The Logical Basis of Educational Theory from the Standpoint of 'Instrumental' Logic

Front matter

MI ER TURE IN CANDIDACY FOR, THE ‘DEGREE. OF

THE LOGICAL BASIS OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY FROM THE STANDPOINT OF “INSTRUMENTAL” LOGIC

A DISSERTATION

Introduction

It is the purpose of this paper to discuss the logical nature of the process of education. Education is taken to mean the way experience develops, or realizes itself. A theory of education is an interpretation of this process of self-realization. Logical theory is an account of “our thinking behavior ;” “thinking” being the constructive movement in this process of development. The subject-matter of logic, then, is the operation of thought in the development of experience; and, if this development is education, the theory of logic one accepts must determine his theory of education.

This view looks upon education as a process continuing from birth to death. While education in its narrower sense, as synonymous with instruction, will receive attention, the primary purpose is to discuss education in its larger meaning.

The first part of this paper will be devoted to a brief outline of the historical development of “instrumental” logic, and to an exposition of that theory as worked out by recent writers on the subject, particularly by Dr. Dewey. No claim to originality is made in the general logical view presented. The purpose has been to present the theory as understood after a careful study of available material. It is probable that the interpretation has not been at all times true to the thought of the authors, particularly in some minor phases which have not been fully developed in the publications of the writers.

The second part of the paper will be devoted to a discussion of the educational theory which follows from this theory of logic. It is not the primary purpose to indicate a detailed method of instruction, though the mere statement of an educational theory must furnish the basis of, and indicate along broad lines, the general method which must be followed in all education.

Psychology is so intimately related to both logic and education that it seems necessary to discuss quite fully the psychological nature of certain parts of the problem. In both the logical and educational discussions free use will be made of psychological material.

I

LOGICAL THEORY

In this brief statement of logical theory only those phases of the subject will be discussed that throw some light on educational procedure. Since the time of Aristotle, the operation of thought has received serious attention. Two general points of view have developed. One is known as formal logic, the other has been called instrumental logic. Formal logic treats of the operation of thought as carried on in reflective thinking. It takes thought as such and endeavors to discover and formulate the laws and principles of accurate thinking. The content of the concepts with which it operates is regarded as given independently of thought’s operation. While formal logic may discuss the way bare sensations are molded into ideas and concepts so as to become fit objects for thought, its real concern is with how truth may be deduced from these concepts through judgment and inference.

On the other hand, the term “instrumental” is applied to that view of logic which holds that thought, human thought, has a part in the actual constituting of reality. It investigates not merely the concepts as given, but also their genesis and how thought determines the actual content of these concepts. Thought is not looked upon as engaged in reproducing an external world of reality, but as having a part in the actual constituting of reality. Whatever our thinking may assume to exist as exterior to and independent of thought, instrumental logic holds that such assumptions are mere postulates and that the content of thought, as we know it, bears the unmistakable character of thought’s construction.

This conception of the creative character of thought is not new. Wundt points out that it preceded the development of formal logic. He says, “The Eleatic and Platonic dialectic are controlled by it [thought as instrument in creating reality], and a caricature of the same meets us in the fallacious conclusions and dilemmas of the Sophists.” +

Aristotle is the father of formal logic. He took up the problem of discovering and formulating the laws of thought, and

* Logik, Band I, s. 3.

developed a complete system. The Aristotelian logic assumed that “objects” are given independently of thought, and the intellectual processes were regarded as entirely dependent upon these objects. This view of thought was generally accepted up to the time of Kant.

Kant marks an epoch in the evolution of thought. Not satisfied with the previous attempts of philosophy, which had failed to remove the opposition between thought and being but had made idealism or realism absolute, Kant subjected the entire theory of knowledge to a searching criticism. As a result of his investigations, Kant differentiates sharply the theoretical reason from the practical. On the theoretical side, in accepting phenomena revealed in sensation as real and absolute, and yet holding that they cannot become knowledge except in and through thought which determines the forms and conditions of their cognition, Kant exalts thought and makes it a real and necessary factor in the development of knowledge. While stoutly maintaining the existence of a world of reality independent of thought, he yet contends that phenomena are so modified and determined by thought that it is impossible to know the real character of the thing-in-itself; that the theoretical reason cannot go beyond phenomena and establish extra-experiential truth. It is limited to the sensuous given.

On the other hand, in Kant’s critique of the practical reason, pure reason is made to determine a priori the will in respect of objects.2, In the theoretical reason truth is derived from sense phenomena; in the practical reason there is recognized “a higher source of motives in which not sense but reason is the lawgiver.’”? Here the will is supreme and it follows “not incentives from without, but obeys, with absolute freedom, a higher practical principle of the reason.” ? From the possibility of a moral law is derived the idea of freedom; from that of perfect virtue is borrowed the idea of immortality ; from the necessary demand for perfect happiness follows the idea of God.*

This recognition that phenomena in becoming knowledge must take on necessary forms of thought, that here reason is limited to sense, but that pure reason may determine the will with absolute freedom, was a revolution in epistemology. Yet Kant did not

2 Schwegler, History of Philosophy (Seeley’s transl.), pp. 290, 291. 8 Tbid., pp. 296, 297.

regard thought as really creative in the sense of actually constituting reality.

In the development of Kantian idealism by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, there is the attempt to present a world-view founded on the “system of reason.” Thought as the world-activity was here supreme.

Among modern logicians Sigwart’s view of the nature of thought as independent and self-supporting, and his idea of how the concept of reality is derived from thought, are particularly interesting and suggestive. He says, “If we consider the nature of thought, we find that an important part of it is engaged in the attempt to arrive at propositions which are certain and universally valid.” * Further, “From a psychological point of view, everything which the individual thinks may be looked upon as necessary,” but besides this necessity “there is another which springs entirely from the contents and object of thought. This “certainty” and “universal validity” which he makes the end of thought is to be found within thought itself, and is not grounded upon an external, independent reality. He makes this point explicit.

We cannot refute the critical assertion that immediately, and in the first instance, all our knowledge is something for us, consisting in a system of ideas. That there is an Existent corresponding to this Thought of ours and in accordance with it, is either a blind belief, or the certainty must be grounded upon a refutation of the doubt it dispels—upon the proof that doubt is impossible. .... The proof rests upon a necessity in Thought. It may be counted among the surest results of an analysis of our knowledge that every assumption of an external world is mediated by Thought..... Thus except by Thought, we have no means of ascertaining whether we have really achieved our purpose of knowing the Existent; the possibility of comparing our knowledge with things as they exist apart from our knowledge is forever closed to us.".... We may thus unhesitatingly say that if all we can attain to is necessary and universally valid Thought, then knowledge of the Existent is included therein.

Here we find explicit recognition of the dependence of reality as known upon thought. Sigwart does not deny the existence of an external world. In fact, he assumes such existence, and much of his discussion of logic is based upon this assumption. But he

* Logic (Dendy’s transl.), Vol. I, p. 1.

THE LOGICAL BASIS OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY Vi shows clearly that it is an assumption which depends wholly for its proof “upon the necessity in thought.” For knowledge, all reality is the result of the operation of thought.

Both Bosanquet and Bradley attempt to give thought a genuine work to do in constituting the “real world,” and yet they retain the concept of an independent reality.

Bosanquet makes thought a “living function” in the development of the world of reality as it exists for any individual. This world of the individual is actually constituted by thought. This character of thought and its relation to reality comes out in Bosanquet’s discussion of Truth. He says,

If the object-matter of reality lay genuinely outside the system of thought, not only our analysis, but thought itself would be unable to lay hold of reality. For logic at all events, it is a postulate that “the truth is the whole.” The forms of thought have the relation which is their truth in their power to constitute a totality..... The work of intellectually constituting that totality which we call the real world, is the work of knowledge.’

But Bosanquet does not minimize the idea of the existence of an independent reality. Indeed, he makes such reality, as that got through sense-perception, the starting-point and core of the individual’s real world. The act in which thought constitutes for itself, or “affirms,” this real world is the judgment.

The truth, the fact, the reality, may be considered, in relation to human intelligence, as the content of a single persistent and all-embracing judgment, by which every individual intelligence affirms the ideas that form its knowledge to be true of the world which is brought home to it as real by sense-perception. .... [And] The real world for every individual is emphatically his world; an extension and determination of his present perception, which perception is to him not indeed reality as such, but his point of contact with reality as such.”

The question that concerns us here is: In what sense and to what extent does Bosanquet make thought really instrumental? The creative character of thought may be looked at from two points of view. First, To what extent is thought efficient and really creative in establishing and organizing this world of reality as it actually exists for human intelligence? Second, Does thought really have a part in constituting the real world as such; or, to put it otherwise,

* Logic, Vol. I, pp. 2, 3 (italics mine). 10 Thid., p.. 3.

is there a reality as such which is, in itself, in no way affected by thought, but which thought merely copies or reproduces?

The above quotations prove, unquestionably, that Bosanquet would answer the first question affirmatively. The world, as we know it, is constructed by thought. While he makes contact with reality through sense-perception the starting-point of thought, and the whole real world for the individual an extension, by means of judgment, of this immediate intuition, yet this reality got so at first hand is “indefinite,” a “mere aspect,” until determined and organized by thought.

As to the other question, Bosanquet ignores the point. Some expressions would indicate that thought merely discovers what is already there; but the whole attitude of his discussion leads to the conclusion that, for him, reality as such, apart from thought, is not the proper subject of logical discussion; that what logic is concerned with is our world, and that world is constituted by thought.

Bradley attacks directly the problem of the relation of thought to reality. He insists that thought is but an external tool, and yet he says that reality actually develops in our thinking. This contradiction comes out in his discussion of judgment. He defines the judgment proper as “the act which refers an ideal content (recognized as such) toa reality beyond the act.’ 14. This judgment always refers, directly or indirectly, to present reality. As to the effect of thought on our conclusions, and, hence, on the constitution of our real world, Bradley says,

It is assumed that, whatever in our reason may be arbitrary, yet at least the conclusions must follow from the premises naturally and necessarily, without altering or straining or even addition. If we can be shown of our own free choice to have forged one link in the chain of inference, then the connection snaps and the ends fall apart..... [And] An apparatus of proof has been compared to a scaffolding, which is removed when the edifice of reason has been built; yet, if we have but placed the parts in conjunction, there is nothing which will hold when the scaffolding is gone.”

This shows conclusively that here Bradley looks upon thought as wholly external.

But there is another side to Bradley’s logic. He makes the statement that “reality develops,’ and this development appears to take place through thinking and because of thinking. In discussing the essence of reasoning, he says,

. at bottom, and in a struggling way, reasoning is really a self-development. Throughout the process our subject is developed, and again to some extent it develops itself.* [Again,] Reality appears, .... as possessing an attribute or group of attributes, which is given with two separate sets of qualities. And in the result this basis through its own activity becomes explicit. We may say here, as everywhere, that the real subject, implicit at the start, and active in the middle, shows itself at the end by a development of some latent relation or quality, which it claims as an attribute. .... And thus, in a certain sense, the movement of the subject has been a self-development; .... [and] if our process is not to end in ruin, the apparatus we have used (that is, scaffolding) must be simply a prop, supported on which the argument has grown up, till strong enough at last to support its own fruit and stand by itself.

Here Bradley presents a wholly different view of thought. This idea of reasoning being a self-development, taken in connection with the “real subject” (that is the reality) as “active” and “developing,’ would seem unquestionably to make thought instrumental in character. But in the working out of this point of view, Bradley leaves much to be desired.

These idealistic logical theories of Sigwart, Bosanquet, and Bradley are in striking contrast to the theories of J. S. Mill and Wundt, each of whom develops a theory of logic based on the practical methods of scientific investigation.

J. S. Mill defines logic as “the science which treats of the operations of the human understanding in the pursuit of truth.” 1 By “truth” Mill seems to mean actual determinable experiences. There is the assumption that facts of experience have systematic connection, and that this may become known. It is the business of logic to investigate the process by which the mind may come into possession of this knowledge.

Attention is called to two important characteristics of Mill’s logic. First, it is a “logic of experience.” He calls it the “logic of truth” as opposed to “formal logic” which he calls the “logic

* Ibid., PP. 452, 453- “4 Ibid., p. 454 (italics mine). % System of Logic, p. 3.

of consistency.” Logic investigates “truth,” and this truth, for Mill, is derived from experience. He says,

Truths are known in two ways; some are known directly and of themselves; some through the medium of other truth (which can, of course, be reduced to direct intuition). The former are the subject of Intuition, or Consciousness; the latter, of Inference.*.... [Again,] .... truth can only be successfully pursued by drawing inferences from experience.”

Mill’s whole elaborate discussion is an attempt to get away from the abstraction and idealism that characterize previous logic. He recognizes that thinking is practical, and so would develop a theory of logic derived from the actual operation of thought in the scientific investigation of truth.

The other characteristic is Mill’s attitude toward the source of knowledge. The primary, irreducible data of experience are the states of consciousness—sensations, feelings, volitions.

.... the best thinkers are now for the most part agreed that all we can know of matter is the sensations which it gives us, and the order of the occurrence of those sensations. .... [And,] All attributes, therefore, are to us nothing but either our sensations and other states of feeling, or something inextricably included therein. ....

Mill assumes the existence of external objects and the powers or properties by which those objects excite mental activity, but says,

These latter (at least) being included rather in compliance with common opinion and because their existence is taken for granted in the common language from which I cannot prudently deviate, than because the recognition of such powers or properties as real existences appears to be warranted by a sound philosophy.”

What Mill is sure of are the facts of experience. Thought, then, in its widest sense, as ideational activity, would seem to be responsible for the whole data of knowledge. This would seem to compel the conclusion that thought is “instrumental” in determining knowledge ; not in an external way, as the means by which we arrive at truth that is true independent of thought, but by actually having a part in the development of reality itself. Mill, however, seems not to have drawn this conclusion, nor to have been conscious of the logical outcome of his position.

This general point of view is worked out more fully by Wundt.

6 System of Logic, p. 3. 8 Tbid., p. 48.

SDI e Dems 9 Tbid., p. 49.

THE LOGICAL BASIS OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY Jet

He defines logic as the science which has to give an account of those laws of thought that are efficient in the investigation of truth.2° It occupies a position between psychology and the other theoretical sciences. Logic “leads back” on the one hand to a psychological examination of the actual course of thought, and “looks forward” on the other to “universal knowledge and the way of procedure of scientific thought.” Its particular problem is to investigate and establish the actually operative laws of thought as these laws reveal themselves in the whole range of scientific investigation.

This view of logic Wundt opposes, on the one hand, to formal logic, and, on the other, to what he calls metaphysical, or dialectic, logic. By the latter, he means that view of logic which makes thought an instrument (Werkzeug) “which gives to knowledge not merely its form but produces out of itself also the content of the same.” 71

Wundt objects to this “metaphysical logic,” particularly because it sets up a system of thought that offers no aid to and has no connection with the scientific investigation of truth. Furthermore, he seems not to grant to thought any part in the creation oi reality, when he says: “Never can it (thought) gain any other significance than that of copying the objects by which thought is conscious of having met all demands which reality imposes on its copying activity.” ?? Buta further examination of Wundt’s philosophy leads to a different view of the function of thought. Wundt recognizes experience as the fundamental ground of all knowledge. Out of experience there develops both object and subject. Historically, this antithesis appears in the course of an individual’s development ; it is not there at the beginning.

.... the expressions outer and inner experience do not indicate different objects, but different points of view from which we take up the consideration and scientific treatment of a unitary experience. We are naturally led to these points of view, because every concrete experience immediately divides into two factors; into a content presented to us, and our apprehension of this content.” .... [And,] Even the use of the terms object and subject in this connection must be regarded as the application to the first stage

” Logik, Band I, s, 1.

BOLDUd.s) Ser 3s Shik C8 Oe 3 Outlines of Psychology (Judd’s transl.), pp. 2, 3.

I2 THE LOGICAL BASIS OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY of experience, of distinctions which are reached only through developed logical reflection.”

If object and subject arise out of a “unitary experience” and “through developed logical reflection,” thought must have an important and fundamental part in determining our conceptions of reality. Thought, from this point of view, is responsible for my reality ; it comes to me through my thinking. To still contend that thought is a mere “copying activity’ would seem to be a plain contradiction.

In the subjective field Wundt seems to regard thought as really instrumental when he says,

None of the mental sciences [philology, history, political science, etc.] employ the abstractions and hypothetical supplementary concepts of natural science; quite otherwise, they all accept ideas and the accompanying subjective activities as immediate reality”

In the domain of these mental activities Wundt recognizes, in the rise of “new attributes,” the presence of a principle of “creative syntheses ;” the actual evolving of “qualities” and “values” that cannot be derived from the analysis of the component elements. He says,

Not only do the elements united by apperceptive synthesis gain, in the aggregate idea which results from their combination, a new significance which they did not have in their isolated state, but, what is of still greater importance, the aggregate idea itself is a new psychical content made possible, to be sure, by the elements but by no means contained in these elements.”

This definite recognition of the creative power of mental activity, when taken in connection with the activity of thought which is admitted to lie back of and condition the rise of the concepts object and subject, would seem to commit Wundt to the theory that thought is fundamentally and essentially instrumental in character.

The theories here briefly outlined show how these writers have attempted to explain the concepts of both matter and thought so as to satisfy actual experience. In the movement variously styled radical empiricism, pragmatism, or humanism (the fundamental thought is the same), we have the most recent contributions to this problem. From the standpoint of this “pragmatic” development

* Outlines of Psychology (Judd’s transl.), p. 5.

*"Tbtd., p. 3 (italics mine). * Tbid., p. 364.

the function of thought is essentially and immanently instrumental. As the theory of education outlined in Part II is based on this general point of view, a brief exposition of this type of instrumental logic follows. The purpose is, particularly, to set forth those characteristics that have a bearing on educational theory. A number of writers have contributed to the development of this logical theory, but it has been worked out most thoroughly by Dr. Dewey in his Studies in Logical Theory. To him more than any other writer is due the following interpretation.

From this point of view of instrumental logic there arise in ordinary everyday experience disturbed situations which do not readily adjust themselves. This disturbance is due to the failure of habitual ways of reacting. Conditions arise which the old habits, the old attitudes, the old ideas, are unable to assimilate and harmonize. There is a state of tension. But this obstruction of activity must be overcome; it is the essence of life to be active. There is an effort made to readjust the situation so that the broken co-ordinations may be brought into harmonious relation and normal activity resumed. The first effort usually fails. There may be a long period of wandering, of experimenting, of reflecting, before success is attained. During this period of tension, one is conscious, often intensely so, of the disturbed conditions. When a satisfactory readjustment is finally made, the whole affair tends to drop out of consciousness and attention is given to other problems. This whole situation—the break in habitual ways of reacting, the tentative movements toward readjustment, and the final successful co-ordination—is the thought-situation. Dr. Dewey says:

It is the whole dynamic experience with its qualitative and pervasive identity of value, and its inner distraction, its elements at odds with each other, in tension against each other, contending each for its proper placing and relationship, that generates the thought-situation.”

This whole readjustive movement in which antagonistic and unrelated factors are brought into harmony is the thought process itself. Thinking is just such readjusting.

The field of thought is the field of human interests. Thought has to do with just these everyday experiences of life. We think about our physical needs, our social relations, our religious convictions. One would build a house, obtain political preferment,

7 Studies in Logical Theory, p. 38.

I4 THE LOGICAL BASIS OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY or perform a religious duty. And each of these may mean strenuous effort, careful planning, periods of doubt and delay and opposition; final success may follow only after long and strenuous activity. Thought is the instrument or tool by means of which success comes. Such experiences of everyday life are antecedent to thought in the sense that, taken at any point, thought has grown out of such commonplace affairs. So long as everything goes on smoothly, there is no thinking. It is when there is conflict, when one does not know just what to do, when there is doubt, hesitancy, perplexity, that thought gets in its work. To overcome a disturbed situation within these life interests is the immediate motive to thought activity.

This thought activity involves consciousness. Habit, so far as it is automatic, takes care of itself, as it were. There is no need of consciously attending to its operations. But our entire conscious world, sensations, perceptions, conceptions, objects, images, ideas, that is, our entire physical world, in so far as that comes to consciousness, and our entire thought world—all have their existence in the thought-situation. All these things exist for me, if they exist for me at all, as conscious existences. When for any reason co-ordinations fail, the factors involved in the situation come to consciousness. It is difficult to see how there could be a sensation, a perception, or any object of thought, unless there were some need of attending to it. The presence of a sensation means the failure of given co-ordinations to meet conditions imposed upon them. The point of “fracture,” the point needing attention, is the point that will come most clearly into consciousness; it will be in the focus of attention. The other data will come to consciousness in so far as they are related to this disturbance, and especially, in so far as they may become means for the solution of the problem generated.

It was stated above that the physical world and the thought world exist in the thought-situation. The truth is that our experience, as it comes to consciousness in the thought-situation, polarizes into an “external” physical world and a “subjective” thought world. Certain data are looked upon as peculiar to the thinker and as having no existence outside his thought. Other data are believed to exist independent of and apart from the thinker. Still other data are uncertain and doubtful. One has not yet determined whether to regard them as really true or as merely subjective. The possible shifting of this third class of data gives the clue to the interpretation of all. A doubtful datum may come to be regarded, with further experience, as a positive fact and true for all thinkers. The law of gravitation and other physical laws are instances of such data that have come to be regarded as absolute fact. On the other hand, doubtful facts may move in the other direction and be looked upon finally as mere ideas. But this is not all. What has been regarded as absolute fact may become doubtful and finally relegated to the realm of ideas. Or, what was thought to be mere idea becomes doubtful fact and finally is accepted as absolute existence. The criterion for the acceptance or rejection of a given datum as law or fact is a practical one. A law is valid because it is found to be unfailing in its operation. A fact is true because we can always count upon it; we have learned how to react toward it. So long as it meets the practical demands made upon it, it is a fixture. In so far as it fails, we modify our conception of it and it ceases to be for us just what it was. The whole meaning of “object” and “subject,” of “fact” and “idea,” of “physical” and “mental,” is determined by the character of our experience; and as this experience is being continually added to, as new content is being continually experienced, so the interpretation of any datum is liable to shift in the getting of a new point of view.

It is believed that the above exposition, so far as it goes, is true to the general thought of the logical theory from the standpoint of which this paper is written. There are certain characteristics that ought to be discussed. First is the category of activity.

Change, activity, development, are fundamentai to this theory of logic. Activity appears as tendencies to action, a striving to pass beyond present conditions and limitations. The word “impulse’’ is sometimes used to express this fundamental tendency to movement. Everyone recognizes that the basic characteristic of reflex action, instinct, desires, motives, and the will is the impulse to act. But, because so often thought does not immediately terminate in overt activity, one tends to overlook the impulsive character of the idea. It is now commonly agreed among psychologists that the idea is in its very nature impulsive. It is a tool for the furtherance of conduct. Professor James says, in discussing voluntary action: