meaning in the implications of experimentation.

Dewey also applies this theory of knowledge to the study of ethics, which is concerned with coming to conclusions about certain values or ends. In this case, Dewey believes that because these ends are unable to be directly measured against each other, we must change the environment in such a way that these ends can be compared, and the best value judgment can be made. For example, imagine a disagreement between two people who come across a wounded deer on the road: Person A believes that they should never kill another animal, no matter what, and refuses to kill the deer in order to put it out of its misery, so to speak. Person B believes that they should always minimize another being’s suffering, regardless of the situation, and wants to shoot and kill the deer. At first blush, it seems that person A and person B have no way forward — how can they come to a conclusion if their core ideologies or “ends” surrounding the situation are so clearly opposing? Dewey’s theory of inquiry urges them to find some common ground through transformation of the environment. First, our two interlocutors can try to both minimize suffering and refuse to kill by attempting to treat the deer, so say they attempt to stop the bleeding by fashioning a tourniquet. Afterwards, they must observe the situation: is the deer no longer suffering? If so, they’ve solved the problem. If not, there is still work to be done. In that case, they must now continue to transform the situation: they can now choose to treat the deer another way, perhaps by calling a local animal hospital or doctor. Though A and B’s revelation that treatment of the deer is possible may lead the reader to believe that I’ve asked a trick question, the emergence of this third option is precisely what Dewey’s theory of inquiry is all about: ends may not be as conflicting as we may immediately think. Usually, when we transform our surroundings and invoke the scientific method and experimentation, many new options emerge that may align with the ends we previously thought were all too conflicting. Though we initially thought that killing the deer or letting it die were the only two options (and “minimizing suffering” and “never killing” were the only two ends) we now realize that there are ways to alleviate the conflict between the two.

Stuart’s Criticisms

Now that we have understood Dewey’s theory of inquiry, we can now move on to Stuart’s attempts to critique it. Stuart begins his critique by stating that method is solely a procedure which brings about a result, and that the worth of a result is not at all based on the methods used to derive them. That is, the result is most important, not the method. The justification for this claim is that if we put ourselves in the position of the knower, who desperately seeks to obtain a particular result, they will be none the better if they undertake a method after which the result they wish to discover is not obtained. Stuart takes this to be in direct contention with Dewey’s belief that we can only truly understand a conception of philosophy when we use his method of inquiry, so this method is supreme. However, Stuart pushes back on Dewey’s understanding of method by insisting that method is just a tool, using Dewey’s framing of a precarious situation: when the precariousness of a situation “reveals itself” to the knower, this is when method can be used. But when no such precariousness is revealed, method “subsides again into inaction.” Stuart references Kant, who says “method is just a formula or skill, to be used as needed,” so method cannot be supreme if all that matters is the result in this situation.

However, in what Stuart refers to as the “ethical” situation, the situation is brought into existence by the method itself, so the method must be regarded as supreme. In this kind of situation, there is nothing endangered or precarious in the way Dewey describes — the resolution of this situation takes the form of realizing what value we should hold most important. Dewey says that there are two possible cases here: one where the end in question is so desirable that the knower must utilize a specific method that will result in the valuation of that end. The other case is where two proposed ends are incompatible with each other, and we must choose which result to obtain; in other words, the ends are incommensurable. According to Stuart’s reading of Dewey, we can estimate the worth of these ends through the framework of precariousness: choose the end which is the least likely to culminate in a doubtful or threatening situation. To this, Stuart takes issue. He claims that if we interpret ethical situations this way, as “an illusion of impatience which may speedily dissolve,” that we are treating ethics the same as biology, because in biology, principles are fixed. In order to combat this, Stuart maintains that ends are incommensurable, and cannot be compared. Stuart brings up a situation where someone is concerned with their future career. In one case, they may choose the career which will provide them the greatest income. This is not an ethical problem because they have already decided the ends that they wish to pursue: income. However, if income does not mean much to this person, the two possible vocations are incommensurable, and thus this is an ethical situation. Stuart goes on to say that if someone is faced with a (possibly ethical) situation, they might “all too easily escape” by overlaying some “common-sense standard” or method of commensurability to the situation. If the person does not do this, they are faced with a true ethical situation.

Stuart defines the ethical method differently than the adaptive method, and concedes that this ethical method “may be regarded as in a sense ‘supreme.’” In the adaptive method, on Stuart’s account, Dewey believes that there is a sort of “natural” or animal drive that the knower or organism in question faces, which asserts a tendency for the organism to reflect and change the environment and situation around it. In the ethical situation however, “animal drive” is replaced with a “quest” for reflection, which is not brought about by a precarious situation but rather can emerge even in a situation where conditions are “wholly good.” The reference to “wholly good” comes from a passage of Dewey’s Quest for Certainty where he states that “if existing conditions were wholly good, notion of possibilities would never arise.” The point of Stuart’s position is to state that when conditions are not wholly good, there would always be some sort of precarious situation and animal drive that the organism would use to push forward and guide reflection. But when there is no precarious situation, the organism’s drive to revise its standards would be caused by its own “interest in constant progress.” Through this extended explanation of incommensurability, Stuart claims that Dewey cannot engage with both ethical and precarious (or “adaptive”) situations through his process of inquiry because inherent in ethical situations are their incommensurability, and Dewey’s process of inquiry requires the comparison of multiple ends.

Stuart believes that Dewey has no method of alleviating the conflicts between the ends in the following situation: Imagine that a local government has proposed to do one of two things with a plot of land it has recently acquired. One option is to turn it into a children’s playground — this aligns with the values of allowing children a space to finetune their motor skills, athletic talents, and social skills through playing with other kids in an outdoor space. The other option is to turn it into a school — this clearly aligns with the value of uplifting education. Now say that a voter must decide whether to vote for the school or the playground. However, and here is where the issue for Dewey supposedly lies, the voter has absolutely no idea which option they prefer. They either have no opinions about the values in question, or they support both sets of values completely equally, and have no method of comparing the two: they are completely conflicting. Here, in Stuart’s view, no matter how much the voter tries to transform the environment and take up the scientific method, there is no way the voter can ever pick one over the other (save from just picking randomly). In this case, there is complete incommensurability, and thus, we have an ethical situation in which the voter cannot make a decision. Stuart does not provide a satisfactory answer regarding what the voter should do in this case. The rest of his argument seems to imply that the voter cannot really make a good decision, no matter what. They must vote based on whatever value they most align with, and if they have no intuition surrounding these values, they must just choose with no basis or evidence for their choice. According to Stuart, if the voter has no idea what option they prefer, there is no way in which they can transform their surroundings in order to gain a better understanding of which end they would rather pursue. Regardless of how much experimentation they do, the scientific method is just unable to help the voter come to a valid conclusion. In order to disprove this, we must attempt to solve this problem of conflicting ends for the voter through a Deweyan application of the scientific method, similar to the deer example. We will return to this example once we examine Dewey’s responses to Stuart’s critique. Dewey finds that Stuart’s misunderstanding of his theory of knowledge has led him to this incommensurability argument, so we must first understand where Dewey takes issue with Stuart’s reading of his theory of knowledge/inquiry.

Deweyan Responses to Stuart’s Claims

First we shift our focus to Stuart’s claim that method cannot be supreme in the case of a direct solution of a firsthand problem. Dewey claims that his method of inquiry is, in fact, supreme in the direct solution of every possible firsthand problem we experience. Methods are not only justified in their success (as Stuart states, which according to Dewey, he takes to be “so axiomatic that [Dewey] must hold it as a matter of course”), and the validity of results can be measured on the basis of the methods used to obtain them. This is because the validity of any result lies in its consequences and our ability to apply these results in such a way that is meaningful (such as in the case of the scientist observing the spectral band from earlier). Dewey also takes issue with Stuart’s understanding that the knower or agent is solely concerned with the result they want. However, Dewey’s actual view is that the knower is much more concerned with the resolution or settling of the precarious situation, and thus, the process of settling the situation is “supreme” (more so than the result itself). Stuart’s view also severely opposes the scientific method: if what is most important is the result, we can choose to take extreme liberties with our experimental processes in order to obtain the satisfactory result. For example, if someone has cancer and wants to be rid of it, they should not simply choose to get into a faulty MRI machine which discerns that no tumors were found. Instead, they should experiment with different treatments until they find one that works.

Dewey also replies to Stuart’s claim that method is solely “a formula of skill to be used as needed.” Method is not simply a formula “for conducting skillful manipulations” but rather “serves to reconstruct antecedent situations,” indicating Dewey’s theory of transforming the environment through physical actions and experimentation. Stuart’s misunderstanding comes from his belief that a situation “presents itself” to the knower as precarious, and this is his fatal flaw in his reading of Dewey: to Dewey, the situation is not outside the knower as Stuart seems to imply. The precarious nature of the situation cannot be set apart from the knower themself — the knower is part of nature, and thus is also part of the precarious situation. Because of this misconception, Stuart can say that Dewey misunderstands knowing (anything, even in the case of an ethical situation) as using some skill that will get rid of some “intrusion” upon the knower. But again, framing it as an “intrusion” is not accurate, because the situation is not outside the knower. That is, Dewey does not believe there are two separate entities: the knower and object-to-be-known, where a transaction of skill occurs between these entities. Rather he believes that an intrusion occurs within a situation that the object and the environment are both in, and both are facing. On top of this, we cannot simply use skill to settle a situation because it requires a manipulation of the physical environment. Here we turn back to our earlier discussion of Dewey’s refutation of idealism: we cannot manipulate our minds through some mental skill the way we can manipulate, for example, a hammer or a plane, through physical skill. Stuart also implies here that it is the environment that is problematic, but Dewey clarifies that the situation is problematic, and is problematic even before the knower pinpoints that it is precarious. This is why the first act of knowing is to locate the problem by analyzing the situation.

Dewey briefly discusses Stuart’s apparent dualism between scientific and moral knowing (the cases of adaptive and ethical situations mentioned earlier), and how this is due to a faulty understanding of knowing as limited to understanding some “antecedent reality,” when instead we should attempt to transform the antecedent conditions. Dewey’s philosophy of knowing based on the method of inquiry uses the conclusions of science to enrich our understanding of moral values through this transformative process, but the Kantian dualism that Stuart believes in must totally separate our conclusions about nature and our conclusions about moral values. According to Kant, science is solely “descriptive” while ethics is not. This means that science has no way of telling us whether something is good or bad — it can only tell us whether something “is” or “is not.” However Dewey would wholeheartedly disagree with this notion: science is instrumental, just like ethics. Ethics provides us a framework for looking at ethical situations, it can help us make sense of an ethical dilemma or help us choose between different ends. Science, similarly, is a framework of looking at nature, and helps us make predictions about the world around us. It cannot tell us exactly what the world is, but can tell us how we can make sense of it.

Now we move on specifically to the issue of conflicting ends raised by Stuart. As a reminder, Stuart’s main critique was that Dewey denies that incommensurability of ends exists, and that if we simply manipulate the “intrusive factors” of a situation, we are able to simply pick which end we want to pursue. By “intrusive factors,” Stuart is implying that there is something external to the situation that we must eliminate in order to solve the problem. However, this notion immediately goes against Dewey’s ideology surrounding an environment. The environment is the whole picture, including the observer and including all possible factors. There can be nothing “external” to the environment in a situation — we must take everything (that is, everything that is relevant) into account when applying the scientific method.

Now we return to the voter example in order to explain that Dewey’s method can, in fact, work to alleviate some of the conflict in that situation. While it may be true that, initially, the voter has no way to decide between the two options, there are still ways they can proceed. One simple way is to do research, perhaps by surveying citizens of neighboring districts. The voter can seek out one district where they have more schools, and one district where they have more parks, and find out about the well-being of these citizens (assuming that our voter believes that the general well-being of the population is important). If one district has an overall higher sense of well-being, then perhaps the criteria associated with that district is the one that the voter should vote for. In any case, this provides us with a method of comparing the two options (in terms of well-being of the citizens), when initially we believed that the two options were entirely incomparable. However, this method seems both too passive for a truly Deweyan account of ethics, and not charitable enough to Stuart.

Not to worry, though: there are ways in which the voter can manipulate the environment in order to get a clearer picture of the two options even if we assume that the aforementioned surveying technique is impossible (we may imagine that there are no neighboring districts that match the criteria outlined). The voter can actually create and carry out an experiment that measures the well-being of those who have access to similar amenities as a park and compare them to that of those who have access to a school. For example, the voter can conduct an experiment with a group of children. One group can simulate the outcome of voting for the school, while the other can simulate the outcome of the playground, and the well-being of the kids (as an example, although other factors can be measured as well) can be used to determine which outcome to vote for. The first group of kids can be given a curriculum that is more focused on traditional education within a school, having teachers come in and explain concepts, and then measure their well-being. This group should have limited access to outdoor activities and sports, perhaps limiting them solely to what they would get at a traditional school. The second group can have unlimited access to sports equipment and outdoor toys, and after a few weeks, they can be measured in accordance with the same factors as the first group. If one of the groups shows a higher well-being factor, the voter can decide to vote for that outcome.

This seems like an overly simplistic example, but it clearly involves Dewey’s manipulation of one’s environment: the method of educating these children is being modified in order to better compare two initially conflicting goals. Now, what if there is currently no good way to measure well-being, or what if these studies show conflicting results? That is, what if the level of well-being of both of the sets of children are about the same? Even if this is the case, the voter has still almost definitely learned something from the experiment. Even if both groups’ well-being ratings are similar, the voter may learn that the playgrounds built into the schools are sufficient to stimulate the childrens’ motor-skills, and thus showing that they should vote for the school (since it has the additional benefit of promoting education), and call for the school’s playground to be open to the public. Also, if the well-being ratings are similar, the voter may decide that the best option would be the one that costs the least to taxpayers since the two options seem to have the same effect. In any case, it would be extremely unlikely that all possible factors and results of the experimentation are completely equal (and thus remain completely incommensurate), which lends credence to the method of inquiry described by Dewey: modifying the environment has a high chance of leading to either a solution to the ethical dilemma, or ideas for further inquiry which may shed more light on the situation.

From here, I believe that Stuart only has two routes of salvaging his critiques. For one, he could ask: “What if the experimentation does not give the voter any more insight into the situation, and it does not lead to any further inquiry that might alleviate the conflict?” To this, I would say that there is such a low probability of this that I do not need to provide any serious answer. Manipulating the environment can always generate further inquiry, regardless of the outcome, because we always gain new information from doing so. Even if no insight is gained in regards to the original question, we can at least gain a better understanding of what kind of experimentation works in this situation: if the aforementioned experiment does not work, we know not to attempt the same sort of experiment in the future, and we can set our sights to new methods. Even this is useful because we can continue our experimentation in new ways until we are able to come to a meaningful conclusion. This possible response from Stuart is simply unrealistic, and holds no weight. As Peirce would claim, this is just a paper doubt – it has no real meaning, and will likely never come up in reality. Stuart’s second route is to ask: “What if the voter is asked to decide on an option right away?” To this point, there is really nothing that I or Dewey can say other than “Nothing.” If the voter must decide, and has no time to manipulate the environment or carry out any sort of meaningful thought, then there is absolutely nothing they can do other than picking randomly. However, this is simply not a meaningful line of questioning, and points to an extremely contrived thought experiment. Dewey responds directly to this possible questioning, and says that this kind of situation happens much less often than one where the knower has time to partake in active effort (which is the kind of effort that involves the manipulation of one’s surroundings), and thus should not be taken as the primary example surrounding how we should deal with ethical dilemmas. Clearly, in both cases, Stuart has been unable to salvage his main critiques of Dewey’s theory of inquiry as it applies to ethics.

Conclusion

Through this analysis, I have provided clear insight into Dewey’s theory of knowledge and its applications in the study of ethics. With respect to science and nature, Dewey believes that we should constantly manipulate the environment in order to actively learn about the world around us through a method he deems supreme and instrumental: the scientific method. He believes that we can apply this same method to ethical dilemmas. When faced with ends that seem to be conflicting, we can change our surroundings in order to alleviate (if not completely eliminate) some of the conflicts in order to come to a clear conclusion about which end we should back. Stuart responds to this theory by stating that Dewey simply cannot claim that method is supreme, since a method’s value is based in the accuracy of its conclusions. On top of this, he claims that Dewey refuses to acknowledge that the core of ethical dilemmas is that their ends are “incommensurate,” here implying that they can never be truly compared against each other in the way Dewey claims they can be. However, these critiques can be chalked up to a misunderstanding of Dewey’s theory of knowledge. Dewey does not agree that a method cannot be supreme, and its validity does not rely on the conclusions we can draw through invoking this method. Stuart also misunderstands that the knower should not be viewed as an outsider to the environment, and that the precariousness of a situation does not come from any “external” factors. In fact, Dewey is very vocal about his disagreement with the so-called “spectator model” that Stuart is invoking here. When all of these misunderstandings are put together, Stuart’s best ways of responding are entirely useless to the situation at hand — in no way do they help us understand how to alleviate the conflict surrounding ethical dilemmas.