Dewey's Theory of Knowing (review)

360 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Georges Dicker. Dewey's Theory of Knowing. Philadelphia: Philosophical Monographs, 1976. Pp. 63. This work appears as a publication of the University City Science Center of Philadelphia and is built around three previously published articles that appeared in The Monist and in Transactionsof the CharlesS. PeirceSociety. There are introductory and concluding chapters and the three principal chapters, entitled "Knowing and Coming to Know," "Dewey's Account of Knowing," and "The Object of Knowledge." Dicker has taken on a monumental task in this work, but he does an excellent job of trying to explain Dewey's theory of knowing by taking account of the context of another philosophical position, that of realism-and it is the realism of Bertrand Russell, A. O. Lovejoy, and Arthur E. Murphy. One of the principal themes of the work is Dewey's attack on the "spectator " theory of knowledge; the statement of Dewey's theory follows closely the position Dewey expressed in Experience and Nature. The author draws upon Dewey's other writings when analyzing the other problems of theory of knowledge, and these are the ones beginning in 1903 and extending to the later writings with many references to Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. A note should be made that Dewey rejected the term epistemology early in his career because it was associated with philosophical idealism. In his later writings he used the term theory of knowledge or inquiry. In the Logic Dewey shows why he is unhappy with terms like belief, knowledge, and even truth. Writers on these topics tend to treat them as independent of the process by which they are "known." Dewey always held that the goal of knowing cannot be severed from the process of inquiry or the means by which the end of inquiry is achieved. If Russell's contention that some statements are true for the wrong reasons had been pushed further, he might have been able to see Dewey's point; for instance, Russell cites a case of a clock that has stopped but shows the correct time twice every twenty-four hours. Dewey could have helped him with this problem. Dicker begins his study of Dewey by setting it in the context of Locke's view of epistemological inquiry. Epistemology is the study of "the origin, certainty, and extent of human knowledge , together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent," as well as "the discerning faculties of man, as they are employed about the objects which they have to do with" (p. 3). Dewey wrote on all these topics but put them in a different context, a context not in the tradition of Locke. Dicker labors hard at trying to present Dewey so that Dewey can be understood by epistemologists thinking and writing in a different philosophical perspective. He refers to comments made by Russell and Murphy (p. 20) and states their views in this way: "Murphy and Russell are both charging that Dewey substitutes for an account of knowing, an account of (i) means or ways of acquiring knowledge, and (ii) means or ways of using acquired knowledge for further achievements." Dicker traces out the conflict between Dewey and his critics in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3 Dicker has an acceptable account of Dewey's theory of knowing, but the space given to the many problems mentioned in this chapter is too limited. For instance, the difference between Russell's view of knowledge by acquaintance and Dewey's analysis of this term would make a long chapter in itself. Chapter 4 should have been called "The Objective of Knowledge" to be in the context of Dewey's approach. Instead, Dicker calls it "The Object of Knowledge." Dicker could have analyzed in more detail the difference between an "indeterminate situation" and a "problematic situation." There are many cases in which critics take Dewey's terms out of the context in which he is writing and place them in their own contexts in a way that makes Dewey's views absurd. Dicker could have made more of these contextual differences . For instance, Dewey's theory of knowing was developed at the time of the rise of experimental science, at a...