John Dewey and James Angell are regarded respectively as the founder and systematizer of the Chicago school of functional psychol

History of Psychology Copyright 2001 by the Educational Publishing Foundation 2001, Vol. 4, No. 4, 323-340 1093-4510/01/SS.OO DO1: 10.1037//1093-4510.4.4.323

JOHN DEWEY AND EARLY CHICAGO FUNCTIONALISM

Andrew Backe Indiana University

John Dewey and James Angell are regarded respectively as the founder and systematizer of the Chicago school of functional psychology. The early Chicago school traditionally has been portrayed as a unified theoretical approach based primarily on William James's naturalistic theory of mental processes. It is argued in this article that although the psychology systematized by Angell bore a close affinity to James's naturalism, Dewey's own psychology was based primarily on the neo-Hegelian philosophy of Thomas Hill Green. Through a review of a number of Dewey's major writings, Green's neo-Hegelian philosophy is shown to have influ- enced Dewey's views on psychological concepts such as reaction, emotion, and perception during the formative period of the Chicago school. The interpretation of Dewey's psychology developed in this article leads to the conclusion that early Chicago functionalism should not be regarded as a unified theoretical approach.

In the last 20 years of the 19th century evolutionary biology had a profound influence on American psychologists. Major psychologists of that time—most notably G. Stanley Hall, James Mark Baldwin, and James McKeen Cattell—all to some degree incorporated into their psychologies the idea that the human indi- vidual is an organism interacting with a natural environment. No American psychologist, however, articulated this idea to the degree to which William James did. In his seminal text of 1890, The Principles of Psychology, James treated mental processes as adaptive-survival functions that accommodate the human organism's needs to the environment. Whereas James is regarded as the first to have articulated thoroughly a biologically based model of the human mind, John Dewey and James Angell are considered the first figures to have formalized this naturalistic psychology into a distinct approach. Their approach, which was developed at the University of Chicago in the late 1890s and early 1900s, came to be regarded as a unified viewpoint known as the Chicago school of functional psychology.

In the remainder of this article, which is divided into three major sections, I develop the thesis that the early Chicago school cannot be treated as a unified theoretical approach. In the first section I review in detail the traditional account of the emergence of the Chicago school. The traditional account is characterized as one that regards Dewey's and Angell's psychologies as a unified theoretical system based primarily on James's naturalistic views offered in the Principles. In the second section I show that Dewey's own psychology was influenced only modestly by James's naturalism and that the most influential factor was the

Andrew Backe is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at Indiana University. He received his PhD from die Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His areas of interest include functional psychology and American philosophy.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Andrew Backe, 17550 White Oak Avenue, Lowell, Indiana 46356.

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neo-Hegelian philosophy of Thomas Hill Green. I establish this point by showing how Dewey's psychology of the 1890s and early 1900s incorporated a central neo-Hegelian intuition—namely, that a transition in conscious experience, such as the kind characterizing perception or learning, cannot be treated as a succession of numerically distinct objects or events standing in a nonmediated relation to one another. In the concluding section I reveal that neo-Hegelian philosophy pervaded Dewey's views to such an extent that his psychology must be considered unique in relation to the functionalism offered by James and systematized by Angell.

The Rise of the Chicago School

Historical accounts generally claim that the formal psychology of Dewey and Angell developed out of James's naturalistic psychology expressed in his 1890 text, The Principles of Psychology.1 This claim receives support from Dewey and Angell themselves, both of whom commented on the influence of James in then- respective autobiographies. Prior to 1890, Dewey had been developing a psychol- ogy grounded in neo-Hegelian idealism. He claimed in his autobiography that after reading James's Principles he began to drift away from his Hegelian commitments. Referring to the text, Dewey stated: "As far as I can discover, [if there is] one specifiable factor which entered into my thinking so as to give it new direction, it is this one."2 Dewey identified "the biological conception of the psyche" as the most influential aspect in James's text, remarking that "it worked its way more and more into all my ideas and acted as a ferment to transform old beliefs."3

Angell too acknowledged the overwhelming influence of James. Angell had performed his undergraduate work under Dewey at the University of Michigan from 1886 to 1890. He commented in his autobiography that Dewey had a profound influence on him in choosing psychology as a profession. However, Angell remarked that Dewey's own psychology of that particular era was devoted to a "special pleading" of Hegel's philosophy. In 1891, Angell read James's Principles, a text that "unquestionably affected [Angell's] thinking for the next 20 years more profoundly than any other."4 Angell found "extraordinarily stimulat- ing" James's use of biological and physiological facts, which led to the "vital employment of cerebralistic hypotheses to account through habit for the central structure of human conduct and experience."5 Angell subsequently studied with James at the Harvard graduate school for a year.

The defining theoretical characteristic of James's Principles was its biologi- cal, or naturalistic, treatment of mental processes. James specifically identified two major biologically based principles of psychology. First, he set out the principle "that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by bodily change."6 This principle reduced mental processes to observ- able physiological activity in the brain and the nervous system. Second, he set out "the principle that no actions but such as are done for an end, and show a choice of means, can be called indubitable expressions of mind.''1 This principle iden- tified the mind with a system of collective "functions" that assist the human organism in adapting to the demands of the environment.

These two principles governed James's discussion in the remainder of the text. In chapters 2 and 3 James discussed nerve and brain physiology in relation

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to mentality. He used the concept of reflex action as the basic unit of explanation. James defined conscious actions as those that accommodate the organism to novel situations. These actions were regarded as complex reflex arcs (voluntary acts) that included activity in the brain. James argued that such actions ultimately become habitual and nonconscious, in which case spinal cord activity (semire- flexes) replaces brain activity in the reflex arc. Throughout the remaining chapters in the Principles James categorized mental processes in terms of their adaptive- survival functions, that is, in terms of how they accommodate the human organ- ism's needs to the environment. Processes reviewed by James included habit, attention, discrimination, conception, sensation, perception, memory, emotion, and will.

The actual formalization of James's functionalism by Dewey and Angell was instigated by a controversy between E. B. Titchener and James Mark Baldwin over sensory-motor reactions.8 On the basis of experiments conducted by some of Wilhelm Wundt's students at the I^eipzig laboratory, Titchener argued that the average latency of a reaction to an auditory stimulus would be shorter if the subject's attention were directed to the movement to be made rather than to the sense impression serving as the signal to the movement.9 This claim assumed that there were two forms of reaction: the sensorial reaction, in which the subject focuses on the sensory impression, and the muscular reaction, in which the subject focuses on the movement. Titchener hypothesized that the muscular reaction was a simpler form of reaction than the sensory reaction. He discredited results contrary to the Leipzig experiments by arguing that the individual subjects in apparently disconfirming experiments did not have the proper disposition—or Anlage—for participating in psychological experimentation.10

One of the contrary studies reviewed by Titchener had been conducted by Baldwin.11 Shortly after Titchener's article appeared, Baldwin published data from a more recent experiment that he had conducted on reactions to sound.12 He had observed that half of his subjects displayed faster motor reactions, whereas the other half displayed faster sensory reactions. Baldwin accounted for his results by setting out his new type theory of reaction. He proposed that "the man who gives relatively shorter motor reactions is a- 'motor' in his type… . But the man who gives relatively shorter sensory reactions, is a 'sensory' in his type."13

Contrary to Titchener, Baldwin hypothesized that there were genuine individual differences with respect to reactions. Baldwin maintained that the differences could be accounted for by the experiences individuals underwent in their local environments. He noted, for example, that a musician would have great difficulty making motor reactions. Because of the musician's habit of using sensory exci- tation as a cue for performance (i.e., manipulating an instrument through move- ment), Baldwin argued that, for this individual, "the very attempt to picture a movement as a movement—by putting the attention on its motor aspect in consciousness—embarrasses, confuses and delays the execution of that move- ment."14 Another individual, Baldwin argued, might more easily put attention on the motor aspect of the reaction than on the sensory aspect.15

New data bearing on the controversy were offered in 1896 by Angell and his colleague Addison Moore of the University of Chicago. The two experimented on unpracticed participants and followed them extensively over time.16 At the outset of the study, each participant was required to perform both motor and sensory

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reactions. Angell and Moore found that some participants had faster motor reactions, whereas other participants had faster sensory reactions. As participants practiced with both types of reactions, the majority of them eventually came to perform motor and sensory reactions that were of approximately equal time values.

In sympathy with Baldwin, Angell and Moore argued that each participant's tendency to be a sensory type or a motor type was determined "from influences already surrounding its [i.e., the participant's] growth" and by habits "customarily employed in the everyday business of life."17 Angell and Moore discussed the observed variation in terms of the interrelation of attention and habit.18 They proposed that attention serves as an "adjuster, or mediator" between habitually established reactions and new conditions under which they have to express themselves. Attention is focused where habit is least able to cope with a situation. With respect to the auditory sensory-motor reaction, if the sound is unfamiliar and the hand movement is familiar, then attention will fall on the ear. If a participant in this situation is forced to focus on the hand, then the reaction will be delayed. The ear adjustment to the sound will be left to habit, and an already-established habit in the hand process will be given attention. Under practice, however, the two types of reaction will grow in speed and regularity together and become habitual.

As reviewed so far, Angell and Moore's interpretation supported Baldwin's theory of the sensory-motor reaction. Yet Angell and Moore made an additional point that set their theory apart from Baldwin's. Angell and Moore offered an interpretation of "reaction" different from that of either Baldwin or Titchener. According to Angell and Moore, the reaction in these experiments was not merely a response of the hand to the ear but rather the "act of coordinating the incoming stimuli from both the hand and the ear."19 Not only could the sensation of sound in the ear be regarded as a stimulus, but so too could the sensation from the hand, which was actually responsible for holding the ear to its task. The hand therefore served as a stimulus as well as a response to the ear. Likewise, the ear served as a response as well as a stimulus to the hand. Hence, Baldwin's "types" could be regarded as equally "sensory" or equally "motor." Angell and Moore concluded that "the distinction of stimulus and response is therefore not one of content, the stimulus being identified with the ear, the response with the hand, but one of function, and both offices belong to each organ."20

Angell and Moore acknowledged that their interpretation of stimulus and response originated with Dewey, under whom they were working at the Univer- sity of Chicago.21 Dewey had outlined his views on stimulus and response earlier in a syllabus of February 1892. He claimed that stimulus and response "are simply the various more or less distinct minor activities contained within an act of larger range."22 According to Dewey, these minor acts check and reinforce one another, so that each act receives its meaning only within the "whole of which it is one member," a whole to which Dewey referred as "the organized coordinated act."

Dewey provided a comprehensive treatment of stimulus and response in his famous 1896 article "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology." The article appeared to set out the assumptions underlying Angell and Moore's approach, on the one hand, and Titchener's and Baldwin's approaches, on the other.23 Dewey distinguished these assumptions through a comparison between his own concept of coordination, which Angell and Moore used in their interpretation of stimulus

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and response, and the reflex arc concept, which corresponded to Titchener's and Baldwin's notion of reaction.

Dewey gave a detailed illustration of the coordination concept by considering what takes place when an individual runs away from a sound. Dewey noted that the sound is not merely a stimulus; it is an act, that of hearing. According to Dewey, muscular activities—namely, the movement and posture of the head and ear muscles—are involved in hearing just as much as in the subsequent running away. "It is just as true to say that the sensation of sound arises from motor response as that the running away is a response to the sound." Moreover,

Just as the response is necessary to constitute the stimulus, to determine it as sound and as this kind of sound, of wild beast or robber, so the sound experience must persist as a value in the running, to keep it up, to control it.

The running away is more appropriately characterized as a circuit rather than an arc. Dewey concluded that the traditional distinction being drawn between stimulus and response was "one of interpretation." He wrote:

The fact is that stimulus and response are … teleological distinctions, that is distinctions of function, or part played, with reference to reaching or maintaining an end [I]t is only the assumed common reference to an inclusive end which marks each member off as stimulus and response.24

One and the same occurrence can play either part, depending on a shift in attention.

The controversy over sensory-motor reactions culminated in a formal recog- nition of two distinct approaches in psychology. The first to distinguish the approaches was Titchener. In his 1898 article "The Postulates of a Structural Psychology" he referred to his own program as an illustration of structural psychology. The aim of this approach, according to Titchener, was "to discover, first of all, what is [in consciousness], and in what quantity."25 The discovery process involved isolating the constituent "elements" of any given conscious formation. These elements corresponded to the traditional notions of "sensations," "ideas," and "feelings." In contrast to the structural approach, Titchener recog- nized a functional psychology. This form of psychology studied the mind not as a structure of elements but rather as a collection of capacities or functions that assist the individual in adapting to the demands of the environment. Such functions included "attention," J'memory," and "volition," among others. Titch- ener explicitly referred to Dewey's "Reflex Arc" article and Angell and Moore's empirical article as examples of functional psychology.26

In the first 10 years of the 20th century both Dewey and Angell published major works articulating some of the key concepts of functionalism. Dewey's major work in this era was a collection of essays published in the 1903 book Studies in Logical Theory. Dewey, like James, treated thought and knowledge as means by which the organism adjusts to the environment. Dewey argued that a doubtful situation in which habits become obstructed creates tension. Reflective thought, or consciousness, arises to reduce tension and restore coherence; specif- ically, reflective thought aids the organism in creating hypotheses about the problematic situation so that a new action can be taken. Dewey himself referred

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to this theory not as functionalism but rather as experimentalism.27 According to this view, thinking ends in experiment, the actual alteration of the immediate situation that created tension for the organism.

The first explicit outline of a functionalist "program" appeared in AngelFs 1904 text, Psychology: An Introductory Study of the Structure and Function of Human Consciousness. In the preface Angell wrote that, although many psychol- ogists had "devoted the larger part of their energy to investigating the structure of the mind," his approach was designed "to deal more fully with its functional phases."28 Rather than discover the "constituent elements" of consciousness, functional psychology determined how consciousness develops and operates. Like James, Angell based his functional psychology on what he called "the biological point of view." This view had two major features. First, it assumed that the "human organism is a psychophysical organism, and that the mental portion of it is not to be completely or correctly apprehended without reference to the phys- iological portion." In short, it held that psychology could understand mental processes only through an understanding of the brain and nervous system. Second, the biological point of view studied consciousness as it relates to objects or events constituting the environment. Angell specifically wrote that

adoption of the biological point of view … will mean not only that we shall study consciousness in connection with physiological processes wherever possible, but it will also mean that we shall regard all of the operations of consciousness—all our sensations, all our emotions, and all our acts of will—as so many expressions of organic adaptations to our environment.29

These two features of Angell's functional psychology constituted the major subject matter of his text. In the second and third chapters Angell discussed how consciousness is connected to the nervous system. He regarded consciousness as the control of muscular movements emanating from the cerebral cortex in situa- tions of uncertainty. Conscious movements established new sensory-motor path- ways, which ultimately become habitual and taken over by the relatively non- conscious processes of the spinal cord. In-the remaining chapters of the book Angell considered the particular operations, or "functions," of consciousness. He gave a superior status to attention, which was regarded as a rudimentary form of will that permits the human organism to selectively direct mental activity toward some aspect of the environment. Other major functions considered by Angell included sensation, perception,^ imagination, memory, emotion, concept forma- tion, reasoning, and will. These were all treated as expressions of organic adaptations to the environment, means by which the organism attains knowledge to survive and develop.

After Dewey's Studies and Angell's Psychology were published, James proclaimed that Dewey and Angell should be regarded as originators of "a new system," which James aptly termed the "Chicago School."30 In 1906, Angell was elected president of the American Psychological Association. His presidential address, titled "The Province of Functional Psychology," was published in the Psychological Review and served as a manifesto of the early Chicago school. In the address Angell identified "functional psychology with the effort to discern and portray the typical operations of consciousness under actual life conditions, as

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over against any attempt to analyze and describe its elementary complex con- tents."^

In its initial years the Chicago school was perceived as a unified theoretical approach. Angell recollected in his autobiography that the "basic element" of early Chicago functionalism was the idea that mentality had "as its major task the adjustment of [the human organism] to the environment … in which it found itself." Specifically, the individual "utilized conscious processes at the point where new sensory-motor co-ordinations were being established, which later as they became perfected, permitted the mental [i.e., conscious] aspect of the process gradually to diminish."32

A Second Look at Dewey

Dewey's contribution to the rise of functionalism cannot be overstated. It is impossible to find a historical account of the development of early functional psychology that omits a reference to Dewey and his "Reflex Arc" article in particular. In fact, that article was voted the most influential article published hi the first 50 volumes of the Psychological Review.3'3' What has been overstated, however, is the relation of the "Reflex Arc" article to the naturalistic emphasis often cited as the defining theoretical characteristic of early functionalism. Dew- ey's "Reflex Arc" article had very little to do with naturalism; rather, the purpose of the article was to convince psychologists that the reaction concept should be reinterpreted as coordination. This point was never strongly emphasized in the work of other functionalists. James, for instance, simultaneously maintained that the reaction concept was the central unit of explanation for psychology and that psychologists should study mental processes in functionalist terms. Furthermore, although Angell and Moore did briefly discuss the coordination concept in their 1896 article, they did not have to refer to the concept at all in their interpretation of the role of habit and attention in auditory sensory-motor reactions. Moreover, AngelFs functionalist program in his 1904 Psychology did not rely on the concept of coordination to any significant extent.34

To see the significance of Dewey's coordination concept, and the "Reflex Arc" article more generally, one must look somewhere other than to the natural- istic psychology of James, for Dewey's first published discussion of the coordi- nation concept actually arose as a criticism against James's theory of emotions set out in the Principles. James had argued that an emotional experience begins with an object or idea operating as a stimulus, then proceeds into the mode of behavior, taken as discharge or response." The response is ultimately followed by affect or emotional excitation.35 In his 1895 Psychological Review article "The Signifi- cance of Emotions" Dewey maintained that "no such seriality or separation attaches to the emotion as an experience." Dewey illustrated his own view on how an emotional experience occurs by considering a reaction of fright to a bear. According to Dewey, such a

reaction is not to the bear as object, nor to the idea of bear, but simply expresses a … co-ordination of acts… . [T]he frightful object and the emotion of fear are two names for the same experience… . The "bear" [i.e., the object or idea] is constituted by the excitations of the eye and co-ordinated touch centres, just as the "terror" [i.e., the affect] is by the disturbances of muscular and glandular systems.

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The reality, the co-ordination of these partial activities, is that whole activity which may be described equally well as "that terrible bear," or "Oh, how frightened I am."36

Dewey maintained that the complete, mature idea of "bear-as-thing-to-be-run- from" comes only in and through the act of running. So too does the complete affect.

Dewey's criticism of James's theory of emotion was an obvious precursor to the discussion of stimulus and response in the "Reflex Arc" article. James's theory of emotion treated the sensorimotor (or ideomotor) activity, which constitutes the object, as the stimulus, and the vegetative-motor activity, which constitutes the reaction to the object, as the response. Dewey argued that "this distinction of stimulus and response is one of interpretation… . The positive truth is that the prior and the succeeding parts of an activity are in operation together."37

In the "Reflex Arc" article Dewey established this "positive truth" with respect to the more general notion of reflex, or reaction. Dewey argued that, by using the reflex arc idea, psychologists were characterizing psychical phenomena from "preconceived and preformulated ideas of rigid distinctions between sensa- tions, thoughts and a

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