Human Nature and Conduct: An introduction to social psychologyDewey, John
Philosophy
Human Nature and Conduct: An introduction to social psychology
Dewey, John
Habit; Social psychology
Yet habit does not, of itself, know, for it does not of itself stop to
think, observe or remember. Neither does impulse of itself engage in
reflection or contemplation. It just lets go. Habits by themselves are
too organized, too insistent and determinate to need to indulge in
inquiry or imagination. And impulses are too chaotic, tumultuous and
confused to be able to know even if they wanted to. Habit as such is too
definitely adapted to an environment to survey or analyze it, and
impulse is too indeterminately related to the environment to be capable
of reporting anything about it. Habit incorporates, enacts or overrides
objects, but it doesn't know them. Impulse scatters and obliterates them
with its restless stir. A certain delicate combination of habit and
impulse is requisite for observation, memory and judgment. Knowledge
which is not projected against the black unknown lives in the muscles,
not in consciousness.
We may, indeed, be said to _know how_ by means of our habits. And a
sensible intimation of the practical function of knowledge has led men
to identify all acquired practical skill, or even the instinct of
animals, with knowledge. We walk and read aloud, we get off and on
street cars, we dress and undress, and do a thousand useful acts without
thinking of them. We know something, namely, how to do them. Bergson's
philosophy of intuition is hardly more than an elaborately documented
commentary on the popular conception that by instinct a bird knows how
to build a nest and a spider to weave a web. But after all, this
practical work done by habit and instinct in securing prompt and exact
adjustment to the environment is not knowledge, except by courtesy. Or,
if we choose to call it knowledge--and no one has the right to issue an
ukase to the contrary--then other things also called knowledge,
knowledge _of_ and _about_ things, knowledge _that_ things are thus and
so, knowledge that involves reflection and conscious appreciation,
remains of a different sort, unaccounted for and undescribed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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