Abstract
In this chapter, we exposit ideas found in Dewey that are either underdeveloped or entirely unexplored by Wittgenstein. Nonetheless, the Deweyan ideas we consider are generally commensurable with most of Wittgenstein. This chapter discusses such aspects of Dewey’s philosophy as the primacy of the aesthetic encounter, creative action, embodiment and especially nonlinguistic embodied immanent meaning, aesthetically expressive meaning, and how mind and meaning distribute to wherever they occur throughout a world without withins. All of these will contribute to the collection of data and the analytical models developed in Chaps. 3 and 4.
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Notes
- 1.
Many plants manifest gravitational sensitivity through geotropism in root growth as well as seasonal and/or diurnal sensitivity to sunlight through heliotropism of leaf and branch growth.
- 2.
In Plato’s Symposium, Diotima the Mantinean teaches the young Socrates the true meaning of poetry, which is not words that rhyme in meter or some such; She declares:
[T]here is more than one kind of poetry in the true sense of the word—that is to say, calling something into existence that was not there before, so that every kind of artistic creation is poetry [poiesis], and every artist is a poet (Hamilton and Cairns 1961, 205b).
- 3.
Dewey titles the chapter from whence we draw this passage, “The Live Creature” and largely limits itself to the experiences we share with other live creatures.
- 4.
The last two sentences are referring to interpenetration of the consummatory and instrumental that indicates rich aesthetic experience of Dewey.
- 5.
This section draws on Macmillan (1983).
- 6.
Tomasello relies on Wittgenstein to make his case. Also relying on Wittgenstein , Segerdahl, Fields, and Savage-Rumbaugh (2005), who also rely on Wittgenstein, respond directly to Tomasello with strong contravening evidence that bonobos in a hybrid bonobo-human culture can acquire linguistic functioning . If they are right, one may still wonder if such training is confined to Abrichtung or may involve Unterricht .
- 7.
Near the end of PI §6 in the German, Wittgenstein shifts from Abrichtung to Unterricht and says, “With different training [ Unterricht ] the same ostensive teaching [ Abrichtung ] of these words [e.g., slab] would have effected a quite different understanding.”
- 8.
Zettel 418 reads, “To begin by teaching someone ‘That looks red’ makes no sense. For he must say that spontaneously once he has learnt what ‘red’ means, i.e., has learnt the technique [‘knowing how’] of using the word.” Abrichtung is only good for “ostensive teaching ” of the technique of word use.
- 9.
Such a response is not far-fetched given human and canine co-evolution (see e.g. Schleidt and Shalter 2003).
- 10.
What the misleadingly phrase, “body language” designates is unintentional nonlinguistic communication of thoughts, intentions, or feelings through gestures, posture, eye movements , touch, and so on. See Garrison (2011).
- 11.
The “external standpoint” is the third-person perspective.
- 12.
Recall Toulmin’s remarks regarding Dewey, Wittgenstein , and universals.
- 13.
No one knows with certainty that further inquiry into your home will not reveal the reality of hobgoblins.
- 14.
Recall the distinction between a merely referential meaning (e.g., hobgoblin) and an empirically warranted evidentially “true” meaning.
- 15.
See Wittgenstein , LCA.
- 16.
We must be careful here. Dewey is not saying that pure aesthetic meanings do not have a reference; they do. He is only saying that some experience may become purely aesthetic by taking it in such a way as to deliberately suspend cognitive reference. Recognizing possible confusion regarding this statement, Dewey adds a footnote that in part reads: “Having a meaning is not a reference, but every meaning had is taken or used as well as had. ‘Dialectic’ [logic, analysis, etc.] means to take it a certain way” (LW 1: 220).
- 17.
While many immanent meanings may simply involve skilled “know how,” we do not particularly enjoy possessing; nonetheless, a great deal of the aesthetic pleasure of sailing involves possessing immanent meaning. It is the same with any other practice. Those that do it best and enjoy it the most employ their “know how” with aesthetic joy.
- 18.
The poem is Ludwig Uhland’s “Count Eberhard’s Hawthorn.”
- 19.
The classicist Wolfgang Schadewaldt (1979) reflected on “physis,” the root of the Greek word for nature:
Physis is never that “nature” out there where people make Sunday excursions, “in” which this and that occurs or this and that is such and such…. [T]he noun physis, like all Greek constructions with –sis, does not mean some object or material thing, but a coming-to-pass, an event. (220)
Dewey’s naturalism comprehends nature this way.
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Andersson, J., Garrison, J., Östman, L. (2018). Distributed Minds and Meanings in a Transactional World Without a Within: Embodiment and Creative Expression. In: Empirical Philosophical Investigations in Education and Embodied Experience. The Cultural and Social Foundations of Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74609-8_2
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