Named source · 1910

How We Think Quotes by John Dewey: Context & Meanings

2 quotations linked to How We Think by or associated with John Dewey, with source notes, explanations and related topics.

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1910 study of reflective thought, judgment and education

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Inquiry, uncertainty, judgment, decision, evidence, interpretation, learning, wisdom and the disciplined handling of suggestions.

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“The thinker has to decide, to choose; and there is always a risk.”

John Dewey

Meaning & context

Choosing among plausible interpretations necessarily involves uncertainty, so sound thinking requires a cautious selection that remains open to confirmation or correction by later events.

Source details

How We Think (1910), Chapter VIII, “Judgment: The Interpretation of Facts,” section 1, printed page 106, Project Gutenberg #37423. Dewey says the thinker must choose among candidate meanings for a perplexing situation and therefore accepts risk; the prudent thinker selects warily and remains answerable to later confirmation or frustration. This is part of Dewey’s historical educational/logical account of reflective judgment, not a modern decision-science finding.

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“The judgment when formed is a decision; it closes (or concludes) the question at issue.”

John Dewey

Meaning & context

Reflective judgment is not endless suspension: Dewey describes it as the point at which a particular uncertainty is concluded in a way that can also inform later judgments.

Source details

How We Think (1910), Chapter VIII, “Judgment: The Interpretation of Facts,” section 1, printed page 107, Project Gutenberg #37423. Dewey identifies a formed judgment as a decision that closes the issue at hand and may help establish a method for analogous later cases. The statement belongs to his early-twentieth-century theory of reflective judgment rather than current clinical, neuroscientific or experimentally settled cognitive science.

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1910 study of reflective thought, judgment and education

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