In a previous article we briefly explored John Dewey’s contribution to the philosophy of pragmaticism. The focus was placed on Dewey’s position that when a person is faced with a challenge, whether the solution draws from intuition or is scientifically derived, the consequences of the outcome need to be evaluated.
The focus on evaluation integrated several aspects of pragmaticism (Dewey, 1935). Dewey agreed the truth is represented by what method and approach seems to produce the most profit in any given situation (James, 1975), however, the interaction of methods and results must be scrutinized continually. For example, if we were to follow Pierce’s (1997) approach of applying the scientific method to everyday life, we may discover during our evaluation we are losing our ability to act spontaneously, and we fail to notice and act on the intuitive feedback we receive from the world around us. The evaluation may allow us to connect our tacit responses to or scientific ones and produce an approach of even greater effectiveness.
Dewey (1935) was keen to point out that we should not wait for our current approaches to stop working before we thought of change and adaptation. Paying attention on a continual basis to the consequences of our methods and actions may draw attention, for example, to how someone in our professional team is not responding with quite the same enthusiasm as they used to in response to the current management approach. We should not wait until this person quits to review the effectiveness of approaches, but rather always look for opportunities to adapt.
The above places context on Dewey’s observation that life is a series of interruptions and recoveries (1935). If we do not evaluate actions, we are operating under the assumption (or delusion) that the method was correct, and the outcome is taken for granted or at best only glanced at. If we evaluate the consequences of our actions, we are attending to how our decisions engage with reality and what emerges as a result. Naturally, if we attend carefully and evaluate as we implement a decision we can notice when our plans are being interrupted by ecological events, and quickly recover. If we evaluate only at the end of implementing a decision, we may only notice our plans have been interrupted too late, and options for recovery are limited.
The key epistemological point is that if life is a series of interruptions and recoveries, then we need to evaluate as we go, and this will allow us to notice interruptions and recover quicker than if we did not pay careful attention. This holds true if our decision making is drawing from the scientific method or motivated by our intuition and instincts. Evaluation is essential to recovering from interruption.
Reading
Dewey, john (1938). Logic: The theory of Inquiry. NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston
James, W (1975). Pragmatism: A New Name for some Old Ways of Thinking, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Pierce, CS (1997) Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: the 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism by Charles Sanders Peirce. Edited by Patricia Ann Turrisi, State University of New York Press, Albany, New York
