The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 12, 1925 - 1953: 1938, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry

Dewey's Logic

This book, "Logic: A Theory of Inquiry" is part of "The Collected Works of John Dewey", a 37 volume set of the philosopher's writings edited by Jo Ann Boydston (1924-- 2011), divided into early, middle, and late works. This scholarly series is a tribute to Dewey in its own right and preserves his voluminous writings to be studied and discussed. Dewey's "Logic" (1938) is the first volume in the Late Works, published when the philosopher had reached the age of eighty. The volume includes an introduction by Ernest Nagel (1901-1985) a logician and philosopher of science who corresponded with Dewey about the "Logic". Nagel both praises Dewey's broad approach and offers telling criticism of some of Dewey's particular positions.

The "Logic" is a lengthy, difficult, and daunting work. It is written in a flat, awkward and often obscure style. It is not a work for the casual reader or for those new to Dewey. I had the good fortune to read this work with a reading group in which several serious scholars of Dewey participated. We read and discussed one or two chapters a week over several months. It helped enhance my reading of the book.

John Dewey was an American pragmatist and naturalist philosopher. Both these terms are difficult to pin down. He is best-known for his work on education and on social philosophy. He wrote broadly throughout his life on all areas of philosophy including metaphysics and logic. His goal was the reconstruction of philosophy in light of the progress of science, particularly Darwinism, and the need for change and for social progress.

"Logic: A Theory of Inquiry" is an unusual book because, for some readers, it does not consist primarily of a study of logic. From the beginning of the 20th Century, the study of logic had been formalized and symbolized through the work of Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and many others. Symbolic logic remains an important ongoing achievement. Dewey's book knows but does not practice formalized logic. Rather, Dewey critiques it strongly as an abstraction, useful in its place but not constituting the entire discipline of logic.

Dewey also criticizes the Aristotelian logic which had held sway for millennia before the rise of symbolic logic. He argues that Aristotelian logic was based on a substantialist, essentialist, teleological and qualitative metaphysics and was also class-based, designed by the well--educated people with leisure in ancient Greece. Greek metaphysical assumptions did not survive the rise of science during the Enlightenment and then with evolutionary theory. Aristotelian logical theory likewise needed to be changed to eliminate its metaphysical assumptions and to understand science and its method.

Thus, Dewey proposes to develop logic as a "theory of inquiry". He wants to develop logic as the study of inquiry as such and to show its use in both common sense and science. For Dewey, logic is contextualized. It arises as part of the decision making process in concrete cases where there is a difficulty and a need to resolve it and to move on. The goal of inquiry is "warranted assertibility" as opposed to an abstract "truth". Logic is a technique or an instrument to achieve warranted assertibility rather than a thing.

Dewey explores how logic functions in common sense and then abstracted and refined in a way he works to explain through science. In this way, logic is not primarily a formalized study as symbolic logic would have it. Dewey's logic is based, I think, as was Aristotelian logic, the empirical logic of John Stuart Mill, and the various idealist logics of the time with which Dewey was familiar on metaphysical assumptions, in his case the assumptions of naturalism. Naturalism rejects transcendental entities such as God, intuition, reason which divide humans from the rest of nature as sources of explanation. Dewey develops the basis for naturalism in the first part of his book, in particular in chapters 2 and 3 which deal with biological and cultural-linguistic bases of human inquiry. In the long difficult treatment of logic throughout the book, Dewey applies naturalism to the structure of inquiry and the making of judgments, the nature of propositions, and the scientific method, including the social sciences and the difficulties they present. In the book's concluding chapter, Dewey uses his logic to criticize traditional epistemological/metaphysical theories in philosophy including realism and idealism. His work in this regard highly influenced the contemporary American neo-pragmatist, Richard Rorty (1931 -- 2007).

Dewey did not see his study of logic as fixed for all time. Rather it changes as science and as human needs change. Dewey wrote in the final chapter of the book, "the challenge to make the world more reasonable is one that is ever-renewed, since it is a challenge to execute concrete operations at definite times and places." (524) Dewey realized that there were gaps in his study that he invited other thinkers to pursue. He also realized that his logic was subject to change as science and as methods of inquiry changed. The scope of what "science" is for Dewey and of the reach of logic is a matter for dispute. There is much of value in what Dewey says about logic as a method and a great deal of room for discussion about specifics in his theory and about naturalism. As with many seminal works of philosophy, "Logic" is not easy. It is valuable and rewards reading for those with interest and patience.

Robin Friedman