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1. On Dewey’s reaction to Peirce’s classes, see Dykhuizen1973: 30–31.

2. “To biology is due the conception of organism”, Deweywrote. In his view, it was leading psychology to recognize

mental life as an organic unitary process developing according to thelaws of all life, and not a theatre for the exhibition of independentautonomous faculties…[or] isolated, atomic sensations andideas. (“The New Psychology”, 1884, EW1: 56)

3. “The idea of environment”, Dewey wrote,

is a necessity to the idea of organism, and with the conception ofenvironment comes the impossibility of considering psychical life asan individual, isolated thing developing in a vacuum [but must alsodraw upon the nascent] sciences of the origin and development of thevarious spheres of man’s activity. (“The NewPsychology”, 1884, EW1: 56–57)

4. Thus, Dewey proposed to leave behind the reflex arc’s patchworkof stimuli-responses for the more flexible notion ofcircuits, the continual reconstitution and adjustment oforganisms-in-environments. Begin, he argued, not with the specious“stimulus” (e.g., “seeing”), but with acts or“sensori-motor coordinations”, e.g.,seeing-for-reaching (“The Reflex Arc”, 1896, EW5:100). The “response” which follows is also thickened;rather than just “reaching” it isreaching-guided-by-seeing. Acts occurs in and through anenvironment, one which presents both surprises and problemsproductive of growth.

5. Whitehead labeled this error the “Fallacy of MisplacedConcreteness”. [see entry on Alfred North Whitehead].

6. “Any impulse may become organized into almost any dispositionaccording to the way it interacts with surroundings. Fear may becomeabject cowardice, prudent caution, reverence for superiors or respectfor equals” (HNC, MW14: 69).

7. Earlier figures such as Hume used habit to explain how impressionseventually lead to complicated things and events. But while Humeresigned to call habit a “mysterious tie”, Dewey pointedto the advances of science to assert that “the development ofbiological knowledge has now done away with the‘mysterious’ quality of the tie” (LTI,LW12: 244).

8. On experience, post-EN, see “The Inclusive PhilosophicIdea” (1928, LW3), “Qualitative Thought” (1930c,LW5), “Context and Thought” (1931, LW6), “Time andIndividuality” (1940b, LW14),Logic: The Theory ofInquiry (1938c, LW12), “Experience, Knowledge and Value: ARejoinder” (1939c, LW14), “Experience and Existence: AComment” (1949, LW16).

9. Retaining “experience” as term central to his philosophywas risky for Dewey, as it already had a range of meanings ensconcedin western philosophy. He chose this path rather than go down the(Whiteheadian or Heideggerian) path of neologisms. The challenge forDewey’s readers is to avoid falling back into older, habitualconnotations; indeed, Dewey quite often intends something radicallydifferent, even converse, to those older senses. Alas, the term causedno end of confusion for Dewey; in 1951, in an early draft of a newintroduction toEN, he expressed a desire to substitute“culture” for “experience” because of, hesaid,

my growing realization that the historical obstacles which preventedunderstanding of my use of “experience” are, for allpractical purposes, insurmountable.

However, he added,

I still believe that on theoretical, as distinct from historical,grounds there is much to be said in favor of using“experience” to designate the inclusive subject-matterwhich characteristically “modern” (post-medieval)philosophy breaks up into the dualisms of subject and object, mind andthe world, psychological and physical. If “experience” isto designate the inclusive subject-matter it must designate both whatis experienced and the ways of experiencing it. (EN, LW1:361–62)

Dewey also discussed substituting the phrases“life-behavior” or “life-activities” forexperience. See “Experience and Existence: A Comment”(1949, LW16: 386–87).

10. For decades, Rorty rebuked Dewey for his notion of "experience,"claiming it was both too vague and also superfluous to his criticismsof the tradition and instrumentalist theory of knowledge. InRorty’s view, Dewey invented an intermediary between organismand environment, and lapsed into the very foundationalist habits hedecried; experience was, Rorty said, a fifth wheel, a thing-in-itselfmade to battle dualisms (see Rorty 1995: 219 n.10; 1977 [1982:79–80]). Toward the end of his own life, Rorty’s distastereached a zenith: “I regard [Dewey’s theory of experience]as the worst part of Dewey. I’d be glad if he had never writtenExperience and Nature” (Rorty 2006: 20). Rorty’s student andleading neopragmatist Robert Brandom has also denounced the term.

11. SeeDemocracy and Education:

Mere activity does not constitute experience….Experience astrying involves change, but change is meaningless transition unless itis consciously connected with the return wave of consequences whichflow from it. When an activity is continued into the undergoing ofconsequences, when the change made by action is reflected back into achange made in us, the mere flux is loaded with significance. We learnsomething. (DE, MW9: 146)

12. Other texts explicating this crucial distinction include “ThePostulate of Immediate Empiricism” (1905, MW3),Experienceand Nature (LW1, especially 26–27); “QualitativeThought” (1930, LW5, especially 211–12); andLogic:The Theory of Inquiry, LW12, especially 74–75).Dewey is not denying the existence of objects as known; he is denyingthatall thatexists must exist as known:

Things that arehad in experience exist prior to reflectionand its eventuation in an object of knowledge; but the latter, assuch, is a deliberately effected re-arrangement or re-disposition, bymeans of overt operations, of such antecedent existences. (1930,“In Reply to Some Criticisms”, LW5: 212)

13. Dewey’s name for this method varies; he calls it, alternately,the “experiential”, “empirical”, and“denotative” method, among others.

14. As Browning puts it, “bedrock” is meant to

emphasize the fact that there is nothing more basic or more radical in[any philosopher’s] philosophical systems than this, nothing intheir metaphysics, their political philosophy, their epistemology,their methodology, and so on. (Browning 1998: 74)

15. “Postulate of Immediate Empiricism” (1905, MW3) rejectedboth the idea of a reality-in-itself and knowing as affording specialaccess to reality, “The Subject-matter of MetaphysicalInquiry” (1915, MW8) rejected any metaphysics concerned withextra-natural or ultimate causes, but created room for one describing“irreducible traits found in any an every subject of scientificinquiry” (1915, MW8: 4), andEssays in ExperimentalLogic’s “Introduction” (1916, MW10) detailedthe “primary character of non-reflectional experience” andhow the “intellectual element is set in a context which isnon-cognitive”. This context, called a “situation”,enlarges as a central metaphysical term in later work. Situations haveboth structure and are “saturated with a pervasivequality” (1916, MW10: 322, 323).

16. In some very obvious ways, Dewey’s is a metaphysics of process.Events, growth, transformation, and change are central, and Deweyclearly repudiates object or substance-oriented approaches. Butbecause he also insists on the method of experience, any “sizingup” of reality will be done from a particular standpoint that ispersonal, cultural, and historical. Thus, it is incorrect to say,simply, that Dewey “inverts” traditional metaphysics bysubstituting “events” for “objects”, since theprimary “sin” of metaphysics is the assumption of a“God’s-eye view” on reality and, almost inevitably,a reductionistic approach to everything subsumed for explanation.

17. Thomas Alexander proposes thatEN covers traits such as

situation, precarious/stable, qualitative immediacy, relationalmediation, interaction or transaction (exemplified in communication),selectivity or individuality, continuity and emergence, field (fringeto focus, exemplified in consciousness), realization or theconsummatory (exemplified in art), and value (intelligent conduct).(Alexander forthcoming; see also Myers forthcoming)

18. See also “Context and Thought”, where Dewey wrote,

Philosophy is criticism; criticism of the influential beliefs thatunderlie culture; a criticism which traces the beliefs to theirgenerating conditions as far as may be, which tracks them to theirresults, which considers the mutual compatibility of the elements ofthe total structure of beliefs. Such an examination terminates,whether so intended or not, in a projection of them into a newperspective which leads to new surveys of possibilities. (1931, LW6:19)

On Dewey’s metaphysics as “ground map” see Sleeper1986 and 1992, Boisvert 1988 and 1998a, Fesmire 2015, and Garrison2005. See also Ortega y Gasset 1966 [1969]:

Metaphysics is not a science; it is a construction of the world, andthis making a world out of what surrounds you is human life. Theworld, the universe, is not given to man; what is given to him is hiscircumstances, his surroundings, with their numberless contents.(1969: 121)

19. Reaction toExperience and Nature came from a variety ofcritics (George Santayana, Morris Cohen, William E. Hocking) whoattacked the proposed relation between “experience” and“nature”. Because they perceivedEN as framingall non-human nature through the lens of human experience,Dewey was charged with conflating the immediacy of human experiencewith the way things are in the natural world, outside of humanobservations and problems. His was an anthropocentric naturalism,which, by exaggerating the “dominance of the foreground”lacked true “natural piety” and failed to regard nature onits own accord (see Santayana 1928, LW3: 367–384).

20. Dewey seemed to be taking two, opposed approaches to reality: on onehand, nature and human nature were to be understood via the empiricalsciences. It was therelations involved and not the immediatequalities which gave rise to knowledge. On the other hand, the naturalworld was to be understood via “experience”. It was thequalities immediately before mind’s self-conscious andrational system responsible for constructing scientific concepts andeven the sciences themselves. Was Dewey a materialistic naturalist orobjective idealist? Critics saw him as waffling. Moreover, theywondered how Dewey could claim that a single experienced event couldconsist inboth qualities (immediate, unique) and relations(mediated, repeatable)?

21. Bernstein claimed that Dewey’s theory harbored twoirreconcilable strains, a “metaphysical strain”, whichtalked aboutall existences, and a “phenomenologicalstrain”, which talked about experience. Bernstein argued thatDewey failed to provide a sufficient robust discussion of theprinciple of continuity, proposed by Dewey as bringing together theexperiential and the natural. Thus, for Bernstein, there exists“a deep crack, a basic discontinuity that cuts through hisnaturalism” (Bernstein 1961: 6). In my view, Thomas Alexanderresponds successfully to Bernstein’s (and others’)critique in his discussion of Dewey’s “generic traits ofexistence”. Alexander wrote,

The quest…for the generic traits of existence only makes sensein the context of a culture which hasalready developedhabits of inquiry, reflection and speculation and encountered theproblematic questions such pursuits raise…..Even the mostabstract reflective enterprises cannot transcend the world or thosebeings who are reflecting….Dewey seeks here what might becalled a transcendental or hermeneutic exploration of reflectiveexperience. What is revealed in the objects ofall reflectiveexperience (“theories”) is nothing less than that theyhave at each and ever moment presupposed the larger world which actsas their ground, their origin, their material and their true end.(Alexander 1987: 89–90)

This response basically rehearses Dewey’s proposal for a newstarting point for philosophy, and reflective thought more generally.In other words, the solution to Bernstein’s criticism is alreadypresent in Dewey’s “denotative method”.

22. The term “instrumentalism” carries some historicalbaggage. Some critics complained that Dewey’s“instrumentalism” implied a cheapening of mentalreflection — a dismissal of the activity of contemplation, orthe reduction of reflection to a primitive means-end calculus,typically for the purpose of economic ends. It is hoped that theaccount here helps set those impressions aside, again.

23. See Dewey’s 1912 “Contributions toA Cyclopedia ofEducation.”

[Instrumentalism] falls in line with the growing influence of thetheory of evolution, asserting that reality itself is inherently andnot merely accidentally and externally in process of continuoustransition and transformation, and it connects the theory of knowledgeand of logic with this basic fact. It connects with historic spiritualphilosophies in its emphasis upon life, and upon biological anddynamic conceptions as more fundamental than purely physical andmathematical ideas. While claiming to be strictly empirical in method,it gives to thought and thought relations (universals) a primary andconstructive function which sensational empiricism denied them, andthus claims to have included and explained the factor that historicrationalisms have stood for. In somewhat similar fashion, it claims tomediate between realistic and idealistic theories of knowledge. Itholds to reality, prior to cognitive operations and not constructed bythese operations, to which knowing, in order to be successful, mustadapt itself. (1912, MW7: 328)

24. In “The Fixation of Belief” Peirce investigated thenature of knowing as part of a biological framework, arguing thatreflective inquiry arises when organisms confront obstacles, whetherthese are disruptions of habit or the frustration of unmet needs. Theinitial phase preceding inquiry is named “doubt”, and thephase of satisfactory resolution, “belief”.

25. James’ pride in the Chicago School pleased Dewey greatly.Writing privately to James in 1903, Dewey says, “I have simplybeen rendering back in logical vocabulary what was already yourown” (Perry 1935: 308–309).

26. Dewey wrote,

When experience is aligned with the life-process and sensations areseen to be points of readjustment, the alleged atomism of sensationstotally disappears. With this disappearance is abolished the need fora synthetic faculty of super-empirical reason to connect them.(RIP, MW12: 131–2)

27. About the study of knowledge, Dewey wrote,

We are trying to know knowledge….The procedure which I havetried to follow, no matter with what obscurity and confusion, is tobegin with cases of knowledge and to analyze them to discover why andhow they are knowledges. Why not take the best authenticated cases offaithful reports which are available, compare them with thesufficiently numerous cases of reports ascertained to be unfaithfuland doubtful, and see what we find? (“Realism without Monism orDualism”, MW13: 60)

28. Dewey places special emphasis on problem formulation, and argued itis too often underestimated.

The way in which the problem is conceived decides what specificsuggestions are entertained and which are dismissed; what data areselected and which rejected; it is the criterion for relevancy andirrelevancy of hypotheses and conceptual structures. (LTI,LW12: 112)

29. Again, this stage is crucial for its ability to return us toproblems: Dewey wrote,

As philosophers, our disagreements as to conclusions are trivialcompared with our disagreement as to problems. To see the problemanother sees, in the same perspective and at the same angle—thatamounts to something. Agreement in solutions is in comparisonperfunctory. To experience the same problem another feels—thatperhaps is agreement. (“Beliefs and Existences”, 1905Presidential Address American Philosophical Association, in MW3:99)

30. In “Philosophy and Civilization”, Dewey wrote,

The life of all thought is to effect a junction at some point of thenew and the old, of deep-sunk customs and unconscious dispositions,that are brought to the light of attention by some conflict with newlyemerging directions of activity. (LW3: 6)

31. “Only by wrestling with the conditions of the problem at firsthand, seeking and finding his own way out, does [the student] think.When the parent or teacher has provided the conditions which stimulatethinking and has taken a sympathetic attitude toward the activities ofthe learner by entering into a common or conjoint experience, all hasbeen done which a second party can do to instigate learning”(DE, MW9: 167).

32. About their teaching at the Laboratory School, two colleagues wrote:

Like Alice, [the teacher] must step with her children behind thelooking glass and in this imaginative land she must see all thingswith their eyes and limited by their experience; but, in time of need,she must be able to recover her trained vision and from the realisticpoint of view of an adult supply the guide posts of knowledge and theskills of method. (Katherine Camp Mayhew and Anna Camp Edwards, 1936,The Dewey School, p. 312; cited in Westbrook 1991: 101)

33. One proposal of Dewey’s for integrating school and societyorganized pedagogy around community-based “occupationalprojects” (such as creating a meal, beginning from the growingof the basic ingredients, traveling to stores to purchase tools, etc.)Such “occupational projects”, not to be confused withvocational education, directly involved students with experimentalinquiry and the need to “take an active share in the personalbuilding up of his own problems and to participate in methods ofsolving them” (“Democracy in Education”, MW3:237).

34. Dewey preferred to speak of “intelligence” rather than“reason”, not least because of philosophy’spropensity to set reason against desire, emotion, and passion. RichardBernstein comments,

[Dewey] preferred to speak about intelligence and intelligent action.Intelligence is not the name of a special faculty. Rather, itdesignates a cluster of habits and dispositions that includesattentiveness to details, imagination, and passionate commitment. Whatis most essential for Dewey is theembodiment of intelligencein everyday practices. (Bernstein 2010: 85)

35. A reasonable starting list of Dewey’s principal ethicalwritings would include hisEthics (1908, MW5, revised 1932,LW7, co-authored with James H. Tufts) as well asHuman Nature andConduct (1922,HNC, MW14) andTheory ofValuation (1939, LW13); the essay “Three IndependentFactors in Morals” (1930,TIF, LW5: 279–88) isalso very significant. Dewey’s writings cover a range of ethicalapproaches which cover descriptive ethics, metaethics, normativeethics, and applied ethics. Perhaps most distinctive among his effortsis his theory of moral experience.

36. Dewey offered no comprehensive, situation-independent, theory aboutpermanent values or goods. He thought that expecting permanentsolutions to ongoing and novel moral perplexities was regressive andunscientific. In the case of values, as well as in the case ofactions, the proper response to a perplexity is inquiry, which canreconsider and reconstruct goods, values, and ends (E-rev,LW7: 164). Dewey did distinguish immediate experiences of value andreflective judgments about value — but was quick to insist thatone must not confuse the first (a had enjoyment of a value) with thesecond (a reflective endorsement of it) (QC, LW4: 207–08). Inbrief, there is no intuitive way to permanently identify an“is” from an “ought” because each instancealways manifests in a specific, problematic situation. In suchsituations, the best course is intelligent inquiry combining aradically empirical attention to the present with the best pastunderstanding about what has already been discovered to be valuable.Dewey wrote,

In short, a truly moral (or right) act is one which is intelligent inan emphatic and peculiar sense; it is a reasonable act. It is notmerely one which is thought of, and thought of as good, at the momentof action, but one which will continue to be thought of as“good” in the most alert and persistent reflection.(E, MW5: 278–79)

37. In morals, Dewey wrote,

The end is….the active process of transforming the existentsituation. Not perfection as a final goal, but the ever-enduringprocess of perfecting, maturing, refining is the aim in living.Honesty, industry, temperance, justice, like health, wealth andlearning, are not goods to be possessed as they would be if theyexpressed fixed ends to be attained. They are directions of change inthe quality of experience. Growth itself is the only moral“end”. (RIP, MW12: 181)

38. Dewey, along with his colleague G.H. Mead, developed a conception ofthe self as social. A cumulative process of socialization, involvingmany activities but especially discourse contributes to andconstitutes who we are as individuals. Dewey wrote,

Cooperation, in all kinds of enterprises, interchange of services andgoods, participation in social arts, associations for variouspurposes, institutions of blood, family, government, and religion, alladd enormously to the individual’s power. On the other hand, ashe enters into these relations and becomes a “member” ofall these bodies he inevitably undergoes a transformation in hisinterests. Psychologically the process is one of building up a“social” self. Imitation and suggestion, sympathy andaffection, common purpose and common interest, are the aids inbuilding such a self. (E, MW5: 16; see also 388).

39. The ethical traditions’ approach to conflict was, for Dewey, acrucial (and damning) commonality between them.

Whatever may be the differences which separate moral theories, allpostulate one single principle as an explanation of moral life. Undersuch conditions, it is not possible to have either uncertainty orconflict: morally speaking, the conflict is only specious andapparent. Conflict is, in effect, between good and evil, justice andinjustice, duty and caprice, virtue and vice, and is not an inherentpart of the good, the obligatory, the virtuous. (TIF, LW5:280)

40. Dewey, recall, took aim at this fundamental metaphysical prejudice(equating what is real with what is certain) in EN. His naturalismaccepts that existence (not just subjective perception) really is amixture of the “precarious” and “stable”.Insofar as we are natural actors in a natural world, this is alsowhere ethical theory should start rather than trying to purify out asingle chief value or end. InHNC, Dewey wrote,

Potentially conduct is one hundred per cent of our acts. Hence we mustdecline to admit theories which identify morals with the purificationof motives, edifying character, pursuing remote and elusiveperfection, obeying supernatural command, acknowledging the authorityof duty. Such notions have a dual bad effect. First they get in theway of observation of conditions and consequences. They divert thoughtinto side issues. Secondly, while they confer a morbid exaggeratedquality upon things which are viewed under the aspect of morality,they release the larger part of the acts of life from serious, that ismoral, survey. Anxious solicitude for the few acts which are deemedmoral is accompanied by edicts of exemption and baths of immunity formost acts. A moral moratorium prevails for everyday affairs.(HNC, MW14: 194)

41. Dewey wrote that improving ethics as a process meant improving

the ability to make delicate distinctions, to perceive aspects of goodand of evil not previously noticed, to take into account the fact thatdoubt and the need for choice impinge at every turn. (TIF,LW5: 280)

By advancing in these empirical ways, Dewey noted, theory goes beyondmere conceptual analysis or exhortation and reveals alternatives andtheir consequences. Theory serves as “an instrument forrendering deliberation more effective and hence choice moreintelligent” (E-rev, LW7: 316).

42. On the sources germane to ethical theory, see “Ethics”(MW3: 41),E-rev (LW7: 179–180). Dewey rarely fails tokeep some of the elements of past philosophies. Philosophers such asPlato, Hume, and Kant (to name three) reward inquiry with theirability to

reveal the complexity of moral situations…[so as] to bring tolight some phase of [our] moral life demanding reflective attention,and which, save for it, might have remained hidden. (E-rev,LW7: 180)

43. On dramatic rehearsal, Dewey wrote,

We give way, in our mind, to some impulse; we try, in our mind, someplan….[W]e find ourselves in imagination in the presence of theconsequences that would follow; and as we then like and approve, ordislike and disapprove, these consequences, we find the originalimpulse or plan good or bad. Deliberation is dramatic and active, notmathematical and impersonal. (E, MW5: 292, 293)

44. As he laid out in his psychology, education, and ethical writings,political (and economic) individuals are not ontologically prior tosocial groups but existin and through transactions withthem. “Assured and integrated individuality is the product ofdefinite social relationships and publicly acknowledgedfunctions” (ION, LW5: 67). While everyone has privatethoughts and experiences, these are not proofs against the socialityinherent in individual experience for it is “only in socialgroups does a person have a chance to develop individuality”(“Individuality in Education”, MW15: 176). Nevertheless,Dewey is on guard against the absorption of the individual into thelarger social collective, which he sees as destructive ofindividuals-as-as such. Against domineering social systems, Deweywrote,

Individuality is inexpugnable because it is a manner of distinctivesensitivity, selection, choice, response and utilization ofconditions. For this reason, if for no other, it is impossible todevelop integrated individuality by any all-embracing system orprogram. (ION, LW5: 121)

45. Dewey wrote,

[E]very generation has to accomplish democracy over again for itself;that its very nature, its essence, is something that cannot be handedon from one person or one generation to another, but has to be workedout in terms of needs, problems and conditions of the social life ofwhich, as the years go by, we are a part, a social life that ischanging with extreme rapidity from year to year. (“Democracyand Education in the World of Today”, 1938a, LW13: 299)

46. 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”, 1939b, LW14: 229)

Dewey’s trust in the average person’s experience was apoint he vigorously debated with, especially, Walter Lippmann (SeePP and Lippmann 1922, 1925).

47. In 1930, Dewey writes of a profound crisis engulfing modern persons,the “lost individual” of his famous chapter inIndividualism (ION, LW5: 66–76). A number ofimpingements — mass production and consumption, the hegemony ofbusiness institutions, exponential increases of information producedby journalism, e.g. — were speeding up the pace of life,fomenting economic insecurity, and undermining “the loyaltieswhich once held individuals, which gave them support, direction andunity of outlook on life” (ION, LW5: 66). Writing justafter the Great Depression, Dewey diagnosed these corrosive conditionsas “an acute maladjustment between individuals and [their]social conditions”. “Where fears abound”, he wrote,“courageous and robust individuality is undermined”(ION, LW5: 68, 66–67).

48. Early colonists’ opposition to government power had backfired,Dewey argued, because merely calling for restrain (“negativeliberty”) had elevated the “wants and endeavors of privateindividuals seeking personal gain to the place of supreme authority insocial life” (“Authority and Social Change”, LW11:136). Thus, liberalism,

in the very act of asserting that it stood completely and loyally forthe principle of individual freedom, was really engaged in justifyingthe activities of a new form of concentrated [economic power,which]…has consistently and persistently denied effectivefreedom to the economically underpowered and underprivileged.(“Authority”, LW11: 136)

See also “Freedom” (LW11: 247, 248).

49. A renascent liberalism would be flexible,hypothetical, andconsistently oriented towardempirical inquiries aboutpresently experienced problems (“A Liberal Speaks Out forLiberalism”, LW11: 287). Liberalism would serve a“mediating function” to help social actions in effecting“a working connection between old habits, customs, institutions,beliefs, and new conditions” (LSA, LW11: 37).

50. Dewey wrote,

A right is never a claim to a wholesale, indefinite activity, but to adefined activity; to one carried on, that is, under certainconditions….The individual is free; yes, that is his right. Buthe is free to act only according to certain regular and establishedconditions. That is the obligation imposed upon him. He has a right touse public roads, but he is obliged to turn in a certain way. He has aright to use his property, but he is obliged to pay taxes, to paydebts, not to harm others in its use, and so on. (E, MW5:394)

51. The whole passage is worth citing. Dewey wrote,

Art is the living and concrete proof that man is capable of restoringconsciously, and thus on the plane of meaning, the union of sense,need, impulse and action characteristic of the live creature. Theintervention of consciousness adds regulation, power of selection, andre-disposition. Thus it varies the arts in ways without end. But itsintervention also leads in time to the idea of art as a consciousidea—the greatest intellectual achievement in the history ofhumanity. (AE, LW10: 31)

52. Regarding ontology, Dewey’s anti-essentialist answer to“What is art?” is thatas experience, art is notsimply locatable in an object, or event, or subject. Rather,“art” denotes theinteraction of (a) making(artist activity), (b) an event or thing (song, painting, etc.) and(c) an appreciator (listener, viewer, etc.). He distinguishes (b) as“art products” (the physical object, e.g.) but says that“the real work of art” is (a)+(b)+(c): “the buildingup of an integral experience out of the interaction of organic andenvironmental conditions and energies” (AE, LW10: 70;see also 167, 218, 223). Regarding interpretation and criticism, theirfunction complements the experiential definition of art; they aresituational and fallible, never seeking final, definitive judgmentsabout a work’s meaning or value. Their aim is to widen anddeepen aesthetic experience. “The function of criticism”,Dewey wrote,

is the reeducation of perception of works of art; it is an auxiliaryin the process, a difficult process, of learning to see andhear….The way to help [someone seeking to understand art] isthrough the expansion of his own experience by the work of art towhich criticism is subsidiary. (AE, LW10: 328)

53. In Dewey’s terminology, “an” or“consummatory” experience is conscious, deeply meaningful,and integrated as a whole. Its character is unique enough that werecognize it as distinct and special. The opposite kind of experiencehe called “anesthetic”, and it is marked by a dispersed,inchoate, or even hum-drum quality (AE, LW10: 42, 47).

54. As with psychology, education, morality, and other subject matters,Dewey looked to organic sources to understand art’s functionsand effects. Art engages our physical, sensory, and psychic abilities,and what we call an “aesthetic experience” is the resultof an organism-environment transaction. “In a growinglife”, Dewey wrote,

the recovery [of unison with the environment] is never mere return toa prior state, for it is enriched by the state of disparity andresistance through which it has successfully passed. (AE,LW10: 19)

These facts, he says, “reach to the roots of the esthetic inexperience”, for when life is able to survive and grow,

there is an overcoming of factors of opposition and conflict; there isa transformation of them into differentiated aspects of a higherpowered and more significant life. (AE, LW10: 20)

Aesthetic concepts and fine-grained meanings are rooted, then, in theorganism’s rhythmic and ongoing adjustments of sense. Thissupplies aesthetics with a natural basis and sets the task for atheory of art: explain how aesthetic phenomena (including artworks)are implicit in everyday experience, and how they might beexpanded.

55. Dewey’s examples press these connections. One can find the samekind of aesthetic experience in a museum’s painting, Dewey says,by looking to experience,

in the raw…in the events and scenes that hold the attentive eyeand ear of man, arousing his interest and affording him enjoyment ashe looks and listens: the sights that hold the crowd—thefire-engine rushing by; the machines excavating enormous holes in theearth; the human-fly climbing the steeple-side; the men perched highin air on girders, throwing and catching red-hot bolts. (AE,LW10: 10–11)

56. Dewey rejected “militant atheism” for its dogmaticassurance that humans were alone in an alien and hostile world; such aview lacked “natural piety”, a felt sensitivity toone’s place in the larger environment. All could cultivate thiskind of piety and it is necessary, Dewey argued, for moral growth(ACF, LW9: 18).

57. Dewey’s views about religious experience echo others aboutaesthetic experience, where experiences possessing uniquelyqualitative characters become entangled with outmoded conceptualstructures and institutions (museum, church, etc.). Emancipating suchexperiences could, Dewey thought, allow them to inform (and transform)more of everyday life (SeeACF, LW9: 8 ff.).

58. These changes, Dewey wrote,

relate not to this and that want in relation to this and thatcondition of our surroundings, but pertain to our being in itsentirety. Because of their scope, this modification of ourselves isenduring. It lasts through any amount of vicissitude of circumstances,internal and external. There is a composing and harmonizing of thevarious elements of our being such that, in spite of changes in thespecial conditions that surround us, these conditions are alsoarranged, settled, in relation to us. (ACF, LW9:12–13)

59. Dewey wrote,

The things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. Theyexist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous humancommunity in which we are a link. Ours is the responsibility ofconserving, transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage ofvalues we have received that those who come after us may receive itmore solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generouslyshared than we have received it. Here are all the elements for areligious faith that shall not be confined to sect, class, or race.(ACF, LW9: 57–58)