Credit Where It’s Due
The latest hit on my recurring Dewey search is this piece by Jonah Goldberg at the National Review Online. Despite his obvious disagreements with pragmatism, Goldberg generally does a good job of portraying the position and the critical areas of disagreement. (In another column he jokes that he is assistant treasurer of “the small club of He-Man Pragmatism-haters.”)
I do think the central point of his essay is wrong, but then I would, since I’m a pragmatist. Goldberg writes:
Am I crazy for seeing a conflict between these two views? Menand values the “realism” of Pragmatism which strips away metaphysical irrelevancies while he criticizes Kahn for failing to take into account the rich variety of moral, political, and cultural factors which prevent us from being able to predict how people will react in a calamity like nuclear war.
The problem, I think is that Goldberg is conflating “metaphysical irrelvancies” with “the rich variety of moral, political and cultural factors” in a way that he shouldn’t. A pragmatist who is realistic about the world is going to have observed the variety of beliefs people have and the ways that those beliefs motivate people’s actions. The pragmatist is then going to take those beliefs into account in any plan or prediction he or she wants to make about human behavior.
However, a pragmatist also argues that those moral, political and cultural factors can and do change, because the world is not eternally stable. And this, I think, is the part that Goldberg has a problem with, so I’m going to sidetrack myself for a second. I believe that Goldberg wants moral standards to be permanent, or at least very slow to change. He wants us to make decisions based on the things that we know are simply right, and we sure can’t do that very easily if what’s right is murky or keeps changing. And he has a point there. Pragmatists point out, though, that 1) there’s no reason to believe these absolute certainties exist, because the world sure does seem to change; 2) we’re not sure how we would know we had found them if we did find them; and 3) there seem to be a whole lot of people who are convinced that they have found them, but the certainties in question are mutually contradictory and sometimes run up against what our empirical investigation tells us about the world. (Galileo and Copernicus being two of the favorite examples trotted out on this score.)
So pragmatists are OK with the idea that our beliefs and practices have to change and evolve over time. They want to encourage people to critically examine their own beliefs and practices and see which ones have good reason for being there and which ones might actually work against us. They can say that we need to take certain beliefs and attitudes into account in our current planning even while they try to convince people not to have those beliefs and attitudes anymore. They acknowledge that there will be unintended and unforeseen consequences of this process, which is why the process is continual – a good solution to a problem in 1950 may have to be revised in 1970 and again in 1990, and a pragmatist is OK with that. At a fundamental level, I don’t think Goldberg is – he just doesn’t see the world that way. But it’s a fair debate to have.
On the other hand, Goldberg also tosses this in:
Under the influence of Dewey, the Pragmatists championed “experimentalism” which sought to treat every human endeavor like a laboratory experiment. Dewey transformed American education entirely and we live with the results today.
The first sentence is, I think, a too-harsh exaggeration. Dewey wanted us to make use of the method of science, but not treat each other as lab rats. As for the second sentence: I really wish I had gone to school in the world where everyone was following the Deweyan model of having students play an active role in the learning process. I spent twelve years sitting in desks listening to teachers lecture while my fellow students asked, “Will this be on the test?” and “What am I ever going to do with this?” I think I would have had more fun in that other world.
Update: Roy at alicublog is considerably less charitable to Goldberg than I am. I’m willing to cut Goldberg some slack on the conflation I mentioned above because I’ve seen that mistake made so many times. There must be something about believing in absolute metaphysical certainties that makes people unable to understand the people who don’t.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.