The sentience of animals in John Dewey's organic naturalism.

John Dewey's 1925 work 'Experience and Nature' proposed that sentience evolved naturally from biological beginnings, a view he called zoopsychism—affective sentience across the animal world. This naturalistic account has been largely overlooked by philosophy, psychology, and animal research, yet those disciplines may now be converging on minimum expectations for sentient learning and behavior that Dewey already defended. Dewey argued that cognitive conduct cannot be understood through outer behavioral adjustments or inner physiological operations alone; their organized coordination within environing conditions is the minimum situation for scientific investigation. An organism perpetually engages its environs through sensings, doings, and energizations to sustain itself. Hard dilemmas about demoting feeling or banishing experience from nature dissolve when vitality's own qualities are empirically respected.

Study at a glance

Abstract

An evolutionary naturalism hospitable for life and its sentience should have been a philosophical priority since Darwin, but dualistic temptations have swayed vitalisms, emergentisms, and panpsychisms. Tracing sentience's evolution from biological beginnings was the modest naturalistic proposal from pragmatist John Dewey. Curiously, his endorsement in his 1925 Experience and Nature of affective sentience across the animal world has gone almost entirely unnoticed by philosophy, psychology, and animal research. However, those disciplines may be converging on minimum expectations for sentient learning and behavior that Dewey had already proposed and defended. For Dewey, identifying and explaining cognitive conduct cannot be about outer behavioral adjustments or inner physiological operations taken separately - their organized coordination within environing conditions is the minimum situation for scientific investigations. An organism is perpetually engaging its environs (what it can sense) through enactions (what it can do) from energizations (what it can power) activated from its sensings-doings, in order to sustain itself as an organized entity. Hard dilemmas about demoting feeling to impotence or banishing experience from nature dissolve when vitality's own qualities are empirically respected. Dewey's organic naturalism endorses zoopsychism, finding that behavioral, life, and physical sciences together discover how the existential and experiential lives of animals are accountable in naturalistic terms.