Open-Mindedness immediately strikes me as a form of
generosity. And it is for this reason that I chose to analyze this work. It is
1918 at the time Dewey writes this review, the year before he leaves for China.
I feel it to be important to reflect on his considerations and approaches to
generosity and emotion at this time.
Dewey is addressing a concern of Professor Alfred Edward
Taylor (1869-1945, a prominent British philosopher of idealism, metaphysics,
moral philosophy, and platonic scholarship,) in this work. Professor Taylor is
concerned with the motive behind our actions, and specifically brings up the
act of being generous. Considering his arguments towards the fact that it is
impossible to have an unconscious motive, and an emotion is what it is unmistakably, he imagines the following two cases:
1.
[T]he influence of an emotion prompts a person to confer a benefit upon a fellow
at some cost to himself, which he takes for an act of generosity.
2.
Later on, the same person finds himself not
strongly prompted to perform a similar act under circumstances such that there
is no chance for the beneficence being known.
Taylor continues to state, “If the man is frank with
himself, he will admit that his motive on the first occasion was not the
feeling of pure generosity which he had supposed it to be.” Taylor’s problem is
that acts of generosity are committed by thought that is independent of the
circumstances at hand. A man may encounter the same circumstances twice yet
choose to act differently based on other factors. These other factors are
considerations of beneficence to the person considering performing generosity.
In other words, when a person considers performing an act of generosity, their motive is mixed between the thought of “How much sympathy do I feel?” and
“What’s in it for me?” There is both a raw emotion and a careful consideration
of benefit in play in order to reach a conclusion. While one of these motives
may dominate over the other at times, neither can completely eliminate the
other.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Dewey disagrees. At least
in part.
Dewey points out that an emotion is only experienced as
result of a circumstance. For example, seeing that commercial on TV about the
injured animals deliberately themed to “In the Arms of an Angel” makes me sad.
But sadness is only aroused as a result of the event. Dewey corrects Taylor by
stating that it is the event that is
what it is, and emotion follows from that. Hence Dewey’s point, “there is no
more reason for supposing that personal events have a nature or meaning which
is one with their happening[.]” For Dewey, there is only the event itself and
that which instinctively and consciously results from it.
As a result of this point, Dewey raises two notable ways
that a person approaches an event. The first being that the event of which I am currently experiencing causes me to experience
some sort of emotion, and that emotion in turn coupled with reflection on
self-benefit applies to a consideration of action. The second can be stated
as such: past experiences of an event
similar to this one stimulate thoughts of similar consequence and cause me to
experience an initial emotion as I approach the circumstances.
In this pre-China work, Dewey establishes a kind of
scientific, psychological approach to emotion and consideration. It only makes
sense that his later concept of “open-mindedness” forms itself through the
scientific method. Dewey’s recognition of the influence of past events to the
emotion and thought experienced in future similar circumstances is most
assuredly a concept of the formation of
bias. Essentially he is pointing out,
at least indirectly, the method and means of which contribute to our
closed-minded tendency to create, maintain and defend a comfort zone. Open-Mindedness seems to be an active defiance against this natural method of response in human psychology.
Dewey,
John. “Concerning Alleged Immediate Knowledge of Mind.” The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, Vol 15, No. 2 (Jan 17, 1918), pp. 29-35
I will definitely explore the idea of open-mindedness as being “an active defiance” against the natural “closed-minded tendency to create, maintain and defend a comfort zone.” This is exactly what I have been feeling all along regarding how we tend to teach American students how to write (an academic essay, at least). Teachers tend to be comfortable with the linear style of writing because it is very teachable. We can tell students to state the main idea explicitly in the introduction, support that idea in the body, and repeat the idea in the conclusion, and for most students, it makes sense. Rinse, wash, repeat. Most of the teachers I know would agree that international students must learn the standard American academic style in order to succeed in an American university; Dewey would say that this can be seen as an attempt on the part of the teachers to protect what they themselves have been taught to be true. Most teachers are willing (and able according to curricular requirements) to ask students to read about other rhetorical styles, treating them as quaint curiosities, but how many are willing (or more importantly, able when curriculum limitations are considered) to actively defy the norm by actually engaging students in multicultural rhetorical strategies in the composition classroom?
ReplyDeleteYou open by saying that open-mindedness is a type of generosity. Dewey says that open-mindedness is more than mere tolerance – that it is not “empty-mindedness.” In the composition classroom, for example, we might feel good about ourselves and our teaching, and feel that we are being quite generous and empathetic if we engage students in exercises such as reading multicultural literature because we think we are teaching students to be open-minded, but these activities don’t necessarily force students out of their comfort zones, or to actively defy closed-minded tendencies.
In this essay, Dewey is returning to ideas he had started working out in articles in the 1890s, in which he questioned quotidian ideas about emotions. At that time, he argued that feelings can be "had" as well as "known," and, in particular, that animals only "know" feelings (in these sense of knowing as well as having them) when some experienced obstacle, blockage, or perplexity obstructs an established habit of activity. I never thought about these ideas in terms of open- (or closed-) mindedness before, but there is a sense in which our minds are frequently "closed," even and especially to ourselves. Insofar as we have many feelings we never know, our minds are indeed quite closed to us! Dewey seems to be trying to emphasize this point in his conclusion especially: "there is no more reason for supposing that personal events have
ReplyDeletea nature or meaning which is one with their happening, and hence open to immediate infallible inspection, than is the case with impersonal events" (MW11:17).