DEWEY'S ETHICS: PHILOSOPHY OR SCIENCE?

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DEWEY’S ETHICS: PHILOSOPHY OR SCIENCE? Christine McCarthy College of Education University of Iowa

INTRODUCTION

In the contemporary discourse on the purposes of education, one often finds the claim that moral education is the education of most fundamental importance. Theorists of virtually every stripe join in the call for an educational system that aims at raising up the person who is “truly” educated, possessed of a laudable moral character, the virtuous person. But this very universality of agreement as to this educational goal should give us pause to wonder if there is, or even could be, any particular substance to so popular a notion. Could there be any particularized substantive account that, once identified, would not lead to the precipitous collapse of the apparently solid commitment to a moral, values, or character education? If not, are there adequate grounds for the selection of, and commitment to, a moral education program that lacks such auniversal acceptance, in apublic school system?

I will argue that, while no substantive program can meet the test of universal popular acceptability, there is a particular conceptualization that ought to be established in the public schools. Clearly, that curriculum would have to meet a stringent test. It must not only be worthy of promulgation, but worthy of promulgation via a governmentally sanctioned system, in the absence of universal popular acclaim. Such a curriculum would be defensible, if it were able to provide students with “moral knowledge,” or if it were able at least to equip students with the cognitive tools that would further their own searches for moral knowledge. The problem in developing such a curriculum is that there is no clear consensus that a concept of ”moral knowledge” even makes sense, never mind any agreement as to which particular beliefs might qualify as such. Nor do we find agreement as to the means by which such knowledge might be sought.

The problem - how to locate a “public-school-appropriate” moral education curriculum - is worth tackling, though, for it has significant practical implications. If one of the fundamental purposes of schooling is to inculcate virtue, and if a public school system because of its inherent governmental connections cannot appropriately serve this purpose, then it would seem that a full-scale privatization of the schooling function ought to be endorsed.

Enter John Dewey. Reading Dewey, one is confronted with frequent, and frequently offhand, allusions to a ”science” of ethics, an empirical approach to the study of ethical problems capable of producing a moral knowledge no less secure (although, of course, no more secure) than the knowledge produced by the more standard sciences. If the concept of a moral science can make sense, and if we were

EDUCATIONAL THEORY / Summer 1999 / Volume 49 / Number 3 0 1999 Board of Trustees / University of Illinois

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to make any sort of progress in developing it, then that new science, and new knowledge, given its scientific status, would constitute a curriculum that could be appropriately taught in the public schools.

Can Dewey be serious about the possibility of a moral science? And more to the point, could he be correct? Or is this just the chimerical nonsense of an unrecon- structed modernist? I will examine this possibility further, concluding in the end that in Dewey’s new science we do indeed find a moral education program for the public schools. I begin with an examination of the nature of Dewey’s empirical study of ethics, then attempt to reconcile the notion of an objective moral science, giving rise to a body of moral knowledge, with the apparently inconsistent notion of the human creation of value and the “determination” of values via human choices, a notion that is frequently considered “pragmatic.”

Finally, I will examine the advantages of adopting the Deweyan position, and some of the rather ominous alternatives to doing so, and explore the pedagogical implications of this view

DEWEY’S NEW SCIENCE

ITS DATA AND RELATION TO OTHER SCIENCES Of all the radical claims Dewey set out, his claims regarding the possibility of an

empirical scientific account of ethics stand out. In 1908, in Theory of theMoral Life, Dewey calls for the practice of a “reflective morality” that would build up, through the application of intelligence, into a “moral theory.” Such a theory would, he claims, be the counterpart of working theories in the standard sciences, and as such would be the start of a bona fide science of morality.

How was this reflective “working theory of morals” to be built up? Dewey’s model is clearly that of the standard sciences: “Moral as well as physical theory requires a body of dependable data, and a set of intelligible working hypotheses.”’ The data to be used in moral inquiry are extensive; they are, simply, the entire body of human experiences. Given that there has been a continuity in human experience, a theoretical account of moral life will be able to “look upon all the [moral] codes as possible data .... it will treat them as a storehouse of information and possible indications of what is now right and good” (TML, 23). Further moral data are to be found in the “more consciously elaborated material of legal history, judicial decisions and legislative activity” as well as in biographies, and in histories of every sort [TML, 231. The standard sciences themselves are to serve as another source of moral data. Particularly, ”biology, physiology, hygiene and medicine, psychology, psychiatry.. .statistics, sociology, economics, andpolitics,” the sciences most closely related to human life, are expected to be pertinent. Dewey writes, “[flor example, the

1. John Dewey, The Theory of the Moral Life (1908; reprint, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), 23. This book will be cited as TML in the text for all subsequent references,

CHRISTINE MCCARTHY is Assistant Professor in the College of Education, University of Iowa, 491 Lindquist Center North, Iowa City, IA 52242-1529. Her primary areas of scholarship are pragmatism, ethics, and critical thinking.

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discovery of the conditions and the consequences of health of body, personal and public.. .opens the way to a relatively new body of moral interests and responsibili- ties” (TML, 24). In short, we have a truly enonnous body of data for this ”science”; what we have long been lacking is the serious attempt to analyze that data.

What the ethical researcher is to look for in all these data are “the consequences of adopting this or that mode of conduct” (TML, 24). Examination of the consequences of human belief and action allows the recognition of such patterns as may exist, leading us to the recognition of general principles of moral action. Such empirically identified principles can serve, just as general principles in other sciences serve, to guide future practice successfully toward desired goals. Of equal importance, such principles make possible rational moral judgments as to the goals that ought to be desired. Through such inquiry, we gradually identify a body of moral knowledge having the objectivity characteristic of every body of scientific knowledge.

In 1949, some forty years later, and in one of his final works, “The Field of Value,” Dewey again clearly states the methodology of the scientific moral inquiry:

[M]y hypothesis is that the methods of inquiry in observation, formation, and test of theories that have proved effective and fertile in other fields, be employed in the value-field ....[ Sluch inquiry will be systematically directed (il to the conditions that at a given time determine the valuings that take place, and (iiJ to the consequences that actually follow from valuings determined by that sort of condtions.. . .there is nothing whatever that methodologically (qua judgment) marks off “value-judgments” from conclusions reached in astronomical, chemical, or biological inquiries.%

Clearly, in Dewey’s view, bona fide knowledge with respect to moral matters can be acquired, and it can be acquired by a straightforward process of scientific reasoning.

The moral science to be developed would fit in with, and indeed merge with, presently existing sciences, for so much of the proposed field’s primary data would come from these sciences:

If ethical theory requires, as one of its necessary conditions, ability to describe in terms of itself thesituation whichdemands moral judgment, any proposition, whether of mechanics, chemistry, geography, physiology, or history, which facilitates and guarantees the adequacy and truth of the description, becomes in virtue of that fact an important auxiliary of ethical science.

If there is to be a moral science, it is necessary that “the field of value,” namely, the area of study of the proposed science, be publicly accessible, open to inspection, and amenable to the wide and cooperative inquiry required of any science. And Dewey claims that this is in fact the case - that the field of value is a perfectly ordinary field of “observable space-time facts,“ which facts he terms value-fact~.~ Such value-facts are, simply, the facts of the particular natural behaviors of selection and rejection that can be called “caring-for.” Caring-for behaviors are readily observed in many animals; in human carings-for, however, we cross a qualitative threshold by adding to the caring the elements of foresight and purpose. Caring-for

2. John Dewey, “The Field of Value,” in The Later Works, vol. 16, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (1949; reprint, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 19891,355,357.

3. John Dewey, ”Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality,” The Middle Works, vol. 3, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), 34.

4. Dewey, “The Field of Value,” 345.

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behavior, plus the cognitive element of taking action for the purpose of achieving a foreseen end, is the characteristically human behavior of “valuing.”5 Because both the cognitive element and the affective element are observable elements of human behavior, the field of value remains a field fully accessible to empirical scientific study. Dewey expresses this in a surprisingly emphatic fashion. He writes, “Desires, interests, and environing conditions, as means, are modes of action, and hence are to be conceived in terms of energies, which are capable of reduction to homogeneous and comparable terms, theoretically capable of statement in terms of physical units.”h

The simple relation between a person-valuing and a thing-valued is not, however, what we are to investigate. Dewey’s scientific inquiry into ethics requires something just a bit more difficult, namely, the empirical investigation of all of the myriad relations in time-space that are relevant to the person-valuing and to the thing-valued. The relations to be stuhed are “plural.. .involving a variety of space- time connections of different things ... the connections in question are across spaces, times, things and persons” (TV, 348). So, not only is the fullest range of scientific inquiry applicable in ethics, it is required, if progress in developing an science of ethics is to be made.

Valuing is a behavior can be done well or poorly, and there is, for Dewey, a straightforward criterion that allows us to tell the difference: the quality of any valuing depends upon the quality of the inquiry that has been undertaken with respect to the relevant data. Given a criterion, it is possible for the individual to e- valuate with respect to particular valuations, which is to say, to make judgments about the truth-value of particular valuations.

How did “truth” get into the picture? Simply, valuations can be expressed in propositions, and those valuation-propositions have truth values. Statements of the form “x is better than y” or “action x ought to be taken” are true or false, just as are statements such as /’x is to the left of y” or “action x will lead to condition y.” Through a process of evaluation, in other words, inquiry into the truth-value of particular valuation-propositions, one attempts to improve upon a set of valuations. For example, if on examination one notices that “class-membership, irrational prejudice, dicta proceeding [from] those in possession of special prestige and/or superior power ... have operated to determine a given valuing” one may well conclude that a valuation so influenced is very likely to be in error (TV, 354). And thus, “[flrom the inquiry and its conclusion (judgment) a changed prizing.. .necessarily proceeds” (TV, 348). ITS JUDGMENTS ARE OBJECTIVE

In ”The Logic of Judgments of Practice,” 1916, Dewey argues that all moral judgments are ~bjective.~ This is because all moral judgments belong to the more

5. Ibid., 347.

6 . JohnDewey, TheoryofValuation(Chicago, Universityof Chicago Press, 1936), 53. This bookwill becited as TV in the text for all subsequent references. 7. John Dewey, ”The Logic of Judgments of Practice,” in Essays in Experimental Logic (New York: Dover Publications, 19161,335-442. This essay will be cited as LIP in the text for all subsequent references.

MCCARTHY Dewey’s Ethics 343

general class, ”judgments of practice.” And all judgments of practice are objective. Judgments of practice have the form: “M.N. should do thus and so; it is better wiser, more prudent, right, advisable, opportune, expedient, and so forth” (LIP, 335). These judgments, Dewey claims, differ in neither their “origin” nor “source” from other more ordinary judgments about empirical matters.

Practical judgments, and hence all moral judgments, do differ in several important respects from empirical judgments. First, all practical judgments are character- ized by the ”uncompletedness” of their subject matter. That is, some part of the objective situation that is targeted for judgment has not yet happened. A part of the situation under consideration is still in the future, and, hence, the situation is not yet ”determined.” The full situation being judged is thus, to use Dewey’s term, “indeterminate” (LJP, 337). That is to say, the object of judgment is not yet fixed, not yet a “done deal, “ not yet a matter of fact. Indeterminateness, which results entirely from the timespan of the situation under judgment, introduces into judgments of practice a complexity that is not found in other judgments.

Second, all judgments of practice are concerned with one’s deciding upon a course of action, oftentimes one‘s own. It does not follow from this, however, that practical judgments are fundamentally personal or subjective. A practical judgment is ”about one’s self only as it is a judgment about the situation in which one is included, and in which a multitude of other factors external to self are included” (LIP, 337). The facts about oneself in the situation are as fully objective as any other aspect of the situation. A third distinctive feature of the practical judgment is that “the proposition [itself] is a determining factor in the outcome” (LIP, 339). The proposition in question, that is, the judgment being made, is itself apart of the full situation, even though the proposition appears to be “about” the future completion of the situation. It is the acceptance of the proposition, “I should do X, ” that sets in motion the actions that serve to “determine” the situation, to cause it to develop in one way rat her than another.

The future state of affairs is thus not predetermined by the facts of the current situation. Nevertheless, it is clear that the determinate portions of the situation, that is, the past and the present, matter a great deal, as factors contributing to the final determination of the future situation. A clear and accurate statement of the given, present, “determined” factors is thus required in any inquiry whose conclusion is to be a practical judgment.

It is important to note that neither the unusual timeframe, nor the element of personal involvement, renders the practical judgment in any way nonobjective [LIP, 339). For Dewey, a judgment that some thing or event is a “value” is simply a special case of a practical judgment, sharing the objectivity characteristic of all practical judgments. “Value-objects” lor, more simply, “values”) are “simply objects as judged to possess a certain force within a situation temporally developing toward a determinate result” (LIP, 358-59). Certain factors thought to be the more important factors occurring in the situation may come to be termed values, and their importance as values is to be judged by the efficiencies the factors possess empirically.

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Moral inquiry is the attempt to find out about these factors, to learn something about their efficacies and connections. The body of knowledge produced by this inquiry makes possible “evaluation as a critical process.. .a process of inquiry for the determination of a good precisely similar to that which is undertaken in science in the determination of the nature of an event” (LJP, 358-59, emphasis added).

Note the potentially pernicious ambiguity that has emerged with respect to the term “determine.” The reflective activity, the “determination of a good,” has just been identified as a process parallel to that by which scientific inquiry “determines” the nature of an event. Through moral inquiry we determine, that is, we find out, whether a thing or action is in fact “good.” We make this sort of determination by figuring out, as best we can, the objective truth of the value claim. Though the terminology is deceptively close, this inquiry, by which we “determine the truth” of a moral claim, is clearly quite a different thing from those actions we take that result in the “determination of a situation.” In this latter sense, “determination” is a matter of fixing (settling, rendering determinate) that portion of a situation which originally had been future, and hence “indeterminate. ” This determination depends, in part, upon the decisions made, the actions taken. When we attempt through inquiry to determine the truth of a moral claim, however, that truth or falsity is entirely independent of the judgments we make about it, and entirely independent of the actions we take on the basis of our judgments. Error with respect to these judgments is thus a distinct possibility.

In short, we do not participate in “making a thing good’’ by m a h g the decision that itis good, by choosing it as avalue. Rather, ffgoodness” or “value” is an objective fact that is to be discovered by inquiry. We must make an empirical judgment as to what thosevalue-facts are. On that basis, we frame apractical judgment. Then, in the altogether ordinary way, by acting on that practical judgment, we participate in determining the future state of affairs.

We must also note the distinction Dewey brings out between (a) the immediate experience of valuing, and (b) the cognitive, intellectual activity of evaluating, in other words, assessing the value of such a valuing. This distinction “may be compared to that between eating something and investigating the food properties of the thing eaten”(LJP, 358-59). The latter is undertaken as a scientific inquiry, and the quality of the inquiry is to be judged by the canons of scientific experiment and theory development.

What can we conclude with respect to the “objectivity” of value judgments? It is clear that, consistently, Dewey takes value judgments to be as fully objective as are (other) scientific judgments: ff[V]alue-judgments are “objective” for the same reason that other judgments are accepted as valid - because, that is, they are verifiable by the hypothetico-inductive method.ffR The objective status of value judgments is critical, for without such an objectivity in morality, no intelligent guidance of human conduct is possible. Nor will it be possible to develop an acceptable, and yet substantive, approach to moral education in the public schools.

8. John Dewey, “Valuation judgments and Immediate Quality,” The Later Works, vol. 15, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Uinois University Press, 1989), 63.


ITS PRODUCT IS KNOWLEDGE

Were we to attempt to develop a scientific moral theory in the way Dewey Suggests, what product might we expect? The purpose of moral theory is to generate moral principles, which, though they begin as hypotheses, emerge eventually as a verified body of moral knowledge. Theory development proceeds when, facing a moral problem situation, the inquirer “search[es] for a reasonable principle by which to decide where the right really lies. In so doing he enters into the domain of moral theory” (TML, 5). Moral theory, however, “does not offer a table of commandments in a catechism in which answers are as definite as are the question.. . .It can render personal choice more intelligent, but it cannot take the place of personal decision” (TML, 7-8). Fortunately, what theory can do is far more important. A set of well- warranted moral principles will serve us, as do scientific laws, as objective tools to be used in future judgments.

Several allusions have been made, thus far, to “moral knowledge.’’ Is there such a thing? In Dewey’s view, moral knowledge is no more problematic than is any knowledge; “moral” knowledge is simply that knowledge which is useful in certain sorts of problems, in this case, moral problems. Moral knowledge is thus not knowledge belonging to some isolated realm of transcendental truths. Nor is moral knowledge in any w a y isolated from, nor even different than, our other knowledge, in other words, from knowledge simpliciter. Indeed, we have, in all knowledge, a knowledge that is, potentially, “moral knowledge.” Any knowledge whatsoever may come to have a moral significance, whenever it is “discovered to have a bearing on the common good” (TML, 144). For example, Dewey writes, “knowledge once technically confined to physics and chemistry is applied in industry and has an effect on the lives and happiness of individuals beyond all estimate.. . .The important point is that any restriction of moral knowledge and judgments to a definite realm necessarily limits our perception of moral significance” (TML, 144).

So, taking the term “moral knowledge” in this sense, do we at present have any? Yes, we do. Although we do not have a special “moral realm” of transcendental, or a priori, or “given,” knowledge, what we do have is an ordinary body of human knowledge, one that is continually increasing as more intimately interconnected networks of relations are discovered via scientific inve~tigation.~ And much, if not all, of this knowledge has moral significance. Hence, “there is no gulf dividing nonmoral knowledge from that which is truly moral” (TML, 144). So, if we have any knowledge at all, and if that knowledge has any relevance to human moral problems, we do have moral knowledge. Our problem, then, is, first, to recognize the natural and ordinary nature of moral knowledge, and to discover how, by what means, and under what conditions knowledge is gained, and then to increase, enrich, and extend our knowledge. Our second problem, of course (and hereinlies the greatest challenge) is to make use of that knowledge.

Indeed, Dewey writes that the greatest need in a scientifically advancing culture is “that the trahtional barriers between scientific and moral knowledge be broken

9.See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963).

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down, so that there will be organized and consecutive endeavor to use all available scientific knowledge for humane and social ends” (TML, 145). The educational implication of this interpretation is rather striking in its simplicity: “Moral education” turns out to be coextensive with the fullest possible scientific education. Hence, although the call to provide a moral education seems at first to be problematic, in this view it is no more problematic than would be a call to provide a full scientific education. This latter call (if indeed it exists today) seems to fall well within the mandate of a public school system, simply because there does exist a body of knowledge to be taught, both with respect to content and to processes of inquiry and validation. ITS PRINCPLES ARE GENERAL

What is the nature of the aforementioned “moral knowledge”! Can general moral truths, principles of wide applicability, become known? Or, is the ”knowledge” that we generate concerned only with describing particular connections existing among particular things or events? Precisely such a limitation to the “particulars” of concrete situations is frequently, and quite erroneously, thought to be definitive of any “pragmatic” moral theory. If a limitation to the particular were required, it would be sufficient to rule out entirely Dewey’s new “science” of ethics. This is because, for Dewey, it is precisely the identification of ”universals,” of principles, of general laws, that is necessary in scientific knowledge. In Deweyan pragmatic theory, “general ideas” with respect to value must and do exist. More important, at least some of these generals are warranted, verified as true. Such legitimate moral generalizations arise ”in the same way as valid general ideas arise in any subject” (TV, 44). General, universal, moral truths are sanctioned by empirical investigation of the conditions, and consequences, of occurrence of the events or things in question. We begin a moral inquiry, as any other, with an examination of particular occurrences. We do not end with the particular, however, because “problems for the most part fall into certain recurrent kinds.. .[so that] ... there are general principles which.. .operate.. .in an empirically regulative way in given cases” [W, 47). These general principles will emerge as the result of continued investigation, given three conditions: first, the investigationls) would have to be continued, extended in time and space; second, the possibility of locating such generalizations would have to be recognized; and third, the ongoing investigations would have to be matters of open public discourse, widely and thoroughly joined.

Once developed, “these general ideas are used as intellectual instrumentalities in judgment of particular cases as the latter arise” (TV, 44). In fact, Dewey argues repeatedly that such generals, which he also terms ”universals,” are precisely what is necessary for moral action: “[I]ndividualized ethical judgments require, for their control, generic propositions, which state a connection of relevant conditions in universal (or objective) form; and ... it is possible to direct inquiry so as to arrive at such universals.

10. John Dewey, “Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality,” The Middle Works, vol. 3., ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), 8.


ITS OBJECTIVE: DISCOVERING THE TRUE, REAL, FINAL, OR OBJECTIVE GOOD

Values are immediate, “primary” qualities that are experienced directly; they are “had.” With respect to these, “there is accordingly nothing to be said; they are what they are.”ll This well known observation by Dewey might seem a singularly unpromising basis for the new science of value. But, before becoming alarmed, we should note that this very same unpromising basis in the immediate and qualitative afflicts all of our sciences. There is no quality of any sort, moral or otherwise, that can be known. What can be known, and, indeed, all that can be known, are the relations that obtain among those qualitative events. Those relations are the objects of knowledge, the “what” that gets known. Reflective, critical, disciplined, cooperative inquiry into those relations - science - produces knowledge of them.

Value theory is no more, and no less, than a special case of such scientific inquiry. In this critical inquiry into values, Dewey would have us search for (take warning, for to some this next bit may sound profoundly non-Deweyan) we are to search for “the true, real, final, or objective good” (EN, 402). We would also try to discover the ”false, specious, illusory, showy, meretricious, le faux bon” (EN, 402). It may seem strangely nonpragmatic to find Dewey employing these terms. It is true that, when experienced immediately, qualitatively, these two different sorts of goods, (a) the “true” goods and (b) the “specious” goods, are quite indistinguishable. The adjectives fftrue” and “specious” can only legitimately be applied to “designate a difference instituted in critical judgment” (EN, 402). Evaluative terms such as these are simply not applicable to immediate experience of any sort. Nevertheless, we definitely can, and necessarily must, use these evaluative terms in moral theory, whenever we are engaged in the study of generative conditions and causal effects of immediate experience.

Can we be justified in concluding that some goods are really and objectively better than other goods? Dewey’s answer could scarcely be more amenable to misunderstanding. (Though I paraphrase, here, for effect.) Certainly not. No way. Never. We cannot ever be justified in such a conclusion. Unless. (And the “unless” here, clearly, is the operative word.) Dewey’s position is that we cannot be justified in holding that some goods are real or “true” goods, while others are merely meretricious or “false” goods, “unless there is something unique in the value, or goodness of reflection’’ (EN, 403). And Dewey proceeds to argue that there definitely is something unique in the value of reflection. And because reflection does have a unique value, we are in fact entitled to, and must, recognize the ominous and commitment-requiring distinction between real goods and spurious goods. Even more importantly, we can, potentially, identify the class, true or specious, to which any one of the multitude of immediately experienced goods actually belongs.

So, what is it that is unique about the value of reflection? Consider that ’,reflection” is the process by which we are able to discover sets of real connections that obtain among particular things or events. Given this, “the difference between

11. John Dewey, Experience and Nature (New York: Dover Publications, 1958), 396. This book will he cited as EN in the text for all subsequent references.

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genuine, valid, good [that which is still found good after reflection] and a counterfeit, specious good [that which would not be] ... is equivalent to [the difference] made by discovery of relationships, of conditions and consequences” (EN, 403). And what difference does this discovery do for us, with respect to value choice? It is clear when we consider that we engage in the reflective criticism, not just for fun, but “for the sake of instituting and perpetuating more enduring and extensive values.. .with a view to appraising the ‘real,’ that is the eventual, goodness of the thing in question” (EN, 403). It is only through reflection that we can accomplish this aim, that we can hope to act effectively with respect to the maintenance of any set of immehate values. The “unique value” of reflection is that it, and it alone, is actually conducive to the further reliable having of values. This is the criterion with respect to which somegoods, andnot others, “approve themselves” to reflection. Those that do are the subset of immediate goods that “steady, vitalize, and expand judgments in creation of new goods and conservation of old goods” (EN, 417). Only reflection can identify that subset, and hence, ”since reflection is the instrumentality of securing freer and more enduring goods, reflection is a unique intrinsic good” (EN, 406, emphasis added).

Hence, for Dewey at least, it is clear that reflected-upon goods are indeed “better than” those goods experienced as values, but not reflected upon. And the better and more reliable is the process of reflection, the better are the values produced. Given this evaluative criterion, when we set out to evaluate values we are able to form true propositions to the effect that one value is better than another, and thus, knowledge with respect to comparative values can be generated.

THE PLACE OF THE SUBJECTIVE IN VALUE-JUDGMENT WE “BRING VALUE INTO BEING”

Is it possible to reconcile the notion of a science of ethics generating bona fide moral knowledge with the often-heard Deweyan claim that it is we ourselves who, through our choices and actions, “bring value into being?” This notion, combined with Dewey‘s continual stress on the “objectivity“ of the called-for moral investigation, definitely presents something of apuzzle. The object being judged, Dewey notes carefully, is already, at the moment of investigation, thevery “means” that it is. That is, the object already has all of the objective connections that it has (though not, of course, all that it ever will have), regardless of anyone’s thoughts about that. So, in what sense can Dewey hold, simultaneously, that the “value” of the object in question is “indeterminate” ?

The answer appears to me to be that the scientific account of the object, the product of the inquiry that gives us the knowledge by which to assess the object as means, is not what is principally at issue in avalue-judgment. The scientific account of the object is a necessary but not a sufficient element in the value judgment. Recall that a value judgment is always of the character of a practical judgment, a judgment of “what to do.” “The question is not what the thing will do ... it is whether [or not] to perform the act which will actualize its potentiality” (LIP, 361). Given the fact that a thing is a better or worse means to one end or another, one must still, in making the value judgment, decide whether to employ it as such, thereby bringing into

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existence some particular determinate “completed” situation. It is in this sense that, until the decision to act is made, “value is indeterminate” (LIP, 361). This is a rather tricky point, and requires some further examination.

The objects that one examines in the course of deciding “what to do,” again, already have the particular traits and relations that they have; these traits of the objects are thus determinate, “given,” objective. These traits are “not affectedby the judgment. They exist” (LIP, 363). But, these given and wholly objective traits are not themselves the ”objects of [the act of] valuation; [rather,] they are data for a valuation” (LIP, 363). Dewey’s example: suppose that “cheapness” is a trait currently possessed by a suit. But, knowing this, one has still to decide upon the “value of cheapness” (LIP, 363, emphasis added). If the suit turns out to be made of shoddy material, this additional fact would not affect in any way the existing factual trait of ”cheapness.” But, it would very likely affect “the weight assigned that trait” (LIP, 364): “Value judged is not existential quality noted, but is the influence attached by judgment to agiven existentialquality”(LJP, 364). Torepeat: “value” is not aquality, among others, possessed by some present, existing object; rather, value is the weight assigned to the quality(ies) of the object.

To perform a valuation requires of one a decision to act in a certain way, cognitively, and perhaps in overt behavior, toward an object: “[V]alue and valuation fall within the universe of action; that [just] as welcoming, accepting, is an act, so valuation is a present act determining an act to be done, a present act taking place because the future act is uncertain and incomplete” (LIP, 366). The “efficiencies” of a thing, the potential of the thing as a means, is a given, determinate and open to scientific investigation. But, a thing’s efficiency cannot be identified with a thing’s “value.” For among the various relations of the object being judged is the power to move us to take action upon reflection. And while the result of that action can be predicted, it cannot be experienceduntil after the reflection takesplace and the result is observed, “discovered.” Value, prior to someone’s decision to use a thing, to employ its efficiencies, as a means to effect some determinate situation, is thus “indeterminate,” still future. For the “object” that is being judged to be a value is, to put it precisely, the future determinate situation. In this sense, the act of judging value is necessary to bring the value into existence, in a completely literal sense. We determine, through actions, the “next” state of affairs, by making value-judgments, and acting accordingly.

Note that the decision to use a particular means as such is in fact the decision to bring about the potential future state that the thing is a means to. So, the making of any value judgment is, simultaneously, a “determination” both of means and of end: “In this process, things get values - something they did not possess before, although they had their efficiencies” (LIP, 368).

KNOWLEDGE AS VALUE, BOTH IN SCIENCE AND IN MORALS For Dewey, “knowledge” is itself a matter of value - for coming to know is a

matter of determining what is ”good to believe.” Value theory subsumes epistemol- ogy. One generates knowledge by looking for the “[plroperties and relations that

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entitle an object to be found good in belief” [these relations] are causal, and hence found only by search into the antecedent and the eventual’’ (LIP, 405). It is a matter of fact that a particular belief is held, or that aparticular object is valued. But, “[wlhen the question is raised as to the ’real’ value of the object ... the appeal is to criticism, intelligence. And the court of appeal decides by the law of conditions and consequences” (LIP, 405). Such a reflected-upon belief, in marked contrast to beliefs that are immediately and non-reflectively experienced as good, does carry with it its “credentials,” which is to say, its warrant, or justification, as an object of belief. And here, again, we see the unique value of reflection operating to decide the question of the “better” belief.

Note the tight linking of the intellectual, the reflective, the cognitive, the judgment, with the determination of value-objects, and with knowledge of moral good:

The primary function of philosophy at present is to make it clear that there is no such difference as this [the traditional] division assumes between science, morals, andesthetics appreciation. All alike exhibit the difference between immediate goods casually occurring and immediate goods which have been reflectively determined by means of critical inquiry.. . .All cases [science, morals, esthetics] manifest the sarnc duality and present the same problem; that of embodying intelligence in action which shall convert casual natural goods, whose causes and effects are unknown, into goods valid for thought, right for conduct and cultivaed for appreciation (LJP, 407, emphasis added].

Philosophy is definitely not a “rival” of science - because the function of philosophy is to “appraise values by taking cognizance of their causes and consequences.” Dewey concludes that “the conclusions of science about matter-of-fact efficiencies of nature are its [philosophy’s] indispensable instruments.. .its road is the subject- matter of natural existence as science discovers and depicts it” (LJP, 408).

Dewey calls for a “scientific” criticism of what is immediately valued, as a means of discovering the real value of the moral beliefs one holds, the real moral status of the actions one takes:

Knlowledge, science, truth, is the method of criticizing beliefs. It is the method of determining right participation in beliefs on the part of personal factors ....[ Slcience is inherently an instrument of critically determining what is good and had in the way of acceptance and rejection (LIP, 423).

An aversion to science, as it is employedin this office, would be entirely appropriate, if, and only if, in fact “the personal is outside of nature” (LIP, 423). But this is not in fact the case - the “personal” is in and of nature. Facts that happen to be personal “are as realistic, as ‘objectively’ natural, as are the constituents of the object of cognitional experience [i.e., the object of knowledge, of science]” (LIP, 424).

It is true that we often regard individual beliefs as “existentially subjective, personal and private” (LIP, 424). We manage to “ignore the monstrous consequences” of this error, namely, a radical skepticism. With respect to moral beliefs, Dewey notes, we find ourselves unavoidably confronted with precisely those monstrous consequences. Taking moral beliefs to be existentially subjective, personal, and private, we conclude erroneously that moral knowledge must be impossible. And this means that with respect to morals, there can be no agreement as to the best, or even the better, beliefs. Since the subject matter of moral theories is

MCCARTHY Dewey's Ethics 351

taken, wrongly, to be "totally segregated from that of science.. .[and] assigned to independent non-participating realms of existence, the only possible method of achieving agreement has been exiled in advance" (LJP, 424).

The "only possible method" is the method of empirical inquiry into the causal relations, conditions, and consequences of the occurrence of various immediate goods. Having deprived ourselves of this, we should find it no surprise that entirely arbitrary "'standards' of value suddenly make their appearance.. .descend[ing] out of the blue," proclaimed as the means to "measure" and judge the various immediate goods (LfP, 425). For that judging task is essential, and some criteria must be found by which we can do that job.

Unfortunately, once scientific inquiry is segregated from the realm of ethics, we are shortly forced to admit that the "standardsN to which we perforce resort themselves have no warrant, being themselves only another case of "a particular liking, on the part of some particular subjective creature. If the liking for it conflicts with some other liking, the strongest wins. The question of which one should be the stronger is as meaningless as it would be in a cock-fight" (LIP, 425).

What is missing in this picture of nonscientific ethics is some objective method of inquiry that would allow warranted conclusions as to the real better value, better standard, better belief. The problem is that in this picture - ethics sans scientific empirical inquiry- "[tlhere is no question of false and true, of real and seeming, only of strongerandweaker"(LJP, 425). Andthis"puts anend to all attempt at consistency and organization', in moral theory - a consequence that could scarcely be worse.

EDUCATION AND A SCIENCE OF VALUE

WHAT MORAL SCIENCE IS NOT

expect of a moral science. Dewey specifies, early on, that Some caveats certainly are in order, with respect to what we can legitimately

Moral theory can [i) generalize the types of moral conflicts whch arise .... it can (iiJ state the leading ways in which such problems have been intellectually dealt with .... it can (iii) render personal reflection more systematic and enlightened, suggesting alternatives.. .stimulating greater consistency. But it does not offer a table of commandments in a catechism in which answers are as definite as are the questions .... The student who expects more from moral theory will be disappointed (TAIL, 7-8).

A second, and more seriously &sappointing caveat exists. Toward the end of Theory of Valuation, Dewey notes that the required knowledge base for the successful evaluation of valuations, for moral science, is not yet compiled. While we have an enormous body of raw data in human history, the lack of recognition of the potential use of this as data has seriously delayed the growth of the science. And, "in the absence of adequate and organized knowledge of human valuations as occurrences that have takenplace, it is a fortiori impossible that there be valid propositions formulating new valuations in terms of consequences of specified causal conditions" ITV, 59). That is to say, do not look for scientifically warranted general propositions, just yet. For, "in the field of human activities, there are at present an immense number of facts of desires and purposes, existing in rather complete isolation from one another. But there are no hypotheses of the same empirical order, which are

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capable of relating them to one another”(TV, 61). But the present lack of this science is, Dewey suggests, in part the predictable effect of the belief that no such science is possible, generated by the belief that “value” is, somehow, a non-natural quality, or even a thing existing in some transcendental realm of its own, that there is a realm of value that is separate from the ordinary realm of facts. And the absence of a valuation science is in part the effect of a predictable resistence to such inquiry based on “institutional and class interests” (TV, 63).

It is important to clarify what Dewey‘s approach is not. First, Dewey‘s approach does not require application of the single, simplified, cookbook “scientific method.” (Nor, of course, does any science.) Nor does it require any reduction of a value realm to a supposedly separate realm of “the material.” Indeed, that sort of requirement would be antithetical to Dewey’s fundamental position, that there in fact is no such dualistic split between the two so-called realms to begin with. However, it should also be noted that Dewey’s approach does not call for similar forms of experimenta- tion, or of instrumentation; rather, he expects that forms of controlled inquiry and inference suitable to the particular subject matter will be devised. THE ALTERNATIVES: THE EVALUATING OF VALUES OR “THE BASHING-IN OF HEADS”

It certainly may seem a bit hard to swallow, in these postmodern times, the notion that there can be a “ scientific” investigation into the field of value and hence morals, an inquiry that will lead to moral knowledge. But, when the alternatives are considered, the hope for such a thing rises. And Dewey sees some hope for the eventual acceptance of such an interpretation: For, “[tlhe fact that, in spite of conflicts, and unnecessary conflicts, there is not complete disorder [in human valuations] is proof that actually some degree of intellectual respect for existing conditions and consequences does operate as a control factor in formation of desires and valuations” (W, 56, emphasis added).

In 1945, Dewey wrote dismissively of the power and efficacy of the usual route to teaching moral goodness: “It is idle to suppose that exhortations , addressed chiefly to the emotions, will create subjection to abstract moral principles. The impotency of this method is evident; it has lost the support of the traditions, customs, and institutions which once gave it whatever efficacy it possessed.”12 Absent a scientific ethics, we are unlikely to find any rationally convincing ethics, This would seem to be the case, still, today. And, paradoxically, the absence of anything resembling a well-warranted moral knowledge, when perceived, only lends force to reactionary tendencies, and the urging upon us, ever more forcefully, of a return to the certainty of authority-sanctioned belief systems, with a continually increasing level of enforcement of the codes contained therein. It is a common concern that the very notion of a “moral knowledge“ would contribute to this trend. And indeed it would, ifwe were to identify “moral knowledge” with a “set of moral edxts,” handed down without justification from some sort of authority, and enforced by same. But this is the notion that is farthest removedfrom the picture sketchedhere. Moral knowledge,

12. John Dewey, “Dualism and the Split Atom: Science and Morals in the Atomic Age,” The Later Works, vol. 15, ed. Jo Ann Boydston [Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 19891, 201.

MCCAKTHY Dewey’s Ethics 353

like all knowledge, is susceptible to, and requires, a continuous testing, leading potentially to improvement, revision, and replacement of beliefs. It is the testing itself that allows the certification of a particular belief as ”known.” Knowing requires, not an authority’s pronouncement, but a free public discourse and the fullest possible open commitment to the testing of belief.

The chief characteristic of the ethical science approach, the focus on the discovery of the complex array of existential connections, is the focus on the evaluation of values in their simultaneous status as both means and ends. Without this attention to the whole, with means recognized as a significant part of the end, the scene is set for a non-critical devotion to “ends in and of themselves ...[ which are] not themselves capable of being subjected to inquiry and to measure of worth.”13 In this nonscientific view of the matter we must admit that, as Dewey puts it so well, “differences as to value can not be adjudicated or negotiated. They are just ultimate facts. In the frank words of one who has taken this [traditional] position, serious cases of ultimate difference can be settled, if at all, only by ‘bashing in of head^.""^

The basic claim that is advanced here perhaps will be seen as being a bit lor perhaps more than a bit) controversial. To reiterate: the only acceptable route to a consensus on ethical matters is the discovery of warranted principles of ethical action via a Deweyan scientific inquiry into the “conditions and consequences” of human actions, including the human action of deciding upon, and acting upon, beliefs about what is good. How is one to argue in support of such a claim? It is clear, certainly, that a whole host of other routes to consensus do exist. Yet these are here rejected in toto as ”unacceptable.” Does this not beg the very question? If, for instance, one were to accept a “consensus theory’’ of truth, including moral truth, one would find consensus itself, however achieved, to be sufficient to decide the issue, both with respect to substantive claims and to the criterion itself. Indeed, any system setting out a criterion of judgment, providing it is not so inconsistent as to rule its very own criterion out of the running, would necessarily rule itself in. It would seem true that no “view from nowhere,” no extra theoretical neutral position, no pou sto, is available to us. Claims about the acceptability of criteria of judgment, and especially of moral judgment, reduce, then, to simple matters of preference and unconstrained choice. And it would follow that no arguments with respect to such matters are relevant.

But, we need not end here, for there is indeed one neutral arbiter as to the quality of, andultimately, the truth of, belief. It is a test that is less than perfect, admittedly. It can provide “false positives” and ”false negatives, ” and it can be frustratingly silent, even when the results are most urgently required. Moreover, it seems to many to be just too mundane, too trite, to serve its purpose. Nevertheless, when one accepts a claim (when one judges it to be true), that claim will indicate some sort of difference in the state of the world, compared to what would have to be the case should that

13. Dewey, “The Field of Value,” 350. 14. John Dewey, “Some Questions About Value,” The Later Works, vol. 15, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 19891, 107.

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claim actually be false. (Claims that do not function in this way are clearly possible, and perhaps even make some sort of sense, but such claims simply, literally, do not matter, and belief or disbelief with respect to such claims “makes no difference.”) The state of affairs, then, is the neutral arbiter as to the merits of belief. Acting upon beliefs, carefully observing the results, and comparing the result to that anticipated, is the procedure by which one checks those beliefs against that neutral arbiter. At some degree of concentrated carefulness, one passes imperceptibly into a scientific inquiry.15 Several responses are possible:

1. “There is no ‘state of affairs.”’ Tlus I take to be too absurd to require rebuttal. 2. “Actions based on one belief as opposed to another may not actually give rise to detectable differences in the state of affairs.” This may often be the case, but, the less detectable the diff erence that a claim asserts about the world, the less one cares about the matter. 3. “Either there is no state of affairs with respect to value, or, statements asserting some such state of affairs, some facts about value, indicate no detectable difference in the world, and hence allow of no test via action.” Both previous answers seem still to apply, in the special case of value. It seems implausible, in adltion, that humankind would have been, and would still be, so highly concemedabout values, should this whole matter simply make no hfference. “I t doesn’t make any difference, what you believe, and how you act, with respect to values” seems to be a position endorsed by scarcely anyone. But perhaps it will be thought that knowledge is not to be had in ethics, and the

use of existing and currently developing knowledge is not the fundamental factor necessary for the making of warranted judgments of value. There are certainly numerous andvaried routes to such a position; rejecting the possibility of knowledge, or the notion of objective truth, or of mind-independent states of affairs will do the trick. But, the view that will be most commonly advanced in opposition, I believe, is the view that the moral realm is fundamentally noncognitive, that it is, rather, wholly affective in nature. Such views themselves are highly various, ranging from A. J. Ayer’s “emotivist,’ interpretation to the more contemporary “ethics of caring” view.16 An examination of the relative merits of the cognitivist view set out here and the various noncognitivist interpretations of ethics is certainly requiredj unfortunately that major task is just as certainly “beyond the scope” of the present piece, and must be reserved for the future.

SOME PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

Is this “science of ethics” necessary for justifying the teaching of ethics in a public school setting? One might claim that it is not, that there are substantive and

15. Questions regarding the nature of scientiflc “testing” and the potential of such testing to provide information useful in judging the quality of belicf, of course, are contentious. These issues cannot be addressed here as fully as they should be but constitute the topic of a subsequent study.

16. A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth andLog~c( 1946; reprint, New York Dover, 1952) andNelNoddings, Caring: A Feminzne Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).


traktional tenets of moral value and obligation that are in fact actually held in common by all members of our society, and that there are enough of these “common elements” to constitute a common public morality, a morality suitable for the curriculum of a public school system. That hopeful answer must be rejected, though, on two grounds. The first claim is that the allegedcommonality is mostly an illusion; the second, which is the more important claim, is that even where such agreement does in fact exist, the mere fact of agreement constitutes a very poor basis for a curriculum in moral education.

The first claim is that, suns a scientific ethics, it simply would not be possible to find any nontrivial set of agreed-upon standards. Consider, for example, a rather basic matter: We can all rally to the banner of “Family Values.” But what are they? What is the appropriate structure of the family? Ought there to be a hierarchical sex- based authority relation? Ought it have a heterosexual basis or would a homosexual structure be equally acceptable? Ought children be taught obedience or autonomy? Ought children be exposed to a wide range of influences or sheltered from them? And how ought one decide the appropriate stance, with respect to some particular influence? To what extent is there a public obligation to the children’s well-being? No sort of agreement on these matters seems apparent. We can agree, it seems, only that families should be ”strong,” and children ”valued.”

We do, of course, have many sets of accepted platitudes, and we may even find a general acceptance of moral and ethical principles, provided those principles are so vaguely stated as to be content-free, or so carefully qualified as to be tautologicali but beyond this, the “basics” that we currently share appear to be seriously limited. Dewey notes our limitation to the platitudes: “Justice: to be sure; give to each that whichis his due .... But ... what system ... is just?””Andonthatquestion, thesubstan- tive question, we find little or no agreement.

Moreover, “[u]niversal agreement upon the abstract principle [of, for example, the ”Golden Rule”] even if it existed would be Of Value Only as a Preliminary to cooperative undertaking of investigation and thou&tful planning.”18 Such an investigation would be required, if we are to say what the principle would require of US in practice.

The second point is that the teaching of the accepted values or virtues as moral truths, even in those limited cases where agreement exists, and even where that agreement does not reduce to a merely verbal assent to a set of platitudes, will tend to produce a highly undesirable state of mind. That state is a dogmatic fixity of belief, a cognitive state that isvery poorly suited to the real requirements of public problem- solving via democratic discourse. The inculcation of this sort of fixed belief system is not a legitimate purpose of a public education system, not even when the belief is as important as are ethical and moral beliefs, not even when the belief system in question is widely, or even universally, held within a population. In addition, limiting moral education to the teaching of “accepted” moral beliefs as moral truths

17. Dewey, “Some Questions about Value,” 21

18. Ibid.. 22.

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can only contribute to the belief that the fact of “acceptance” is the criterion of truth in moral matters. This in turn contributes to a disinclination to question seriously one’s existing moral beliefs, or those of one’s co-believers.

The chief pedagogical implication of a moral science is that we would have to reject the popular widely held notion that moral education is an effort to instill in the child good standards of action, or good moral habits. To do so would be merely to fix a so-called “morality” as a matter of thoughtless adherence to custom. We would have to reject the notion that moral education can be interpreted as the teaching of “accepted” standards of moral behavior for two reasons. First, the “thoughtless,” habitual approach is, in itself, destructive of the very impetus necessary to the process of moral inquiry. According to Dewey, ’‘moral theory cannot emerge when there is positive belief as to what is right and what is wrong, for then there is no occasion for reflection.. .only. ..a conflict of good ends and of standards and rules or right and wrong calls forth personal inquiry” (TML, 5). As in every inquiry, a condition of doubt, a perceived problem-situation, is the necessary context of thought.

A key aspect in moral development for Dewey is the fact of “habit” -which fact means that particular actions, once taken, “leave an enduring impress on the one who performs them” (TML, 13). But it is not so much the development of fixed “proper” habits that is required for moral education. Rather, it is the associated set of cognitive changes that is required. That is, the student of “moral education” should be brought to recognize the fact of habit, and to see the implications, particularly the negative implications, of that fact for the development of their own characters. So,

Moral development, in the training given by others and in the education one secures for oneself, consists in becoming aware that our acts are connected with one another; thereby an ideal of conduct is substituted for the blind and thoughtless performance of isolated acts (TML, 11) .

And what is this “conduct” that is to become the ideal? It is, simply, the “binding together of [individual] acts” into a sequence that “carries forward an underlying tendency and intent” (TML, 11). This leads to the formation of the individual‘s character. To take on a commitment to conduct as an ideal would be to require of oneself the careful judging of every act, to determine (to figure out, to discover) the act’s contribution, or lack thereof, to the development of one’s life. What would be outlawed would be random, thoughtless, impulsive acts; acts not undertaken with reflection as to their subsequent effects.

This view of a scientific ethics clearly requires the abjuration of “given” ends, of ”goods-in-themselvesf” of a priori ideals. It means that one cannot appropriately “teach values,” if by this is meant arranging for children to accept certain ends as “given” goods. And this applies to QZ canddates, no matter how obviously good. Kindness and honesty? Respect for persons? Consideration of others? Yes. These are to be questioned and evaluated. The ‘’basics” of moral virtue? Yes. Even the fact (should there be such a fact) that there are certain things that we all agree are virtuous, or are of value, even that consensus cannot justify the teaching of the thing as a given a priori value. What one is to teach, instead, is the process of evaluating values.

Dewey’s Ethics 357 MCCARTHY

There is another consideration. There exists (Iassert) a public obligation to teach such moral knowledge as may be had, just as there is an obligation to teach what is known in scientific matters, for example, evolution. And this obligation does not stem from any presumed degree of public acceptance. In the absence of a relatively well warranted body of knowledge, there is an obligation to teach the methods of public pursuit of that knowledge, carefully eschewing any attempt to inculcate beliefs sanctioned only by the fact of widespread acceptance. In short, with respect to moral education, it is a “science of ethics,” in the Deweyan sense, that is required for the public school curriculum.

Consider the alternative view, the nonscientific view, of ethics, and its implications for public education. On this view, if you are teaching “morals,” you are teaching, not a matter of science, nor a matter of bona fide knowledge, but merely a matter c.f “belief.” These different beliefs are held to be incommensurable. And nonverifiable. It is held not to be possible, even in theory, to evaluate comparatively different and conflicting beliefs, to assess their relative warrant and grounds to be believed. Hence, the beliefs selected to be taught are arbitrarily chosen, and thus unjustifiably taught. Or, alternatively, it is held that all beliefs must be taught, on an even basis - a charge that is both practically impossible and morally repugnant -for example, the teaching of white supremacist belief systems along with beliefs about equality of all persons, or perhaps the teaching of belief in the right of the male to dominate in interpersonal and societal settings along with the equality of the sexes.

Too, in this nonscientificview of ethics, moral beliefs are frequently held to arise hrectly out of a set of specific religious beliefs. This is their sole warrant - some form of revealed doctrine. In such a case, to teach morals in a substantive fashion requires the choice of, and teaching of, some particular religious view. Failure in the public schools to select and endorse openly a particular religious grounding for moral education merely stands as proof that an unacknowledged religion, a “secular religion,” is being employed. This is taken to be a “belief system,” the elements of which are warranted by the same sort of grounds that warrant ordinary religious belief.

This creates a dilemma: “We must teach morals in the schools. We can’t teach morals, ever, without teaching religious doctrine. We can’t teach religion in the public schools. Hence, we must privatize the public schools - which is to say, to support formerly private religiously based elementary and secondary schools with public funds.” This is a dead-end to the public schools that, perhaps, Dewey’s version of a science of ethics offers some hope of avoiding.

One final pedagogical implication is that an attempt to engage students in scientific inquiry in the problems of ethics would necessarily affect the teaching of all the sciences. For, as noted earlier, none of the sciences can be understood as isolated from any of the others. The moral curriculum would also be developed through studies of all sorts of human interactions and beliefs. So, history would have tremendous significance as would literature of all sorts. There being no particular ”moral realm” in which to sequester the moral curriculum, it would become clear

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to the student that there is a fundamental interrelation of all sorts of knowledge, arising from all processes of inquiry. Considerable emphasis would have to be placed upon the human, social, and personal consequences of the knowledge gleaned. Dewey, predictably, puts the case strongly, and it is appropriate that the final word should be his:

The idea that natural science has to do with an “external” world comes near to being the height of intellectual perversion and of moral ineptness, at a time when about every concrete fact in every phase of human life, along with every serious human problem, is what it is because of applications in human life of the conclusions of sciences that are alleged to be merely physical, while the scientific attitude and method are notable for their absence in connection with these affairs and problems.lY

19. John Dewey, “The Penning-In of Natural Science,” The Later Works, vol. 15, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 19891, 186.

DEWEY'S ETHICS: PHILOSOPHY OR SCIENCE?

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