Situations as Field of Analysis

Another of Dewey’s core assumptions is that behavior can only be understood by an accounting of its varying meanings as discerned within a situation. Dewey makes an important distinction between common sense and science in terms of how knowledge is constructed in pointing out the more central role of culture and dominant norms in the former. To put this in more formal terms, on Dewey’s considered view, “significances and meanings” reflective of common sense “are determined in reference to pretty directly existential application” while in the realms formal scientific analysis they are “determined on the ground of… systematic relations of coherence and consistency” (p. 71).

Even still, the substantive link that Dewey brings out between the two is the centrality of a context-based derivation of meaning that cannot be reduced to atomistic components or sharp isolation of independent variables in describing behavior that can only be grasped within the fields of contexts in which it is situated. More fundamentally, the specific field of focus and the relation of any part to the whole (in common sense and in science) depends on the problem focus of the investigation at hand in its role as a factor in serving as a critical piece of evidence in the actual formation of a particular judgment. In short, “independent” variables do not stand alone, whether in common sense or in science. Rather, they have functional capacity in relation to the specific project of focus as defined by the “total qualitative situation” (p. 74) in which even common sense becomes, in Dewey’s vision, subject, to the degree possible, to the more rigorous methodologies of scientific logic.

Critical to Dewey’s concept of situations is that of language and, in his usage, to the role of sign systems in referring to culture, and to symbols pertaining to science. Significance and meaning are derived from these abstractive capacities, from which inference making emerges, the sine non-qua of Dewey’s interpretation of logic as a theory of inquiry. Thus, the very shaping of a problem, for example, the definition of literacy, whether as a synonym descriptive of the technical mastery of reading and writing, or whether applied in a more metaphorical way to that of knowledge acquisition (“multiliteracies”) can only be grasped within the context of the mutual interaction of culture and language. In the former case, reading and writing proficiency are taken as the ultimate determinants of literacy. These technologies, in principle, are subject to more exacting methodologies of assessment based on scales of measurement than those plausible through the more metaphorical definition of literacy. In the latter case, reading and writing technologies are viewed as subset variables that may be more or less salient in given circumstances, as determined by the broader contexts in which various “literacy practices” are embedded (Barton, 1994). Whether pertaining to common sense or to science:

…no sound, mark, product of art, is a word or part of language in isolation. Any word or phrase has the meaning which it has only as a member of a constellation of related meanings. Words as representative are part of an inclusive code. The code may be public or private. A public code is illustrated in any language that is current in a given cultural group. A private code is one agreed upon by members of special groups so as to be unintelligible to those who have not been initiated. Between these two come argots of special groups in a community, and the technical codes invented for a restricted special purpose, like the one used by ships at sea. But in every case, a particular word has its meaning only in relation to the code of which it is one constituent (Dewey, 1938/1991, p. 55).

The challenge to which Dewey’s Logic sets out to achieve is to provide a mode of reasoning that accounts for situations, which are shaped by such symbolically mediated discourse. In order to do so, Dewey’s “new logic” needs to fully account for their existential complexity and particularity, while providing a mode of inquiry that brings the desired level of satisfaction that progressively resolves the initial problematic situation in the process of reconstructing a more satisfactory one. The work, which takes place through what Dewey refers to as a “means-ends continuum,” brings maximum scientific reasoning through “controlled inquiry” to the process, consistent with the complexity of the problem at hand.

Date: 2014-12-21; view: 916