Human Nature and Conduct · Chapter
V: Classification of Instincts explained
Dewey critiques the scientific and practical fallacy of reducing human nature to a fixed set of instincts, arguing that such classifications are artificial and hinder genuine understanding and social control.
What happens
Dewey critiques the scientific and practical fallacy of reducing human nature to a fixed set of instincts, arguing that such classifications are artificial and hinder genuine understanding and social control. He emphasizes that impulses are numerous and fluid, shaped by social conditions, and that true moral and social progress requires detailed empirical study of how environments select and coordinate native activities.
Themes in this chapter
Critique of Traditional Morality and Dualisms
Dewey attacks the dualism between self-love and altruism, and the fixed classification of instincts, arguing they are artificial and hinder moral growth.
Impulse and Intelligence as Agents of Change
Dewey emphasizes that impulses are not fixed but are plastic and can be redirected through intelligent social engineering and education.
Social Environment Shapes Morality
Dewey argues that social conditions determine which impulses are selected and intensified, and that moral progress depends on modifying these conditions.
Characters to notice
- Hobbes
Dewey discusses Hobbes' emphasis on fear as a primary instinct, attributing it to the social disorders of his time rather than to a universal human nature.
- Plato
Dewey references Plato's threefold division of the soul as an example of historical instinct classification that reflects social conditions.
- Aristotle
Dewey mentions Aristotle's political faculty as part of a historical classification of instincts that has been used to explain political phenomena.
- Herbert Spencer
Dewey alludes to Spencerian evolutionary psychology in the context of classifying instincts and the influence of social conditions on such theories.
- Bergson
Dewey references Bergson's philosophy in the context of impulse and the creative evolution of self, though indirectly through the discussion of ongoing process.
Key passages
“To classify is, indeed, as useful as it is natural. The indefinite multitude of particular and changing events is met by the mind with acts of defining, inventorying and listing, reducing to common heads and tying up in bunches. But these acts like other intelligent acts are performed for a purpose, and the accomplishment of purpose is their only justification.”
Classification is a natural and useful mental tool, but its value lies solely in how well it helps us deal with unique and changing realities, not in any fixed truth it claims to represent.
Dewey warns against treating classifications as inherent divisions in nature rather than as practical instruments.
“When we assume that our clefts and bunches represent fixed separations and collections in rerum natura , we obstruct rather than aid our transactions with things. We are guilty of a presumption which nature promptly punishes.”
Believing that our categories reflect real, fixed divisions in the world hinders our ability to interact effectively with reality, and nature will inevitably correct this error.
Dewey criticizes the fallacy of reifying classifications, especially in the study of human nature.
“The first step in dealing with it is to increase our detailed scientific knowledge. We need to know exactly the selective and directive force of each social situation; exactly how each tendency is promoted and retarded.”
The initial move toward social improvement is to gather precise empirical data on how social environments shape and channel innate tendencies.
Dewey advocates for a scientific, experimental approach to social reform, analogous to the methods that succeeded in physical science.
