Article Critique
History of Psychology Copyright 2001 by the Educational Publishing Foundation 2001, Vol. 4, No. 4, 323-340 1093-4510/01/SS.OO DO1: 10.1037//1093-4510.4.4.323
JOHN DEWEY AND EARLY CHICAGO FUNCTIONALISM
Andrew Backe Indiana University
John Dewey and James Angell are regarded respectively as the founder and systematizer of the Chicago school of functional psychology. The early Chicago school traditionally has been portrayed as a unified theoretical approach based primarily on William James's naturalistic theory of mental processes. It is argued in this article that although the psychology systematized by Angell bore a close affinity to James's naturalism, Dewey's own psychology was based primarily on the neo-Hegelian philosophy of Thomas Hill Green. Through a review of a number of Dewey's major writings, Green's neo-Hegelian philosophy is shown to have influ- enced Dewey's views on psychological concepts such as reaction, emotion, and perception during the formative period of the Chicago school. The interpretation of Dewey's psychology developed in this article leads to the conclusion that early Chicago functionalism should not be regarded as a unified theoretical approach.
In the last 20 years of the 19th century evolutionary biology had a profound influence on American psychologists. Major psychologists of that time—most notably G. Stanley Hall, James Mark Baldwin, and James McKeen Cattell—all to some degree incorporated into their psychologies the idea that the human indi- vidual is an organism interacting with a natural environment. No American psychologist, however, articulated this idea to the degree to which William James did. In his seminal text of 1890, The Principles of Psychology, James treated mental processes as adaptive-survival functions that accommodate the human organism's needs to the environment. Whereas James is regarded as the first to have articulated thoroughly a biologically based model of the human mind, John Dewey and James Angell are considered the first figures to have formalized this naturalistic psychology into a distinct approach. Their approach, which was developed at the University of Chicago in the late 1890s and early 1900s, came to be regarded as a unified viewpoint known as the Chicago school of functional psychology.
In the remainder of this article, which is divided into three major sections, I develop the thesis that the early Chicago school cannot be treated as a unified theoretical approach. In the first section I review in detail the traditional account of the emergence of the Chicago school. The traditional account is characterized as one that regards Dewey's and Angell's psychologies as a unified theoretical system based primarily on James's naturalistic views offered in the Principles. In the second section I show that Dewey's own psychology was influenced only modestly by James's naturalism and that the most influential factor was the
Andrew Backe is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at Indiana University. He received his PhD from die Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His areas of interest include functional psychology and American philosophy.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Andrew Backe, 17550 White Oak Avenue, Lowell, Indiana 46356.
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neo-Hegelian philosophy of Thomas Hill Green. I establish this point by showing how Dewey's psychology of the 1890s and early 1900s incorporated a central neo-Hegelian intuition—namely, that a transition in conscious experience, such as the kind characterizing perception or learning, cannot be treated as a succession of numerically distinct objects or events standing in a nonmediated relation to one another. In the concluding section I reveal that neo-Hegelian philosophy pervaded Dewey's views to such an extent that his psychology must be considered unique in relation to the functionalism offered by James and systematized by Angell.
The Rise of the Chicago School
Historical accounts generally claim that the formal psychology of Dewey and Angell developed out of James's naturalistic psychology expressed in his 1890 text, The Principles of Psychology.1 This claim receives support from Dewey and Angell themselves, both of whom commented on the influence of James in then- respective autobiographies. Prior to 1890, Dewey had been developing a psychol- ogy grounded in neo-Hegelian idealism. He claimed in his autobiography that after reading James's Principles he began to drift away from his Hegelian commitments. Referring to the text, Dewey stated: "As far as I can discover, [if there is] one specifiable factor which entered into my thinking so as to give it new direction, it is this one."2 Dewey identified "the biological conception of the psyche" as the most influential aspect in James's text, remarking that "it worked its way more and more into all my ideas and acted as a ferment to transform old beliefs."3
Angell too acknowledged the overwhelming influence of James. Angell had performed his undergraduate work under Dewey at the University of Michigan from 1886 to 1890. He commented in his autobiography that Dewey had a profound influence on him in choosing psychology as a profession. However, Angell remarked that Dewey's own psychology of that particular era was devoted to a "special pleading" of Hegel's philosophy. In 1891, Angell read James's Principles, a text that "unquestionably affected [Angell's] thinking for the next 20 years more profoundly than any other."4 Angell found "extraordinarily stimulat- ing" James's use of biological and physiological facts, which led to the "vital employment of cerebralistic hypotheses to account through habit for the central structure of human conduct and experience."5 Angell subsequently studied with James at the Harvard graduate school for a year.
The defining theoretical characteristic of James's Principles was its biologi- cal, or naturalistic, treatment of mental processes. James specifically identified two major biologically based principles of psychology. First, he set out the principle "that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by bodily change."6 This principle reduced mental processes to observ- able physiological activity in the brain and the nervous system. Second, he set out "the principle that no actions but such as are done for an end, and show a choice of means, can be called indubitable expressions of mind.''1 This principle iden- tified the mind with a system of collective "functions" that assist the human organism in adapting to the demands of the environment.
These two principles governed James's discussion in the remainder of the text. In chapters 2 and 3 James discussed nerve and brain physiology in relation
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to mentality. He used the concept of reflex action as the basic unit of explanation. James defined conscious actions as those that accommodate the organism to novel situations. These actions were regarded as complex reflex arcs (voluntary acts) that included activity in the brain. James argued that such actions ultimately become habitual and nonconscious, in which case spinal cord activity (semire- flexes) replaces brain activity in the reflex arc. Throughout the remaining chapters in the Principles James categorized mental processes in terms of their adaptive- survival functions, that is, in terms of how they accommodate the human organ- ism's needs to the environment. Processes reviewed by James included habit, attention, discrimination, conception, sensation, perception, memory, emotion, and will.
The actual formalization of James's functionalism by Dewey and Angell was instigated by a controversy between E. B. Titchener and James Mark Baldwin over sensory-motor reactions.8 On the basis of experiments conducted by some of Wilhelm Wundt's students at the I^eipzig laboratory, Titchener argued that the average latency of a reaction to an auditory stimulus would be shorter if the subject's attention were directed to the movement to be made rather than to the sense impression serving as the signal to the movement.9 This claim assumed that there were two forms of reaction: the sensorial reaction, in which the subject focuses on the sensory impression, and the muscular reaction, in which the subject focuses on the movement. Titchener hypothesized that the muscular reaction was a simpler form of reaction than the sensory reaction. He discredited results contrary to the Leipzig experiments by arguing that the individual subjects in apparently disconfirming experiments did not have the proper disposition—or Anlage—for participating in psychological experimentation.10
One of the contrary studies reviewed by Titchener had been conducted by Baldwin.11 Shortly after Titchener's article appeared, Baldwin published data from a more recent experiment that he had conducted on reactions to sound.12 He had observed that half of his subjects displayed faster motor reactions, whereas the other half displayed faster sensory reactions. Baldwin accounted for his results by setting out his new type theory of reaction. He proposed that "the man who gives relatively shorter motor reactions is a- 'motor' in his type... . But the man who gives relatively shorter sensory reactions, is a 'sensory' in his type."13
Contrary to Titchener, Baldwin hypothesized that there were genuine individual differences with respect to reactions. Baldwin maintained that the differences could be accounted for by the experiences individuals underwent in their local environments. He noted, for example, that a musician would have great difficulty making motor reactions. Because of the musician's habit of using sensory exci- tation as a cue for performance (i.e., manipulating an instrument through move- ment), Baldwin argued that, for this individual, "the very attempt to picture a movement as a movement—by putting the attention on its motor aspect in consciousness—embarrasses, confuses and delays the execution of that move- ment."14 Another individual, Baldwin argued, might more easily put attention on the motor aspect of the reaction than on the sensory aspect.15
New data bearing on the controversy were offered in 1896 by Angell and his colleague Addison Moore of the University of Chicago. The two experimented on unpracticed participants and followed them extensively over time.16 At the outset of the study, each participant was required to perform both motor and sensory
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reactions. Angell and Moore found that some participants had faster motor reactions, whereas other participants had faster sensory reactions. As participants practiced with both types of reactions, the majority of them eventually came to perform motor and sensory reactions that were of approximately equal time values.
In sympathy with Baldwin, Angell and Moore argued that each participant's tendency to be a sensory type or a motor type was determined "from influences already surrounding its [i.e., the participant's] growth" and by habits "customarily employed in the everyday business of life."17 Angell and Moore discussed the observed variation in terms of the interrelation of attention and habit.18 They proposed that attention serves as an "adjuster, or mediator" between habitually established reactions and new conditions under which they have to express themselves. Attention is focused where habit is least able to cope with a situation. With respect to the auditory sensory-motor reaction, if the sound is unfamiliar and the hand movement is familiar, then attention will fall on the ear. If a participant in this situation is forced to focus on the hand, then the reaction will be delayed. The ear adjustment to the sound will be left to habit, and an already-established habit in the hand process will be given attention. Under practice, however, the two types of reaction will grow in speed and regularity together and become habitual.
As reviewed so far, Angell and Moore's interpretation supported Baldwin's theory of the sensory-motor reaction. Yet Angell and Moore made an additional point that set their theory apart from Baldwin's. Angell and Moore offered an interpretation of "reaction" different from that of either Baldwin or Titchener. According to Angell and Moore, the reaction in these experiments was not merely a response of the hand to the ear but rather the "act of coordinating the incoming stimuli from both the hand and the ear."19 Not only could the sensation of sound in the ear be regarded as a stimulus, but so too could the sensation from the hand, which was actually responsible for holding the ear to its task. The hand therefore served as a stimulus as well as a response to the ear. Likewise, the ear served as a response as well as a stimulus to the hand. Hence, Baldwin's "types" could be regarded as equally "sensory" or equally "motor." Angell and Moore concluded that "the distinction of stimulus and response is therefore not one of content, the stimulus being identified with the ear, the response with the hand, but one of function, and both offices belong to each organ."20
Angell and Moore acknowledged that their interpretation of stimulus and response originated with Dewey, under whom they were working at the Univer- sity of Chicago.21 Dewey had outlined his views on stimulus and response earlier in a syllabus of February 1892. He claimed that stimulus and response "are simply the various more or less distinct minor activities contained within an act of larger range."22 According to Dewey, these minor acts check and reinforce one another, so that each act receives its meaning only within the "whole of which it is one member," a whole to which Dewey referred as "the organized coordinated act."
Dewey provided a comprehensive treatment of stimulus and response in his famous 1896 article "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology." The article appeared to set out the assumptions underlying Angell and Moore's approach, on the one hand, and Titchener's and Baldwin's approaches, on the other.23 Dewey distinguished these assumptions through a comparison between his own concept of coordination, which Angell and Moore used in their interpretation of stimulus
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and response, and the reflex arc concept, which corresponded to Titchener's and Baldwin's notion of reaction.
Dewey gave a detailed illustration of the coordination concept by considering what takes place when an individual runs away from a sound. Dewey noted that the sound is not merely a stimulus; it is an act, that of hearing. According to Dewey, muscular activities—namely, the movement and posture of the head and ear muscles—are involved in hearing just as much as in the subsequent running away. "It is just as true to say that the sensation of sound arises from motor response as that the running away is a response to the sound." Moreover,
Just as the response is necessary to constitute the stimulus, to determine it as sound and as this kind of sound, of wild beast or robber, so the sound experience must persist as a value in the running, to keep it up, to control it.
The running away is more appropriately characterized as a circuit rather than an arc. Dewey concluded that the traditional distinction being drawn between stimulus and response was "one of interpretation." He wrote:
The fact is that stimulus and response are ... teleological distinctions, that is distinctions of function, or part played, with reference to reaching or maintaining an end [I]t is only the assumed common reference to an inclusive end which marks each member off as stimulus and response.24
One and the same occurrence can play either part, depending on a shift in attention.
The controversy over sensory-motor reactions culminated in a formal recog- nition of two distinct approaches in psychology. The first to distinguish the approaches was Titchener. In his 1898 article "The Postulates of a Structural Psychology" he referred to his own program as an illustration of structural psychology. The aim of this approach, according to Titchener, was "to discover, first of all, what is [in consciousness], and in what quantity."25 The discovery process involved isolating the constituent "elements" of any given conscious formation. These elements corresponded to the traditional notions of "sensations," "ideas," and "feelings." In contrast to the structural approach, Titchener recog- nized a functional psychology. This form of psychology studied the mind not as a structure of elements but rather as a collection of capacities or functions that assist the individual in adapting to the demands of the environment. Such functions included "attention," J'memory," and "volition," among others. Titch- ener explicitly referred to Dewey's "Reflex Arc" article and Angell and Moore's empirical article as examples of functional psychology.26
In the first 10 years of the 20th century both Dewey and Angell published major works articulating some of the key concepts of functionalism. Dewey's major work in this era was a collection of essays published in the 1903 book Studies in Logical Theory. Dewey, like James, treated thought and knowledge as means by which the organism adjusts to the environment. Dewey argued that a doubtful situation in which habits become obstructed creates tension. Reflective thought, or consciousness, arises to reduce tension and restore coherence; specif- ically, reflective thought aids the organism in creating hypotheses about the problematic situation so that a new action can be taken. Dewey himself referred
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to this theory not as functionalism but rather as experimentalism.27 According to this view, thinking ends in experiment, the actual alteration of the immediate situation that created tension for the organism.
The first explicit outline of a functionalist "program" appeared in AngelFs 1904 text, Psychology: An Introductory Study of the Structure and Function of Human Consciousness. In the preface Angell wrote that, although many psychol- ogists had "devoted the larger part of their energy to investigating the structure of the mind," his approach was designed "to deal more fully with its functional phases."28 Rather than discover the "constituent elements" of consciousness, functional psychology determined how consciousness develops and operates. Like James, Angell based his functional psychology on what he called "the biological point of view." This view had two major features. First, it assumed that the "human organism is a psychophysical organism, and that the mental portion of it is not to be completely or correctly apprehended without reference to the phys- iological portion." In short, it held that psychology could understand mental processes only through an understanding of the brain and nervous system. Second, the biological point of view studied consciousness as it relates to objects or events constituting the environment. Angell specifically wrote that
adoption of the biological point of view ... will mean not only that we shall study consciousness in connection with physiological processes wherever possible, but it will also mean that we shall regard all of the operations of consciousness—all our sensations, all our emotions, and all our acts of will—as so many expressions of organic adaptations to our environment.29
These two features of Angell's functional psychology constituted the major subject matter of his text. In the second and third chapters Angell discussed how consciousness is connected to the nervous system. He regarded consciousness as the control of muscular movements emanating from the cerebral cortex in situa- tions of uncertainty. Conscious movements established new sensory-motor path- ways, which ultimately become habitual and taken over by the relatively non- conscious processes of the spinal cord. In-the remaining chapters of the book Angell considered the particular operations, or "functions," of consciousness. He gave a superior status to attention, which was regarded as a rudimentary form of will that permits the human organism to selectively direct mental activity toward some aspect of the environment. Other major functions considered by Angell included sensation, perception,^ imagination, memory, emotion, concept forma- tion, reasoning, and will. These were all treated as expressions of organic adaptations to the environment, means by which the organism attains knowledge to survive and develop.
After Dewey's Studies and Angell's Psychology were published, James proclaimed that Dewey and Angell should be regarded as originators of "a new system," which James aptly termed the "Chicago School."30 In 1906, Angell was elected president of the American Psychological Association. His presidential address, titled "The Province of Functional Psychology," was published in the Psychological Review and served as a manifesto of the early Chicago school. In the address Angell identified "functional psychology with the effort to discern and portray the typical operations of consciousness under actual life conditions, as
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over against any attempt to analyze and describe its elementary complex con- tents."^
In its initial years the Chicago school was perceived as a unified theoretical approach. Angell recollected in his autobiography that the "basic element" of early Chicago functionalism was the idea that mentality had "as its major task the adjustment of [the human organism] to the environment ... in which it found itself." Specifically, the individual "utilized conscious processes at the point where new sensory-motor co-ordinations were being established, which later as they became perfected, permitted the mental [i.e., conscious] aspect of the process gradually to diminish."32
A Second Look at Dewey
Dewey's contribution to the rise of functionalism cannot be overstated. It is impossible to find a historical account of the development of early functional psychology that omits a reference to Dewey and his "Reflex Arc" article in particular. In fact, that article was voted the most influential article published hi the first 50 volumes of the Psychological Review.3'3' What has been overstated, however, is the relation of the "Reflex Arc" article to the naturalistic emphasis often cited as the defining theoretical characteristic of early functionalism. Dew- ey's "Reflex Arc" article had very little to do with naturalism; rather, the purpose of the article was to convince psychologists that the reaction concept should be reinterpreted as coordination. This point was never strongly emphasized in the work of other functionalists. James, for instance, simultaneously maintained that the reaction concept was the central unit of explanation for psychology and that psychologists should study mental processes in functionalist terms. Furthermore, although Angell and Moore did briefly discuss the coordination concept in their 1896 article, they did not have to refer to the concept at all in their interpretation of the role of habit and attention in auditory sensory-motor reactions. Moreover, AngelFs functionalist program in his 1904 Psychology did not rely on the concept of coordination to any significant extent.34
To see the significance of Dewey's coordination concept, and the "Reflex Arc" article more generally, one must look somewhere other than to the natural- istic psychology of James, for Dewey's first published discussion of the coordi- nation concept actually arose as a criticism against James's theory of emotions set out in the Principles. James had argued that an emotional experience begins with an object or idea operating as a stimulus, then proceeds into the mode of behavior, taken as discharge or response." The response is ultimately followed by affect or emotional excitation.35 In his 1895 Psychological Review article "The Signifi- cance of Emotions" Dewey maintained that "no such seriality or separation attaches to the emotion as an experience." Dewey illustrated his own view on how an emotional experience occurs by considering a reaction of fright to a bear. According to Dewey, such a
reaction is not to the bear as object, nor to the idea of bear, but simply expresses a ... co-ordination of acts... . [T]he frightful object and the emotion of fear are two names for the same experience... . The "bear" [i.e., the object or idea] is constituted by the excitations of the eye and co-ordinated touch centres, just as the "terror" [i.e., the affect] is by the disturbances of muscular and glandular systems.
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The reality, the co-ordination of these partial activities, is that whole activity which may be described equally well as "that terrible bear," or "Oh, how frightened I am."36
Dewey maintained that the complete, mature idea of "bear-as-thing-to-be-run- from" comes only in and through the act of running. So too does the complete affect.
Dewey's criticism of James's theory of emotion was an obvious precursor to the discussion of stimulus and response in the "Reflex Arc" article. James's theory of emotion treated the sensorimotor (or ideomotor) activity, which constitutes the object, as the stimulus, and the vegetative-motor activity, which constitutes the reaction to the object, as the response. Dewey argued that "this distinction of stimulus and response is one of interpretation... . The positive truth is that the prior and the succeeding parts of an activity are in operation together."37
In the "Reflex Arc" article Dewey established this "positive truth" with respect to the more general notion of reflex, or reaction. Dewey argued that, by using the reflex arc idea, psychologists were characterizing psychical phenomena from "preconceived and preformulated ideas of rigid distinctions between sensa- tions, thoughts and acts." He warned that under this interpretation "the reflex arc is not a comprehensive, or organic unity, but a patchwork of disjointed parts, a mechanical conjunction of unallied processes." Dewey urged that the reflex arc be reinterpreted so that "sensory stimulus, central connections, and motor responses shall be viewed, not as separate and complete entities in themselves, but as ... functioning factors, within [a] single concrete whole, 'most conveniently termed co-ordination.'"38
Contrary to historical accounts that draw connections between James's Prin- ciples and Dewey's "Reflex Arc" article, Dewey's major objective in the article was to criticize James's discussion of the concept provided in the Principles.39
James described a reflex arc as a current along nerve paths running from a sensory organ to the spinal cord or brain and then back to a motor organ.40 According to James, these simple sensory-motor connections become educated—a process by which "ideas" in higher level brain hemispheres enter into the reflex arc. James illustrated this process by considering how a child learns to avoid being burned by a candle flame. An initial sensation of light from the candle is a stimulus to the child's reaching as a response. The resulting burn, in turn, is a stimulus to the withdrawing of the hand as a response. The next time that the child sees the candle flame, the sensation will be followed by ideas of reaching for the flame and getting burned so that "the grasping will be arrested in mid-career, the hand drawn back, and the child's finger saved."41 In James's outline learning occurs when an existing reflex arc is altered by the addition of a connection in the higher level brain hemisphere, which includes memory traces, or reminiscences, of earlier experiences. The seeing of the flame the second time actually excites new pathways and is consequently a new experience.
Dewey, on the other hand, believed that the child's interaction with the candle should be explained in terms of a developing coordination of minor acts. Re- sponding directly to James's interpretation, Dewey remarked that "we begin not with a sensory stimulus" but with "the act of seeing," "the optical-ocular." According to Dewey, "the movement of body, head and eye muscles determine[s]
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the quality of what is experienced." This "act of seeing" is coordinated with the "act of reaching." "Each may be considered practically a sub-ordinate member of a larger co-ordination," which is actually the previous coordinated act of seeing being enlarged into the act of "seeing-for-reaching-purposes." The stage at which the child gets burned "is simply the completion, or fulfillment, of the previous eye-arm-hand co-ordination and not an entirely new occurrence." Dewey argued that "the heat-pain quale enters into the same circuit of experience with the optical-ocular and muscle quales" so that the original seeing experience is "enlarged and transformed in value." Seeing the flame now becomes "seeing-of- a-light-that-means-pain-when-contact-occurs." Dewey noted "that we do not have the replacing of one sort of experience by another, but the development or (as it may seem convenient to term it) the mediation of an experience."42
Dewey painstakingly emphasized why the child's learning could not be treated as an accumulation of separate entities working in a causal sequence with one another. According to Dewey, stimulus and response actually describe the same event. To show this, Dewey considered what happens the next time that the once-burned child encounters a candle flame. At this point, the child is in doubt as to the next act: whether or not to reach. According to Dewey, the question of whether to reach or refrain is the question of what sort of bright light the child has before him. The child's attention is aimed not just at determining the proper response; it is also aimed at defining the stimulus. Dewey noted that "the response is not only uncertain, but the stimulus is equally uncertain; one is uncertain only in so far as the other is."43 The search for the stimulus is a search for the value of the object (i.e., the value of the candle flame)—its interpretation or mediation. Once the child discovers the value of the flame, he will have simultaneously discovered the response. Dewey remarked that "the distinction o f . . . stimulus and response respectively is not a distinction which can be regarded as descriptive of anything which holds of psychical events or existences as such."44 To interpret them as separate existences hi a causal sequence is a characterization that is not real but rather "read into" the process by the psychologist.45
Dewey's point here—that a distinction between stimulus and response cannot denote a distinction of separate existences' arranged in a causal, temporal se- quence—had its origins in work done prior to the publication of James's Prin- ciples. At the outset of his academic career hi the mid-1880s, Dewey was influenced by the neo-Hegelian philosophies of Thomas Hill Green and George Sylvester Morris.46 Green's writings were most influential. Green had criticized the empiricism of John Locke ̂ and David Hume. Their theories of knowledge assumed that thought could be parsed into primitive sensory qualities. These qualities, hi the form of ideas impressed on the individual mind, were assumed to "combine" hi thought to form the objects of which one is aware as well as the more complex relations between objects. In his Prolegomena to Ethics Green argued that empiricism could not account for the "connected order" of sensations. He urged that the "relation" rather than the sensory quale be treated as the primitive notion.47 Green regarded relations as the observed regularities between objects.48
Green emphasized the difference between his theory of thought and an empiricist's theory by considering the way hi which perception was defined hi each theory. For empiricists, perception of a relation between objects was treated
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merely as a "combination" of sensations. Green, however, argued that a distinc- tion had to be drawn between "stages of the process by which ... [a] perception is arrived at" and "the relation in which its [i.e., the perception's] constituents stand to each other." According to Green, the stages of arriving at a perception, which he referred to as sensations, can be discussed in terms of temporality and externality. The objects that enter into a perception can appear to the organism in succession, one before the other, and, hence, be considered outside of one another. In the organism's apprehension of the mutual attraction between a planet and its moon, for example, the planet might affect the organism's nervous system before the moon. However, according to Green, it is not possible to discuss the percep- tion itself in this way, for perception—the actual apprehension of objects as related—implies no succession. Green remarked that "so long as certain events are contemplated as successive, no one of them is an object to consciousness before or after another."49 This is so because of two objects that form the terms of a relation one cannot exist as so related without the other and therefore cannot exist before or after the other.
Green believed that the terms of a relation should be regarded as identical. This consequence stems from the essential nature of any relation. Each object that makes up a relation gets its meaning, and hence is brought into conscious existence for the organism, only through being associated with the other object that makes up the relation. Green remarked of any single object that "without the relation it would not exist at all."50 Green ultimately held that relations "emanate" from an activity of "understanding" or "intelligence," which "is necessary to our conceiving an order of nature, an objective world of fact."51 Green placed this activity in the Hegelian notion of a universal consciousness. The notion assumed that human knowledge ultimately arises out of the thought activity of a universal entity—the "Absolute." Green maintained that "the growth of our experience," the "process of our learning to know the world," is the activity of the Absolute "gradually reproducing itself in us."52
George Sylvester Morris, who was Green's American contemporary, shared many of Green's views. According to Morris, empiricism treated relations be- tween objects as "mechanical." In the empiricist account each object is considered a separate existence. Its interaction with other objects is described in external terms, as if the objects were billiard balls banging into one another. The relations of perception arise, then, as a result of "impact" or "contact." Morris warned that the mechanical distinction between objects is "not the complete, nor the true, account of knowledge." Like Green, Morris argued that, as apprehended within consciousness, objects "must be, and are in fact, different, and they must be, and are in fact in some sense identical."53 The association of objects cannot be merely mechanical; otherwise, the objects would be only different and not related. Morris gave a special term for relations as they arise within consciousness: He called such relations organic. By this Morris meant that within individual consciousness objects could not exist without the relation.
Dewey's graduate work was carried out under Morris, who introduced Dewey to Green's neo-Hegelian views. In the initial years after graduate school, Dewey applied neo-Hegelian philosophy to psychology. His first article in psychology was an 1884 one titled "The New Psychology," in which he criticized the tendency of experimental psychologists to treat ideas or sensations as separate
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existences. He remarked that such "analysis is but a process of abstraction, leaving us with a parcel of parts . . . , distinctions [that]... are unreal and largely arbitrary."54 Dewey promoted instead the "organic conception" for psychology, arguing that mental life is "an organic unitary process ... and not a theatre for the exhibition of independent autonomous faculties, or a rendezvous in which iso- lated, atomic sensations and ideas are gathered, hold external converse, then forever part."55 It is impossible, Dewey maintained, to consider "psychical life as an individual, isolated thing developing in a vacuum."
The influence of Green's and Morris's philosophies is apparent in "The New Psychology." To treat sensible experience, or what Dewey called psychical life, as a collection of distinct existences implied mechanistic relations in which there is nothing holding the objects of experience together. In an 1887 article titled "Knowledge as Idealization" Dewey developed his neo-Hegelian psychology further. Like Green, Dewey drew a "fundamental distinction" between sensation and perception. According to Dewey, a sensation is "a physiological fact," such as "the occurrence of nerve tremors."56 Dewey maintained, though, that sensations "never enter into knowledge."57 Knowledge is gained through perceptions, and these are "psychical facts," that is, "facts of meaning." Perceptions, according to Dewey, cannot be described as mere combinations or "clusterings" of sensations; rather, perceptions involve the coming of relations into individual consciousness. Dewey referred to this process as idealization and, at times, as mediation. Dewey maintained that individual consciousness gains more perceptions "or gets more meaning, just in the degree in which [universal] intelligence reads more ideal content into it."58 Knowledge, or perception, then, is the realization by the individual of the eternal relations of universal consciousness.
Dewey's views of the mid-1880s were ultimately summarized in his 1887 textbook, titled Psychology. The neo-Hegelian influence in the text is obvious from the beginning, where Dewey defined psychology. Dewey referred to psy- chology as the study "of the reproduction of some universal content or existence ... in the form of individual consciousness," where "universal contents" are those constituting the universal consciousness.59 As in his earlier articles, Dewey was critical of empiricist psychology. He claimed that mental life is not built out of "separate existences" of sensations and urged that psychology not treat sensations as knowledge. The process by which knowledge is arrived at, Dewey noted, "is properly called one of idealization because it goes beyond the sensuous existence ... and gives the present datum meaning."60 "Actual knowledge," Dewey main- tained, "is concerned with relations." Dewey noted that these relations are "supplied by" universal consciousness. By focusing on relations and placing the individual subject and objects within the "permanent connections" of universal consciousness, psychologists may "hold objects and events together, and make a unity of them."61
Although Dewey abandoned the notion of a universal consciousness by the mid-1890s, he retained a central neo-Hegelian intuition. The intuition was that perceptual reality could not be considered a collection of numerically distinct objects standing in a direct, nonmediated relation to one another. This intuition— and not James's naturalism—served as the primary basis for Dewey's analysis in the "Reflex Arc" article. The traditional characterizations of the reflex arc pro- vided no theoretical means to unite stimulus and response, no way to keep them
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together or to prevent them from falling apart. Dewey explicitly noted that the reflex arc left psychologists with "disconnected existences, having to be somehow adjusted to each other ... by mechanical push or pull."62 To accept the reflex arc concept psychologists had to assume that a mechanistic relation holds in which the stimulus is treated as a billiard ball that bangs into another billiard ball: the response. This assumption implied that stimulus and response occur successively in episodes of perception or learning, that one of the terms of a relation arises as an object hi individual consciousness before the other.
The relevant lesson from Dewey's early psychology was that objects in individual consciousness, such as stimulus and response, must acquire their meaning simultaneously. Dewey's concept of coordination, which at times he also called the organic circuit, was sensitive to this requirement. The concept assumed that stimulus and response occur at the same time and are, in a sense, identical. Recall Dewey's claim that a stimulus or response is uncertain only insofar as the other is uncertain. The stimulus object, such as a candle flame, is discriminated only when its value is determined, that is, when it is mediated. Mediation occurs through activity, such as a child's pulling away of his hand from a candle flame. The action establishes the relation, which hi the case of the child-candle inter- action is the "burning." The child acquires a new perception, or knowledge of a further distinction in experience, only on the activity being carried out. Neither James's nor Angell's accounts of perception were sensitive to the simultaneity restriction. Their accounts regarded perception as a complex physiological pro- cess hi which brain activity gave rise to "attention," the adaptive reaction of consciousness. This process replaced an already-attained habitual reaction with a new one to accommodate the organism to the immediate environment.
Implications and Conclusion
Recognizing the underlying concern hi Dewey's "Reflex Arc" article has implications for how the early Chicago school of functionalism should be char- acterized. According to the traditional account, Chicago functionalism was based on a naturalistic, or biological view of mental processes. From this point of view psychologists studied how consciousness and other processes function to aid the human organism in adapting to the conditions of the immediate environment. The naturalistic point of view also treated mental processes in physiological terms. This form of functionalism was attributed to both Dewey and Angell and was regarded as developing out of James's psychology hi the Principles.
The traditional characterization of early Chicago functionalism is insensitive to Dewey's philosophical commitments. Dewey was strongly committed to neo- Hegelian philosophy early hi his academic career. Insofar as neo-Hegelian phi- losophy applied to psychology, it held that objects related within perception had to arise simultaneously. This point had profound consequences for psychology's unit of analysis—the reaction, or reflex arc, concept. The concept permitted objects, such as sensory stimulus and motor response, to acquire their values or meanings successively. This left objects, insofar as they enter into individual consciousness, in an external, mechanistic relation with one another. Placing them in such a relation implied that experience was not unified. Dewey remedied this situation in his "Reflex Arc" article by presenting the coordination concept.
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The "Reflex Arc" article was not the only post-1890 writing in which Green's neo-Hegelian theme regarding unity emerged. Dewey's 1903 Studies in Logical Theory also incorporated the theme. Although some of the passages cited earlier bear a close affinity to the biologically based theory of psychology advanced by Angell, a closer look at the Studies reveals that Dewey was still very much concerned with the point made earlier by Green. In the Studies Dewey addressed the separation between knowing subject and known object. He was critical of what he referred to as the school of "analytic knowing." This school treated "continuity," "unity," and "organization" as "fictions superinduced by associa- tion" on the knower and object, "each of which in its own right is [regarded as] a separate existence."63 Instead of "analytic knowing," Dewey favored the "or- ganic conception" of knowledge. According to this conception, reality is an "organization" in which knower and object "hang together" and "are saturated with a pervasive quality."64 There is an essential property that pervades the knower and the object, a property that makes each member identical to one another. Dewey argued that the same holds for the relation between organism and environment. According to Dewey, "there are not, as respects organism and environment, two terms at all. [They] constitute one and the same situation."65
In his writings prior to 1890 Dewey had identified the "situation" with universal consciousness, which pervaded and unified the entire universe. In his post-1890 writings Dewey replaced the notion of universal consciousness with the notion of "experience." He remarked in the Studies that reflective thinking—or individual consciousness—arises within "dynamic experience with its qualitative and pervasive continuity."66 Thought is "the movement of experience in its reconstructive transition."67 Although Dewey never gave a detailed description of what experience is, it was presented as a solution to the problem of treating the relation between subject and object (or between organism and environment) as essential to their coming into being.
The major lesson to be drawn from this article pertains to the characterization of early Chicago functionalism as a unified school. I have shown that Dewey had a unique theoretical point of view, one that had its roots in neo-Hegelian idealism. His psychology did not attempt merely to identify and describe the functions of consciousness under actual life conditions, as Angell's functionalism did; rather, Dewey's psychology was a form of metaphysics. It sought to explain individual consciousness and other psychological processes with reference to the unified whole of experience.68
In concluding this article I make two remarks regarding the limitations of the preceding examination. First, James's own psychology has been somewhat rigidly defined as naturalism. Although this characterization is fairly well entrenched in the historical literature, it may be in need of revision. It is true that major portions of James's Principles emphasized that mental processes serve as adaptive func- tions and that these processes can be observed in physiological activity. However, there are also portions of the Principles that treat mental processes, and that of consciousness in particular, in metaphysical terms. The chapter on the "stream of thought" is one example. An in-depth examination of James's views might very well reveal that, like Dewey, James to some extent was influenced by the idealist philosophy so prominent during the late 19th century.69
The second remark pertains to the restricted treatment of Chicago function-
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alism. Insofar as this article concentrates mainly on mental concepts (e.g., reac- tion, emotion, and perception), the implications drawn are applicable to the theoretical features of the early Chicago school. In addition to theoretical features, however, functionalism is famous for its practical attributes. For example, as the Chicago school matured, functionalists considered mental testing and the study of psychopathology to be within the domain of psychology. In this article I have not considered the practical aspects of functionalism, because they arose later in the development of the functional school. Specifically, they became closely associ- ated with functionalism while the Chicago school was under the direction of Harvey Carr, which occurred during the period from 1919 to 1938.70 Although Dewey did not remain at the University of Chicago during this time, he did endorse many of the practical attributes of psychology, particularly psychology's role in informing educational and social policy. An in-depth study of Dewey's later writings would likely reveal a number of the practical themes for which mature functionalism became known.
Although examinations of the nuances of James's psychology and of the practical features of Dewey's later psychology are beyond the scope of this article, I hope that the preceding examination will underscore the point that these issues, as well as many others hi functional psychology, are worthy of future historical research.
Notes
1. Historical examinations of the influence of James on both Dewey and Angell can be found in Lawrence R. Carleton, "The Rise of Chicago Functionalism," Erkenntnis 18 (1982): 3-23; D. L. Krantz, "The Baldwin-Titchener Controversy," in Schools of Psy- chology, ed. D. L. Krantz (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969), 1-19; and Alfred C. Raphelson, "The Pre-Chicago Association of the Early Functionalists," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 9 (1973): 115-122. Most historical examinations, however, focus directly on the relation between James and Dewey and only indirectly (if at all) on the relation between James and Angell. Such examinations can be found in Michael Buxton, "The Influence of William James on John Dewey's Early Work," Journal of the History of Ideas 54 (1984): 451-464; Neil Coughlan, Young John Dewey: An Essay in American Intellectual History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975); Jane M. Dewey, "Biography of John Dewey," in The Philosophy of John Dewey, ed. Paul A. Schilpp (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1939), 3-45; D. C. Phillips, "James, Dewey, and the Reflex Arc," Journal of the History of Ideas 32 (1971): 555-568; Andrew J. Reck, "The Influence of William James on John Dewey's Psychology," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 20 (1984): 87-118; Allen K. Smith, "Dewey's Transition Piece: The 'Reflex Arc' Paper," Tulane Studies in Philosophy 22 (1973): 122-141; and J. E. Tiles, Dewey (London: Routledge, 1988), 31-35, 45-48.
2. John Dewey, "From Absolutism to Experimentalism," in Contemporary Ameri- can Philosophy, vol. 2, eds. George P. Adams and William P. Montague (New York: Macmillan, 1930), 13-27, see p. 23.
3. Ibid., 24. 4. James Angell, "Autobiography," in A History of Psychology in Autobiography,
vol. 3, ed. Carl Murchison (Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, 1936), 1-38, see p. 5. 5. Ibid., 22. 6. William James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. I. (1890; reprint, New York:
Dover, 1950), see p. 5.
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7. Ibid., 8-11. 8. For in-depth discussions of the controversy, see Carleton, "The Rise of Chicago
Functionalism," 3-23; and Krantz, "The Baldwin-Titchener Controversy," 1-19. 9. Edward B. Titchener, "Simple Reactions," Mind 4 (1895): 74-81. This doctrine
was actually articulated by Ludwig Lange and became known as Lange's Thesis. See Ludwig Lange, "Neue Experimente iiber den Vorgang der einfachen Reaction auf Sin- neseindriike," Philosophische Studien 4 (1888): 479-510.
10. Titchener, "Simple Reactions," 77. 11. See James Mark Baldwin, "Internal Speech and Song," Philosophical Review 2
(1893): 385-407. 12. James Mark Baldwin, "Types of Reaction," Psychological Review 2 (1895):
259-273. 13. Ibid., 269. 14. Ibid., 266. 15. The controversy between Baldwin and Titchener escalated, although neither
psychologist offered new data. Further exchanges between the two can be found in Edward B. Titchener, "The Type-Theory of Simple Reaction," Mind 4 (1895): 506-514; James Mark Baldwin, "The Type Theory' of Reaction," Mind 5 (1896): 81-90; and Edward B. Titchener, "The 'Type-Theory' of Simple Reaction," Mind 5 (1896): 236-241.
16. James R. Angell and Addison W. Moore, "Reaction-Tune: A Study in Attention and Habit," Psychological Review 3 (1896): 245-258.
17. Ibid., 246. 18. Ibid., 246-247. 19. Ibid., 253. 20. Ibid., 253. 21. Angell and Moore specifically stated that without Dewey's insights their "in-
terpretation would not have been reached." Ibid., 252. 22. John Dewey, "Introduction to Philosophy: Syllabus of Course 5," in John
Dewey: The Early Works, vol. 3, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), 211-235, see p. 213.
23. John Dewey, "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," in John Dewey: The Early Works, vol. 5, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972), 96-109.
24. All quotes in this paragraph appear chronologically in Ibid., 101-105. 25. Edward B. Titchener, "The Postulates of a Structural Psychology," Philosoph-
ical Review 1 (1898): 449-465, see p. 450. 26. Ibid., 451-452. Discussions of functionalist concepts in relation to structuralist
concepts can be found in W. Caldwell, "The Postulates of a Structural Psychology: A Discussion," Philosophical Review 8 (1899): 187-194; Edward B. Titchener, "Structural and Functional Psychology," Philosophical Review 8 (1899): 290-299; James R. Angell, "The Relations of Structural and Functional Psychology to Philosophy," Philosophical Review 12 (1903): 243-271; and Mary Calkins, "A Reconciliation Between Structural and Functional Psychology," Psychological Review 8 (1906): 61-81.
27. The essays contained in Studies in Logical Theory were later reprinted in Dewey's more comprehensive work, Essays in Experimental Logic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1916). All quotes in this article are taken from that work. See p. 13.
28. James R. Angell, Psychology: An Introductory Study of the Structure and Function of Human Consciousness, 2nd ed. (New York: Henry Holt, 1905), iii.
29. All quotes in this paragraph appear chronologically in Ibid., 6-7. 30. William James, "The Chicago School," Psychological Bulletin 1 (1904): 1-5,
see p. 1.
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31. James R. Angell, "The Province of Functional Psychology," Psychological Review 14 (1907): 61-91, see pp. 62-63.
32. James R. Angell, "Autobiography," in A History of Psychology in Autobiogra- phy, vol. 3, ed. Carl Murchison (Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, 1936), 1-38, see p. 23. The reader may very well note similarities between this "basic element" of functionalism and the doctrine of behaviorism. The founder of behaviorism, John B. Watson, actually earned his doctorate under Angell at the University of Chicago in 1903. Discussions of the relations between behaviorism and functionalism can be found in Angell's autobiography as well as in John B. Watson, "Autobiography," in A History of Psychology in Autobiography, vol. 3, ed. Carl Murchison (Worcester, MA: Clark Uni- versity Press, 1936), 271-281; and in J. M. O'Donnell, The Origins of Behaviorism: American Psychology, 1870-1929 (New York: New York University Press, 1985).
33. See Herbert S. Langfeld, "Fifty Volumes of the Psychological Review," Psy- chological Review 50 (1943): 154.
34. For a discussion of the coordination concept in relation to James's work and Angell's work, see Carleton, "The Rise of Chicago Functionalism," 4-15; and Krantz, "The Baldwin-Titchener Controversy," 14-16.
35. James's theory of emotion is set out in his The Principles of Psychology, vol. II (1890; reprint, New York: 1950, Dover), 442-485.
36. The article was the second part of a series titled "The Theory of Emotion." See John Dewey: The Early Works, vol. 4, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwards- ville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971), 152-188. All quotes in this paragraph appear chronologically in the article on pp. 174-176.
37. Ibid., 181-182. 38. Dewey, "The Reflex Arc Concept." All quotes in this paragraph appear chro-
nologically in the article on pp. 96-97. 39. The fact that Dewey was actually criticizing James in the "Reflex Arc" article
has often been overlooked by historians. In fact, some of the major scholars writing on the subject argue that James's discussion of the reflex arc in the Principles served as the basis for Dewey's own views in the "Reflex Arc" article. These scholars have assumed that implicit in James's treatment of the reflex arc is the idea that stimulus and response are not independent entities but rather interconnected parts of a whole unit. See Phillips, "James, Dewey, and the Reflex Arc," 561; and Reck, "The Influence of William James," 106. An analysis contrary to those offered by Phillips and Reck can be found in Andrew Backe, "Dewey and the Reflex Arc: The Limits of James's Influence," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 35 (1999): 312-327. In it I offer evidence, including an unpublished letter from Dewey to James, showing that Dewey was initially quite critical of James's Principles.
40. James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. I, 24-27. James also considered the reflex arc concept in an earlier article of 1881, "Reflex Action and Theism," published in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897, reprint; New York: Dover, 1956), 111-144. In this earlier work, James described the reflex arc as the basic unit of psychology. He stated that "all action is re-action upon the outer world." See pp. 113-114.
41. James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. I, 26. James indicated in a footnote that this illustration of the interaction between child and candle was actually devised by an Austrian anatomist: Thomas Meynert. James accordingly referred to the child-candle instance as the Meynert Scheme.
42. Dewey, "The Reflex Arc Concept." All quotes in this paragraph appear chro- nologically in the article on pp. 97-99.
43. Dewey, "The Reflex Arc Concept," 106. 44. Ibid., 108.
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DEWEY AND CHICAGO FUNCTIONALISM 339
45. Ibid., 106. Dewey referred to the process of reading separate existences into perception as the psychologist's fallacy. It is ironic that it was James who initially identified the psychologist's fallacy. See James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1,196.
46. For discussions of the development of Dewey's early academic thought, see Coughlan, Young John Dewey, 3-53; Dewey, "From Absolute Idealism to Experimental- ism," 18; George Dykhuizen, The Life and Mind of John Dewey (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974), 1-63; Lewis B. Hahn, "Intro- duction: From Intuitionalism to Absolutism," in John Dewey: The Early Works, vol. 1, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), vii-xxi; John R. Shook, Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2000); and Morton G. White, The Origin of Dewey's Instrumentalism (1943; reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1977), 3-63. It should be noted that although Green and Morris had a profound influence on Dewey, other figures also influenced him. It is notable that G. Stanley Hall introduced Dewey to what were then the current developments in experimental psychology. For a discussion of the influence that Hall had on Dewey, see Coughlan, Young John Dewey, 33-36, 48-49.
47. Thomas Hill Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, 3rd ed. (1883; reprint, Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1890), 13-58. All references to Green are taken from the third edition. There are no changes in either the second or third editions beyond the corrections of verbal mistakes and errors of the press. The first 103 pages of Green's book were actually printed in a series of Mind articles in January, April, and July of 1882. _ _ 48. In this article the term object is used in a very broad sense so as to include events and occurrences.
49. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, 3rd ed. All quotes in this paragraph appear chronologically in the text on pp. 60-61.
50. Ibid., 31. 51. Ibid., 22-23. 52. Ibid., 72. 53. George Sylvester Morris; see his "Philosophy and Its Specific Problems,"
Princeton Review 9 (1882): 208-232. All quotes in this paragraph appear chronologically in the text on pp. 219-225. In addition to introducing Green's philosophy to Dewey, Morris also introduced Wundt's psychology to Dewey. For a discussion of Wundt's influence on Dewey, see John R. Shook, "Wilhelm Wundt's Contribution to John Dewey's Functional Psychology," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 31 (1995): 347-369.
54. John Dewey, "The New Psychology," in John Dewey: The Early Works, vol. 1, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), 48-60, see p. 49.
55. Ibid., 56. 56. John Dewey, "Knowledge as Idealization," in John Dewey: The Early Works,
vol. 1, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), 176-193, see p. 178.
57. Ibid., 181. 58. Ibid., 191. 59. John Dewey, Psychology, 3rd rev. ed., in John Dewey: The Early Works, vol.
2, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967), 10-11. Dewey's text appeared in three editions. All quotes provided in this article are present in the first edition of 1887.
60. Ibid., 122. 61. Ibid., 76. 62. Dewey, "The Reflex Arc Concept," 100. 63. Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic, 5-6.
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340 BACKE
64. Ibid., 5. 65. Ibid., 270. 66. Ibid., 122. 67. Ibid., 171. 68. It is noteworthy that Dewey's psychology of the period from 1890 to 1903
shared some similarities with Gestalt psychology. His concept of coordination bore an affinity to the notion of spontaneous perception underlying the Gestalt concepts of perceptual organization and insight. For articulations of these Gestalt concepts, see, respectively, Max Wertheimer, "Experimental Studies of the Perception of Movement," Zeitschrift fur Psychologic 61 (1912): 161-265; and Wolfgang Kohler, The Mentality of Apes (Berlin, Germany: Royal Academy of Sciences, 1917).
69. For a consideration of the metaphysical aspects of James's psychology, see Richard M. Gale, "John Dewey's Naturalization of William James," in The Cambridge Companion to William James, ed. Ruth Ann Putnam (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 49-68.
70. For a discussion of how the Chicago school developed while under the direction of Carr, see Fred McKinney, "Functional!sm at Chicago—Memories of a Graduate Student: 1929-1931," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 14 (1978): 142-148.
Received June 7, 2000 Revision received January 18, 2001
Accepted March 14, 2001 •
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