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
Technical affairs give evidence that the work of inquiry, reporting
and analysis is not always ineffectual. The development of a chain
of "nation-wide" tobacco shops, of a well managed national telephone
system, of the extension of the service of an electric-light plant
testify to the fact that study, reflection and the formation of plans do
in some instances determine a course of events. The effect is seen in
both engineering management and in national commercial expansion. Such
potency however, it must be admitted, is limited to just those matters
that are called technical in contrast with the larger affairs of
humanity. But if we seek, as we should, for a definition of "technical,"
we can hardly find any save one that goes in a circle: Affairs are
technical in which observation, analysis and intellectual organization
are determining factors. Is the conclusion to be drawn a conviction that
our wider social interests are so different from those in which
intelligence is a directing factor that in the former science must
always remain a belated visitor coming upon the scene after matters are
settled? No, the logical conclusion is that as yet we have no technique
in important economic, political and international affairs. Complexity
of conditions render the difficulties in the way of the development of a
technique enormous. It is imaginable they will never be overcome. But
our choice is between the development of a technique by which
intelligence will become an intervening partner and a continuation of a
regime of accident, waste and distress.
PART FOUR
CONCLUSION
Conduct when distributed under heads like habit, impulse and
intelligence gets artificially shredded. In discussing each of these
topics we have run into the others. We conclude, then, with an attempt
to gather together some outstanding considerations about conduct as a
whole.
I
The foremost conclusion is that morals has to do with all activity into
which alternative possibilities enter. For wherever they enter a
difference between better and worse arises. Reflection upon action means
uncertainty and consequent need of decision as to which course is
better. The better is the good; the best is not better than the good but
is simply the discovered good. Comparative and superlative degrees are
only paths to the positive degree of action. The worse or evil is a
rejected good. In deliberation and before choice no evil presents itself
as evil. Until it is rejected, it is a competing good. After rejection,
it figures not as a lesser good, but as the bad of that situation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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