Empirical Philosophical Investigations in Education and Embodied Experience

Joacim Andersson, Jim Garrison, Leif Östman

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319746081
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319746098
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Drawing on John Dewey and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein, this book employs philosophy as a conceptual resource to develop new methodological and analytical tools for conducting in situ empirical investigations. Chapter one explores the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Dewey. Chapter two exposits Deweyan ideas of embodiment, the primacy of the aesthetic encounter, and aesthetically expressive meaning underdeveloped in Wittgenstein. Chapter three introduces the method of practical epistemological analysis (PEA) and a model of situated epistemic relations (SER) to investigate the learning of body techniques in dinghy sailing. The concluding chapter introduces a model of situated artistic relations (SAR) to investigate the learning of artistic techniques of self-expression in the Swedish sloyd classroom. 

© The Author(s) 2018

Joacim Andersson, Jim Garrison and Leif ÖstmanEmpirical Philosophical Investigations in Education and Embodied ExperienceThe Cultural and Social Foundations of Educationhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74609-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Dewey, Wittgenstein, and the Primacy of Practice

Joacim Andersson¹ , Jim Garrison² and Leif Östman³

(1)

School of Health Sciences, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden

(2)

Learning Sciences & Tech, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

(3)

Teacher Education, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

Abstract

This chapter explores some of the most interesting intersections between the philosophy of John Dewey and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein. Practical epistemological analysis (PEA), Situated Epistemic Relations (SER), and Situated Artistic Relations (SAR) examine learning primarily as a sociolinguistic practice. Since it is a sociolinguistic practice, much of both the product and the process of learning are plainly visible to sophisticated methodological observation. This chapter emphasizes the primacy of practice in comprehending linguistic meaning (i.e., forms of life, language-games, meaning as use, etc.), the rejection of a private language, antifoundationalism, and epistemological contextualism, action, and antirepresentationalism. It establishes the philosophical framework for our analytical method developed in Chap. 3 and assumed in Chap. 4.

Keywords

DeweyWittgensteinAntifoundationalismAntirepresentationalismSociolinguistics

End Abstract

This chapter first draws on W. V. Quine, Richard Rorty, and Stephan Toulmin to establish some critical connections between Wittgenstein and Dewey that we will use to develop practical epistemological analysis (PEA), situated epistemic relations (SERs) and situated artistic relations (SARs). Next, we show why we prefer the idea of action, and especially the primacy of social practice, to reductive behaviorism as an approach to studying human learning in situ. We also acknowledge the permanent presence of radical underdetermination. We then take up social rules and customs and how they establish bodily habits of practice as the embodied base of learning. We conclude by developing a first-person perspective on learning.

1.1 Quine, Rorty, and Toulmin on Wittgenstein and Dewey

The current scholarship rarely acknowledges the resemblance between Wittgenstein and Dewey, especially in education, even though philosophers as respected as W. V. O. Quine, Richard Rorty, and Stephen Toulmin have long since established many of the most significant similarities for our purposes.

1.1.1 Toulmin: Wittgenstein’s Pragmatism

In his introduction to Dewey’s The Quest for Certainty, Stephen Toulmin, who studied with Wittgenstein, remarks, “Viewing Wittgenstein as a pragmatist of a sophisticated kind can certainly be helpful. In particular, his use of the notions of ‘language-games’ and ‘forms of life’ serves to focus attention directly on the question of praxis” (LW 4: xiii). We strongly agree. We do not believe Wittgenstein was a pragmatist, although it is easy to put him into dialogue with Deweyan pragmatism. In starting this conversation, we assume a certain reading of Wittgenstein and Dewey that acknowledges their comparable philosophies. Alternative readings may emphasize their differences over their similarities, but we will tend to favor highlighting the latter since it is heuristically useful for formulating our research methodology.

Toulmin remarks on the many “parallels between the mature position of John Dewey, as captured in The Quest for Certainty, and the views that Ludwig Wittgenstein began to develop from 1927 on” (LW 4: xii–xiii). One of these parallels is that “both men were equally opposed to the theory of sense data” (LW 4: xiii).¹ It is part of their rejection of British empiricism. In the next chapter, we will find Dewey arguing that data for inference is “taken” from anoetic qualitative experience as part of inquiry; it is not given.

Toulmin recognizes that in various “areas of research…John Dewey’s insistence on the active character of human knowledge is now bearing fruit, and the combined heritage of Dewey and Wittgenstein is giving us a new command over psychology and social theory” (LW 1: xiv). We rely on Wittgenstein and Dewey to provide a new command over educational research. Toulmin also observes:

Whereas Dewey spoke in rather broad terms of knowledge as rooted in “action,” and did not give us a technique for analyzing action in any systematic way, the ideas of the later Wittgenstein have stimulated a great deal of thought about the taxonomy of human actions. (LW 1: xiii)

Chapters 3 and 4 introduce three techniques for analyzing action in a systematic way. The first is the analytical method of PEA. The second technique is the model of SER that employs data provided by PEA. The third technique is the model of SAR that likewise employs data provided by PEA. SER and SAR may both be employed together using the PEA data.

The primacy of practice plays a prominent role in Wittgenstein and Dewey’s understanding of ideas. Toulmin declares:

For Dewey … “ideas” have the meanings they do only to the extent that they are put to work. Human beings show rational command over their lives through the sets of operations which they devise and put to work. To use Wittgenstein’s image, an “idea” or a “thought” which is not associated with such sets of operations serves no more purpose (and so has no more meaning) than an “idle wheel” added to a clock mechanism, which drives nothing and so has no intelligible effect. (LW 1: xvii–xviii)

Both Wittgenstein and Dewey reject the notion that a collection of properties that a set of entities have in common alone comprises a concept, meaning, or universal. For Wittgenstein, all we have are “family resemblances” (PI §§ 66–67; see also BB, 17–18). In his essay “What are Universals?” Dewey affirms, “From the point of view of what has been said, every universal, like any rule, is a formulation of an operation to be performed” (LW 11: 107). In Wittgenstein’s terms, a universal has no meaning outside the forms of life, including their various language-games that deploy them. Toulmin also comments on Dewey and Wittgenstein’s rejection of private language, which is discussed in the next chapter (xix).

1.1.2 Quine: Naturalism, Antirepresentationalism, and the Private Language Argument

In one of the most influential papers in the tradition of analytic philosophy, “Ontological Relativity,” Quine (1969) relies heavily on the similarities between Dewey and Wittgenstein regarding linguistic “behavior,” “use,” and “context.” Quine states: “Philosophically I am bound to Dewey by the naturalism…. With Dewey I hold that knowledge, mind, and meaning are part of the same world…. There is no place for a prior philosophy” (26). Quine adds that, like Dewey, when discussing the philosophy of mind, he turns to language to comprehend mental functioning. Linguistically, he also wishes to avoid “pernicious mentalism” in semantics (27). Quine’s naturalism is strident in its rejection of mentalism and psychic representationalism. It is worth mentioning that Dewey’s naturalism is more robust than that of Wittgenstein’s, especially in Dewey’s emphasis on embodiment.

Quine cites Dewey to support his rejection of representationalism: “Meaning … is not a psychic existence; it is primarily a property of behavior” (27; see LW 1: 141).² Quine states:

Meanings are, first and foremost, meanings of language. Language is a social art which we all acquire on the evidence solely of other people’s overt behavior under publicly recognizable circumstances. Meanings, therefore, those very models of mental entities, end up as grist for the behaviorist’s mill. (26)

Later, we will show why it is better to think in terms of action, even creative action, rather than “behavior” since it allows us to avoid confusion with the reductive behaviorism of John B. Watson or B. F. Skinner, which Dewey and Wittgenstein reject. Nonetheless, behavior, action, and such render mental functioning observable.

Quine refers to the followi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Dewey, Wittgenstein, and the Primacy of Practice
• 2. Distributed Minds and Meanings in a Transactional World Without a Within: Embodiment and Creative Expression
• 3. A Method and Model for Studying the Learning of Body Techniques: Analyzing Bodily Transposition in Dinghy Sailing
• 4. A Method and Model for Studying the Learning of Artistic Techniques: Analyzing Sculptural Expression in School Sloyd
• Back Matter