John Dewey’s contributions were very relevant to different fields related to the human sciences.Although he was trained as a philosopher, Dewey was also influential in psychology, pedagogy , logic and even in American politics, since he openly defended very progressive positions.

In this article we will review the life and work of John Dewey . We will place special emphasis on his contributions to philosophy and psychology within the frameworks of pragmatism and functionalism, respectively.

Biography of John Dewey

The American John Dewey was born in 1859 in Burlington, in the state of Vermont . He went to college there to study philosophy. Evolutionary theories had a key influence on the development of his thinking; throughout his career he would focus on the interaction between human beings and their environment, inspired by Darwin’s idea of natural selection.

After graduating in 1879, Dewey worked for two years as an elementary and high school teacher, but eventually chose to devote himself to philosophy. He received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore; the next 10 years he taught philosophy at the University of Michigan and in 1894 he joined the newly founded University of Chicago.

By then Dewey had already written his first two books: Psychology (1887) and Leibniz’s New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding (1888). In these works he synthesised Hegelian idealism and experimental science applied to human behaviour and thought.

Later evolution of his thought

Later, Dewey’s philosophy evolved to approach American pragmatism, which was beginning to develop at that time. He applied his theses to the educational context through the publication of the book School and Society (1899) and the foundation of a pedagogical laboratory , although he ended up resigning from his post as director.

For the rest of his life Dewey worked as a professor of philosophy at Columbia University in New York City. There he developed relationships with many philosophers and his thinking was enriched by contributions from many different perspectives.

His focus of interest continued to be pedagogy, always linked to philosophy, logic and politics ; in fact, he was an activist committed to causes such as the defence of the rights of immigrants, the organisation of teachers, women’s suffrage and participatory democracy in general. John Dewey died in 1952, at the age of 92.

Philosophical proposal: pragmatism

Pragmatism is a philosophical trend that emerged in the United States in the 1870s. This tradition argues that the main function of thought is not the representation of reality but its prediction and action on it.

Charles Sanders Peirce is considered to be the founder of pragmatism . Other relevant philosophers who followed him were William James, Chauncey Wright, George Herbert Mead and John Dewey himself. Nevertheless, this author described himself as an instrumentalist and consequentialist as well as a pragmatist.

Dewey was of the opinion that philosophers took as true constructs that had been created only to help conceptualize reality, while ignoring the mental functions that constitute thought itself . For him, as for the rest of the functionalists, this had to be the focus of philosophy.

From this perspective, thought is understood as an active construction that takes place from human interaction with the environment, so it is constantly updated. This is opposed to the classic vision of ideas as passive results of the observation of the world.

Thus, according to pragmatism, human concepts do not constitute a reflection of reality, nor is there an absolute truth, as the rationalist and formalist philosophers asserted. The practical utility of a “truth” or the consequences of an act are what give them meaning , and therefore philosophy must focus on the objective and not on concepts.

Functionalist Psychology

Functionalism is a theoretical orientation of psychology that analyzes behavior and cognition from the point of view of active adaptation to the environment. Logically, there is a strong relationship between functionalist psychology and pragmatism in philosophy. On a more general level, functionalism was a philosophy that also influenced sociology and anthropology.

William James founded Functionalism, although he did not consider himself part of this trend nor did he agree with the division of scientists into schools of thought. Other authors who made relevant contributions in this framework, besides Dewey, were George Herbert Mead, James McKeen Cattell and Edward Thorndike.

Functionalism emerged as a reaction to Edward Tichtener’s structuralism; James or Dewey rejected his introspective methodology, but continued to emphasize conscious experience. Later behaviorism criticized the functionalist positions because they were not based on controlled experiments and therefore did not have predictive capacity.

Functionalist psychology was inspired by the evolutionary ideas of Darwin and his followers. Today functionalism continues to live primarily in evolutionary psychology, which analyzes the development of the human mind from a phylogenetic point of view.