Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called ''intelligent practice''. Important positions characteristic of pragmatism include instrumentalism, radical empiricism, verificationism, conceptual relativity, a denial of the fact-value distinction, a high regard for science, and fallibilism.

Charles Sanders Peirce (and his pragmatic maxim) deserves most of the credit for pragmatism, along with later twentieth century contributors William James, John Dewey and George Santayana.

Pragmatism enjoyed renewed attention after W. V. O. Quine and Wilfrid Sellars used a revised pragmatism to criticize logical positivism in the 1960s. Another brand of pragmatism, known sometimes as neopragmatism, gained influence through Richard Rorty, the most influential of the late 20th-century pragmatists. Contemporary pragmatism may be broadly divided into a strict analytic tradition and "neo-classical" pragmatism (such as Susan Haack) that adheres to the work of Peirce, James, and Dewey.

Origins

Pragmatism as a philosophical movement began in the United States in the 1870s. Its direction was determined by The Metaphysical Club members Charles Sanders Peirce ( like "purse"), William James, and Chauncey Wright, as well as John Dewey and George Herbert Mead.

The first use in print of the name ''pragmatism'' was in 1898 by James, who credited Peirce with coining the term during the early 1870s. James regarded Peirce's 1877–8 "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" series (including "The Fixation of Belief", 1877 and especially "How to Make Our Ideas Clear", 1878) as the foundation of pragmatism . Peirce in turn wrote in 1906 that Nicholas St. John Green had been instrumental by emphasizing the importance of applying Alexander Bain's definition of belief, which was "that upon which a man is prepared to act." Peirce wrote that "from this definition, pragmatism is scarce more than a corollary; so that I am disposed to think of him as the grandfather of pragmatism." John Shook has said, "Chauncey Wright also deserves considerable credit, for as both Peirce and James recall, it was Wright who demanded a phenomenalist and fallibilist empiricism as an alternative to rationalistic speculation."

Inspiration for the various pragmatists included: Francis Bacon who coined the saying '''' ("knowledge itself is power")

David Hume for his naturalistic account of knowledge and action

Thomas Reid, for his direct realism

Immanuel Kant, for his idealism and from whom Peirce derives the name "pragmatism"

G. W. F. Hegel who introduced temporality into philosophy (Pinkard in Misak 2007)

J. S. Mill for his nominalism and empiricism

George Berkeley for his project to eliminate all unclear concepts from philosophy (Peirce 8:33)

Summary

Peirce developed the idea that inquiry depends on real doubt, not mere verbal or hyperbolic doubt and said, in order to understand a conception in a fruitful way, "Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object" — which he later called the pragmatic maxim. It equates any conception of an object to a conception of that object's effects to a general extent of the effects' conceivable implications for informed practice. It is the heart of his pragmatism as a method of experimentational mental reflection arriving at conceptions in terms of conceivable confirmatory and disconfirmatory circumstances — a method hospitable to the generation of explanatory hypotheses, and conducive to the employment and improvement of verification. Typical of Peirce is his concern with inference to explanatory hypotheses as outside the usual foundational alternative between deductivist rationalism and inductivist empiricism, though he himself was a mathematical logician and a founder of statistics.

Peirce lectured and further wrote on pragmatism to make clear his own interpretation. While framing a conception's meaning in terms of conceivable tests, Peirce emphasized that, since a conception is general, its meaning, its intellectual purport, equates to its acceptance's implications for general practice, rather than to any definite set of actual consequences (or test results) themselves; a conception's clarified meaning points toward its conceivable verifications, but actual outcomes are not meanings but individual upshots. Peirce in 1905 coined the new name pragmaticism "for the precise purpose of expressing the original definition", saying that "all went happily" with James's and Schiller's variant uses of the old name "pragmatism" and that he nonetheless coined the new name because of the old name's growing use in "literary journals, where it gets abused". Yet in a 1906 manuscript he cited as causes his differences with James and Schiller. and, in a 1908 publication, his differences with James as well as literary author Giovanni Papini. Peirce in any case regarded his views that truth is immutable and infinity is real, as being opposed by the other pragmatists, but he remained allied with them on other issues.

Central pragmatist tenets

The primacy of practice

Pragmatism is based on the premise that the human capability to theorize is necessary for intelligent practice. Theory and practice are not separate spheres; rather, theories and distinctions are tools or maps for finding our way in the world. As John Dewey put it, there is no question of theory ''versus'' practice but rather of intelligent practice versus uninformed practice.

Anti-reification of concepts and theories

Dewey, in ''The Quest For Certainty'', criticized what he called "the philosophical fallacy": philosophers often take categories (such as the mental and the physical) for granted because they don't realize that these are merely nominal concepts that were invented to help solve specific problems. This causes metaphysical and conceptual confusion. Various examples are the "ultimate Being" of Hegelian philosophers, the belief in a "realm of value", the idea that logic, because it is an abstraction from concrete thought, has nothing to do with the act of concrete thinking, and so on. David L. Hildebrand sums up the problem: "Perceptual inattention to the specific functions comprising inquiry led realists and idealists alike to formulate accounts of knowledge that project the products of extensive abstraction back onto experience." (Hildebrand 2003)

A summary of which can conclude that pragmatism is subjugated by perception.

Naturalism and anti-Cartesianism

From the outset, pragmatists wanted to reform philosophy and bring it more in line with the scientific method as they understood it. They argued that idealist and realist philosophy had a tendency to present human knowledge as something beyond what science could grasp. These philosophies then resorted either to a phenomenology inspired by Kant or to correspondence theories of knowledge and truth. Pragmatists criticized the former for its a priorism, and the latter because it takes correspondence as an unanalyzable fact. Pragmatism instead tries to explain, psychologically and biologically, how the relation between knower and known 'works' in the world.

In 1868, C.S. Peirce argued there there is no power of ''intuition'' in the sense of a cognition unconditioned by inference, and no power of introspection, intuitive or otherwise, and that awareness of an internal world is by hypothetical inference from external facts. Introspection and intuition were staple philosophical tools at least since Descartes. He argued that there is no absolutely first cognition in a cognitive process; such a process has its beginning but can always be analyzed into finer cognitive stages. That which we call introspection does not give privileged access to knowledge about the mind - the self is a concept that is derived from our interaction with the external world and not the other way around (De Waal 2005, pp. 7–10). At the same time he held persistently that pragmatism and epistemology in general could not be derived from principles of psychology understood as a special science: what we ''do'' think is too different from what we ''should'' think; in his "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" series, Peirce formulated both pragmatism and principles of statistics as aspects of scientific method in general. This is an important point of disagreement with most other pragmatists, who advocate a more thorough naturalism and psychologism.

Richard Rorty expanded on these and other arguments in ''Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature'' in which he criticized attempts by many philosophers of science to carve out a space for epistemology that is entirely unrelated to - and sometimes thought of as superior to - the empirical sciences. W.V. Quine, instrumental in bringing naturalized epistemology back into favor with his essay ''Epistemology Naturalized'' (Quine 1969), also criticized 'traditional' epistemology and its "Cartesian dream" of absolute certainty. The dream, he argued, was impossible in practice as well as misguided in theory because it separates epistemology from scientific inquiry.

The reconciliation of anti-skepticism and fallibilism

Hilary Putnam has suggested that the reconciliation of anti-skepticism and fallibilism is the central goal of American pragmatism. Although all human knowledge is partial, with no ability to take a 'God's-eye-view,' this does not necessitate a globalized skeptical attitude, a radical philosophical skepticism (as distinguished from that which is called scientific skepticism). Peirce insisted that (1) in reasoning, there is the presupposition, and at least the hope, that truth and the real are discoverable and ''would'' be discovered, sooner or later but still inevitably, by investigation taken far enough, and (2) contrary to Descartes' famous and influential methodology in the Meditations on First Philosophy, doubt cannot be feigned or created by verbal ''fiat'' so as to motivate fruitful inquiry, and much less can philosophy begin in universal doubt. Doubt, like belief, requires justification. Genuine doubt irritates and inhibits, in the sense that belief is that upon which one is prepared to act. It arises from confrontation with some specific recalcitrant matter of fact (which Dewey called a 'situation'), which unsettles our belief in some specific proposition. Inquiry is then the rationally self-controlled process of attempting to return to a settled state of belief about the matter. Note that anti-skepticism is a reaction to modern academic skepticism in the wake of Descartes. The pragmatist insistence that all knowledge is tentative is actually quite congenial to the older skeptical tradition.

Pragmatist theory of truth and epistemology

The epistemology of early pragmatism was heavily influenced by Charles Darwin. Pragmatism was not the first to apply evolution to theories of knowledge: Schopenhauer advocated a ''biological idealism'' as what's useful to an organism to believe might differ wildly from what is true. Here knowledge and action are portrayed as two separate spheres with an absolute or transcendental truth above and beyond any sort of inquiry organisms use to cope with life. Pragmatism challenges this idealism by providing an "ecological" account of knowledge: inquiry is how organisms can get a grip on their environment. ''Real'' and ''true'' are functional labels in inquiry and cannot be understood outside of this context. It is not ''realist'' in a traditionally robust sense of realism (what Hilary Putnam would later call metaphysical realism), but it is realist in how it acknowledges an external world which must be dealt with.

Many of James' best-turned phrases—''truth's cash value'' (James 1907, p. 200) and ''the true is only the expedient in our way of thinking'' (James 1907, p. 222)— were taken out of context and caricatured in contemporary literature as representing the view where any idea with practical utility is true. William James wrote:

In reality, James asserts, the theory is a great deal more subtle. (See Dewey 1910 for a 'FAQ')

The role of belief in representing reality is widely debated in pragmatism. Is a belief valid when it represents reality? ''Copying is one (and only one) genuine mode of knowing,'' (James 1907, p. 91). Are beliefs dispositions which qualify as true or false depending on how helpful they prove in inquiry and in action? Is it only in the struggle of intelligent organisms with the surrounding environment that beliefs acquire meaning? Does a belief only become true when it succeeds in this struggle? In Pragmatism nothing practical or useful is held to be necessarily true, nor is anything which helps to survive merely in the short term. For example, to believe my cheating spouse is faithful may help me feel better now, but it is certainly not useful from a more long-term perspective because it doesn't accord with the facts (and is therefore not true).

Pragmatism in other fields of philosophy

While pragmatism started out simply as a criterion of meaning, it quickly expanded to become a full-fledged epistemology with wide-ranging implications for the entire philosophical field. Pragmatists who work in these fields share a common inspiration, but their work is diverse and there are no received views.

Philosophy of science

In the philosophy of science, instrumentalism is the view that concepts and theories are merely useful instruments and progress in science cannot be couched in terms of concepts and theories somehow mirroring reality. Instrumentalist philosophers often define scientific progress as nothing more than an improvement in explaining and predicting phenomena. Instrumentalism does not state that truth doesn't matter, but rather provides a specific answer to the question of what truth and falsity mean and how they function in science.

One of C.I. Lewis' main arguments in ''Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge'' was that science does not merely provide a copy of reality but must work with conceptual systems and that those are chosen for pragmatic reasons, that is, because they aid inquiry. Lewis' own development of multiple modal logics is a case in point. Lewis is sometimes called a 'conceptual pragmatist' because of this. (Lewis 1929)

Another development is the cooperation of logical positivism and pragmatism in the works of Charles W. Morris and Rudolph Carnap. The influence of pragmatism on these writers is mostly limited to the incorporation of the pragmatic maxim into their epistemology. Pragmatists with a broader conception of the movement don't often refer to them.

W. V. Quine's paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", published 1951, is one of the most celebrated papers of twentieth-century philosophy in the analytic tradition. The paper is an attack on two central tenets of the logical positivists' philosophy. One is the distinction between analytic statements (tautologies and contradictions) whose truth (or falsehood) is a function of the meanings of the words in the statement ('all bachelors are unmarried'), and synthetic statements, whose truth (or falsehood) is a function of (contingent) states of affairs. The other is reductionism, the theory that each meaningful statement gets its meaning from some logical construction of terms which refers exclusively to immediate experience. Quine's argument brings to mind Peirce's insistence that axioms aren't a priori truths but synthetic statements.

Logic

Later in his life Schiller became famous for his attacks on logic in his textbook "Formal Logic." By then, Schiller's pragmatism had become the nearest of any of the classical pragmatists to an ordinary language philosophy. Schiller sought to undermine the very possibility of formal logic, by showing that words only had meaning when used in an actual context. The least famous of Schiller's main works was the constructive sequel to his destructive book "Formal Logic." In this sequel, "Logic for Use," Schiller attempted to construct a new logic to replace the formal logic that he had criticized in "Formal Logic." What he offers is something philosophers would recognize today as a logic covering the context of discovery and the hypothetico-deductive method.

Whereas F.C.S. Schiller actually dismissed the possibility of formal logic, most pragmatists are critical rather of its pretension to ultimate validity and see logic as one logical tool among others - or perhaps, considering the multitude of formal logics, one ''set'' of tools among others. This is the view of C.I. Lewis. C.S. Peirce developed multiple methods for doing formal logic.

Stephen Toulmin's ''The Uses of Argument'' inspired scholars in informal logic and rhetoric studies (although it is actually an epistemological work).

Metaphysics

James and Dewey were empirical thinkers in the most straightforward fashion: experience is the ultimate test and experience is what needs to be explained. They were dissatisfied with ordinary empiricism because in the tradition dating from Hume, empiricists had a tendency to think of experience as nothing more than individual sensations. To the pragmatists, this went against the spirit of empiricism: we should try to explain all that is given in experience including connections and meaning, instead of explaining them away and positing sense data as the ultimate reality. Radical empiricism, or Immediate Empiricism in Dewey's words, wants to give a place to meaning and value instead of explaining them away as subjective additions to a world of whizzing atoms.

William James gives an interesting example of this philosophical shortcoming:

F.C.S. Schiller's first book, "Riddles of the Sphinx", was published before he became aware of the growing pragmatist movement taking place in America. In it, Schiller argues for a middle ground between materialism and absolute metaphysics. The result of the split between these two explanatory schemes that are comparable to what William James called tough-minded empiricism and tender-minded rationalism, Schiller contends, is that mechanistic naturalism cannot make sense of the "higher" aspects of our world (freewill, consciousness, purpose, universals and some would add God), while abstract metaphysics cannot make sense of the "lower" aspects of our world (the imperfect, change, physicality). While Schiller is vague about the exact sort of middle ground he is trying to establish, he suggests that metaphysics is a tool that can aid inquiry, but that it is valuable only insofar as it actually does help in explanation.

In the second half of the twentieth century, Stephen Toulmin argued that the need to distinguish between reality and appearance only arises within an explanatory scheme and therefore that there is no point in asking what 'ultimate reality' consists of. More recently, a similar idea has been suggested by the postanalytical philosopher Daniel Dennett, who argues that anyone who wants to understand the world has to adopt the intentional stance and acknowledge both the 'syntactical' aspects of reality (i.e. whizzing atoms) and its emergent or 'semantic' properties (i.e. meaning and value).

Radical Empiricism gives interesting answers to questions about the limits of science if there are any, the nature of meaning and value and the workability of reductionism. These questions feature prominently in current debates about the relationship between religion and science, where it is often assumed - most pragmatists would disagree - that science degrades everything that is meaningful into 'merely' physical phenomena.

Philosophy of mind

Both John Dewey in ''Experience and Nature'' (1929) and half a century later Richard Rorty in his monumental ''Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature'' (1979) argued that much of the debate about the relation of the mind to the body results from conceptual confusions. They argue instead that there is no need to posit the mind or mindstuff as an ontological category.

Pragmatists disagree over whether philosophers ought to adopt a quietist or a naturalist stance toward the mind-body problem. The former (Rorty among them) want to do away with the problem because they believe it's a pseudo-problem, whereas the latter believe that it is a meaningful empirical question.

Ethics

Pragmatism sees no fundamental difference between practical and theoretical reason, nor any ontological difference between facts and values. Both facts and values have cognitive content: knowledge is what we should believe; values are hypotheses about what is good in action. Pragmatist ethics is broadly humanist because it sees no ultimate test of morality beyond what matters for us as humans. Good values are those for which we have good reasons, viz. the Good Reasons approach. The pragmatist formulation pre-dates those of other philosophers who have stressed important similarities between values and facts such as Jerome Schneewind and John Searle.

William James' contribution to ethics, as laid out in his essay ''The Will to Believe'' has often been misunderstood as a plea for relativism or irrationality. On its own terms it argues that ethics always involves a certain degree of trust or faith and that we cannot always wait for adequate proof when making moral decisions.

Of the classical pragmatists, John Dewey wrote most extensively about morality and democracy. (Edel 1993) In his classic article ''Three Independent Factors in Morals'' (Dewey 1930), he tried to integrate three basic philosophical perspectives on morality: the right, the virtuous and the good. He held that while all three provide meaningful ways to think about moral questions, the possibility of conflict among the three elements cannot always be easily solved. (Anderson, SEP)

Dewey also criticized the dichotomy between means and ends which he saw as responsible for the degradation of our everyday working lives and education, both conceived as merely a means to an end. He stressed the need for meaningful labor and a conception of education that viewed it not as a preparation for life but as life itself. (Dewey 2004 [1910] ch. 7; Dewey 1997 [1938], p. 47)

Dewey was opposed to other ethical philosophies of his time, notably the emotivism of Alfred Ayer. Dewey envisioned the possibility of ethics as an experimental discipline, and thought values could best be characterized not as feelings or imperatives, but as hypotheses about what actions will lead to satisfactory results or what he termed ''consummatory experience''. A further implication of this view is that ethics is a fallible undertaking, since human beings are frequently unable to know what would satisfy them.

A recent pragmatist contribution to meta-ethics is Todd Lekan's "Making Morality" (Lekan 2003). Lekan argues that morality is a fallible but rational practice and that it has traditionally been misconceived as based on theory or principles. Instead, he argues, theory and rules arise as tools to make practice more intelligent.

Aesthetics

John Dewey's ''Art as Experience'', based on the William James lectures he delivered at Harvard, was an attempt to show the integrity of art, culture and everyday experience. (Field, IEP) Art, for Dewey, is or should be a part of everyone's creative lives and not just the privilege of a select group of artists. He also emphasizes that the audience is more than a passive recipient. Dewey's treatment of art was a move away from the transcendental approach to aesthetics in the wake of Immanuel Kant who emphasized the unique character of art and the disinterested nature of aesthetic appreciation.

A notable contemporary pragmatist aesthetician is Joseph Margolis. He defines a work of art as "a physically embodied, culturally emergent entity", a human "utterance" that isn't an ontological quirk but in line with other human activity and culture in general. He emphasizes that works of art are complex and difficult to fathom, and that no determinate interpretation can be given.

Philosophy of religion

Both Dewey and James have investigated the role that religion can still play in contemporary society, the former in ''A Common Faith'' and the latter in ''The Varieties of Religious Experience''.

It should be noted, from a general point of view, that for William James, something is true ''only insofar'' as it works. Thus, the statement, for example, that prayer is heard may work on a psychological level but (a) will not actually help to bring about the things you pray for (b) may be better explained by referring to its soothing effect than by claiming prayers are actually heard. As such, pragmatism isn't antithetical to religion but it isn't an apologetic for faith either.

Joseph Margolis, in ''Historied Thought, Constructed World'' (California, 1995), makes a distinction between "existence" and "reality". He suggests using the term "exists" only for those things which adequately exhibit Peirce's ''Secondness'': things which offer brute physical resistance to our movements. In this way, such things which affect us, like numbers, may be said to be "real", though they do not "exist". Margolis suggests that God, in such a linguistic usage, might very well be "real", causing believers to act in such and such a way, but might not "exist".

Analytical, neoclassical and neopragmatism

Neopragmatism is a broad contemporary category used for various thinkers, some of them radically opposed to one another. The name neopragmatist signifies that the thinkers in question incorporate important insights of, and yet significantly diverge from, the classical pragmatists. This divergence may occur either in their philosophical methodology (many of them are loyal to the analytic tradition) or in actual conceptual formation (C.I. Lewis was very critical of Dewey; Richard Rorty dislikes Peirce). Important analytical neopragmatists include the aforementioned Lewis, W. V. O. Quine, Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam and the early Richard Rorty. Brazilian social thinker Roberto Unger advocates for a "radical pragmatism," one that 'de-naturalizes' society and culture, and thus insists that we can "transform the character of our relation to social and cultural worlds we inhabit rather than just to change, little by little, the content of the arrangements and beliefs that comprise them." Stanley Fish, the later Rorty and Jürgen Habermas are closer to continental thought.

Neoclassical pragmatism denotes those thinkers who consider themselves inheritors of the project of the classical pragmatists. Sidney Hook and Susan Haack (known for the theory of foundherentism) are well-known examples, as are the many publications by Nicholas Rescher which advocate his version of "methodical pragmatism" based on construing pragmatic efficacy not as a replacement for truths but as a means to its evidentiation.

Not all pragmatists are easily characterized. It is probable, considering the advent of postanalytic philosophy and the diversification of Anglo-American philosophy, that more philosophers will be influenced by pragmatist thought without necessarily publicly committing themselves to that philosophical school. Daniel Dennett, a student of Quine's, falls into this category, as does Stephen Toulmin, who arrived at his philosophical position via Wittgenstein, whom he calls "a pragmatist of a sophisticated kind" (foreword for Dewey 1929 in the 1988 edition, p. xiii). Another example is Mark Johnson whose embodied philosophy (Lakoff and Johnson 1999) shares its psychologism, direct realism and anti-cartesianism with pragmatism. Conceptual pragmatism is a theory of knowledge originating with the work of the philosopher and logician Clarence Irving Lewis. The epistemology of conceptual pragmatism was first formulated in the 1929 book ''Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge''.

'French Pragmatism' is attended with theorists like Bruno Latour, Michel Crozier and Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot. It is often seen as opposed to structural problems connected to the French Critical Theory of Pierre Bourdieu.

Legacy and contemporary relevance

In the twentieth century, the movements of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy have similarities with pragmatism. Like pragmatism, logical positivism provides a verification criterion of meaning that is supposed to rid us of nonsense metaphysics. However, logical positivism doesn't stress action like pragmatism does. Furthermore, the pragmatists rarely used their maxim of meaning to rule out all metaphysics as nonsense. Usually, pragmatism was put forth to correct metaphysical doctrines or to construct empirically verifiable ones rather than to provide a wholesale rejection.

Ordinary language philosophy is closer to pragmatism than other philosophy of language because of its nominalist character and because it takes the broader functioning of language in an environment as its focus instead of investigating abstract relations between ''language'' and ''world''.

Pragmatism has ties to process philosophy. Much of their work developed in dialogue with process philosophers like Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead, who aren't usually considered pragmatists because they differ so much on other points. (Douglas Browning et al. 1998; Rescher, SEP)

Behaviorism and functionalism in psychology and sociology also have ties to pragmatism, which is not surprising considering that James and Dewey were both scholars of psychology and that Mead became a sociologist.

Utilitarianism has some significant parallels to Pragmatism and John Stuart Mill espoused similar values.

Influence of pragmatism in social sciences

Increasing attention is being given to pragmatist epistemology in social sciences, which have struggled with divisive debates over the status of social scientific knowledge

Enthusiasts suggest that pragmatism offers an approach which is both pluralist and practical.

Influence of Pragmatism in Public Administration

The classical pragmatism of John Dewey, William James and Charles Sanders Peirce has influenced research in the field of Public Administration. Scholars claim classical pragmatism had a profound influence on the origin of the field of Public Administration. At the most basic level, public administrators are responsible for making programs "work" in a pluralistic, problems-oriented environment. Public administrators are also responsible for the day-to-day work with citizens. Dewey's participatory democracy can be applied in this environment. Dewey and James' notion of theory as a tool, helps administrators craft theories to resolve policy and administrative problems. Further, the birth of American public administration coincides closely with the period of greatest influence of the classical pragmatists.

Which pragmatism (classical pragmatism or neo-pragmatism) makes the most sense in public administration has been the source of debate. The debate began when Patricia M. Shields introduced Dewey's notion of the Community of Inquiry. Hugh Miller objected to one element of the community of inquiry (problematic situation, scientific attitude, participatory democracy) - Scientific attitude. A debate that included responses from a practitioner, an economist, a planner, other Public Administration Scholars, and noted philosophers followed. Miller and Shields also responded.

In addition, applied scholarship of public administration that assesses charter schools, contracting out or outsourcing, financial management, performance measurement, urban quality of life initiatives, and urban planning in part draws on the ideas of classical pragmatism in the development of the conceptual framework and focus of analysis.

Pragmatism and Feminism

Since the mid 1990s, feminist philosophers have re-discovered classical pragmatism as a source of feminist theories. Works by Seigfried, Duran, Keith, and Whipps explore the historic and philosophic links between feminism and pragmatism. The connection between pragmatism and feminism took so long to be rediscovered because pragmatism itself was eclipsed by logical positivism during the middle decades of the 20th century. As a result it was lost from feminine discourse. The very features of pragmatism that led to its decline are the characteristics that feminists now consider its greatest strength. These are “persistent and early criticisms of positivist interpretations of scientific methodology; disclosure of value dimension of factual claims”; viewing aesthetics as informing everyday experience; subordinating logical analysis to political, cultural and social issues; linking the dominant discourses with domination; “realigning theory with praxis; and resisting the turn to epistemology and instead emphasizing concrete experience”. These feminist philosophers point to Jane Addams as a founder of classical pragmatism. In addition, the ideas of Dewey, Mead and James are consistent with many feminist tenets. Jane Addams, John Dewey & George Herbert Mead developed their philosophies as all three became friends, influenced each other and were engaged in the Hull-House experience and women’s rights causes.

Criticism

From the very beginning, pragmatists have been vague about what "pragmatism" is (a method? a theory of truth? a theory of meaning?), and positions as divergent as direct realism and extreme social constructivism have been characterized as "pragmatist". This drew criticism regarding its somewhat ill-defined nature.

One of the first to recognize these problems was Arthur Oncken Lovejoy, whose 1908 essay "The Thirteen Pragmatisms" identifies thirteen different philosophical positions that were each labeled pragmatism. Lovejoy notes the ambiguity in the notion of the consequences of the ''truth'' of a proposition and those of ''belief'' in a proposition, and that some pragmatists fail to recognize that distinction.

Bertrand Russell was especially known for his vituperative attacks on pragmatism, which he considered little more than epistemological relativism and short-sighted practicalism. Realists in general often could not fathom how pragmatists could seriously call themselves empirical or realist thinkers and thought pragmatist epistemology was only a disguised manifestation of idealism. (Hildebrand 2003)

Louis Menand argues that during the Cold War, the intellectual life of the United States became dominated by ideologies. Since pragmatism seeks "to avoid the violence inherent in abstraction," it was not very popular at the time.

Neopragmatism as represented by Richard Rorty has been criticized as relativistic both by neoclassical pragmatists such as Susan Haack (Haack 1997) and by many analytic philosophers (Dennett 1998). Rorty's early analytical work, however, differs notably from his later work which some, including Rorty himself, consider to be closer to literary criticism than to philosophy, and which attracts the brunt of criticism from his detractors.

see: Criticism texts, Further reading.

A list of pragmatists

Classical pragmatists (1850-1950)

{|class="sortable wikitable" ! width="10%" | Name ! width="8%" | Lifetime ! class="unsortable" width="78%" | Notes |- valign="top" | | 1839–1914 | was the founder of American pragmatism (later called by Peirce pragmaticism). He wrote on a wide range of topics, from mathematical logic and semiotics to psychology. |- | | 1842–1910 | influential psychologist and theorist of religion, as well as philosopher. First to be widely associated with the term "pragmatism" due to Peirce's lifelong unpopularity. |- | | 1859–1952 | prominent philosopher of education, referred to his brand of pragmatism as instrumentalism. |- | | 1864–1937 | one of the most important pragmatists of his time, Schiller is largely forgotten today. |- |}

Important protopragmatists or related thinkers {|class="sortable wikitable" ! width="10%" | Name ! width="8%" | Lifetime ! class="unsortable" width="78%" | Notes |- valign="top" | | 1863–1931 | philosopher and sociological social psychologist. |- | | 1803–1882 | the American protopragmatist, Transcendentalists, and noted Rhetorician. |- | | 1855–1916 | colleague of James at Harvard who employed pragmatism in an idealist metaphysical framework, he was particularly interested in the philosophy of religion and community; his work is often associated with neo-Hegelianism. |- | | 1863–1952 | often not considered to be a canonical pragmatist, he applied pragmatist methodologies to naturalism, exemplified in his early masterwork, ''The Life of Reason''. |- | | 1868–1963 | student of James at Harvard who applied pragmatist principles to his sociological work, especially in ''The Philadelphia Negro'' and ''Atlanta University Studies''. |- |}

Fringe figures {|class="sortable wikitable" ! width="10%" | Name ! width="8%" | Lifetime ! class="unsortable" width="78%" | Notes |- valign="top" | | 1881–1956 | Italian essayist, mostly known because James occasionally mentioned him. |- | | 1863–1909 | Italian analytic and pragmatist philosopher. |- | | 1891–1962 | Chinese intellectual and reformer, student and translator of Dewey's and advocate of pragmatism in China. |- | | 1892–1971 | American Philosopher and Theologian, inserted Pragmatism into his theory of Christian Realism. |- |}

Neoclassical pragmatists (1950-)

Neoclassical pragmatists stay closer to the project of the classical pragmatists than neopragmatists do. {|class="sortable wikitable" ! width="10%" | Name ! width="8%" | Lifetime ! class="unsortable" width="78%" | Notes |- valign="top" | | 1902–1989 | a prominent New York intellectual and philosopher, a student of Dewey at Columbia. |- | | 1930– | seeks to apply pragmatist thinking in a decision-theoretic perspective. |- | | 1945– | teaches at the University of Miami, sometimes called the intellectual granddaughter of C.S. Peirce, known chiefly for foundherentism. |- | | 1928– | advocates a methodological pragmatism that sees functional efficacy as evidentiating validity. |- |}

Analytical, neo- and other pragmatists (1950-)

(Often labelled neopragmatism as well.) {|class="sortable wikitable" ! width="10%" | Name ! width="8%" | Lifetime ! class="unsortable" width="78%" | Notes |- valign="top" | | 1932– | author of ''Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis'', ''The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity'', ''The Pragmatic Turn'' |- | | 1937– | Philosopher of Science who proposed the Natural Ontological Attitude to the debate of scientific realism. |- | | 1938– | Literary and Legal Studies pragmatist. Criticizes Rorty's and Posner's legal theories as "almost pragmatism" and authored the afterword in the collection ''The Revival of Pragmatism''. |- | | | Defends a pragmatist form of contextualism to deal with the lottery paradox in his ''Knowledge and Lotteries''. |- | | 1883–1964 | |- | | 1924– | still proudly defends the original Pragmatists and sees his recent work on Cultural Realism as extending and deepening their insights, especially the contribution of Peirce and Dewey, in the context of a rapprochement with Continental philosophy. |- | | 1926– | in many ways the opposite of Rorty and thinks classical pragmatism was too permissive a theory. |- | | 1931–2007 | famous author of ''Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature''. |- | | 1908–2000 | pragmatist philosopher, concerned with language, logic, and philosophy of mathematics. |- | | 1947– | in The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound, advocates for a "radical pragmatism," one that 'de-naturalizes' society and culture, and thus insists that we can "transform the character of our relation to social and cultural worlds we inhabit rather than just to change, little by little, the content of the arrangements and beliefs that comprise them." |- | | 1961– | Applied Rorty's neopragmatism to media studies and developed a new branch that he called Media Philosophy. Together with authors like Juergen Habermas, Hans Joas, Sami Pihlstroem, Mats Bergmann, Michael Esfeld and Helmut Pape he belongs to a group of European Pragmatists who make use of Peirce, James, Dewey, Rorty, Brandom, Putnam and other representatives of American pragmatism in continental philosophy. |- | | | philosopher of art. |- | | 1969– | Defends a pragmatist form of contextualism against semantic varieties of contextualism in his ''Knowledge and Practical Interest''. |- | | 1970– | defends an epistemological conception of democratic politics that is explicitly opposed to Deweyan democracy and yet rooted in a conception of social epistemology that derives from the pragmatism of Charles Peirce. His work in argumentation theory and informal logic also demonstrates pragmatist leanings. |- | | 1922–2009 | student of Wittgenstein, known especially for his ''The Uses of Argument''. |- |}

Other pragmatists

Legal pragmatists {|class="sortable wikitable" ! width="10%" | Name ! width="8%" | Lifetime ! class="unsortable" width="78%" | Notes |- valign="top" | | 1841–1935 | justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. |- | | 1938– | U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice. |- | | 1939– | Judge on U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. |- |} Pragmatists in the extended sense {|class="sortable wikitable" ! width="10%" | Name ! width="8%" | Lifetime ! class="unsortable" width="78%" | Notes |- valign="top" | | 1953– | thinker on race, politics, and religion; operates under the sign of "prophetic pragmatism". |- | | 1912–1989 | broad thinker, attacked foundationalism in the analytic tradition. |- | | 1903–1930 | |- | | 1922– | |- | | 1886–1918 | |- | | 1947– | author of Communication Theory as a Field. |- | | 1929– | |- |}

Further reading

IEP Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy SEP Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Elizabeth Anderson. ''Dewey's Moral Philosophy''. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Douglas Browning, William T. Myers (Eds.) ''Philosophers of Process.'' 1998.

Robert Burch. ''Charles Sanders Peirce''. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

John Dewey. Donald F. Koch (ed.) ''Lectures on Ethics 1900–1901.'' 1991.

Daniel Dennett. Postmodernism and Truth. 1998.

John Dewey. ''The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action.'' 1929.

John Dewey. ''Three Independent Factors in Morals.'' 1930.

John Dewey. ''The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays''. 1910.

John Dewey. ''Experience & Education.'' 1938.

Cornelis De Waal. ''On Pragmatism.'' 2005.

Abraham Edel. Pragmatic Tests and Ethical Insights. In: Ethics at the Crossroads: Normative Ethics and Objective Reason. George F. McLean, Richard Wollak (eds.) 1993.

Michael Eldridge. ''Transforming Experience: John Dewey's Cultural Instrumentalism.'' 1998.

Richard Field. ''John Dewey (1859-1952)''. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

David L. Hildebrand. ''Beyond Realism & Anti-Realism.'' 2003.

David L. Hildebrand. ''The Neopragmatist Turn''. Southwest Philosophy Review Vol. 19, no. 1. January, 2003.

William James. ''Pragmatism, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Popular Lectures on Philosophy''. 1907.

William James ''The Will to Believe''. 1896.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. ''Philosophy in the Flesh : The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought.'' 1999.

Todd Lekan. ''Making Morality: Pragmatist Reconstruction in Ethical Theory.'' 2003.

C.I. Lewis. ''Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge.'' 1929.

David Macarthur. “Pragmatism, Metaphysical Quietism and the Problem of Normativity,” Philosophical Topics Vol. 36 no.1, 2009.

Keya Maitra. ''On Putnam.'' 2003.

Joseph Margolis. ''Historied Thought, Constructed World.'' 1995.

Louis Menand. ''The Metaphysical Club.'' 2001.

Cheryl Misak (ed.) ''The New Pragmatists.'' Oxford University Press, 2007

Hilary Putnam ''Reason, Truth and History.'' 1981.

W.V.O. Quine. ''Two Dogmas of Empiricism''. Philosophical Review. January 1951.

W.V.O. Quine ''Ontological Relativity and Other Essays.'' 1969.

N. Rescher. ''Process Philosophy''. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Richard Rorty ''Rorty Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers. Volume 3.'' 1998.

Stephen Toulmin. ''The Uses of Argument.'' 1958.

William Egginton/Mike Sandbothe (Eds.) ''The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy. Contemporary Engagement between Analytic and Continental Thought.'' 2004.

Mike Sandbothe. ''Pragmatic Media Philosophy.'' 2005.

Notes and other sources

Papers and online encyclopedias are part of the bibliography. Other sources may include interviews, reviews and websites.

Gary A. Olson and Stephen Toulmin. ''Literary Theory, Philosophy of Science, and Persuasive Discourse: Thoughts from a Neo-premodernist.'' Interview in JAC 13.2. 1993.

Susan Haack. ''Vulgar Rortyism''. Review in The New Criterion. November 1997.

Pietarinen, A.V. “Interdisciplinarity and Peirce's classification of the Sciences: A Centennial Reassessment," ''Perspectives on Science'', 14(2), 127-152 (2006).

See also

American philosophy

Charles Sanders Peirce bibliography

Pragmatic theory of truth

Pragmatism as an eighth tradition of Communication theory

Scientific method#Pragmatic model

Success

Notes and references

Baldwin, James Mark (ed., 1901–1905), ''Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology'', 3 volumes in 4, Macmillan, New York, NY.

Dewey, John (1900–1901), ''Lectures on Ethics 1900–1901'', Donald F. Koch (ed.), Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL, 1991.

Dewey, John (1910), ''How We Think'', D.C. Heath, Lexington, MA, 1910. Reprinted, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1991.

Dewey, John (1929), ''The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action'', Minton, Balch, and Company, New York, NY. Reprinted, pp. 1–254 in ''John Dewey, The Later Works, 1925–1953, Volume 4: 1929'', Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), Harriet Furst Simon (text. ed.), Stephen Toulmin (intro.), Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL, 1984.

Dewey, John (1932), ''Theory of the Moral Life'', Part 2 of John Dewey and James H. Tufts, ''Ethics'', Henry Holt and Company, New York, NY, 1908. 2nd edition, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1932. Reprinted, Arnold Isenberg (ed.), Victor Kestenbaum (pref.), Irvington Publishers, New York, NY, 1980.

Dewey, John (1938), ''Logic: The Theory of Inquiry'', Henry Holt and Company, New York, NY, 1938. Reprinted, pp. 1–527 in ''John Dewey, The Later Works, 1925–1953, Volume 12: 1938'', Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), Kathleen Poulos (text. ed.), Ernest Nagel (intro.), Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL, 1986.

James, William (1902), "Pragmatic and Pragmatism", 1 paragraph, vol. 2, pp. 321–322 in J.M. Baldwin (ed., 1901–1905), ''Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology'', 3 volumes in 4, Macmillan, New York, NY. Reprinted, CP 5.2 in C.S. Peirce, ''Collected Papers''.

James, William (1907), ''Pragmatism, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Popular Lectures on Philosophy'', Longmans, Green, and Company, New York, NY.

James, William (1909), ''The Meaning of Truth, A Sequel to 'Pragmatism'', Longmans, Green, and Company, New York, NY.

Lundin, Roger (2006) ''From Nature to Experience: The American Search for Cultural Authority'' Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Peirce, C.S., ''Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce'', vols. 1–6, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (eds.), vols. 7–8, Arthur W. Burks (ed.), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1931–1935, 1958. Cited as CP vol.para.

Peirce, C.S., ''The Essential Peirce, Selected Philosophical Writings, Volume 1 (1867–1893)'', Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel (eds.), Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 1992.

Peirce, C.S., ''The Essential Peirce, Selected Philosophical Writings, Volume 2 (1893–1913)'', Peirce Edition Project (eds.), Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 1998.

Putnam, Hilary (1994), ''Words and Life'', James Conant (ed.), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Quine, W.V. (1951), "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", ''Philosophical Review'' (January 1951). Reprinted, pp. 20–46 in W.V. Quine, ''From a Logical Point of View'', 1980.

Quine, W.V. (1980), ''From a Logical Point of View, Logico-Philosophical Essays'', 2nd edition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1980.

Ramsey, F.P. (1927), "Facts and Propositions", ''Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 7'', 153–170. Reprinted, pp. 34–51 in F.P. Ramsey, ''Philosophical Papers'', David Hugh Mellor (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1990.

Ramsey, F.P. (1990), ''Philosophical Papers'', David Hugh Mellor (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Rescher, N. (1977), ''Methodological Pragmatism'', Oxford: Blackwell, 1977.

Rescher, N. (2000), ''Realistic Pragmatism'', Albany, SUNY Press, 2000.

Further reading

;Surveys

John J. Stuhr, ed. ''One Hundred Years of Pragmatism: William James's Revolutionary Philosophy'' (Indiana University Press; 2010) 215 pages; Essays on pragmatism and American culture, pragmatism as a way of thinking and settling disputes, pragmatism as a theory of truth, and pragmatism as a mood, attitude, or temperament.

Important introductory primary texts Note that this is an ''introductory'' list: some important works are left out and some less monumental works that are excellent introductions are included.

C. S. Peirce, "The Fixation of Belief" (paper)

C. S. Peirce, "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (paper)

C. S. Peirce, "A Definition of Pragmatism" (paper as titled by Menand in ''Pragmatism: A Reader'', from ''Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce'' v. 8, some or all of paragraphs 191–195.)

William James, ''Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking'' (especially lectures I, II and VI)

John Dewey, ''Reconstruction in Philosophy''

John Dewey, "Three Independent factors in Morals" (lecture published as paper)

John Dewey, "A short catechism concerning truth" (chapter)

W. V. O. Quine, "Three Dogmas of Empiricism" (paper)

;Secondary texts

Cornelis De Waal, ''On Pragmatism''

Louis Menand, ''The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America''

Hilary Putnam, ''Pragmatism: An Open Question''

Abraham Edel, ''Pragmatic Tests and Ethical Insights''

D. S. Clarke, ''Rational Acceptance and Purpose''

Haack, Susan & Lane, Robert, Eds. (2006). ''Pragmatism Old and New: Selected Writings''. New York: Prometheus Books.

Louis Menand, ed., ''Pragmatism: A Reader'' (includes essays by Peirce, James, Dewey, Rorty, others)

;Criticism texts

Edward W. Younkins, ''Dewey's Pragmatism and the Decline of Education''.

''Pragmatism'', Ayn Rand Lexicon.

Albert Schinz, ''Anti-Pragmatism: An Examination into the Respective Rights of Intellectual Aristocracy and Social Democracy''. Boston: Small, Maynard and Company, 1909.

External links

A short film about the pragmatist revival

;Journals''' There are several peer-reviewed journals dedicated to pragmatism, for example

Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society

Contemporary Pragmatism

William James Studies

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy

;Organizations and online resources

Pragmatism Cybrary

Arisbe: The Peirce Gateway

Associazione Culturale Pragma (Italy)

Center for Dewey Studies

CEPF - The Central European Pragmatist Forum

Charles S. Peirce Studies

Dutch Pragmatism Foundation

Helsinki Peirce Research Center, including:

* Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms — see Pragmatism, Pragmaticism, and Pragmatism: Maxim of

Institute for American Thought

John Dewey Society

Neopragmatism.org

Nordic Pragmatism Network

Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy

William James Society

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Category:Philosophical movements Category:Philosophy of science Category:Empiricism Category:Philosophical schools and traditions Category:Charles Sanders Peirce

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Sidney Morgenbesser (September 22, 1921 – August 1, 2004) was a Columbia University philosopher. Born in New York City, he undertook philosophical study at the City College of New York and rabbinical study at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, then pursued graduate study in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, where he wrote his Ph.D. thesis under the direction of Nelson Goodman. Morgenbesser returned to Columbia to teach in 1953 and, in 1975, was named the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy there. Morgenbesser was known particularly for his sharp witticisms and humor, which often penetrated to the heart of the philosophical issue at hand. He published little, and established no school, but was revered for his extraordinary intelligence and moral seriousness. He was a famously influential teacher; his former students include Jerry Fodor, Raymond Geuss, Robert Nozick, and Derek Parfit.

Morgenbesser's areas of expertise included the philosophy of social science, political philosophy, epistemology, and the history of American Pragmatism. He founded the Society for Philosophy and Public Affairs along with G.A. Cohen, Thomas Nagel and others.

Stories and quotations

During a lecture the Oxford linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin made the claim that although a double negative in English implies a positive meaning, there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative. To which Morgenbesser responded in a dismissive tone, "Yeah, yeah." (Some have it quoted as "Yeah, right." See litotes for the actual linguistic status of this hypothesis.)

Morgenbesser was leaving a subway station in New York City and put his pipe in his mouth as he was ascending the steps. A police officer told him that there was no smoking on the subway. Morgenbesser pointed out that he was leaving the subway, not entering it, and hadn't lit up yet anyway. The cop repeated his injunction. Morgenbesser repeated his observation. After a few such exchanges, the cop saw he was beaten and fell back on the oldest standby of enfeebled authority: "If I let you do it, I'd have to let everyone do it." To this the old professor replied, "Who do you think you are, Kant?" The word "Kant" was mistaken for a vulgar epithet and Morgenbesser had to explain the situation at the police station.

On the independence of irrelevant alternatives: After finishing dinner, Sidney Morgenbesser decides to order dessert. The waitress tells him he has two choices: apple pie and blueberry pie. Sidney orders the apple pie. After a few minutes the waitress returns and says that they also have cherry pie at which point Morgenbesser says "In that case I'll have the blueberry pie."

Morgenbesser said the following of George Santayana: “There’s a guy who asserted both ''p'' and not-''p'', and then drew out all the consequences…”

Interrogated by a student whether he agreed with Chairman Mao’s view that a statement can be both true and false at the same time, Morgenbesser replied “Well, I do and I don’t.”

During campus protests of the 1960s Sidney Morgenbesser was hit on the head by police. When asked whether he had been treated unfairly or unjustly, he responded that it was "unfair, but not unjust. It was unfair because they hit me over the head, but not unjust because they hit everyone else over the head.” Some of his students then argued that it may have been unjust, in that no guilt had been proved against him, but it was by no means unfair as all his fellow demonstrators got the same treatment. This alternative version is sometimes attributed to Morgenbesser himself.

To B. F. Skinner, "Let me see if I understand your thesis. You think we shouldn’t anthropomorphize ''people''?"

In class Prof. Morgenbesser stated that whereas the first Greek philosopher, Thales, said everything is made of water, the first Jewish philosopher said everything is made of seltzer.

Morgenbesser described Gentile ethics as entailing “ought implies can” while in Jewish ethics “can implies don’t.”

Morgenbesser once set this as an exam question: “It is often said that Marx and Freud went too far. How far would you go?”

When challenged why he had written so little, he fired back: "Moses wrote one book. Then what did he do?"

On Jewish logic: "If ''P'', so why not ''Q''?"

"The only problem with pragmatism is that it's completely useless."

When asked his opinion of pragmatism, Morgenbesser replied "It's all very well in theory but it doesn't work in practice."

In response to Heidegger's ontological query "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Morgenbesser answered "If there were nothing you'd still be complaining!"

At a conference on cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind, one scholar was presenting what was at the time a popular line on how "madness" had no real referent and was merely a product of power-laden "othering." His response: "You mean to tell me that it's all in my head?"

A few weeks before his death, he asked another Columbia philosopher, David Albert, about God. "Why is God making me suffer so much?" he asked. "Just because I don't believe in him?"

Asked to prove a questioner's existence, Morgenbesser shot back, "Who's asking?"

A student once interrupted him and said, "I just don't understand." "Why should you have the advantage over me?" he responded.

See also

American philosophy

List of American philosophers

References

External links

The Lives They Lived: Sidewalk Socrates, The New York Times Magazine.

Sidney Morgenbesser, Times Online

The Witty Professor, NPR.

Columbia News

Sidney Morgenbesser, Crooked Timber

Sidney, by Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic.

Category:20th-century philosophers Category:American philosophers Category:1921 births Category:2004 deaths

de:Sidney Morgenbesser is:Sidney Morgenbesser

Coordinates	49°18′″N19°57′″N
region	Western Philosophy
era	20th-century philosophy
color	#B0C4DE
name	John Dewey
birth date	October 20, 1859
death date	June 01, 1952
school tradition	Pragmatism
main interests	Philosophy of education, Epistemology, Journalism, Ethics
influences	Plato Rousseau Hegel Peirce James Ladd Ward Wundt
influenced	Veblen Santayana Kaplan Hu Shih Hook Young radicals Greene Putnam Chomsky Habermas Rorty West Durkheim
notable ideas	Reflective ThinkingAmerican Association of University Professors Inquiry into Moscow show trials about Trotsky Educational progressivism }}

John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology. He was a major representative of the progressive and progressive populist philosophies of schooling during the first half of the 20th century in the USA.

Although Dewey is known best for his publications concerning education, he also wrote about many other topics, including experience, nature, art, logic, inquiry, democracy, and ethics.

In his advocacy of democracy, Dewey considered two fundamental elements—schools and civil society—as being major topics needing attention and reconstruction to encourage experimental intelligence and plurality. Dewey asserted that complete democracy was to be obtained not just by extending voting rights but also by ensuring that there exists a fully formed public opinion, accomplished by effective communication among citizens, experts, and politicians, with the latter being accountable for the policies they adopt.

Life and works

Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, to a family of modest means. Like his older brother, Davis Rich Dewey, he attended the University of Vermont, from which he graduated (Phi Beta Kappa) in 1879. A significant professor of Dewey's at the University of Vermont was Henry A. P. Torrey, the son-in-law and nephew of former University of Vermont president Joseph Torrey. Dewey studied privately with Torrey between his graduation from Vermont and his enrollment at Johns Hopkins University.

After two years as a high-school teacher in Oil City, Pennsylvania and one teaching elementary school in a small town in Vermont, Dewey decided that he was unsuited for employment in primary or secondary education. After studying with George Sylvester Morris, Charles Sanders Peirce, Herbert Baxter Adams, and G. Stanley Hall, Dewey received his Ph.D. from the School of Arts & Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. In 1884, he accepted a faculty position at the University of Michigan (1884–88 and 1889–94) with the help of George Sylvester Morris. His unpublished and now lost dissertation was titled "The Psychology of Kant."

In 1894 Dewey joined the newly founded University of Chicago (1894–1904) where he developed his belief in an empirically based theory of knowledge, becoming associated with the newly emerging Pragmatic philosophy. His time at the University of Chicago resulted in four essays collectively entitled ''Thought and its Subject-Matter'', which was published with collected works from his colleagues at Chicago under the collective title ''Studies in Logical Theory'' (1903). During that time Dewey also initiated the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where he was able to actualize the pedagogical beliefs that provided material for his first major work on education, ''The School and Social Progress'' (1899). Disagreements with the administration ultimately caused his resignation from the University, and soon thereafter he relocated near the East Coast. In 1899, Dewey was elected president of the American Psychological Association. From 1904 until his retirement in 1930 he was professor of philosophy at both Columbia University and Columbia University's Teachers College. In 1905 he became president of the American Philosophical Association. He was a longtime member of the American Federation of Teachers.

Along with the historian Charles Beard, economists Thorstein Veblen and James Harvey Robinson, Dewey is one of the founders of The New School. Dewey's most significant writings were "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (1896), a critique of a standard psychological concept and the basis of all his further work; ''Democracy and Education'' (1916), his celebrated work on progressive education; ''Human Nature and Conduct'' (1922), a study of the function of habit in human behavior; ''The Public and its Problems'' (1927), a defense of democracy written in response to Walter Lippmann's ''The Phantom Public'' (1925); ''Experience and Nature'' (1925), Dewey's most "metaphysical" statement; ''Art as Experience'' (1934), Dewey's major work on aesthetics; ''A Common Faith'' (1934), a humanistic study of religion originally delivered as the Dwight H. Terry Lectureship at Yale; ''Logic: The Theory of Inquiry'' (1938), a statement of Dewey's unusual conception of logic; ''Freedom and Culture'' (1939), a political work examining the roots of fascism; and ''Knowing and the Known'' (1949), a book written in conjunction with Arthur F. Bentley that systematically outlines the concept of trans-action, which is central to his other works. While each of these works focuses on one particular philosophical theme, Dewey included his major themes in most of what he published. He published more than 700 articles in 140 journals, and approximately 40 books.

Reflecting his immense influence on 20th-century thought, Hilda Neatby, in 1953, wrote "Dewey has been to our age what Aristotle was to the later middle ages, not a philosopher, but ''the'' philosopher."

Dewey was first married to Alice Chipman. They had six children. His second wife was Roberta Lowitz Grant.

The United States Postal Service honored Dewey with a Prominent Americans series 30¢ postage stamp.

Functional psychology

At University of Michigan, Dewey published his first two books, ''Psychology'' (1887), and ''Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding'' (1888), both of which expressed Dewey's early commitment to British neo-Hegelianism. In ''Psychology'', Dewey attempted a synthesis between idealism and experimental science.

While still professor of philosophy at Michigan, Dewey and his junior colleagues, James Hayden Tufts and George Herbert Mead, together with his student James Rowland Angell, all influenced strongly by the recent publication of William James' ''Principles of Psychology'' (1890), began to reformulate psychology, emphasizing the social environment on the activity of mind and behaviour rather than the physiological psychology of Wundt and his followers.

By 1894, Dewey had joined Tufts, with whom he would later write ''Ethics'' (1908), at the recently founded University of Chicago and invited Mead and Angell to follow him, the four men forming the basis of the so-called "Chicago group" of psychology.

Their new style of psychology, later dubbed functional psychology, had a practical emphasis on action and application. In Dewey's article "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" which appeared in ''Psychological Review'' in 1896, he reasons against the traditional stimulus-response understanding of the reflex arc in favor of a "circular" account in which what serves as "stimulus" and what as "response" depends on how one considers the situation, and defends the unitary nature of the sensory motor circuit. While he does not deny the existence of stimulus, sensation, and response, he disagreed that they were separate, juxtaposed events happening like links in a chain. He developed the idea that there is a coordination by which the stimulation is enriched by the results of previous experiences. The response is modulated by sensorial experience.

Dewey was elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1899.

In 1984, the American Psychological Association announced that Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878–1972) had become the first psychologist to be commemorated on a United States postage stamp. However, psychologists Gary Brucato Jr. and John D. Hogan later made the case that this distinction actually belonged to John Dewey, who had been celebrated on an American stamp 17 years earlier. While some psychology historians consider Dewey more of a philosopher than a bona fide psychologist, the authors noted that Dewey was a founding member of the A.P.A., served as the A.P.A.'s eighth President in 1899, and was the author of an 1896 article on the reflex arc which is now considered a basis of American functional psychology.

Dewey also expressed interest in work in the psychology of visual perception performed by Dartmouth research professor Adelbert Ames, Jr. He had great trouble with listening, however, because it is known Dewey could not distinguish musical pitches - in other words was tone deaf.

Pragmatism and instrumentalism

Although Dewey referred to his philosophy as "instrumentalism" rather than pragmatism, he was one of the three major figures in American pragmatism, along with Charles Sanders Peirce, who invented the term, and William James, who popularized it. Dewey worked from strongly Hegelian influences, unlike James, whose intellectual lineage was primarily British, drawing particularly on empiricist and utilitarian ideas. Neither was Dewey so pluralist or relativist as James. He stated that value was a function not of whim nor purely of social construction, but a quality situated in events ("nature itself is wistful and pathetic, turbulent and passionate" (''Experience and Nature'').

James also stated that experimentation (social, cultural, technological, philosophical) could be used as an approximate arbiter of truth. For example he felt that, for many people who lacked "over-belief" of religious concepts, human life was superficial and rather uninteresting, and that while no one religious belief could be demonstrated as the correct one, we are all responsible for making a gamble on one or another theism, atheism, monism, etc. Dewey, in contrast, while honoring the important function that religious institutions and practices played in human life, rejected belief in any static ideal, such as a personal God. Dewey felt that only scientific method could reliably increase human good.

Of the idea of God, Dewey said, "it denotes the unity of all ideal ends arousing us to desire and actions."

As with the reemergence of progressive philosophy of education, Dewey's contributions to philosophy as such (he was, after all, much more a professional philosopher than an educator) have also reemerged with the reassessment of pragmatism, beginning in the late 1970s, by philosophers like Richard Rorty, Richard J. Bernstein and Hans Joas.

Because of his process-oriented and sociologically conscious opinion of the world and knowledge, his ideology is considered sometimes as a useful alternative to both modern and postmodern ideology. Dewey's non-foundational method pre-dates postmodernism by more than half a century. Recent exponents (like Rorty) have not always remained faithful to Dewey's original ideas, though this itself is completely consistent with Dewey's own usage of other writers and with his own philosophy— for Dewey, past doctrines always require reconstruction in order to remain useful for the present time.

Dewey's philosophy has had other names than "pragmatism". He has been called an instrumentalist, an experimentalist, an empiricist, a functionalist, and a naturalist. The term "transactional" may better describe his views, a term emphasized by Dewey in his later years to describe his theories of knowledge and experience.

Epistemology

The terminology problem in the fields of epistemology and logic is partially due, according to Dewey and Bentley, to inefficient and imprecise use of words and concepts that reflect three historic levels of organization and presentation. In the order of chronological appearance, these are:

Self-Action: Prescientific concepts regarded humans, animals, and things as possessing powers of their own which initiated or caused their actions.

Interaction: as described by Newton, where things, living and inorganic, are balanced against something in a system of interaction, for example, the third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Transaction: where modern systems of descriptions and naming are employed to deal with multiple aspects and phases of action without any attribution to ultimate, final, or independent entities, essences, or realities.

A series of characterizations of Transactions indicate the wide range of considerations involved.

Logic and method

Dewey sees paradox in contemporary logical theory. Proximate subject matter garners general agreement and advance, while the ultimate subject matter of logic generates unremitting controversy. In other words, he challenges confident logicians to answer the question of the truth of logical operators. Do they function merely as abstractions (e.g., pure mathematics) or do they connect in some essential way with their objects, and therefore alter or bring them to light?

Logical positivism also figured in Dewey's thought. About the movement he wrote that it "eschews the use of 'propositions' and 'terms', substituting 'sentences' and 'words'." ("General Theory of Propositions", in ''Logic: The Theory of Inquiry'') He welcomes this changing of referents “in as far as it fixes attention upon the symbolic structure and content of propositions.” However, he registers a small complaint against the use of "sentence" and "words" in that without careful interpretation the act or process of transposition “narrows unduly the scope of symbols and language, since it is not customary to treat gestures and diagrams (maps, blueprints, etc.) as words or sentences.” In other words, sentences and words, considered in isolation, do not disclose intent, which may be inferred or “adjudged only by means of context."

Yet Dewey was not entirely opposed to modern logical trends. Concerning traditional logic, he states:

Louis Menand argues in ''The Metaphysical Club'' that Jane Addams had been critical of Dewey's emphasis on antagonism in the context of a discussion of the Pullman strike of 1894. In a later letter to his wife, Dewey confessed that Addams' argument was He went on to add,

In a letter to Addams herself, Dewey wrote, clearly influenced by his conversation with her:

Aesthetics

''Art as Experience'' (1934) is Dewey's major writing on aesthetics. It is, according to his place in the Pragmatist tradition that emphasizes community, a study of the individual art object as embedded in (and inextricable from) the experiences of a local culture. See his ''Experience and Nature'' for an extended discussion of 'Experience' in Dewey's philosophy.

On democracy

The overriding theme of Dewey's works was his profound belief in democracy, be it in politics, education or communication and journalism. As Dewey himself stated in 1888, while still at the University of Michigan, "Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonymous."

With respect to technological developments in a democracy:

On education

Dewey's educational theories were presented in ''My Pedagogic Creed'' (1897), ''The School and Society'' (1900), ''The Child and the Curriculum'' (1902), ''Democracy and Education'' (1916) and ''Experience and Education'' (1938). Throughout these writings, several recurrent themes ring true; Dewey continually argues that education and learning are social and interactive processes, and thus the school itself is a social institution through which social reform can and should take place. In addition, he believed that students thrive in an environment where they are allowed to experience and interact with the curriculum, and all students should have the opportunity to take part in their own learning.

The ideas of democracy and social reform are continually discussed in Dewey’s writings on education. Dewey makes a strong case for the importance of education not only as a place to gain content knowledge, but also as a place to learn how to live. In his eyes, the purpose of education should not revolve around the acquisition of a pre-determined set of skills, but rather the realization of one’s full potential and the ability to use those skills for the greater good. He notes that “to prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities” (1897, p. 6). In addition to helping students realize their full potential, Dewey goes on to acknowledge that education and schooling are instrumental in creating social change and reform. He notes that “education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction” (1897, p. 16).

In addition to his ideas regarding what education is and what effect it should have on society, Dewey also had specific notions regarding how education should take place within the classroom. In ''The Child and the Curriculum'' (1902), Dewey discusses two major conflicting schools of thought regarding educational pedagogy. The first is centered on the curriculum and focuses almost solely on the subject matter to be taught. Dewey argues that the major flaw in this methodology is the inactivity of the student; within this particular framework, “the child is simply the immature being who is to be matured; he is the superficial being who is to be deepened” (1902, p. 13). He argues that in order for education to be most effective, content must be presented in a way that allows the student to relate the information to prior experiences, thus deepening the connection with this new knowledge.

At the same time, Dewey was alarmed by many of the "child-centered" excesses of educational-school pedagogues who claimed to be his followers, and he argued that too much reliance on the child could be equally detrimental to the learning process. In this second school of thought, “we must take our stand with the child and our departure from him. It is he and not the subject-matter which determines both quality and quantity of learning” (Dewey, 1902, p. 13-14). According to Dewey, the potential flaw in this line of thinking is that it minimizes the importance of the content as well as the role of the teacher.

In order to rectify this dilemma, Dewey advocated for an educational structure that strikes a balance between delivering knowledge while also taking into account the interests and experiences of the student. He notes that “the child and the curriculum are simply two limits which define a single process. Just as two points define a straight line, so the present standpoint of the child and the facts and truths of studies define instruction” (Dewey, 1902, p. 16). It is through this reasoning that Dewey became one of the most famous proponents of hands-on learning or experiential education, which is related to, but not synonymous with experiential learning. He argued that “if knowledge comes from the impressions made upon us by natural objects, it is impossible to procure knowledge without the use of objects which impress the mind” (Dewey, 1916/2009, p. 217-218). Dewey’s ideas went on to influence many other influential experiential models and advocates. Many researchers even credit him with the influence of Project Based Learning (PBL) which places students in the active role of researchers.

Dewey not only re-imagined the way that the learning process should take place, but also the role that the teacher should play within that process. According to Dewey, the teacher should not be one to stand at the front of the room doling out bits of information to be absorbed by passive students. Instead, the teacher’s role should be that of facilitator and guide. As Dewey (1897) explains it:

The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences (p. 9).

Thus the teacher becomes a partner in the learning process, guiding students to independently discover meaning within the subject area. This philosophy has become an increasingly popular idea within present-day teacher preparatory programs.

As well as his very active and direct involvement in setting up educational institutions such as the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (1896) and The New School for Social Research (1919), many of Dewey's ideas influenced the founding of Bennington College in Vermont, where he served on the Board of Trustees. Dewey's works and philosophy also held great influence in the creation of the short-lived Black Mountain College in North Carolina, an experimental college focused on interdisciplinary study, and whose faculty included Buckminster Fuller, Willem de Kooning, Charles Olson, Franz Kline, Robert Duncan, and Robert Creeley, among others. Black Mountain College was the locus of the "Black Mountain Poets" a group of avant-garde poets closely linked with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance.

On journalism

Since the mid-1980s, Deweyan ideas have experienced revival as a major source of inspiration for the public journalism movement. Dewey's definition of "public," as described in ''The Public and its Problems'', has profound implications for the significance of journalism in society. As suggested by the title of the book, his concern was of the transactional relationship between publics and problems. Also implicit in its name, public journalism seeks to orient communication away from elite, corporate hegemony toward a civic public sphere. "The 'public' of public journalists is Dewey's public."

Dewey gives a concrete definition to the formation of a public. Publics are spontaneous groups of citizens who share the indirect effects of a particular action. Anyone affected by the indirect consequences of a specific action will automatically share a common interest in controlling those consequences, i.e., solving a common problem. Since every action generates unintended consequences, publics continuously emerge, overlap, and disintegrate.

In ''The Public and its Problems'', Dewey presents a rebuttal to Walter Lippmann’s treatise on the role of journalism in democracy. Lippmann’s model was a basic transmission model in which journalists took information given them by experts and elites, repackaged that information in simple terms, and transmitted the information to the public, whose role was to react emotionally to the news. In his model, Lippmann supposed that the public was incapable of thought or action, and that all thought and action should be left to the experts and elites.

Dewey refutes this model by assuming that politics is the work and duty of each individual in the course of his daily routine. The knowledge needed to be involved in politics, in this model, was to be generated by the interaction of citizens, elites, experts, through the mediation and facilitation of journalism. In this model, not just the government is accountable, but the citizens, experts, and other actors as well.

Dewey also said that journalism should conform to this ideal by changing its emphasis from actions or happenings (choosing a winner of a given situation) to alternatives, choices, consequences, and conditions, in order to foster conversation and improve the generation of knowledge. Journalism would not just produce a static product that told what had already happened, but the news would be in a constant state of evolution as the public added value by generating knowledge. The "audience" would end, to be replaced by citizens and collaborators who would essentially be users, doing more with the news than simply reading it. Concerning his effort to change journalism, he wrote in ''The Public and its Problems'': “Till the Great Society is converted in to a Great Community, the Public will remain in eclipse. Communication can alone create a great community” (Dewey, p. 142).

Dewey believed that communication creates a great community, and citizens who participate actively with public life contribute to that community. "The clear consciousness of a communal life, in all its implications, constitutes the idea of democracy." (''The Public and its Problems'', p. 149). This Great Community can only occur with "free and full intercommunication." (p. 211) Communication can be understood as journalism.

On humanism

Dewey participated with a variety of humanist activities from the 1930s into the 1950s, which included sitting on the advisory board of Charles Francis Potter's First Humanist Society of New York (1929); being one of the original 34 signatories of the first ''Humanist Manifesto'' (1933) and being elected an honorary member of the Humanist Press Association (1936).

His opinion of humanism is best summarised in his own words from an article titled "What Humanism Means to Me", published in the June 1930 edition of ''Thinker 2'':

"What Humanism means to me is an expansion, not a contraction, of human life, ''an expansion in which nature and the science of nature are made the willing servants of human good''." — John Dewey, "What Humanism Means to Me"

Social and political activism

As a major advocate for academic freedom, in 1935 Dewey, together with Albert Einstein and Alvin Johnson, became a member of the United States section of the International League for Academic Freedom, and in 1940, together with Horace M Kallen, edited a series of articles related to the infamous Bertrand Russell Case.

As well as being active in defending the independence of teachers, and opposing a communist takeover of the New York Teachers' Union, Dewey was involved in the organization that eventually became the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

He directed the famous Dewey Commission held in Mexico in 1937, which cleared Leon Trotsky of the charges made against him by Joseph Stalin, and marched for women's rights, among many other causes.

In 1950, Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Benedetto Croce, Karl Jaspers, and Jacques Maritain agreed to act as honorary chairmen of the Congress for Cultural Freedom.

Other interests

Dewey's interests and writings included many topics, and according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "a substantial part of his published output consisted of commentary on current domestic and international politics, and public statements on behalf of many causes. (He is probably the only philosopher in this encyclopedia to have published both on the Treaty of Versailles and on the value of displaying art in post offices.)"

In 1917, Dewey met F. M. Alexander in New York City and later wrote introductions to Alexander's ''Man's Supreme Inheritance'' (1918), ''Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual'' (1923) and ''The Use of the Self'' (1932). Alexander's influence is referenced in "Human Nature and Conduct" and "Experience and Nature."

As well as his contacts with people mentioned elsewhere in the article, he also maintained correspondence with Henri Bergson, William M. Brown, Martin Buber, George S. Counts, William Rainey Harper, Sidney Hook, and George Santayana.

Criticism

Dewey is considered the epitome of liberalism by many conservative pundits today (see ''The Closing of the American Mind''), even being "portrayed as dangerously radical" during the era of McCarthyism. Meanwhile, Dewey was critiqued strongly by American communists because he argued against Stalinism and had philosophical differences with Marx, despite identifying himself as a democratic socialist.

Other criticisms of him include his opinions of both the First and the Second World Wars, as well as, despite having been involved with the initiation of the NAACP, not having written more directly against racism.

Another source of criticism has been religion. While one biographer, Steven C. Rockefeller, traced Dewey's democratic convictions to his childhood attendance at the Congregational Church, with its strong proclamation of social ideals, another, Edward A. White, a Stanford University professor of history, suggested in ''Science and Religion in American Thought'' (1952) that Dewey's work had led to the 20th century rift between religion and science. However, in reviewing the book in ''The Quarterly Review of Biology'' (1954), noted geneticist H. Bentley Glass openly wondered if the controversy between religion and science would have been much the same, even if there had not been a John Dewey.

Academic awards

Copernican Citation (1943)

Doctor “honoris causa” – University of Oslo (1946)

Doctor “honoris causa” – University of Pennsylvania (1946)

Doctor “honoris causa” – Yale University (1951)

Doctor “honoris causa” – University of Rome (1951)

Publications

Besides publishing prolifically himself, Dewey also sat on the boards of scientific publications such as ''Sociometry'' (advisory board, 1942) and ''Journal of Social Psychology'' (editorial board, 1942), as well as having posts at other publications such as ''New Leader'' (contributing editor, 1949).

The following publications by John Dewey are referenced or mentioned in this article. A more complete list of his publications may be found at List of publications by John Dewey.

"The New Psychology" ''Andover Review'', 2, 278-289 (1884)

''Psychology'' (1887)

''Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding'' (1888)

"The Ego as Cause" ''Philosophical Review'', 3,337-341. (1894)

"The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (1896)

"My Pedagogic Creed" (1897)

''The School and Society'' (1900)

''The Child and the Curriculum '' (1902)

"The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism" (1905)

''Moral Principles in Education'' (1909) The Riverside Press Cambridge Project Gutenberg

''How We Think'' (1910)

''German Philosophy and Politics'' (1915)

''Democracy and Education: an introduction to the philosophy of education'' (1916)

''Reconstruction in Philosophy'' (1919)

''Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology''

''Experience and Nature'' (1925)

''The Public and its Problems'' (1927)

The Quest for Certainty (1929)

The Sources of a Science of Education (1929) The Kappa Delta Pi Lecture Series

''Individualism Old and New'' (1930)

''Philosophy and Civilization'' (1931)

Ethics, second edition (with James Hayden Tufts) (1932)

''Art as Experience'' (1934)

''A Common Faith'' (1934)

''Liberalism and Social Action'' (1935)

''Experience and Education'' (1938)

''Logic: The Theory of Inquiry'' (1938)

''Freedom and Culture'' (1939)

''Theory of Valuation'' (1939). ISBN 0-226-57594-2

''Knowing and the Known'' (1949)

See also

''The Essential Dewey: Volumes 1 and 2''. Edited by Larry Hickman and Thomas Alexander (1998). Indiana University Press

''The Philosophy of John Dewey'' Edited by John J. McDermott (1981). University of Chicago Press

Dewey's Complete Writings is available in 3 multi-volume sets (37 volumes in all) from Southern Illinois University Press:

''The Early Works: 1892-1898'' (5 volumes)

''The Middle Works: 1899-1924'' (15 volumes)

''The Later Works: 1925-1953'' (17 volumes)

''Posthumous Works: 1956-2009''

The Correspondence of John Dewey is available in 4 volumes via online subscription and also in TEI format for university servers. (The CD-ROM has been discontinued).

Works about Dewey

Alexander, Thomas. ''John Dewey's Theory of Art, Experience, and Nature'' (1987) SUNY Press Boisvert, Raymond. ''John Dewey: Rethinking Our Time.'' (1997) SUNY Press

Campbell, James. ''Understanding John Dewey: Nature and Cooperative Intelligence''. (1995) Open Court Publishing Company

Caspary, William R. ''Dewey on Democracy'' (2000). Cornell University Press.

Crick, Nathan. ''Democracy & Rhetoric: John Dewey on the Arts of Becoming'' (2010) University of South Carolina Press.

Fishman, Stephen M. and Lucille McCarthy. ''John Dewey and the Philosophy and Practice of Hope'' (2007). University of Illinois Press.

Garrison, Jim. ''Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching.'' Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, 2010. Original published 1997 by Teachers College Press.

Hickman, Larry A. ''John Dewey's Pragmatic Technology.'' (1992) Indiana University Press.

Hook, S. ''John Dewey: An Intellectual Portrait'' (1939)

Kannegiesser, H. J. "Knowledge and Science" (1977) The Macmillan Company of Australia PTY Ltd

Martin, Jay. ''The Education of John Dewey.'' (2003) Columbia University Press

Putnam, Hilary. "Dewey's ''Logic'': Epistemology as Hypothesis". In ''Words and Life'', ed. James Conant. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.

Rockefeller, Stephen. ''John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism.'' (1994) Columbia University Press Rogers, Melvin. ''The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy'' (2008). Columbia University Press.

Roth, Robert J. ''John Dewey and Self-Realization.'' (1962). Prentice Hall

Rorty, Richard. "Dewey's Metaphysics". In ''The Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays 1972-1980''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982.

Rud, A. G., Garrison, Jim, and Stone, Lynda (eds.) ''John Dewey at 150: Reflections for a New Century.'' West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2009.

Ryan, Alan. ''John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism.'' (1995) W.W. Norton. Seigfried, Charlene Haddock, (ed.). ''Feminist Interpretations of John Dewey'' (2001) Pennsylvania State University Press Shook, John. ''Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality.'' (2000) The Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy Sleeper, R.W. ''The Necessity of Pragmatism: John Dewey's Conception of Philosophy.'' Introduction by Tom Burke. (2001) University of Illinois Press.

Talisse, Robert B. ''A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy'' (2007) Routledge

Westbrook, Robert B. ''John Dewey and American Democracy.'' (1991) Cornell University Press. online edition, the standard scholarly biography

White, Morton. ''The Origin of Dewey's Instrumentalism.'' (1943). Columbia University Press.

See also

List of American philosophers

Center for Dewey Studies

Democratic education

John Dewey Society

Inquiry-based science

Laboratory school

Learning by teaching

References

External links

''Center for Dewey Studies

* John Dewey Papers, 1858-1970 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Special Collections Research Center

* John Dewey Chronology at Southern Illinois University

John Dewey Society

Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education hypertext from American Studies at the University of Virginia.

Excerpts from Dewey, ''Experience and Nature'' (pdf file)

Dewey, ''Impressions of Soviet Russia''

Information about John Dewey and F. Mathias Alexander

John Dewey: His Life and Work 4-minute clip from a documentary film used primarily in higher education.

More information about John Dewey and F. Mathias Alexander

Article on Dewey's Moral Philosophy in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Article on Dewey's Political Philosophy in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Dewey page from Pragmatism Cybrary

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