John Dewey (1859–1952) was one of American pragmatism’searly founders, along with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James,and arguably the most prominent American intellectual for the firsthalf of the twentieth century. Dewey’s educational theories andexperiments had global reach, his psychological theories influencedthat growing science, and his writings about democratic theory andpractice helped shape academic and practical debates for decades.Dewey developed extensive and often systematic views in ethics,epistemology, logic, metaphysics, aesthetics, and philosophy ofreligion. Because Dewey’s approach was typically genealogical,couching his views within philosophy’s larger history, one findsin Dewey a fully developed metaphilosophy.

Dewey’s “cultural naturalism” (which he favored over“pragmatism” and “instrumentalism”) is acritique and reconstruction of philosophy within the ambit of aDarwinian worldview (Lamont 1961; MW4: 3). Following William James,Dewey thought philosophy had become overly technical andintellectualistic, divorced from assessing everyday social conditionsand values (FAE, LW5: 157–58). Philosophy, he believed,needed to be reconnected with education-for-living (philosophy as“the general theory of education”), viz., social criticismat the most general level, a “criticism of criticisms”(EN, LW1: 298; see alsoDE, MW9: 338).

Understood within the Darwinian evolutionary arena, philosophy becomesan activity taken by interdependent organisms-in- environments. Fromthis standpoint of active adaptation, Dewey criticized traditionalphilosophers’ tendency to abstract and reify concepts derivedfrom living contexts. Along with other classical pragmatists, Deweycritiqued metaphysical and epistemological dualisms (e.g., mind/body,nature/culture, self/society, and reason/emotion) reconstructing theirelements as parts of larger continuities. For example, human thinkingis not a phenomenon categorically external from the world it seeks toknow; indeed, such knowing isnot a purely rational attemptto escape illusion and discover ultimate “reality” or“truth”. Rather, knowing is one amongmany waysorganisms with evolved capacities for thought and language cope withproblems. Minds, then, are not passive observers but are engines ofactive adaptation, experimentation, and innovation; ideas and theoriesare not rational fulcrums to transcend culture, but rather functionwithin culture, adjudged on situated, pragmatic grounds. Knowing,then, is no “divine spark”, for while knowing (orinquiry, to use Dewey’s term) includes calculative orrational elements, these are agentially entangled with the body andemotions.

Beyond academia, Dewey was an active public intellectual, infusingcontemporary issues with insights found in philosophy. He addressedtopics of broad moral significance, such as human freedom, economicalienation, race relations, women’s suffrage, war and peace, andeducational methods and goals. Typically, he integrated discoveriesmade via public inquiries back into his academic theories. Thispractice-theory-practice rhythm powered every area ofDewey’s intellectual enterprise, and perhaps explains theenduring usefulness of his philosophy in many academic and practicalarenas. The fecundity of Dewey’s ideas continues to manifest inaesthetics, education, environmental policy, information theory,journalism, medicine, political theory, psychiatry, publicadministration, sociology, and philosophy, per se.

• 1. Biographical Sketch
  • Short Chronology of the Life and Work of John Dewey
• 2. Psychology
  • 2.1 Associationism, Introspectionism, and Physiological Psychology
  • 2.2 The “Reflex Arc” and Dewey’s Reconstruction of Psychology
  • 2.3 Instincts/Impulses
  • 2.4 Perception/Sensation
  • 2.5 Acts and Habits
  • 2.6 Emotion
  • 2.7 Sentiency, Mind, and Consciousness
    • Sentiency
    • Mind
    • Consciousness
• 3. Experience and Metaphysics
  • 3.1 The Development of “Experience”
  • 3.2 Traditional Views of Experience and Dewey’s Critique
  • 3.3 Dewey’s Positive Account of Experience
  • 3.4 Metaphysics
  • 3.5 The Development of “Metaphysics”
  • 3.6 The Project ofExperience and Nature
  • 3.7 Empirical Metaphysics and Wisdom
  • 3.8 Criticisms of Dewey’s Metaphysics
• 4. Inquiry and Knowledge
  • 4.1 The Organic Roots of Instrumentalism
  • 4.2 Beyond Empiricism, Rationalism, and Kant
  • 4.3 Inquiry, Knowledge, and Truth
• 5. Philosophy of Education
  • 5.1 Experiential Learning and Teaching
  • 5.2 Traditionalists, Romantics, and Dewey
  • 5.3 Democracy Through Education
• 6. Ethics
• 7. Political Philosophy
• 8. Art and Aesthetic Experience
• 9. Religion, Religious Experience andA Common Faith
  • 9.1 Dewey’s Religious Background
  • 9.2 Aligning Naturalism and Religion
  • 9.3 “Religion” vs. “Religious”
  • 9.4 Faith and God
  • 9.5 Religion as Social Intelligence—a Common Faith
• Bibliography
  • A. Works by Dewey
    • Collections
    • Abbreviations of Dewey works frequently cited
    • Individual works
  • B. Secondary Sources
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Biographical Sketch

John Dewey lead an active and multifarious life. He is the subject ofnumerous biographies and an enormous literature interpreting andevaluating his extraordinary body of work: forty books andapproximately seven hundred articles in over one hundred and fortyjournals.

Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont on October 20, 1859 to ArchibaldDewey, a merchant, and Lucina Rich Dewey. Dewey was the third of foursons; the first, Dewey’s namesake, died in infancy. He grew upin Burlington, was raised in the Congregationalist Church, andattended public schools. After studying Latin and Greek in highschool, Dewey entered the University of Vermont at fifteen andgraduated in 1879 at nineteen. After college, Dewey taught high schoolfor two years in Oil City, Pennsylvania. Subsequent time in Vermontstudying philosophy with former professor H.A.P. Torrey, along withthe encouragement of the editor of theJournal of SpeculativePhilosophy, W.T. Harris, helped Dewey decide to attend graduateschool in philosophy at Johns Hopkins University in 1882. There, hisstudy included logic with Charles S. Peirce (which Dewey found too“mathematical”, and did not pursue), the history ofphilosophy with George Sylvester Morris, and physiological andexperimental psychology with Granville Stanley Hall (who trained withWilhelm Wundt in Leipzig and with William James at Harvard).^[1]

Though Dewey later attributed important credit to Peirce’spragmatism for his mature views, Peirce had no sizable impact duringgraduate school. There, his main influences—Neo-Hegelianidealism, Darwinian biology, and Wundtian experimentalpsychology— created a tension he fought to resolve. Was theworld fundamentally biological, functional, and material or was itinherently creative and spiritual? In no small part, Dewey’scareer was launched by his attempt to mediate and harmonize theseviews. While sharing the idea of “organism”, Dewey alsosaw in both — and rejected— any aspects he deemed overlyabstract, atomizing, or reductionistic. His earliest attempts tocreate a “new psychology” (aimed at merging experimentalpsychology with idealism) sought a method to understand experience asintegrated and whole. As a result, Dewey’s early approachmodified English absolute idealism. In 1884, two years aftermatriculating, Dewey graduated with a dissertation criticizing Kantfrom an Idealist position (“The Psychology of Kant”); itremains lost.

While scholars still debate the degree to which Dewey’s maturephilosophy retained early Hegelian influences, Hegel’spersonal influence on Dewey was profound. New England’sreligious culture, Dewey recalled, imparted an “isolation ofself from the world, of soul from body, [and] of nature fromGod”, and he reacted with “an inward laceration” and“a painful oppression”. His study (with George SylvesterMorris) of British Idealist T.H. Green and G.W.F. Hegel afforded Deweypersonal and intellectual healing:

Hegel’s synthesis of subject and object, matter and spirit, thedivine and the human, was, however, no mere intellectual formula; itoperated as an immense release, a liberation. Hegel’s treatmentof human culture, of institutions and the arts, involved the samedissolution of hard-and-fast dividing walls, and had a specialattraction for me. (FAE, LW5: 153)

Philosophically, early encounters with Hegelianism informedDewey’s career-long quest to integrate, as dynamic wholes, thevarious dimensions of experience (practical, imaginative, bodily,psychical) that philosophy and psychology had defined as discrete.

Dewey’s family, as well as his reputation as a philosopher andpsychologist, grew while at various universities, including theUniversity of Michigan (1886– 88, 1889–1894) and theUniversity of Minnesota (1888–89). At Michigan, Dewey developedlong-term professional relationships with James Hayden Tufts andGeorge Herbert Mead. In 1886, Dewey married Harriet Alice Chipman;they had six children and adopted one. Two of the boys died tragicallyyoung (two and eight). Chipman had a significant influence onDewey’s advocacy for women and his shift away from religiousorthodoxy. During this period, Dewey wrote articles critical ofBritish idealists from a Hegelian perspective; he taught James’Principles of Psychology (1890), and labeled his own view“experimental idealism” (1894a,The Study ofEthics, EW4: 264).

In 1894, at Tuft’s urging, President William Rainey Harperoffered Dewey leadership of the Philosophy Department at theUniversity of Chicago, which also included Psychology and Pedagogy.Motivated to put these disciplines into active collaboration, Deweyaccepted and began building the department by hiring G.H. Mead fromMichigan and J.R. Angell, a former student at Michigan (who alsostudied with James at Harvard). Dubbed the “ChicagoSchool” by William James, Dewey, Tufts, Angell, Mead and severalothers developed “psychological functionalism”. He alsopublished the seminal “Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology”(1896, EW5; hereafterRAC), and broke from transcendentalidealism and his church.

At Chicago, Dewey founded The Laboratory School, a site to testpsychological and educational theories. Dewey’s wife Alice wasthe principal from 1896–1904. Dewey became active inChicago’s social and political causes, including JaneAddams’ Hull House; Addams became a close personal friend of theDewey’s. Dewey and his biographer, daughter Jane Dewey, creditedAddams with helping him develop his views on democracy, education, andphilosophy. The significance of Dewey’s intellectual debt toAddams is still being uncovered (“Biography of JohnDewey”, Dewey 1939a; see also Seigfried 1999, Fischer 2013).

In 1904, conflicts related to the Laboratory School lead Dewey toresign his Chicago positions and move to the philosophy department atColumbia University in New York City. There, he established anaffiliation with Columbia’s Teacher’s College. Importantinfluences at Columbia included F.J.E. Woodbridge, Wendell T. Bush,W.P. Montague, Charles A. Beard (political theory) and Franz Boas(anthropology). Dewey retired from Columbia in 1930, going on toproduce eleven more books.

In addition to many significant academic publications, Dewey wrote forvarious non-academic audiences, notably in theNew Republic;he was active in leading, supporting, or founding a number ofimportant organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union,the American Association of University Professors, the AmericanPhilosophical Association, the American Psychological Association, andthe New School for Social Research. Dewey spoke out to supportprogressive politics and social change. His renown as a philosopherand educator lead to numerous invitations; in 1922, he inaugurated thePaul Carus Lectures (revised and published asExperience andNature, 1925), gave the 1928 Gifford Lectures (revised andpublished asThe Quest for Certainty, 1929), and gave the1933–34 Terry Lectures at Yale (published asA CommonFaith, 1934a). He traveled for two years in Japan and China, andmade notable trips to Turkey, Mexico, the Soviet Union, and SouthAfrica.

In 1946, almost two decades after Alice Chipman Dewey died (1927),Dewey married Roberta Lowitz Grant. John Dewey died of pneumonia inhis home in New York City on June 1, 1952.

Short Chronology of the Life and Work of John Dewey

Source:H&A 1998, xiv

• 1859 Oct. 20. Born inBurlington, Vermont
• 1879 Receives A.B. fromthe University of Vermont
• 1879–81 Teachesat high school in Oil City, Pennsylvania
• 1881–82 Teachesat Lake View Seminary, Charlotte, Vermont
• 1882–84 Attendsgraduate school at Johns Hopkins University
• 1884 Receives Ph.D.from Johns Hopkins University
• 1884 Instructor in theDepartment of Philosophy at the University of Michigan
• 1886 Married to AliceChipman
• 1888–89 Professorof Philosophy at the University of Minnesota
• 1889 Chair ofDepartment of Philosophy at the University of Michigan
• 1894 Professor andChair of Department of Philosophy (including psychology and pedagogy)at the University of Chicago
• 1897 Elected to Boardof Trustees, Hull-House Association
• 1899The School andSociety
• 1889–1900President of the American Psychological Association;Studies inLogical Theory
• 1904 Professor ofPhilosophy at Columbia University
• 1905–06 Presidentof the American Philosophical Society
• 1908Ethics
• 1910How WeThink
• 1916The Influenceof Darwin on Philosophy, Democracy and Education, Essays inExperimental Logic
• 1919 Lectures inJapan
• 1919–21 Lecturesin China
• 1920Reconstructionin Philosophy
• 1922Human Natureand Conduct
• 1924 Visits schools inTurkey
• 1925Experience andNature
• 1926 Visits schools inMexico
• 1927The Public andits Problems
• 1927 Death of AliceChipman Dewey
• 1928 Visits schools inSoviet Russia
• 1929The Quest forCertainty
• 1930Individualism,Old and New
• 1930 Retires fromposition at Columbia University, appointed ProfessorEmeritus
• 1932Ethics
• 1934A CommonFaith, Art as Experience
• 1935Liberalism andSocial Action
• 1937 Chair of theTrotsky Commission, Mexico City
• 1938Logic: TheTheory of Inquiry, Experience and Education
• 1939Freedom andCulture, Theory of Valuation
• 1946 Married to Roberta(Lowitz) Grant;Knowing and the Known
• 1952 June 1. Dies inNew York City

2. Psychology

Dewey’s involvement with psychology began early. He hoped theemerging discipline would answer philosophy’s deepest questions.His initial approach resembled Hegelian Idealism, though it did notincorporate Hegel’s dialectical logic; instead he sought newmethods in psychology (Alexander 2020). By overcoming longstandingdivisions (between subject and object, matter and spirit, etc.) hewould show how human experiences —physical, psychical,practical, and imaginative —all integrate in one, dynamic person(FAE, LW5: 153). Dewey’s large ambitions for psychology(asthe new science of self-consciousness), imagined it asthe “completed method of philosophy” (“Psychology asPhilosophic Method”, EW1: 157). Nominally a textbook,Psychology (1887 EW2) introduced psychology’s study ofthe self as ultimate reality.

Dewey developed his own psychological theories. Extant accounts ofbehavior were flawed, premised upon outdated and false philosophicalassumptions. (He eventually judged that such larger questions aboutthe meaning of human existence exceeded the resources of psychology.)Dewey’s work at this time reconstructed components of humanconduct (instincts, perceptions, habits, acts, emotions, and consciousthought) and these proved integral to later, mature accounts ofexperience. They informed his lifelong contention that mind, contraryto long tradition, isnot fundamentally subjective andisolated, but social and interactive, emerging in nature andculture.

2.1 Associationism, Introspectionism, and Physiological Psychology

Dewey’s entry into psychology coincided with two dominanttrends: introspectionism (arising from associationism, a.k.a.,“mentalism”) and the newer physiological psychology(imported from Germany). Earlier British empiricists, such as JohnLocke and David Hume, explained intelligent behavior with (1)internally inspected (“introspected”) entities, includingperceptual experiences (e.g., “impressions”), and (2)thoughts or ideas (e.g., “images”). These accrue towardintelligence via an elaborate process of associative learning.Discovery-by-introspection was indispensable to many empiricists, andto physiologicalcum experimental psychologists (e.g.,Wundt).

Dewey was deeply influenced by graduate study of physiologicalpsychology with G. Stanley Hall, whose classes included theoretical,physiological, and experimental psychology. Dewey conducted laboratoryexperiments on attention. Unlike the introspectionists, Hall’smethods incorporated strict experimental controls, a biology-basedapproach which proffered Dewey an organic and holistic model ofexperience capable of overcoming the subjectivist dualisms plaguingthe older, associationist models.^[2] However, Dewey still found experience atomized and mechanistic inphysiological psychology, stemming from a reliance upon “sensedata”. From his Hegelian perspective, this psychology couldnever account for a wider, socio-cultural world. Briefly, for Dewey,“organism” entails “environment” and“environment” entails “culture”. A rigorouslyempirical psychology could restrict study to “the” mindbut was bound to forge connections with other sciences.^[3]

2.2 The “Reflex Arc” and Dewey’s Reconstruction of Psychology

Dewey sought an account of psychological experience that respectedexperimental limitsand culture’s pervasive influences.James’s tour de force,The Principles of Psychology(1890), modeled how to explain the conscious and intelligent selfwithout appealing to a transcendental Absolute. ThePrinciples’ emphatically biological conception of mind,Dewey recalled, gave his thinking “a new direction andquality” and “worked its way more and more into all myideas and acted as a ferment to transform old beliefs”(FAE, LW5: 157). Rather than measuring psychic phenomenaagainst preexisting abstractions, it deployed a “radicalempiricism” that starts from lived experience’s actualphases and elements and aims to understand its functional origins.

One expression of this Jamesean turn was Dewey’s seminalcritique of the reflex arc concept (1896). The “reflexarc” model of behavior was an influential way to empirically andexperimentally explain human behavior using stimulus-response(cause-effect) pairings. It sought to displace less observable andtestable approaches relying upon “psychic entities” or“mental substance”. In the model, a passive organismencounters an external stimulus, causing a sensory and motor response— a child sees a candle (stimulus), grasps it (response), burnsher hand (stimulus), and pulls her hand back (response). This makesexplicitthe event’s basic stimuli and responses,describing connections in mechanistic and physiological terms. Norecourse to mysterious and unobservable entities is necessary.

Dewey criticized the reflex arc on several grounds. First, events(sensory stimulus, central response, and act) are artificiallyseparated for purposes of analysis. “The reflex arc”,Dewey wrote, “is not a comprehensive, or organic unity, but apatchwork of disjointed parts, a mechanical conjunction of unalliedprocesses” (RAC, EW5: 97). Second, the model falsifiesgenuine interaction; organisms do notpassively receivestimuli and thenactively respond; rather, organismscontinuously interact with environments in cumulative andmodifying ways. The child encountering a candle isalreadyactively exploring, anticipating; noticing a flame modifiesongoing actions. “The real beginning is with the act ofseeing; it is looking, and not a sensation of light”(RAC, EW5: 97). Third, the model too rigidly designatescertain events (the stimulus,the response); itreifies them and ignores a wider, ongoing matrix of activity.Effectively, Dewey was pointing out the ironic fact that the reflexarc model — intending to shed metaphysical assumptions —was inadvertently creating new ones. We are seeking to discover, Deweyargued, “what stimulus or sensation, what movement and responsemean” and we are finding that “they meandistinctions of flexiblefunction only, not of fixedexistence” (RAC, EW5: 102; emphasis mine). Hissuggestion is pragmatic; rather than anunderlying reality(pure stimulus,pure response), psychology shouldlook to meanings. Pragmatically, then, terms such as stimulus,response, sensation, and movement “mean distinctions of flexiblefunction only, not of fixed existence” (RAC, EW5: 102).Meanings of terms are understood once they are seen as functional actsin a dynamic context that includes aims and interests.^[4]

Dewey’s critique and reconstruction of the reflex arc presagedother important developments in his pragmatism. The wider lesson wasthe need to pay greater attention to context and function, and heapplied it over his career to science more broadly, and to logic andmathematics. This was a warning not to mistake analyses’eventual outcomes as evidence for already-existing entities.^[5] It was also a reminder that specific applications of theory earnedsalience by their value in a longer temporal context, checked bothprospectively and retrospectively.

Rather than recount Dewey’s extensive reconstruction of thehuman self, here is a cursory review to illustrate how he developedsome basic notions: instincts/impulses, perceptions, sensations,habits, emotions, sentiency, consciousness, and mind.

2.3 Instincts/Impulses

James had already attacked attempts to explain complex, developedbehavior by reference to preexisting impulses and instincts (e.g.,“Habit”, James 1890: chapter 4); Dewey continued theassault. Such explanations fail to consider instinct’s plasticand pliable character. Across a variety of individuals, instinctsconsidered simple or basic are anything but—they blossom intomany different habits and customs.^[6] Also, instincts are not pushing an essentially passive creature, butare actively taken up in diverse circumstances, for diverse purposes.“Instinct”, like “stimulus”, has meaningdepending upon contextual factors which may include biological andsocio-linguistic responses. There is no psychology without socialpsychology, no plausible inquiry into pure, biological instincts (orother “natural” powers) without consideration of socialand environmental factors, let alone the particularities of a giveninquiry. As interactive phenomena-in-environment, instincts/impulsesare better framed as transactions (HNC, MW14: 66).

2.4 Perception/Sensation

Dewey’s argument about instincts applied to perception andsensation as well — do not base an empirical science onunquestioned, metaphysical posits, and do not rely upon strictlyanalytical methods that use simple elements to build up complexbehavior. Too often, such methods are inadequate to explainpsychological phenomena. Accordingly, Dewey attacked the then-commonview that a perception (1) was simply and externally caused, (2)completely occupied a mental state, and (3) was passively receivedinto an empty mental space.

Such elements grow out of an erroneous “psychophysicaldualism” that radically separates perceiver from world. Consider(1), perception as causation. Perception as simply and externallycaused is contravened by the Darwinian, ecological model. There,organism-environment interactions include,but are notontologically reducible to, “minds”,“bodies”, and their impingements— the so-called“impressions” and “ideas” of modernphilosophy. Wedo encounter surprising, unbidden events butsuch occurrences donot justify leaping to metaphysicalconclusions, that there is a world “out there” and a mind“in here”.

While experience is profoundly qualitative, qualities are never simplyreceived nor are they contextless. This new view of qualities rejectsthe longstanding dualism between “objective” and“subjective”. A lemon’s “yellowness” or“tartness” are neitherin a perceiver norin a lemon; each quality emerges from complex interactionsthat can later be characterized (as “tartness”)for reasons germane to the inquiry. Dewey wrote,

The qualities never were ‘in’ the organism; they alwayswere qualities of interactions in which both extra-organic things andorganisms partake. (EN, LW1: 198–199)

Thus, as discriminated, perceptions and qualities are made in inquiryand language, not reports of ontological entities that are simple,discrete, or ultimate. “Perception”, then, is shorthandfor more complicated interacting events. “Red” abstractsfrom a more complex experience (e.g., red-car-merging-into-my-lane),and the pragmatic question becomes, What is the function of thisabstraction? How does it mediate thought or action for futureexperiences? (“A Naturalistic Theory of Sense-Perception”,LW2: 51;EN, LW1: 198–199)

Regarding (2), perceptions pervading mental states, Dewey echoes Jamesin “The Stream of Thought” (James 1890: chapter 9). Whilea perception may occupy mental focus, there is also an attendant“fringe” which contributes contrast and creates, in thewider situation, an “underlying qualitative character”(“Qualitative Thought”, LW5: 238 fn. 1). Theaforementioned “tartness” of the lemon relies for itscharacter upon a slew of “fringe” conditions (e.g.,immediate past flavors, gustatory anticipations, etc.).

Finally, regarding passive reception (3), perception is already a“taking up” by organismsalready functioning insituations; there is no instantaneous and passive apprehension ofstimuli. Taking up always means selectivity, a process of adjustmentthat takesome time. Perception is never naïve, never aconfrontation with some “given” content already imbuedwith inherent meaning. Long before Wilfred Sellars (seeentry on Sellars) dismissed the passive-perception-encounter as modernempiricism’s “Myth of the Given”, Dewey had rebukedsuch claims. All seeing is seeingas —adjustmentswithin larger acts. These habits of adjustment can change (subsequentselections and interpretations are modified), so what is perceived canshift (DE, MW9: 346).

2.5 Acts and Habits

The 1896 “Reflex Arc” paper argued that simplerconstituents are insufficient to explain complex behavior; Dewey foundthat the “act” provided a better starting point(HNC, MW14: 105). Acts help organisms cope with theirenvironment; they direct movement. Acts exhibit selectivity andexpress interest, which make things meaningful. Our ancestors’selective acts to satisfy instinctive hunger resulted in choosingcertain foods (safe) over others. Over time, more elaborate interestin food becomes social norms (dining, e.g.) and aesthetic expectations(cuisine).

Following James and Peirce, Dewey integrates “habit”deeply into his philosophy, using it to explain various dimensions ofhuman experience (biological, ethical, political, and aesthetic) asmanifested in complex and social behaviors—walking, talking,cooking, conversing.^[7]Habits are complex, composed of acts which unfold in time. Actsmay begin with instinct borne of need and muddle toward reintegrationand satisfaction. To become a habit, an act-series changes graduallyand cumulatively; one act leads to the next. “Habit”emerges when acts cumulatively link to structure experience. Habit,Dewey wrote, “is an acquired predisposition toways ormodes of response, not to particular acts” (HNC, MW14:32). Such “ways” draw on past experiences, includingsocial and linguistic interaction. Habits shared by groups are“customs”.

Dewey challenged assumptions about the routine nature of habits.Habits maybecome routine, but are not strictly automatic orinsulated from conscious reformulation. Indeed, theycannotbe literally automatic because every situation is somehow new. Thus,the same exact acts never repeat. Unlike machine routines, organichabits remain plastic, changeable. Habitually eating sweets is subjectto contingency (toothache) and modification (restraint); thus,conscious reflection is the first stage of habits’ revision.

He also challenged the notion that habits were dormant powers, waitingto be invoked. Instead, habits are “energetic and dominatingways of acting” determining what we do and are: “Allhabits are demands for certain kinds of activity; and they constitutethe self” (HNC, MW14: 22, 21). Habits are notindividual possessions or inner forces; rather, they are transactionsbetween organisms and environments, functions making adaptation orreconstruction possible.

Habits enter into theconstitution of the situation; they arein and of it, not, so far as it is concerned, something outside of it.(“Brief Studies in Realism”, MW6: 120)

Because situations are cultural as well as bio-physical, habits areineliminably social. So-called “individual” habits emergewithin the social world of friends, family, home, work, media, etc.Change of habit, then, is not a project of invoking sheer willpower,but rather one of intelligent inquiry into relevant, frequently widerand social, conditions (psychological, sociological, economic,etc.).

2.6 Emotion

Dewey redescribed “emotion” as he did “habit”— a basic form of involvement in “coordinatedcircuits” of activity. But while habits are controlled responsesto problematic situations, emotion is not predominantly controlled ororganized; emotion is an organism’s “perturbation fromclash or failure of habit” (HNC, MW14: 54). As with theother psychological accounts, Dewey reconstructs emotion astransactional with other experiences (also typically analyzed asdiscrete — “rational,” “physical,”etc.).

Dewey’s account draws upon Darwin and James. Darwin argued thatinternal emotional states cause organic expressions which, dependingon their survival value, may be subject to natural selection. Jamessought to decrease the distance between emotion and accompanyingbodily expression. In cases of emotion, a perception excites a pre-organized physiological mechanism; recognizing such changes justis the emotional experience: “we feel sorrybecause we cry, angrybecause we strike”(James 1890 [1981: 450]). Dewey’s “The Theory ofEmotion” (1894b & 1895, EW4) pushed James’ pointfurther, toward an integrated whole (feeling-and-expression).Being sad is not merelyfeeling sad oractingsad but is the purposive organism’s overall experience. Ineffect, Dewey is gently correcting James’ (1890) reiteration ofmind-body dualism. To understand emotion, we must see that “themode of behavior is the primary thing” (“The Theory ofEmotion”, EW4: 174). Like habits, emotions are not privatepossessions but emerge from the dynamic organism-environment complex;emotions are “called out by objects, physical andpersonal” as an intentional “response to an objectivesituation” (EN, LW1: 292). As I encounter a strangedog, I am perplexed about how to react; usual habits are inhibited andthere is emotion. (“The Theory of Emotion”, EW4: 182) Wemay say emotions are intentional insofar as they are“to orfrom orabout somethingobjective, whether in fact or in idea” and not merely reactions“in the head” (AE, LW10: 72).

Philosophically, emotion is a central feature of Dewey’scritique of traditional epistemology and metaphysics. By pursuingsimple or pure rational access (to truth, reality) such systemsmisrepresent and castigate emotion as distraction, confused thought,or bodily interference; naturally, emotion becomes something needingto be suppressed, controlled, or bracketed. For Dewey, emotion iscourses through individuals (reasoning, acting) and social groups(creating cultural meanings). He connects the traditionalbalkanization of emotion to non-philosophical motives, such as thesegregation of leisure from labor and men from women. On Dewey’sreading, traditional rationalistic approaches require not just logicalbut moral critique.

2.7 Sentiency, Mind, and Consciousness

Dewey’s accounts of sentiency, mind, and consciousness buildupon those of impulse, perception, act, habit, and emotion. A cursoryview completes this sketch of Dewey’s psychology.

Sentiency

As with other psychic phenomena, sentience emerges throughorganism-environment transactions. Creatures seek to satisfy needs andescape peril; when precarity disrupts stability a struggle toreestablish balance begins, and what follows is adjustment of self,environment, or both. Sometimes previously successful methods(pre-organized responses) fail, and we become ambivalent. Dividedagainst ourselves about what to do next, it proves advantageous toinhibit practiced responses (look before leaping). It is thisinhibitory pause of action that, Dewey wrote, “introduces mentalconfusion, but also, in need for redirection, opportunity forobservation, recollection, anticipation” (EN, LW1:237). In other words, inhibition makes new ways of consideringalternatives possible, imbuing crude, physical situations with newmeaning. Thus, Dewey wrote, sentiency or feeling

is in general a name for the newly actualized quality acquired byevents previously occurring upon a physical level, when these eventscome into more extensive and delicate relationships of interaction.(EN, LW1: 204)

At this stage, the new relationships are not yetknown; theydo, however, provide the conditions for knowing. Symbolization,language, liberates these now-noticed relationships using tools ofabstraction, memory, and imagination (EN, LW1: 199).

Mind

Dewey rejected traditional accounts of mind-as-substance (orcontainer) and more contemporary reductions of mind to brain states(EN, LW1: 224–225). Rather, mind is activity, a rangeof dynamic processes of interaction between organism and world.Language offers some clues to the diversity of ways we can think ofmind: asmemory (I am reminded of X); asattention (I keep her inmind, Imind mymanners); aspurpose (I have an aim inmind); ascare orsolicitude (Imind the child); asheed (Imind the traffic stop). “Mind”,then, ranges over many activities: intellectual, affectional,volitional, or purposeful. It is

primarily a verb…[that] denotes every mode and variety ofinterest in, and concern for, things: practical, intellectual, andemotional. It never denotes anything self-contained, isolated from theworld of persons and things, but is always used with respect tosituations, events, objects, persons and groups. (AE, LW10:267–68)

As Wittgenstein (entry on Wittgenstein, section on rule-following and private language) pointed out 30 years later, no private language (seeentry on private language) is possible given this account of meaning. While meanings might beprivately entertained, they are not privately invented; meanings aresocial and emerge from symbol systems arising through collectivecommunication and action (EN, LW1: 147).

Active, complex animals are sentient due to the variety of distinctiveconnections they have with their environment. But“mentality” (mindfulness) arises due to the eventualability to recognize and use meaningful signs. With language,creatures can identify and differentiate feelingsasfeelings, objectsas objects, etc.

Without language, the qualities of organic action that are feelingsare pains, pleasures, odors, colors, noises, tones, only potentiallyand proleptically. With language they are discriminated andidentified. They are then “objectified”; they areimmediate traits of things. (EN, LW1: 198)

The bull’s charge isstimulated by the red flag, butthe automobile drivertakes the red stoplightas asign.

Dewey thus de-divinized mind while accentuating new aspects ofmind’s significance. No longer our spark of divinity, as someancients held, mind is also no mere ghost in a machine. Mind isvital, investigating problems and inventing tools, aims, andideals. Mind bridges past and future, an “agency of novelreconstruction of a pre- existing order” (EN, LW1:168).

Consciousness

Like mind, consciousness is also activity—the brisktransitioning of felt, qualitative events. Profoundly influenced byJames’s metaphor of consciousness as a constantly moving“stream of thought” (FAE, LW5: 157), Dewey didnot conclude that an account of consciousness could be adequatelycaptured in words. Talk about consciousness is alwayselliptical—it is “vivid” or“conspicuous” or “dull”—always fallingshy of the phenomenon. Because the experience of consciousness isever-evanescent, we cannot fix it as with objects of ourattention— for example, “powers”,“things”, or “causes”. Dewey, then, evokes butdoes not define consciousness. Consider these contrasts inExperience and Nature, (EN, LW1: 230)

As the comparison makes obvious, psychological life is processual andactive; accordingly, Dewey describes consciousness in terms suitingdynamic organisms. Consciousness is thinking-in-motion,ever-reconfiguring series of events that are felt as qualitativeexperience proceeds. If mind is a “stock” of meanings,consciousness is the realization-and-reconstruction of meanings,reconstructions which can reorganize and redirect activity(EN, LW1: 233).

Dewey occasionally tried to convey his notion of consciousnessperformatively, inviting readers to reflect about consciousness whilethey were reading about it. Here, again, “focus” and“fringe” play a crucial role. (EN, LW1: 231). Asphysical balance controls walking, mental meanings adjust and directongoing foci and interpretation.

3. Experience and Metaphysics

3.1 The Development of “Experience”

Dewey’s notion of “experience” evolved over thecourse of his career. Initially, it contributed to his idealism andpsychology. After he developed instrumentalism in Chicago during the1890’s, Dewey moved to Columbia, revising and expanding theconcept in 1905 with his historically significant “The Postulateof Immediate Empiricism” (PIE, MW3). “TheSubject-matter of Metaphysical Inquiry” (1915, MW8) and the“Introduction” toEssays in Experimental Logic(1916, MW10) developed the concept, showing “experience”did more than rebut subjectivism in psychology, but was also centralto his metaphysical accounts of existence and nature (Dykhuizen 1973:175–76). This was concretized in Dewey’s 1923 CarusLectures, revised and expanded asExperience and Nature(1925, revised edition, 1929;EN, LW1). Further extensionsand elaborations followed, notably inArt as Experience(1934b,AE, LW10).^[8]

Pivotal to his oeuvre, interested readers should track experienceacross this entry; here, the focus will be on Dewey’sphilosophical method and metaphysics.

Why was experience so important that it permeated Dewey’sapproach to philosophy? Three influences were paramount. First, Deweyinherited Darwin’s idea of nature as a complex congeries ofchanging, transactional processes without fixed ends; in this context,experience means the undergoing and doing oforganisms-in-environments, “a matter of functions and habits, ofactive adjustments and readjustments, of coordinations and activities,rather than of states of consciousness” (“A ShortCatechism Concerning Truth”, MW6: 5). Second, Dewey took fromJames a radically empirical approach to philosophy—theinsistence that perspectival experience, (e.g., thepersonal,emotional, ortemperamental) was philosophicallyrelevant, including to abstract and logical theories. Finally, Deweyaccepted Hegel’s emphasis on experience beyond the subjectiveconsciousness — manifest in social, historical, and culturalmodes. The self is constituted through experiential transactions withthe community, and this vitiates the Cartesian model of simple, atomicselves (and any methods based upon that presumption). Understood thisway, philosophy starts wherewe start,personally— with complex, symbolic, and cultural forms.

These influences, plus Dewey’s own inquiries, convinced him“experience” was the linch-pin to a broader theory ofhuman beings and the natural world. This renewed focus on experiencealso amounted to a metaphilosophy; it discarded the assumption thatphilosophy gave special insights into ultimate truth or reality.Philosophy was equipment for living.

As both sheer terminology and as Dewey deployed it,“experience” generated much confusion and debate. Deweycommented about this toward the end of his life.^[9] Decades later, one of Dewey’s foremost philosophicalcelebrants, Richard Rorty, lambasted Dewey for both the term and (whatRorty perceived as) Dewey’s intentions.^[10] (Rorty 1977, 1995, 2006) (Rorty 1977, 1995, 2006) Nevertheless, sincethe term lives on, both in Dewey’s work and in everydaydiscourse, it deserves continued analysis.

3.2 Traditional Views of Experience and Dewey’s Critique

Understanding Dewey’s view of experience requires, first, somenotion of what he rejected. It was typical for many philosophers toconstrue experience narrowly, as the private contents ofconsciousness. These might be perceptions (sensing), or reflections(calculating, associating, imagining) done by the subjective mind.Some, such as Plato and Descartes, denigrated experience as a fluxwhich confused or diverted rational inquiry. Others, such as Hume andLocke, thought experience (as atomic sensations) provided the mind atleastsome resources for knowing, but with limits. All agreedthatpercepts andconcepts were different and intension; they agreed that sensation was perspectival andcontext-relative; they also agreed that this relativity problematizedthe assumed mission of philosophy—toknow withcertainty—and differed only about the degree of the problem.

Dewey disputed the empiricist conviction that sensations arecategorically separable contents of consciousness. This beliefproduced a “whole epistemological industry” devoted to thegeneral problem of “correspondence” and a host of specificpuzzles (about the existence of an external world, other minds, freewill, etc.) (“Propositions, Warranted Assertibility, andTruth”, LW14: 179). This “industry” isolatesphilosophy from empirically informed accounts of experience and frompressing, practical problems. Regarding mental privacy, Dewey arguedthat while we have episodes of what might be called mentalinteriority, it is a later development: “Personality, selfhood,subjectivity, are eventual functions that emerge with complexlyorganized interactions, organic and social” (EN, LW1:162; see also 178–79). Regarding sensorial atomicity, discussedpreviously in thesection on psychology,

Dewey explained sensation as embedded in a larger sensori-motorcircuit, a transaction which should not be quarantined to any singlephase—nor to consciousness.

Dewey levied similar criticisms against traditional accounts ofreflective thought. He denied a substantial view of mind, especiallyone ontological apart from body, history, or culture. Reasoning is onefunction of mind, not the exercise of a separate“faculty”. There is no reason to purify reasoning offeeling, either; reasoning is always permeated with feelings andpractical exigencies. It may be practical, at times to “bracketout” a feeling or exigency when they interfere with mentalcalculating, but it is nevertheless true that reasoning subsists in awider and “qualitative world” (“Psychology andWork”, LW5: 243).

3.3 Dewey’s Positive Account of Experience

We have, already, an outline of Dewey’s view: experience isprocessual, transactional, socially mediated, and not categoricallyprefigured as “rational” or “emotional”. Weadd three additional, positive characterizations of experience: first,asexperimental; second, asprimary(“had”) orsecondary (“known”); andthird, asmethodological.

First, experience exhibits a fundamentally experimental character.Dewey’s saw, during decades in education, how children’sexperiences alternate between acting and being acted upon. Such phasesbecome “experimental” when agents (students) consciouslyrelate what is tried with what eventuates as they come to understandwhich actions are significant for controlling future events. Whenexperience is experimental, we name the outcome “learning”.^[11]

Second, most of experience is not known or reflective; it is barelyregulated or reflected upon. As such, it is “felt” or“had”. Dewey also calls such experience direct andprimary. The other kind experience, the focus of philosophy, ischaracterized by “knowing” or mediation-by-reflection.Dewey labels these “indirect”, “secondary”, or“known”.Known experience abstracts fromhad (or direct) experience purposefully and selectively,isolating certain relations or connections.The Quest forCertainty provides a cogent description:

[E]xperienced situations come about in two ways and are of twodistinct types. Some take place with only a minimum of regulation,with little foresight, preparation and intent. Others occur because,in part, of the prior occurrence of intelligent action. Both kinds arehad; they are undergone, enjoyed or suffered. The first arenot known; they are not understood; they are dispensations of fortuneor providence. The second have, as they are experienced, meanings thatpresent the funded outcome of operations that substitute definitecontinuity for experienced discontinuity and for the fragmentaryquality due to isolation. (QC, LW4: 194)^[12]

Dewey’s had/known distinction describes existence withoutpresupposing a dualism between appearance/reality. Much can be unknownwithout therefore being illusory or merely apparent.PacePlato, we are not trapped in a cave of illusions with reason as ouronly escape. We cope with a world that is often confusing or opaque;as we try to make meaning, we keep track of ideas especially helpfulpredicting and controlling circumstances. Some other experiences aresimply enjoyed without making them lessreal.

Third, Dewey’s renewed and expanded focus on experience wasmethodological. This requires some unpacking. Dewey’sdistinction between experience “had” and“known” was more than a phenomenological observation; itwas directive about how philosophy should be done. (We can see thiskind of move embedded in Peirce’s pragmatic maxim andJames’s radical empiricism.) For Dewey, experience is not just“stuff” presented to (or witnessed by) consciousness;experience is activity, engagement with life. Philosophy, too, is aform of lived activity, which means that doing philosophy properlyrequires a different starting point. In life, even philosophers do notstart with a theory. Theories undoubtedly enter in, but notfirst. “The vine of pendant theory”, Dewey wrote about thedenotative method, “is attached at both ends to the pillars ofobserved subject-matter” (EN, LW1: 11; see also 386).^[13]

Following James and Peirce, Dewey is challenging the theoreticalassumptions of previous philosophies—“substances”,“mind vs. body”, “pleasure as natural aim”,and so on. Dewey’s philosophical work did critique thoseconcepts, but the point here is metaphilosophical—that we do notstart with what is abstract, conceptual. Dewey’s concern withsuch theoretical starting points was that they isolate philosophy froma more thoroughgoing empiricism capable of engaging actual humanproblems.

“Experience as method”, then, is both a warning and apositive recommendation. It warns philosophers to recognize that whileintellectual terms mayseem “original, primitive andsimple” they should be understood as the historically andnormatively situated “products of discrimination andclassification” (EN, LW1: 386; see also 371–372,375). “Knowing” does not stand beyond experience ornature, but is an activity with its own standpoint and qualitativecharacter.Whatever theory is eventually devised, a genuinelyexperiential method will check it against ordinary experience(EN, LW1: 26).^[14]

The experiential or denotative method tells us that we must go behindthe refinements and elaborations of reflective experience to the grossand compulsory things of our doings, enjoyments andsufferings—to the things that force us to labor, that satisfyneeds, that surprise us with beauty, that compel obedience underpenalty. (EN, LW1: 375–76)

Such a method iscritical because it forces inquirers tocheck previous interpretations and judgments against their liveencounters in a new situation (EN, LW1: 364). Philosophy hasto engage with new subject matters (and theories), accept challengesbeyond the traditional “problems of philosophy”, andembrace the idea that “the starting point is the actuallyproblematic” (EN, LW1: 61).

3.4 Metaphysics

Much that is central to Dewey’s metaphysics has beendiscussed—the transactional organism-environment setting, mind,consciousness, and experience. Accordingly, this section will examinehow Dewey conceived of “metaphysics”, the main project inExperience and Nature, how he attempted to reconnectempirical metaphysics with an ancient idea (philosophy as wisdom), andsome of the criticisms his conception received.

3.5 The Development of “Metaphysics”

Debate over a definite meaning for the term “metaphysics”,was as alive in Dewey’s day as in ours. From the beginning,Dewey sought to critique and reconstruct metaphysical concepts (e.g.,reality, self, consciousness, time, necessity, and individuality) andsystems (e.g., Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel). Like his fellowpragmatists Peirce, James, and Mead, Dewey wished to transform noteradicate metaphysics. Dewey’s early metaphysical views wereclosest to idealism, but engagements with experimental science andinstrumentalism convinced him to abandon the traditional goal ofultimate and complete accounts of reality.

His interest in metaphysics was revivified at Columbia by colleague F.J. E. Woodbridge, who thought metaphysics could be done in a“descriptive” rather than an extra-physical way(“Biography of John Dewey”, in Schilpp 1939: 36). Whilemany of Dewey’s most important metaphysical works focused onexperience (discussed above), special attention is due to “ThePostulate of Immediate Empiricism” (1905,PIE, MW3),“The Subject-Matter of Metaphysical Inquiry” (1915, MW8),and his “Introduction” toEssays in ExperimentalLogic (1916c, MW10).^[15] These were all vital precursors to his magnum opus,Experienceand Nature.EN’s final chapters, dealing with artand consummatory experience, were further developed inArt asExperience (1934b, LW10), a text containing additional andsignificant metaphysical discussions.

While labels tend to obscure what was innovative in his work, it issafe to say Dewey composed a realist, naturalistic, non-reductive,emergentist, process metaphysics.^[16] He described nature’s most general features (“generictraits”) while trying to do empirical justice to the world asencountered. His account also aimed to remain fallible and useful forfuture researchers seeking to improve life with philosophy. In theend, Dewey described his efforts as a “metaphysics” and asa “system”: “the hanging together of variousproblems and various hypotheses in a perspective” (“Naturein Experience”, LW14: 141–142). He did not propose ametaphysics from a god’s eye point of view, but one informed andmotivated by “a definite point of view” and linked to thecontemporary, human world (“Half-hearted Naturalism”, LW3:75–76 ).

3.6 The Project ofExperience and Nature

Experience and Nature provides extended criticism of pastmetaphysical approaches, especially their quest for certainty andassumption of an Appearance/Reality framework, and a positive, generaltheory regarding how human existence is situated in nature. It isempirical, descriptive, and hypothetical, eschewing claims of specialaccess beyond “experience in unsophisticated forms”. Suchexperience, Dewey argued, gives us “evidence of a differentworld and points to a different metaphysics” (EN, LW1:47).EN looks to existing characteristics of human culture,anthropologically, to see what they reveal, more generally, aboutnature. One significant product is Dewey’s isolation, analysis,and description of “generic traits of existence” and theirrelations to one another.

While this entry lacks space for even a bare summary, it is noteworthythatEN begins with an extensive discussion of method andexperience as a new starting point for philosophy. An extensivepresentation of the generic traits follows, which later informsdiscussions about science, technology, body, mind, language, art, andvalue. While the traits are not presented systematically (à laother metaphysicians such as Spinoza or Whitehead) there is aprogression moving from the more basic to the more complex.^[17]

3.7 Empirical Metaphysics and Wisdom

One might ask, How can metaphysics contribute to the world beyondacademic philosophy? Dewey aimed to return philosophy to an older,ancient mission—the pursuit of wisdom. And while Dewey describesphilosophy as inherently critical, a “criticism ofcriticisms”, it still raises questions about the objectives ofan empirical, hypothetical, naturalistic metaphysics? (EN,LW1: 298) Dewey raises the issue, himself, prophylactically:

As a statement of the generic traits manifested by existences of allkinds without regard to their differentiation into physical andmental, [metaphysics] seems to have nothing to do with criticism andchoice, with an effective love of wisdom. (EN, LW1: 308)

His answer comes by way of an account of existence’s generictraits, which purportedly provides “a ground-map of the provinceof criticism, establishing base lines to be employed in more intricatetriangulations” (EN, LW1: 308).^[18] A new metaphysics, like a new map, offers new possibilities forframing and explaining the world. This could discredit entrenchedtruisms—e.g., men are rational, women are emotional, humans areintelligent, animals are dumb, etc.— or facilitate newconnections and new meanings. As Dewey saw it, the long tradition ofphilosophy had rendered too basic conceptual tools (kinds, categories,dualisms, aims, and values) unassailable; his reconsideration offereda new basis for metaphysics, one which would be relevant andrevisable.

"Map-making" suggested a new way to do metaphysics and a new role forphilosophers. Philosophers, on this model, become “liaisonofficers”, intermediators able to facilitate communicationbetween those speaking at cross purposes or in different jargons(EN, LW1: 306). Drawing from contemporary circumstances andpurposes, the maps drawn could not promise certainty or permanency butwould need to be redrawn according to changing needs and purposes.Their test, as with the rest of Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy,would lay in their capacity to sharpen criticisms and securevalues.

3.8 Criticisms of Dewey’s Metaphysics

Dewey received and responded to many criticisms of his metaphysicalviews. Critics often overlooked that his aim was to undercutprevailing metaphysical genres; often, his view was rashly consignedto some other extant camp. (He was characterized, variously, as arealist, idealist, relativist, subjectivist, etc. See Hildebrand2003.) One recurrent criticism was that his statement inPIE(that “things are what they are experienced as” ) couldnot yield a metaphysics because it merely reported subjective andimmediate experience; such reports, the criticism went, prevented amore mediated and (properly) objective account. Twenty years later,EN received similar reactions by critics who attackedDewey’s non-binary approach to experienceand nature.^[19]

Subsequent criticisms focused upon Dewey’s supposed neglect of atension between “qualities” vs. “relations”.Qualities, the argument ran, are immediate, whereas relations aremediate; how could Dewey claim they coexist in the same item ofexperience? This seemed to embody a contradiction.^[20] Richard Bernstein (1961) seized on this issue, and claimed that Deweyharbored two irreconcilable strains, a “metaphysicalstrain” and a “phenomenological strain”, but failedto sufficiently account for them with his “principle ofcontinuity”. One response to Bernstein argued that his critiqueunwittingly reenacted the very spectatorial standpoint Dewey’sexperiential starting point seeking to overcome.^[21]

In recent years, some debate whether Dewey should have engaged inmetaphysics at all. Richard Rorty and Charlene Haddock Seigfriedargued that Dewey’s critique of traditional metaphysics was asfar as he should have gone; his further efforts diverted him from moreimportant ethical work (Seigfried 2001a, 2004) or plunged him intofoundationalist projects previously disavowed (“Dewey’sMetaphysics” in Rorty 1977). Defenders argue that Dewey’sgenuinely new approach to metaphysics avoids old problems whilecontributing something salutary to culture at large (Myers 2020,Garrison 2005, Boisvert 1998a, Alexander 2020).

4. Inquiry and Knowledge

4.1 The Organic Roots of Instrumentalism

The interactional, organic model Dewey developed in his psychologyinformed his theories of learning and knowledge. Within thisframework, a range of traditional epistemological proposals andpuzzles (premised on metaphysical divisions such asappearance/reality, mind/world) lost credibility. “So far as thequestion of the relation of the self to known objects isconcerned”, Dewey wrote, “knowing is but one special caseof the agent-patient, of the behaver-enjoyer-sufferer situation”(“Brief Studies in Realism”, MW6: 120). As withpsychology, Dewey’s wholesale repudiation of the traditionalmetaphysical framework required extensive reconstruction in everyother area; “instrumentalism” was one popular name forDewey’s reconstruction of epistemology (or “theory ofinquiry”, as Dewey preferred).^[22]

As with his earlier functional approach to psychology, Dewey’sinstrumentalism leveraged Darwin to dissolve entrenched divisionsbetween, for example, realism/idealism, science/religion, andempiricism/rationalism. Change and transformation become naturalfeatures of the actual world, and knowledge and logic are recast asways to adapt, survive, and thrive. The better way to understandreasoning is by looking to the dynamic and biological world whichharbors it, rather than the traditional paradigms of static precision,physics or mathematics.^[23]

Early statements of instrumentalism (and definitive breaks by Deweywith Hegelian logic) may be seen in “Some Stages of LogicalThought” (Dewey 1900 [1916], MW1); that essay follows Peirce (entry on Peirce section on pragmatism, pragmaticism, and the scientific method],^[24] especially the well known 1877–78 articles championing thelarger framework of scientific thinking, namely the“doubt-inquiry process” (MW1: 173; see also Peirce 1877,1878). This account is developed inStudies in Logical Theory(Dewey 1903b, MW2), by Dewey and his collaborators at Chicago. In thework, Dewey acknowledges a “preeminent obligation” toJames (Perry 1935: 308–309).^[25]

Studies criticizes transcendentalist logic extensively,concluding that logic should not assume either thought orreality’s existencein general but should rest contentwith the function or use of ideasin experience:

The test of validity of [an] idea is its functional or instrumentaluse in effecting the transition from a relatively conflictingexperience to a relatively integrated one. (Studies, MW2:359)

Thus, instrumentalism abandons all psycho-physical dualisms and allcorrespondentist theories of knowing. Dewey wrote,

In the logical process the datum is not just external existence, andthe idea mere psychical existence. Both are modes ofexistence—one ofgiven existence, the other ofpossible, of inferred existence….In other words, datumand ideatum are divisions of labor, cooperative instrumentalities, foreconomical dealing with the problem of the maintenance of theintegrity of experience. (Studies, MW2: 339–340)

4.2 Beyond Empiricism, Rationalism, and Kant

While instrumentalism was of a piece with Dewey’s other views,it was also responding to dialectic within philosophy’sepistemological positions, particularly between British empiricism,rationalism (see entry onrationalism vs. empiricism), and the Kantian synthesis.

Classical empiricists insisted that sensory experience provided theorigins of knowledge. They were motivated, in part, by the concernthat rationalistic accounts effort to link knowledge with thoughtalone (away from particular sense stimuli), were too unchecked.Without the constraints of sense experience, philosophy was doomed tokeep producing wildly divergent systems. Classical empiricists, likeDewey, shared a genuine interest in scientific progress; such progressrequired, first, escape from unfettered speculation. The accountdeveloped by figures such as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume claimed that(in Locke’s version) the world writes on a receptive blankslate, the mind, in the language of ideas. Using faculties of memory,association, and imagination, knowledge is generated; extension ofknowledge must, on this account, be traceable to origination in senseexperience.

Rationalists, in contrast, argued that knowledge was both abstract anddeductively certain. Sensory experiences are fluid, individualized,and permeated by the relativity borne of innumerable externalconditions. How could a philosophical account ofgenuineknowledge—necessarily certain, self-evident, andunchanging—be derived using sensorial flux? No, knowledge mustbe derived from inner and certain concepts. Knowledge, then, isproduced by an immaterial entity, mind, with an innate power toreason, independent of the contingencies of practical ends andphysical bodies.

Kant responded to the empiricist-rationalist tension by reigning intheir ambitions; philosophy must stop attempting to transcend thelimits of thought and experience. Philosophy’s more modest andproper aspiration is to discover what can be known in the phenomenalworld. Kant, then, refused an originary role to either percepts orconcepts, arguing that sense and reason are co-constitutive ofknowledge. More important, Kant argued for mind as systematizing andconstructive.

Dewey’s response to this three-way epistemological conflict wasforeshadowed in the earlier discussion of the “Reflex Arc”paper and the idea of sensori-motor circuits. For Dewey, any proposalpremised on a disconnected mind and body—or upon one assumingthat stimuli (causes, impressions, or what have you) were atomic andin need of synthesis—was a non-starter.^[26]

Accepting some of Kant’s criticisms of rationalism andempiricism, Dewey rejected Kant’s propagation of severalsignificant but unjustified assumptions: that knowledge must becertain; that nature and intellect were categorically distinct; andthat it was justified to posit a noumenal realm(things-in-themselves). Dewey also questioned Kant’s suppositionthat the sensations ingredient to knowledge are initially inchoate;such a claim was, Dewey believed, driven by Kant’sarchitectonic. Methodologically, perhaps most significantly, Deweyfollowed James in criticizing Kant’s standpoint as toospectatorial. From a pragmatic, Jamesean, “radicalempiricist” standpoint, one may accept a wide variety ofphenomenon (clear, vague, felt, remembered, anticipated, etc.) asreal even though they are notknown.

Thus, for Dewey, Kant falls short of the philosophical perspectiveneeded to synthesize perception and conception, nature and reason,practice and theory. While Kant’s model of an active andstructuring mind was a clear advance over passive ones, it retainedthe retrograde picture of knowledge as reality’s faithfulmirror. Kant failed to seeknowledge as a dynamic instrumentfor managing (predicting, controlling, guiding)futureexperience. This pragmatic conception of knowledge judges it as onewould an eye or hand, gauging how it affects the organism’sability to cope:

What measures [knowledge’s] value, its correctness and truth, isthe degree of its availability for conducting to a successful issuethe activities of living beings. (“The Bearings of PragmatismUpon Education”, in MW4: 180)

Thus, Dewey replaced Kant’s mind-centered system with onecentered upon experience-nature transactions—“areversal”, Dewey wrote, “comparable to a Copernicanrevolution” (QC, LW4: 232).

4.3 Inquiry, Knowledge, and Truth

In the context of instrumentalism, what is “logic” and“epistemology”? Dewey does not discard these but insistson a more empirical approach. How do reasoning and learning actually happen?^[27] Dewey comprehensively addresses logic in his 1938Logic: TheTheory of Inquiry (LTI, LW12), which calls logic the“inquiry into inquiry”.LTI attempts tosystematically collect, organize, and explicate the actual conditionsof different kinds of inquiry; the aim, previewed in his 1917“The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy”, is pragmatic andameliorative: to provide an “important aid in proper guidance offurther attempts at knowing” (MW10: 23).

Throughout his career, Dewey described the processes and patternsevinced in active problem solving. Here, we consider three: inquiry,knowledge, and truth. There is, Dewey argued, a “pattern ofinquiry” which prevails in problem solving. “Analysis ofReflective Thinking” (1933, LW8) andLTI (LW12)describes five phases. Disavowing the usual divide between emotion andreason, inquiry begins (1) with afeeling of something amiss,a unique and particular doubtfulness; this feeling endures as apervasive quality imbued in inquiry and serves as a kind of“guide” to subsequent phases. Next, because what isinitially present is indeterminate, (2) aproblem must bespecifically formulated; note that problems do not preexist inquiry,as typically assumed.^[28] Next, (3) ahypothesis is constructed, one whichimaginatively utilizes both theoretical ideas and perceptual facts inorder to forecast possible consequences of eventual operations. Next,(4) onereasons through the meanings involved in thehypothesis, estimating implications or possible contradictions;frequently, discoveries here direct one return to an earlier phase (toreformulate the hypothesis or redescribe the problem).^[29] Finally, inquiry closes, (5) acting to evaluate and test thehypothesis; here, inquiry discovers whether a proposed solutionresolves the problem, whether (inLTI’s terminology)inquiry has converted an “indeterminate situation” into a“determinate one”.

The inquiry pattern Dewey sketched is schematic; actual cases ofreasoning often lack such discreteness or linearity. Thus, the patternis not a summary of how peoplealways think but rather howexemplary cases of inquirential thinking unfold (e.g., in theempirical sciences).

Knowledge, on Dewey’s transactional model of inquiry, departsfrom tradition and brought to earth. “Knowledge, as an abstractterm”, Dewey wrote,

is a name for the product of competent inquiries. Apart from thisrelation, its meaning is so empty that any content or filling may bearbitrarily poured in. (LTI, LW12: 16)

To understand a product, one must understand the process; this isDewey’s approach. By denying that knowledge is an isolatedproduct, he effectively denies a metaphysics that makes mind-the-substance separate from everything else. Hedoes notdepreciate knowing as an activity, and strongly maintains that“intelligence” is crucial to mediating individual andsocietal conflicts.^[30]

Truth is also radically reevaluated. Truth long connoted anideal— an epistemic fixity (a correspondence, a coherence)capable of satisfying the need for further inquiry. Since this is notthe actual situation human beings (or philosophy) inhabits, the idealshould be set aside. Still, Dewey was ever the (re)constructivist; in“Experience, Knowledge, and Value” (1939c) he provided anaccount. Truth no longer points toward something transcendental buttoward theprocess of inquiry (“Experience, Knowledge,and Value”, LW14: 56–57). A proposition is“true” insofar as it serves as a reliable resource:

In scientific inquiry, the criterion of what is taken to be settled,or to be knowledge, is being so settled that it is available as aresource in further inquiry; not being settled in such a way as not tobe subject to revision in further inquiry. (LTI, LW12:16)

Truth is not beyond experience, but is an experienced relation,particularly one socially shared. InHow We Think, Deweywrote,

Truth, in final analysis, is the statement of things “as theyare,” not as they are in the inane and desolate void ofisolation from human concern, but as they are in a shared andprogressive experience….Truth, truthfulness, transparent andbrave publicity of intercourse, are the source and the reward offriendship. Truth is having things in common. (HWT, MW6: 67;see also “The Experimental Theory of Knowledge”, 1910b,MW3: 118)

In Dewey’s instrumentalism, then, knowledge and truth areadjectival not nominative, describing a process which, as Peirce tellsus, can persist as long as we do. “There is no belief so settledas not to be exposed to further inquiry” (LTI, LW12: 16). Wordslike “knowledge” and “truth” are honoredbecause of their historic service as tools for past inquiries andtheir aid in securing values.

5. Philosophy of Education

Around the world, Dewey remains as well known for his educationaltheories (seeentry on philosophy of education, section Rousseau, Dewey, and the progressive movement) as for his philosophical ones. A closer look shows how often thesetheories align. Recognizing this, Dewey reflected that his 1916 magnumopus in education,Democracy and Education (DE, MW9)“was for many years that [work] in which my philosophy, such asit is, was most fully expounded” (FAE, LW5: 156).DE argued that philosophy itself could be understood as“the general theory of education”, avoiding furtherhyper-specialization and investing more earnestly in everydayproblems.

This was a call to see philosophy from an educational standpoint:

Education offers a vantage ground from which to penetrate to thehuman, as distinct from the technical, significance of philosophicdiscussions….The educational point of view enables one toenvisage the philosophic problems where they arise and thrive, wherethey are at home, and where acceptance or rejection makes a differencein practice. If we are willing to conceive education as the process offorming fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, towardnature and fellow-men, philosophy may even be definedas thegeneral theory of education. (DE, MW9: 338)

Dewey was active in education his entire life. Besides high school andcollege teaching, he devised curricula, established, reviewed andadministered schools and departments of education, participated incollective organizing, consulted and lectured internationally, andwrote extensively on many facets of education. He established theUniversity of Chicago’s Laboratory School as an experimentalsite for theories in instrumental logic and psychologicalfunctionalism. This school also became a site for democraticexpression by the local community.

5.1 Experiential Learning and Teaching

Dewey’s “Reflex Arc” paper applied functionalism toeducation. “Reflex” argued that human experience is not adisjointed sequence of fits and starts, but a developing circuit ofactivities. Framed this way, learning is a cumulative, progressiveprocess where inquirers move from dissatisfying doubt towardsatisfying resolutions of problems. “Reflex” also showsthat the subject of a stimulus (e.g., the pupil) is not a passiverecipient but an agent activelyselecting stimuli within alarger field of activities.

Cognizance of these facts, Dewey argued, compelled educators todiscard pedagogies based on the mind as “blank slate”. InThe School and Society Dewey wrote, “the question ofeducation is the question of taking hold of [children’s]activities, of giving them direction” (MW1: 25).How WeThink (1910c, MW6) primarily aimed to help teachers applyinstrumentalism. Overall, education’s intellectual goals wouldadvance by acquainting children using the general intellectual habitsof scientific inquiry.

The native and unspoiled attitude of childhood, marked by ardentcuriosity, fertile imagination, and love of experimental inquiry, isnear, very near, to the attitude of the scientific mind.(HWT, MW6: 179)

These proposals entailed the revision of the teacher’s role;while teachers still had to know their subject matter, they alsoneeded to understand students’ cultural and personalbackgrounds. If learning was to incorporate actual problems, morecareful integration of content with particular learners was needed.Motivational tactics also had to change. Rather than rewards orpunishments, Deweyan teachers were to reimagine the whole learningenvironment, merging the school’s existing goals withpupils’ present interests. One strategy was to identify specificproblems that could bridge curriculum and student and then formulatelearning situations to exercise them.^[31] This problem-centered approach was demanding, requiring teachers totrain in subject matters, child psychology, and pedagogies for weavingthese together.^[32]

5.2 Traditionalists, Romantics, and Dewey

Dewey’s educational philosophy emerged amidst a fierce1890’s debate between educational “romantics” and“traditionalists”.Romantics (also called“New” or “Progressive” education by Dewey),urged a “child- centered” approach; the child’snatural impulses provided education’s proper starting point.Education should not fetter creativity and growth, even if contentmust sometimes be attenuated.Traditionalists (called“Old” education by Dewey) pressed for“curriculum-centered” approaches. Children were emptycabinets curriculum fills with civilization’s contents; the mainjob of instruction was to ensure receptivity with discipline.

Dewey developed an interactional model to move beyond that debate,refusing to privilege either child or society. (See “MyPedagogic Creed”, 1897b, EW5;The School and Society,1899, MW1;Democracy and Education, 1916b, MW9;Experience and Education, 1938b, LW13, etc.) While Romanticscorrectly identified the child (replete with instincts, powers,habits, and histories) as an indispensable starting point forpedagogy, Dewey denied that the child was theonly startingpoint. Larger social groups (family, community, nation) have alegitimate stake in passing along extant interests, needs, and valuesas part of an educational synthesis.

Still, of these two approaches, Dewey more adamantly rejectedtraditionalists’ (overly) high premium on discipline andmemorization. While recognizing the legitimacy of conveying content(facts, values), it is paramount that schools eschew indoctrination.Educating meantincorporating, giving wide latitude forunique individuals who, after all, would inherit and have dominionover the changing society. This is whywho the child wasmattered so much. Following colleague and lifelong friend G.H.Mead’s ideas about the social self, Dewey argued that schoolshad to become micro-communities to reflect children’s growinginterests and needs. “The school cannot be a preparation forsocial life excepting as it reproduces, within itself, the typicalconditions of social life” (“Ethical Principles UnderlyingEducation”, 1897a, EW5: 61–62).^[33]

5.3 Democracy Through Education

Connecting child, school, and society aimed not only to improvepedagogy, but democracy as well. Because character, rights, and dutiesare informed by and contribute to the social realm, schools werecritical sites to learn and experiment with democracy. Democratic lifeincludes not only civics and economics, but epistemic andcommunicative habits as well: problem solving, compassionateimagination, creative expression, and civic self-governance. The rangeof roles a child might inhabit is vast; this creates a societalobligation to make education its highest political and economicpriority. During WWII, Dewey wrote,

There will be almost a revolution in school education when study andlearning are treated not as acquisition of what others know but asdevelopment of capital to be invested in eager alertness in observingand judging the conditions under which one lives. Yet until thishappens, we shall be ill-prepared to deal with a world whoseoutstanding trait is change. (“Between Two Worlds”, 1944,LW17: 463)

Democracy is much more comprehensive than a form of government, it is“not an alternative to other principles of associated life [but]the idea of community life itself” (PP, LW2: 328).Individuals exist in communities; as their lives change, needs andconflicts emerge that require intelligent management; we must makesense out of new experiences. Education empowers that by teaching theattitudes and habits (imaginative, empirical) that made theexperimental sciences so successful. Dewey called these attitudes andhabits “intelligence”.^[34]

Informing these areas—science, education, and democraticlife—is Dewey’s naturalism, which redirects hope away fromwhat is immutable or ultimate (God, Nature, Reason, Ends) toward thehuman capacity to learn from experience. In “CreativeDemocracy—The Task Before Us” (1939b) Dewey wrote,

Democracy is the faith that the process of experience is moreimportant than any special result attained, so that special resultsachieved are of ultimate value only as they are used to enrich andorder the ongoing process. Since the process of experience is capableof being educative, faith in democracy is all one with faith inexperience and education. All ends and values that are cut off fromthe ongoing process become arrests, fixations. They strive to fixatewhat has been gained instead of using it to open the road and pointthe way to new and better experiences. (“CreativeDemocracy”, LW14: 229)

Democracy’s success or failure rests on education. Education ismost determinative of whether citizens develop the habits needed toinvestigate problematic beliefs and situations while communicatingopenly. While every culture aims to convey values and beliefs to thecoming generation, the most important thing is to distinguish betweeneducation which inculcates collaborative and creative hypothesizingfrom education which foments obeisance to parochialism and dogma. Thissame caution applies to philosophy itself.

6. Ethics

Dewey wrote and spoke extensively on ethics throughout his career;some writings were explicitly about ethics, but ethical analysesappear in works with other foci.^[35] As elsewhere, Dewey critiques then reconstructs traditional views; heargued it is typical for traditional systems (e.g., teleological,deontological, or virtue-based) to seek comprehensive and monocausalaccounts of, for example, ultimate aims, duties, or values. Such idealtheorizing is obligated to explain morality’s requirements forall individuals, actions, or characters.

Dewey argued for a more experimental approach. Rather than an ultimateexplanatory account of moral life, ethics should describe intelligentmethods for dealing with novel and morally perplexing situations. Noultimate values should be stipulated or sought.^[36] The only value Dewey celebrated as (something like) ultimate was “growth”.^[37] Ethics means inquiry into concrete, problematic conditions; suchinquiry may use theories to inform hypotheses tested in experience.Reliable hypotheses may come to be called “knowledge”, butmust, in the end, be considered fallible and revisable. Actualresolutions to moral problems typically point toward plural factors(aims, duties, virtues), rather than just one (TIF, LW5).Moreover, actual conduct (including inquiry) is undertaken not byisolated, rational actors but by social beings.^[38] “Conduct”, Dewey wrote,

is always shared; this is the difference between it and aphysiological process. It is not an ethical “ought” thatconductshould be social. Itis social, whether bador good. (HNC, MW14: 16)

Dewey’s ethical theory, like those in education and politics,utilizes his transactional views of experience, habit, inquiry, andthe communicative, social self. It also exemplifies his metaphysics— a world both precariousand stable, where conflict isnatural and quests to ignore or permanently eradicate it are fantastical.^[39] Conflict is a generic trait of life, not a defect; theories denyingthis tend to be so reductive and absolutist that they divorce inquiryfrom the essential details of concrete situations, cultures, andpersons. Such strategies tend to fail.^[40]

Progress in ethical theory, then, means inquiry that is morediscriminating and revelatory of consequences and alternatives.^[41] Improving inquiry requires better methods of deliberation; this meansbeing open to contributions from many sources: sciences, socialcustoms, jurisprudence, biographies, moral systems of the past.^[42] Deliberation especially benefits from what Dewey called“dramatic rehearsal”, where imaginative enactment ofpossible scenarios can illuminate the emotional weight and color ofpotential ethical choices.^[43]

For further details on Dewey’s ethics, see the entryDewey’s moral philosophy by E. Anderson (2023) and Hildebrand (2018).

7. Political Philosophy

Dewey’s political philosophy, like other areas, builds on theidea that individuals are not self-subsistent social atoms but areconstituted in social environments; it also builds on humans’ability to inquire to solve problems in hypothetical and experimental ways.^[44] As elsewhere, theory is instrumental; concepts do not uncover anunderlying “reality,” but are functional (or not) inparticular, practical circumstances. Concepts and theories inpolitical theory are fallible and amenable to reconstruction. Deweyrejected approaches relying upon non-empirical,a prioriassumptions (e.g., about human nature, progress, etc.) and thoseproposing ultimate, typically monocausal, explanations. His workcriticized and reconstructed core concepts (individual, freedom,right, community, public, state, and democracy) along naturalist andexperimentalist lines. Besides numerous articles (for academic and layaudiences), Dewey’s political thought is found in booksincludingThe Public and Its Problems (1927b, LW2),Individualism, Old and New (1930f, LW5),Liberalism andSocial Action (1935, LW11), andFreedom and Culture(1939d, LW13). BecauseDemocracy and Education (1916b,DE, MW9) emphasizes profound connections between education,society, and democratic habits—it also merits study as a“political” work.

Enormous changes occurred during Dewey’s lifetime, includingmassive US population growth, the rise of industrial, scientific,technological, and educational institutions, the American Civil War,two world wars, and a global economic depression. These eventsstrained prevailing liberal theories, and Dewey labored to reconceivedemocracy and liberalism. “The frontier is moral, notphysical”, Dewey urged, proposing that democracy was tantamountto a “way of life” which required continual renewal to survive.^[45] Beyond governmental machinery (universal suffrage, recurringelections, political parties, trial by peers, etc.), he alsocharacterized democracy as “primarily a mode of associatedliving, of conjoint communicated experience” (DE, MW9:93; see also,PP, LW2: 325). Such experience, expressedthrough collaborative inquiry, required intellectual and emotionalcompetencies so that shared problems and value differences could bediscussed and addressed. Ultimately, democracy requires faith thatexperience is a sufficient resource for future solutions, and thatrecourse to transcendent rules or aims can be outgrown.^[46]

Dewey’s analysis of individualism arose from earlier academicinterests and his sensitivity to contemporary economic andtechnological pressures.^[47] The older “atomic” individualism—where naturalegoists vie to maximize their standing—was now harming notprotecting individuals; deployed as a rhetorical pretext, it wasenabling wealthy and powerful interests to undermine most of theprotections which initially justified liberalism.^[48]

Dewey’s counter-proposal was “renascent liberalism”.^[49] Reconstructing its core concept (“atomic” individualsbecome “social”), made other key political notionsrevisable—e.g., “liberty”, “freedom”,and “rights” —as all were resituated in aninstrumentalist framework (LSA, LW11: 35;E, MW5: 394).^[50] Also revised are notions of “community” and“public”. A democratic “public” forms aroundproblems, and aims to conduct experimental inquiry that leads toredress (PP, LW2: 314). Dewey also expressed a grave concern,still with us today, regarding “inchoate” publics. Suchpublics include members lacking the education, time, and attentionnecessary for inquiry. They present democracy with perhaps its mostsignificantly undermining condition (PP, LW2: 321, 317).

For further details on Dewey’s political theory, see the entryonDewey’s political philosophy by M. Festenstein (2023) and Hildebrand (2018).

8. Art and Aesthetic Experience

Dewey’s magnum opus on aesthetics,Art as Experience(AE, LW10: 31) states that art, as a conscious idea, is“the greatest intellectual achievement in the history ofhumanity” (31).^[51] Such high praise deserves notice. Dewey began writing aboutaesthetics very early, regarding art’s relevance to psychology(1887, EW2), to education (1897c, EW5), the invidious distinctionbetween “fine” and “practical” art (1891, EW3:310–311), and on Bosanquet (1893, EW4). His own theory emergedinExperience and Nature (1925a,EN, LW1) andflourished inAE (1934b); he proposed aesthetics as centralto philosophy’s mission, namely rendering everyday experiencemore fulfilling and meaningful.

Dewey’s aesthetics has four main objectives and an overarchingpurpose. First, it explicates artworks’ ontology, theinterrelated processes of making and appreciation, and specifies thefunctions of interpretation and criticism.^[52] Second, it examines arts’ social role in presenting,reimagining, and projecting human identity. Third, it analyzes thecommunicative functions of art, especially in education and politicallife. Finally, it describes and analyzes the implications ofart’s expression as experience; such experience can reach levelsof integration as they become qualitatively distinct, or “consummatory”.^[53] Consummatory experience happens occasionally; sometimes it occurs notin an “artistic” context (concert, museum, etc.) but inunexpectedly quotidian circumstances. It is life at its fullest. Theoverarching purpose of Dewey’s aesthetics is determining howmore of life’s experiences could becomeconsummatory.

The main problem posed byAE is: How did a chasm arisebetween the arts, artists and ordinary people? How have culturalconditions and aesthetic theories (reinforced by institutions)isolated “art and its appreciation by placing them in a realm oftheir own, disconnected from other modes of experiencing”?(AE, LW10: 16)AE makes art’s naturalcontinuities with everyday life explicit, while seeking to prevent itsreduction to mere entertainment or “transient pleasurableexcitations”. (AE, LW10: 16)^[54] Dewey criticizes traditional aesthetics’ spectatorial (ortheoretical) starting point and offers radically empirical accounts ofart making, appreciation, expression, form, and criticism. Becauseaesthetic experience has organic roots, it can be recognized even ineveryday objects and events.^[55] Again, the goal is dissolution of dualisms between “fine”and “useful” objects to foment a greater “continuityof esthetic experience with normal processes of living”(AE, LW10: 16).

For further details on Dewey’s aesthetics, see entry onDewey’s aesthetics by T. Leddy (2021) and Hildebrand (2018).

9. Religion, Religious Experience andA Common Faith

The whole story of man shows that there are no objects that may notdeeply stir engrossing emotion. One of the few experiments in theattachment of emotion to ends that mankind has not tried is that ofdevotion, so intense as to be religious, to intelligence as a force insocial action.(A Common Faith,1934a, LW9: 52–53)

9.1 Dewey’s Religious Background

Dewey grew up in a religious family; his devout mother pressured hersons to live up to a similar devotion. His family church wasCongregationalist; a bit later, including in college, LiberalEvangelicalism proved more acceptable. At twenty-one, while living inOil City, Pennsylvania, Dewey had a “mystic experience”which he reported to friend Max Eastman:

There was no vision, not even a definable emotion—just asupremely blissful feeling that his worries [about whether he prayedsufficiently in earnest] were over. (Dykhuizen 1973: 22)

Dewey belonged to congregations for about thirty-five years, turningaway circa 1894 as he left for a post in Chicago. After that,Dewey’s deepest loyalties lay outside religion; he was, as JohnJ. McDermott put it,

an unregenerate philosophical naturalist, one for whom the humanjourney is constitutive of its own meaning and is not to be rescued byany transcendent explanations, principles of accountability, orposthumous salvation. (McDermott 2006, 50–51)

Dewey returned to philosophical issues of religion in the1930’s. “What I Believe” (1930, LW5) argued for anew kind of “faith”, a “tendency towardaction”. Such a faith was not transcendental, but signified that“experience itself is the sole ultimate authority”(“What I Believe”, LW5: 267). This faith arises actively,from “the full participation of all our powers in the endeavorto wrest from each changing situation of experience its own full andunique meaning” (“What I Believe”, LW5: 272). In1933–34, Dewey gave the Terry Lectures at Yale, published asA Common Faith (1934a,ACF, LW9), his majorstatement on religion and religious experience.

9.2 Aligning Naturalism and Religion

Dewey’s endeavor inA Common Faith seems, inretrospect, insurmountable: to reconstruct religion in a wayharmonious with his empirical naturalism, while transforming religiousexperience and belief to support and advance a secular conception ofdemocracy. Religions vary, of course, but typically posittranscendent, eternal, unobservable entities and reveal themselves inways which are not, shall we say, open to verification. Empiricalexperience, typically, is cast as inferior—castigated as flux,illusion, uncertainty, or confusion — and must be set aside.Dewey had squared himself against the metaphysics, epistemology, andseemingly the morality, of major religions.

Who wasACF’s intended audience? Dewey wasnotaddressing believers content with supernatural religion,norreligious liberals seeking a compromise that would place scientificand spiritual truths in separate categories. He wasnotaddressing militant atheists, and rejected their dogmatism.^[56] Rather,ACF addressed those who had abandonedsupernaturalism yet still believed themselves religious(“Experience, Knowledge, and Value”, LW14: 79–80).ACF meant to salvage whatever made the religious attitudevaluable in experience while shedding traditional religious frameworksand supernaturalistic beliefs.

9.3 “Religion” vs. “Religious”

Dewey’s strategy was to divorce “religiousexperience” from religion, showing how the former might arisewithin a natural and social context.^[57] He found that none of the qualities reported by religiousexperiencers (feelings of peace, wholeness, security, etc.), offeredevidence for the supernatural. (ACF, LW9ff.) He also foundthat religious experience is not self-enclosed; it can color or affectother experiences. Just as sunset may exhibit “aesthetic”dimensions or a linguistic remark may betray a “moral”tint, various experiences may have a “religious” aspect(ACF, LW9: 9.). The “religious” character ofexperience, then, is attitudinal, lending “deep and enduringsupport to the processes of living” (ACF, LW9: 15).Dewey analyzed such religiosity as a kind of coping. Consider threeoptions for coping: (1)accommodate an obstacle by resigningto put up with conditions imposed; (2)adapt or modify theobstacle’s conditions to one’s liking; finally, (3)adjust to the obstacle by changing one’s attitudeand altering conditions. (Consider, asadjustment,the case of ofbecoming a parent which demands significantchanges that encompassboth selfand environment.)Option (3) (adjustment) is characteristic of religiousexperience for it is “inclusive and deep seated” andtransformative of attitudes in “generic and enduring” ways(ACF, LW9: 12,13). Adjustment projects imaginativepossibilities and puts them into action—both in oneself (wants,aims, ideals) and in surrounding conditions. The cumulative impact ofadjustment is often the evolution of identity (ACF, LW9: 13).^[58]

9.4 Faith and God

Dewey’s effort to naturalize religion reinterpreted othertraditional notions, including “faith” and“God”. Typically, faith is juxtaposed against reason.Faith requires neither empirical inquiry nor verification; it reposesin the transcendent and ultimate, in “things not seen”. Ittypically connotes intellectual acceptance, without proof, ofreligious propositions (e.g., “God exists and lovesmankind”).

Dewey made at least two important criticisms of traditional faith.First, faith is too closely identified withintellectualacceptance, eclipsing its pragmatic side;faith in a cause,for example, indicates a practicalwillingness to act strongenough to modify present desires, purposes, and conduct. Byover-identifying faith with intellectual recognition, traditionalaccounts undermine inquiry and constructive action. Second, faithtends to reify its objects (e.g., “sin”,“evil”, etc.) making them immune to inquiry andredescription. Creeds based on such interpretations of faith attemptto “solve” problems with formulaic appeals to absolutes.The better approach, Dewey argues, is fallibilistic and experimental:approaching problems with empirical inquiry. Insofar as traditionalfaith frustrates inquiry (and solutions), it tends to run counter tomoral aims.

One faith Deweycan accept he calls “naturalpiety”. Natural piety is not grounded in unseen, supernaturalpowers; it is a “just sense of nature as the whole of which weare parts” and the recognition that, as parts, we are

marked by intelligence and purpose, having the capacity to strive bytheir aid to bring conditions into greater consonance with what ishumanly desirable. (ACF, LW9: 18)

Faith grounded in natural piety accepts the idea that“experience itself is the sole ultimate authority”(“What I Believe”, LW5: 267).

Regarding God, Dewey’s naturalism disallows traditionalmodels—a single being responsible for the physical and moraluniverse, and its inhabitants. Belief in God is neither warranted noradvisable. Instead, Dewey offers a reconstructed “God”. Heproposes we thinknot of a singular object (person) but ofthe qualities to which God is compared—goodness, wisdom, love,etc. Such descriptions reveal our highest ideals. Remove thepossessor of the ideals and consider how idealspullus from possibility (imagination, calculation, action) toactualization —and one begins to understand "God" inDewey’s sense:

This idea of God, or of the divine is also connected with all thenatural forces and conditions—including man and humanassociation—that promote the growth of the ideal and thatfurther its realization….It is this active relation betweenideal and actual to which I would give the name “God”.(ACF, LW9: 34; see also 29–30)

9.5 Religion as Social Intelligence—a Common Faith

As a pragmatist, a meliorist, and a humane democrat, Dewey sought toharness the undeniable power of religion and religious experiencetoward ends beneficial to all. Religion provides people with a storyabout the larger universe and how we fit. He knew simple critiques ofreligion were ineffective because they leave powerful needs unmet.Dewey did not propose swapping out old religious institutions for newones; he hoped that emancipating religious experience frominstitutional and ideological shackles might free its energies towarda “common faith”, a passion for imaginative intelligencein pursuit of moral goods. Methods of inquiry and criticism are notmysteries; society is already deeply familiar with them. What wasnecessary would be for religious persons to connect inquiry with theenhancement of religious experience and values (ACF, LW9:23). If persons could appreciate how many celebrated accomplishmentswere due not to God but to intelligent, human collaboration, thenperhaps the idea ofcommunity could inspire a non-sectarian,common faith.^[59]

Dewey thought his call for a common faith was deeply democratic. Theidea of the supernatural was, by definition, suspicious of experience(as an adequate guide) and, consequently, suspicious of empiricalmethods. Unchecked by lived experience or experiment, supernaturalismcan produce deep divisions. Dewey’s common faith, in contrast,is bound up with experimental inquiry and open communication. This iswhy Dewey’s exhortation to exchange traditional religious faithfor a common faith is another expression of his ideal of experimentaldemocracy.

Bibliography

A. Works by Dewey

Collections

Citations to John Dewey’s works are to the thirty-seven-volumecritical editionThe Collected Works of John Dewey,1882–1953, edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Southern IllinoisUniversity Press, 1969–1991).The series includes:

This critical edition was also published in electronic form as:

• The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1953: TheElectronic Edition, Larry A. Hickman (ed.), Charlottesville, Va.:InteLex Corporation, 1996,available online. To insure uniformity of citation, the electronic edition preservesthe line and page breaks of the print edition.

In-text citations give the original publication date, seriesabbreviation, followed by volume and page number. For example LW10: 12refers to page 12 ofArt as Experience, which is published asvolume 10 ofThe Later Works.

Abbreviations of Dewey works frequently cited

Individual works

• 1884, “The New Psychology”,Andover Review,2(Sept.): 278–289. Reprinted in EW1: 48–60.
• 1886, “Psychology as Philosophic Method”,Mind, old series, 11(42), 153–173. Reprinted in EW1:144–67. doi:10.1093/mind/os-XI.42.153
• 1887,Psychology, New York: Harper and Brothers.Reprinted in EW2.
• 1891,Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics, Ann Arbor,Michigan: Register Publishing Company. Reprinted in EW3:239–388.
• 1893, Dewey, review of Bosanquet, “A History of Aesthetic,by Bernard Bosanquet, formerly Fellow of University College,Oxford”, Philosophical Review, 2 (Jan.1893):63–69. Reprinted in EW4: 189–197.
• 1894a,The Study of Ethics: A Syllabus, Ann Arbor, MI:The Inland Press. Reprinted in EW4: 220–362.
• 1894b, “The Theory of Emotion I: Emotional Attitudes”,Psychological Review, 1(6): 553–569. Reprinted in EW4:152–169. doi:10.1037/h0069054
• 1895, “The Theory of Emotion II: The Significance ofEmotions”,Psychological Review, 2(1): 13–32.Reprinted in EW4: 169–188. doi:10.1037/h0070927
• [RAC] 1896, “The Reflex Arc Concept inPsychology”,Psychological Review, 3(4): 357–370.Reprinted in EW5: 96–109. doi:10.1037/h0070405
• 1897a, “Ethical Principles Underlying Education”, inThird Yearbook of the National Herbart Society, Chicago: TheNational Herbart Society, pp. 7–33. Reprinted in EW5:54–83.
• 1897b, “My Pedagogic Creed”,School Journal,54(Jan.): 77–80. Reprinted in EW5: 84–95.
• 1897c, “The Aesthetic Element in Education”,Addresses and Proceedings of the National EducationalAssociation, pp. 329–30. Reprinted in EW5:202–204.
• 1899,The School and Society, Chicago: The University ofChicago Press. Reprinted in MW1.
• 1900 [1916], “Some Stages of Logical Thought”,ThePhilosophical Review, 9(5): 465–489. Revised and reprintedin 1916d: 183–219. Reprinted in MW1: 152–175.doi:10.2307/2176692
• 1903a, “Democracy in Education”,Elementary SchoolTeacher, 4 (1903): 193–204. Reprinted in MW3:229–239.
• 1903b,Studies in Logical Theory, Chicago: The Universityof Chicago Press. Reprinted in MW2: 293–378.
• [PIE] 1905, “The Postulate of ImmediateEmpiricism”,The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology andScientific Methods, 2(15): 393–399. Reprinted in MW3:158–167. doi:10.2307/2011400
• 1906, “Beliefs and Realities” (later retitled“Beliefs and Existences”),Philosophical Review,15(2): 113–119; originally read as the Presidential Address atthe fifth annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association, atCambridge, December 28, 1905. Reprinted in MW3: 83–100.doi:10.2307/2177731
• [E] 1908, with James H. Tufts,Ethics, New York:Henry Holt and Co. Reprinted in MW5.
• 1908–1909, “The Bearings of Pragmatism UponEducation”,Progressive Journal of Education,originally three papers, 1(Dec. 1908): 1–3; 1(Jan. 1909):5–8; 1–(Feb. 1909): 6–7. Reprinted in MW4:178–191
• 1910a, “A Short Catechism Concerning Truth”, inThe Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, New York: Henry Holtand Co., pp. 154–168. Reprinted in MW6: 3–11.
• 1910b, “The Experimental Theory of Knowledge”,TheInfluence of Darwin on Philosophy, New York: Henry Holt and Co.,pp. 77–111. Reprinted in MW3: 107–127.
• [HWT] 1910c,How We Think, Boston: D. C. Heathand Co. Reprinted in MW6.
• 1912, “Contributions to A Cyclopedia of Education”, inMW7: 207–366.
• 1915, “The Subject-Matter of Metaphysical Inquiry”,The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods,12(13): 337. Reprinted in MW8: 3–13. doi:10.2307/2013770
• 1916a, “Brief Studies in Realism”, in 1916d:250–280. Reprinted in MW6: 103–122. Revised version of anarticle in two parts in 1911,Journal of Philosophy, Psychologyand Scientific Methods, 8(15): 393–400, 8(20):546–454.
• 1916b,Democracy and Education: An Introduction to thePhilosophy of Education, New York: Macmillan. Reprinted inMW9.
• [EEL] 1916c, “Introduction” to 1916d:v–vi. Reprinted in MW10: 320–365.
• 1916d,Essays in Experimental Logic, Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.
• 1917, “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy”, in hisCreative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude, NewYork: Henry Holt and Co., pp. 3–69. Reprinted in MW10:3–49
• [RIP] 1920,Reconstruction in Philosophy, NewYork: Henry Holt and Co. Reprinted in MW12.
• [HNC] 1922a,Human Nature and Conduct, New York:Henry Holt and Co. Reprinted in MW14.
• 1922b, “Realism without Monism or Dualism”,Journal of Philosophy, 19(12): 309–317, 19(13):351–361 Reprinted in MW13: 40–60. doi:10.2307/2939872doi:10.2307/2939610
• 1923, “Individuality in Education”,GeneralScience Quarterly, 7(3): 157–166. Reprinted in MW15:170–179. doi:10.1002/sce.3730070301
• [EN] 1925a,Experience and Nature, Chicago: OpenCourt Publishing.
• 1925, “The Naturalistic Theory of Perception by theSenses”,The Journal of Philosophy, 22(22):596–606. Reprinted in LW2: 44–54 as “A NaturalisticTheory of Sense-Perception”. doi:10.2307/2015056
• 1927a, “Half-Hearted Naturalism”,The Journal ofPhilosophy, 24(3): 57–64. Reprinted in LW3: 73–81.doi:10.2307/2014856
• [PP] 1927b,The Public and Its Problems, NewYork: Henry Holt and Co. Reprinted in LW2.
• 1927c, “The Rôle of Philosophy in the History ofCivilization”,The Philosophical Review, 36(1):1–9. Reprinted in LW3: 3–11 as “Philosophy andCivilization”. doi:10.2307/2179154
• 1928, “Social as a Category”,Monist, 38(2):161–177. Reprinted in LW3: 41–54 as “The InclusivePhilosophical Idea”,. doi:10.5840/monist192838218
• [QC] 1929,The Quest for Certainty: A Study of theRelation of Knowledge and Action, New York: Minton, Balch and Co.Reprinted in LW4.
• [FAE] 1930a, “From Absolutism toExperimentalism”, inContemporary American Philosophy:Personal Statements, George Plimpton Adams and William PepperellMontague (eds), London: George Allen and Unwin; New York: MacmillanCo., volume 2: 13–27. Reprinted in LW5: 147–60.
• 1930b, “Psychology and Work”,PersonnelJournal, 8(February): 337–341. Reprinted in LW5:236–242
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Other Internet Resources

• A Brief Account: John Dewey’s Ethics, Political Theory, and Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics, by David L. Hildebrand (2018)
• John Dewey, American Pragmatist, at pragmatism.org
• Gouinlock, James S., “John Dewey”,EncyclopediaBritannica, revision: 27 September 2018. URL = <https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Dewey>
• John Dewey, entry by Jim Garrison in Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Education (internet Archive)
• Field, Richard, “John Dewey (1859–1952)”,Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. URL = <http://www.iep.utm.edu/dewey/>
• Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, resources (research and teaching) on John Dewey and other American Philosophers
• The Center for Dewey Studies
• The John Dewey Society

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