Introduction
This is the final part of a series of posts on my criticism of the pseudo-science presented by Dr. David Burns by using the theory of science (the logic of scientific inquiry) developed by John Dewey, an American philosopher.
As I indicated in another post (A Worker’s Resistance to the Capitalist Government or State and Its Representatives, Part Nine), I engaged in a partial critique of the book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns, M.D. (1999). This book is used by many psychologists and psychiatrists as a basis for the psychological technique called “mindfulness”–and with reason since Dr. Burns defines human problems independently of social context–quite convenient for the class of employers since the economic, social and political oppressive and exploitative contexts are thereby ignored–or rather suppressed.
The reason why I read the book was that I was required to see a psychologist as a condition of receiving disability benefits from the Manitoba Teachers Society (see A Worker’s Resistance to the Capitalist Government or State and Its Representatives, Part Ten). Mr. Alan Slusky, a psychologist in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, recommended the book and, in fact, it was supposed to be part of my “therapy”–bibliotherapy. According to Wikipedia:
Bibliotherapy is a creative arts therapies modality that involves storytelling or the reading of specific texts with the purpose of healing. It uses an individual’s relationship to the content of books and poetry and other written words as therapy. Bibliotherapy is often combined with writing therapy.
I refer to my dissertation in the following critique. My doctoral dissertation compared the philosophies of human nature of John Dewey (an :American philosopher of education and author of, among other books, Human Nature and Social Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology and Democracy and Education, and Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938)) and Paulo Freire (a Brazilian philosopher of education and author, among other books, of Pedagogy of the Oppressed).
I refer in more depth to John Dewey’s philosophy of science. I will not reproduce the entire partial critique of Burns’s pseudo-science from the point of view of Dewey’s philosophy of science (or the logic of inquiry) since some of it requires some understanding of Dewey’s theory of logic (but see Critical Education Articles Placed in the Teacher Staff Lounge While I Was a Teacher, Part Thirty-Four (Last Part): A Critique of an Attempt to Identify Dewey’s Progressive Educational Theory with Modern School Practice), and I myself have problems with understanding it (there are only a limited number of books and articles that address Dewey’s theory of logic in any detail). Rather, I will provide in this post a critique of Dr. Burn’s understanding of the nature of science by looking at Dewey’s understanding of the nature of science–or the logic of inquiry. Dr. Burns’ conception of science is really pseudo-science,, when looked at from the point of view of Dewey’s theory of scientific inquiry.
This post is the most difficult post of the series in terms of understanding its content.
Pseudo-science Parading as Science
Let us now turn to the contents of the book and some of my criticisms. My critical comments are usually either in square brackets or separate points as a continuation of my comments. The couple of notes contained in the following are located at the end of the post.
- Burns’ book: P. 12: “What causes you to feel that way? Your thoughts.” [What does he mean by “cause”? Is this science? Not according to Dewey. This is “common-sense inquiry.” Correlation is not a cause. See my dissertation. Furthermore, Burns does not seem to conceptualize what a thought is or what a feeling is. He assumes the common-sense conception is sufficient. Such “data” are not scientific. See my dissertation. From my dissertation:
Dewey’s own formal definition is relevant for determining problems with common-sense inquiry and how scientific inquiry addresses the limitations of common-sense inquiry. Dewey defines inquiry thus: “Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole” (1938/1986, 108). An indeterminate situation arises objectively when the relation between people and their environment is undergoing change that disturbs the relation in some way. The disturbance is located in the background conditions for inquiry, and includes the social customs, habits and institutions as well as the physical conditions. The indeterminate situation is precognitive. Inquiry, then, has a wider context than itself, both in terms of its source and in terms of its function as a means for dealing with that wider context. Inquiry never encompasses the whole of human experience.
The disturbance can be addressed when a person becomes conscious that an indeterminate situation exists. Becoming conscious of an indeterminate situation constitutes the situation as problematic subjectively and not just objectively.
Dewey’s definition of inquiry implies that a problematic situation contains two essential elements that inquiry must address: an indeterminate situation and a disconnected situation. The situation requires both clarification and unification. It is this process of clarification and unification that constitutes the learning or educational process in general.
This definition applies to both common-sense inquiry and scientific inquiry. Common-sense inquiry may be more appropriate in certain instances than scientific inquiry. It depends on the context. It would be pointless to engage in scientific inquiry if time constraints and cost, for instance, do not warrant it. If the situation does not require scientific inquiry to resolve the problem, then common-sense inquiry is sufficient (or the best that can be achieved under the circumstances). However, if those who engage in common-sense inquiry fail to take into consideration the need for controlling human nature as living and as social beings, they will likely extend common-sense forms of inquiry into domains that require scientific inquiry. They will then present scientific inquiry as merely an organized form of common-sense inquiry rather than as a process which controls the biases of human nature as both a living process and as a social process.
The inadequacy of common-sense inquiry can be seen in relation to the two functions of the inquiry process: the clarification of the indeterminate situation and its unification. In particular, common-sense inquiry, although it contextualizes rather than absolutizes the concepts of cause and effect to a determinate situation, lacks an adequate conception of cause to ground its own assertions both in terms of clarification and in terms of unity. The difference between common-sense inquiry and scientific inquiry is thus exemplified in the different ways in which they conceive causation (Stone, 1994). In common sense inquiry, which deals with qualitative inference, cause assumes the form of a beginning which is supposed to be temporally antecedent to another event and produces or generates an effect (an end):
It remains to indicate the bearings of these considerations upon the conception of causation as it operates in scientific inquiry. A common conception, derived from loose common sense beliefs, is that an event can be picked out as the antecedent of the event in question, and that this antecedent is its cause. (1938/1986, page 443)
Dewey, however, points out that the temporal sequence is inadequate in, for instance, identifying the cause of a death as the shot from a revolver since there are intervening events between the shot and the entering of the bullet into the body in such a way that the person’s organic nature ceases to function; the shot is not necessarily the antecedent. It may be a necessary condition, but it is hardly a sufficient condition. There is a spatial and temporal gap between the cause and the effect. By specifying the antecedent cause and the subsequent effect, common-sense inquiry comes to an end since it has specified all that there is to specify: “Common sense takes the problem to be resolved by reference to an “antecedent” event, say, being set afire by some one for revenge or for insurance money; or by a match carelessly dropped, etc.” (Dewey, 1938/1986, page 441). The fact that one event follows temporally another event does not permit maximum control of the environment. When precise control is needed, then temporal and qualitative separation indicates a problem set for scientific inquiry. Thus, Dewey gives the example of malaria, where the symptoms were thought to be caused by the literal meaning of the word: bad air (1938/1946). Such a hypothesis linked the disease and its symptoms to the antecedent “air,” which did direct people to close their windows at night, but it led nowhere otherwise. It is here not just a question of inadequate understanding, but of the tendency of human beings to focus on ends and not on means. The inferential connection assumes gross qualitative differentiation rather than refined differentiations that permit the linking of one process with another process. Common-sense experience could develop more adequately the mediating links, but in accordance with their initial nature historically human beings have not done so.
To be sure, for both common-sense and scientific inquiry, the causal connection contextualizes the event by placing it in a wider series of events. In scientific inquiry, though, the existential and conceptual material is prepared much more thoroughly than in the case of common-sense inquiry, with the existential and conceptual material being developed in conjugate relation with each other until a spatio-temporal continuum has been established in such a way “that the resulting complex of related events forms an individual spatial-temporal continuum” (Dewey, 1938/1986, page 443).
Common-sense inquiry in many instances deals with too gross subject matter. To refine it so that control in an indeterminate situation can occur, it is necessary to control the process of clarification and the process of unification.
Observations and suggestions that guide inquiry have, historically, varied in quality, depending on the extent to which they have been regulated in order to minimize biases characteristic of human nature. Without such regulation, human beings have often fallen into superstition since their inferences have little ground in real connections, and it is real connections in the natural world that constitute the stable basis for human inference, not symbols per se. The history of science involves the difficult process of separating the purely scientific object from the common-sense object:
In science, since meanings are determined on the ground of their relation as meanings to one another, relations become the objects of inquiry and qualities are relegated to a secondary status, playing a part only as far as they assist in institution of relations. They are subordinate because they have an instrumental office, instead of being themselves, as in prescientific common sense, the matters of final importance. The enduring hold of common sense is testified to historically by the long time it took before it was seen that scientific objects are strictly relational. First tertiary qualities were eliminated; it was recognized that moral qualities are not agencies in determining the structure of nature. Then secondary qualities, the wet-dry, hot-cold, light-heavy, which were the explanatory principles of physical phenomena in Greek science, were ejected. But so-called primary qualities took their place, as with Newton and the Lockeian formulation of Newtonian existential postulates. It was not until the threshold of our time was reached that scientific inquiries perceived that their own problems and methods required an interpretation of “primary qualities” in terms of relations, such as position, motion and temporal span. In the structure of distinctively scientific objects these relations are indifferent to qualities. (1938/1986, 119-120)
The use of observable facts as evidence for the existence of other facts does not provide any kind of warranted assurance that the facts used as data are actually appropriate data in the context of the specific problem. The data used may well be so insufficiently prepared because the qualities used are not molded to define the problem more clearly as to point towards a solution.
The facts of common-sense inquiry, for instance, are not sculpted to perform their evidential function as means that function to point to an adequate solution or synthesis:
The particulars of observations which are experimentally instituted not only form the subject-matter of a problem so as to indicate an appropriate mode of solution, but are also such as to have evidential and testing value with respect to indicated modes of solution. Operations are deliberately performed that experimentally modify given antecedent objects of perception so as to produce new data in a new ordered arrangement. Institution of new data which are relevant and effective with respect to any conclusion that is hypothetically entertained, forms the most dispensable and difficult part of inquiry in the natural sciences. Objects and qualities as they naturally present themselves or as they are “given,” are not only not the data of science but constitute the most direct and important obstacle to formation of those ideas and hypotheses that are genuinely relevant and effective. (1938/1986, 420-421)
The data of common-sense inquiry are inadequate to perform the control function of evidence in relation to the specific problem to be resolved when that problem requires to be grounded sufficiently to be applicable independently of specific contexts. Thus, scientific inquiry in astronomy was impeded because of the common-sense data used (the apparent fixed nature of the Earth) to formulate inadequate hypotheses and not because of the lack of data:
Consider how the development of astronomic science was arrested because the earth as an object of direct perception seemed fixed, while the sun was perceived to move across the heavens every day, and to move, together with the “erratic” planets, from north to south and back again during each yearly period. Consider the enormous obstructions which had to be removed before present astronomical conceptions could be reached along with the extensive and refined institution of new data of observation, dependent upon inventions of new instruments and techniques. It was not for lack of ingenuity in ordering data but because of what were taken to be data that astronomical theory was so wide of the mark for many centuries. It should be evident, without argument, that any theory which fails to take as basic in its conception of induction experimental operations of transformation of given objects of perception, and institution of new orders of data, is radically defective. (Dewey, 1938/1986, 421-422)
Dewey does not specifically attribute the lack of adequate data to the nature of humans as living beings, but the experience of observing the sun move every day without a corresponding direct experience of the earth moving suggests that part of the reason for the belief was human proclivity to respond to qualities as means to other qualities (such as the use of the apparently variable position of the sun to predict when to plant and to harvest). On the other hand, although the initial impetus for obtaining inadequate data probably derived from the life process, its sedimentation into dogma was more a result of the social institutions that gathered around the common-sense view:
Nothing could be more indifferent than questions as to the relative size of the sun and the earth and whether the sun moves round the earth or vice versa, concretely considered. The change of the view of men upon these subjects partly grew out of and partly induced, partly was a symptom of and partly was the cause of, a tremendous change in men’s whole political and religious consciousness, simply because those things were part of the interpretation of society at large, of humanity at large, of itself, and of its place in nature. (Dewey, 1898/1976a, 345)
In common-sense inquiry, the primary concern is with the end (which forms the direct relation between humans and their environment) and not with the means. The nature of the problematic situation differs in just this way between common-sense and scientific inquiry. In the former, the end is of primary importance, and the means are subordinate. In the latter, the means are of primary importance, or are the end of scientific inquiry: the constant perfection of the means of inquiry as the end. The focus on means as the end is the basis for Dewey’s assertion that the data must not only point to a solution but also test it.
In scientific inquiry, through the logical (control) actions of affirmation and negation, the data is prepared to perform its evidential function of grounding the suggestion or solution to the problem. Indeed, for the emergence of a warranted or intelligent solution to emerge, not only must the facts be molded to guide the inquirers into an adequate solution, but they should simultaneously function to test the resulting category or proposed solution (a plan of action):
The progress made by inquiry in any branch may, then, be measured by the extent to which it has succeeded in developing methods of inquiry that, at one and the same time, provide material data having conjunct inferential and testing force. Satisfaction of this condition provides the definition of inductive procedures. (Dewey, 1938/1986, 424)
The double requirement of both specifying the problem and testing the solution is not present in common-sense inquiry. The data are prepared only to the point necessary to achieve the specific aims of the person at a particular time and place. The continuum of inquiry (just like the continuity of the life process) is frequently ignored in such a situation. In such cases, data preparation is thus limited in its applicability since its generalization to all times and places is unwarranted. Common-sense inquiry and its solutions are frequently limited to particular local times and places and cannot be used in other times and places whereas in scientific inquiry such limitation is abrogated.
The requirement that the data not only serve as evidential signs for the determination of the nature of the problem but also for testing the solution also means that the data used must enter into the formation of the solution, or form a constituent part of the solution (Dewey, 1938/1986). The means used to define the problem, in other words, must form part of the consequences or ends attained and not remain something external to the end or to the solution.1
The data must be reworked until they can mediate each other, thereby forming a stable basis for action when the latter does occur. Without such mediation, mere external, not organic, stimuli, will result so that the solution will be mechanical, resulting in inadequate stimuli to address the problems of living human beings since initial action will not be linked to action that occurs later except in the sense of antecedent and subsequent acts. In other words, the various acts will be discrete and will not synthetically coordinate the diverse actions in relation to a set of stimuli. Action will not form a unity and no adequate solution will be forthcoming since action will result in one activity cancelling out or diminishing the effectiveness of another activity.
The relevant traits, as they become mediated through each other, become more unified, working as an organic unit. As they become more unified, they cease to be separate from each other functionally (though, of course, existentially they are separate from each other spatially and temporally). At the same time, their distinctive contribution to the whole becomes more refined as their own specific nature is reinforced by the other functions. At the limit, the spatial separation becomes a continuous, functional whole, with description becoming narration: “If the man in the iron mask should be identified (a complete description formed), then he would at once enter into a narrational sequence” (Dewey, 1938/1986, 240). Dewey, therefore, had a correspondence theory of experience (Burke, 1994). The definition of a problem (increasing clarification of its nature, or the necessary elements of the problem) is simultaneously the emergence of the explicit formulation of its solution since they are one and the same process. Identification of a thing as one of a kind (description) is identical to the identification of a thing as persisting over time (narration).
The structure of the emerging unity or the solution becomes increasingly concrete as relevant stimuli in space are located and identified as so many different (but interrelated) kinds that can function to produce determinate consequences.
…
The generating conditions of a scientific object have a past reference, and its own conditioning of consequences or function has a future reference. Future use of the structure, rather than just the use in the particular problematic situation, also serves to refine the structure, modifying and adapting the elements to account for anomalies. Recognition of this fact forms a necessary part of scientific inquiry:
While the direct use of objects, factual and conceptual, which have been determined in the course of resolving prior problematic situations is of indispensable practical value in the conduct of further inquiries, such objects are not exempt in new inquiries from need for reexamination and reconstitution. The fact that they have fulfilled the demands imposed upon them in previous inquires is not a logical proof that, in the form in which they have emerged, they are organs and instrumentalities which will satisfy the demands of a new problematic situation. On the contrary, one of the commonest sources of error is the premature assumption that a new situation so closely resembles former ones that conclusions reached in these earlier cases can be directly carried over. Even the history of scientific inquiry shows how often this error has been made and for what long periods it has gone undetected. One indispensable condition of controlled inquiry is readiness and alertness to submit the conclusions of even the best grounded conclusions to re-inquiry with reference to their applicability in new problems. There is a presumption in their favor but the presumption is no guarantee. (1938/1986, 143-144)
Through the control of observations and inferences, the gap between qualities as inferential conditions and qualities as inferred consequences is reduced to a minimum through an extensive process of mediation and elimination of irrelevancies while still permitting the restructuring of a system of scientific categories when anomalies arise.
Conditions for the genesis of a structure that can function in a specific way are specified; changes lead into each other in such a way that they function as a unified whole, and the stability of the structure (and hence its function) is increasingly assured as further refinements in the total structure of a specific science and the interpenetration of sciences ensure that the structure be modified, if necessary, to accord both with its structural presuppositions and its functional consequences.2
The difference between scientific inquiry and common-sense inquiry, then, is the extent to which they develop the subject matter and the end to which they aspire to perfect the means of inquiry. In common-sense inquiry, the prime concern is the end as functional to human beings. In scientific inquiry, the prime concern is the end as functional to further inquiry. Common-sense inquiry has its place as does scientific inquiry, and both involve structure and function.
In human life, action involves both a structure and a function, and both emerge together in the process of living. Dewey provides many examples of how a function is a way of acting that accomplishes something specific. He also links this function to the creation or generation of specific structures: “… such acts as walking, plowing, eating, blacksmithing, etc., need and evolve distinctive instrumentalities, organs, structures, for their prosecution, especially for their successful prosecution….” (1916/1980b, 92). He also notes in several places that the structures emerge from the adaptation of various elements to each other until they form a unified whole that can perform a certain function: “Crutches, pedometers, skates, pedals, do not grow like legs. But given walking—or locomotion—things which had an independent prior existence are made over so as to safeguard or promote walking” (92). The simultaneous creation of a structure and the emergence of a function apply to both common-sense inquiry and scientific inquiry, but the latter provides a warranted ground for its structure and function whereas common-sense inquiry does not since the mediating elements that provide for stability are not made explicit.
Scientific inquiry is necessary since human nature does have its limitations—unless controlled. Human nature includes impulse and habit, but their operation by no means needs to lead to solid structures that can unify human life within a changing world. Common-sense inquiry provides many means that, within the domain of use and enjoyment and pain and suffering, are sufficient for daily life. However, it also has limitations, such as failing to address the biases of human beings as living beings and as social beings. It fails to ground the unification of disparate and changing elements into a stable form.
Scientific inquiry, according to Dewey, does provide the most effective method of controlling human limitations as living and social beings. By stipulating that scientific inquiry furnish data that serves to both point to a solution and to test the solution, scientific inquiry constitutes the best method for overcoming the limitations of human nature. It specifies changing conditions in such a way that they result in a relatively stable synthesis.
Scientific inquiry, though, is ultimately answerable to common-sense experience (not common-sense inquiry) since its raison d’être is the focus on means. Means are not means if they never result in any transformation into ends. Those means mediate human impulse, on the one hand, and human habit on the other. Human nature, if it is to develop even further, must learn to control its own limitations. Human nature can be an effective synthesis of impulse and habit, leading to refined and differentiated action through control over its own limitations, or it can lead to capriciousness (impulse) or mechanical action (habit that is not mediated by flexibility or variation). It can be a process of increasing synthesis of extensive mediations that lead to increased differentiation and individualization, or it can lead to a dispersal of energy that leads nowhere or to a mere mechanical process of living, with one habit leading to another habit without any expansion to a more extensive and differentiated set of habits—the negation of individuality.
1This principle was already, indirectly, formulated by Hegel. The beginning must lead to itself again in a process of advance and concretization in a circle. Marx also followed this method when he began with a commodity as a beginning that itself becomes a result of the capitalist process of production and reproduction.
2 Bernal (1965) notes how the mutual interpenetration of diverse fields of science has led to the most innovative scientific advances rather than their isolation from each other.
Conclusion
Given John Dewey’s characterization of the nature of scientific inquiry and its difference from common-sense inquiry, readers who have read earlier posts in this series should be able to readily see that Dr. Burns’ theory of negative thoughts determining or causing depression and other emotions fails categorically as a scientific theory. It is not science; it is pseudoscience.
And yet this is one of the main books for clinical practice in psychology. This says much about the nature of psychology these days. Psychology uses pseudoscience–as illustrated by Dr. Burns’ book–to justify its oppressive practices.
This is the end of this series.
The poverty of the left in Toronto (and elsewhere) is that its members do not even call into question such pseudoscientific theories that serve to oppress workers, citizens, immigrants and migrants in various ways. Indeed, it is likely that it is even unaware of such oppression. And yet they present themselves as the incarnation of morality; they flail about in their moral indignation at every immediate sign of oppression, and yet they ignore the more insidious and hidden forms of oppression that serve the ruling class of employers. They fail to engage in inquiry into such hidden forms of oppression. Indeed, many of them idealize such oppressive structures (such as public services. See, for example, The Expansion of Public Services Versus a Basic Income, Part Two: How the Social-democratic Left Ignore the Oppressive Nature of Public Services: Part One: Oppressive Educational Services).
Should not the radical left expose pseudo-science wherever they find it–especially when it is used to oppress the working class, citizens, migrants and migrant workers?
The Abolitionary 