How We Think

Dewey, John 1910. How We Think. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co.

This scientific attitude of mind might, conceivably, be quite irrelevant to teaching children and youth. But this book also represents the conviction that such is not the case; that the native and unspoiled attitude of childhood, marked by ardent curiosity, fertile imagination, and love of experimental inquiry, is near, very near, to the attitude of the scientific mind. (Dewey 1910: iii)

What do children and science have in common?

In the first place thought is used broadly, not to say loosely. Everything that comes to mind, that "goes through our heads," is called a thought. To think of a thing is just to be conscious of it in any way whatsoever. Second, the term is restricted by excluding whatever is directly presented; we think (or think of) only such things as we do not directly see, hear, smell, or taste. Then, third, the meaning is further limited to beliefs that rest upon some kind of evidence or testimony. Of this third type, two kinds - or, rather, two degrees - must be discriminated. In some cases, a belief is accepted with slight or almost no attempt to state the grounds that support it. In other cases, the ground or basis for a belief is deliberately sought and its [|] adequacy to support the belief examined. This process is called reflective thought; it alone is truly educative in value, and it forms, accordingly, the principal subject of this volume. We shall now briefly describe each of the four senses. (Dewey 1910: 1-2)

Thus, "affirmations of some supremely obvious state of things" (PC 2.2) is not thinking on the grounds that the thing thought about is perceivable in the immediate environment. On "educative" see how communication models imply a teacher-student relation, one has information and the other will receive it.

In its loosest sense, thinking signifies everything that, as we say, is "in our heads" or that "goes through our minds." He who offers "a penny for your thoughts" does not expect to drive any great bargain. In calling the objects of his demand thoughts, he does not intend to ascribe to them dignity, consecutiveness, or truth. Any idle fancy, trivial recollection, or flitting impression will satisfy his demand. Daydreaming, building of castles in the air, that loose flux of casual and disconnected material that floats through our minds in relaxed moments are, in this random sense, thinking. More of our waking life than we should care to admit, even to ourselves, is likely to be whiled away in this inconsequential trifling with idle fancy and unsubstantial hope. (Dewey 1910: 2)

Hence "a flow of language, purposeless expressions of preference or aversion, accounts of irrelevant happenings, comments on what is perfectly obvious" (PC 5.1).

Now reflective thought is like this random coursing of things through the mind in that it consists of a succession of things thought of; but it is unlike, in that the mere chance occurrence of any chance "something or other" in an irregular sequence does not suffice. Reflection involves not simply a sequence of ideas, but a con-sequence - a consecutive ordering in such a way that [|] each determines the next as its proper outcome, while each in turn leans back on its predecessors. The successive portions of the reflective thought grow out of one another and support one another; they do not come and go in a medley. Each phase is a step from something to something - technically speaking, it is a term of thought. Each term leaves a deposit which is utilized in the next term. The stream or flow becomes a train, chain, or thread. (Dewey 1910: 2-3)

I noticed that somewhere Malinowski mentions consecutiveness. "Chance and idle thinking", in other words, don't form trains of thought but constitutes a medley ("a varied mixture of people or things").

The imaginative stories poured forth by children possess all degrees of internal congruity; some are disjointed, some are articulated. When connected, they simulate reflective thought; indeed, they usually occur in minds of logical capacity. These imaginative enterprises often precede thinking of the close-knit type of prepare the way for it. But they do not aim at knowledge, at belief about facts or in truths; and thereby they are marked off from reflective thought even when they most resemble it. Those who express such thoughts do not expect credence, but rather credit for a well-constructed plot or a well-arranged climax. They produce good stories, not - unless by chance - [|] knowledge. Such thoughts are an efflorescence of feeling; the enhancement of a mood or sentiment is their aim; congruity of emotion, their binding tie. (Dewey 1910: 3-4)

Note how closely Malinowski discusses narrative (story-telling) and phatic communion. In some sense the distinctions he draws between them are arbitrary - small talk very often includes story-telling.

Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends, constitutes reflective thought. Any one of the first three kinds of thought may elicit this type; but once begun, it is a conscious and voluntary effort to establish belief upon a firm basis of reasons. (Dewey 1910: 6)

It is amazing how compatible Dewey's remarks on the matter of reflective thinking are with Peirce's treatment of thinking.

Let us now reverse this operation; let us consider a rudimentary case of thinking, lying between careful examination of evidence and a mere irresponsible stream of fancies. A man is walking on a warm day. The sky was clear the last time he observed it; but presently he notes, while occupied primarily with other things, that the air is cooler. It occurs to him that it is probabl going to [|] rain; looking up, he sees a dark cloud between him and the sun, and he then quickens his steps. What, if anything, in such a situation can be called thought? Neither the act of walking nor the noting of the cold is a thought. Walking is one direction of activity; looking and noting are other modes of activity. The likelihood that it will rain is, however, something suggested. The pedestrian feels the cold; he thinks of clouds and a coming shower. (Dewey 1910: 6-7)

Again, a Peircean movement from Firstness to Thirdness. This, of course, skips Secondness, which is perhaps justified, seeing the complications involved with the "otherness" - what "resistance", indeed, does the cold and sight of clouds offer? In any case, it is remarkable how frequently something like "comments on weather" (PC 2.2) appear in my recent readings. Note also that Dewey develops the theory of suggestion.

The danger of rain, on the contrary, presents itself to us as a genuine possibility - as a possible fact of the same nature as the observed coolness. Put differently, we do not regard the cloud as meaning or indicating a face, but merely as suggesting it, while we do consider that the coolness may mean rain. In the first case, seeing an object, we just happen, as we say, to think of something else; in the second, we consider the possibility and nature of the connection between the object seen and the object suggested. The seen thing is regarded as in some way the ground or basis of belief in the suggested thing; it possesses the quality of evidence. (Dewey 1910: 7)

How is this different from semiosis?

This function by which one thing signifies or indicates another, and thereby leads us to consider how far one may be regarded as warrant for belief in the other, is, then, the central factor in all reflective or distinctively intellectual thinking. By calling up various situations to which such terms as signifies and indicates apply, the student will best realize for himself the actual facts denoted by the words reflective thought. Synonyms for these terms are: points to, tells of, betokens, prognosticates, represents, stands for, implies. We also say one thing portends another; is ominous of another, or a symptom of it, or a key to it, or (if the connection is quite obscure) that it gives a hint, clue, or intimation. (Dewey 1910: 8)

Sidemarked with "Various synonymous expressions for the function of signifying" or, in Peircean idiom, standing for, or, in Jakobsonian idiom, renvoi. Here, "neither the result of intellectual reflection, nor do they necessarily arouse reflection in the listener" (PC 6.4) finds a semiotic explanation: phatic communion is not an exchange of signs in the sense that the sender is not forming a train of thought and the receiver does not engage in interpretation. When Malinowski says that "language does not function here as a means of transmission of thought" (PC 6.5), he is contrasting his social function of language to Dewey's signifying function of language.

To expatiate upon the importance of thought would be absurd. The traditional definition of man as "the thinking animal" fixes thought as the essential difference between man and the brutes, - surely an important matter. More relevant to our purpose is the question how thought is important, for an answer to this question will throw light upon the kind of training thought requires if it is to subserve its end. (Dewey 1910: 14)

When McDougall writes that Providence has denied the higher faculty of reason to brutes (1916: 20-21), and when Malinowski affirms that "The aborigenes are not able to think exactly, and their beliefs do not possess any "exact meaning."" (1913: 213), the implication is an equivalence between savages and brutes, or aborigenes and animals. Empirical evidence does not bear this out but that's the sign of the times.

Thought affords the sole method of escape from purely impulsive or purely routine action. A being without capacity for thought is moved only by instincts and appetites, as these are called forth by outward conditions and by the inner state of the organism. A being thus moved is, as it were, pushed from behind. This is what we mean by the blind nature of brute actions. The agent does not see or foresee the end for which he is acting, nor the results produced by his behaving in one way rather than in another. He does not "know what he is about." Where there is thought, things present act as signs or tokens of things not yet experienced. A thinking being can, accordingly, act on the basis of the absent and the future. Instead of being pushed into a mode of action by the sheer urgency of forces, whether [|] instincts or habits, of which he is not aware, a reflective agent is drawn (to some extent at least) to action by some remoter object of which he is indirectly aware. (Dewey 1910: 14-15)

Again a nice congeniality with Peirce, as well as with Clay and his "self-denial" (practical life initiated and controlled by conscious mind). As to "the blind nature of brute actions" see "blind impulse" (McDougall 1916: 171). This "blindness" is a vivid metaphor but requires further examination. As to the in absentia and in futuro, these are the exact qualities Jakobson attributes to symbols, probably with good justification.

By thought man also develops and arranges artificial signs to remind him in advance of consequences, and of ways of securing and avoiding them. As the trait just mentioned makes the difference between savage man and brute, so this trait makes the difference between civilized man and savage. A savage who has been shipwrecked in a river may note certain things which [|] serve him as signs of danger in the future. But civilized man deliberately makes such signs; he sets up in advance of wreckage warning buoys, and builds lighthouses where he sees signs that such events may occur. A savage reads weather signs with great expertness; civilized man institutes a weather service by which signs are artificially secured and information is distributed in advance of the appearance of any signs that could be detected without special methods. A savage finds his way skillfully through a wilderness by reading certain obscure indications; civilized man builds a highway which shows the road to all. The savage learns to detect the signs of fire and thereby to invent methods of producing flame; civilized man invents permanent conditions for producing light and heat whenever they are needed. (Dewey 1910: 15-16)

Once again we see how Peirce's self-communication and Morris's self-conditioning collapse into each other. The illustrations offer, in some sense, an aspect of collective self-conditioning, though the difference between the savage and the civilized once again follows the line of thought afforded by a variant of "delayed gratification" that, paradoxically (if sticking to this metaphor) cuts short natural signs in favour of artificial sign mechanisms.

A chair is a different object to a being to whom it consciously suggests an opportunity for sitting down, repose, or sociable converse, from what it is to one to whom it presents itself merely as a thing to be smelled, or gnawed, or jumped over; a stone is different to one who knows something of its past history and its future use from what it is to one who only feels it directly through his senses. It is only by courtesy, indeed, that we can say that an unthinking animal experiences an object at all - so largely is anything that presents itself to us as an object made up by the qualities it possesses as a sign of other things. (Dewey 1910: 17)

Something of an amalgamation of Uexküllian Umwelten and Gibsonian affordances.

The signs of enemies, of shelter, of food, of the main social conditions, have to be correctly apprehended. (Dewey 1910: 20)

The "signs of enemies" called to mind "watching intently for the first low hint of a growl" (Trotter 1921: 119-120). Otherwise, this list of basic needs is not all that different from Trotter's instincts (self-preservation, nutrition, and sex), Shand's ends of sentiments (the love of power, the love of property, the love of reputation, the love of pleasure), and, a bit later down the line, Maslow's pyramid.

Both Bacon and Locke make it evident that over and above the sources of misbelief that reside in the natural tendencies of the individual (like those toward hasty and too far-reaching conclusions), social conditions tend to instigate and confirm wrong habits of thinking by authority, by conscious instruction, and by the even more insidious half-conscious influences of language, imitation, sympathy, and suggestion. (Dewey 1910: 25)

"The three most important of these pseudo-instincts, as they might be called, are suggestion, imitation, and sympathy" (McDougall 1916: 90-91). The fact that Dewey includes language in this list may very possibly hold a very significant theoretical kernel. All three are means of communication between an agent and a patient, and language fits rather neatly into the scheme, if it were not subsumed by suggestion.

With many, curiosity is arrested on the plane of interest in local gossip and in the fortunes of their neighbors; indeed, so unusual is this result that very often the first association with the word curiosity is a prying inquisitiveness into other people's business. (Dewey 1910: 33)

I've made notes on curiosity but this is the closest to Malinowski's understanding of gossip. Spot on.

Out of the subject-matter, whether rich or scanty, important or trivial, of present experience issue suggestions, ideas, beliefs as to what is not yet given. The function of suggestion is not one that can be produced by teaching; while it may be modified for better or worse by conditions, it cannot be destroyed. (Dewey 1910: 34)

Gossip is trivial. "Present experience" can be read as immediate environment.

Primarily, naturally, it is not we who think, in any actively responsible sense; thinking is rather something that happens in us. Only so far as one has acquired control of the method in which the function of suggestion occurs and has accepted responsibility for its consequences, can one truthfully say, "I think so and so." (Dewey 1910: 34)

"It's wrong to say: I think. Better to say: I am thought. [...] I is an other" (Rimbaud 1871: 100; in Macke 2008: 141).

We speak truly, in some cases, of the flood of suggestions; in others, there is but a slender trickle. (Dewey 1910: 35)

"A flow of language" vs. "a slender trickle".

A conclusion reached after consideration of a few alternatives may be formally correct, but it will not possess the fullness and richness of meaning of one arrived at after comparison of a greater variety of alternative suggestions. On the other hand, suggestions may be too numerous and too varied for the best interests of mental habit. So many suggestions may rise that the person is at a loss to select among them. He finds it difficult to reach any definite conclusion and wanders more or less helplessly among them. So much suggests itself pro and con, one thing leads on to another so naturally, that he finds it difficult to decide in practical affairs or to conclude in matters of theory. There is such a thing as too much thinking, as when action is paralized by the multiplicity, of views suggested by a situation. Or again, the very number of suggestions may be hostile to tracing logical sequences among them, for it may tempt the mind away from the necessary but trying task of search for real connections, into the more congenial occupation of embroidering upon the given facts a tissue of agreeable fancies. The best mental habit involves a balance between paucity and redundancy of suggestions. (Dewey 1910: 36)

A meta-theoretical insight. I am exactly at this point where I need to consider whether I've perhaps accumulated too much material for what might eventually end up a meagre clarification upon a widely held misconception. I'm quite happy with the fact that these recent readings constitute an interrelated network - these authors refer to each other, borrow each others terminology and insights, and develop them with their own interests in mind. But I am vexed by whether the material accumulated might not lead me to erroneous judgments due to an overflow of information. In what amount of detail, for example, should I treat of the sentiments, given that Malinowski glosses over them without making a true argument? I'm a bit afraid that if I were to explicate everything those damned four pages summarized, it would yield a tome no-one would have patience to read.

One man's thought is profound while another's is superficial; one goes to the roots of the matter, and another touches lightly its most external aspects. This phase of thinking is perhaps that most untaught of all, and the least amenable to external influence whether for improvement or harm. Nevertheless, the conditions of the pupil's contact with subject-matter may be such that he is compelled to come to quarters with its more significant features, or such that he is encouraged to deal with it upon the basis of what is trivial. The common assumptions that, if the pupil only thinks, one thought is just as good for his mental discipline as another, and that the end of study is the amassing of information, both tend to foster superficial, at the expense of significant, thought. Pupils who in matters of ordinary practical experience have a ready and acute perception of the difference between the significant and the meaningless, often reach in school subjects a point where all things seem equally important or equally unimportant; where one thing is just as likely to be true as another, and where intellectual effort is expended not in discriminating between things, but in trying to make verbal connections among words. (Dewey 1910: 37)

Superficial, insignificant, trivial, meaningless. Lack of depth or profundity.

Intellectual organization originates and for a time grows as an accompaniment of the organization of the acts required to realize an end, not as the result of a direct appeal to thinking power. The need of thinking to accomplish something beyond thinking is more potent than thinking for its own sake. All people at the outset, and the majority of people probably all their lives, attain ordering of thought through ordering of action. (Dewey 1910: 41)

The opposite of talking for the sake of talking.

The so-called faculty-psychology went hand in hand with the vogue of the formal-discipline idea in education. If thought is a distinct piece of mental machinery, separate from observation, memory, imagination, and common-sense judgments of persons and things, then thought should be trained by special exercises designed for the purpose, as one might devise special exercises for developing the biceps muscles. Certain subjects are then to be regarded as intellectual or logical subjects par excellence, possessed of a predestined fitness to exercise the thought-faculty, just as certain machines are better than others for developing arm power. (Dewey 1910: 45)

The primary folly of faculty psychology. Now looking forward to someone summarizing the follies of instinct psychology (e.g. Mace 1931?).

He needs to recognize that method covers not only what he intentionally devises and employs for the purpose of mental training, but also what he does without any conscious reference to it, - anything in the atmosphere and conduct of the school which reacts in any way upon the curiosity, the responsiveness, and the orderly activity of children. (Dewey 1910: 46)

Does conduct make atmosphere? If "Conduct is the behaviour of self-conscious and rational beings" (McDougall 1916: 353) then probably not.

As the child's response is toward or away from anything presented, he keeps up a running commentary, of which he himself is hardly distinctly aware, of like and dislike, of sympathy and aversion, not merely to the acts of the teacher, but also to the subject with which the teacher is occupied. (Dewey 1910: 48)

Thus, "purposeless expressions of preference or aversion, accounts of irrelevant happenings" (PC 5.1).

Most persons are quite unaware of the distinguishing peculiarities of their own mental habit. They take their own mental operations for granted, and unconsciously make them the standard for judging the mental processes of others. (Dewey 1910: 48b)

What is idiomorphizing?

The pupil is enjoined to do this and that specific thing, with no knowledge of any reason except that by so doing he gets his result most speedily; his mistakes are pointed out and corrected for him; he is kept at pure repetition of certain acts till they become automatic. (Dewey 1910: 51)

Phraseology.

Much the same sort of thing is to be said regarding studies where emphasis traditionally falls upon bulk and accuracy of information. The distinction between information and wisdom is old, and yet requires constantly to be redrawn. Information is knowledge which is merely acquired and stored up; wisdom is knowledge operating in the direction of powers to the better living of life. Information, merely as information, implies no special training of intellectual capacity; wisdom is the finest fruit of that training. In school, amassing information always tends to escape from the ideal of wisdom or good judgment. The aim often seems to be - especially in such a subject as geography - to make the pupil what has been called a "cyclopedia of useless information." (Dewey 1910: 52)

Information, turns out, is inert.

In this sense, the word logical is synonymous with wide-awake, thorough, and careful reflection - thought in its best sense (ante, p. 5). (Dewey 1910: 57)

"above, p. 5"

It is thought that there are certain steps arranged in a certain order, which expresses preëminently an understanding of the subject, and the pupil is made to "analyze" his procedure into these steps, i.e. to learn a certain routine formula of statement. (Dewey 1910: 60)

Phraseology.

At present, the notion is current that childhood is almost entirely unreflective - a period of mere sensory, motor, and memory development, while adolescence suddenly brings the manifestation of thought and reason. (Dewey 1910: 65)

Define:unreflective - "not engaged in or characterized by reflection or thought". Ironycally, my comment itself is unreflective. "Unreflective" has passed through these recent readings and I'm just noting down that this is thought of children as well as brutes and savages - in other words the whole set of language users ascribed with phaticity. Dewey is making me reflect on how unreflective my comments are.

Since suspended belief, or the postponement of a final conclusion pending further evidence, depends partly upon the presence of rival conjectures as to the best course of pursue or the probable explanation to favor, cultivation of a variety of alternative suggestions is an important factor in good thinking. (Dewey 1910: 75)

Phraseology for the etymological question.

There is thus a double movement in all reflection: a movement from the given partial and confused data to a suggested comprehensive (or inclusive) entire situation; and back from this suggested whole - which as suggested is a meaning, an idea - to the particular facts, so as to connect these with one another and with additional facts to which the suggestion has directed attention. Roughtly speaking, the first of these movements [|] is inductive; the second deductive. A complete act of thought involves both - it involves, that is, a fruitful interaction of observed (or recollected) particular considerations and of inclusive and far-reaching (general) meanings. (Dewey 1910: 79-80)

The movement from Firstness to Thirdness is inductive; movement from Thirdness to Firstness deductive. The comprehensive situation here is the equivalent of legisign.

The state of his room is perceived and is particular, definite, - exactly as it is; burglars are inferred, and have a general status. The state of the room is a fact, certain and speaking for itself; the presence of burglars is a possible meaning which may explain the facts. (Dewey 1910: 82)

Thus, "affirmations of some supremely obvious state of things" (PC 2.2) are superficial and superfluous because those things speak for themselves, they are self-evident. According to Trotter, there is already a community of knowledge about those facts.

Consider, for example, how a physician makes his diagnosis - his inductive interpretation. If he is scientifically trained, he suspends - postpones - reaching a conclusion in order that he may not be led by superficial occurrences into a snap judgment. Certain conspicuous phenomena may forcibly suggest typhoid, but he avoids a conclusion, or even any strong preference for this or that conclusion until he has greatly (i) enlarged the scope of his data, and (ii) rendered them more minute. (Dewey 1910: 85)

These two operations are equally present in my current research. In other words, it's another meta-theoretical insight.

In object lessons in elementary education and and in laboratory instruction in higher education, the subject is often so treated that the student fails to "see the forest on account of the trees." Things and their qualities are retailed and detailed, without reference to a more general character which they stand for and mean. (Dewey 1910: 97)

Define:retail - "relate or repeat (a story) in detail".

The final point of the deductive devices lies in their use in assimilating and comprehending individual cases. No one understands a general principle fully - no matter how adequately he can demonstrate it, to say nothing of repeating it - till he can employ it in the mastery of new situations, which, if they are new, differ in manifestation from the cases used in reaching the generalization. Too often the textbook or teacher is contended with a series of somewhat perfunctory examples and illustrations, and the student is not forced to carry the principle that he has formulated over into further cases of his own experience. In so far, the principle is inert and dead. (Dewey 1910: 99)

The opposite case, with similar results, is also possible: if a principle is given only a superficial interpretation it is easy enough to find endless further examples but these end up as perfunctory as the original.

This brings us to the question of ideas in relation to judgments. Something in an obscure situation [|] suggests something else as its meaning. If this meaning is at once accepted, there is no reflective thinking, no genuine judging. Thought is cut short uncritically; dogmatic belief, with all its attending risks, takes place. But if the meaning suggested is held in suspense, pending examination and inquiry, there is true judgment. We stop and think, we de-fer conclusion in order to in-fer more thoroughly. In this process of being only conditionally accepted, accepted only for examination, meanings become ideas. That is to say, an idea is a meaning that is tentatively entertained, formed, and used with reference to its fitness to decide a perplexing situation, - a meaning used as a tool of judgment. (Dewey 1910: 107-108)

Define:idea - "a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action". All this is heavily muddled. At the very least I can accept that unreflective thinking does not produce meaning; as to the relation between meaning and judgment, I shall have to postpone acceptance of the thesis.

Let us recur to our instance of a blur in motion appearing at a distance. We wonder what the thing is, i.e. what the blur means. A man waving his arms, a friend beckoning to us, are suggested as possibilities. To accept at once either alternative is to arrest judgment. But if we treat what is suggested as only a suggestion, a supposition, a possibility, it becomes an idea, having the following traits: (a) As merely a suggestion, it is a conjecture, a guess, which in cases of greater dignity we call a hypothesis or a theory. That is to say, it is a possible but as yet doubtful mode of interpretation. (b) Even though doubtful, it has an office to perform; namely, that of directing inquiry and examination. If this blur means a friend beckoning, then careful observation should show certain other traits. If it is a man driving unruly cattle, certain other traits should be found. (Dewey 1910: 108)

"Imagine yourself seeing at a distance a person who so affects your faculty of identification as to beget in you a faint opinion that he is your father, imagine that the opinion alternates for a time with the opposite opinion until, getting near to the object, you become certain that it is your father" (Clay 1881: 32).

As analysis is conceived to be a sort of picking to pieces, so synthesis is thought to be a sort of physical piecing together; and so imagined, it also becomes a mystery. In fact, synthesis takes place wherever we grasp the bearing of facts on a conclusion, or of a principle on facts. As analysis is emphasis, so synthesis is placing; the one causes the emphasized fact or property to stand out as significant; the other gives what is selected its context, or its connection with what is signified. (Dewey 1910: 114)

Hence why the referential function (connecting the sign with what is signified) is tied with the factor of context.

For one thing to mean, signify, betoken, indicate, or point to, another we saw at the outset to be the essential mark of thinking. To find out what facts, just as they stand, mean, is the object of all discovery; to find out what facts will carry out, substantiate, support a given meaning, is the object of all testing. When an inference reaches a satisfactory conclusion, we attain a goal of meaning. The act of judging involves both the growth and the application of meanings. (Dewey 1910: 116)

In other words, to arrive at a meaning there must be "a real doubt" (cf. Savan 1965: 37).

If a person comes suddenly into your room and calls out "Paper," various alternatives are possible. If you do not understand the English language, there is simply a noise which may or may not act as a physical stimulus [|] an irritant. But the noise is not an intellectual object; it does not have intellectual value. To say that you do not understand it and that it has no meaning are equivalents. If the cry is the usual accompaniment of the delivery of the morning paper, the sound will have meaning, intellectual content; you will understand it. Or if you are eagerly awaiting the receipt of some important document, you may assume that the cry means an announcement of its arrival. If (in the third place) you understand the English language, but no context suggests itself from your habits and expectations, the word has meaning, but not the whole event. You are then perplexed and incited to think out, to hunt for, some explanation of the apparently meaningless occurrence. If you find something that accounts for the performance, it gets meaning; you come to understand it. As intelligent beings, we presume the existence of meaning, and its absence is an anomaly. Hence, if it should turn out that the person merely meant to inform you that there was a scrap of paper on the sidewalk, or that paper excited somewhere in the universe, you would think him crazy or yourself the victim of a poor joke. The grasp a meaning, to understand, to identify a thing in a situation in which it is important, are thus equivalent terms; they express the nerves of our intellectual life. Without them there is (a) lack of intellectual content, or (b) intellectual confusion and perplexity, or else (c) intellectual perversion - nonsense, insanity. (Dewey 1910: 116-117)

Oddly similar to the illustration of a red gas bill (cf. Žegarac & Clark 1999).

All judgment, all reflective inference, presupposes some lack of understanding, a partial absence of meaning. We reflect in order that we may get hold of the full and adequate significance of what happens. Nevertheless, something must be already understood, the mind must be in possession of some meaning which it has mastered, or else thinking is impossible. (Dewey 1910: 119)

A real doubt.

Similarly, conceptions are general because of their use and application, not because of their ingredients. The view of the origin of conception in an impossible sort of analysis has as its counterpart the idea that the conception is made up out of all the like elements that remain after dissection of a number of individuals. Not so; the moment a meaning is gained, it is a working tool of further apprehensions, an instrument of understanding other things. Thereby the meaning is extended to cover them. Generality resides in application to the comprehension of new cases, not in constituent parts. A collection of traits left as the common residuum, the caput mortuum, of a million objects, would be merely a collection, an inventory or aggregate, not a general idea; a striking trait emphasized in any one experience which then served to help undrestand some one other experience, would become, in virtue of that service of application, in so far general. Synthesis is not a matter of mechanical addition, but of application of something discovered in one case to bring other cases into line. (Dewey 1910: 129)

In this sense, phatic communion is general, as discussed above. At the core of it is incommunicability. The folly consists in "very cleverly" applying it on phenomena naturally uncommunicative (e.g. fountains). That is, communicationalize something and identify its dysfunction - ingenious!

A constant source of misunderstanding and mistake is indefiniteness of meaning. Through vagueness of [|] meaning we misunderstand other people, things, and ourselves; through its ambiguity we distort and pervert. Conscious distortion of meaning may be enjoyed as nonsense; erroneous meanings, if clear-cut, may be followed up and got rid of. But vague meanings are too gelatinous to offer matter for analysis, and too pulpy to afford support to other beliefs. They evade testing and responsibility. Vagueness disguises the unconscious mixing together of different meanings, and facilitates the substitution of one meaning for another, and covers up the failure to have any precise meaning at all. It is the aboriginal logical sin - the source from which flow most bad intellectual consequences. Totally to eliminate indefiniteness is impossible; to reduce it in extent and in froce requires sincerity and vigor. (Dewey 1910: 129-130)

"Gelatinous" here could very well describe the ignored portions of PC, which are vague because they have lost their original context (McDougall, Durkheim, Shand, and Trotter).

The maxim enjoined upon teachers, "to proceed from the concrete to the abstract," is perhaps familiar rather than comprehended. Few who read and hear it gain a clear conception of the starting-point, the concrete; of the nature of the goal, the abstract; and of the exact nature of the path to be traversed in going from one to the other. At times the injunction is positively misunderstood, being taken to mean that education should advance from things to thought - as if any dealing with things in which thinking is not involved could possibly be educative. So understood, the maxim encourages mechanical routine or sensuous excitation at one end of the educational scale - the lower - and academic and unapplied learning at the upper end. (Dewey 1910: 135)

"Traditionally, the word concrete characterizes a material object, something that can be perceived by at least one of our senses" (Buyssens 1988: 191), and abstract a part or quality, something akin to general law, for example this concrete table, and "what is common to all tables" (ibid, 192). In broad outline this follows advanging from things to thought, yes, but the misconception about how this should apply to teaching is unique to Dewey and his particular interest towards thinking in the context of education. Buyssens, too, has his particular interest in the minutiae of language philosophy. This distinction, on the whole, seems to be so abstract and heuristic that it cammon be exemplified without stumbling upon the explicator's own thesic affections.

Yet the maxim has a meaning which, understood and supplemented, states the line of development of logical capacity. What is this signification? Concrete denotes a meaning definitely marked off from other meanings so that it is readily apprehended by itself. When we hear the words, table, chair, stove, coat, we do not have to reflect in order to grasp what is meant. The terms convey meaning so directly that no effort at translating is needed. The meanings of some terms and things, however, are grasped only by first calling to mind more familiar things and then tracing out connections between them and what we do not understand. Roughly speaking, the former kind of meanings is concrete; the latter abstract. (Dewey 1910: 136)

Apt. On the object level I have the concrete side of phatic communion - a type of languaging that is not the outcome and does not arouse reflection, does not require translation or interpretation; in other words, the social automatism of language in greetings and small talk. On the meta-level I have the terminological invention, phatic communion - an abstract signifier that's poorly understood and requires finding concrete illustrations and using common speech equivalent (small talk, chit chat) to call instances or examples into mind. The theoretical side of phatic communion in Malinowski's formulation is rarely visited with any thoroughness; only portions are quoted from it often, and a proportionally overwhelming part of it is completely neglected, neven even mentioned, possibly because it appears to be "mostly nonsense, linguistically, psychologically, psychiatrically, and anthropologically" (La Barre 1954: 349). Once again, this situation is largely so due to Malinowski obfuscating his sources, divorcing his "invention" from those who gave it its substance. In a broader theoretical context phatic communion represents a line of thinking in social psychology that is no longer affordable to social science, it is formulated in an antiquated metalanguage and bears many marks of nationalist and supremacists over-, and undertones. Had his diary been translated a mere decade earlier, "phatic" might have gone the way of "ratiocination" and "anœtic sentience" instead of littering my inbox with a Google Scholar Alert with 10 new results every few days.

The difference as noted is purely relative to the intellectual progress of an individual; what is abstract [|] at one period of growth is concrete at another; or even the contrary, as one finds that things supposed to be thoroughly familiar involve strange factors and unsolved problems. (Dewey 1910: 136-137)

"Lotman rõhutab seal muuhulgas semiootika kuulumist tavaliste teaduste hulka, kusjuures selle "tavalisuse" juurde kuulub ka püüd avastada selgetes ja lihtsates asjades arusaamatuid ja keerulisi aspekte" (Torop 2010: 10-12; minu rõhk).

We are acquainted with a thing (or it is familiar to us) when we have so much to do with it that its strange and unexpected concerns are rubbed off. The necessities of social intercourse convey to adults a like concreteness upon such terms as taxes, elections, wages, the law, and so on. Things the meaning of which I personally do not take in directly, appliances of cook, carpenter, or weaver, for example, are nevertheless unhesitatingly classed as concrete, since they are so directly connected with out common social life. (Dewey 1910: 137)

Are social intercourse and social life equivalent?

By contrast, the abstract is the theoretical, or that not intimately associated with practical concerns. The abstract thinker (the man of pure science as he is sometimes called) deliberately abstracts from application in life; that is, he leaves practical uses out of account. This, however, is a merely negative statement. What remains when connections with use and application are excluded? Evidently only what has to do with knowing considered as an end in itself. Many notions of science [|] are abstract, not only because they cannot be understood without a long apprenticeship in the science (which is equally true of technical matters in the arts), but also because the whole content of their meaning has been framed for the sole purpose of facilitating further knowledge, inquiry, and speculation. When thinking is used as a means to some end, good, or value beyond itself, it is concrete; when it is employed simply as a means to more thinking, it is abstract. To a theorist an idea is adequate and self-contained just because it engages and rewards thought; to a medical practitioner, an engineer, an artist, a merchant, a politician, it is complete only when employed in the furthering of some interest in life - health, wealth, beauty, goodness, success, or what you will. (Dewey 1910: 147-148)

That is, "the lover of knowledge [desires] intellectual conscientiousness, impartiality, and exactitude" (Shand 1914: 113). I finally figured out how to use this contrapoint, the reflexiveness of thought vs speech. It can be employed to characterise the differing ends of an ethnographer and the native informant. The ends of practical uses of thought are not that different from all the social sentiments, e.g. "the love of power, the love of property, the love of reputation, the love of pleasure" (Shand 1914: 206).

For the great majority of men under ordinary circumstances, the practical exigencies of life are almost, if not quite, coercive. Their main business is the proper conduct of their affairs. (Dewey 1910: 138)

By coincidence I was just thinking of how to connect PC with power. It is implicit here that the social life and intercourse of common people depends much on the proper navigation of the social world in a manner that avoids direct coercion. Proper conduct, that is, amounts to self-censorship.

Power in action requires some largeness and imaginativeness of vision. Men must at least have enough interest in thinking for the sake of thinking to escape the limit of routine and custom. Interest in knowledge for the sake of knowledge, in thinking for the sake of the free play of thought, is necessary then to the emancipation of practical life - to make it rich and progressive. (Dewey 1910: 139)

By analogy, social automatism can enrich life if it yields to good conversation and creates new social bonds of union. Free and aimless conversation can be an escape from idleness, for example.

Appropriate continuous occupations or activities involve the use of natural materials, tools, modes of energy, and do it in a way that compels thinking as to what they mean, how they are related to one another and to the realization of ends; while the mere isolated presentation of things remains barren and dead. A few generations ago the great obstacle in the way of reform of primary education was belief in the almost magical efficacy of the symbols of language (including number) to produce mental training; at present, belief in the efficacy of objects just as objects, blocks the way. (Dewey 1910: 140)

Against superficiality. Simultaneously, use of language is not automatically a transmission of ideas.

The outcome, the abstract to which education is to proceed, is an interest in intellectual matters for their own sake, a delight in thinking for the sake of thinking. It is an old story that acts and processes which at the outset are incidental to something else develop and maintain an absorbing value of their own. So it is with thinking and with knowledge; at first incidental to results and adjustments beyond themselves, they attract more and more attention to themselves till they become ends, not means. Children engage, unconstrainedly and continually, in reflective inspection and testing for the sake of what they are interested in doing successfully. (Dewey 1910: 141)

Old story indeed, as something becomes "divorced from the practical ends [and] are exercised merely for their own sake" (Shand 1914: 290). I am happy that I haven't undertaken writing about this process of functional autonomization on the basis of Malinowski's publications only, because so many earlier instances would have been uncluded, exformed. It is one of those modes of thought that go waay back.

Engineers, lawyers, doctors, merchants, are much more numerous in adult life than scholars, scientists, and philosophers. (Dewey 1910: 143)

A ratio that can reverse in the coming age of leisure when automation takes over the former fields and humans will be left with the latter. If nothing else, it is a constant source of utopian visions and hope to imagine such a future. There will be no such thing as overspecialization. There will be people who dedicate years upon years towards making sense of something extremely minute and trivial; that is, there will be a before unseen mass of such people. Occupations and practical matters will be to them machines' work; they would dig the archives of human knowledge and lay tribute upon the ingenuity of our sapient species.

When men lived in the open and got their living by hunting, fishing, or [|] pasturing flocks, the detection of the signs and indications of weather changes was a matter of great importance. A body of proverbs and maxims, forming an extensive section of traditionary folklore, was developed. But as long as there was no understanding why or how certain events were signs, as long as foresight and weather shrewdness rested simply upon repeated conjunction among facts, beliefs about the weather were thoroughly empirical. (Dewey 1910: 145-146)

A familiar enough note about the importance of weather. The promising part of it is the mechanization of semiosis, to borrow from above, that human beings create artificial means to take control of such realities. In my own utopian visions this includes the control of weather, whether by "doming" cities and dwellings or regulating natural forces beyond capabilities currently imaginable.

Our beliefs about human nature in individuals (psychology) and is masses (sociology) are still very largely of a purely empirical sort. (Dewey 1910: 146)

I recal A. R. asking the difference between psychology and sociology, which I gave as a correlation between interest in the behaviour of individuals and the actions of groups. Not that far off the mark but I may be beautifying it in hindsight.

The technical designation for one of the commonest fallacies is post hoc, ergo propter hoc; the belief that because one thing comes after another, it comes because of the other. (Dewey 1910: 147)

A fallacy I've committed numerous times with regard to publication dates, whereas later on I've discovered more complex interrelations and more pertinent antecedents. Chronology is not a reliable indicator of unidirectional influence. Correlation does not imply causation.

But even the most reliable beliefs of this type fail when they confront the novel. Since they rest upon past uniformities, they are useless when further experience departs in any considerable measure from ancient incident and wonted precedent. Empirical inference follows the grooves and ruts that custom wears, and has no track to follow when the groove disappears. (Dewey 1910: 148)

Here Dewey appears to invoke William James's metaphor of vinyl record groove for habits.

Beliefs that perhaps originally were the products of fairly extensive and careful observation are stereotyped into fixed traditions and semisacred dogmas accepted simply upon authority, and are mixed with fantastic conceptions that happen to have won the acceptance of authorities. (Dewey 1910: 149)

Where the traditions of the herd meet the production of knowledge.

One of these facts, the weight of the atmosphere, is then selectively seized upon as the key to the entire phenomenon. (Dewey 1910: 152)

Phraseology for making discussion of social atmosphere more vivid. What is the weight of small talk?

The empirical method says, "Wait till there is a sufficient number of cases;" the experimental method says, "Produce the cases." The former depends upon nature's accidentally happening to present us with certain conjunctions of circumstances; the latter deliberately and intentionally endeavors to bring about the conjunction. (Dewey 1910: 154)

I'll have to remember this distinction because I tend to conflate empirical, analytical, experimental, and positivist in different measures. Roughly, on the very theoretical level I'm operating, the empirical method would be to read on and hoping to discover what else I might have missed, and experimental would be to do some thinking myself and lead already sure arguments to their logical ends, whatever they appear to be at the moment.

Customary experience tends to the control of thinking by considerations of direct and immediate strength rather than by those of importance in the long run. Animals without the power of forecast and planning must, upon the whole, respond to the stimuli that are most urgent at themoment, or cease to exist. These stimuli lose nothing of their direct urgency and clamorous insistency when the thinking power develops; and yet thinking [|] demands the subordination of the immediate stimulus to the remote and distant. The feeble and the minute may be of much greater importance than the glaring and the big. The latter my be signs of a force that is already exhausting itself; the former may indicate the beginnings of a process in which the whole fortune of the individual is involved. The prime necessity for scientific thought is that the thinker be freed from the tyranny of sense stimuli and habit, and this emancipation is also the necessary condition of progress. (Dewey 1910: 154-155)

Symbols are used to predict the future, as noted above; "delayed gratification" is involved. I might need to add Levi-Bruhl to my reading list. Attending to the immediately perceived stimuli of ongoing processes is "barbarian's work", suitable for brutes and savages but not to the ideational civilized Übermensch, whose science accurately predicts the future. I still don't know how to excise this image from the discussion of PC - this worldview taints the theory.

In connection with parents, nurse, brother, and sister, the child learns the signs of satisfaction of hunger, of removal of discomfort, of the approach of agreeable light, color, sound, and so on. His contact with physical things is regulated by persons, and he soon distinguishes persons as the most important and interesting of all the objects with which he has to do. Speech, the accurate adaptation of sounds heard to the movements of tongue and lips, is, however, the great instrument of social adpatation; and with the development of speech (usually in the second year) adptation of the baby's activities to and with those of other persons gives the keynote of mental life. (Dewey 1910: 159)

Getting Meadian again.

Imitation is one (though only one, see p. 47) of the means by which the activities of adults supply stimuli which are so interesting, so varied, so complex, and so novel, as to occasion a rapid progress of thought. Mere imitation, however, would not give rise to thinking; if we could learn like parrots by simply copying the outward acts of others, we should never have to think; nor should we know, after we had mastered the copied act, what was the meaning of the thing we had done. Educators (and psychologists) have often assumed that acts which reproduce the behavior of others are acquired merely by imitation. But a child rarely learns by conscious imitation; and to say that his imitation is unconscious is to say that it is not from his standpoint imitation at all. The word, the gesture, the act, the occupation of another, falls in line with some impulse already active and suggests some satisfactory mode of expression, some end in which it may find fulfillment. Having this end of his own, the child then notes other persons, as he notes natural events, to get further suggestions as to means of its realization. (Dewey 1910: 160)

Imitation is indeed one, but in McDougall it has to do with bodily action, whereas the communication of ideas proceeds through "suggestion" (as with feelings and sympathy). The really remarkable thing is that this gives credence for my idea of treating Dewey's "fourth" in that series, language, under the guise of Jakobson's "imputed similarity". I should be more surprised that talking birds are illustrative of perfunctory use of language. What Dewey says about children's imitation on the other hand appears to fall into the same pit as Lamarkians did, assuming that some traits are inheritable which now seem very dubitable. A faint anticipation of Chomsky's deep structure is in the air.

When things become signs, when they gain a representative capacity as standing for other things, play is transformed from mere physical exuberance into an activity involving a mental factor. A little girl who had broken her doll was seen to perform with the leg of the doll all the operations of washing, putting to bed, and fondling, that she had been accustomed to perform with the entire doll. The part stood for the whole; she reacted not to the stimulus sensibly present, but to the meaning suggested by the sense object. So children use a stone for a table, leaves for plates, acorns for cups. So they use their dolls, their trains, their blocks, their other toys. In manipulating them, they are living not with the physical things, but in the large world of meanings, natural and social, evoked by these things. So when children play horse, play store, play house or making calls, they are subordinating the physically present to the ideally signified. In this way, a world of meanings, a store of concepts (so fundamental to all intellectual achievement), is defined and built up. (Dewey 1910: 161)

Semiotic reality or semiosphere?

Moreover, not only do meanings thus become familiar acquaintances, but they are organized, arranged in groups, made to cohere in connected ways. A play and a store blend insensibly into each other. The most fanciful plays of children rarely lose all touch with the mutual fitness and pertinency of various meanings to one another; the "freest" plays observe some principles of coherence and unification. They have a beginning, middle, and end. In games, rules of order run through various minor acts and bind them into a connected whole. The rhythm, the competition, and coöperation involved in most plays and games also introduce organization. (Dewey 1910: 162)

Signs organize reality? The statement about the rules of the game could become profound if there was certitude to Malinowski's influence on Wittgenstein.

Playfulness is a more important consideration than play. The former is an attitude of mind; the latter is a passing outward manifestation of this attitude. When things are treated simply as vehicles of suggestion, what is suggested overrides the thing. Hence the playful attitude is one of freedom. The person is not bound to the physical traits of things, nor does he care whether a thing really means (as we say) what he takes it to represent. (Dewey 1910: 162)

"Are words in Phatic Communion used primarily to convey meaning, the meaning which is symbolically theirs?" (PC 6.3) - Thus far only Dewey has given real substance to this part of the argument. When the referential function lapses, the thing - speech as a mode of action - overrides what ever is suggested by the "mental factor" or representation suggested. Tere loses its connection with health (tervis) and becomes a meaningless greeting.

What is work - work not as mere external performance, [|] but as attitude of mind? It signifies that the person is not content longer to accept and to act upon the meanings that things suggest, but demand congruity of meaning with the things themselves. In the natural course of growth, children come to find irresponsible make-believe plays inadequate. A fiction is too easy a way out to afford content. There is not enough stimulus to call forth satisfactory mental response. When this point is reached, the ideas that things suggest must be applied to the things with some regard to fitness. (Dewey 1910: 162-163)

A semiotic definition of work? What? Where this could turn useful is Uexküll's Umwelt to give more substance to Wirk. Contained in this is the implication that our human species specific Umwelt, unlike, or at least more so than, that of other living beings, we can organize our environment; i.e. instead of looking at the sky and feeling the cold, we open a weather app and get accurate information about the physical atmosphere outside our artificial caves called houses (wouldn't a careful examination of human Umwelten be an experiment in estrangement, defamiliarization, остранение?).

The point of this distinction between play and work may be cleared up by comparing it with a more usual way of stating the difference. In play activity, it is said, the interest is in the activity for its own sake; in work, it is in the product or result in which the activity terminates. Hence the former is purely free, while the latter is tied down by the end to be achieved. When the difference is states in this sharp fashion, there is almost always introduced a false, unnatural separation between process and product, between activity and its achieved outcome. The true distinction is not between an interest in activity for its own sake and interest in the external result of that activity, but between an interest in an activity just as it flows on from moment to moment, and an interest in an activity as tending to a culmination, to an outcome, and therefore possessing a thread of continuity binding together its successive stages. Both may equally exemplify interest in an activity "for its own sake"; but in one case the activity in which the interest resides is more or less casual, following the accident of circumstance and whim, or of dictation; in the other, the activity is enriched by the sense that it leads somewhere, that it amounts to something. (Dewey 1910: 164)

Consummation! I'm so thankful I haven't written about futility to any great extent yet - this passage sets autonomy and the means-ends model in an orderly relief unlike anything I've read thus far.

Just as the opponents of play in education always conceive of play as mere amusement, so the opponents of direct and useful activities confuse occupation with labor. The adult is acquainted with responsible labor upon which serious financial results depend. Consequently he seeks relief, relaxation, amusement. Unless children have prematurely worked for hire, unless they have come under the blight of child labor, no such division exists for them. Whatever appeals to them at all, appeals directly on its own account. There is no contrast between doing things for utility and for fun. Their life is more united and more wholesome. To suppose that activities customarily performed by adults only under the pressure of utility may not be done perfectly freely and joyously by children indicates a lack of imagintaion. Not the thing done but the quality of mind that goes into the doing settles what is utilitarian and what is constrained and educative. (Dewey 1910: 167)

In what way are savages childlike? The fact that Malinowski subsumed most of tribal life and labour under something like playfulness or, Dorothy Lee (1940, 1950) would put it, futility.

In turn, modern industry is almost wholly a matter of applied science; year by year the domain of routine and crude empiricism is narrowed by the translation of scientific discovery into industrial invention. The trolley, the telephone, the electric light, the steam engine, with all their revolutionary consequences for social intercourse and control, are the fruits of science. (Dewey 1910: 168)

The same goes for social media. We've already seen its effects on social intercourse but, as "Exploring the Utility of Memes for U.S. Government Influence Campaigns" (Zamek, McBride & Hammerberg 2018) shows, is only beginning to be understood as a means of social control (one may object to the conflation of memes and social media but that study is about DARPA's new initiative SMISC, Social Media in Strategic Communications).

Seech has such a peculiarly intimate connection with thought as to require special discussion. Although the very word logic comes from logos (λόγος), meaning indifferently both word or speech, and thought or reason, yet "words, words, words" denote intellectual barrenness, a sham of thought. Although schooling has language as its chief instrument (and often as its chief matter) of study, educational reformers have for centuries brought their severest indictments against the current use of language in the schools. The conviction that language is necessary to thinking (is even identical with it) is met by the contention that language perverts and conceals thought. (Dewey 1910: 170)

This is why "The case of language used in free, aimless, social intercourse requires special consideration" (PC 1.1). "Words may be used to record and conceal" (Lecky 1955: 29).

Three typical views have been maintained regarding the relation of thought and language: first, that they are identical; second, that words are the garb or clothing of thought, necessary not for thought but only for conveying it; and third (the view we shall here maintain) that while language is not thought it is necessary for thinking as well as for its communication. When it is said, however, that thinking is impossible without language, we must recall that language includes much more than oral and written speech. Gestures, pictures, monuments, visual images, finger movements - anything consciously [|] employed as a sign is, logically, language. To say that language is necessary for thinking is to say that signs are necessary. Thought deals not with dare things, but with their meanings, their suggestions; and meanings, in order to be apprehended, must be embodied in sensible and particular existences. Without meaning, things are nothing but blind stimuli or chance sources of pleasure and pain; and since meanings are not themselves tangible things, they must be anchored by attachment to some physical existence. Existences that are especially set aside to fixate and convey meanings are signs or symbols. If a man moves toward another to throw him out of the room, his movement is not a sign. If, however, the man points to the door with his hand, or utters the sound go, his movement is reduced to a vehicle of meaning: it is a sign or symbol. In the case of signs we care nothing for what they are in themselves, but everything for what they signify and represent. Canis, hund, chien, dog - it makes no difference what the outward thing is, so long as the meaning is presented. (Dewey 1910: 170-171)

Peirceans would concur. The illustration (throwing someone out) concurs with the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic coding (cf. Ekman & Friesen 1969). How could I make use of this to counterpose go with "Don't go!"?

Their production is under our direct control so that they may be produced when needed. When we can make the word rain, we do not have to wait for some physical forerunner of rain to call out thoughts in that direction. (Dewey 1910: 172)

"It rains."

Individual Meanings. A verbal sign (a) selects, detaches, a meaning from what is otherwise a vague flux and blur; (b) it retains, registers, stores that meaning; and (c) applies it, when needed, to the comprehension of other things. Combining these various functions in a mixture of metaphors, we may say that a linguistic sign is a fence, a label, and a vehicle - all in one. (Dewey 1910: 173)

De Saussure's "vague uncharted nebula".

Every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account. When Emerson said that he would almost rather know the true name, the poet's name, for a thing, than to know the thing itself, he presumably had this irradiating and illuminating function of language in mind. (Dewey 1910: 173)

I've noticed people online expressing their joy at finding out that there's a label, "phatic communion", for this common experience.

Moreover, there is a tendency to assume that whenever there is a definite word or form of speech there is also a definite idea; while, as a matter of fact, adults and children alike are capable of using even precise verbal formulæ [|] with only the vaguest and most confused sense of what they mean. Genuine ignorance is more profitable because likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open-mindedness; while ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with a varnish waterproof to new ideas. (Dewey 1910: 177)

That is to say, "set phrases" are not necessarily tied to a definite idea (cf. Gardiner 1932: 46).

Again, although new combinations of words without the intervention of physical things may supply new ideas, there are limits to this possibility. Lazy inertness causes individuals to accept ideas that have currency about them without personal inquiry and testing. A man uses thought, perhaps, to find out what others believe, and then stops. The ideas of others as embodied in language become substitutes for one's own ideas. (Dewey 1910: 177)

An unreflective use of language; is this a transmission of ideas or something else?

Finally, words that originally stood for ideas come, with repeated use, to be mere counters; they become physical things to be manipulated according to certain rules, or reacted to be certain operations without consciousness of their meaning. Mr. Stout (who has called such terms "substitute signs") remarks that "algebraical and arithmetical signs are to a great extent used as mere substitute signs. [...] It is possible to use signs of this kind whenever fixed and definite rules of operation [|] can be derived from the nature of the things symbolized, so as to be applied in manipulating the signs, without further reference to their signification. A word is an instrument for thinking about the meaning which it expresses; a substitute sign is a means of not thinking about the meaning which it symbolizes." The principle applies, however, to ordinary words, as well as to algebraic signs; they also enable us to use meanings so as to get results without thinking. In many respects, signs that are means of not thinking are of great advantage; standing for the familiar, they release attention for meanings that, being novel, require conscious interpretation. Nevertheless, the premium put in the schoolroom upon attainment of technical facility, upon skill in producing external results, often changes this advantage into a positive detriment. In manipulating symbols so as to recite well, to get and give correct answers, to follow prescribed formulæ of analysin, the pupil's attitude becomes mechanical, rather than thoughtful; verbal memorizing is substituted for inquiry into the meaning of things. (Dewey 1910: 177-178)

Mechanization and post-language symbols. The thinking is exactly that of "social automatism": habituation is useful because it facilitates conservation of energy for the novel.

The common statement that "language is the epression [|] of thought" conveys only a half-truth, and a half-truth that is likely to result in positive error. Language does express thought, but not primarily, nor, at first, even consciously. The primary motive for language is to influence (through the expression of desire, emotion, and thought) the activity of others; its secondary use is to enter into more intimate sociable relations with them; its employment as a conscious vehicle of thought and knowledge is a tertiary, and relatively late, formation. The contrast is well brought out by the statement of John Locke that words have a dobule use, - "civil" and "philosophical." "By their civil use, I mean such a communictaion of thoughts and ideas by words as may serve for the upholding of common conversation and commerce about the ordinary affairs and conveniences of civil life. [...] By the philosophical use of words, I mean such a use of them as may serve to convey the precise notions of things, and to express in general propositions certain and undoubted truths." (Dewey 1910: 178-179)

Amazing. When Malinowski writes about the intellectual use of language being a higher and later development, this must be what he was referring to. Absolutely incredible discovery.

The distinction of the practical and social from the intellectual use of language throws much light on the problem of the school in respect to speech. That problem is to direct pupils' oral and written speech, used primarily for practical and social ends, so that gradually it shall become a conscious tool of conveying knowledge and assisting thought. How without checking the spontaneous, natural motives - motives to which language owes its vitality, force, vividness, and variety - are we to modigy speech habits so as to render them accurate and flexible intellectual instruments? It is comparatively easy to encourage the original spontaneous flow and not make language over into a servant of reflective thought; it is comparatively easy to check and [|] almost destroy (so far as the schoolroom is concerned) native aim and interest, and to set up artificial and formal modes of expression in some isolated and technical matters. (Dewey 1910: 179-180)

Aand we're back to this. Whereas Russian formalists distinguished between practical and literary language, here we have practical and intellectual, plus social.

Enlargement of vocabulary. This takes place, of course, by wider intelligent contact with things and persons, and also vicariously, by gathering the meanings of words from the context in which they are heard or read. (Dewey 1910: 180)

Elaborating vicariousness.

While a limited vocabulary may be due to a limited range of experience, to a sphere of contact with persons and things so narrow as not to suggest or require a full store of words, it is also due to carelessness and vagueness. A happy-go-lucky frame of mind makes the individual averse to clear discriminations, either in perception or in his own speech. Words are used loosely in an indeterminate kind of reference to things, and the mind approaches a condition where practically everything is just a thing-um-bob or a what-do-you-call-it. (Dewey 1910: 181)

Another tirade against loose thinking.

We must note also the great difference between flow of words and command of language. Volubility is not necessarily a sign of a large vocabulary; much talking or even ready speech is quite compatible with moving round and roundin a circle of moderate radius. (Dewey 1910: 181)

Is "a flow of language" contrasted with a command of words? Note that "purposeless expressions of preference or aversion, accounts of irrelevant happenings, comments on what is perfectly obvious" are exactly what one may readily move round and round of.

Accuracy of vocabulary. One way in which the fund of words and concepts is increased is by discovering and naming shades of meaning - that is to say, by making the vocabulary more precise. Increase in definiteness is as important relatively as in the enlargement of the capital stock absolutely. (Dewey 1910: 182)

Phraseology for the etymological task.

Such vagueness tends to persist and to become a barrier to the advance of thinking. Terms that are miscellaneous in scope are clumsy tools at best; in addition they are frequently treacherous, for their ambiguous reference causes us to confuse things that should be distinguished. (Dewey 1910: 182)

Pretty much the exact situation with phatic communion; modern researchers don't understand Malinowski's vague archaic language and put forth definitions that go against what he wrote (e.g. on the matter sympathy).

The term vernacular, now meaning mother speech, has been generalized from the word verna, meaning a slave born in the master's household. (Dewey 1910: 183)

I will never see this word the same way again.

All persons have a natural desire - akin to curiosity - for a widening of their range of acquaintance with persons and things. The sign in art galleries that forbids the carrying of canes and umbrellas is obvious testimony to the fact that simply to see is not enough for many people; there is a feeling of lack of acquaintance until some direct contact is made. This demand for fuller and closer knowledge is quite different from any conscious interest in observation for its own sake. Desire for expansion, for "self-realization," is its motive. The interest is sympathetic, socially and æsthetically sympathetic, rather than cognitive. While the interest is especially keen in children (because their actual experience is so small and their possible experience so large), it still characterizes adults when routine has not blunted its edge. This sympathetic interest provides the medium for carrying and binding together what would otherwise be a multitude of items, diverse, disconnected, and of no intellectual use. (Dewey 1910: 189)

At first sight it looked to be heading towards what "makes the mere presence of others a necessity for man" (PC 3.3), but the use of "sympathetic" is odd here, pertaining more to the aesthetic rather than moral use of the word.

Material should be supplied by way of stimulus, not with dogmatic finality and rigidity. When pupils get the notion that any field of study has been definitely surveyed, that knowledge about it is exhaustive and final, they may continue decile pupils, but they cease to be students. All thinking whatsoever - so be it is thinking - contains a phase of originality. This originality does not imply that the student's conclusion varies from the conclusions of others, much less that it is a radically novel conclusion. His originality is not incompatible with large use of materials and suggestions contributed by others. Originality means personal interest in the question, personal initiative in turning over the suggestions furnished by others, and sincerity in following them out to a tested conclusion. Literally, the phrase "Think for yourself" is tautological; any thinking is thinking for one's self. (Dewey 1910: 198)

Recall that "it was Malinowski's practice "to have works read to and discussed with him"" (Firth; in Symmons-Symonolewicz 1958: 67).

The material furnished by way of information should be relevant to a question that is vital in the student's own experience. What has been said about the evil of observations that begin and end in themselves may be transferred without change to communicated learning. Instruction in subject-matter that does not fit into any problem already stirring in the student's own experience, or that is not presented in such a way as to arouse a problem, is worse than useless for intellectual purposes. In that it fails to enter into any process of reflection, it is useless; in that it remains in the mind as so much lumber and débris, it is a barrier, an obstruction in the way of effective thinking when a problem arises. (Dewey 1910: 199)

A real doubt, again. In my own experience, I've noticed how the problem I'm working on at the time colours everything I read and comment. Some of these problems have become so ingrained that it takes little effort to switch to an earlier problem if something I read offers a hint of solution. Recently, I've been thinking about what I'm going to deal with next, after I'm done with phaticity. Ideally, it should be connected to my earlier interests enough to offer continuity. This is so, I thik, because phaticity appears to be coming to a close - what else is there to discover?

In comparing, the mind does not naturally begin with objects a, b, c, d, and try to find the respect in which they agree. It begins with a single object or situation more or less vague and inchoate in meaning, and makes excursions to other objects in order to render understanding of the central object consistent and clear. The mere multiplication of objects of comparison is adverse to successful reasoning. Each fact brought within the field of comparison should clear up some obscure feature or extend some fragmentary trait of the primary object. (Dewey 1910: 210)

A practicable suggestion for the next phase in my research on phaticity.

A true conception is a moving idea, and it seeks outlet, or application to the interpretation of particulars and the guidance of action, as naturally as water runs downhill. In fine, just as reflective thought requires particular facts of observation and events of action for its origination, so it also requires particular facts and deeds for its own consummation. "Glittering generalities" are inert because they are spurious. Application is as much an intrinsic part of genuine reflective inquiry as is alert observation or reasoning itself. (Dewey 1910: 213)

Define:spurious - "not being what it purports to be; false or fake"; "(of a line of reasoning) apparently but not actually valid"; "(of offspring) illegitimate". (Cf. PC 2.3)

It is significant that one meaning of the term understood is something so thoroughly mastered, so completely agreed upon, as to be assumed; that is to say, taken as a matter of course without explicit statement. The familiar "goes without saying" means "it is understood." If two persons can converse intelligently with each other, it is because a common experience supplies a background of mutual understanding upon which their respective remarks are projected. To dig up and to formulate this common background would be imbecile; it is "understood"; that is, it is silently sup-plied and im-plied as the taken-for-granted medium of intelligent exchange of ideas. (Dewey 1910: 214)

Community of knowledge and communization of experience.

A like balance in mental life characterizes process and product. We met one important phase of this odjustment in considering play and work. In play, interest centers in activity, without much reference to its outcome. The sequence of deeds, images, emotions, suffices on its own account. In work, the end holds attention and controls the notice given to means. Since the difference is one of direction of interest, the contrast is one of emphasis, not of cleavage. When comparative prominence is consciousness of activity or outcome is transformed into isolation of one from the other, play degenerates into fooling, and work into drudgery. (Dewey 1910: 217)

A restatement of the distinction made above. The "centering" (in other words, dominance) of interest (in other words, function), determines the nature of the activity.

By "fooling" we understand a series of disconnected temporary overflows of energy dependent upon whim and accident. When all reference to outcome is eliminated from the sequence of ideas and acts that make play, each member of the sequence is cut loose from every other and becomes fantastic, arbitrary, aimless; mere fooling follows. (Dewey 1910: 217)

"But what can we consider as situation when a number of people aimlessly gossip together?" (PC 7.4). It is most certainly not a coincidence that "free, aimless, social intercourse" should have that exact wording, with Dewey using both adjectives in relation with play.

Exclusive interest in the result alters work to drudgery. For by drudgery is meant those activities in which the interest in the outcome does not suffuse the means of getting the result. Whenever a piece of work becomes drudgery, the process of doing loses all value for the doer; he does solely for what is to be had at the end of it. The work itself, the putting forth of energy, is hateful; it is just a necessary evil, since without it some important end would be missed. Now it is a commonplace that in the work of the world many things have to be done the doing of which is not intrinsically very interesting. (Dewey 1910: 218)

The communion of food! - that is what is had at the end of a communion of words. In the end, the play of good conversation can become the drudgery of phatic communion if it is employed as a means to an end and not an end in itself.

That teaching is an art and the true teacher an artist is a familiar saying. Now the teacher's own claim to rank as an artist is measured by his ability to foster the attitude of the artist in those who study with him, whether they be youth or little children. Some success in arousing enthusiasm, in communicating large ideas, in evoking energy. So far, well; but the final test is whether the stimulus thsu given to wider aims succeeds in transforming itself into power, that is to say, into the attention to detail that ensures mastery over means of execution. If not, the zeal flags, the interest dies out, the ideal becomes a clouded memory. (Dewey 1910: 220)

I appreciate that these follow the familiar scheme: feeling - enthusiasm, zeal; action - energy, interest; thought - ideas and ideals.

When fractions have become thoroughly familiar, his perception of them acts simply as a signal to do certain things; they are a "substitute sign," to which he can react without thinking. If, nevertheless, the situation as a whole presents something novel and hence uncertain, the entire response is not mechanical, because this mechanical operation is put to use in solving a problem. There is no end to this spiral process: foreign subject-matter transformed through thinking into a familiar possession becomes a resource for judging and assimilating additional foreign subject-matter. (Dewey 1910: 223)

When I read these books I attend to verbiage that I'm already familiar, but this does not hinder attaining new ideas. I have a real problem to deal with, and this has been the right spot to reach for answers.

A final exemplification of the required balance between near and far is found in the relation that obtains between the narrower field of experience realized in an individual's own contact with persons and things, and the wider experience of the race that may become his through communication. Instruction always runs the risk of swamping the pupil's own vital, though narrow, experience under masses of communicated material. The instructor ceases and the teacher begins at the point where communicated matter stimulates into fuller and more significant life that which has entered by the strait and narrow gate of sense-perception and motor activity. Genuine communication involves contagion; its name should not be taken in vain by terming communication that which produces no community of thought and purpose between the child and the race of which he is the heir. (Dewey 1910: 244)

This has been an exceedingly good book.