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
The reason for insisting on this fact is not failure to appreciate the
distinctive value of knowledge when once it comes into existence. This
value is so immense it may be called unique. The aim of the discussion
is not to subordinate knowing to some hard, prosaic utilitarian end. The
reason for insistence upon the derivative position of knowing in
activity, roots in a sense for fact, and in a realization that the
doctrine of a separate original power and impulse of knowledge cuts
knowledge off from other phases of human nature, and results in its
non-natural treatment. The isolation of intellectual disposition from
concrete empirical facts of biological impulse and habit-formation
entails a denial of the continuity of mind with nature. Aristotle
asserted that the faculty of pure knowing enters a man from without as
through a door. Many since his day have asserted that knowing and doing
have no intrinsic connection with each other. Reason is asserted to have
no responsibility to experience; conscience is said to be a sublime
oracle independent of education and social influences. All of these
views follow naturally from a failure to recognize that all knowing,
judgment, belief represent an acquired result of the workings of natural
impulses in connection with environment.
Upon the ethical side, as has been intimated, the matter at issue
concerns the nature of conscience. Conscience has been asserted by
orthodox moralists to be unique in origin and subject-matter. The same
view is embodied by implication in all those popular methods of moral
training which attempt to fix rigid authoritative notions of right and
wrong by disconnecting moral judgments from the aids and tests which are
used in other forms of knowledge. Thus it has been asserted that
conscience is an original faculty of illumination which (if it has not
been dimmed by indulgence in sin) shines upon moral truths and objects
and reveals them without effort for precisely what they are. Those who
hold this view differ enormously among themselves as to the nature of
the objects of conscience. Some hold them to be general principles,
others individual acts, others the order of worth among motives, others
the sense of duty in general, others the unqualified authority of right.
Still others carry the implied logic of authority to conclusion, and
identify knowledge of moral truths with a divine supernatural revelation
of a code of commandments.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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