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DEWEY_EYED

                                             July 20, 2021

Let's once again roll back the clock to
just after the turn of the century (no,
not *this* century, the one that turns--       Mnemonic: think
the ever rotating 20th).                       about stomachs.


    I was trying to make sense of John Dewey's
    "Experimental Logic" from 1916 and my
    first impression left me feeling puzzled
    by a number of things-- he's always at
    pains to argue against *someone*-- there's
    some philosophical positions out there
    that he objects to strongly-- but it takes
    him forever to name names (and when he
    does it's often someone I've never heard      Heh: and I guess there's some
    of: Lotze?).                                  room to speculate that Dewey
                                                  didn't understand Lotze very
                                                  well himself:

                                                     https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermann-lotze/

                                                     "Lotze’s influence was
                                                     far-reaching and not yet
                                                     widely admitted or well
                                                     understood. While he
                                                     accidentally inspired
                                                     numerous materialists (and
                                                     was simultaneously claimed
                                                     by the idealists) ..."

       It's often difficult for me to tell what
       Dewey is going on about.

       When he talks abbout "idealistic logic"
       does he mean *idealized* logic or might he
       be talking about a logic of "ideals", a
       logic related to morality and ethics?

       Ah: he's referring to "philosophical idealism",
       or course, and claims that the understanding of    And Lotze is his
       "logic" he wants to overthrow is rooted in that    paradigmatic example
       idealism.                                          of an idealist.

                   You know philosphers are very
                   smart because they have their own
                   private jargon, including their
                   own definitions of words commonly       Philosophy has
                   understood to mean something else       a lot in common
                   entirely.                               with Computer
                                                           Science.
                   Philosophic idealism, I would
                   say is roughly the notion that
                   the world around us is a shadow
                   in Plato's cave, a corrupted
                   reflection of an idea in the
                   mind of god, a multiverse
                   radiating out from the true
                   Amber, or something like that.


                            A mathematically precise logic
                            derived from simple, uncontested
                            first principles might count as
                            something like an "idealized logic".


Peeking at the answer key, in the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:        https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dewey/

   "As did other classical pragmatists,
   Dewey focused criticism upon traditional
   dualisms of metaphysics and epistemology
   (e.g., mind/body, nature/culture,
   self/society, and reason/emotion) and
   then reconstructed their elements as          The word continuity
   parts of larger continuities."                makes more sense than
                                                 "continuum":

                                                        DEWEY_PIERCE




   "For example, human thinking is not a
   phenomenon which is radically outside
   of (or external to) the world it seeks    Dewey makes a funny point about
   to know; knowing is not a purely          how philosophers are inclined to
   rational attempt to escape illusion in    focus on experiences involving
   order to discover what is ultimately      reasoning (reflection/inquiry),
   'real' or 'true'. Rather, human           even though these are only a
   knowing is among the ways organisms       small subset of human
   with evolved capacities for thought       experience.  When they reflect
   and language cope with problems."         on human consciousness,
                                             philosophers tend to think first
                                             of reflection, because that's
                                             the kind of stuff philosophers
                                             do, at least when being
                                             philosophers.
                                             
                                                 FAST_SLOW_AND_SLOWER


   "Minds, then, are not passively observing
   the world; rather, they are actively
   adapting, experimenting, and innovating;
   ideas and theories are not rational
   fulcrums to get us beyond culture, but
   rather function experimentally within
   culture and are evaluated on situated,
   pragmatic bases.


   "Knowing is not the mortal's exercise of a
   'divine spark', either; for while knowing
   (or inquiry, to use Dewey's term) includes
   calculative or rational elements, it is
   ultimately informed by the body and
   emotions of the animal using it to cope."


That all sounds good, and it sounds like
something that might be plausibly related
to the text.

My usual question for pragmatists applies
though: what can you do with this?  What
does it get you?  Do you think differently
once you buy this into style of thinking
about thinking?

    You can see how it would be eminently
    useful as grounds for sneers:

        I have pragmatic intuition, you
        have delusions of divine sparks.


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