more on Nature, Communication and Meaning

p. 132:  In communication "events turn into objects, things with a meaning."  Dewey then goes on in the opening paragraph to explore a variety of things that become available through this transformation.   The "objects" here are the means of communication....but obviously there's going to be a focus on "words in use".

pp. 132-33:  "By this fashion [which is the entire content of the first paragraph] qualitative immediacies [the sequence of moments had and to which we are awake] cease to be dumbly rapturous [in part, unspoken].     They become capable of survey, contemplation, and ideal or logical elaboration; 

when something can be said of qualities,  they are purveyors of instruction. 

Learning and teaching come into being, and there is no event which may not yield information. 

A directly enjoyed thing adds to itself meaning."  (Hence we describe our passions to each other and through that communication "add meaning" not only to the directly enjoyed things but to the act of communicating which as Dewey mentions carries "teaching-learning" as a transactional event.  In this respect Dave's chickens and his attention to language related to them was one of the best possible ED 5010 moments possible).   

Dewey in these opening paragraphs is making a significant transition from the fleeting but grasped moments of experience (experiences had)  to "giving them expression" or "description".   It happens through the actions of communication.   It is where histories and narratives are forged and created.   Which in turn become the instrumentalities by which we seem to relate most often to "the event".    


Just as with "history" and "science" one has to discard previous notions of what "communication" is to get the fullest sense of what Dewey means by it.   It includes verbal communication with words but that is only one part of what he means by it.   


p. 133:  "In view of these increments and transformations....

p. 137:  "Failure to recognize that [the] world of inner experience is dependent upon an extension of language which is a social product and operation led to the subjectivistic, solipsistic and egotistic strain in modern thought."

This is part of a important paragraph that critiques "modern philosophy".   But also refines his notion of "mind" which is something that emerges "in transaction" with the environment or world.   

p. 137:  "Language considered as an experienced event enables...."






"Language is always a form of action and in its instrumental use is always a means of concerted action for an end" (p. 144).

"there is no mode of action as fulfilling and as rewarding as is concerted consensus of action" (p. 145).

Meaning and communication were dependant on each other as they evolved in nature.  Throughout Dewey's fifth chapter, the importance of social interaction to the development of meaning is paramount.  "If we had not talked with others and they with us, we should never talk to and with ourselves" (p. 135).  He goes on, "Because of converse, social give and take, various organic attitudes become an assemblage of persons engaged in converse, conferring with one another, over-hearing unwelcome remarks, accusing and excusing.  Through speech a person dramatically identifies himself with potential acts and deeds; he plays many roles, not in successive stages of life but in contemporaneously enacted drama.  Thus mind emerges." (emphasis mine.)

p. 137:   "Language is a natural function of human association; and its consequences react upon other events, physical and human, giving them meaning or significance. Events that are objects or significant exist in a
context where they acquire new ways of operation and new properties."  


So "language" (in a larger sense "communication") becomes a bridging/connective means.   It is the medium through which we "create knowledge".  And "knowledge" in Dewey's use of it is the ability to convey meanings/significances from one event to another in a different context.   And as you point out later this function of "mind at work/play" is what creates his definition of "intelligence".


p. 138:  "When events have communicable meaning, they have marks, notations, and are capable of con-notation and de-notation."  


"The significant consideration is that assemblage of organic human beings transforms sequence
and coexistence into participation."  [emphasis mine]

Meaning and mind are social conditions of nature.   Dewey relates how natural movements and sounds in animals led to communication, "but they became language only when used within a context of mutual assistance and direction" (p. 139).  "The story of language is the story of the use made of these occurrences." These movements, like pointing and speaking in humans, operate through an object and an action, to allow the one being spoken to to see the object from the point of view of the speaker.  "He sees the thing as it may function in B's experience.  Such is the essence and import of communication, signs and meaning.  Something is literally made common in at least two different centres of behavior.  To understand is to anticipate together" (p. 141).

"Possession of the capacity to engage in such activity is intelligence" (p. 142).

With language perception becomes possible, instead of merely coming into contact with things, we can name and identify them, move them out of the world of immediate experience and into reflection.  "To perceive is to acknowledge unattained possibilities" (p. 143). Here we start to see Dewey's discussion of tools, means, ends, the useful arts, and now words coming together.

For several paragraphs Dewey gives us the forerunner of Wittgenstein's "primitive language games".   It's just that Dewey is too eager to explain them.   We get a bit tangled up and they are hard to read.   Wittgenstein just sets it up and you have to figure out his point in a "thought experiment" (or what Dewey calls "ideal or inner experimentation" in the first paragraph).  In other works (notably How We Think):  "dramatic rehearsal" as part of the process of thinking and problem solving.



p. 143:  "If we consider the form or scheme of the situation in which meaning and understanding occur, we find an involved simultaneous presence and cross-reference of immediacy and efficiency, overt actuality and potentiality, the consummatory and the instrumental."

Important statement here.  One which Wittgenstein wisely avoided by leaving "meaning" and "understanding" to the same fate as any other "word in use".   So he would not like what Dewey tried to do here.   However, in the situation of Dewey's use in this sentence I can get Wittgenstein's drift:

It's  not precise....but variously created in situations that are mediating between the immediate flow/grasp and the efficiency of assigning words; the brute nature of things happening and the possibilities or end results that are possible but not yet realized; the best statement or expression of an event judged against what will often be a narrower use of it.   


p. 144:  Discourse itself is both instrumental and consummatory."


And with language and meaning the idea of the essence rises.  I believe Dewey intersects with James and Wittgenstein here, "Essence...is but a pronounced instance of meaning; to be partial, and to assign a meaning to a thing as the meaning is but to evince human subjection to bias...Essence is never existence, and yet it is the essence, the distilled import, of existence...In it, feeling and understanding are one" (p. 144).  And more directly to Wittgenstein's family of relations, "Thus, the essence, one, immutable and constitutive, which makes the thing what it is, emerges from the various meanings which vary with conditions and transitory intents."

I think Dewey uses "essence" differently from what Wittgenstein seems to mean by his use of it.   Wittgenstein saw logic and grammar as forms of essentialism (opposed to words in ordinary or natural use and contexts).   Dewey it seems to me is getting at how "essence" has been part of traditional metaphysics.   I'm not sure on this and it's something perhaps we can talk about on Saturday....see if we can pry out some sense of his use.


What is more significant to me is the turn Dewey makes on p. 146 to discussion of "tools".   Now this does have a direct relation to Wittgenstein's early on paragraph about words in use as tools.


11. Think of the tools in atoolbox: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws.—The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects. (And in both cases there are similarities.)

pp. 149-50:  "The case is the same with the essence of any non-human event, like gravity, or virtue, or vertebrate. Some consequences of the interaction of things concern us; the consequences are not merely physical; they enter finally into human action and destiny. Fire burns and the burning is of moment. It enters experience; it is fascinating to watch swirling flames; it is important to avoid its dangers and to utilize its beneficial potencies.

 When we name an event, calling it fire, we speak proleptically; we do not name an immediate event; that is impossible. We employ a term of discourse; we invoke a meaning, namely, the potential consequences of the existence.

The ultimate meaning of the noise made by the traffic officer is the total consequent system of social behavior, in which individuals are subjected, by means of noise, to social coordination; its proximate meaning is a coordination of the movements of persons and vehicles in the neighborhood and directly affected. Similarly the ultimate meaning, or essence, denominated fire, is the consequences of certain natural events within the scheme of human activities, in the experience of social intercourse, the hearth and domestic altar, shared comfort, working of metals, rapid transit, and other such affairs.°

"Scientifically," we ignore these ulterior meanings. And quite properly; for when a sequential order of changes is determined, the final meaning in immediate enjoyments and appreciations is capable of control.

p. 152:  "This capacity of essences to enter readily into any number of new combinations, and thereby generate further meanings more profound and far reaching than those from which they sprang...."  Reminds me of the citation I made from Emerson's "Circles" the other day.


Once we have words and essences, their meanings can become independent of their original objects.  This happens through discourse, as humans use old meanings in new contexts.  These become logical systems of their own.  Dewey illustrates this point through the use of legal language, which conveys the essence of ideas which are not found in the objects in nature.  I think this discussion is a reference to justice and possibly to morals.

p. 157-8:  After a rather lengthy (possible) tangent:  Dewey comes around to the Machine Metaphor (also prominently in Wittgenstein) and a discussion of words in use/language.   Right now I'm imagining that Dewey sort of thought his way through the preceding discussions (legal, etc) to come to the notion of a "concept".  

132. We want to establish an order in our knowledge of the use of language: an order with a particular end in view; one out of many possible orders; not the order. To this end we shall constantly be giving prominence to distinctions which our ordinary forms of language easily make us overlook. This may make it look as if we saw it as our task to reform language.  

Such a reform for particular practical purposes, an improvement in our terminology designed to prevent misunderstandings in practice, is perfectly possible. But these are not the cases we have to do with. The confusions which occupy us arise when language is like an engine     idling  , not when it is doing work.

291. What we call "descriptions" are instruments for particular uses. Think of a  machine-drawing, a cross-section, an elevation with measurements, which an engineer has before him. Thinking of a description as a word-picture of the facts has something misleading about it: one tends to think only of such pictures as hang on our walls: which seem simply to portray how a thing looks, what it is like. (These pictures are as it were idle.) 

While I was finding these in W, I ran across Wittgenstein case examples or demonstration involving traffic cops etc.   I have always imagined that Wittgenstein read Dewey closely.   And this dip into E&N with you makes me think this is incredibly true.   They are different.  But I think a study like Goodman did for James/Wittgenstein could be made between Dewey in E&N and W in PI.  

I think this is also true of art, "art fixes those standards of enjoyment and appreciation with which other things are compared; it selects the objects of future desires; it stimulates effort.  This is true of the objects in which a particular person finds his immediate or esthetic values, and it is true of collective man" (p. 159).  Thus art, while not intentionally, is a critic of society.

p. 159:   "Communication is uniquely instrumental and uniquely final."   How many times has Dewey said this in slightly different ways?  Many it seems.    And each tinme with completely different considerations coming up after it.   So, I do think this is thematic for this chapter.  It is something commonly approached as a dualism or either/or in many cultures and also I suggest in the ways that we think now.   But Dewey wants the two positions to overlap situationally as in Venn Diagram; one that's spontaneously generated in order to represent eventfulness.   In this respect, I guess one can see Dewey's concern for essences as a fixing of meaning.   I would say myself, that "essence" is a provisional fixing sufficient to the conditions of moving ahead with a better grasp or linguistic representation of an event....calling it an event means that we have to see is as historically emergent.....that is part of the nature of all things.   


So I've been teasing out for myself Dewey's use of "essence" here, despite myself.