Ejpap 570

European Journal of Pragmatism and
American Philosophy
V-1 | 2013
Pragmatism and Creativity
Giovanni Maddalena and Fernando Zalamea (dir.)
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DOI: 10.4000/ejpap.570
ISSN: 2036-4091
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Symposia. Pragmatism and Creativity
Introduction
Giovanni Maddalena and Fernando Zalamea
Reason and Imagination in Charles S. Peirce

Sara Barrena
The Role of Imagination in James’s and Dewey’s Understanding of Religious Experience

Romain Mollard
The Creative Moment of Scientific Apprehension

Understanding the Consummation of Scientific Explanation through Dewey and Peirce
Mark Dietrich Tschaepe
The Philosopher as a Child of His Own Time

Rorty on Irony and Creativity
Javier Toro
Plasticity and Creativity in the Logic Notebook

Fernando Zalamea
Time as Experience/Experience as Temporality

Pragmatic and Perfectionist Reflections on Extemporaneous Creativity
Vincent Colapietro
How Novelty Arises from Fields of Experience

A Comparison Between W. James and A. N. Whitehead
Maria Regina Brioschi
Symposium on Dewey’s Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy

Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 2012
Symposium on Dewey’s Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy

Edited and with an introduction by P. Deen, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 2012
Roberto Gronda
John Dewey’s Critique of Our “Unmodern” Philosophy

Larry A. Hickman
Pragmatist Historiography in Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy

Phillip Deen
The Nature of the Modern Mind

Some Remarks on Dewey’s Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy
Pierre Steiner
From Mythology to Logic

Dewey’s View of Modernity and the Linguistic Nature of Experience
Roberto Gronda
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, V-1 | 2013

2
Essays
Was Art as Experience Socially Effective?

Dewey, the Federal Art Project and Abstract Expressionism
Roberta Dreon
Neopragmatism Viewed by Pragmaticism

A Redescription
Ivo Assad Ibri
Chicago Pragmatism and the Extended Mind Theory

Mead and Dewey on the Nature of Cognition
Roman Madzia
Neuropragmatism: A Neurophilosophical Manifesto

Tibor Solymosi and John Shook
Book Reviews
John LACHS, Stoic Pragmatism

Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2012, 204 pages
Matthew Caleb Flamm
José MEDINA, The Epistemology of Resistance

Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012, 352 pages
Roberto Frega
HOLLSTEIN B., JUNG M., KNÖBL W., (WHg.), Handlung und Erfahrung. Das Erbe von
Historismus und Pragmatismus und die Zukunft der Sozialtheorie [Action and
experience. The legacy of Pragmatism and Historism and the future of Social Theory]
Frankfurt a. M., Campus, 2011, 381 pages
Andreas Hetzel

3
Symposia. Pragmatism and

Creativity

4
Introduction
Giovanni Maddalena and Fernando Zalamea
1 Perhaps due to the period of international crisis, appeals to creativity multiplied in any
field. Sure enough, when the status quo cannot grant welfare conditions anymore,
something new is needed. And the problem of novelty intertwines that kind of thought
that goes by the name of creativity. Philosophically speaking, this request means to
question what creativity really is, which are its cognitive processes, whether it is
teachable, and where it comes from.
2 A first methodological question is about the science that should take care of such an
important topic. Creativity has often been considered too high (a gift from gods, a
normative look from outside the world), too low (unconscious or abysmal), or too
lateral (something to relegate to pre-theoretical intuitions) to be observed and studied.
When it was studied philosophically, creativity has often been pigeonholed into the
aesthetic cage as if it had not to enter other fields of knowledge.
3 Pragmatism assumed a different attitude towards the creative moment from the start.
Classical pragmatists’ common stance was a profound idea of continuity of experience,
scientifically or epistemologically considered and expressed. With different nuances all
of them avoided dualisms, dichotomies and severed approaches to experience.
“Experience” itself has to be treated with a whole, or rather a continuity, to which our
thoughts and intellectual endeavors belong as well as objects, actions, practical habits,
and values. Creativity is no exception and it belongs to this common, continuous
ground of experience. Therefore, a quick look at the conception of continuity is
important to understand what creativity is and how authors handle it in this issue of
the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy.
4 Here continuity has to be understood in the Peircean sense. From the analytic
mathematical standpoint it remains a hypothesis. However, it is a working hypothesis
that recent mathematical studies seem to confirm. This hypothesis regards a non-
metrical kind of continuity that consists in a transition among logical and ontological
modalities (possibility, actuality, necessity) governed by the properties of reflexivity,
generality, modality (plasticity), each underlying one aspect of the relationship
between the parts and the whole of continuity. Taking these terms in their
philosophical meaning, we can say that generality is the law of cohesiveness among

5
parts beyond any individual and any possibility of metrically measuring it; modality
means plasticity, namely the fact that a continuum is not tied to actualities but involves
both possibility and necessity; reflexivity means that any part shall have the same
properties of the whole to which it belongs. This hypothesis of continuum explains that
experience is a very complex pattern that is always evolving: experience is really
experience of a change, as James would have said. On this result classic pragmatists
converged. With different perspectives that range from psychology to logic, from
sociology to epistemology, all of them accepted experience as a continuity.
5 Creativity is thus a peculiar kind of change that happens within this changing
experience. The peculiarity is due to the fact that creativity seems connected to
something new, which would be by definition something that breaks continuity. Late
Peirce’s view on continuity, classic pragmatists’ considerations, and recent
mathematical studies show that discontinuity in metrical terms can be conceived
within the sort of continuity to which they were hinting and aiming. In this kind of
continuous path, any break is more the realization of a possibility than an absolute
rupture. In this way, it is possible to conceive creativity as an operation on a novelty
that emerges within experience.
6 The articles of this volume suggest some of the characteristics that are consequence of
this understanding and that raise from both the historical and the theoretical
treatment of pragmatism.
7 The first consequence of this conception of experience on the topic of creativity is that
this phenomenon cannot be relegated to any irrational or a-rational moment, or
rather, that the creative moment is part of knowledge. The papers of this volume well
explain that creativity is linked to cognitive processes in all pragmatists’ works. James’,
Dewey’s, Santayana’s (Mollard), and Peirce’s conceptions of “imagination” and
“creativity” (Barrena, Zalamea, Tschaespe) are completely embodied in experience and
they are bound to perception and to the process of cognition that develops in it and
from it. We are somehow creative in any knowledge (Colapietro, Maddalena) and not
only in particular processes as abduction. From this perspective this volume overtakes
the usual approach that limits creativity to abduction and to the study of it. It shows
that pragmatists looked at creative imagination as constant part of cognitive processes
of any sort and that this part permits the highest degree of synthesis.
8 This profound understanding of creativity as part of knowledge implies a different view
of aesthetics, if aesthetics is the discipline that has to take care of this cognitive feature
as it has been affirmed traditionally. In different ways, Peirce and Dewey provided a
good alternative to any view of aesthetics as separated from the rest of the cognitive
path. The aesthetical moment is fundamental in order to develop any form of
knowledge because it is part of the initial apprehension of experience and of any
reasoning: Dewey’s appreciation of imagination as pervasive element of any perception
in Art as experience and Peirce’s late but firm consideration of aesthetics as primeval
normative science that has to judge upon logical reasoning do not leave any doubts on
their approach. Far from being too high, low or lateral, imagination and the aesthetical
approach based on it are the pivot of our knowledge.
9 The second consequence is that in all pragmatist accounts creativity is an answer to an
external question. Externalism is one of the landmarks of pragmatism. Creativity is
part of a continuity of experience that invests us, whether you read it semiotically
(Peirce, Dewey), psychologically (James), or sociologically (Dewey, Mead). Toro’s paper

6
suggests that also in Rorty’s more controversial position on this topic, we can see that
creativity is historically embodied and we cannot abandon cognitive conditions that
come from experience.
10 As for the crucial issue of the novelty that seems to break continuity, the creative
moment is something new, but the articles make clear that there is no newness without
a profound acceptance of this flux of experience that precedes us. Colapietro’s and
Maddalena’s papers show this game that involves both the belonging to this flux and
the modification of it that we name creativity. Moreover, all the papers show that a
pragmatist understanding of creativity can never be but highly critical of any romantic
overstress on singularity and personalities, since any pragmatist was and is convinced
of the deep fallibility that lays at the bottom of human experience. Newness is always a
modification of something which is already part of experience, and newness always has
to show up within an understandable situation and cognitive pattern. Absolute novelty
would be utterly incomprehensible.
11 The third consequence of a continuous approach is the unity of the practical and the
theoretical aspects of creativity. Inquiring on some Peirce’s manuscripts, Zalamea’s
article shows that the creative answer to reality comes as a practical-theoretical event
in which the actual scribing is as important as the theoretical insight. They operate
together without any chance to divide them up. This profound unity is what Maddalena
advocates in his suggestion of creativity as “complete gesture,” explaining it with the
semiotic and phenomenological characteristics that he derives from Peirce. It is also
the ground for a study of musical creative performance as jazz, which is the example
that clarifies Colapietro analysis of creativity grounded on Peirce’s and Cavell’s inputs.
12 A fourth consequence is that creativity is part of any discipline, or instead that the
division of subjects and methods does not work in the moment of creativity. Zalamea’s,
Barrena’s, Tschaepe’s and Mollard’s papers show that the creative moment
pragmatistically understood is part of very different studies and different interests as
science and religion, ethics and mathematics. In their studies on Peirce, James, and
Dewey they show that classic pragmatists were using a rational approach to these
disciplines and that this critical attitude appealed to creative imagination as decisive
tool. Zalamea’s work illuminates this experience that is quite shared by all those that
really perform scientific inquiry: when research reaches its peaks made of highly
problematic questions, the division among subjects and sciences does not work any
longer. Imagination, sense of beauty, dialogue, calculations, and technical devices are
all involved in the experience of creativity, no matter the field under investigation. All
divisions do not make sense anymore because, as we have seen, aesthetical judgments
are needed in order to reason and the quest for an answer to the problem that
experience arises can come from any part. Many creative moments in any field are due
to connections and links that someone realizes while they were left severed before.
13 A final question arises. If creativity has to be understood within the continuous path of
experience, any newness that creativity recognizes and fosters is accountable also from
an ontological standpoint? This is the topic of the study of James and Whitehead that
Brioschi develops in her paper. The answer is not univocal in these two authors and
other papers touch upon this question hinting toward different answers: Mollard’s final
claim urges the possibility of a “realism with a divine face” while Colapietro refers to
Mead’s emergentism, an attitude somehow closer to Whitehead’s view of “process.” For
sure creativity has to do with the mud (Zalamea) or the vagueness (Maddalena) of a

7
primeval inchoative state of experience that needs to be studied in a new creative way
also from an ontological perspective. After Roberto Perry, we called “horotic” the
needed logic of borders (horos) that should be developed also in order to sink through
the terrain that gives birth to both new creative syntheses and more precise analyses.
This study would not settle the issue about naturalism either, but it probably will give a
better non-ideological perspective on this very complicated ontological and
metaphysical topic.
14 Certainly these few articles do not claim any sort of exhaustion of the problem, but we
hope they help introducing to a broad cognitive perspective on the topic and they can
suggest some clues for a different pragmatist understanding of creativity.
AUTHORS
GIOVANNI MADDALENA
Università del Molise
maddalena[at]unimol.it
FERNANDO ZALAMEA
UniversidadNacional de Colombia
fzalameat[at]unal.edu.co

8
Reason and Imagination in Charles

S. Peirce
Sara Barrena
1 Charles S. Peirce was always interested in investigating how reason functions and in
explaining how new ideas arise. As a result of his research in this area, linked to the
development of pragmatism – which emphasizes the clarification of concepts by means
of their “reasonable” consequences – he arrived at a conception of reason as being
profoundly creative, and which directs other capacities and interacts with them. Peirce
writes: “what he adores, if he is a good pragmaticist, is power; not the sham power of
brute force, which, even in its own specialty of spoiling things, secures such slight
results; but the creative power of reasonableness, which subdues all other powers, and
rules over them with its sceptre, knowledge, and its globe, love” (CP 5.520, c.1905).
2 In this article I aim to explore Peircean creativity more deeply, focusing on one of its
essential, thought perhaps less studied, elements: the imagination. This faculty should
be taken more into account, given that Peirce affirms that the whole business of
ratiocination, and all that makes us intellectual beings, is performed in imagination (CP
6.286, 1893). Hence it is necessary to study a connection – that between reason and
imagination – in which the most important aspects of the Peircean conception of
reasonableness are rooted. As Andacht has written: “it is not exaggerated to talk about
a ‘revolution’... when one evaluates historically the theoretical integration of
imagination and rationality, of esthetics and action, such as it was done by Peirce...”
(Andacht 1996: 1266). What does Peirce understand by imagination? How is its
connection with reason produced? In addition to the obvious role of imagination in the
process of abduction, i.e. in the origin of possible explanatory hypotheses, pragmatist
imagination also performs other functions. It is fundamental in mathematical thought,
in philosophical reasoning, and in all aspects of knowledge, since for Peirce
understanding the world means interpreting it, and we cannot interpret without
imagination.
3 This article, written based on Peirce’s illuminating texts about imagination, is divided
into five parts. In the first part, I will explain the necessity of the imagination for
understanding the world. Next, I will focus on the principal characteristics that Peirce

9
attributes to the imagination, followed by an analysis of the role that this faculty
develops within Peircean pragmatism. The fourth part will illustrate, by means of
examples, how Peirce deals with imagination in different areas of his thought. Finally, I
will consider the conjunction of reason and imagination itself, in order to disentangle
the different mechanisms by which this conjunction comes into play: habits, surprise,
doubt, belief and expectations.
I. The Necessity of Interpretation

4 Usually Peirce is classified as a realist philosopher, or at least one who was on a
trajectory towards realism. Nevertheless, it is important to note that Peirce’s realism is
sui generis. For him, things are there, outside of ourselves. What is real is precisely that
which our thought cannot modify, and hence is what it is independently of what we
may think or imagine about it. Nevertheless, for Peirce it was insufficient merely to
explain a reality which is, in some manner, transparent: rather, one must interpret it.
His notion of semiotics, in which everything is a sign and knowledge is mediated by
signs – or more correctly, is itself constituted as a sign – involves the necessity of
interpreting the world. Reality is that which is independent of what we think, but
which nevertheless generates interpretants that reveal it, in the infinite process of
signification. As Mariluz Restrepo points out:
Peirce uses splendid metaphors in order to express what we do with the
phenomenon under study: ‘absorb it,’ ‘sleep over it,’ ‘assimilate it,’ ‘dream of it,’ ‘set
it down upon paper,’ ‘digest it,’ ‘give it an order,’ ‘deliver it in a form,’ (MS 857, 4-5,
n. d.), that is, interiorize it in such a way that we penetrate it while at the same time
we are penetrated by it. We also register it, ponder it and organize it, seeking to
discover that which explains it and thereby be able to comprehend it. (Restrepo
2011)
5 Our manner of knowing is precisely that of performing a re-creative reading of reality,
which we could not accomplish without the imagination. Observation alone cannot be
constitutive of investigation or knowledge. There must be a meticulous process of
thought, by means of which the ideas given by observation produce others in the mind
(W 3.41-42). This investigation, by means of which we attain a grasping of the world, is
not, for Peirce, “a merely rational process, but rather is ‘reasonable,’ and includes
senses, imagination and memory; desires, projects and hopes; ideas, concepts and
arguments” (Restrepo 2011).
6 Imagination is required at the moment of grasping the world because, for Peirce,
knowledge is interpretation; it involves combining observation with reflection until the
mind finally renders up to us the facts in a given fashion which explains them. This
interpretation must be, as I will show, both imaginative as well as rigorous. Reason and
imagination go hand in hand.
7 This equilibrium between a reality that is what it is while simultaneously being open to
interpretation, between the application of reason and the imagining of an explanation,
is present throughout the entirety of Peirce’s thought. We cannot know without
imagining. This intimate union of reason and imagination, which is perhaps most
evident in science or art, occurs in each of our reflections – or interpretations –
concerning reality, whatever their order may be, and makes pragmatism a creative
philosophy.

10
II. Peirce’s Concept of the Imagination

8 Peirce can be considered as one of the most imaginative thinkers in history. His
intellectual trajectory is marked by many discoveries in different fields which he would
not have achieved without a powerful imagination: from the fruitful pragmatic maxim
to his omnipresent triadic system of categories. Peirce embodies creative thought,
which oscillates between reason and imagination. He has much to say about the latter
and about the plasticity which it confers on the human being.
9 Peirce deals with the question of imagination more than we sometimes think. For
instance, the references to imagination in Collected Papers are abundant, and many of
these texts shed light upon the role of the most creative faculty of the human being.
Imagination appears in these texts as something distinct from mere fantasizing. Peirce
makes a distinction between imagination and fantasy, which Howard Callaway has
examined in the light of certain antecedents in Coleridge and Emerson. We can cite, for
example, a suggestive text by Emerson:
Imagination is central; fancy superficial. Fancy relates to surface, in which a great
part of life lies. The lover is rightly said to fancy the hair, eyes, complexion of the
maid. Fancy is a willful imagination, a spontaneous act; fancy, a play as with dolls
and puppets which we chose to call men and women; imagination, a perception and
affirming of a real relation between a thought and some material fact. Fancy
amuses; imagination expands and exalts us. Imagination uses an organic
classification. Fancy joins by accidental resemblance, surprises and amuses the idle,
but is silent in the presence of great passion and action. Fancy aggregates;
imagination animates. Fancy is related to color; imagination to form. Fancy paints;
imagination sculptures. (Emerson 1875)
10 Imagination has the capacity of penetrating, expanding, animating. For Peirce it
consists in “the power of distinctly picturing to ourselves intricate configurations” (MS
252, n.d.). Nevertheless, pragmatist imagination, as Thomas Alexander has written, is
not merely the psychological property of having images of absent or non-existent
objects, nor it is only a power for unlimited creativity beyond any rational
comprehension, as was the Romantic imagination; rather, it offers a radically different
perspective:
Imagination is neither merely an extension of the passive capacity of sensation,
subsumable under pre-established rational categorial structures, nor is it a purely
intuitive source of novelty. It is a mode of action and as such seeks to organize
experience so that it anticipates the world in a manner that is meaningful and
satisfying. In more human terms, it is an essential and necessary element in our
perpetual project of making sense of life. (Alexander 1990: 341)
11 Imagination, for Peirce, is not a mere producer of images nor a wide-awake dreaming, a
merely lazy mind. It is neither a fantasy nor a perception, although the (uncontrollable)
percipuum can be converted, Peirce writes, into a controllable imagination by a brief
process of education (CP 7.646, 1903). Imagination does not function in an uncontrolled
fashion; rather, it can be educated and helps us to grow. One must not confuse the great
potential of the imagination with mere fantasy, since for Peirce the castles that we
build in the air must be copied, with effort, on the ground: “every man who does
accomplish great things is given to building elaborate castles in the air and then
painfully copying them on solid ground… Mere imagination would indeed be mere

11
trifling; only no imagination is mere” (CP6.286, 1893). Imagination should stimulate and
orient our action.
12 On one occasion Peirce distinguishes various types of imagination: the scientific, which
dreams of explanations and laws, the artistic, and the mere dreaming of opportunities
for gain (CP 1.48, c.1896). Of course, imagination is a fundamental tool in art, but
science also requires as a prelude a pretty wild play of the imagination (CP 1.48), and
this holds for knowledge of any given order. It is indispensable for knowing the truth.
This is so much the case, Peirce affirms, that man’s mind has a natural adaptation to
imagining correct theories of some kinds (CP 5.591, 1903). The scientist, honest,
disinterested, indeed any kind of researcher, is precisely that person who places his or
her imagination at the service of the truth. He looks for reasonable hypotheses or
conjectures which have a certain basis, as opposed to purely fantastic ones. Scientists
seek explanations which take into account that which has come before, accumulated
knowledge, living science. They do not seek fantastic conjectures, but reasonable ones,
hypotheses which take into account the continuity of research in order to distinguish
that which is both imaginative and useful from merely fantasy. There is an imagination
which is genuinely creative and appropriately disciplined, which arises from the
tension between a systematic and detailed consideration of past attainments in a field
and its outstanding problems and anomalies (Callaway 2007).
13 The imaginative world has such an important presence that, as Peirce states, it cannot
be distinguished from the actual world by any description (CP 3.363, 1885). The
imagination permits us to come to know something more than what is immediately
present (CP 1.38,1890), there is in it such an operation by which thought springs up (CP
1.538, 1903), allows that phenomena connect themselves together in a rational way (CP
1.46, c.1896), and expands our environment while permitting us to discover unexpected
solutions.
14 The imagination permits us to enjoy freedom, because for Peirce the products of the
imagination are not necessarily determined in all their aspects, as Berkeley, for
instance, sustained. The imaginary does not have existence in the sense understood by
Peirce; it does not react to anything, it suffers no resistances and hence provides us
with greater freedom. There is a free play of the imagination which is essential to art
and science, and which permits the continuity of ideas, since new ideas must have
always been taken in imagination before the old ones are allowed to drop (CP 7.429,
1893). Peirce terms this imaginative play musement, and it is what makes abduction
possible, that is, a particular state of mind which passes freely from one thing to
another. Musement is a mental state characterized by free speculation, without rules or
purpose or limits of any kind. The mind plays with ideas and can sustain a dialogue
with what it perceives, a dialogue not only of words but also of images, in which the
imagination plays an essential part.
15 Imagination has nothing to do with issues of fact or with states of things which might
at some point come about; rather it deals with non-existent states of things, and with
the manner in which unoriginal parts unite to give rise to something original, since
originality is not an attribute of the matter of life, but is an affair of form, of the way in
which parts none of which possess it are joined together (CP 4.611, 1908). Since it has
nothing to do with facts, the imagination can give rise to necessary knowledge, as
occurs in mathematics. How can it be that the freest faculty of all, the least subject to
rules, which permits us to fly and build castles in the air give rise to necessary

12
knowledge? For Peirce it is possible because necessary knowledge does not follow a
path which cannot be deviated from: “Much unexpected truth may often be brought to
light by the repeated reintroduction of a premise already employed” (CP 4.611). It is
frequently the case that the necessary reasoner encounters distinct lines of reasoning
which open before him or her. It is false that in necessary reasoning little space is left
for the exercise of invention.
16 In sum, there is no other quality which is so indispensable for knowledge as the
imagination. It does not consist in mere fantasies, but rather has an essential scientific
function, where we understand science to encompass all true knowledge and all artistic
expression. Following Emerson, one can say that for Peirce the imagination is
constructive, cognitively oriented, and examines relations, forms and possibilities.
Without its creative work the inquirer would have no world to explore, no determinate
hypothetical state of affairs to investigate with the rigor of reasoning (Campos 2009:
137). Imagination is linked with action, and with the desire to know. In what follows I
will show how pragmatism makes use of this tool.
III. The Role of Imagination in Pragmatism

17 “All scientific men are engaged upon nothing else than the endeavor to discover,”
writes Peirce (MS 1334), and one can say that an emphasis on discovery is an emphasis
on imagination. While the role that, for Peirce, experience plays in knowledge has been
strongly emphasized, the role of the imagination has not been studied to the same
degree. This is despite the fact that Peirce himself affirms that there are two
fundamental kinds of reasoning: the imaginative and the experiential, that is,
reasoning by means of diagrams or reasoning by means of experiments (CP 4.74, 1893).
Experience and imagination are two complementary wellsprings, which do not always
go hand in hand. At times, the imagination works without directly depending on
experience, as in the case of certain mathematical conceptions which do not derive
from physical experience (CP 4.238, 1902). For example, conceiving the idea of
imaginary quantity and imagining non-Euclidian measurement, both take place in the
thoroughly theoretical context of a hypothetical state of things, and mathematicians
exercise “immense genius” in creating them in order to solve pure mathematical
problems (CP 4.238, 1902). Experience makes possible the creative work of the
mathematical imagination, but it is not a necessary condition (Campos 2009: 138).
18 Pragmatism, which Peirce did not consider to be a philosophical doctrine, but rather
the expression of the genuine scientific method – beginning with experience and
returning to it in order to confirm hypotheses and concepts on the basis of their effects
– involves a defense of imagination, which must be put into play in order to explore the
possible consequences of the concepts and the reasonable actions to which it may give
rise. The method of pragmatism prescribes to trace out in the imagination the
conceivable practical consequences of the affirmation or denial of the concept (CP
8.191, c.1904), which in turn permits the clarification and development of the concept,
such that its meaning may transcend mere effects in the here and now, thereby
attaining the realm of the possible: “[the method] allows any flight of imagination,
provided this imagination ultimately alights upon a possible practical effect […] it
makes conception reach far beyond the practical” (CP 5.196, 1903). In this way, the
actual is reinterpreted and reconstructed in the light of what is possible, and human

13
reason is conceived of in a way that is radically different from the traditional vision of
rationality, which leaves imagination out. The imagination is no longer seen as a
spontaneous and undisciplined faculty, but rather as something which actively
intervenes in the clarification and development of our ideas, integrating with
rationality and action. In this way the role of the non-propositional in our experience,
i.e. the aesthetic dimension of rationality, is taken into account (Alexander 1990: 325-6).
19 In the process of investigation defended by pragmatism, the imagination is necessary at
every step. It is necessary, of course, for arriving at hypotheses through abduction.
Abductive reasoning presupposes an imaginative effort of understanding, beginning
with an “aesthetic-hypothetic” response to the world (Alexander 1990: 329). Abduction
involves a creative use of the imagination: the scientist asks his or her imagination
about how things might be, imagines possible explanations and makes suppositions
which, according to Peirce, constitute an increase of information (CP 2.430, 1893).
20 In order that science may advance it is necessary to imagine distinct things, and Peirce
himself, as a scientist and practical thinker, practices what he preaches. His work is
filled with imaginative conjectures and suppositions which help him in his reasoning:
for example, let us imagine, states Peirce, that that separate corpuscles related to
atoms are endowed with free will (CP 1.261, c.1902); imagine that at a certain moment
velocity was suddenly imparted to every atom and corpuscle of the universe (CP 1.274,
c.1902); we may imagine the atom of argon to be really formed of four triads (CP 4.309,
c.1902), or imagine some molecules as something like little solar systems, only vastly
more complex (CP 6.283, 1893), however, we can hardly imagine that the number of
atoms in protoplasm is much less than a thousand (CP 1.393, c.1890). In some texts,
Peirce imagines that he is seeking to explain a given doctrine to someone that doesn’t
know it, or he speaks with imaginary interlocutors. Numerous texts begin with “let us
imagine” or “let us suppose.” He uses imaginative metaphors, such as his comparison of
consciousness to a bottomless lake in which ideas are suspended at different depths,
with a constant rain of perceptions that falls upon it (CP 7.553, n.d.). In order to
evaluate certain arguments, Peirce also uses his imagination; for instance, in order to
evaluate the Neglected Argument for the Reality of God he imagines how it would be
considered by three types of people: the first of small instruction, the second inflated
with current notions of logic, and the third a trained man of science (CP 6.478, 1908).
21 Within pragmatism the imagination is not only necessary for coming up with
hypotheses, but also for testing them. Indeed, in the texts of Peirce we find that the
imagination constitutes the first test for hypotheses. One must discern, prior to taking
any other step, whether something is imaginable or not. For Peirce, it is possible that
we might have an idea, while nonetheless concluding that it cannot be imagined. In
turn, whatever cannot be imagined must be rejected. Thus, if a scientist is confronted
with a hypothesis of any order, it is necessary that he or she ask “does the hypothesis
hold up in the world of the imagination?” and “does it hold up in that creative world
which is not merely a fantasy, but possesses its own proper logic?” In addition, these
first imaginary experiments cost very little, as Peirce notes.
22 Furthermore, Peirce considers the criterion of inconceivability as fundamental for
knowing whether a proposition is necessarily true, i.e. to test whether its negation is
inconceivable. A proposition will necessarily be true if it is impossible to imagine a
state of things in which it would be false, a state not merely unrealizable in imagination
today but unrealizable after indefinite training and education (CP 2.29, c.1902).

14
23 The imagination, nonetheless, not only intervenes in these first moments of testing a
hypothesis, but also during the entire process. Methodeutic logic impels us to pursue,
to choose between possible explanations, that which is most simple, where ‘simple’
means for Peirce “more facile of human imagination” (CP 4.644, 1908), and with the
least possible number of arbitrary conventions.
24 We can thus conclude that imagination not only has to do with abduction – the
inventive phase of science – but also with the second and third forms of reasoning, i.e.
with deduction (the explanatory phase) and with induction (the verification phase).
Imagination, moreover, plays an important role in the handling of hypotheses, in the
development of their possible consequences and in their verification. The warrant of
deduction is that the facts presented in the premisses could not under any imaginable
circumstances be true without involving the truth of the conclusion. That is, we cannot
imagine a state of things in which the premises are true without the conclusion also
being true (CP 2.778, 1901). In the case of induction, there are things that can be proved
inductively by imagining and analyzing instances of the surdest description (CP 5.448,
1905).
25 Peirce thus defends the role of imagination as part of the correct method of research,
and we can verify, as I will show in what follows, that his defense and usage of the
imagination appear in numerous different parts of his system of thought. I will briefly
provide some examples of the role which Peirce assigns to this faculty.
IV. Some Applications of the Imagination Within

Peirce’s System
Imagination and Mathematics
26 One of Peirce’s most vehement defenses of the imagination is that which he makes
within the realm of mathematics. The imagination is central for a deductive science
such as mathematics, since ‘deductive’ does not mean for Peirce that a science is
mechanical or lacking imagination, as we will see in what follows.
27 For Peirce, mathematics is an observational science: it functions by means of a special
mode of observation, i.e. that which is directed to the creations of our mind, to
imaginary constructions with some degree of fixity (CP 2.305, 1901). Mathematicians
construct figures, establish hypotheses and draw out their consequences and examine
their relations, all by means of imaginary objects. In the imagination a type of
diagrammatic representation is formed, that is constructed so that there would be
something closely similar in every possible state of things to which the hypothetical
description would be applicable, and is constructed so that it shall have no other
characters which could influence the reasoning (CP 4.233, c.1902). The diagram
constructed in this way is modified in a process that takes place in the mind, since, as
Fernando Zalamea has written, “the imagination of mathematical possibilities does not
require marks” (Zalamea 2011: 94). Peirce describes this diagrammatic reasoning in the
following way:
We form in the imagination some sort of diagrammatic, that is, iconic,
representation of the facts, as skeletonized as possible. The impression of the
present writer is that with ordinary persons this is always a visual image, or mixed
visual and muscular; but this is an opinion not founded on any systematic

15
examination. If visual, it will either be geometrical, that is, such that familiar
spatial relations stand for the relations asserted in the premisses, or it will be
algebraical, where the relations are expressed by objects which are imagined to be
subject to certain rules, whether conventional or experiential. This diagram, which
has been constructed to represent intuitively or semi-intuitively the same relations
which are abstractly expressed in the premisses, is then observed, and a hypothesis
suggests itself that there is a certain relation between some of its parts – or perhaps
this hypothesis had already been suggested. In order to test this, various
experiments are made upon the diagram, which is changed in various ways. This is
a proceeding extremely similar to induction, from which, however, it differs widely,
in that it does not deal with a course of experience, but with whether or not a
certain state of things can be imagined. Now, since it is part of the hypothesis that
only a very limited kind of condition can affect the result, the necessary
experimentation can be very quickly completed; and it is seen that the conclusion is
compelled to be true by the conditions of the construction of the diagram. This is
called “diagrammatic, or schematic, reasoning. (CP 2.778, 1901)
28 The imagination thus plays a central role in this type of reasoning, which Peirce calls
‘diagrammatic’ or ‘schematic,’ and which has nothing to do with the course of
experience, but rather with whether a certain state of things can be imagined or not.
Daniel Campos has described the skills necessary for the mathematician: power of
imagination to create hypothetical presentations, power of concentration to
discriminate between mathematically essential and superfluous relations, and power of
generalize on the basis of the characters and relations represented (Campos 2009: 137).
Mathematics requires perfect imaginability as well as an extreme familiarity with
spatial relations (CP 4.246, c.1902). On another occasion Peirce wrote that
“mathematics calls for the profoundest invention, the most athletic imagination, and
for a power of generalization” (CP 4.611, 1908).
29 Mathematics is purely deductive, and obtains necessary conclusions apodictically. This
is necessary reasoning, i.e. applicable to all possible cases. Nevertheless, its manner of
reasoning and its experiments are based on the imaginative study of an individual
schema, or of various individual schemas which represent alternative possibilities. It
might appear that when one constructs a figure in the imagination instead of on paper,
any desired line might be added, but this is not the case. The image, as Peirce affirms,
has a certain power of persisting such as it is and resisting metamorphosis. Thus, any
fiction has certain characteristics which someone has attributed to it and which cannot
be freely altered. Inner objects do offer a certain degree of resistance, though not in a
fashion comparable to that of facts existing in reality (CP 5.45, 1903).
30 The necessary character of mathematics, thanks to the presence of the imagination,
combines without contradiction with surprising discoveries, just as occur in any other
observational science. The hypotheses of the mathematician are creatures of his own
imagination, and at times surprising things are discovered. We thus learn that
surprises are not linked only to the real world (CP 5.567, 1901) nor is the inventive
power linked exclusively to abductions regarding that which exists. Experiments on
diagrams, which question the nature of the relations involved, may provoke
unintended and unexpected changes. All deductive reasoning involves an element of
observation and discovery in the imagination.
31 It can thus be concluded with Peirce that the imagination is central to mathematical
reasoning, necessary for invention and, in part, responsible of the superior certainty of
the mathematician’s results, because the mathematician’s experiments, being

16
conducted in the imagination upon objects of his own creation, cost next to nothing,
and also because due to his reasoning only concerning hypothetical conditions the
assurance of the mathematician is greater, not being open to unknown conditions
which may alter the results (CP 5.8, c.1907).
Imagination and Phenomenology
32 Phenomenology is another case, within Peirce’s system, of a science which has its
foundations in the imagination. The capacity for imagination is necessary in order to
separate and study that which appears before us. Peirce distinguishes three types of
separation. First, there are ideas which are little allied amongst themselves, with the
result that consciousness of one of these ideas does not imply consciousness of the
other. Hence, we can imagine red without imagining blue, and vice versa. This type of
separation is termed a dissociation. Secondly, prescision occurs when, even in cases
where two conceptions cannot be separated in the imagination, we can suppose one
without the other, that is we can imagine data from which we should be led to believe
in a state of things where one was separated from the other. Thus, we can suppose
uncolored space, though we cannot dissociate space from color. In other words,
prescision consists in imagining ourselves in situations in which certain elements of
fact cannot be ascertained. For example, Peirce states that prescind the geometrical
figure from color consists in imagining it to be so illuminated that its hue cannot be
made out (CP 2.428, 1893). This is a different and more complicated operation than
merely attending to certain elements and forgetting the rest, and cannot be carried out
without the imagination. Thirdly, even when one element cannot even be supposed
without another, they may ofttimes be distinguished from one another. Thus we can
neither imagine nor suppose a taller without a shorter, yet we can distinguish the taller
from the shorter. Peirce terms this manner of separation ‘distinction’ (CP 1.353, c.1880).
33 Peirce’s categories, deduced from the phenomena and present in them all, are closely
related to the imagination. How could we separate them without imagination?
Furthermore, the categories constitute precisely that which cannot be dissociated in
the imagination, although they can be prescinded. One category cannot be dissociated
in imagination from the others. Peirce explains this feature as follows:
Now, the categories cannot be dissociated in imagination from each other, nor from
other ideas. The category of first can be prescinded from second and third, and
second can be prescinded from third. But second cannot be prescinded from first,
nor third from second. The categories may, I believe, be prescinded from any other
one conception, but they cannot be prescinded from some one and indeed many
elements. You cannot suppose a first unless that first be something definite and
more or less definitely supposed. Finally, though it is easy to distinguish the three
categories from one another, it is extremely difficult accurately and sharply to
distinguish each from other conceptions so as to hold it in its purity and yet in its
full meaning. (CP 1.353)
34 The imagination is necessary in order to separate concepts and comprehend the
categories: in order to imagine red without blue, or sound without a melody, and to
realize that we cannot conceive of melody without sound (CP 1.353). We must imagine
the primary qualities, which we cannot know in any other way. We can imagine a
universe that consists of a single quality that never changes (CP 1.322, 1903). We need
the imagination in order to achieve, for instance, a general impression of pain – or of
any other quality – by imagining at the same time distinct types of pain without

17
attending to their parts, or imagining a color at the same time that all the rest of our
consciousness is utterly wiped out; we need the imagination in order to capture the
monadic aspect of phenomena (CP 1.424, 1893). We must also be imaginative in order to
comprehend the second category, i.e. binarity. It is necessary to imagine two objects
which are not merely thought as two, but of which something is true such that neither
could be removed without destroying the fact supposed true of the other (CP 2.84, c.
1902). In order to comprehend the third, on the other hand, we must imagine laws
which have no occurrences: this is something which we can only imagine (CP 1.304, c.
1904).
Imagination and Semiotics
35 The imagination occurs frequently in the semiotic explanations given by Peirce. The
word ‘sign,’ he affirms, is used to denote an object perceptible, or only imaginable, or
even unimaginable in a certain sense (CP 2.230, c.1902). To attach any general
significance to a sign and to know that we do attach a general significance to it, we
must have a direct imagination of something not in all respects determinate (CP 5.371,
1877). His principal classification of signs can be explained with the help of the
imagination: the value of an icon consists in its exhibiting the features of a state of
things regarded as if it were purely imaginary (CP 4.448, c.1903). An index, on the other
hand, assures a positive fact. A symbol implies existent instances of what the symbol
denotes, although they exist in the possibly imaginary universe to which the symbol
refers (CP 2.249, 1903). A symbol implies that we are able to imagine certain things, for
instance birds, and associate the word with them (CP 2.298, 1893). Symbol, with the aid
of imagination, serves to make thought and conduct rational and enables us to predict
the future.
36 In addition, from Peirce’s point of view, the interpretant (that other sign which the
first sign gives rise to in the mind of the interpreter) requires the imagination. What
Peirce calls an immediate interpretant is a schema in imagination, the vague image or
what there is in common to the different images of the same thing (CP 8.314). In
speaking of the logical interpretant, Peirce affirms that first logical interpretants
stimulate us to various voluntary performances in the inner world. We imagine
ourselves in various situations and animated by various motives; and we proceed to
trace out the alternative lines of conduct which the conjectures would leave open to us
(CP 5.481, c.1907).
Imagination and Logic
37 In the field of logic, according to Peirce, the imagination takes far wider flights, being
bounded solely by the limits of its own powers (CP 5.440, 1905). One of these imaginary
flights led Peirce, for example, to think of existential graphs, which have an
extraordinary plasticity: “the success of existential graphs, which provide a unique set
of uniform axioms for the classical calculus of propositions, the classic calculus of first
order relations and some modal calculi, have their basis in the plasticity of certain rules
of transformation situated on a continuum” (Zalamea 2010: 5). The graphs are related
to imaginary worlds. When we work with them we employ, or at least imagine that we
employ, different things, e.g. a sheet of paper of different tints on its two sides (CP
4.573, 1906). The first convention for these graphs is that there is an assertion sheet

18
which is considered as expressing an assertion made by an imaginary person called a

‘graphist.’
38 On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that logic, for Peirce, is much more than a
mere discipline. Rather, it is a long and difficult art which he understood as a way of
entering into human thought (CP 5.359, 1877). Peirce dared to sketch out the path by
which knowledge is produced. For him, it was clear that the explanation of the process
of arriving at discoveries could not be merely psychological, given that all the
psychology in the world would leave the logical problem just as it was (CP 5.172, 1903).
This process of discovery is structured and susceptible to a logical explanation: “there
is a purely logical doctrine of how discovery must take place, which, however great or
little is its importance, it is my plain task and duty here to explore” (CP 2.107, c.1902).
Creativity acquires a logical form via abduction, thus putting imagination in the center,
not only of logic, but of all human knowledge.
Imagination and Ethics
39 For Peirce, ethics is not limited to telling people what they must or must not do (MS
675, 1911; EP 2: 459; CP 2.198, c.1902); indeed it goes beyond a mere dichotomy. Peirce
an ethics has to do with admirable conduct. “The righteous man is the man who
controls his passions, and makes them conform to such ends as he is prepared
deliberately to adopt as ultimate” (CP 5.130, 1903). Ethics, from the Peircean pragmatist
point of view, is seen as our guiding ourselves in accordance with our reason, which
can grow and invent the modes by which it will grow, and which has the capacity to go
beyond what is given, acting in an interconnected fashion with the imagination and the
rest of human capacities. Ethics consists in our embodying ideals in our lives, bringing
us closer to our ends. Indeed, the imagination fulfills a fundamental function with
regards to those ideals which must orient our conduct: man imagines what the
consequences of fully carrying out his ideals would be, and asks himself what the
esthetic quality of those consequences would be (CP 1.591, 1903). On this basis, they
make resolutions and determinations which will guide their actions.
V. The Connection of Reason and Imagination

40 Before concluding, I will explain this relation between imagination and reason a little
more in depth. I have upheld this relation throughout this entire article, and I will
show now that the most important nexus between imagination and reason are the
habits.
41 Imagination is necessary so that reason can function; it aids reason on the road to truth
and in its interconnection with life, as a guide of action. Indeed, as Peirce states on one
occasion, thought is the development of a belief-habit which takes place in the
imagination (CP 3.160, 1880). Intelligence does not consist in feeling a certain way, but
in acting in a certain way, taking into account that many times these actions are
internal and occur in the imagination (CP 6.286, 1893). For Peirce, the formation of
habits is one of the most essential ingredients of moral and logical self-control, and all
self-control that is a result of training takes place in the imagination (CP 5.533, c.1905).
42 The fact that the imagination contributes to forming habits, states Peirce on another
occasion, is precisely that which separates it from mere fantasy: “Day-dreams are often

19
spoken of as mere idleness; and so they would be, but for the remarkable fact that they
go to form habits, by virtue of which when a similar real conjuncture arises we really
behave in the manner we had dreamed of doing” (CP 6.286, 1893). How does the
imagination carry out this formation of habits which will determine our actions and
our reasoning? Merely imagining oneself reacting in a specific way can cause, after
numerous repetitions, the class of reaction that is imagined. We imagine cases, place
mental diagrams before our mind’s eye, and multiply these cases, until a habit is
formed (CP 2.170, c.1902). We may imagine the occurrence of the stimulus, and think
out what the results of different actions will be. One of these will appear particularly
satisfactory; and then that mode of reaction “receives a deliberate stamp of approval”
(CP 5.538, c.1902). That stamp implies the act of recognition as one’s own, being placed
by a deed of the soul upon an imaginary anticipation of experience. In some way, one
knows what to expect from then on, what will happen, and when a similar occasion
arises one will see that the habit has already been established. Peirce gives the
following example:
I well remember when I was a boy, and my brother Herbert was scarce more than a
child, one day, as the whole family where at table, some spirit from a “blazer,” or
“chafing-dish,” dropped on the muslin dress of one of the ladies and was kindled;
and how instantaneously he jumped up, and did the right thing, and how skillfully
each motion was adapted to the purpose. I asked him afterward about it, and he
told me that since Mrs. Longfellow’s death he had often run over in imagination all
the details of what ought to be done in such an emergency. It was a striking
example of a real habit produced by exercises in the imagination. (EP 2: 413, 1907)
43 There are imaginary lines of conduct that shall give a general shape to our actual future
conduct, and is what Peirce terms a resolve (CP 5.538). Habits are acquired in this way,
not by muscular effort but rather by the internal acts of the imagination. Behaviour,
affirms Peirce, is always partially controlled by the deliberate exercise of imagination
and reflexion (CP 7.381, c.1902). Hence, as Andacht has indicated, preparation is
everything, since speculating on an imaginary action may have the effect of helping us
to effectively carry out that action at some still undetermined time in the future
(Andacht 1996: 1268).
44 The imagination thus serves as a preparatory meditation for action. It allows us to
know what must be and not merely what is in the actual world (CP 2.227, c.1897), and
aids us in acting in consequence. It allows us to make a unitary consideration of all that
must be done and when it should be done. The imagination thus produces real effects,
not only mere fantasies.
45 In addition to the habits there are other mechanisms, which we can briefly indicate,
involved in this interconnection of imagination with reason. The imagination is
necessary, in the first place, for the surprise and doubt that put reasoning into motion.
When something surprises us it is because the mind is filled up with an imaginary
object that we anticipate, and which in the end does not occur. Doubt, for its part, is a
state of hesitancy concerning an imagined state of things. A man in doubt is usually
trying to imagine how he shall act when he finds himself in the imagined situation. In
his imagination, he does not know which path to follow amongst those which are
presented to him (CP 5.510, c.1905).
46 Imagination is equally necessary in order to escape from doubt and advance towards
belief. The critical common sensist, writes Peirce, for example, must set himself to the
systematic business of endeavoring to bring all his very general first premisses to

20
recognition, and of developing every suspicion of doubt of their truth, by the use of
logical analysis, and by experimenting in imagination (CP 5.517, c.1905). Every answer
to a question that has any meaning, states Peirce, is a decision as to how we would act
under imagined circumstances (CP 5.373, 1877). To answer questions, man makes
abstractive observations, makes in his imagination a sort of skeleton diagram, or
outline sketch, and considers what modifications would require to be made. There are
questions, and not only in mathematics, which can be resolved via imaginary
experimentation, cases in which a generalization is needed, and when at last we arrive
at a belief, that belief, which will determine our action, is active in the imagination. A
belief is an intelligent habit upon which we shall act when occasion presents itself, and
we virtually resolve to act as if certain imagined circumstances were perceived (CP 2.435,
c.1893). The substance of beliefs can therefore be represented in the schemata of
imagination, that is to say, in continuous series of images, these composites being
accompanied by conditional resolutions as to conduct. (CP 5.517, c.1905).
47 Finally, the imagination is necessary in order to produce expectations. Peirce holds that
an expectation is a kind of image in the imagination characterized by vague and fluid
contours, a general idea which will govern the individual when it occurs. An
expectation is a habit of imagining, an affection of consciousness which can be directly
compared with that which occurs later (CP 2.148, c.1902).
Conclusion
48 Truth must first be imaginable and imagined. In order to advance in knowledge one
must explore not only the limits of experience, but also those of the imagination,
something which has not been sufficiently taken into account. It has always been said
that knowledge for Peirce starts with experience, but it is frequently forgotten that this
experience can and must also be imagined. Reason and imagination need one another.
The order and rigor of reason and the flexibility and freedom of the imagination
complement one another, contributing to more reasonable and aesthetic thoughts and
acts.
49 A great part of our reasoning occurs through hypotheses, which cannot occur without
imagination, or else through diagrams, which are applied to a better understanding of
imaginary states of things, and help to analyze reasonings and to render ideas clear. We
need the imagination for certain mental operations, in order to acquire habits, to
separate, to doubt and to believe. Imaginary observation, holds Peirce, is the most
essential part of reasoning (CP 4.355, c.1903). We need the imagination in order to
explore consequences, clarify concepts and advance in knowledge.
50 It is therefore essential to develop the imagination, that tool which works together
with reason, or better, which orients it and even houses it. Mere imagination is useless,
but the imagination is not mere: without it there is nothing, intellectually speaking.
The imagination works in harmony with the rules dictated by the reason in order to
construct knowledge, to provide explanations, to express qualities, to envisage possible
worlds, to generate habits and actions. “Imagination and reason go hand in hand, and it
is only by means of their complete conjunction that man – slowly and sinuously, along
paths full of ups and downs, advances and retreats, through literary, philosophical and
scientific trends – partially unveils strange secrets which should have transcended
him” (Zalamea 2009: 49). The cultivation of the imagination is not only essential for

21
artistic and scientific creativity, but also for a greater attainment of reasonableness in
general. In order that our reason be more productive, we must stimulate our
imagination, since they are closely connected, to the point that thought “develops in
the imagination.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ALEXANDER T. M., (1990), “Pragmatic Imagination,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 26,
325-48.
ANDACHT F., (1996), “El lugar de la imaginación en la semiótica de C. S. Peirce,” Anuario Filosófico,
XIX/3, 1265-89.
CALLAWAY H. G., (2007), “Abduction, Pragmatism, and the Scientific Imagination,” Apply- ing
Peirce Conference, Helsinki. Electronic version in [philpapers.org/rec/CALAPA3].
CAMPOS D., (2009) “Imagination, Concentration, and Generalization: Peirce on the Reason- ing
Abilities of the Mathematician,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 45 (2), 135-56.
EMERSON R. W., (1875), “Poetry and Imagination,” in Letters and Social Aims, Boston, Osgood.
PEIRCE C. S., (1931-58), Collected Papers (CP), vols. 1-8, Hartshorne, C., Weiss, P. and Burks, A. W.
eds., Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Electronic Edition of J. Deely, Charlottesville, VA,
InteLex.
PEIRCE C. S., (1992-98), The Essential Peirce. Selected Philosophical Writings (EP), vols. 1-2, Peirce
Edition Project eds., Bloomington, Indiana University Press.
PEIRCE C. S., (1982- ), Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition (W), vols. 1-6, Fisch, M. H. et
al. eds., Bloomington, Indiana University Press.
PEIRCE C. S., (1978), microfilms of his manuscripts (MS), Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA, Harvard
University Library, Photographic Service.
RESTREPO M., (2011), “Representación interpretante, enlace hermenéutico,” IV Jornadas In-

ternacionales Peirceanas, México D. F., 3-6 May. Electronic version in [unav.es/gep/
ArticulosOnLineEspanol.html].
ZALAMEA F., (2011), “Creatividad y plasticidad en el Logic Notebook,” Cuadernos de Sistemática

Peirceana, 3, 79-102.
ZALAMEA F., (2010), “Creatividad y plasticidad en los gráficos existenciales,” Cuadernos de

Sistemática Peirceana, 2 , 5-24.
ZALAMEA F., (2009), “Faneroscopia, filosofía natural y literatura. ‘La esfinge’ en Peirce, Emerson,
Poe y Melville,” Cuadernos de Sistemática Peirceana, 1, 33-52.

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ABSTRACTS
Charles S. Peirce held a view of human reason as creative. The objective of this article is to
explore more deeply the Peircean conception of imagination, indispensable for the correct
functioning of reason. The connection of reason and imagination is necessary in order to be able
to interpret the world, to advance towards the truth and to direct our own actions. In this paper I
will explain the principal forms in which these faculties interact, and will provide examples
taken from the Peircean corpus.
AUTHOR
SARA BARRENA
Grupo de Estudios Peirceanos, University of Navarre, Spain
sbarrena[at]unav.es

23
The Role of Imagination in James’s

and Dewey’s Understanding of
Religious Experience
Romain Mollard
1 It is well known that pragmatism follows from Alexander Bain’s definition of ideas as
“that upon which a man is prepared to act.” But pragmatism needs to explain how
ideas gain this authority on our action. Ideas may not have by themselves the power to
determine or motivate our active nature. Ethical and religious problems are therefore
central to the pragmatist anthropology. The Varieties of Religious Experiences, where
James explore a “deeper level of (our) nature,” showing thus “the inferiority of the
rationalistic level in founding belief” (WWJ 1985: 67), describes how imagination brings
a sense of reality to ideas, by which we become ready to act upon them. Imagination
helps ideas or ideals which look remote and abstract to become absolutely lively, and
start to occupy the centre of our consciousness’s field. Thus, pragmatism rests upon a
fine descriptive psychology of how ideas becomes real and, in that becoming,
imagination, far from being a queen of falsehood, is heightened to the status of an
“ontological” faculty:
Such is the human ontological imagination, and such is the convincingness of what
it brings to birth. Unpicturable beings are realized, and realized with intensity
almost like that of a hallucination. They determine our vital attitude as decisively
as the vital attitude of lovers is determined by the habitual sense, by which each us
haunted, of the other being in the world. (WWJ 1985: 66)
2 “Ontology” is not one of James’s favourite topics. If speaking of “ontological
imagination” has a sense, it can only be in connexion with the idea of reality as being
not ready-made but “on the making.” How does this “making” takes place in the
workshop of imagination? An idea, in order to be a rule of action, needs to be felt as
real and for that needs to be imagined. Thus different levels of reality are constructed
imaginatively before any separation between imagination and perception is possible. In
this article, I would like to connect James’s theory of imagination in The Principles of
Psychology with his theory of the religious imagination in The Varieties, showing how the
first offers a ground for understanding the second. I will also argue that, although

24
James Will to Believe doctrine does not mention imagination, the idea is central to give
us a better understanding of how religious experiences and religious belief are related.
The central problem in James understanding of religion is to go beyond the opposition
between affirming in The Will to Believe the role of religious belief as the condition of
religious experience, while affirming, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, the primacy
and suddenness of religious experience. James’s theory of imagination can offer a basis
under which the solution should be search. But to offer a better understanding of how
this theory is compatible with supernaturalism of the Varieties, I propose to contrast it
with John Dewey’s naturalistic theory of imagination in A Common Faith. I would like to
show that, although James and Dewey’s religious concern share a common refusal to
radically differentiate the ideal and the real, the condition under which imagination
can be useful in practice is fundamentally different for them, and so is their conception
of the ideal. For James, imagination is intentional in the sense that it points towards an
object that it poses as real. It has therefore a cognitive content, however minimum.
Imagination is a part of his theory of the “feeling of reality” and blends very well with
the type of surnaturalism that we find in the Varieties, since it is not connected with the
senses. On the contrary, according to Dewey, the fact that imagination points towards
real entities entices the fallacy of surnaturalism. If for both, ideal and reality are
unified by imagination in a religious dimension of experience, I would also like to show
that Dewey’s naturalist position, although interesting, is partly contaminated by an
esthetical spiritualism and a mystical quest for unity, which creates difficulties when
he wants to differentiate between the esthetical, the ethical and the religious
dimensions of experience. By showing how, in James’s theories, imagination can be
understood only through a kind of realism about the “unseen world,” my aim is also to
defend James against those who charged his philosophy of religion of subjectivism.
I. James and Dewey’s Reading of Santayana’s

Definition of Imagination
3 At the beginning of their reflexion on religious experience, James and Dewey had both
meditated upon an interesting definition of imagination by Santayana, and of its role in
religious and esthetical experiences. It is therefore a worthy point of departure in order
to see more clearly where and how James and Dewey differ. Indeed, A Common Faith
takes some of Santayana’s affirmations as central, while the book acts as a foil for the
writing of The Varieties of Religious Experience. In Interpretation of Poetry and Religion,
Santayana writes:
Imagination and intelligence do not differ in their origin, but in their validity…
Those conceptions which, after they have spontaneously arisen, prove serviceable
in practice, and capable of verification in sense, we call idea of the understanding.
The other remains idea of the imagination. (Santayana 1900: V)
4 Santayana’s conception of imagination is pragmatic in the sense that if affirms the
creative aspects of the mind, its spontaneity, and its usefulness in practice.
Nevertheless, it seems to entail that what we call the “ideas of the imagination” do not
have a practical role. In fact, Santayana’s position is more subtle. Those ideas do have a
role in practical affairs since
Religion and Poetry are identical in essence, and differ merely in the way in which
they are attached to practical affairs. Poetry is called religion when it intervenes in

25
life, and religion, when it merely supervenes upon life, is seen to be nothing but
poetry. (Santayana 1900: 5)
5 This distinction is crucial for Dewey. It helps him to articulate the religious dimension
of experience with ethical and esthetical dimensions through imagination. The
specificity of religious experience will be for Dewey, explained by a certain quantity
and quality of imagination’s play. Commenting on Santayana’s distinction, Dewey
writes:
The difference between the imagination that only supervenes and imagination that
intervenes is the difference between one that completely interpenetrates all the
elements of our being and one that is interwoven with only special and partial
factors. (LW 9: 13)
6 For Dewey, our ideals become religious when they are interwoven and integrated in our
life in a total way. Following Santayana, it entails that religion cannot be said to deal
with matters of fact:
It would naturally follow from this conception that religious doctrine would do well
to withdraw their pretention with matters of fact. That pretention is… the cause of
the impurity and incoherence of religion in the soul, when it seeks its sanction in
the sphere of reality, and forgets that its proper concern is to express the ideal.
(Santayana, 1900, V)
7 It is then easy to see why James refuses Santayana’s approach of religion, since his
intention in the Varieties is precisely to show that religion is “not a mere illumination of
facts already elsewhere given…” but is mainly “a postulator of new facts as well” (WWJ
9: 407). It is therefore not surprising, if James, in a letter to Palmer on 2nd April 1900,
while writing the Edinburgh Lectures writes: “I now understand Santayana, the man. I
never understood him before. But what a perfection of rottenness in a philosophy! I
don’t think I ever knew the anti-realistic view to be propounded with so impudently
superior an air” (WWJ 2001: 180). Their disagreement, at the same time, helps James to
make his own position more boldly affirmed. That is why he describes, in the same
letter to Palmer, Santayana’s book as “the great event of my life.” Keeping in mind that
James wrote the Varieties not only against theories of the absolute but also partly
against Santayana’s “anti-realistic view,” we will be able to read him with a proper
realistic stance. The unity of the ideal and the real is for him a living concrete unity. In
a draft of the Varieties, he writes: “Life comes to me as expressive of result, as
dramatically significant, as shot through with an ideality to which I’m bound to be
faithful… Santayana would that the result is only the contemplation of the significance
in the abstract” (CWJ 9: 492).
8 It would seem that, for James, the distinction between imagination that intervenes and
imagination that merely supervenes in our life cannot explain how ideality is “shot
through” our life, and how it is embedded in our practical affairs. It perhaps misses a
sense of the tragic without which James’s pragmatism can’t be understood. Before
coming back to James position and his underlying theory of imagination, we will go
through a closer reading of A Common Faith, where Dewey explains the role of
imagination in the religious experiences.

26
II. The Role of Imagination in the Religious Dimension

of Experience in Dewey’s A Common Faith
9 In the 30’s, Dewey had to defend his pragmatism against its reduction to a kind of
utilitarism. In 1934, he published Art and Experience and A Common Faith, whose common
points lies in the emphasis on the creative dimension of the mind and the role that
imagination has in the religious and esthetical dimensions of experience. As we have
seen, Santayana helps him to connect those two dimensions. For him, they are not
different kind of experiences. This poses two issues which I would like to raise. First, it
raises the issue of the relation of perception to imagination. Second, I would like to
suggest that it is showing in Dewey’s thought an influence of a kind of esthetical
mysticism, which is connected to his intense relation to poetry.
10 Regarding the first issue, Dewey certainly shows that facts are generally not perceived
as “brute facts” but in connexion with imagination: “There actually occurs extremely
little observation of brute facts… Facts are usually observed with reference to some
practical end of purpose, and that end is presented only in imagination” (LW9: 14).
Imagination thus connects perceptual knowledge of the world to our practice.
Nevertheless, however connected and even interwoven with “brute facts,” there
remains a distinction between the facts of nature and the idealisation of those facts
through imagination. Imagination is thus merely a continuation of the observation of
brute facts. As we shall see later, it seems that James is more radical in connecting the
two, and shows that we can’t help believing that our ideals, even though they are
idealisations, are not only “ours” but matches with other ideals in an objective moral
order. Thus, the sense of “surrender” which in The Varieties is a fundamental feature of
religious experience that helps to distinguish mere morality from religion, is ruled out
by Dewey. For him, to surrender to an already existing being has lead supernaturalistic
creeds to weaken the active moral impulse that urges the realisation of the ideal. Ideals
should be regarded merely as possible and not as real:
What I have been criticizing is the identification of the ideal with a particular Being,
especially when the identification makes necessary the conclusion that this being is
outside of Nature, and what I have tried to show is that the ideal itself has its roots
in natural conditions; it emerges when the imagination idealizes existence by laying
hold of the possibilities offered to thought and action. (LW 9: 34)
11 How does then Dewey differentiate morality from religion? I will argue that he replaces
the idea of surrendering with the experience of an emotional oneness with the
universe. A mere emotion of security or of harmony is what we are left with when we
refuse the idea of surrendering to some beings that can’t help being postulated as real.
This operates again largely through imagination, which should be broadly understood
as to include some subconscious effects: “The idea of a thoroughgoing and a deep-
seated harmonising of the self with the Universe… operates only threw imagination –
which is one reason why this composing of the self is not voluntary…” (LW 9: 14).
12 At this point, it should be mentioned that Dewey, throughout his life, found in
Wordsworth and Coleridge the expression of a natural piety that made him have a taste
of mysticim. The reading of Wordsworth triggered what he described later as “a mystic
experience.” According to Rockefeller (1991: 67), Dewey explained that his experience
was filled with an emotional sense of the unity with the universe. This strengthened his
belief that the truth of the universe is an organic unity, not a separation. Along with

27
Rockefeller, Russell B. Goodman (1990) has shown how Dewey’s mind is deeply rooted
in 19th century romanticism. More recently, Peter Gale showed the strong presence in
Dewey’s thought, along with the promethean aspect of his instrumentalism, of a
mystical quest for unity. It is therefore justified to suspect, in A Common Faith, certain
naturalised and secularised aspect of the Hegelian idea of God as union of the ideal and
the real. We therefore see that, when Dewey tries to differentiate religion from
morality, he is bound to compare it with a kind of an esthetical dimension with a strong
sense of unity and totality. The difficulty in Dewey attempt is that imagination must
unite the real and the ideal, without postulating the ideal as a real being. It entails
therefore that imagination mustn’t be essentially cognitive or intentional. The same
things follow for emotion, but I shall not consider this point here but stay concentrated
on the question of imagination. How can we not believe that whatever is imagined is, in
a certain sense, real? According to Dewey, we should differentiate between the
theoretical faith and practical faith. Theoretical faith is “a belief that some object or
being exists as a truth for the intellect” and the practical faith equated to “a conviction
that some end should be supreme over conduct” (LW9: 15). Thus it is not imagination
which is responsible for the delusion caused by the postulation of supernatural beings:
it is a mixture between intellectual or cognitive aspects and imagination. But is
religious faith not always mixed up with some intellectual content, however minimum,
about some existing fact? Are the practical and the theoretical faith not essentially
connected as James says?
III. The Ontological Imagination in William James

Psychology and Philosophy of Religion
13 Before going to a closer reading of some of James’s text on imagination, we can sum up
few points of departure between him and Dewey. Dewey links imagination with
totalities. This, perhaps, shows an influence of monistic tendencies. On the contrary,
James, as she shall now see connect imagination with a more pluralistic concept of a
multi-layered reality, of a plurality of spaces and times. Dewey explains how
imagination and perception are complementary, imagination being a continuation of
perceptive experiences on the side of the ideal possibilities of the perceived object.
James let the imagination plays a more fundamental role in the constitution of reality
itself, refusing a priori distinction between real and unreal, perception and
hallucination. Dewey describes religious experience as a harmonisation of the self and
the world, while James connects it with adapting oneself to a pluralistic “unseen
universe.” Dewey reconstructs the object of religious experience and believes that
imagination can be free from intellectual or cognitive content. James pragmatist
approach links religious experience with a cognitive content expressed in various
“world formula.” Dewey refuses the idea, central to James, that imagination has an
intentionality, that it not only points towards something else than itself, but tends to
assert the existence of the reality towards which she points. For James, we may even
say that imagination would not have any practical effect unless the ideals which are
imagined would be really believed to be part of a larger form of consciousness. As the
son of swedenborgian, James’s theory blurred the a priori distinctions between reality
and fiction, between vision and hallucination. If some individuals, whom he calls
“religious genius” in the Varieties (WWJ 15: 15), are luckier than others, grasping some

28
features of the unseen universe, it is not possible to understand why and how. The
value of the religious imagination is known only through its effects but not through its
cause. It is of no use rationalising the visions of the mystic. James theory of imagination
works for Swedenborg’s visions or for the lunatic hallucination. But the Varieties are
not only defending such a pragmatist agenda. Perhaps, the most interesting these of
the Varieties is not his theory of the subconscious origin of religious experience but his
theory of the reality of religious experience. Reality, for James, is not an abstract
attribute of things but a quality of living, concrete experience. It is therefore necessary
to connect what James says in the Principles of Psychology about imagination and the
feeling of reality and what he says of the “reality of the unseen” in the Varieties.
14 It is well known that The Principles of Psychology presents various contradictory theses.
On one hand, James look for the neural basis of the mind which is considered as an
object in a world of already made objects. On another hand, the mind is seen as a
selecting agency carving the objects among a chaotic plurality, a “big blooming
confusion.” The 18th chapter, who deals with imagination, starts by reaffirming the
empiricist credo of a purely reproductive imagination. Nevertheless, it ends by denying
that the neural basis of sensation and that of imagination can be radically different.
Hence, James starts to prepare the reader to admit a more radical thesis, affirmed in
the 19th and 21st chapters, of a strong connection between imagination and
perception. James contradictions between naturalism and a more phenomenological
approach can partly be reconciled under the umbrella of James’s Darwinism which
applies the theory of evolution to consciousness. If the progress of art and science can
be explained by creativity found in the conceptualising power of the mind,
Why may it not have been so of the original elements of consciousness, sensation,
time, space, resemblance…? Why may they not have come into being by the back-
door method, by such physical processes as lie more in the sphere of morphological
accident, of inward summation of effects, than in that of the ‘sensible presence’ of
objects? Why may they not, in short, be pure idiosyncrasies, spontaneous
variations, fitted by good luck. (WWJ 9: 1228)
15 Indeed, for James, our knowledge (either perceptual or conceptual) is not a copy or
reality. Naïve realism is false: the mind is not a passive mirror of objects independent of
it. However, this does not mean that there is no object independent of it but rather that
the mind is creative, even at the elementary level of sense perception. This allows
James to say that even “the elementary feelings is a recondite history” (WWJ :1228).
This history of consciousness, either biological or cultural, is generally ignored,
because we live through the experiences of others. However, religious experiencers are
those who get some glimpse of the “unseen universe” by having first hand experience
of conversion. At that level, the difference between imagination and perception is done
though a “feeling of reality.” The 21st chapter, who deals with that theory of reality as
feeling, starts by stating that “Everyone knows the difference between imagining a
things and believing in its existence” (WWJ 9: 913) but, later in the same chapter, as
James gets closer to a denial of the subject/object distinction, he denies ultimate
distinction between perception and imagination, relegating it to some further genesis
inside experience itself. The sense of reality arisen by the object, according to our
emotional and practical aspects, does not depend on any sense perception but is
characterized by a “cessation of theoretic agitation” (WWJ 9: 913), by the stability of an
idea and the exclusion of contradictory ideas. According to James, reality “means
simply relation to our emotional and active life” (WWJ 9: 924) and the reality of

29
religious experience in the Varieties is also shown by connecting it with emotion and
action. This feeling of reality is a common feature of all kind of experiences, including
sensational experience as well as religious experience. Being independent of any
particular “senses,” it can account for the reality of something unseen. In religious
experiences, there is something that strikes this feeling of reality, and can even make
the conception felt intensely more real than ordinary sense perception:
It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of
objective presence, a perception of what we may call ‘something there,’ more deep
and more general than any of the special and particular ‘senses’ by which the
current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed… So far as
religious conceptions were able to touch this reality-feeling, they would be believed
in in spite of criticism, even though they might be so vague and remote as to be
almost unimaginable, even though they might be such non- entities in point of
whatness, as Kant makes the objects of his moral theology to be. (WWJ 15: 55)
16 Although James refers to Kant, his basic argument his fundamentaly anti-kantien. He
argues against the strong kantian influence in the psychology of his time, showing that
reality or “objectivity” is not necessarily awakened by a connexion with the sense data.
This is essential to make room for a psychological or empirical understanding of
religious experience. However, the battle against idealism, in the Varieties, is not an
opposition of ‘concept’ against ‘feeling.’ It’s rather an opposition of concept as merely
thought of and concept as felt. James feels that concepts are by themselves rather
powerless unless they are connected with a reality-feeling or with imagination.
Objectivity requires an esthetical dimension in concepts as well as a cognitive content
of feelings. We find in a draft of the Varieties an interesting autobiographical passage on
religious imagination:
I cannot find in myself a trace of personal religion in the sense, in which so many
possess it nor any live belief in a conscious spirit of the universe with whom I may
hold communion. I used to have something like this, but it has gone, beyond the
possibility of recall… The lack in me seems to be an incapacity of actively imagining
with any content whatever “another and a better world.” (WWJ 15: 492)
17 This passage shows how deeply connected are imagination and religious belief and that
they both entail an intellectual content. This content may be minimal as the simple
affirmation of “another and a better world.” It also points out that imagination, in
James’s sense, is not under the control of the will. This is firstly a strong argument
against any superficial reading of the theory of the “will to believe” which sees in it
nothing but subjectivism. Secondly, it shows that religious belief and religious
experience are simultaneous. In other words, the element of surrendering is not caused
by the belief in any divine being, since believing itself required to be already able to
imagine actively the content of the belief and cannot be caused by will. At the same
time the act of surrendering is not causing the belief since to surrender, we already
need to have a belief in some kind of existing being. When James says that feeling is the
essential element in religion, he doesn’t mean a feeling free of any intellectual or
cognitive content. This is a strong argument in favour of an understanding of the
relation between the will to believe doctrine, and the accent put on religious
experiences in the Varieties which could be read as not presupposing any belief.
Imagination makes us experience our beliefs to be of realities; and neither imagination
nor belief or our feeling of reality is under the control of the will. This is, as I would like
to conclude, what gives us good reasons to believe that reality is not mind-dependant.

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IV. Conclusion: Realism Without A Human Face

18 Without a realistic frame of understanding, several aspects of James’s affirmation
would not escape being completely subjectivist and fall under the criticism of his
critics. Generally, James’s pragmatism is not considered as having strong realist
tendencies and theories like that of a reality-feeling seems to argue in favour of a
subjectivist tendency in his theories. It’s a fact that James pragmatism reject naïve
realism – the idea that things are the way we think them to be and that theories are
mirror of realities. Nevertheless, we can argue in favour of a metaphysical realism in
James’s position, at least regarding the reality of the supernatural world. This as been
recently defended by Slater 2008 against a current reading that sees, under the
influence of Putnam, James as defending a kind of internal realism in a Kantian
manner. Nevertheless, if we take metaphysical realism not in the elaborated sense
given by Putnam but simply as posing the existence of mind-independent objects, there
are plenty of evidence of it in James affirmation about the supernatural world. As Slater
(2008: 667) as shown, James is a religious realist, believing in an unseen and better
world, and understanding religion as a way of adapting oneself with this mind-
independent unseen world. Religion is therefore not true only because it has a value for
human life but because it puts us into contact with non-human higher form of
experience which have a value for our life (WWJ 1985: 408). While it is not clear that
James’s understanding of our ordinary perception and knowledge, being infused with
concepts, entails the existence of objects independant of the mind, religious
perceptions must be understood in a realist manner. For example, this passage, at the
end of the Varieties is clearly realistic about the existence of ideals and of a
supernatural world:
The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether dimension
of existence from the sensible and merely “understandable” world. Name it the
mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as our
ideal impulses originate in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we fi
nd them possessing us in a way for which we cannot articulately account), we
belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible
world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong. Yet the
unseen region in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in this world.
When we commune with it, work is actually done upon our finite personality, for
we are turned into new men, and consequences in the way of conduct follow in the
natural world upon our regenerative change. But that which produces effects
within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we had no
philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal. (WWJ 15: 406)
19 Keeping in mind what we have just said regarding imagination, we can say more
precisely in what way the “unseen region… produces effects in this world.” It restores
our lost faiths, it recreates our shaken hopes, and it gives us a clearer understanding of
our own ideals. It adds some spices to our moral life. For, although ethical and religious
experiences are clearly different, firstly religion has an essential ethical dimension
since the world we imagine is not only “other” than this world but also “better” and
secondly, our ideals can have an authority on our action only by being part of a wider
ideal world. Besides being a religious realist, James is thus also an ethical realist (Slater
2008: 668). Moreover, any objectivism regarding ethical values is grounded in the sort
of religiosity that James argues for in The Varieties. If for Dewey, to surrender to a being
already there has leaded supernaturalist creeds to weaken the active moral impulse

31
that urge to the realisation of the ideal, it is the contrary for James. The postulation of a
divine being encompassing our ideals form the basic esthetical condition under which
our moral efforts are at best. In the last chapter of The Moral Philosopher and the Moral
Life, James indeed try to show how moral objectivism is not possible on purely
naturalistic grounds. Moral objectivity demands the postulating of a God as one of the
claimant (WWJ 6: 170). If the entities that are postulated are not imagined as real
entities, they lack the power to motivate us. Imagination plays a role thus, in triggering
the “strenuous mood” which alone makes ethics supreme. But ideas and ideal, in order
to become what we are ready to act on, needs not be picturised in an anthropomorphic
manner. The “ontological imagination” picture “unpicturable beings” such as idea or
ideal without a human face. Imagination doesn’t create images but activates the sense
of reality. The jamesian pragmatist philosophy of religion and of religious imagination
has thus little to do with the “superstitiology” who sees, from Feuerbach to Freud,
including Nietzsche or Durkheim, religion as an anthropomorphic projection. It may
explain how religious perception thoroughly shaped by imagination cannot be reduced
a priori to hallucination, provided they are understood as embedded into a form of
realistic supernatural world, without a human face.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
DEWEY J., (2008), A Common Faith, in The Later Works of John Dewey, Vol. 9, Carbondale, Southern
Illinois University Press.
GALE R., (2010), John Dewey’s Quest for Unity, Amherst, New York, Prometheus Book.
GOODMAN R. B., (1990), American Philosophy and the Romantic Tradition, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
JAMES W., (2001), The Correspondance of William James, Vol. 9 (CWJ 9), Charlottesville, University
Press of Virginia.
JAMES W., (1979), The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, in The Works of William
James, vol. 6 (WWJ 6), Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, Harvard University Press
JAMES W., (1981), The Principles of Psychology, vol. 2, in The Works of William James, vol. 9 (WWJ 9),
Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, Harvard University Press.
JAMES W., (1985), The Varieties of Religious Experience, in The Works of William James, (WWJ 15),
Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, Harvard University Press.
ROCKEFELLER S. C., (1991), John Dewey, Religious faith and Democratic Humanism, New York, Columbia
University Press.
SANTAYANA G., (1924), Interpretation of Poetry and Religion, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons.
SLATER M., (2008), “Pragmatism, Realism and Religion,” Journal of Religious Ethic, 36 (4), 653-81.

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ABSTRACTS
Many aspects of The Varieties of Religious Experience found their theoretical background in other
books of James psychology or philosophy. In this article I try to connect his theory of imagination
in The Principle of Psychology with his supernaturalism regarding religious experience. Both
suppose a theory of the “feeling of reality” that explains how, under the working of imagination,
abstract ideas or remote ideals can be perceived as real and lively, becoming motives for action,
although they may not have anything to do with sense experience. Although imagination is not
mentioned in James’s doctrine of the will to believe, it is central in both understanding this
doctrine as well as the overall vision of James psychology and philosophy of religion. Similarly,
imagination is essential to grasp a better understanding of how ideas and ideals unite with reality
in Dewey’s thoughts concerning religion. I find it useful, in order to have a better understanding
of James position, to compare it with what Dewey has to say about it in A Common Faith.
Contrasting their theories will show that James’s understanding of imagination can only be
understood if rooted in a kind of realism about the ‘unseen universe’.
AUTHOR
ROMAIN MOLLARD
Paris I, Sorbonne University, Execo
romain108[at]gmail.com

33
The Creative Moment of Scientific

Apprehension
Understanding the Consummation of Scientific Explanation through
Dewey and Peirce
Mark Dietrich Tschaepe
“In the light of the doctrine of categories I should

say that an object, to be esthetically good, must
have a multitude of parts so related to one
another as to impart a positive simple immediate
quality to their totality…” (EP 2: 201)
“I suppose anyone who knows Mr. Einstein at
present would say that he had quite as genuine
and esthetic an experience from his
mathematical calculations and their results that
would mean nothing to us as he does from
playing his violin.” (LW 13: 359)
1 When creativity is thought as a part of science, it is primarily considered as part of the
innovative process – perhaps as the Eureka! moment of Archimedes – before some sort
of scientific process takes over as strictly instrumental and removed from any sort of
experience that could be deemed aesthetic. Even when the processes of constructing
hypotheses and experiments are performed, these are rarely understood as creative in
an artistic or aesthetic sense. Scientific experience and aesthetic experience seem to be
antipodal. The former too often thought as merely consisting of mechanistic
propositions, considered objective and rooted in those shared respects of experience
that have been distilled of feeling for the sake of shared experimentation and reaching
general conclusions. Aesthetics being considered as the realm of feeling – the
qualitative realm of experience – that is regarded, at worst, as an individualistic
hindrance to scientific thought, and, at best, as a problematic explanandum for which
we need scientific explanans.
2 Through his reconstructive philosophy, John Dewey facilitated re-connecting the
scientific and aesthetic modes of experience. He realized that the two modes of

34
experience were too often thought as mutually exclusive, pertaining only to objects
that were considered as if they were of two distinct natural kinds. In his work, he
warned against opposing science and aesthetic experience, whether through simply
cleaving the two, or through valuing one above the other. He declared this opposition
due to the “separation of the instrumental and the consummatory,” and offered a
corrective to this separation in his reconstruction of aesthetic experience as that which
ties together seemingly isolated fields of experience (LW 1: 290). As he states in his
essay, “Aesthetic Experience as Primary Phase”:
the case of aesthetic experience with its cultivated development of the artistic
variety out of what is natural and spontaneous in primary experience provides
what, in all probability, is the simplest and most direct way in which to lay hold of
what is fundamental in all the forms of experience that are traditionally (but
fallaciously) regarded as so many different, separate, isolated, independent
divisions of subject matter. (LW 16: 396)
3 In the following, I utilize Dewey’s work that re-connects science with aesthetic
experience in order to argue that scientific products are also aesthetic objects, i.e.
objects that are part of our instrumental experience are also part of our aesthetic
experience. As a part of aesthetic experience, scientific explanations are creative
objects both within and outside of the proper domain of science. Specifically, I argue
that scientific explanation, as Dewey conceives of it, is both instrumental and
consummatory, and that when we experience scientific explanation in its
consummation, this is what I deem a creative moment of scientific apprehension. This
moment is one at which Charles S. Peirce hints in his Monist paper, “What Pragmatism
Is” and is complemented by his categories of firstness and secondness (EP 2). It is a
moment not restricted to scientists or aesthetes, being a moment of apprehension that
occurs in everyday experience by non-specialists. By combining Dewey’s conceptions of
scientific explanation and aesthetic experience with Peirce’s categories, an aspect of
creativity regarding the products of scientific inquiry is acknowledged and understood
as an important part of our reasoning process.
4 In order to argue that scientific explanation is both instrumental and consummatory, I
first provide Dewey’s instrumental conception of scientific explanation, which includes
why science is so often considered as separated from aesthetic experience. Second, I
present a general overview of Dewey’s conception of aesthetic experience and the
common division conceived between scientific experience and that of aesthetics. Third,
I supply reasons to reconsider scientific experience as having an aesthetic dimension,
especially with regard to scientific explanations and the creative moment of scientific
apprehension. Finally, I discuss how recognition of this moment reveals an important
aspect of creative reasoning that is to be understood as a part of our experience
through what Peirce referred to as firstness and secondness. 1
Scientific Explanation as Instrumental

5 John Dewey’s work has proven to be a source of tension regarding science and
aesthetics. Most Dewey scholars rightly object to any claims that Dewey is scientistic,
and most agree that Dewey places importance upon both scientific inquiry and
aesthetic inquiry throughout his work. One major point of controversy, as indicated by
James Scott Johnston, has been “the proper role and scope of science in Dewey’s
concept of inquiry” (Johnston 2002: 1). Johnston has attempted to refute readings of

35
Dewey as scientistic or positivistic (e.g. H.O. Mounce 1997; Leonard Waks 1998), in part,
by remarking on the importance of aesthetic inquiry for Dewey, as well as the fact that
the reach of aesthetic inquiry extends far beyond that of scientific inquiry. My purpose
here is not to argue against Johnston or other Dewey scholars concerning the types of
inquiry or the extension of aesthetic inquiry versus that of scientific inquiry; however,
these scholars neglect and, at times, seemingly reject scientific products as part of
aesthetic experience. In contrast, scientific explanations are not only scientific, but are
also objects that one experiences aesthetically in everyday life. This is an important
aspect of scientific explanation that becomes evident when we combine Dewey’s work
on science with that on aesthetics. It is important because Dewey’s inclusion of the
aesthetic regarding scientific products, such as explanations, provides a dimension of
understanding the process and products of scientific inquiry that are too often
neglected in philosophical analyses of science. This is especially true in the case of
scientific explanation, wherein most accounts leave aside the actual experience of the
moment of having or getting an explanation, treating scientific explanation as if it is
something that simply remains within a separate ‘realm’ of scientific practice that is
apart from our experience. Dewey’s reconstruction of scientific experience provides an
account of scientific explanation that aids in re-connecting the secondary experience of
explanation with the primary experience of an explanation being had. His inclusion of
the aesthetic dimension of experience is a fundamental part of this corrective
reconstruction of scientific activity. Dewey’s conception of aesthetics as applied to
scientific practice indicates that scientific explanation is, in fact, consummated as an
explanation because of its aesthetic dimension.
6 All of scientific practice, as is the case with any of our practices, is born from and is
always part of experience. Dewey defined experience generally as “what men do and
suffer, what they strive for, love, believe, endure, and also how men act and are acted
upon, the ways in which they do and suffer, and desire and enjoy, see, believe, imagine”
(LW 1: 8). Experience is the process of living, and it pertains to every type of interaction
between the organism and its environment, including productive, discursive, and
consummatory interactions (LW 12: 74). From and within experience, we engage in
scientific processes when we are attempting to solve problems that pertain to the
conditions of experience (LW 10: 211). Through the process of scientific inquiry, we
transform our immediate experience, utilizing the sub-processes of analysis and
synthesis. Analysis is the process of discrimination by which experience is pieced into
particular objects, and synthesis is the process of identification wherein the objects of
experience are re-unified as a whole (LW 8: 275). Experience is analyzed into data,
which is the discernible material of our experience divided into distinct parts in our
attempt to understand the conditions of experience, i.e. how or why a problem has or
will or might possibly take place. This data is synthesized into ideas, which are the
suggestions or possible solutions that are to be used to solve the questions addressing
those conditions (LW 8: 197-198). This process signifies one of Dewey’s most important
distinctions within experience: that of primary and secondary experience. Primary
experience is simply experiencing without analysis or synthesis. Most of our
experience is merely primary, and most unproblematic primary experience goes
unquestioned. Secondary experience is that which has been systematically analyzed
and synthesized. It is that experience by which we attempt to understand primary
experience. Analysis provides us with scientific products within secondary experience
that are applied to primary experience in answering questions concerning experience.

36
Scientific explanation is one type of scientific product created in this process. The
explanations constructed from our secondary experience are tested against what we
have questioned regarding primary experience (LW 1: 15-16). Thus, scientific
explanations are the result of our inquiries into experience, and thereby become part
of our experience, even when we are not engaged in scientific inquiry.
7 For Dewey, scientific explanation is a type of operation that is to be derived from a set
of cases produced and analyzed (LW 12: 275). The explanation is applied to specific
situations through the process of experimentation, testing whether or not the
explanation actually solves the problem being addressed at the level of the conditions
of experience. An explanation thereby provides a solution, or guide to a solution, for a
problem or question regarding the conditions of experience. Scientific explanations are
based upon a series of experiments, including the hypotheses that direct experiments,
and through the conceptualization of the secondary experience of experimentation,
scientific objects such as explanations are applied to primary experience.
8 The process of experimentation and explanation-generation is rife with creative
processes, including abduction, the process of creating a probable solution to a
problem, as Peirce conceived of it (Anderson 1987: 15). However, Peirce also hints at
another creative process within the process of experimentation; one on which he never
elaborates as a moment of creativity. This moment occurs between the sixth and
seventh stage of experiment that he describes in his essay, “What Pragmatism Is” (EP 2:
339-40). Here he states that following the actual actions of the experiment, there
“comes the subsequent reaction of the world upon the experimenter in a perception;
and finally, his recognition of the teaching of the experiment” (EP 2: 340). Peirce’s use
of the term recognition indicates a re-cognizing, or what Dewey would call synthesis.
However, Peirce’s use of reaction and perception in the moment before recognition
indicate awareness without secondary cognition; a felt quality had by the experimenter
as the experiment comes to a close. There is an immediately grasped qualitative
dimension of the experience of experimentation that accompanies the formulation of
the solution to the question that drives the experiment, i.e. which consummates the
experience.
9 As Dewey rightly noted, scientific processes typically ignore the immediately grasped
qualitative dimension of experience (LW 5: 243). Peter Godfrey-Smith has remarked
that Dewey’s philosophy of science accounts for the neglect of the aesthetic by pointing
to the instrumentalist practices of science. Most scientific practices merely involve
“relations, potentialities, and interactions” (Godfrey-Smith 2002: S32). Dewey
understood that “Scientific thought is, in its turn, a specialized form of art, with its own
qualitative control,” but that most people do not realize or acknowledge the qualitative
and artistic nature of scientific practices (LW 5: 252). He reasoned that the failure to
realize the immediate qualitative nature of formal scientific construction had two
primary causes. The first was the common limited “habit of associating art and
aesthetic appreciation with a few popularly recognized forms,” while the second “is the
fact that a student is so concerned with the mastery of symbolic or propositional forms
that he fails to recognize and to repeat the creative operations involved in their
construction” (LW 5: 242). This second reason I here expand to include anyone who is
presented with scientific explanations. Science is primarily not included in the realms
of art and aesthetic appreciation, instead being considered completely instrumental
and actively anti-aesthetic. In addition, we are typically not considered to be creating

37
when being receptive to a scientific explanation. This mistakenly is thought of as a

passive process. In fact, when we inquire and consider an explanation, this is an active
process in which we actually engage. Similar to what Peirce stated concerning the
process of experimentation, a reaction of the explanation upon the inquirer is a
perception, and this is followed by the inquirer’s recognition of what the explanation
explains. For Peirce, “all of experience is ‘a consciousness of reaction’” (Short 2007: 77)
When a scientific explanation is presented, the inquirer both feels it and reacts to it,
and this is not merely an instrumental activity, but can also be an aesthetic experience.
Scientific Explanation Cleaved from Aesthetic

Experience
10 The aesthetic is a forgotten world in which the scientific resides. Godfrey-Smith has
stated, “for Dewey science is the disinterested study of instrumentality in nature,” and this
is the case for most of the “decisions made within science” (S32). 2 However, the scientific
explanations that are constructed from within science are not only instrumental, but,
as Dewey indicated, they are also able to be experienced as aesthetic. Neither of these
experiences is somehow exclusive from the other, nor are they exclusive from the rest
of our experience.
11 The aesthetic is that which has immediately enjoyed intrinsic meaning (LW 1: 271). In
this manner, it is in direct contrast to the scientific processes of analysis and synthesis,
which are the mediation of meaning. The latter entail discerning or ‘figuring out’ the
meaning of a situation, and, in that respect, the situation is incomplete, i.e.
unconsummated. In his work on Dewey’s aesthetics, Van Meter Ames remarked, “The
unaesthetic then is the slack, the loose, the confused, the lack of balance between doing
and receiving” (Ames 1953: 146). This is the instrumental side of the scientific, which is
a search for something apart from the experience being had. In fact, we often engage in
scientific practices, including inquiring about and engaging with scientific
explanations, in order to remove ourselves from our present experience; to effectively
create a way out of our current, problematic, situation. An instrumental experience is
open and incomplete. By its very nature as instrumental, it signifies seeking something
to complete the experience.
12 According to Dewey, “every normally complete experience, every one that runs its
course, is aesthetic in its consummatory phase…” (LW 16: 395). The aesthetic is then not
isolated to what we often take to be artistic, but pertains to all complete experiences –
those which we can legitimately call an experience. As Richard Bernstein has stated:
“Anything which is distinctly an experience, i.e. a situation which has a unity and
wholeness of its own, has aesthetic quality” (Bernstein 1961: 8). In Experience and Nature,
Dewey discusses the common conflation of the artistic and the aesthetic. The artistic
pertains to those actions that manipulate a situation from an incomplete or
unsatisfactory state to a state that is complete and satisfying. The aesthetic does not
pertain to the actual artistic processes that complete the formerly incomplete or
unsatisfying state, but rather, it pertains to “an enancement of the receptive
appreciation and assimilation of objects” within the completed, satisfying state (LW 1:
267). Dewey continues that science is an art that aids in bringing about what he calls
“the complete culmination of nature” and the union between the artistic and the
aesthetic (LW 1: 268-9).

38
13 The qualities of an experience are immediate, and when the immediate grasp of
qualities is of an experience that is complete and at its fullest, then that experience is
aesthetic. Most often, aesthetic experience is mistakenly thought to be had only in the
midst of what are considered ‘art objects’ or ‘fine art.’ Dewey fought tirelessly against
this dualism imposed between ‘fine art’ and life. This included the artificial separation
between what are considered to be ‘the arts’ and ‘the sciences.’ As Casey Haskins has
indicated, Dewey rejected the Kantian argument that the products of art and science
come from “two transcendentally distinct forms of mental activity,” arguing instead
that they emerge “from intelligence’s more general impulse of striving for increasingly
developed experience through a transformation of the world in which it finds itself”
(Haskins 1992: 230). In the same regard that both are created from the same intelligent
source, neither are they necessarily divided in how they are experienced. Just as the art
product is often analyzed and synthesized, the scientific product is aesthetically
experienced.
Apprehending the Consummation of Scientific

Explanation
14 An aesthetic experience consists of the culmination of all of our emotion, awareness,
inquiry, and interest in its immediacy. This is experienced often through films, musical
pieces, sculptures, and paintings, i.e. objects of art or the ‘fine arts.’ As James Scott
Johnston has indicated, Dewey placed a great emphasis on inquiry within the
consummatory aesthetic experience. In his own investigation of the role of inquiry in
the aesthetic experience, Johnston states that aesthetic reflection occurs “in the
immediacy of the experience undergone, rather than in the realm of language”
(Johnston 2002: 10). Johnston rightly notes that scientific method can become akin to
an aesthetic object, although he restricts this to science only when “the act of
discovery, of creation, is privileged” (Johnston 2002: 11). His exclusive categorization of
science as aesthetic being conditional upon science only when it turns to discovery or
creation stems from the separation that Johnston detects between the immediacy of
creation, and the logical detachment of science as “the inquiry of statement,” which is
necessarily “removed from the immediacy of awareness necessary as a quality for any
consummatory experience” (Johnston 2002: 11). Here I believe that Johnston is too
restrictive in his account of science as it is presented by Dewey, overstressing the
remark that “… there is an unbridgeable gap between science in the laboratory and the
work of art” (LW 10: 126; quoted in Johnston 2002: 11). Johnston proclaims that:
An aesthetic object is generally able to evoke a far wider-ranging set of responses in
a far wider-ranging set or group of people than a bald scientific statement. […]
Inquiry in an aesthetic experience functions as a more complete inquiry. It helps to
fuse all of the ingredients necessary for a consummatory experience into one
cohesive, immediate whole, whereas inquiry in a scientific experiment or logical
understanding often contents itself to dwell in the explanatory realm alone.
(Johnston 2002: 12)
15 Johnston undermines the potential aesthetic experience of scientific explanations
without questioning what the aesthetic dimension of such a scientific product might
be. Although he has acknowledged the aesthetic dimension of science when it is
focused on discovery or creation, the consummatory phase of scientific explanation –
the actual explanation itself – has been neglected prima facie. By reassessing Dewey’s

39
work concerning scientific products and aesthetic experience, we find that scientific
explanations are actually objects that bring an important aesthetic dimension to our
experience.
16 Qualitative experience includes scientific thinking, thereby including products of
science, such as scientific explanations (LW 5: 261-2). Perhaps the most common
qualitative experience had pertaining to science is that of felt difficulty, which is the
immediate feeling that launches us into scientific inquiry. “The problem is had or
experienced before it can be stated or set forth; but it is had as an immediate quality of
the whole situation. The sense of something problematic, of something perplexing and
to be resolved, marks the presence of something pervading all elements and
considerations” (LW 5: 249). This is the qualitative experience at the inception of
scientific inquiry, and just as there is a feeling of “something pervading all elements
and considerations” as the problem, there is also the qualitative experience of the
solution, i.e. qualitatively experiencing the explanation of the problem. As a solution,
scientific explanation is often qualitatively experienced through what Mark Girod has
deemed aesthetic understanding, a concept inspired by Dewey. Aesthetic understanding
is defined as “a rich network of conceptual knowledge combined with a deep
appreciation for the beauty and power of ideas that literally transform one’s
experiences and perceptions of the world” (Pugh and Girod 2007: 12). Utilizing this
conception of aesthetic understanding as an epistemic network ingrained with an
appreciation for what Peirce referred to as kalos – a generalized sense of harmony –,
scientific explanations are those qualitative and epistemic objects that elegantly fit
where our felt difficulty was (Hocutt 1962: 160). The explanation, as a totality, is felt
aesthetically as what Peirce called “a positive immediate quality” (EP 2: 201). We do not
only comprehend explanations, understanding them indirectly through a mediated
process. There are also moments when we apprehend scientific explanations – grasping
their meaning directly— in our immediate engagement with them.
17 As a construction, scientific explanation is created over a period of time through a
process of inquiry that is removed from the aesthetic. Again, most of scientific inquiry,
following the initial felt difficulty, is mediated, but the artistry of scientific method
sometimes ends in a completed, finished product: a scientific explanation that fully
explains the problem that launched the inquiry. Dewey’s conception of scientific
explanation, combined with his conception of aesthetic experience, provide us with a
way in which we can understand how our explanations sometimes simply feel as if they
fit at the moment in which we receive them. The very process of apprehending the
explanation consummates the experience, and it is an aesthetic experience in which we
are fully absorbed. This is a rare moment in which science not only “states meaning,”
but fulfills the common role of art: it also expresses those meanings (LW 10: 90). The
scientific explanation becomes both an expression and a statement. Although it is a
generalized statement as a part of intellectual experience, it is also an expressive object
in the moment in which it is aesthetically experienced. Our engagement with the
explanation leads to our experiencing its expression and the achievement of kalos. A
scientific explanation may strike us suddenly with what Dewey referred to as
“tranquility of emotion and at the same time […] excitement” (LW 13, 368). The
explanation fixes the violent rupture brought to our experience through a felt
difficulty.

40
18 If the felt difficulty is the wound and ensuing infection that has “spread throughout the
entire situation,” then the explanation is the remedy that eradicates the infection (LW
8: 201). Our aesthetic experience of the explanation is that moment of consummation
when the infected situation has been cleansed and cauterized, and we are presented
with a clean bill of health. We feel the alleviation of our exigency. Our situation is not
only remedied, but improved upon. Before analyzing and comprehending the scientific
explanation, our aesthetic experience of it is that of a kind of panacea: the explanation
feels as if it cures our problem without reflective details or grueling, meditative steps,
but all at once, in one gesture. This is the creative moment of scientific apprehension, which
is our individual experience of the scientific explanation consummated and felt at its
fullest. In this moment we feel the full force of the scientific explanation as it answers
our felt difficulty. It is creative because we experience the immediate making of a
solution; we are swept in the process of making before mediation.
The Feeling and Resistance of Creative Apprehension

19 If, as Ignacio Götz states, “creativity is the process or activity of deliberately concretizing
insight,” then this moment of apprehension is that very moment of insight; it is
creativity realized (Götz 1981: 300). Peirce provides a terminology here to understand
how this moment contributes to the reasoning process.3 The quality of the explanation
as it is experienced is what Peirce called a First or its firstness. In “A Guess at the
Riddle,” Peirce defines a First as that which is “present and immediate,” “initiative,
original, spontaneous, and free,” as well as “vivid and conscious” (EP 1: 248). There is
no way to describe adequately the felt experience of a First. In light of the initial felt
quality of a scientific explanation as a First, Peirce’s attempt at describing Adam on the
first day of being conscious is apt: “first, present, immediate, fresh, new, initiative,
original, spontaneous, free, vivid, conscious, and evanescent. Only, remember that
every description of it must be false to it” (EP 1: 248). In addition to the firstness that
constitutes scientific explanation in the creative moment of scientific apprehension, it
is concomitantly constituted by what Peirce called Second, or secondness. This is the
feeling of relation or reaction to the First, and the First is necessary for the Second to
exist. Regarding our experience of scientific explanation in that moment before
recognition, this reaction is one of engagement; the secondness of the situation
indicates that we contribute to the experience of the explanation when we come
“knocking up against it” (EP 1: 249). It is a moment of apprehension, in which an
explanation is completed with regard to our own previously incomplete situation. We
feel the explanation fitting our problem and solving it in its immediacy. The feeling of
consummation at its fullest makes the creative moment of scientific apprehension an
aesthetic experience, which brings our specific scientific inquiry to a close. What we
are in the process of making during this experience is what will be the Third, but this
only occurs after this creative moment of apprehension has passed. The Third will
consist in the re-cognition of the experience and our attempt to represent the scientific
explanation as a functional tool that solves our felt difficulty. This signifies the
dissipation of aesthetically experiencing the scientific explanation through
apprehension, returning to the instrumentality of comprehension.
20 We may find that we have had similar experiences with the same explanations as
others, but the feeling of solution differs between individuals, and, as Peirce indicates,

41
that feeling can never be described adequately. It is common for scientists to reminisce
and venerate scientific theories and explanations. One of the reasons that scientists do
this is because they have experienced creative moments of scientific apprehension,
which returns them to what Dewey described as “a kind of innocence of the totality of
experience” (LW 13: 364). There is something childlike in being swept away in an
explanation as we aesthetically experience it. Some of the more common scientific
theories and explanations experienced this way are: Darwin’s theory of natural
selection as an explanation for the variation between species; DNA as an explanation
for genetic heredity; Quantum Theory as an explanation for why matter and energy
behave in the ways that they do. The explanations are what we often describe as
‘beautiful’ or ‘elegant,’ thus ascribing an aesthetic or emotional quality to them. By re-
evaluating the aesthetic experience of scientific explanations against the backdrop of
Dewey’s conceptions of aesthetics and science, combined with Peirce’s categories, we
can account for that creative moment of scientific apprehension in which a scientific
explanation takes on the quality of kalos, or sense of general harmony. This is surely
not our only aesthetic experience that is also scientific, but it is one that is important
because it reinforces why we continue to be scientific and helps address the question of
how scientific explanations inspire us creatively.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
AMES V., (1953), “John Dewey as Aesthetician,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 12 (2),
145-68.
ANDERSON D., (1987), Creativity and the Philosophy of C.S. Peirce, Dordrecht, Martinus Nijhoff Press.
BERNSTEIN R., (1961), “John Dewey’s Metaphysics of Experience,” The Journal of Philosophy, 58 (1),
5-14.
DEWEY J., The Middle Works of J. Dewey, 1899-1924, ed. by J.A. Boydston, Southern Illinois University
Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1976-1983.
DEWEY J., The Later Works of J. Dewey, 1925-1953, ed. by J.A. Boydston, Southern Illinois University
Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1981-1990.
GODFREY-SMITH P., (2002), “Dewey on Naturalism, Realism and Science,” Philosophy of Science, 69
(S3), 525-35.
GÖTZ I., (1981), “On Defining Creativity,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 39 (3), 297-301.
HASKINS C., (1992), “Dewey’s Art as Experience: The Tension Between Aesthetics and
Aestheticisms,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 28 (2), 217-59.
HOCUTT M., (1962), “The Logical Foundations of Peirce’s Aesthetics,” The Journal of Aesthetics and
Art Criticism, 21 (2), 157-66.
JOHNSTON J., (2002), “John Dewey and the Role of Scientific Method in Aesthetic Experience,”
Studies in Philosophy and Education, 21, 1-15.

42
MOUNCE H., (1997), The Two Pragmatisms: From Peirce to Rorty, London, Routledge.
PEIRCE C., The Essential Peirce, Selected Philosophical Writings: Volume 1: 1867-1893, ed. by N. Houser.
and C. Kloesel, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1992.
PEIRCE C., The Essential Peirce, Selected Philosophical Writings: Volume 2: 1893-1913, ed. by N. Houser and
C. Kloesel, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1998.
PUGH K., & M. GIROD, (2007), “Science, Art, and Experience: Constructing a Science Pedagogy from
Dewey’s Aesthetics,” Journal of Science Teacher Education, 18, 9-27.
SHORT T., (2007), Peirce’s Theory of Signs, New York, Cambridge University Press.
WAKS L., (1981), “Experimentalism and the Flow of Experience,” Educational Theory, 1 (47), 1-19.
NOTES
1. Doug Anderson has given an extensive analysis of creativity and the work of Peirce. However, I
disagree with the distinction between the “final looks” of artistic creativity and scientific
discovery (Anderson 1987: 54). In this particular paper, the argument is not one directly aimed at
this distinction, and is thus here outside the scope of my analysis. In addition, I agree with both
Max Hocutt 1962 and C.M. Smith 1972 that Peirce, as he admitted, never adequately developed an
aesthetics. Dewey provides a much better conception of aesthetic experience with which to work,
especially with regard to scientific explanation.
2. I take issue with Godfrey-Smith’s use of the term ‘disinterested’ here. Although Dewey claims
that most scientific practice consists in secondary experience with regard to analyzing and
synthesizing what has occurred within primary experience, I think he would find it difficult to
accept that scientists would bother to inquire into experience if they were disinterested in that
experience.
3. Here Peirce provides what I believe is sorely lacking in Dewey, categorical divisions by which
to understand experience. Although Dewey’s conceptions of primary and secondary experience
are useful, especially with regard to broad types of experience (emotive, intellectual, aesthetic),
Peirce’s categories are much more useful for understanding the relationships within those
experiences. Here I only briefly touch upon how these categories relate to the creative moment
of scientific apprehension, acknowledging that further work on this particular aspect of the
phenomenon would prove beneficial to our understanding.
ABSTRACTS
Scientific explanation is both instrumental and consummatory. When we experience scientific
explanation in its consummation, we experience what I have deemed a creative moment of scientific
apprehension, which is an important aspect of creativity that comes at the end of inquiry and
contributes to the development of future inquiry. Because scientific explanation is commonly
cleaved from aesthetic experience, this moment of creativity has been neglected in both analyses
of scientific practice and analyses of aesthetic experience. By synthesizing John Dewey’s
conceptions of scientific explanation and aesthetic experience with Charles S. Peirce’s categories,

43
this moment of scientific inquiry is revealed and understood as a fundamental part of our
creative reasoning process. In order to argue that scientific explanation is both instrumental and
consummatory, Dewey’s instrumental conception of scientific explanation is provided, which
includes why science is so often considered as separated from aesthetic experience. A general
overview of Dewey’s conception of aesthetic experience and the common division conceived
between scientific experience and that of aesthetics is also provided. Reasons are then supplied
to reconsider scientific experience as having an aesthetic dimension, especially with regard to
scientific explanations and the creative moment of scientific apprehension, which is followed by
a brief discussion concerning how recognition of this moment reveals an important aspect of
creative reasoning that is to be understood as a part of our experience through what Peirce
referred to as firstness and secondness. Analyzing the aesthetic experience of scientific
explanations against the backdrop of Dewey’s conceptions of aesthetics and science, combined
with Peirce’s categories, accounts for that creative moment of scientific apprehension in which a
scientific explanation takes on the quality of kalos, or sense of general harmony, that inspires
reverie and future inquiry.
AUTHOR
MARK DIETRICH TSCHAEPE
Prairie View A&M University
mdtschaepe[at]pvamu.edu

44
The Philosopher as a Child of His

Own Time
Rorty on Irony and Creativity
Javier Toro
The community stagnates without the impulse of

the individual. The impulse dies away without the
sympathy of the community.
William James, “Great Men, Great Thoughts, and
the Environment,” Atlantic Monthly, October,
1880.
Introduction
1 By the time Richard Rorty wrote Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity he was convinced that
it was impossible to fulfill his adolescent yearning of holding “reality and justice in a
single vision,”1 fusing private enlightenment with public justice. This yearning is better
represented in the Platonic tradition which holds that there is something necessary
and transcendental about human nature and values, that solidarity is based on
objectivity, not the other way around:
The attempt to fuse the public and the private lies behind both Plato’s attempt to
answer the question ‘Why is it in one’s interest to be just?’ and Christianity’s claim
that perfect self-realization can be attained through service to others. Such
metaphysical or theological attempts to unite a striving for perfection with a sense
of community require us to acknowledge a common human nature. They ask us to
believe that […] the springs of private fulfillment and of human solidarity are the
same. (Rorty 1989: xiii)
2 According to Rorty, such Platonic yearning is at the core of all our western philosophic
tradition in the sense that it has been, in part, due to this yearning that the grand
philosophical systems (such as the Cartesian and Kantian quests for certainty) have
arisen. Such yearning is not to be ignored by the philosopher, since it seems to stand
amidst all of philosophy’s enterprises.

45
3 As a reaction to this impulse, Rorty claims that it is not necessary to marry justice and
reality, fuse the public and the private; in other words, it is not necessary to make
coincide our moral responsibilities to others with our most private yearnings,
regardless that such yearnings be entirely philosophical or simply aesthetical (like
one’s egotistical love to wild orchids, or Proust’s novels). As he acknowledges in an
autobiographical passage:
One should try to abjure the temptation to tie in one’s moral responsibilities to
other people with one’s relation with whatever idiosyncratic things or persons one
loves with all one’s heart and soul and mind… The two will, for some people,
coincide […] but they need not co-incide, and one should not try too hard to make
them do so (Rorty 1999: 13).
4 For Rorty, the most valuable philosophers and intellectuals – or at least those who
provide us with tools to cope with our reality and whose vocabulary has eventually
become the canon – are those historicists who acknowledge the contingency of their
thought and vocabularies. The imaginative creativity of such philosophers is not very
far from the creative drive of the poet; in fact, in different places Rorty sees the
philosopher as constructing a poetic narrative.2 The best example of this sort of
philosopher-as-poet is, Rorty tells us, Nietzsche, who
by treating Socrates as one more mythmaker rather than as someone who
employed reason to break free of myth, he lets us see Parmenides and Plato as all-
too-strong poets. (Rorty 2007: 110)
5 Heidegger and Wittgenstein are also good examples of the type of ironist-historicist
philosopher which Rorty had in mind, because these two authors were mainly
concerned with self-creation and private perfection instead of justice and general well-
being. Nietzsche, Proust, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida and Foucault, among many
others, are grouped together by Rorty as the kind of intellectual who has criticized final
vocabularies and has created its own vocabulary, but all in account of private self-
fulfillment. On the other hand, other historicist authors such as Marx, Dewey, and
Habermas, who also created their own vocabulary, saw such self-concern as a selfish
intellectual exercise which needed to be abandoned for the search of social welfare and
public justice.
6 Rorty – especially in his book Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity – doesn’t try to synthesize
both groups of historicist writers; rather, he insists on giving up such efforts and live
happily with the split result. Such outcome is a toolbox which helps us cope with
different and limited aspects of our reality, not all of it. Thus, Nabokov’s novels and
Wittgenstein’s philosophy help us cope with certain aspects of our reality, in dealing
with certain limited problems. At the same time, Habermas’ and Dewey’s books come
handy in some cases (namely, when it comes to understand the struggles of societies’
quest for certainty throughout history), but completely irrelevant when it comes to
give us inspiration for our private self-creation.
7 The moral behind Rorty’s ironic philosophy is that our lives make much more sense
when we drop the Platonic yearning for metaphysical unity of reality. The outcome is,
though, that our sense of moral responsibility might not have a transcendental and
rational basis, but it is there nevertheless, since it is what comes naturally for us to do.
8 In what follows, I will argue against such detached view of philosophical creativity.
First, I will argue that Rorty’s ironist contradicts the image of the pragmatist
philosopher which Rorty himself shared with the classical pragmatists. Then, I will

46
point that Rorty’s insistence on the dichotomy between the public and the private is
exaggerated and fails to acknowledge the deep entanglement between the two.
However, in this essay I want to rescue what is valuable from Rorty’s philosophy and
read between the lines, trying to form a general view of his philosophy, rather than
focusing on some unfortunate lines of his; thus, in some sense, I will try to save Rorty
from himself. This way of reading Rorty is not that far from John Horton’s way of
interpreting the American philosopher, since he suggests an approach which
involves treating Rorty in a more receptive spirit, one which involves the benefit of
the doub and which genuinely seeks to understand what it is that he is trying to say
and why. It means treating Rorty in the spirit in which he often treats others-
taking up what is useful, pursuing what looks promising and rejecting or passing
over what looks to be his less impressive lines of thought. (Horton 2001: 16)
9 This approach, though, as Horton also points out, does not imply giving up on critical
rigor and analysis and does not mean giving up an effort to find internal difficulties in
Rorty’s writings. However, it means to treat the American pragmatist as if he had
something really valuable to say, something which, to follow Rorty’s method, must be
redescribed.
The Philosopher and His Context

10 By equating philosophy’s creative drive to aesthetic and artistic creativity, Rorty wants
us to read Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein as if they were completely detached
from their humanity when it comes to write philosophy. Thus, in his essay “Cavell on
Skepticism” (Rorty 1982), Rorty claims that Wittgenstein would have written pretty
much the same books even if he hadn’t had so much contact with the British
philosophers for whom the problem of the external world was the main problem of
philosophy back then:
Had Wittgenstein stayed in Central Europe, he would have met philosophy
professors who worried more about the transcendental standpoint and less about
skepticism. But he would probably have written pretty much the same books, and
directed our attention to the same things. (Rorty 1982: 177)
11 Likewise, Rorty tells us a similar story of Heidegger, for whom he imagines a possible
world where the German philosopher becomes more sensible to the Jewish Holocaust,
and thus avoids the attraction of Nazism; nevertheless, in this possible world Heidegger
writes almost the same books as he does in our actual world. 3
12 For Rorty, the philosopher, just as it happens with the artist, uses imagination more
than reason, feeling more than logic. That is why Rorty believes pragmatism to be
closely linked with romanticism, since
These two movements are both reactions against the idea that there is something
non-human out there with which human beings need to get in touch (Rorty 2007:
105).
13 This claim is closely linked to his claims against representationalism and metaphysical
realism: namely, since the task of the philosopher is not to guide our knowledge to the
true essence of things – for language is a tool which helps us cope with the
environment rather than accurately penetrate it and represent it –, then, the
remaining task for the philosopher is to enhance our imagination and direct our
attention to unnoticed problems. For achieving such task the philosopher – just as the
creative artist – invents his own vocabulary, since the current vocabulary of his

47
community doesn’t allow him to cope adequately with whatever he considers to be a

problem.
14 However, the claim that a philosopher would have pretty much written the same books
as he did had he lived in different conditions (either place or time conditions) is a claim
which lacks empirical or any sort of evidence; it is an speculative claim, for which,
nevertheless, Rorty argues for. As opposed to this, I claim that all sensible evidence
speaks against such claim; thus, when we study the history of ideas, one realizes that all
ideas, even philosophical ones, belong to a certain historic and contingent paradigm
and conceptual scheme.4 By claiming this I hope not to be understood as an all-out
relativist for whom all truth-claims would merely depend on a discourse. The idea of
Truth (absolute or relative) is something that must go by once we reject the Platonic
picture of unity of reality. Instead, as pragmatists such as Rorty himself and Hilary
Putnam have taught us, the pragmatist embraces the idea of diverse valid descriptions
and conceptual relativity. According to this internal way to understanding philosophy,
one has that what philosophers do is to
help you hold your time in thought. But we are not the people to come to if you
want confirmation that the things you love with all your heart are central to the
structure of the universe, or that your sense of moral responsibility is ‘rational and
objective’ rather than ‘just’ a result of how you were brought up. (Rorty 1999: 20)
15 It would be contradictory for Rorty to hold that the philosopher can hold his time in
thought and at the same time be outside of time himself. Such claim is not far from the
metaphysical claim (held by philosophers with whom Rorty strongly disagreed, such as
Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel) that the philosopher should hold reality from a
privileged view from nowhere. However, such is the image of the philosopher that one
has after reading the above passages from Rorty.
16 This view of a detached philosopher tells us a great deal of Rorty’s idea of the
philosophical enterprise, namely, an ahistorical quest for certainty which deals with
eternal problems that have little importance to mankind’s lives. However, one must ask
at this point, is this really Rorty’s idea of philosophy?
17 When Rorty speaks of the philosopher as a detached individual, one has the idea that
he would not be concerned with problems from its own time, but rather with
ahistorical problems. Thus, the image that we have is of an individual completely
detached from his history and situations when it comes to write philosophy. If this is
so, then Rorty never fully took enough distance from the analytic philosopher’s
yearning of “keeping philosophy pure.” According to this picture, the little and – only
apparently – insignificant contingencies in Heidegger’s and Wittgenstein’s lives (public
and private) accounted for nothing in their philosophical creativity; for them life was
something that happened outside of philosophy.5
The Contingency of Philosophical Problems

18 This way of understanding contingency and creativity goes far beyond the
consequences which Rorty himself would have wanted to acknowledge. As any reader
of Rorty knows, he didn’t consider philosophical problems to have an eternal and
never-changing nature. Instead, for him a philosophical problem was a way of speaking
which had relevance up to a certain historical moment; after that moment such way of
speaking became irrelevant.6 I don’t think that he would have been happy with the

48
image of a historically detached philosopher, and I really don’t think that his
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity was written with such an image in mind.
19 However, one cannot escape a feeling of contradiction in Rorty’s writing when one
compares what he said about the contingency of the philosopher’s context when it
comes to write philosophy with what he said about the contingency of philosophical
problems. The feeling of contradiction is explicit because Rorty agrees with Dewey that
When it is acknowledged that under disguise of dealing with ultimate reality,
philosophy has been occupied with the precious values embedded in social
traditions, that it has sprung from a clash of social ends and from a conflict of
inherited institutions with incompatible contemporary tendencies, it will be seen
that the task of future philosophy is to clarify men’s ideas as to the social and moral
strifes of their own day.7 (Dewey 1982: 94)
20 Further, Rorty criticizes those contemporary philosophers such as Michael Ayers and
Margaret Wilson who advocate an “absolutist stance” regarding philosophical
problems, which amounts to
the conviction that the problems one addresses are inescapable once one begins to
reflect – where ‘philosophical reflection’ denotes the activity of reconciling those
persistent intuitions that survive changes in sociocultural circumstance. (Rorty
1998: 277)
21 How are we to put together the last two quotations with the former which claimed that
Had Wittgenstein stayed in Central Europe, he would have met philosophy
professors who worried more about the transcendental standpoint and less about
skepticism. But he would probably have written pretty much the same books, and
directed our attention to the same things. (Rorty 1982: 177)
22 As I said above, I would like to take Rorty in his own words and at the same time be fair
to his conception of philosophy as a whole. That is why I insist that this last quotation
is an unfortunate leftover of Rorty’s analytic past.
23 One must remember that Rorty viewed philosophy as cultural politics, an enterprise
which is set to modify and radically change the self-images of a given society. 8 Thus, I
want to preserve Rorty’s idea of philosophy as a toolbox and at the same time uphold
the metaphor of the philosopher as a child of his own time. 9
24 The idea of a “detached” philosopher, occupied with eternal and impersonal problems,
in other words, the idea of philosophical writing done sub specie aeternitatis, was the
dominant idea regarding philosophical creativity until the second half of the 20th
century. And in some respects such idea still presents itself as compelling, since many
of the problems which troubled Plato still trouble sensible philosophers. However, this
doesn’t necessarily mean that philosophical problems are eternal, timeless, and
inescapable. Rather, as Rorty understood it, philosophical problems are of such nature
that allows for permanent reinterpretations and recontextualizations:
Dewey agreed with Hegel that philosophers were never going to be able to see
things under the aspect of eternity; they should instead try to contribute to
humanity’s ongoing conversation about what to do with itself. (Rorty 2007: ix)
25 The importance of philosophical problems is that they help us keeping an ongoing
interesting conversation, a conversation that still, to our own day, tells us something
about our lives. Therefore, it is a mistake to reinterpret and recontextaulize the
problems of philosophy ahistorically, without an appeal to their context. The idea of a
“pure” philosophical problem, clean from the contingencies of its day and time,

49
reminds us of the idea of the thing in itself, of something which remains untouched by
human perspective.
26 Rorty’s historicist perspective claims that what the philosopher (and the historian of
philosophy, for that matter) does is to reinterpret and translate such topics and
language to the effect that they become relevant in his conversation. That is what Rorty
means when he says that the philosopher cannot expect to produce writing which is
not itself recontextualizable in many ways. That is precisely the appeal Rorty finds in
philosophy: the possibilities it offers for permanent recontextualization and
interpretation:
The most that an original figure can hope to do is to recontextualize his or her
predecessors. He or she cannot aspire to produce works that are themselves
uncontextualizable, any more than a commentator like myself can aspire to find the
one “right” context into which to fit those works. (Rorty 1991: 2)
27 Given such appeal to interpretation through generations of philosophers, it is
necessary, in order to keep the dialogue flowing, to appeal to the context in which a
certain philosophical problem develops; therefore, there seems to be no possibility of
recontextualization without an appeal to context. When approaching a philosophical
problem, the philosopher, as well as the historian of philosophy, needs to enquiry as to
how far the beliefs of previous philosophers who dealt with that problem permeate the
problem itself. In other words, what is to be done is an exercise similar to that of
Dewey’s in The Quest for Certainty, where the philosopher approaches humanity’s
philosophical journey from within the social and cultural history in which it has
developed.
The Entanglement Between the Public and the Private

28 With what has been said above I hope to have clarified some points about Rorty’s claim
that philosophical creativity arises in the void. Now I shall examine Rorty’s ironic claim
that the public and the private spheres are not to be consequently united.
29 As was remarked above, Rorty considered futile the Platonic drive to make a
comprehensive unit out of the public and private spheres. Such yearning, he tells us,
ends up in metaphysical antinomies which do not reflect adequately people’s lives and
do not help in coping with life’s most important problems:
There is no way to bring self-creation together with justice at the level of theory.
The vocabulary of self-creation is necessarily private, unshared, unsuited to
argument. The vocabulary of justice is necessarily public and shared, a medium for
argumentative exchange… The one tells us that we need not speak only the
language of the tribe, that we may find our own words, that we may have a
responsibility to ourselves to find it. The other tells us that that responsibility is not
the only one we have. Both are right, but there is no way to make both speak a
single language. (Rorty 1989: xiv)
30 The ironist – who, according to Rorty, is someone who doubts final vocabularies and its
own vocabulary – finds inconsistencies in private and public discourse and cannot find
a coherent and nonmetaphysical way to make them coincide; for him, “searches for a
final vocabulary are not destined to converge” (Rorty 1989: 76).
31 After reading these passages, and after considering what was said above about the
detached ironist philosopher, one might retain the impression that Rorty considered

50
philosophers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein as expressing their

philosophical thoughts from a solipsistic stance, using a private language. However,
one must ask again: is this really a consequence Rorty was willing to admit? Again, as
was remarked above, and as any reader of Rorty knows, this is of course not a
consequence which he would have upheld, since he strongly promoted the idea of
philosophy as cultural politics. But then, why the insistence on private vocabularies
and on the separation between public and private spheres? This is an inconsistency in
Rorty’s philosophy which needs to be looked upon. In what follows I offer two
approaches to bridge such inconsistency.
32 First, I propose that we pay attention to Rorty’s definition of the ironist. For hi m, the
ironist is someone who fulfills three conditions:
(1) She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently
uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as
final by people or books she has encountered; (2) she realizes that argument
phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor resolve these doubts;
(3) in so far as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her
vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that is in touch with a power not herself.
(Rorty 1989: 73)
33 Some critics, like John Horton, find it difficult to make sense of the ironist’s worries,
since she must use the vocabulary of “right” and “wrong,” a vocabulary which, as
Horton sees it, cannot be linked with Rorty’s anti-foundationalism:
Once we dispense with there being something which answers to the description ‘the
right tribe,’ ‘the right language game,’ and ‘the right sort of human being,’ what is
there for the ironist to worry about? (Horton 2001: 21)
34 For Horton, dispensing with foundationalism necessarily means getting rid of terms
such as “right” and “wrong,” therefore, the ironist is not really worrying, but merely
expressing a personal preference of having been born in a different tribe and playing a
different language game. However, this move is unnecessary, since accepting Rorty’s
anti-foundationalism doesn’t necessarily imply falling into relativism. The ironist can
still speak of “right” and “wrong,” but only in a creative and innovative sense, a sense
in which standard moral commitments are challenged. As a creative individual the
philosopher can still retain such talk of being mistaken or not, since he speaks of new
and – until now – unimag ined extensions for such words.
35 A second approach for making sense of Rorty’s insistence on the philosopher’s apparent
private language and the separation between the public and private spheres, consists
on shifting the attention towards the important role imagination played in Rorty’s
philosophy and account of creativity. For him, “imagination creates the games that reason
proceeds to play... In this sense, imagination has a priority over reason” (Rorty 2007: 115). For
Rorty imagination sets the bounds of thought, giving rise to language and concepts.
However, Rorty insisted, one must not think of imagination
as a faculty that generates mental images but as the ability to change social
practices by proposing advantageous new uses of marks and noises… On this view,
expressions like ‘gravity’ and ‘inalienable human rights’ should not be thought of as
names of entities whose nature remains mysterious, but as noises and marks, the
use of which by various geniuses have given rise to bigger and better social
practices. (Rorty 2007: 107-8)
36 The history of philosophy is, for Rorty, the history of original and appealing ideas
developed by very imaginative intellectuals. In those intellectuals Rorty recognizes the

51
imaginative and creative drive of the poet, who sees himself as writing a poem in
answer to his predecessors:
Nietzsche thought that Plato’s success in putting the term ‘really real’ into
circulation was a great imaginative achievement. But the answer to a poem is still a
better poem, and that is what Nietzsche thought of himself as writing. (Rorty 2007:
117)
37 I am not going to push further Rorty’s metaphor of philosophy as poetry, since he
himself wrote plenty about it.10 Rather, I want to come back to the issue between the
supposed incommensurability between the public and the private spheres using as a
guide the two previous quotations.
38 The problem which concerns us now is the problem of the supposed private language
and discourse which Rorty attributes to the philosopher (at least to the most creative
ones). For Rorty, the private language of the ironist doesn’t have any kind of impact on
the public discourse, since it springs from different sources and its terms are unshared
and unsuited to argument. However, one cannot but disagree with such opinion after
reading the last two passages, in which a relation between the public and the private
are made explicit. The clarity of this is such, that Rorty himself acknowledges it a few
lines later, where, after describing imagination as setting the bounds of thought and as
the spring of social change through the original use of marks and noises, he points that
such imagination is bounded by practicality and common intentionality:
To be imaginative, as opposed to being merely fantastical, one must both do
something new and be lucky enough to have that novelty adopted by one’s fellows –
incorporated into their ways of doing things. The distinction between fantasy and
imagination is between novelties that do not get taken up and put to use by one’s
fellows and those that do. People whose novelties we cannot appropriate and utilize
we call foolish, or perhaps insane. Those whose ideas strike us as useful we hail as
geniuses. That is why people like Socrates and Nietzsche often seemed like lunatics
to some of their contemporaries and like heroes to others. (Rorty 2007: 107)
39 Thus considered, the philosophical creative enterprise becomes entirely different from
the detached and solipsistic endeavor suggested by Rorty in his Contingency, Irony, and
Solidarity. As opposed to the idea of a detached genius whose language is exclusively
private, one finds in this last quote the entanglement between enlightened private
individuals and their fellow human beings. This quote shows how individual
imagination sets the path for public discourse, and that such imagination cannot be
solipsistic and “fantastic” if it wishes to get any acknowledgement besides its own
creator. Such creative geniuses, like Socrates and Newton, and Kant and Dewey, have
produced appealing ideas which were bounded not by language or a conceptual scheme
(since according to this view it is them who are coming up with concepts), but by their
practicality.
“The Trail of the Human Serpent…”

40 It is pragmatically convenient to hold philosophy as a set of tools which helps us cope
with different problems as they come to us in history. One cannot expect that, for
example, Wittgenstein would be an appropriate answer to all of culture’s and
philosophy’s problems,11 just as Dewey is far from answering all of our philosophical
yearnings. In philosophy, just as in any other areas of culture, we not only find pleasure
in variety, but wisdom too. This idea of philosophy as a toolbox is not incompatible

52
with William James’ claim that “the trail of the human serpent is over all”:
Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Dewey all were nothing but human beings, all too
contingent, fragile and erring human beings. It is according with the classical
pragmatism of James and Dewey to acknowledge the philosopher’s humanity and
contingency, and it doesn’t harm philosophy (at least the idea of philosophy which
Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Rorty shared) – or makes it an “impure” discipline – to start
recognizing the trail of the human serpent in the best of philosophical writing; after all,
philosophy is a human science in which the author – as opposed to the exact sciences –
cannot be detached from its creation.
41 With this I am not expecting to claim that philosophers should psychoanalyze other
philosophers as individuals (such field, though not totally barren, I do not regard as a
task for philosophers, psychoanalysts could do that much better! 12) and explain the
existence of philosophical ideas as mere contingent results of individual psyches.
Rather, I expect to claim that it is about time philosophers start to acknowledge the
importance of History and holism when it comes to write philosophy. Rorty has taught
us that the Platonic yearning for unity is impossible, and, at most, undesirable; now it is
time to take Rorty’s teaching to another level and start truly seeing the philosopher as
a child of his own time.
42 It is possible, though, that one may criticize such approach as denying any role for
creativity in philosophical writing: if thought is limited and conditioned by a historical
framework then it is impossible to think outside of such framework. Nevertheless, my
reconstruction of Rorty’s approach to creativity doesn’t go that far as claiming that all
thought is determined by social conditions, denying thus the space for individual
creativity. As was said above, the best philosophical thought is produced by individuals
who see themselves as writing not just a poem, but a practical narrative which they
expect to be adopted by their fellows. However, as Spinoza13 and (more than two
centuries later) the classical pragmatists saw it, man is not as free as he wishes to be;
our thoughts and actions do not happen in the void, but are causally entrenched with
the conditions which surround them. For Spinoza, man’s thoughts and actions are
bounded and causally occasioned by nature; and by nature Spinoza understood not
only God, but reality as a whole (which of course includes human society); that is why
he rejected the Cartesian idea of an all capable free will. However, nature itself allows
man enough power to free himself from causes external to him, thus giving him the
possibility to free himself from natural servitude. This idea is not totally foreign to
pragmatism, since pragmatists such as James, Dewey, and Rorty, also welcomed the
idea of thought and action as strictly social enterprises thus acknowledging the
importance of private creativity in the service of public understanding. Rorty himself
acknowledges such limits of creativity and language by insisting on doing philosophy
from a historical perspective. Thus, he quotes Lorenz Krüger approvingly when he
criticized “the assumption that philosophy is characterized by a specific set of tasks which
remain constant through history” (Krüger quoted in Rorty 1998: 278). Krüger and Rorty
agreed on the importance of holism in science and philosophy, the importance of
recognizing that “the discovery, as well as the justification of an advanced theory requires the
predecessor theory, or rather the chain or net of predecessor theories” (Rorty 1998: 278). Thus,
Rorty continues, “this historicity gives one reason to doubt that the history of philosophy can
be written independently of cultural history” (Rorty 1998: 278).

53
43 One cannot but agree with Rorty that, in the end, what philosophers do, at least those
who are most remembered, is to change the subject of the conversation and the terms
in which such conversation is carried. Rorty saw that very clearly, though he, as a child
of his own time – namely, the analytic age – sometimes kept a certain respect for
philosophy as a discipline untainted from social contingencies; thus, as I tried to claim,
he was never able to fully acknowledge the overreaching trail of the human serpent.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
AYER A.J. (1978), Part of My Life, Oxford, Owford University Press.
HORTON J., (2001), “Irony and Commitment: an irreconcilable dualism of Modernity,” in M.

Festenstein and S. Thompson (eds.), Richard Rorty: Critical Dialogues, London, Polity Press, 2001.
RORTY R., (1982), Consequences of Pragmatism, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
RORTY R. (1989), Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
RORTY R. (1991), Essays in Heidegger and Others, Philosophical Papers vol. 2, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
RORTY R. (1998), Truth and Progress, Philosophical Papers vol. 3, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press.
RORTY R. (1999), Philosophy and Social Hope, London, Penguin.
RORTY R. (2007), Philosophy as Cultural Politics, Philosophical Papers vol. 4, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
RORTY R. (2010), “Intellectual Autobiography,” in R. Auxier, and L. Hahn (eds.), The Philosophy of
Richard Rorty, The Library of Living Philosophers, Chicago, Open Court, 2010.
RORTY R., SCHNEEWIND J. B., & Q. SKINNER, (eds.), (1984) Philosophy in History, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
SHAPIN S. (2010), Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as if It was Produced by People with Bodies,
Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority, Baltimore,
Johns Hopkins University Press.
NOTES
1. See the Introduction to Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, and “Trotsky and the Wild Orchids.”
2. See the essays in his Essays on Heidegger and Others, Philosophical Papers vol. 2; and “
Pragmatism and Romanticism” in Philosophy as Cultural Politics, Philosophical Papers, vol. 4.
3. “On Heidegger’s Nazism” (Rorty 1999: 190-97).
4. The case of Wittgenstein is particularly interesting, since his last writing, On Certainty, was
clearly inspired by his discussions with and the writings of G.E. Moore regarding the problem of
skepticism about the external world.

54
5. The idea that “life” is something totally independent and separated from philosophy was
clearly stated by A. J. Ayer when he remarked to Isaiah Berlin that “philosophy is linguistic
analysis, the rest is life.” See A. J. Ayer’s Part Of My Life.
6. See “The Contingency of Philosophical Problems: Michael Ayers on Locke” in Rorty 1998.
7. This passage by John Dewey is quoted by Rorty in his 1998: 276.
8. See Rorty’s preface to Philosophy as Cultural Politics.
9. I do not believe that Rorty was aware that by holding his main ironic thesis of Contingency,
Irony, and Solidarity he would deny his other Hegelian thesis of the philosopher as a child of his
own time.
10. See particularly “Philosophy as science, metaphor, and as politics” in Rorty 1991; and “
Pragmatism and Romanticism” in Rorty 2007.
11. Unfortunately, a quick bibliographical search will show that many commentators of
Wittgenstein hope to find in him a correct answer to all of culture’s problems, something similar
as Aristotle was for the medieval mind.
12. Nevertheless, the writings of Steven Shapin have promoted a fruitful and rewarding
sociological approach to the history of philosophic and scientific ideas. See Shapin 2010.
13. By linking Spinoza’s idea of freedom with classical pragmatism I expect to be doing – rather
than making a historical mistake – what Rorty saw himself as doing throughout his philosophical
life, namely, “trying to coax pairs of philosophers into each other’s arms- sometimes to their discomfort
and annoyance.” “Rorty’s Intellectual Autobiography,” in Auxier & Hahn 2010.
ABSTRACTS
In this essay I propose a criticism of Richard Rorty’s dualism between the public and the private.
According to Rorty’s ironic utopia, the intellectual should not try to fuse public and private
drives, since both spring from different sources and are qualitatively incompatible. Thus, Rorty’s
utopia consists in a radical irreconcilability between private intellectuals who create their own
language and the general public for which such language has little to no impact. In this essay,
however, I argue that Rorty’s ironic proposal is not consistent since: 1) Rorty himself
acknowledges that the vocabulary and imagination of private intellectuals, such as Socrates and
Galileo, eventually – if it is appealing enough – becomes the canon; and 2) because Rorty’s
conception of philosophy, which he shares with the classical pragmatists, does not allow the idea
of a philosophical problem as not making a difference in practice, which is the case with the
problems with which is concerned the creative philosopher of Rorty’s utopia. As opposed to such
detached idea of philosophical creativity, I argue that, as the classical pragmatists claimed, all
philosophical thought, in order to account as a practical difference, is relational, and not, as
Rorty claimed, romantically solipsistic.
AUTHOR
JAVIER TORO
Universitat de Valencia
spinozayer[at]yahoo.es

55
Plasticity and Creativity in the Logic

Notebook
Fernando Zalamea
I. The Manuscript: Creative Reason and Plastic

Imagination
1 The Logic Notebook (LN) is a notebook1 where Peirce annotated chronologically
(1865-1909) the emergence of some of his major ideas in logic and semiotics. The
manuscript, lying in Harvard’s Houghton Library, is registered in Robin’s catalogue as
(MS 339). The notebook is constituted by approximately 375 folios (recto/verso) which
correspond to 530 written pages (many versos untouched). The LN was perused
extensively by Don Roberts in the 1960’s, while preparing his Ph. D. Thesis on the
existential graphs. Roberts proposed the name “Logic Notebook,” produced a
reasonable pagination and provided the actual or dering of the manuscript. Since then,
only 35 pages have been published: Fisch 1966, 3 pages on triadic logic; Eisele 1985, 3
pages on classes; W 1.337-350, W 2.1-10, W 4.214-217, 29 pages on general logical
arguments and on the calculus of relatives. Apparently, no fragment of the LN was
published in the Collected Papers, nor in New Elements of Mathematics.
2 Peirce’s annotations register some of his first thoughts on logical subjects, with very
diverse fragmentation levels, from isolated scraps to extended first versions of articles,
projects or conferences, going through multiverse conceptualizations, definitions,
systematizations and calculations. The chronological development of the material can
be studied with rigor, thanks to the marks (day, month, year) that Peirce himself wrote
on top of the pages (handwritten or, at the end, with a mechanical dater). A fourth part
of the manuscript covers the period 1865-1897, and the other three fourths the period
1898-1909. The LN is, thus, articularly useful for understanding the late Peirce, and, in
particular, the emergence of the existential graphs and the semiotic classifications.
3 The fundamental interest of the LN consists in providing us a privileged laboratory of
creativity. The creative mind, and in particular the creative scientist, has a tendency to

56
erase the intermediate paths in her discoveries/inventions, once the work approaches
some consistent final results, the ones that are circulated to the community of
inquirers. The LN allows, instead, to track many intermediate modulations between
Peirce’s initial, abductive guesses and its posterior, better achieved expressions. A
register of practices of the scientist emerges, with explicit marks in the process of
discovery. Through advances day by day, in some cases, and with sudden bursts of
imagination, in other cases, the LN yields a genuine vision of the creative web. In fact,
the LN – true index of invention – can be understood as an exceptional plastic register of
obstructions (2), openings (1) and transits (3), where the esthetic freshness of the
annotations confirms the so-called logic of research: combination of problems (“walls”
in the original Greek) (2), regulating hypotheses (1), trial and error tests (2) and partial
proofs (3).
4 The great critic and historian of art, Pierre Francastel, has underscored forcefully how
mathematics and art should be understood as the two major polarities of human
thought. Beyond mathematics and art, Francastel observed, in turn, the emergence of
creative webs with multisorted mixtures: real and ideal, concrete and abstract, rational and
sensible. A mediating system if there is one, Peirce’s architectonics helps to calibrate
those gluings between reason and imagination, and to situate “topographically” many of
their diverse instantiations. It is well known how, in the late Peirce, esthetics becomes
one of the foundations of logic (Parret 1994). Imagination transforms itself into a pillar
of reason, confirming Pascal’s dictum: “the heart has its reasons, of which reason
knows nothing.” The basis of Peirce’s inversion consists in recognizing the esthetic
summum bonum as a profound form of reasonableness, a sort of continuous growing of
potentiality.2 Normative sciences emerge then as progressive approximations to the
summum bonum: esthetical works as first embodiments (sensibility/creativity), ethical
norms as second embodiments (action/community), logical systems as third
embodiments (necessity/thought). Then, everything turns out to be modulation of an
archetypical force, the summum bonum, which subdetermines its further evolution.
5 We propose to define the continuity/plasticity dialectics through the following Pascalian
“reasons”:
6 In this way, Peirce’s summum bonum, as stated in 1905, where existence embodies
progressively the general, lies on the plasticity (and esthetic) side, while continuity and
mathematics serve as counterweights – in their primary studies of intrinsic structures –
to situate further esthetic embodiments. In fact, we are facing a double spiral, reflexive
and iterative, here, on one side, mathematics as pure, first, imagination supports
globally a mixed, second, esthetic creativity, which in turn supports logical, third
reasons, but, on the other side, diverse mathematical fragments, viewed as consistent
reasons, are locally supported on esthetic forms which, later, help to liberate the logical
imagination (Shelah, the greatest living logician, proposes for example a typology of
“reasons” to work in Set Theory, where “beauty” stands on top, well above any other
methodological, logical or technical consideration [Shelah 2002]).
7 We are thus in presence of a fundamental adjunction, easily expressed in a simple slogan:

57
to create an extended reason, to raise the general tree of inventive reason, to

potentiate its growing (summum bonum), reason requires plasticity, while
imagination requires exactness.
8 A fact not sufficiently emphasized, we believe that Peirce may well be considered as
one of the greatest imaginative powers in the history of thought. Jakobson already
signaled Peirce’s profound originality, but it is difficult not to perceive that most of his
interpreters (and some of his best readers, as Murphey, Hookway, Parker or Short) lack
almost completely of the needed imagination to evaluate and appreciate Peirce’s
inventiveness. In that order of ideas, the absence of any monograph in English on
Peirce’s creativity is extremely telling (something which also points to the importance
of Barrena 2007). It is just an aberrant situation since, in fact, most of the decisive
Peircean advances constitute extraordinary forms of invention: globally, the
cenopythagorean categories, the (fully modal) pragmaticist maxim, the dyad
synechism/tychism, the universal semiosis, or, locally, the gravimetric measures, the
relative calculus, the existential graphs, the dynamical interpretants. Such a wide and
profound range of original production cannot be understood without situating, on front
of the arguments, esthetical and plastic considerations. In fact, an understanding of
Peirce’s creative impulses requires to understand a multiverse web of contaminations,
mixtures, blends, translations. In the next section we will immerse ourselves in precise
examples of creativity in the LN, where many modes of plastic transformation become
crucial.
II. Case studies in the Logic Notebook

9 The emergence of new ideas abounds along the LN, since Peirce seems to have con-
structed the habit of turning to the notebook in many of those “moments privilégiés”
(Proust) related to the opening of creative possibilia. In this section we will investigate
five case studies which express well that creative emergence: (A) differential relatives
(November 1868), (B) existential graphs (June 1898), (C) sequence diagrams (August
1898), (D) triadic logic (February 1909), (E) translatability (October 1898). In many of
those moments, mathematics, logic, semiotics and philosophy are mixed to produce new
ideas, and a general transgression process is at the bottom of their originality.
A. Differential Relatives (November 1868)
10 Between November 8 and 15 1868, the LN registers diverse essays to construct a calculus
of differential relatives (LN, 46r-67r). An extensive number of pages betrays Peirce’s
agitation in that week. Preceding the major article on the subject (Peirce 1870), the
long sketch in the LN enters the realm of a speculative differential version of the relative
calculus, which is not mentioned afterwards in the 1870 article. Motivated by Boole’s
analytical treatment of logic, Peirce tries to transgress the traditional conception of
logic (study of finite laws of thought) and proposes, instead, to use a more sophisticated
mathematical arsenal (infinite webs of analysis) to reveal other invariances and, as we
shall see, other logical obstructions.
11 Peirce’s annotations begin with the sentence “In short there must be a Middle Voice”
(46r, Peirce’s capitals). Peirce thus sketches, since November 1868, a logic of differential
mediations (“Middle Voice”), that is, an early logic of continuity, a middle-way logic of

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“being.” The multiplicity of exponentials will emerge again, years ahead, through the
multiplicity of possibilia in Peirce’s continuum. Peirce’s writings present a fascinating
series of daily progresses and retreats, calculus exercises and conceptual discussions,
failed trials, erasures, crossing-outs, and permanent verbal modalities (“may,” “can,”
“must,” etc.) The inquirer fights with himself: “Here I feel myself sadly in want of a
better notation,” “This development does not hold,” “I want some thing similar” (46v),
“How the inverse should be,” “My analogies so far are but remote. Still I hope they will
develop into something” (47r). Since the very first pages, Peirce begins to combine
notations (algebraic and diagrammatic) and to suggest analogies (relative and analytical
exponentials), immersed in a mud where lights are absent but where confidence (“Still I
hope”) may orient new findings.
12 Days go by, and Peirce works with a multitude of techniques –quantifier
approximations (44r), comparisons with De Morgan (a5r), algebraic developments
(52v), lattice arguments (55r), Taylor’s theorem (57v), differential remainders (59v),
general binomial developments (60v)– until getting again insuperable obstructions
(“There must be some mistake here,” “I drop this here for the present” (62r)).
Nevertheless, only a day later, he takes up again what was apparently left over: he
discovers the reason of all complications in the non-commutative treatment of the
relative differential exponential that he has been trying to introduce, and begins to
elaborate a list of its peculiar properties (“I will now note all the exceptions in
reference to these exponents” (62v)). The introduction of generalized logarithms
(63r-66r) helps to explain the exceptions, but the annotations finish abruptly,
concluding a week of extraordinary fizziness.
13 A long year elapses before Peirce, on October 15 1869, writes finally his “Eureka” (see
figure 1). The exclamation is related to the conscience of an unusual state of things: the
non-commutativity and the absence of unit for certain logical first-order operations, a
profound discovery, well ahead in time, which would take a century in being
understood (through the exponentials in Girard’s linear logic). One can observe how
Peirce’s creativity fully profits from the means available: contamination of logic and
mathematics, transgression and new adaptation of signs, possibility of alternative laws.
It reflects the plasticity of a non-dogmatic researcher, open both to variable conjectures
(through daily corrections and doubts) and to steady alternative laws in the longue durée.
Mark of a genius, reverse paths and doubtful mistakes pave the way to unsuspected
possibilities of growth.

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Figure 1. Commutativity and Unit Failures in Relative Differential Exponentials (LN, 73r)
14 Peirce’s essays on the differential relatives constitute a good example of mixed and
transformative creativity. A back-and-forth between obstructions and transits flows all
over Peirce’s thought, first, bounding every failure, every doubt, every sign of despair,
and reflecting, after, on each of those limitations, at many levels, notational,
definitional, calculative or conceptual. Stunningly, the pragmatic maxim governs thus
Peirce’s very inventive trance. The transformations of signs –floating or sinking on a sea
of apparently disparate analogies– generate, in a very concrete and material way, new
ideas.
B. Existential Graphs (June 1898)
15 If the differential relatives constitute an “obscure” chapter in Peirce’s creativity,

somewhat sunken in the LN, the emergence of the existential graphs in the LN can be
seen, instead, as one of its most luminous moments. Recognized by Peirce himself as his
“chef d’oeuvre,” the graphs may well be considered, a century later, not only as Peirce’s
master work, an exceptional reflection of his architectonics, but also as one of the most
remarkable inventions of the entire history of logic. The graphs include in fact, with the
utmost economy, (i) (syntactics) a unique diagrammatic language, (ii) (pragmatics)
archetypical rules for the uniform handling of multiverse logics, propositional, first-
order or modal, and (iii) (semantics) a wide variety of models of profound mathematical
richness, topological (Burch), intuitionistic [Oostra 2010, 2011], categorical (Brady and
Trimble) and analytical (in the sense of complex variables, Zalamea) (for an overview of
all these contributions see Zalamea 2010).
16 At the end of his life, Peirce sketched a brief genealogy of the graphs, affirming that he
had discovered them in January 1897.3 We have no record that Peirce’s affirmation has
been confirmed by any inspection of his manuscripts, but, instead, it is certain that the
first appearance of the graphs in the LN occurs only one year and a half later, on June 9
1898 (102r). It is the beginning of a first draw of a systematic 4 rendering of the graphs –
“Existential Graphs: a system of logical expression. The Constitutive Conventions of this
Language” (102r, Peirce’s capitals) – where the emphasis lies on expression and language.
Hours later, still on June 9, Peirce writes a third draw, with a small but significant

60
variation in the title: “Existential Graphs. The Constitutive Conventions of this system
of assertion expression” (105r, Peirce’s crossing-out). “Language” passes thus to a
second plane. Five days later, the seventh draw is titled “Basic Formal Rules, from
which, without reference to the Constitutive Conventions, all illative transformations
can be deduced” (112r). The previous constitutive references to language are thus
forced to disappear. Between June 14 and June 19, all of Peirce’s efforts (112r-125r) are
concentrated in specifying, with great care, the “Basic Formal Rules” of the logical
system and in emphasizing repeatedly its pragmatic aspect.
17 A comparison of the diverse versions shows us how Peirce becomes growingly
conscious of the pragmatic specificity of his system, introducing many short and
beautiful proofs that illustrate the strength of the rules. All is beauty, for example, in
Theorem XIX (117r) where Peirce proves the consistency of his system (in a same
region, one cannot draw simultaneously a and a ). A counterpoint harmony between
erasure and insertion imposes on the Reader. In a similar vein, Theorem XXVI (120r)
proposes normal forms for the quantifiers, where the breaks and gluings of the line of
identity codify a very beautiful diagrammatic dance on the page (see figure 2). The
transformation of images not only reveals underlying logical codes, but also a profound
esthetic equilibrium.
Figure 2. Quantifier Transformations (LN, 120r)
18 In Peirce’s creative skills we thus observe how the scientist accepts the mud, decants it
analytically, manipulates it pragmatically and, finally, finds novel synthesis. 5 In fact, we
are looking to an inquirer which situates itself naturally in a middle-way between
analysis and synthesis (for developments see Maddalena and Zalamea 2011). The
transgression of any absolute perspective (either analytical or synthetic) is fundamental
to allow the plasticity required by the creative mind.

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C. Sequence Diagrams (August 1898)
19 Little after the first entries on existential graphs in the LN (102r-127r), Peirce embarks
on another unexpected adventure, in which he tries to understand visually some
metaproperties of sequences, with the objective of presenting diagrammatically the
properties of natural numbers (already axiomatized algebraically in Peirce 1881, see
Oostra 2003 for a detailed study). On August 4 1898, Peirce writes: “We now come to An
Extension of Existential Graphs, permitting Abstraction,” where “Abstraction consists
essentially in regarding a set of things, ordered or unordered, as an individual object,
and denoting it by an index” (LN, 128r). Dealing with abstractions in Beta is a daunting
enterprise, that Peirce would never complete,6 even if the discernment of the seer
astonishes us: “But it is hard to define a ‘set’ of things. Since, then, the idea of a sign is
presupposed in logic, it is better to endeavor to define abstraction in terms of signs
instead of sets” (128r, Peirce’s emphasis), “Try to define a pair, an ordered pair. You are
driven to the idea of a sign” (129r). The control of an abstraction must be, thus, the
control of its signs: a simple form of asserting that the control of a concept consists in
the control of its representations in formal systems, the basis of XXth century
mathematics.
20 Peirce creates diverse signs to capture the idea of a sequence. He introduces first a new
sign (sort of eagle wings, 129r) to express the ordered pair, then introduces another
original sign (sort of inverted heart, 130r) to express belonging, and he begins to
combine them under Beta to express order properties (August 4, first fragment of figure
3), sequences properties (August 5, second fragment of figure 3) and natural number
properties (August 6, third fragment of figure 3). Again, we stand in front of intense
days of sowing, that, without enough fertilizers, dry soon. But, even if the days of
harvest were not meant to be Peirce’s, it is still amazing to sense his great vision.
Figure 3. Diagramming Properties of Sequences (LN, 131r, 136r, 139r)

62
21 Peirce’s visual imagination multiplies over approximately fifty (!) diagrams produced in
three days (128r-150r). The construction guides for the diagrams are clearly esthetical:
progressive elegance of the sign to represent the ordered pair (129r, 130r, 134r),
modification of distributions of identity lines to reach harmonic counterpoints (134r,
135r, 138r), coloration of black and red lines to produce tonal balances (136r), quest for
visual nuclei susceptible of being iterated (136r, 137r, 139r). Very diverse contaminations
between mathematics, esthetics and logic become enacted in those Peircean sketches.
Inventiveness explodes thanks to the esthetic tensions between signs. Peirce’s
approaches to the summum bonum open a new door, completely abandoned in the history
of thought since that August 1898: interlacing abstraction (logic) and order
(mathematics) through visual harmonic equilibria (diagramming).

63
22 In fact, even if abstraction, order and visual harmony have been embodied, for
example, in the paintings of Rothko or in the sculptures of Caro, Peirce’s heirs have still
to understand that compelling mixture in mathematics. If Category Theory confirms
itself as an appropriate general topos for such an encounter, if its technical expression
turns out to be describable by the logic of Sheaf Theory, and if sheaf logic situates
finally at the “heart” of a wider Synthetic Philosophy of Mathematics, then we could
appreciate better the extraordinary power of the LN seeds. Indeed, an invitation to
imagine such an alternate program for Philosophy lay, technically, in Peirce’s abstract
visualization and, methodologically, in the contaminating transit efforts of the “cryptic”
pages 128r-150r of the LN: a true miraculous icon of Peirce’s genius, that our Epoch still
has to embody in its progressive concretion of the summum bonum.
D. Triadic Logic (February 1909),
23 Close to his final years, in another week of intense activity, between February 16 and
February 23 1909, Peirce annotates in the LN several attempts to construct forms of a
triadic logic. The essays are situated between a triadic extension of the Pascalian
triangle (December 27 1908, 333v), a modal problematic at bottom (“Studies of Modal,
Temporal and other Logical Forms which relate to special Universes,” February 16 1909,
341r) and a short observation on graph tinctures (“Note on the Tinctures,” February 26
1909, 345r). Consequently, the emergence of triadic logic is not casual and answers
partially some permanent queries of Peirce: cenopythagoreanism, modality, variation.
Fisch 1966 has underscored the full importance of the ternary tables that appear in the
LN (340v, 341r, 341v, 342r, 344r), the first ones in the history of logic to try to formalize
a modal triadic calculus (see also Oostra 2007).
24 On February 16 1909, Peirce begins with an analysis of the Boolean functions and
establishes a minimal set of functional equations (341r), that, after, profiting from a
blank verso in the preceding page, he extends to three values, proposing new truth
tables for the connectives (340v, see figure 4). The proposals (rediscovered ten years
later in Lukasiewicz’s logic) are distributed along difficult calculations on the page,
with a unique commentary by Peirce: “All this is mighty close to nonsense.” Once more,
penetrating on the borders of contradiction, coming from obscure layers, through
crossing-outs and rewritings, through mixed non well-oriented essays, in short, coming
from a muddy bottom, emerges the creative act.

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Figure 4. First Truth Tables for Triadic Logic (LN, 340v)
25 At the end of the February 16 session, Peirce writes: “Try the triadic system of values
again.” To the amazement of those which can now follow his annotations, we see how
the functional equations of some triadic operators are then expressed in a perfectly
clean way, and how Peirce proposes the tables of six (!) different triadic connectives
(341v). The mental imagination work done between pages 340v and 341v is simply
inconceivable. From the mud we pass to crystalline waters, through esthetic visualizations
and structural equilibria which are not registered in the LN and, thus, which may never have
existed as external, concrete marks. We are in front of a fascinating process of
mathematical invention,7 where the creative mind lucubrates on obscure images of
tension and equilibrium, without marking or writing, until she attains, suddenly, the
desired clearness.
26 In turn, the process may be viewed as a showing instance of Peirce’s “scholastic
realism”: in the same manner as imagination of possibilia in mathematics does not
require marks, the possibility of an understanding of real universals does not need to
reduce itself to existence verifications. In fact, Peirce’s last annotation on “Triadic
Logic” (red title, February 23 1909, 344r) states: “Triadic Logic is universally true.” That
universal truth is another weaving form of Peirce’s architectonics: if an advanced model
for synechism was already present through the existential graphs, the new triadic logic
could serve now as a nice model for the three cenopythagorean modalities. A stunning
mind, Peirce continued to interlace the global and the local, the universal and the
particular, the dynamical and the invariant: the true stamp of a genius.
E. Translatability (October 1898)
27 The force of creative processes, as Walter Benjamin’s opus has shown, originates often
in their translatable character. On one side, the creative mind translates texts, images,
analogies between different fields of knowledge, and, on the other side, she transforms
the closed boundaries of those fields in open frontiers. Many times in his life, Peirce went
consciously beyond his mother tongue and made incursions in other languages (French,
Greek, Latin, etc.; the list is long and includes Euskera...) Of major relevance can be

65
considered the first version in French, in a ship between Hoboken and Plymouth, of his
famous article How to Make our Ideas Clear (for a careful analysis, see Deledalle 1981).
28 Between October 1 and 4 1898, the LN includes another revealing example of such a
translatability process (LN, 151r-166r). Peirce’s first sentence is colorful:
I am writing in this book, not this time parce que j’ai quelque chose de nouveux
[sic] à laquelle je veux fixer la date, mais simplement parce que le papier que j’ai
commandé pour écrire mon histoire de la science n’étant pas venu, je m’occupe
cependant en faisant des notes pour un traité de logique. (151r)
29 The student of the LN thanks the mention to the book, and the declaration that Peirce
writes on it in order to fix novelties. Peirce’s student smiles at the lack of adequate
paper, an intrusion of chance which transforms the action. The student of thought
marvels at Peirce’s desire to write a treatise of logic, just not to lose his time. But, above
all, what thoroughly strikes us is the continuous change of language in the first
fragment of the sentence. Without forewarning marks, Peirce’s mind imagines fragments
of space (“book” – “papier”), time neighborhoods (“this time” – “la date”) and activities
(“writing” – “quelque chose de nouveux”), that only afterwards get transposed to a
given language. In this way, (i) a continuous pragmatic protogeometry (place, moment,
action) underlies (ii) its discontinuous expressions in reflexive languages (English,
French). The germs of possibility –prototypes of space, time and relation– come before
their later existence. Translation, situated at language level (ii), refers to a much more
profound transformation at geometric level (i).
30 In fact, it is the plasticity of protogeometry which inspires, potentiates and impels many
forms of invention. A plastic transformation –combination of free (universal)
imagination and singular (particular) expression– is the very engine of creativity in those
pages of the LN. After the first sentence of his “traité de logique,” the singularity of the
French expression liberates Peirce’s imagination, and generates a turning point in
Peirce, who writes 16 pages in four days, producing a surprising alloy of freeness,
freshness and precision. From an imaginary mud and the contradictions of language
emerges then the creative spark. Most of Peirce’s annotations consist in an
explanation, notably simple and well argued, of what will be his 1903 “perennial
classification” of sciences [Kent 1987]. Even if Peirce had already proposed multiple
classification patterns, those essays were long and artificial. It is remarkable that the
very heart of the “perennial classification” occurs, instead, compactly presented in the
LN five years before.
31 Apparently, a visual perception of the classification (a typically Peircean activity that
Kent resumes in her analysis) is combined in October 1898 with its French expression,
an unexpected weaving which yields an evident simplification in its orderly
presentation. Comte’s typological clearness, or the French inheritance around “distinct
reasons,” may have exerted then a benefic action on Peirce’s somewhat profuse and
never-ending English.
32 Translation and transformation, forcing him to think from the verso, crystallizes in this
occasion in a pearl of elegant concision.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
BARRENA S., (2007), La razón creativa. Crecimiento y finalidad del ser humano según C. S. Peirce, Madrid,
Rialp.
DELEDALLE G., (1981), “English and French versions of C.S. Peirce’s «The Fixation of Belief» and
«How to Make our Ideas Clear,” Transactions Charles S. Peirce Society, 17, 141-52.
EISELE C., (ed.), (1985), Historical Perspectives on Peirce’s Logic of Science: a History of Science, New
York, Mouton.
FISCH M., & A. TURQUETTE, (1966), “Peirce’s Triadic Logic,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society,
11, 71-85.
KENT B., (1987), Logic and the Classification of Sciences, Montreal, McGill University Press.
MADDALENA G., & F. ZALAMEA, (2011), “A New Analytic/Synthetic/Horotic Paradigm: From

Mathematical Gesture to Synthetic/hHorotic Reasoning,” Kurt Gödel Research Prize Fellowships,
preprint.
OOSTRA A., (2003), “Acerca del artículo On the Logic of Number de Charles S. Peirce,” Boletín de
Matemáticas, Nueva Serie X (1), 14-21.
OOSTRA A., (2007), “La lógica triádica de Charles S. Peirce,” in Memorias XVIII Encuentro de Geometría
y sus Aplicaciones, Bogotá, Universidad Pedagógica.
OOSTRA A., (2010), “Los gráficos Alfa de Peirce aplicados a la lógica intuicionista,” Cuadernos de
Sistemática Peirceana 2, 25-60.
OOSTRA A., (2011), “Gráficos existenciales Beta intuicionistas,” Cuadernos de Sistemática Peirceana 3,
53-78.
PARRET H., (ed.), (1994), Peirce and Value Theory. On Peircean Ethics and Esthetics, Amsterdam,
Benjamins.
PEIRCE C. S., (1870), “Description of a Notation for the Logic of Relatives, Resulting from an
Amplification of the Conceptions of Boole’s Calculus of Logic,” Memoirs of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, 9, 317-78.
PEIRCE C. S., (1881), “On the Logic of Number,” American Journal of Mathematics, 4, 85-95.
Shelah S., (2002), “The Future of Set Theory,” [arxiv.org/pdf/math.LO/0211397.pdf].
Zalamea F., (2010), Los gráficos existenciales peirceanos. Sistemas de lógicas diagramáticas del continuo:
horosis, tránsitos, reflejos, fondos, Bogotá, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
NOTES
1. Peirce mentions the LN as “this book” (LN, 17r). Our visit to Houghton Library (2008) confirms
it, finding diverse booklets of what may have been the original Notebook, and keeping track of
diverse perforations (now in separated sheets) which correspond to the original sewing of the
book. The physical state of the manuscript is calamitous, but, fortunately, the LN has been
entirely digitized (2010), and is now available on line: [pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/15255301].

67
2. “The pragmaticist does not make the summum bonum to consist in action, but makes it to
consist in that process of evolution whereby the existent comes more and more to embody those
generals which were just now said to be destined, which is what we strive to express in calling
them reasonable” (CP 5.433; 1905, Peirce's emphasis).
3. “Owing to my Existential Graphs having been invented in January of 1897 and not published
until October, 1906, it slipped my mind to remark when I finally did print a description of it, what
any reader of the volume entitled Studies in Logic by Members of the Johns Hopkins University
(Boston, 1883), might perceive, that in con structing it, I profited by entirely original ideas both
of Mrs. and Mr. Fabian Franklin, as well as by a careful study of the remarkable work of
O. H. Mitchell, whose early demise the world of exact logic has reason deeply to deplore” (CP
4.618, 1908).
4. Which would confirm indirectly the previous existence of graph manipulations.
5. The construction of a Peirce supposedly anticipating Analytic Philosophy seems to have been
just an ingenuous artificial interpretation at the end of XXth century, which should have no
course anymore.
6. From a logical (not mathematical) point of view, Peirce's enterprise was equivalent to control
some sort of Set Theory over a reasonable quantificational calculus. The task took three decades
(1895-1925), before the Zermelo-Fraenkel system fully emerged, based on first-order classical
logic.
7. The process has been several times described since Poincaré. Grigory Perelman, recent
inventor/discoverer of the proof of Poincaré's Conjecture, has described how the proof
developed for months in his mind, without ever using a written account. Imagination in
mathematics necessarily approaches imagination in art.
ABSTRACTS
Peirce’s architectonics, far from rigid, is bended by many plastic transformations, deriving from
the cenopythagorean categories, the pragmaticist (modal) maxim, the logic of abduction, the
synechistic hypotheses and the triadic classification of sciences, among many other tools capable
of molding knowledge. Plasticity, in turn, points to interlacements between mathematics and art,
and shapes some associated conceptual forces in the boundary of the disciplines: variation,
modulation and invariance; transformability, continuity and discreteness; creative emergence. In
this article we focus on this third aspect, through bounded, well defined case studies in the Logic
Notebook. The first section describes the manuscript and its interest for a study of creativity,
leading to a short speculation on “creative reason” and “plastic imagination” in Peirce. The
second section studies five precise cases of creative emergence in the Logic Notebook: differential
relatives, existential graphs, sequence diagrams, triadic logic, translatability. Some major
surprises occur in those detailed studies.

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AUTHOR
FERNANDO ZALAMEA
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
fzalameat@unal.edu.co

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Time as Experience/Experience as
Temporality
Pragmatic and Perfectionist Reflections on Extemporaneous Creativity
Vincent Colapietro
Introduction: The Experience of Improvisation/The

Renovation of Experience
1 My ultimate goal1 is to sketch the broad outlines of an experiential approach to
extemporaneous creativity, especially as such creativity is exemplified by jazz
musicians. This approach is, at once, pragmatist and (in Stanley Cavell’s sense)
perfectionist.2 But my initial goal is to illuminate human creativity in its less manifest
forms.
2 Paradoxically, such creativity is commonplace. The actions, gestures, and utterances of
human beings in everyday life are far from mindless routines. To some extent, they are
almost always creative responses to dramatic situations (cf. Joas 1996, Ch. 3). They are,
at the very least, unrehearsed responses, that is, improvised or extemporaneous ones.
As R. W. Emerson stresses in “Quotation and Originality,” they ineluctably draw upon
past exertions; they deeply draw upon interiorized traditions.3 But the nuanced
spontaneity of these extemporaneous exertions ordinarily transcends the mechanical
re-enactment of fixed habits. Even a frequently repeated expression, one reiterated
innumerable times such as “Hello” or “Good morning,” can be variously inflected and
by the truly courteous person is situationally modulated. The phrasing of such a person
can arguably be as deft as that of Frank Sinatra when shaping a musical phrase
(Iseminger 2010: 299). Without question, deeply sedimented habits make possible
extemporaneous creativity, so much so that it is easy to allow the operation of such
habits to eclipse our appreciation or even awareness of the creativity inherent in our
unrehearsed exertions. The innate intelligence of the human animal, precisely as a
meshwork of dispositions, is, however, an organ of novelty, all the more so human
intelligence in its more mature form.4 Such intelligence is as much as anything else a

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capacity to act creatively (Emerson; Whitehead). Present action is, to repeat, not simply
the mechanical re-enactment of established dispositions; rather it tends to be an
innovative manner of responding to the immanent demands of an unfolding drama.
The roots of it in the past should not obscure from us the fruits just now forming
themselves in the ever present spring of the living present (CP 5.459; also EP 2: 358).
The spontaneity and plasticity of the child can be preserved by or, to some extent,
recovered by, the adult. As much as action reveals the presence of habits, it can also
alter the form of those habits, if only in subtle and virtually imperceptible ways. Habits
owe not only their origin but also their continuance and integration to actions. Our
experience of improvisation discloses the irreducible reality of extemporaneity but also
the inescapable renovation of experience itself. We are continuously making something
of our experience and, therein, re-making nothing less than our selves. What is
imperceptibly pervasive in our everyday doings, is dramatically operative in jazz
improvisation. In their most successful improvisations, jazz musicians combine the
spontaneity of the novice explorer and the control of the experienced practitioner. They
draw upon wide and deep experience in order (as much as anything else) to interrogate
what their experience prompts them to play. Accordingly, jazz improvisation is a series
of focused self-interrogations, a form of exploration in which previously successful
modes of exploration are themselves subjected to interrogation. It aims at “a cultivated
naiveté of eye, ear, and thought” (LW 1: 40); put otherwise, it culminates in deliberate
spontaneity (spontaneity resulting from reflection). The original spontaneity of the
very young child and the irrepressible extemporaneity of human actors in the variable
scenes of their quotidian engagements are in complex ways related to the cultivated
naiveté of the experienced improviser.
3 My goal here is, at the very least, to render this claim plausible. Because not only the
acquisition but also the interrogation of experience is so critical in such improvisation,
the realization of this goal requires me to embed this sketch in a thick account of
human experience. For this, Stanley Cavell no less than the classical pragmatists is
critical. Accordingly, the path to the topic of improvisation cannot avoid being
somewhat circuitous: it will weave its way through an extended discussion of
philosophical appeals to human experience. But the point of this discussion is to
underscore the importance of experience itself, not our efforts to articulate a theory of
experience. That is, the appeal to experience refers here to what a practitioner does in
the context of some engagement; in particular, it refers, in the first instance, to what
everyday actors do in the ordinary circumstances of their lives and, in the end, to what
jazz musicians do in the context of performance. As this suggests, I am guided by the
intuition that musical improvisation is not an utterly unique phenomenon; it is rather
part of a vastly extended family of human activity. Therefore, the main reason why I
approach our topic in this manner is what William Day suggests in a very instructive
treatment of the elusive topic of jazz improvisation: we properly orient ourselves to
jazz improvisation (thus, to arguably the most important form of musical creativity)
when we strive “to experience improvised music as a species of ordinary, unrehearsed
activity” (2000: 102; emphasis added). The experience in question calls for
understanding how it relates to both the most commonplace experiences and (to a less
extent) other forms of human engagement (e.g., scientific investigation, moral
deliberation, and religious worship). First and foremost, however, we need to experience
this form of musicking5 as a creative refinement of our everyday extemporaneity. The
reconstruction of experience advocated by the pragmatists and the approach

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exemplified by Cavell are undertaken for the sake of enhancing experience itself
(Colapietro 2008: 118-19). That is, they are offered as ways of rendering our modes of
engagement more luminous, intense, fulfilling, significant, and sustainable than they
otherwise would be (cf. LW 1: 305). They concern primarily direct (or “immediate”)
experience itself, not a formal understanding, certainly not a detached understanding,
much less an elaborate theory of it. While reading a text is, in this context, one such
mode of engagement, so too are watching a film, conversing with a friend, walking
around a city, and hiking up a mountain. Their concern is with the quality of the
experience of reading, watching, walking, conversing, and climbing. In the end,
solicitude for this quality encompasses nothing less than what H. D. Thoreau in Wild
Fruits, a recently discovered manuscript, calls the “art of how to spend a day” (Thoreau
2001; cf. Emerson’s “Art”). But we also need to articulate an understanding of
experience that is able to make sense of what experience actually is in our lives, not
only in our formally reflective engagements but also in the myriad contexts of our
everyday lives. Philosophical theories of human experience have tended to be crude
caricatures, not least of all because they have occluded the most salient features of
human experience when experience is considered in reference to the actual
achievements and inevitable failures of an experienced practitioner (say, an
experienced equestrian or an experienced musician). Hence, part of the task here is to
bring into focus the features that other accounts of experience tend to occlude.
4 The significance of our experience is far greater than the role played by experience in
the acquisition of knowledge.6 This role is tremendously important and, thus, needs to
be properly understood (cf. Haack 2009; also Short 2008). But the appeal to experience
is not limited to the differential perspective of the theoretical inquirer (Smith 1981);
indeed, it is present in every domain of human engagement. For example, the novice
reader might greatly benefit from an experienced one.7 The experience of novices is
however not to be slighted, certainly not to be denigrated.8 Regardless of the practice
or site of engagement, it all comes down to “experience personally conducted and
personally consummated” (MW 3: 94). But the dominant traditions of Western
philosophy are, in effect, so many betrayals of experience, most of all because they
assume that, in order for us to comport ourselves responsibly, we must have resources
and criteria beyond anything experience could provide. Experience is judged to be,
even by Kant and Hegel, not sufficient unto itself. Though Kant and indeed all of the
rationalists concede that appeals to experience are in some instances necessary, they
are far from sufficient: a transcendental or dialectical or some other form of reason
alone can make up for the inherent deficiencies of our finite experience. The need to go
beyond experience indeed seems to many thinkers to be an exigency rooted in
experience itself. But the classical pragmatists in their way and Cavell in his suggest
that the need is rather to turn toward experience in a more painstaking, courageous,
and imaginative manner than philosophers have yet done. They do not presume that a
trans-experiential reason is required; rather they contend that the cultivated capacities
of the human animal are sufficient for drawing from experience what such an animal
needs to act responsibly and, indeed, to live wisely.
5 While the experience of time as experience,9 especially as it is exhibited in the
extemporaneous creativity of jazz musicians, is our ultimate concern, the appeal to
experience is our inaugural topic. Though I will begin by framing this topic with the
help of the pragmatists and an exemplary expositor of the pragmatic tradition, I will
turn decisively to Cavell’s insistence upon the need for “checking one’s experience”

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(1981: 12; cf. Day 2000: 100). That is, we need simultaneously to consult and interrogate
our own experience, to fall back upon it and to turn it upon itself. This experiential task
is itself a prefiguration of extemporaneous creativity. Consequently, in exploring the
contours of this task, we will be foreshadowing the exploration of jazz improvisations
as an arresting instance of what a reflective engagement with human experience
demands.
6 The characteristic focus of human agents is on the most immediately imminent future,
the future as it just now is taking shape in the present (see e.g. Peirce: EP 2, 358 and
James: MT, 231). Experience is, among other things, a name for what equips the human
animal to meet effectively the promptings, pressures, and propulsions of this
intimately imminent future (see, e.g., LW 10: 28; also Whitehead 1933 [1961], Ch. XI).
The appeal to experience in its rudimentary form is not a formal, articulated appeal; it
is rather a spontaneous, situated response, for when agents respond in this manner
they are drawing upon (or going on10) their experience. Even so, the philosophical
attempts to accredit the appeal to experience, especially those of the classical
pragmatists and Stanley Cavell, help us to understand what is entailed – and indeed
entangled – in its most rudimentary form.
The Appeal to Experience: Naïve and Critical

7 John E. Smith was fond of remarking that William James “wrote as though one had only
to consult ‘experience’ as one consults a timetable in order to find the answer” (Smith
1983: 40).11 This is no doubt a caricature. It is, indeed, an intentional one. But there is
value in caricaturing James in this manner. For it underscores the difficulties inherent
in any appeal to experience. Of course, James was alert to these difficulties and,
moreover, Smith was appreciative of James’s sensitivity in this regard. But James’s
efforts to recover experience in a fuller and deeper way than had yet been done
occasionally forced him to simplify what is involved in any appeal to experience. A
reliable timetable is, of course, the result of a painstaking distillation of controlled
observation. As such, it is at a significant distance from primary experience in the
Deweyan sense (certainly even farther from “pure” experience in the Jamesian sense!).
Such a symbolic chart is at once the reflective distillation from, and a valuable
instrument for, ascertaining practical opportunities concerning (say) railroad travel. In
a sense, the experience of any mature person is to some extent always already codified.
Aye, there’s the rub, especially from a Jamesian perspective. So, the appeal to one’s own
experience is quite unlike that to a timetable.
8 We need not only to appeal to experience but also to reflect on what is entailed when
practitioners do so, especially in the context of practice, that is, of performance. So, the
necessity of such an appeal cannot be gainsaid, at least by those of us who take
experimental science seriously, also by those who consider personal experience
uniquely valuable. The very possibility of such an appeal is, however, deeply
problematic. If human experience is what traditional philosophy has claimed, it cannot
bear the weight or fulfill the functions placed upon it. The recovery of experience must,
at least in part, be a reconstruction of our understanding of experience such that
experience can bear, for example, the weight of experimental evidence, as this
expression is used by the scientific inquirer, or that of personal testimony, as this is
understood in a historical situation. Even so, it cannot be merely a reconstruction of

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our understanding of experience, for it must be both a creative appropriation and an

ongoing transformation of our actual experience (Colapietro 2008). In other words, it
must be an enhancement of experience itself, an enhancement due above all else to the
cumulative effects of making our experience, at once, more our own and more trust-
worthy. The appeal to experience is something we do; and that to which we appeal is, in
some manner and measure, called into being as the result of our appeals. Experience is,
in its immediacy, so inchoate and unfocused as not to be recognizable by us as
experience (i.e., by us as experience) until others have held us accountable and, as a
result, we begin to hold ourselves responsible (MW 14: 18, 216-17) for the conjunctions
between what we do and what we suffer (or simply undergo). This however should not
be interpreted as an example of radical constructivism; rather it should be seen as an
implication of pragmatic intelligence. The given is never simply given; put positively, it
is always in some fashion taken (LW 1: Ch. 4; LW 12: 127). Even in the most uncontrolled
phases of our primary experience selective attention is an ineliminable function (again,
LW 1: 34). Selective attention is inevitably woven into a fabric involving potentially
debilitating inattention (Hagberg 2008: 260-61).
9 The appeal to experience is analogous (if only remotely analogous) to what is involved
when a competent speaker addresses a very young child who is barely more than an
infant in the etymological sense. The infant becomes a speaker by being addressed by
others as one (as someone whose babblings are already to some extent utterances).
Analogously, experience becomes something to which we can reliably appeal by being
that to which appeals are made. Experience as a court of appeal is constituted as such
by the conscientious efforts of deliberative agents. In stressing this point, however, I do
not intend to privilege unduly the juridical metaphor, especially since my intention is
to move away from Kant, not to reinforce his authority. Other metaphors are indeed
needed to highlight other facets of experience. I might appeal to a friend for
reassurance or to a lover for affirmation of my singularity. The appeal to experience is,
in any event, simultaneously an appeal to one’s own experience and to the experience
of others. On this occasion, however, I want to focus most of all on the deeply personal
dimension of human experience, without thereby neglecting the inevitably communal
dimension. That is, I want to focus primarily on what is entailed in an appeal to one’s
own experience, though I fully concede that your experience and mine are far from
separable and, in numerous cases, hardly distinguishable.
10 No point is more important to stress than this one: The appeal to experience can be
either naïve or critical (Smith 1967: 6-8). If naïve, it turns out, at some point, to be a
betrayal of experience. For the experienced person is anything but naïve. Indeed, such
a person is, virtually, by definition one who is resolutely disposed to be skeptical of
naïve claims, especially when such claims are entwined with personal pretention or
simply presumptuous attitudes. To repeat: if the appeal to experience is naïve, then
anyone who makes such an appeal is destined to be exposed, at some juncture, as
someone entangled in a betrayal of experience. The experienced person is, accordingly,
a practical (not a rhetorical or theoretical) skeptic, that is, a skeptic in the etymological
rather than the textbook sense. Above all else, then, the disposition not only to pose
questions but also to be open to questioning all facets of our questions themselves
defines the skeptic in this sense. Etymologically, the skeptic is the inquirer and,
perforce, the questioner – one who is alive to the force, implications, and salience of
questions ordinarily left unasked. To invoke an expression from Ludwig Wittgenstein
(“Question the question”), however, it is not enough simply to question; we must

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question our own questions. We must interrogate the motives and ideals animating as
well as the protocols and indeed spirit structuring our forms of interrogation. Skeptical
reflexivity of course returns, time and again, to the interminable task of reflexive
interrogation: put quite simply, the task of calling ourselves into question. Part of the
goal of this essay is, however, to suggest that self-interrogation and self-trust are of a
piece (Emerson; Day). For the moment, it suffices to say that a critical stance toward
one’s own experience paradoxically involves questioning what one must, in some
fashion, trust. The distrust implicit in the very act of questioning turns out to be an
expression of trust (or faith) in our experience as a self-corrective and self-
transcendent process. We cannot help but fall back on our own experience. For
experience is not only that with which we have been entrusted; 12 it is also that in which
we are forced to put our trust. It is, in the end (that is, in the meantime), what we willy-
nilly go on, especially in our efforts to go on (see, e.g., Wittgenstein PI, #179; Cavell 1990:
70). As it presently stands, however, it is not yet entirely trustworthy. Making our
experience trustworthy can only begin, in earnest, by entrusting ourselves to our
experience (again, Day). Trust is inevitably the first word, whereas trustworthiness is
ideally the “last” one (though there is no more a final or ultimate word than there is,
without ambiguity or uncertainty, an inaugural or initiating one).
11 If our experience is critical rather than naïve, then another set of dangers inevitably
appears upon the stage of our thinking. These inevitable dangers are, for the most part,
disguised characters, some of them being indeed seductive figures whose alluring
power might have far more destructive sources than even these seducers realize. It is
likely that they have misled themselves. In other words, the forms of seduction almost
certainly involve, for the seducer no less than the seduced, a subjection to a series of
illusions. For example, Immanuel Kant in his Herculean effort to save human
experience from Humean “skepticism” has, in my judgment, betrayed experience at
least as much as Hume. Those who are seduced by his critique of reason, a project
inescapably encompassing a critique of experience, are, therefore, blocked from their
own experience, in subtle, frequently imperceptible, but ultimately destructive ways.
But so too is Kant himself. As tempting as it is to see either the pragmatic or the
perfectionist appeal to human experience as a transformation of the transcendental
approach, it is better to resist than to succumb to this temptation. Such, at least, is
what I hope to show next.
The Critique of Experience: Transcendental or

Experiential?
12 For my own purpose, however, the principal point is that the form in which a critique
of our own experience is most humanely and wisely undertaken need not be the form
in which Kant cast his critiques of reason and, consequently, articulated his critical
stance toward cognitive, moral, and aesthetic experience. A critique of experience is
unavoidable. Naiveté is, experientially, precluded. Experience is indeed the name for a
process of overcoming the myriad forms of human naiveté, both historically pervasive
ones and specifically contemporary Gestalten. It not only invites but also demands
interrogation. Our experience proves itself trustworthy by being subjected to relentless
critique, incessant interrogation, innumerable queries As Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and
indeed others have stressed, such critique is always an exercise of courage. As it stands

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at any actual moment of either our personal lives or collective histories, however, our
experience is not entirely trustworthy, even in those instances (cf. Day 2000), or in
those contexts, when it has undergone dramatic transformation as a result of our
conscientious critiques. It more often than not needs to be rendered more trustworthy.
Our opposition to the (allegedly) Humean dissolution of human experience into an
arbitrary conjunction of sensory impressions need not drive us to a transcendental
critique of human rationality, even though familiarity with the details of such a
critique, especially as developed by such a philosophical genius as Kant, can be
immensely suggestive for how other forms of critique (including ones breaking
decisively with the tenacious tradition of transcendental philosophy) are to be carried
out. So, the critique of experience is (to repeat) inescapable, whereas the form of that
critique is debatable. On this occasion, I want more than anything else to suggest that
this form might be something more deeply akin to the one we encounter in the
writings of Stanley Cavell than the form we see exemplified in the texts of Kant. Of
course, Cavell’s critical engagement with experience owes much to Kant’s
transcendental critiques of rationality in its distinguishable forms (Neiman). But it is
not simply or even primarily a variant of the form we encounter in Kant. For Cavell’s
writings in this regard mark a decisive break, a dramatic rupture, with the
transcendental tradition, thereby opening a creative space for a truly novel
engagement with human experience. The motives and implications of this engagement
are as deeply in tune with our time as Kant’s were in sync with his epoch or moment in
history.
13 In any event, a critical stance to our precarious experience need not reenact the
Kantian turn. Our experience is precarious because we are typically careless but (of
even greater pertinence) we are, all too often, cowardly. To use a wonderful expression
employed by William Ernest Hocking, we have to have the courage of our experience. 13
In falling to have this courage, we in effect fail to have nothing less than the experience
itself (Colapietro 2008). Put otherwise, the coin by which our experience is purchased is
courage: our experience is not ours lest there is, especially at critical junctures [crisis], a
courageous refusal to cede our personal experience to various authorities (Cavell 2005).
To be thr own back on our experience is, in effect, to be thrown back on self-trust. But
what makes this especially problematic and disconcerting is that, at just those times
when we are thrown back on self-trust, we are ordinarily least confident about the
trustworthiness of our experience. Practically, this means that we are least confident of
our mastery of an aspect of a practice especially relevant to the execution of a task, in
the here and now, frequently a task thrust upon us (not infrequently, an inescapable
task). In a word, we are least confident about ourselves. Do we possess what the
moment demands of us, what the situation asks so urgently of us? The felt “No” is no
warrant for personal annihilation, for self-abnegation; rather it is a reason for self-
affirmation. Trust in the self helps create the self. More fully, trust in the self helps
create not only the self (hence, a self worthy of being trusted) but also a depth of
experience itself worthy of our trust. Of course, such a trustworthy self and such
trustworthy experience are not in the least separable. In the end, they are identical.
14 The critique of experience might take the form of an experientially animated and
guided process wherein unblinking attention to immanent factors, above all, immanent
tendencies, on the one hand, and immanent failures, frustrations, fulfillments, and
facilitations, on the other, is the decisive factor (Hagberg 2008). In Pragmatism, William

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James writes: “Nothing outside of the flux secures the issue of it. It can hope salvation
only from its own intrinsic promises and potencies” (1978: 125).
15 The critique of experience is, at bottom, rooted in our experience of crisis, where the
word crisis designates (as the etymology suggests) not necessarily a catastrophe but
primarily a moment of decision (though the decision need not be a conscious or
deliberate one). In his role as an inquirer, committed to the ceaseless advance of
theoretical knowledge, Kant experienced a crisis: the Humean challenge needed to be
met, for otherwise Kant in this role could not go on (at least, could not go on in good
intellectual conscience). What we witness in Kant’s first Kritik is accordingly a response
to an existential crisis, not simply the solution of a philosophical puzzle. The
experience of crisis might also be exemplified by being challenged by a child as to why
one proceeds in a certain fashion, acts in a particular way. Wittgestein: “This is simply
what I do.” The question, time and again, turns out to be: How am I to go on
(Wittgenstein, PI, #179)?
The Recovery of Self-Trust/The Rediscovery of the

Ordinary
16 Though I have already touched upon this theme, it is instructive to see the way in
which Cavell links experience and self-trust. We have no option but to trust our
experience. But, in doing so, we are eventually, perhaps quickly, led to the realization
that experience is not up to the demands we are placing upon it. At this point, we might
turn aside from experience and seek for resources from some other source. This move
is predicated on the conviction that experience is inherently and invincibly deficient
precisely in providing us with the means for (say) more responsibly conducting our
inquiries, more justly arranging our institutions, or more sensitively shaping our
responses to the singular beings with whom our own singular lives are so intricately
entangled. But we might also turn back to experience in a self-consciously critical
manner, animated by the goal of transforming our experience into something more
trustworthy than it now is (Cavell 2005: 12). The present inadequacies of our experience
are not, in themselves, a sufficient warrant for jettisoning our trust in experience. To
rely uncritically upon our present experience is naïve; however, to jettison completely
that experience is self-stultifying, indeed, self-destructive. Maturity, inevitably the
result of a series of disillusionments, need not eradicate all trust in either the self or
the world as a source of warrants and as a site of fulfillments (the self-in-the world but
also the world as the matrix from which selves spring and the habitat in which they
dwell). Trust might – in truth, trust must – survive the process of maturation. This
actually reverses the order or, more precisely, suggests too simple a picture of the place
of trust in this process, for trust needs to be seen as integral to the origin of this
process as much as observable as a result. Trust as that which survives the process is a
transformation of what inaugurates and, at every turn, sustains the process. In fact, the
process of maturation is arrested in the most tragic ways when the self is unable or
unwilling to trust itself or the world in a sufficiently expansive and (in certain respects)
reckless manner.14 Again, the inability or unwillingness of individuals to trust
themselves is ultimately identifiable with their incapacity or refusal to trust the world
as a stage, especially for their unrehearsed exertions and interventions. Self-trust is
almost certainly the better name for what Emerson celebrates in “Self-Reliance” and it

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is indeed one of the names he himself uses to identify the object of his praise. Self-trust
does not preclude self-suspicion or self-doubt of every sort; indeed, it often invites and
even demands that certain suspicions be take seriously, that certain doubts be pressed
strenuously.
17 No philosopher has enabled us to appreciate the contemporary relevance of
transcendentalist authors (especially Emerson and Thoreau) more than Stanley Cavell.
In particular, his reading of Emerson is truly Emersonian. On this occasion, however, I
want to turn most of all to Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage, a
work no less inspired by Emerson than, say, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome or This
New Yet Unapproachable America. What Cavell in this book says about film is immediately
applicable to music. So, when he asserts, “A reading of a film sets up a continuous
appeal to the experience of the film, or rather an active memory of the experience (an
active anticipation of acquiring the experience)” (1981: 11), we might immediately
translate: Listening to a piece of music “sets up a continuous appeal to the experience
of the film, etc.” It demands us to check the work or performance out, again and again,
but also to check out (to take careful note of) our critical responses and imperfect
understanding, then, finally, to check (or suspend) our juridical impulses and even to
tarry in our imperfect understanding.15 Even popular films such as The Lady Eve or The
Philadelphia Story are to be read as carefully as philosophical texts; but, then, pieces of
music are to be listened to as painstakingly as such films.
18 “Checking one’s experience is,” Cavell suggests, “a rubric an American, or a spiritual
American, might give to the empiricism practiced by Emerson and by Thoreau” (Cavell
1981: 12). To be engaged with a film or a piece of music demands checking one’s
experience of that engagement. But there is an intended ambiguity here: on the one
hand, we need to check our experience in the sense of consulting it; on the other, we
need to check it in the sense a pilot tests the controls on a plane. Cavell is explicit in
stressing this twofold sense plus yet a third meaning: “I mean the rubric [of checking
one’s experience] to capture the sense at the same time of consulting one’s experience
and subjecting it to an examination, and beyond these, of momentarily stopping,
turning yourself away from its expected, habitual track, to find itself, its own track:
coming to attention” (Cavell 1981:12). He is also emphatic about the purpose of doing
so: “The moral of this practice is to educate your experience sufficiently so that it is worthy of
trust” (Cavell 1981: 12, emphasis added). Encouraged by Emerson and Thoreau, “one
learns,” Cavell adds, that without this trust in one’s own experience, expressed as a
willingness to find words for it [at least, as a drive to articulate it in some medium or
other, though not necessarily in language], without thus taking an interest in it, one is
without is without authority in one’s own experience” (emphasis added; cf. Philosophy the Day
After Tomorrow). Such self-trust is however only one half (or less) of the story. For it “is
fundamental to this view of experience not to accept any given experience as final but
to subject the experience and its object to the test of one another.” Accordingly, the
appeal to experience, so understood, cannot avoid being somewhat convoluted: it must
turn upon itself, in order to be able more confidently in the future to turn to itself. This
appeal does so, initially, for the sake of testing but, ultimately, for the sake of
strengthening and solidifying experience, as a resource for improvisation.
19 The philosophical appeal to experience is ordinarily conceived in a narrowly
epistemological context, whereas the critical or reflective appeal (cf. Diamond 2012; cf.
Murdoch 1997: 33-42, i.e., “Thinking and Language”) being advocated here is

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envisioned in reference to the entire range of human engagements (Smith 1981). Part
of the task of the pragmatists no less than the perfectionists is to re-make the
philosophical appeal into such a reflective appeal, the appeal of situated agents (or
implicated actors) to their personal involvement in an ongoing endeavor. The concern
is not to rise above, but to go on: the accent falls not on transcendence and distance but
immanence and involvement (or participation). It involves, at once, appropriating
more fully our own experience and imaginatively distancing ourselves from that
experience in such a way as to open a range of possibilities not otherwise available to
us. The paradox here is that in making our experience more truly our own we make
ourselves other than we have been: in making my experience more fundamentally mine
I make me into someone else, the most intimate of strangers, the most uncanny of
intimates.
20 A truly critical appeal to experience must, I urge, take the form outlined by Cavell in
the passages from Pursuits of Happiness quoted above. It exhibits the degree and form of
selftrust requisite for self-interrogation. It fights against nostalgia. In Philosophy the Day
After Tomorrow, Cavell astutely observes: “Nostalgia is an inability to open the past to
the future, as if the strangers who will replace you will never find what you have
found” (Cavell 2005: 218). In fighting against nostalgia, however, someone making such
an appeal fights for the present. But it fights for the present precisely as the site
wherein creativity emerges and often explodes upon the scene.16 We might take
extemporaneity as the opposite of nostalgia as Cavell defines the latter word in
Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow. Whereas nostalgia is the inability or perhaps the
unwillingness to open the past to the future, extemporaneity can be understood as the
willingness to trust both our present resources and future practitioners sufficiently to
open the past to the future. Of course, the present alone can be the site in which the past is
opened, by the creative exertions of extemporaneous actors implicated in unfolding
dramas, to the future (cf. LW 14, Ch. 22). The open-ended lineage provides, among other
things, paths back to earlier moments of inspiration. The innovations of Milton do not
cut us off from Shakespeare, any more than those of Charlie Parker cut us off from the
improvisations of Louis Armstrong. The drive forward very often makes available to us
the past from which it pushes off. Indeed, by virtue of such innovations and
improvisations, the past is rendered more vibrantly and vitally available to us than
unimaginative replications would leave it. While nostalgia is unable – or unwilling – to
expose the past to the risks of the future, self-trust is more than self-trust: it
encompasses trust of our successors to make of the past something vital and vibrant,
also of the past itself to be able to incorporate our modifications without destroying its
integrity.
The Preordained and the Extemporaneous

21 A conversation is, Michael Oakeshott suggests, “an unrehearsed intellectual adventure”
(Oakeshott 1991: 490). While being an intellectual adventure, a conversation can also be
a personal, social, cultural, and political one as well. More than anything else, what
makes such a multifaceted adventure possible – of greatest pertinence, what enables an
unrehearsed sequence of distinct gestures to add up to a more or less coherent whole –
are past performances. These are in effect rehearsals, while sometimes they are in
intent just that: deliberate preparations for extemporaneous performances. Although

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there might be a paradox here, there is no contradiction. Let me try to explain why. If
everything in one’s past in effect serves as a rehearsal for what one is now
extemporaneously doing, then that might seem to preclude extemporaneity. The
opposite is, in truth, the case: no amount of rehearsal or preparation eradicates
entirely the need for improvisation, no matter how unimaginatively meet or
mechanically satisfied. The living organism is blessed – and cursed – with an
immeasurable degree of irrepressible spontaneity, despite some regimes of discipline to
transform the human animal into a perfectly predictable or, simply, a thoroughly
reliable automaton. Extemporaneity cannot be eradicated: the life of the organism is
realized in time and, moreover, the unpredictable sequence of interpenetrating events
is both itself a site of novelty and an invitation to respond creatively to what is
unfolding, here and now (in other words, to the cutting edge of some inherent
tendencies in the temporal continuum of lived experience).
22 What gives any human action both its immediate point and its ineluctable claim upon
an intelligibility far transcending any actual moment, especially an intelligibility far
transcending the immediate present, is a vast, vague background of actions, agents, and
the world in which the strivings, struggles, defeats, and successes alone make sense.
Our performances, even our most routine ones, are to some degree improvisations.
23 What makes an unrehearsed performance possible is, paradoxically, the ordinarily vast
repertoire of prior performances. But the performer has not done precisely this before.
What the past performances enable is a truly present performance, more differentially
responsive to the unique demands of the actual situation (cf. MW 14: Ch. 18). Such a
performance is not a mere replication of previous exertions. It is inevitably, if not
always obviously, let alone dramatically, an instance of repetition and difference (cf.
Deleuze 1994), thus an instance wherein the repetition is inherently a moment of
differentiation, whereas the difference is inevitably a phase in a process wherein
echoes and traces of other phases are legible. Closely connected to this point, it is as
inheritors that we are improvisers. The very process of inheritance is far from an
unimaginative or indeed passive one. Think here of how a child acquires language. At
the heart of this acquisition, there is the creative, playful, and (in many respects)
spontaneous engagement with the competent speakers of a linguistic community.
Linguistic inheritance is both a personal and communal achievement; moreover, it is
the result of (again) both an imitative and a creative activity on the part of the
inheritor.
24 For the most part, breaking “free” of a tradition has point and power, justification and
value, only as an act wherein someone appropriates more deeply some resource of the
very tradition from which the individual is struggling to free herself. It is rarely the
case that we can break free in any decisive, let alone any thoroughgoing, way from a
tradition in which we have been reared (see Scott 1996 on lineage). The contemporary
contrast between “traditional” and “modern” societies is to a great degree an instance
of self-mystification. Premodern societies are claimed by many social theorists to be
traditional, whereas modern ones are said by these theorists to be post-traditional
(Giddens 1990: 4). Is any human society so bound by tradition as to preclude the very
possibility of extemporaneity? So, too, is any culture so structured by its rejection of
tradition as to escape the claims and influence of an intricate meshwork of intersecting
traditions?17 Is not anti-traditionalism itself a tradition characteristic of a certain epoch
in Western history?

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25 Conversin’ with the Elders is the title of a CD by James Carter (cf. Colapietro 2009). It
reminds us of a leitmotiv in this paper: the metaphor of conversation. The most
innovative jazz musicians know the “music” and this practically means that they know
a variety of traditions of musicking (Small 1998a). The conversation in question is
ineluctably intergenerational. It is, in its innermost character, an ongoing tradition: as
such, it is a transformative process in which representative figures from distinct
traditions, most urgently immediate elders and their more or less acknowledged
offspring18 oppose one another, learn from one another, cast aspersions, utter
denouncements, offer encouragement, maintain affection, and do much else.
26 The scenes of our everyday lives are ones of vital improvisation. 19 In this quotidian
sphere, we are doing nothing less than making up our lives as we go along. 20 There are,
to be sure, inherited scripts or (more appropriate for this context) inherited charts or
scores. The relationship between score and performance, analogous to that between
dictionary and usage, deserves comment here.
27 Those brought up in literate cultures in which formal documents are invested with
sacred authority or, at least, something akin to such authority, also ones in which
symbolic practices such as storytelling, musicking, and of course governing require (at
least for culturally recognized or authoritative practitioners) specific forms of literary
competence, are likely to misunderstand what is most vital. The constitution of a
country is, for example, a distillation of the commitments of a people. Its locus is first
and foremost in the habits of its citizens, including the disposition to check their
actions against the document itself (i.e., against the explicit protocols of those earlier
citizens in whom present citizens continue to invest a constitutive authority). Or take
the example of a dictionary. Indeed, just what is a dictionary? Though odd sounding,
the question is far from unintelligible; though not obviously germane to our inquiry, it
is in fact of the greatest salience. The normative function of a carefully compiled
lexicon cannot be denied. But just what is a dictionary and how does it acquire its
widely acknowledged authority regarding the (at least) apparent vagaries of
contemporary usage? A dictionary is, at bottom, a compilation of reminders of how a
particular linguistic community actually uses words. But why does actual usage dictate
or determine proper usage? More pointedly, why is it not appropriate to insist that the
way words have been actually used by the community in which I am a participant
cannot by itself determine the way they ought to be used here and now? How can mere
facts about established usage determine semantic norms regarding the permissible or,
more strongly, requisite deployment of a determinate set of linguistic signs?
28 These questions cannot be adequately addressed here. They can be barely addressed at
all. Suffice it to say, on this occasion, that we ultimately have to fall back on the
confession, “This is simply what we do – or what we say” (cf. Wittgenstein). We can of
course give reasons or, just as likely, elaborate narratives that go some distance toward
making what we do or say intelligible. Beyond this, we can go some distance toward
justifying these practices, but the justification cannot avoid being circular. There are
circles and there are circles. If the circle takes the form of a spiral, and in turn if the
spiral is invincibly, ineluctably, open-ended, the circularity of our justification need not
be vicious.
29 What is true of constitutions and dictionaries is, mutatis mutandis, true of scripts and
scores. In a culture such as ours, one disposed to invest the highest authority in
formalized procedures, codes, and protocols, it is commonplace to see a musical

81
performance as secondary to a formal score. The authority and originality of the

composer of such a score are, to a remarkable degree, allowed to constrain, if not to
eclipse entirely, the creativity and resourcefulness of the performers (Small). It is as
though the dictionary dictated in the most minutely detailed manner the vocalizations
of speakers in situ. There is much to be said for the dominant forms of Western
musicking, with their overriding emphasis on musical literacy and the exacting
“interpretation” of magisterial compositions. But the rigidly hierarchical world of such
musicking, also the commitment to an antecedently scripted performance, stand in
stark opposition to fluidly democratic relationships and vibrantly extemporaneous
performances. The rigidly hierarchical and antecedently fixed cannot, from the
perspective of either pragmatism or perfectionism, be allowed to preclude the flexibly
democratic and historically emergent. The extemporaneous creativity of unrehearsed
conversation, in its most quotidian forms no less than in its more disciplined ones, 21
needs to be accorded wider recognition and greater authority than they have at
present. This brings us, at last, to our ultimate aim: jazz improvisation as an arresting
example of just such extemporaneous creativity.
Time as Experience/Experience as Temporality:

Reprise
30 Let us very quickly recall, with James’s assistance, some of the most salient features of
human experience. “The fundamental fact about our experience is,” James stresses,
“that it is a process of change” (MT: 220). With a slight but significant variation, he
notes: “experience as a whole is a process in time, whereby innumerable terms lapse
and are superseded by others that follow upon them by transitions […] which are
themselves experiences, and must in general be accounted at least as real as the terms
which they relate” (MT: 231). Whatever is immediate in any experience is, James adds,
always provisionally so and indeed situationally so. “But owing to the fact that all
experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one. Every one is insufficient and
off its balance, and responsible to later points of view than itself” (MT: 221; emphasis added).
“Experience leads ever on and on, and objects and our ideas of objects may lead to the
same goal” (MT: 258). “Experience is a process that continually gives us new material to
digest” (MT: 208).
31 For our purposes, then, it is critical to stress that human experience is a temporal
process in which time as experience assumes myriad forms. But time is first and foremost
an affair of transitions, also one of transmutations, transformations, and even
transfigurations.
32 Our understanding or our own experience is inescapably partial, provisional, and
perspectival. Returning even to the most familiar experiences can, if that return is
truly reflective and hence imaginative, yield fresh insights, surprising illumination (cf.
Diamond 2012).
33 Acknowledging our finitude means, among other things, abandoning the ideal of
finality. The ongoing flux of our finite lives implies just what James emphasizes in a
text just quoted: “no point of view can ever be the last one. Every one is insufficient and
off its balance, and responsible to later points of view than itself.” But what he claims
regarding science (more precisely, a certain understanding of scientific

82
accomplishment) might have much wider applicability. In The Varieties of Religious

Experience, he suggests:
[T]he divorce between scientific facts and religious facts may not necessarily be as
eternal as it at first sight seems, nor the personalism and romanticism of the world
[…] be matters so irrevocably outgrown. The final human opinion may, in short, in
some manner now impossible to foresee, revert to the personal style, just as any
path of progress may follow a spiral rather than a straight line. If this were so, the
rigorously impersonal view of science might appear one day as having been a
temporarily useful expedient rather than the definitively triumphant position which the
sectarian scientist at present so confidently announces it to be. (James 1985: 395,
note 8, emphasis added)
34 In a universe such as ours, especially for a species such as us, definitively triumphant
positions are unobtainable. The best we can ever aspire to reach are temporarily useful
expedients. Their utility may of course span decades or even centuries; but it does so
principally by their remarkable adaptability to novel circumstances In other words,
there are definitive accomplishments, exemplary performances, but they fall short of
being absolutely definitive or unsurpassably exemplary. The accomplishments of, say,
Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein unquestionably define for us what the
practice of science must mean, just as the performances of (say) Armstrong, Ellington,
Parker, and Coltrane exemplify what musical improvisation can be.
35 Rigorous formalism is more often than not an invaluable discipline, at least when
subjection to the rigors of this discipline is voluntarily embraced rather than externally
imposed. But formal anarchism, at least in a weak sense, 22 can be no less valuable a
personal discipline,23 at least when the demands of sustaining such a stance (rather than
simply the initial impulse to break free from established forms) are imaginatively and,
thus, courageously met. The initial impulse exposes itself as infantile or, at best,
adolescent, if it does not struggle to find ways of going on. 24 The spirit of such
anarchism, at least with respect to philosophy, is exuberantly expressed by James in a
letter to Bergson (December 14, 1902) when he proclaims: “How good it is sometimes
simply to break away from all the old categories, deny old worn-out beliefs, and restate
things ab initio, making the lines of division fall into entirely new places!” (Perry: 606).
Of course, it is impossible completely to break away from “all the old categories,” to
deny all our inherited beliefs. The process of twisting free, however partial and
provisional, from the constitutive forms of some consolidated practice may be truly
emancipatory, because transformatively enlivening. As Paul Klee notes in one of his
notebooks, “form is the end, death. Form-giving is movement, action. Form-giving is
life.”
36 From a pragmatist perspective (at least, from a Deweyan one), virtually all art is
improvisational. In many cases, perhaps most, however, what we encounter is the
product of improvisation, not the process itself (cf. Sawyer 2000: 149-50). But the
product bears the traces of its origin in such a process. At least, this is Dewey’s position:
“A rigid predetermination of an end product whether by artist or beholder leads to the
turning out of a mechanical or academic product” (LW 10: 143; cf. Sawyer 2000: 154).
Artists of course care about what shape or form their works take; but they tend to care
about “the end-result as a completion of what goes before and not because of its
conformity or lack of conformity with a ready-made antecedent scheme” (LW 10: 143).
The self-trust of the artist is as much as anything a trust in the process: its
characteristic form is a far from begrudging willingness “to leave the outcome to the

83
adequacy of the means from which it issues and which it sums up.” In the case of some
artists, however, such self-trust points toward the felt inadequacy of means toward
which the work points and which it as yet has failed to attain. The work as a work is an
invitation to take up and renew the efforts of the artist to carry forward the process,
but this task requires developing means beyond anything presently possessed. Artists
trust themselves and their audiences enough to devote themselves to the cultivation of
unprecedented skills and sensitivities, that is, to hope that sustained, imaginative effort
will equip them with what neither they nor their audience now possess. In any event,
the “consummatory phase of experience – which is intervening as well as final – always
presents something new. Admiration always includes an element of wonder.” (LW 10:
143-44). For Dewey, then, art is always the result of improvisation, even when the
process by which the work came into being is, at least in part, hidden from those who
encounter the work afterwards. Given the importance of this point, quoting Dewey at
further length seems warranted:
The unexpected turn, something which the artists himself does not definitely
foresee, is a condition of the felicitous quality of a work of art; it saves it from being
mechanical. It gives the spontaneity of the unpremeditated to what would
otherwise be a fruit of calculation. The painter and poet like the scientific inquirer
know the delights of discovery. Those who carry on their work as a demonstration
of a preconceived thesis may have the joys of egotistic success but not that of
fulfillment of an experience for its own sake. In the latter they learn by their work,
as they proceed, to see [or perceive] and feel what had not been part of their
original plan and purpose.25 (LW 10: 144)
37 Those works having the power to arrest and sustain our attention trace their origin, in
part, to the unexpected turn, the unpremeditated effect, the creative process itself as
an unrehearsed conversation with a sensuous medium, various traditions, inchoate
impulses, dispositional tendencies, and much else. The work flows from such a
conversation and embodies in itself the traces of this give-and-take, even when its form
is, as in the case of a painting or a piece of sculpture, static (or synchronic) in some
sense.
38 But music is inherently diachronic and, thus, perceptibly dynamic or fluid, while some
forms of musicking are unquestionably extemporaneous. In the case of these forms, we
might highlight a handful of features especially relevant to the topic of this paper.
Musical improvisations such as those exemplified by Louis Armstrong’s West End Blues,
Paul Gonsalves’s solo on Diminuendo in Blue, Charlie Parker’s Koko, John Coltrane’s
Naima, or Sonny Rollins’s Green Dolphin Street are themselves works of art crafted,
intentionally yet spontaneously, as processes of improvisation. We are confronted with
an invitational process, not a finished product merely suggestive of its improvisational
origin. In the case of such improvisations, we are invited into the process in a more
immediate and dramatic manner than we are when the product is presented apart from
the process of its origination. Such a process precisely qua improvisation is:
transactional, emergentist, collaborative, unpredictable, problematizing, 26 and hence
expressive beyond anything intended by, or known to, the improvisers at the time of
their collaboration.27 What might seem contradictory to some, jazz ensembles rehearse
to prepare themselves for the exacting demands of “an unrehearsed adventure” in real
time before a live audience. Though some claim that such a performance precludes the
possibility of editing or revising, it might be more accurate to say that what we are
witnessing is a process of revising, though one that involves no less than re-envisioning
what one is doing, what counts as a problem or difficulty.

84
39 What emerges from such a process is exactly what G. H. Mead highlights when he
defines emergence. Much of his reflection on time is organized around the insight (at
least, the claim) that “a reality that transcends the present must exhibit itself in the
present” (Mead 1932: 11; cf. Mead 1938: 640-43). “The emergent when it appears is
always found to follow from the past, but before it appears it does not, by definition,
follow from the past” (Mead 1932: 2, emphasis added). To insist that the emergent must
be, in principle, deducible from the past is to break with the pragmatists, for whom the
universe is shot through with contingency and novelty. The novel and the contingent
are not necessarily illusions due to our ignorance of the laws governing phenomena;
they are, in some instances at least, nothing less than features of reality itself. The
demands of intelligibility dispose us to stress continuity with the past and thereby
compromise the extent to which the irreducibly novel explodes upon the scene, in the
present. In contrast, the celebration of novelty inclines us to highlight rupture with
precedent or antecedent. The pragmatist orientation invites us to take seriously the
possibility of there emerging, here and now, novel forms of intelligibility (cf. Hausman
1984), but to treat no less earnestly the threads of continuity between the unfinished
present and an apparently irrevocable past (see, however, Mead 1932: 2). For Mead, at
least, “there is and always will be a necessary relation of the past and the present but
[…] the present in which the emergent appears accepts that which is novel as an
essential part of the universe, and from that standpoint rewrites the universe” (Mead
1932: 11). It is, in Mead’s judgment, nothing less than the task of philosophy “to bring
into congruence with each other this universality of determination which is the text of
modern science, and the emergence of the novel” (Mead 1932: 14; cf. Sawyer 2000: 152).
The emergence of novelty might be identified as the “text” of modern life, nowhere
more legible than in the arts expressive of the ethos of modernity and its discontents.
40 The forms we have inescapably acquired in the course of our lives are either accorded
the status of forms in the sense denigrated by Klee or they are deployed as resources
for form-giving beyond anything dictated by these forms themselves. That is, they are
either dead and deadening things or living and enlivening ones. The given forms are
frequently accorded the status of absolutely authoritative texts, scripts, or scores; or,
alternatively, the given forms are treated primarily as immediate resources for form-
giving. Regarding the latter, the function of intelligence in its most vital form is the
introduction and nurturance of novelty (Whitehead 1929 [1971]: 25; also 27, 32). Such
intelligence is observable in virtually all domains of experience, but nowhere more
manifestly than in the forms of musicking commonly called jazz improvisation.
41 It might be an exaggeration to assert, “the history of pragmatism survives most
unexpectedly, and therefore most startlingly, in black music and contemporary
experimental writing” (Magee 2004: 179). It is, however, no exaggeration at all to claim
that the spirit animating especially James’s pragmatism and indeed Cavell’s
perfectionism is truly akin to that animating these forms of musicking and writing. The
philosophical celebration of creative intelligence obtains pertinence and power when
conjoined to historical instantiations of extemporaneous creativity.
42 For much of our history, the achievements of art no less than those of philosophy have
seemed to enable the transcendence of time, as such. More recently, however, an ethos
of immanence has in certain circles, including those of pragmatists and perfectionists,
discredited the ideal of such transcendence. But we are not imprisoned in time or
history any more than we are in our own bodies. Whatever forms of transcendence are

85
available to us, they are available in and through our temporality and historicity no less
than our embodiment and sociality. In a poem (“in the time of daffodils,” e. e.
cummings insists, parenthetically, “(time from time shall set us free).” Pragmatists and
perfectionists remove the parentheses: this is hardly an aside or a line to be separated,
however slightly, from what most demands utterance. Only time from time shall set us
free and such freedom is itself only a critical distance – better, a creative distance –
from some facets of our inheritances and traditions, not from inheritance or tradition as
such. Even so, the instances of twisting free from time in time is at once a human
commonplace (witness the irrepressible spontaneity of ever yday conversations) and a
remarkable achievement (witness the exemplary improvisations of such jazz musicians
as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, or Sonny Rollins). The given
forms give way to form-giving, when just the right tone in an everyday exchange is
struck or when jazz truly becomes (in the words of Sonny Rollins), “the music of
surprise,” for the performers (at least) as much as the auditory collaborators (i.e., what
is ordinarily called the audience or listeners).
Conclusion
43 Jazz improvisation is just a dramatic example of a pervasive feature of human
comportment. The spontaneous creativity exhibited in our everyday extemporaneity
cannot be gainsaid. Human perception is an endless source of irreducible novelty, but
our conceptualization of our own perceptions tend, as James so brilliantly made clear,
to efface the novelty no less than the fluidity of our experience. Reason as a juridical
capacity is not to be utterly denigrated; it however needs to be supplemented.
Intelligence as an irrepressible drive toward extemporaneous novelty needs to be seen
for what it is – the human face of human rationality (again, cf. Whitehead 1929 [1971];
also MW 14: 48-49, 134-38; LW 1, Ch. 10). The ongoing critique of reason is
simultaneously an ever deeper interrogation of experience. When this interrogation is
undertaken for rendering our experience more luminous, intense, differential,
sustaining, and indeed startling (LW 1: 18; 305; also LW 10: 41), the appeal to experience
is made, in a single stroke, more critical and more humane.
44 Self-trust in its most admirable form underwrites self-interrogation of a relentless and
(in certain respects) frequently ruthless character. Self-interrogation in such an
adverse form alone makes our trust in our own experience trustworthy, for it helps to
transform experience into something more secure yet plastic, more stable yet protean,
than it otherwise would be. These are, at least, the directions in which we are invited to
move – the ways we might go on – in light of our experience of extemporaneity (at least,
as I interpret this experience).
45 These modes of temporality constitutive of this experience – e.g., the unblinking
confrontation with the irrevocability of any actual past linked to the imaginative
resignification of the import of this irrevocable actuality; the present as a scene of
struggle between a stubborn past and an irrepressible future; the future as, at once,
elusive and fateful – (the modes of temporality) are, especially as affective processes of
personal entanglement, nowhere more sensuously available to us than in musicking,
above all, jazz improvisation. Put far more simply, time as experience and experience
as temporality are articulated more arrestingly, intricately, and emphatically in
musicking than anywhere else. In music, art as experience takes the form of time as

86
experience. In this form, our experience of time and the temporality of experience are
not so much made into objects of contemplation (though to some extent this is true) as
we are made into processes of transitions, transience, and transfiguration. That is, the
human animal is afforded a unique opportunity to have the time of its life, in the
multifarious configurations in which experienced time unfolds, above all, in the
interstices of everyday life. Experience is first and foremost had, not known (LW 1: 28). 28
But there is having and there is having! Experience had as art – time had as music – are
more philosophically illuminating and, of greater importance, more humanly centering
than philosophers and indeed other theorists have yet discerned (cf. Bowie 2009).
46 My reflections on time as experience are designed, more than anything else, to
exemplify a way we as philosophers might go on – and go on in an innovative way. In
our most creative moments, our unwitting quotations of others are audible (cf., once
again, Emerson’s “Quotation and Originality”). But, in our most seemingly routine
performances, a nuanced extemporaneity (however slight and thus imperceptible) is
discoverable. Time as experience is, accordingly, best approached in reference to
experience as extemporaneity: the cutting edge of our ongoing experience is, in effect,
a musical gesture. The significance of this gesture is affectively had only as a moment
unto itself and a phase of transition from what precedes to what follows this moment.
The intelligibility of this gesture forever eludes those who lack a feel for what is to be
had in such sequences, ones often punctuated by a single note held for a sustained
duration, but more often by a rapid sequence of different notes organized along
distinct axes. The medium of articulation can only be that of music itself (Bowie 2009),
though verbal and other forms of commentary might send us back to a piece or
performance with new ears, with a more probing and appreciative feel for what
resounds in this medium.
47 “We humans,” James insists, are incurably rooted in the temporal point of view. The
eternal’s ways are utterly unlike our ways” (James 1977 [1909]: 23). But much of the
history of philosophy has been animated by an impulse to transcend temporality and,
thereby, to make our ways the eternal’s ways. What the pragmatists in their way and
Cavell in his make clear is what another inhabitant of Cambridge, MA, noted when he
wrote, “time from time shall set us free” (cummings). The transcendence of time is a
transition and indeed an achievement in time. The experience of eternity is,
paradoxically, an arresting moment in the ongoing rush of the temporal flux itself.
Very few people who have ever listened to music have not felt themselves to be lifted
out of time and suspended in eternity, however briefly (!). Our experience of music
discloses the feel of time, including the felt sense of a present possibly inclusive of the
entirety of past, present, and future (Neville), better than any other medium of
articulation, not least of all because this experience is itself essentially temporal. Time
is of the essence – of music. In its affectively charged disclosure 29 of the most intricate
textures of experiential temporality, we are provided with an impetus to acknowledge 30
that we are indeed “incurably rooted in the temporal point of view.”
48 Temporality and the perspective it demands of us are, however, not diseases. They are
decidedly not anything from which we need to be cured. Much rather, philosophical
therapy is needed for counteracting our insistence upon casting ourselves as time’s
stepchildren31 (Lovibond 1983: 206). Despite our fantasies, philosophical and otherwise,
we were not abandoned by eternity on time’s doorstep one cold evening: we were
formed and nurtured in time’s womb and exiled into other spheres of temporality.

87
Music more than anything else and jazz more than any other form of music help us to
avoid this impiety inherent in the fantasy that we are eternity’s child (cf. Santayana on
impiety). As agents, we are in no small measure the playthings of time. But, precisely as
such playthings, we can mount our resistance and improvise the script or (better) the
score as we have inherited it, if only just a moment ago. Extemporaneity is shot
through with resistance and reparation, rejection and reconciliation, implosion and
renovation, quotation and originality, repetition and – difference. The sensuous shapes
of musical extemporaneity are, in sum, invaluable for discerning this and much more.
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NOTES
1. In Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome, Stanley Cavell writes: “Perfectionism, as I think of it, is
not a competing theory of the moral life, but something like a dimension or tradition of the
moral life that spans the course of Western thought and concerns what used to be called the state
of one’s soul, a dimension that places enormous burdens on personal relationships and on the
possibility or necessity of the transforming of oneself and of one’s society …” (Cavell 1990: 2). See
Falomi 2010. In identifying this as my ultimate goal, I am not suggesting or implying that this –
or this alone – is my main goal. I have several principal objectives, this being only one of them.
Indeed, this essay is as much, if not more, a reflection on the most appropriate form of
experiential appeal as it is a treatment of improvisation.
2. I do not mean to blur the differences between pragmatism and perfectionism, much less to
suggest an exact equivalence or an easy harmony between Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead, on
the one side, and Stanley Cavell, Garry Hagberg, Richard Eldridge, and others, on the other side.
In other words, I take with the utmost seriousness what Cavell argues in “What’s the Use of
Calling Emerson a Pragmatist?” and what he asserts, for example in Conditions Handsome and
Unhandsome (see especially Cavell 1990: 13).
3. “Tradition and custom, especially when emotionally charged, are a part of the habits that have
become one with our very being” (LW 9: 11).
4. In “The Development of American Pragmatism” (1925), Dewey insists: “reason, or thought, in
its most general sense, has a real, though limited function, a creative, constructive function”
(LW 2: 13; emphasis added).
5. I am borrowing this term from Christopher Small. In Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and
Listening, he informs us that: The word “is the present participle, or gerund, of the verb to
music.” For the verb, he proposes this definition: “To music is to take part in, in any capacity, in a
musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or praticising, by
providing material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing” (Small 1998a: 9;
italics omitted).
6. In “Poetry and Philosophy” (1890), a commencement address given at Smith College, Dewey
asserts: “after all, science means only knowledge – philosophy, only love of wisdom, only the
essay at reaching the meaning of this experience of ours” (EW 3: 112). Cf. his “Philosophy and
Civilization.” Philosophy is, first and foremost, at attempt to understand more fully and deeply
the meaning of our own experience.
7. In “How Should One Read a Book?” Virginia Woolf insists: “To admit authorities, however
furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value
to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those
sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions – there we have none”
(Woolf 1932: 234). But she is quick to point out that freedom in any meaningful sense involves
more than being out from under the dictates of authority: “To enjoy freedom […] we have to
control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, squirting half the house in order to water a
single rose-bud; we must train them, exactly and powerfully, here on the very spot.” For such
self-training the advice and suggestions of the experienced reader can, of course, be invaluable.
8. In Human Nature and Conduct (1922), Dewey stresses: “There is instinctive wisdom in the
tendency of the young to ignore the limitations of the environment. Only thus can they discover
their own power and learn the differences in different kinds of environing limitations. But this
discovery when once made marks the birth of intelligence; and with its birth comes the
responsibility of the mature to observe, to recall, to forecast” (MW 14: 118).
9. This expression and its use as part of the title for this essay is, of course, indebted to the title of
one of Dewey’s most important works, Art as Experience.

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10. Our habits are what we primarily go on. “Experience is,” Dewey asserts in a late manuscript,
“no stream, even though the stream of feelings and ideas (that flows upon its surface is the part
which philosophers love to traverse. Experience [however] includes the enduring banks of
natural constitution and acquired habit as well as the stream” (LW 1: 370).
11. Though I am quoting an instance of this remark as found in one of his published works, this
was a point that John Smith was fond of making in informal conversation.
12. “For we do not, after all, simply have experience; we are,” Patricia Hampl stresses, “entrusted
with it. We must do something – make something – with it. A story, we sense, is the only possible
habitation of the burden of our witnessing” (Hampl 1999: 18).
13. “The great public work of the instrumental philosophy,” Hocking suggests in “Action and
Certainty” (1929/1930), “has been to limber up the ways of knowing of this people [i.e., of the
American people], to reduce fixed dogmas to working hypotheses fit for experiment; to the
intellectually tradition, authority-seeking, heroworshipping American the courage of his own
experience, As a people we do believe in the dignity of labor. […] We must carry this belief over in
the dignity of a laboring philosophy, arising out of and pertinent to existing crises, not to ancient
ones” (LW 5: 463; emphasis added).
14. At the conclusion of “Circles,” Emerson observes: “Nothing great was ever achieved without
enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment. The great moments of history are
the facilities of performance through the strength or ideas, as the works of genius and religion.
‘A man,’ said Oliver Cromwell, ‘never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going.’
Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this
oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men. For the like reason they ask the
aid of wild passions, to ape in some manner these flames and generosities of the heart ”
(Emerson 1982: 238). In Human Nature and Conduct, Dewey highlights another facet of this, one
concerning the orientation of children toward the world: “There is instinctive wisdom in the
tendency of the young to ignore the limitations of the environment. Only thus can they discover
their own power and learn the differences in different kinds of environing limitations” (MW 14:
118).
15. This is what John Keats advises in a letter and, moreover, what Dewey endorses in Art as
Experience: in his famous phrase, this is “Negative Capability.” In his far less famous explication,
Keats means by this the capacity to live with “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any
irritable reaching after fact and reason” (quoted by Dewey in LW 10: 39). The resounding
conclusion of this important chapter, the title of which in part is borrowed from Keats (“The Live
Creature and ‘Ethereal Things’”), is worth recalling here: “Ultimately there are but two
philosophies. One of them accepts life and experience in all its uncertainties, mystery, doubt, and
half-knowledge and turns that experience upon itself to deepen and intensify its own qualities –
to imagination and art. This is the philosophy of Shakespeare and Keats” (LW 10: 41). It is also the
philosophy of Dewey and, arguably, the other pragmatists.
16. In Experience and Education, Dewey identifies a problem that he takes to be “new in the story of
education: How shall the young become acquainted with the past in such a way that the
acquaintance is a potent agent in appreciation of the living present?” (LW 13: 10). This is in effect
a corollary derived from James’s more general claim regarding human experience: nothing
outside of the flux secures the issue of it.
17. In “One Current Religious Problem” (1936), a response to Percy Hughes’s critique of A Common
Faith and other writings by Dewey on religion, Dewey stresses: “About the importance of
tradition – or, better, traditions – in effecting the desired organization I have no doubt. But I am
high skeptical of all arguments that there is but one available tradition. We have at our disposal
many traditions. There is the great tradition of autonomous literature, of music, of painting, of
all the fine arts, in each of which, moreover, there are many significant traditions. There is the
tradition of democracy; there is the tradition of experimental science, which if not thoroughly

93
established is yet far from embryonic” (LW 11: 117). In The Public and Its Problems, Dewey insists:
“The level of action fixed by embodied intelligence is always the important thing” (LW 2: 166).
Intelligence is embodied in habits. It is also concretely embodied in the vast array of human
artifacts without which the more refined dispositions of human agents would could never sustain
themselves, let alone take deep enough root ever to flower.
18. A tradition is very often, if not always, an intergenerational struggle. Such an agon assumes a
more central and intense form in some cultures than in others.
19. “The sweetest music,” Emerson suggests, “is not the oratorio, but in the human voice when it
speaks from its instant life, tones of tenderness, truth, or courage” (CW 2: 216; cf. Day 2000: 105).
20. “Somewhere being must,” James insists, “iimediately breast nonentity. Why may not the
advancing front of experience, carrying its immanent satisfactions and dissatisfactions, cut
against the black inane as the luminous orb of the moon cuts the cærulean abyss? Why should
anywhere the world be absolutely fixed and finsihed? And if reality genuinely grows, why may it
not grow in these very determinations which here and now are made?” (MT: 222; emphasis added).
“Our acts, our turning-places, where we seem to ourselves to make ourselves and grow, are,” he
asserts elsewhere, “the parts of the world to which we are closest, the parts of which our
knowledge is the most intimate and complete. Why should we not take them at their face-value?
Why may they not be the actual turning-places and growing-places which they seem to be, of the
world – why not the workshop of being, where we catch fact in the making, so that nowhere may
the world grow in any other kind of way than this?” (James 1978: 138).
21. There is no contradiction here. An extemporaneous performance can be a disciplined one,
above all, because the disciplined attention of improvisational artists is a critical feature in any
successful improvisation. The apparent “abandonment” of control is the suspension of dominant
habits, for the sake of the more or less free play of suppressed ones but also the spontaneous
promptings of inchoate impulses.
22. In a strong sense, an anarchist designates anyone who rejects laws as such; in a weaker sense,
this term refers to an individual who rejects the state as an institution designed to enforce
lawfulness. The kind of anarchist toward whom I am gesturing here does not reject forms as
such, but rather the absolute authority of antecedently determined forms and, moreover, the
fixation on form rather than preoccupation with processes of form-giving.
23. “There is,” Dewey suggests in Experience and Education, “no discipline so severe as the
discipline of experience subjected to the tests of intelligent development and direction” (LW 13:
90). Improvisation is voluntary, frequently joyful subjection to such immanent discipline – the
discipline inherent in the demands, urgencies, and propensities of experience itself. Out of such
discipline, creative intelligence alone is born. Rather than being an advocate of irrationalism or
anti-intellectualism, Dewey was a champion of intelligence in this sense. No sensed more the
vital role of creative intelligence “in the development and control of a living and moving
experience” (LW 13: 60). Though in the text to which I am referring Dewey does not append this
adjective to intelligence, there is little or no question that this is implicit in what he is advocating
here.
24. “The release of some portion of the stock of impulses [always available to the live creature]
is,” Dewey notes in Human Nature and Conduct, “an opportunity, not an end. In its origin it is the
product of chance; but it affords imagination and invention their chance. The moral correlate
[also the artistic one] of liberated impulse is not immediate activity, but reflection upon the way
in which to use impulse to renew disposition and reorganize habit” (MW 14: 117). But immediate
activity might be both the initial phase of a reflective process and a promising gesture worthy of
being repeated countless times and, in this process of reiteration, capable of being interrogated
in diverse ways (think here of how a jazz musician will play the same lick over and over again,
altering it ever so slightly, also often quite radically).

94
25. For the danger of egotism even in improvisation, see Garry Hagberg’s “Jazz Improvisation
and Ethical Interaction: A Sketch of the Connections.” His example of the differences between the
younger and older Stan Getz are especially instructive in this regard.
26. While this term will likely be taken as an allusion to Michel Foucault, and while this would
not be a mistake, my use of it here refers primarily to what Sawyer identifies as “problem-
finding” (Sawyer 2000: 153-54). For example, a “‘problem-finding’ painter is constantly searching
for her or his visual problems while painting – improvising a painting rather than executing it”
(Sawyer 2000: 153, emphasis added).
27. Here I am drawing heavily on the work of R. Keith Sawyer. See, in particular, Sawyer 2003. In
a more extended treatment of this elusive topic, I would have to explain more fully what these
terms designate. For the purpose of this paper, however, all I can do is refer my readers to the
work of Sawyer. Nonetheless, I hope to return to this topic and, on that occasion, elaborate in my
own way these salient features of the improvisational process.
28. An earlier but extremely illuminating articulation of this point is “Epistemological Realism:
The Ubiquity of the Knowledge Relation” (MW 6).
29. While not all music is affectively charged, much is. Even those instances where little or no
emotions are given sensuous form or expression in a piece of music, the textures of time as
experienced are made available to us for contemplation or scrutiny. Those instances in which
conflicts, tensions, and resolutions of an incredibly intricate character, with the characteristic
emotion involvement invited by these instances, are, however, sensuous forms in which the
textures of temporality are made most forcibly but also vividly available to us (see, e.g., Langer).
30. Here as well as elsewhere in this paper, I am using this word in the sense in which
Wittgenstein and, following him, Cavell tend to use it.
31. Referring to Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, Sabina Lovibond in Realism and Imagination in
Ethics suggests: “The sickness which that philosophy sets out to treat (the ‘bewitchment of our
intelligence by means of language’ [PI 1, #109]) has its origins, he implies, in the incomplete
acceptance of our embodied condition, and in our failure to acknowledge the significance of that
condition for the reflective undersanding of such topics as meaning and rationality” (Lovibond
1983: 206), also of course such topics as action and time. Our incomplete acceptance of our
embodied condition encompasses a failure to acknowledge that condition as temporal, without
qualification.
ABSTRACTS
The characteristic form of human action is an extemporaneous performance or improvisational
exertion. An ordinary conversation (what C. S. Peirce calls “a wonderfully perfect kind of sign-
functioning” [EP 2: 391]) provides us with an extremely useful model for understanding other
forms of “unrehearsed intellectual adventure” (Oakeshott 1991: 490), not least of all jazz
improvisation. But since our inquiry into this range of considerations turns on appealing to our
experience as improvisational actors in the overlapping situations of everyday life, this appeal
itself needs to be considered. Accordingly, the appeal to experience is here interrogated with the
aid of what pragmatists but also perfectionists such as Stanley Cavell say about it. What Cavell
asserts regarding checking one’s experience, as a way of rendering it trustworthy, is of the utmost
critical importance for the present inquiry. After exploring what is entailed by an appeal to
experience, when conjoined to what Cavell identifies as the task of checking one’s experience,

95
the author turns to our quotidian experience as improvisational actors and, ultimately, to the
rather singular achievements of jazz improvisers. In doing so, he hopes to illuminate the
inherently creative dimension of human action, wherever it unfolds.
AUTHOR
VINCENT COLAPIETRO
The Pennsylvania State University
vxc5[at]psu.edu

96
How Novelty Arises from Fields of

Experience
A Comparison Between W. James and A. N. Whitehead
Maria Regina Brioschi
I. The “Re-coloration” of James, according to

Whitehead
1 Before understanding and comparing the authors’ thoughts from the perspective of
their conceptions of experience, it is necessary to clarify and explain what is their
connection, from a historical-critical point of view. Indeed, the relationship subsisting
between James and Whitehead has been noticed from the very outset by the critical
scholarship on Whitehead, as is testified by the presence of articles that appeared
before the author’s death.1 Such concern is due not only to the fact that Whitehead
inaugurates the properly speculative phase of his thought in 1924, 2 the same year in
which he is called to teach at Harvard University, nor even simply to a peculiar affinity
in terms of interests or temperament.
2 Granted that James is cited by Whitehead in the preface of his Process and Reality,
alongside Bergson and Dewey, as evidence of his intellectual debt towards these
authors, the place reserved for him in the peculiar history of philosophy outlined in
Science and the Modern World holds a prominent relevance, which stands in need of
clarification, if not of proper justification. By way of example, let us consider a passage
from the aforementioned work:
It is an exaggeration to attribute a general change in a climate of thought to any
one piece of writing, or to any one author. No doubt Descartes only expressed
definitely and in decisive form what was already in the air of his period.
Analogously, in attributing to William James the inauguration of a new stage in
philosophy, we should be neglecting other influences of his time. But, admitting
this, there still remains a certain fitness in contrasting his essay, Does Consciousness
Exist?, published in 1904, with Descartes’s Discourse on Method, published in 1637.
James clears the stage of the old paraphernalia; or rather he entirely alters its
lighting. (SMW: 143)3

97
3 Throughout an original critical re-examination of the modern history of philosophy

and science, in this excerpt Whitehead equates the “genius”4 of the seventeenth
century, Descartes, with James, correspondingly targeted as the genius of the
nineteenth century. It is therefore inevitable to pose the following questions: why does
Whitehead address James as the genius of the nineteenth century? Why does he “
entirely alter the stage lighting”?
4 The first step towards an understanding of the momentous function of James,
according to Whitehead, is that of getting a grasp of both the subject matter and the
purpose of Science and the Modern World. In the introductory pages, Whitehead
maintains that the thesis he means to develop in the text can find expression in the
idea that the “quiet growth of science has practically recoloured our mentality” (SMW:
2). And that is not all, because these “modes of thought which in former times were
exceptional are now broadly spread through the educated world” (SMW: 2).
Consequently, this change can be traced of course in terms of scientific methodology
and philosophical premises, but must be especially comprehended in terms of
mentality, because – according to Whitehead – “the new mentality is more important
even than the new science and the new technology” (SMW: 2). The first aspect through
which he addresses such a mentality consists in a renewed and constant attention for
particular facts. The author highlights:
What I mean is just that slightest change of tone which yet makes all the difference.
This is exactly illustrated by a sentence from a published letter of that adorable
genius, William James. When he was finishing his great treatise on the Principles of
Psychology, he wrote to his brother Henry James, “I have to forge every sentence in
the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts.” (SMW: 2-3)
5 The change of tone is therefore determined by the primary interest accorded to stubborn
facts. But by laying stress on this aspect, Whitehead does not mean so much as to
become the champion of a vague and naïve emphasis on mere facts 5 as he does to invoke
the same orientation attitude which James outlines well in What Pragmatism means,
where he claims that pragmatism is that “attitude of looking away from first things,
principles, ‘categories,’ supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits,
consequences, facts” (WWJ1: 32).
6 Strictly speaking, for Whitehead this change can be easily clarified by the brief
comparison between the results produced by Descartes’s and James’s thoughts. Indeed,
on the one hand Whitehead claims that, in virtue of the clear-cut distinction between
matter and consciousness worked out by Descartes, “after the close of the seventeenth
century, science took charge of the materialistic nature, and philosophy took charge if
the cogitating minds” (SMW: 145), and that this perpetration of such a rigid dualism
has led to “unfortunate limitations of thought on both sides. Philosophy has ceased to
claim its proper generality, and natural science is content with the narrow round of its
methods” (FR: 50). On the other he observes that “we have now come to a critical
period of the general reorganization of categories of scientific thought. Also sciences,
such as psychology and physiology, are hovering on the edge of the crevasse separating
science from philosophy” (FR: 50), and for Whitehead James is the most prominent
champion of such a reorganization.6
7 As far as the change in mentality is concerned, we might say that the paradigm of
scientific materialism has begun to fade away since the nineteenth century, so paving
the way for an organicistic conception which, starting from the primacy accorded to

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experience, acknowledges that “the concrete fact, which is the organism, must be a
complete expression of the character of a real occurrence. Such a displacement of
scientific materialism, if it ever takes place, cannot fail to have important consequences
in every field of thought” (SMW: 38-39).
8 From another point of view, if “the ancient world takes its stand upon the drama of the
Universe, [and] the modern world upon the inward drama of the Soul” (SMW: 141),
nowadays drama is represented by ‘event,’ conceived of as a primeval and primary
unity of universe and soul. Thus, one might agree with Whitehead in claiming that:
The materialistic starting point is from independently existing substances, matter
and mind. The matter suffers modifications of its external relations of locomotion,
and the mind suffers modifications of its contemplated objects. There are, in this
materialistic theory, two sorts of independent substances, each qualified by their
appropriate passions. The organic starting point is from the analysis of process as the
realization of events disposed in an interlocked community. The event is the unit of things
real. (SMW: 152-153)7
9 Thanks to such a swift journey throughout Whitehead’s thought, it is now clearer why
that ‘adorable genius,’ as he defines James, occupies such a central place in his
historical and theoretical analysis. Having concluded this preliminary part, we might
now safely venture ourselves into more specific aspects of the influence which James
exerted on Whitehead.
II. Comparing Philosophies: The Role of Reason and

Experience
10 If, as it has been shown so far, Whitehead’s appreciation of James is undeniable, 8 it will
be now necessary to identify the specific elements of influence, and then proceed to the
confrontation between the two authors with reference to the problem of novelty. 9
11 First of all, from the point of view of both method and setting the authors have similar
requirements, which can be grouped into three different and salient conceptual points,
namely 1) The task and role of the philosophical praxis, in agreement with a properly
antiintellectualistic instance; 2) The “prospective” (WWJ1: 53) and dynamic nature of
reason (and hence of philosophy); 3) Empiricism and the absolute primacy of
experience.10
12 (1) For both authors the very first function of philosophy (or of the pragmatic method)
consists in offering an instrument able to unveil and sort out those controversies of the
abstract thought, which depend on misplaced assumptions and metaphysical premises,
by way of reduction or reference to the field of experience. Just as – Sini claims – “more
than to ‘re-solve’ problems and to inspire definite beliefs, the pragmatic maxim helps
to ‘dissolve,' to show that they are ‘false problems’” (Sini 2000: 15), 11 in the same way
Whitehead maintains that the first function of philosophy is to be a “critic of
abstractions” (SMW: 88), throughout a reference to experience as the utmost concretum:
in fact, on the author’s view, “the elucidation of immediate experience is the sole
justification for any thought” (PR: 4), whereas thought, qua abstract, always runs the
risk of getting impaired by the so called “fallacy of misplaced concreteness” (SMW: 52). All
the same, a meaningful difference ought to be considered with respect to this resort to
experience, in an anti-intellectual perspective. Indeed, for Whitehead the appeal to facts
has a derivative intent, while for James it has an applicative one. In other words, the

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unveiling of preconceived theses occurs, in the case of Whitehead, through the referral
of a given concept to the field of the experience from which it derives its origin; whereas,
in the case of James, it occurs through the confrontation with the consequences which
the concept at issue might bring about. As James states: “The pragmatic method is
primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be
interminable. […] The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion
by tracing its respective practical consequences. What the difference would it
practically make to any one if this notion rather than that notion were true?” (WWJ1:
28).
13 (2) Secondly, in order to understand the specific nature of this philosophical attitude, it
is necessary, on the one hand, to catch a glimpse of the methodological perspective
adopted by both authors and, on the other, to understand the possibilities and the
nature they acknowledge to reason. In this respect, it might be useful to oppose the
thought of James and Whitehead to the rationalistic tendencies proper to traditional
philosophy. As James himself suggests:
The essential contrast is that for rationalism reality is ready-made and complete
from all eternity, while for pragmatism it is still in the makings and awaits part of
its complexion from the future. On the one side the universe is absolutely secure,
on the other it is still pursuing its adventures (WWJ1: 123).
14 As James stresses in a more articulated way in his A Pluralistic Universe – if, qua
rationalists, “you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in
its wholeness. Out of no amount of discreteness can you manufacture the concrete”
(WWJ4: 116). On the contrary – and this is exactly his pragmatic invitation – one should
pose one-self “in the making by a stroke of intuitive sympathy with the thing […].
Philosophy should seek this kind of living understanding of the movement of reality,
not follow science in vainly patching together fragments of its dead results” (WWJ4:
117-18).
15 If the echo of Bergson resounds in such an invitation, it is nevertheless true that the
immediacy and sympathy, indicated as a way towards an effective knowledge of
experience, do not correspond to a form of intuitionism able to pave the way for the
irrational and to distrusts reason in its power to positively grasp the items internal to
“the living, moving, active thickness of the real” (WWJ4: 116). Rather, it is a matter of
an opening and an understanding that differ from the retrospective analysis to which
we use to associate the employment and the function of reason. What are therefore the
possibilities and the modalities proper to the philosophical progression here
introduced, as well as to reason – understood as its tool? First and foremost, as James
points out in Pragmatism by criticizing Spencer’s stance, philosophy is not simply
retrospective: “philosophy is prospective also, and, after finding what the world has
been and done, and yielded, still asks the further question ‘what does the world
promise?’” (WWJ1: 53).12 What clearly re-emerges here is that dimension of becoming
(and properly of the future) situated at the core of the distinctive concreteness of the
real movement described above. This is properly the direction pursued by radical
empiricism, as James specifies in his Essays in Radical Empiricism:
Understanding backwards is, it must be confessed, a very frequent weakness of
philosophers, both of the rationalistic and of the ordinary empiricist type. Radical
empiricism alone insists on understanding forwards also, and refuses to substitute static
concepts of the understanding for transitions in our moving life. A logic similar to that

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which my critic seems to employ here should, it seems to me, forbid him to say that
our present is, while present, directed towards our future. (WWJ3: 121) 13
16 The pragmatic method addresses the future, the facts, the (possible) practical
implications of a given idea in order to assess it. The kind of world it takes issue with is
a world being constantly in fieri; therefore, its investigation is bent onwards with
respect to the same concepts on which philosophy usually hinges. The function of
philosophy – and that of reason (pragmatically conceived) – emerges into light while
frontally facing change and becoming, without exhausting itself in its own distinctive
retrospective analytic. What does philosophy consist of, then? How can it be described?
With regard to this, it will be useful to make use of some passage of Whitehead,
extremely akin to the position just expounded and taken from a short text published in
1929: Function of Reason.14 In this work, which a substantial part of the Whiteheadian
scholarship has not hesitated to define “the most straightforward, and in many ways
the most suggestive and delightful of Whitehead’s books” (Emmett 1966: 11), the author
takes into account the concept of reason without confining himself to analyzing it in
terms of the essence of the human being, but rather analyzing it as a “cosmic force,” 15
that is, as “the self–discipline of the originative element in history” (FR: i), whose
whose function is to “promote the art of life” (FR: 2). 16 Still, moving beyond the specific
argument of the text, in which the cosmological point of view coincides with the
phenomenological-experiential one, I shall focus on a single aspect of such a work: the
nexus of reason with the dimension of the future.
17 In Symbolism (1927) the author introduced such a “pragmatic appeal to the future” (S:
31) as a necessary aspect of philosophical investigation, remarkably, in Function of
Reason this aspect receives further attention. In Whitehead’s view, reason is not “a
passively receptive substance” (S: 32), its value is of a “pragmatic, or even
instrumental”17 kind: it is not an object, because it always proves to be an essential
minimal dynamic, an irreducible one. This is why it is more appropriate to study it
from the perspective of its function, and it is just from the latter that Whitehead starts
to rediscover and identify reason as “the organ of emphasis upon novelty” (FR: 15). The
author maintains that, without such an organ, the one which proves able to capture
and highlight novelty, there would be nothing but mere repetition (that is, the sole
thing to which rationalism can aspire), and this would turn out to be nothing but the
expression of a “stealthy inevitableness” (FR: i), disowned by both the same progressing
activity of reason and by experience. In other words, at the cosmological level,
Whitehead lays stress on the idea that nothing in the universe stands unaltered, 18 not
even the inorganic matter, whereas what is to be acknowledged is a “tendency
upwards, in a contrary direction to the aspect of physical decay. In our experience we
find appetition, effecting a finale causation toward ideal ends which lie outside the
mere physical tendency” (FR: 72), at whose peak is located reason which, in its turn,
even at its minimal levels, consists properly in “its judgments upon flashes of novelty,
of novelty in immediate realization and of novelty which is relevant to appetition” (FR:
15).
18 Far from exhausting the issue in Whitehead’s thought, what emerges here equally and
with transparency is the same need manifested by James, i.e. that to connect – and
almost indentify – the proper object of reason, and therefore of philosophy (which uses
reason as its distinctive instrument), with the becoming, that is, with the new. As
Deleuze has sharply stressed, for Whitehead “the best of all worlds is not the one that

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reproduces the eternal, but the one in which new creations are produced, the one
endowed with a capacity for innovation or creativity” (Deleuze 1993: 89).
19 In a nutshell, then, this short text gives expression to both (a) a closeness, on
Whitehead’s part, to conception of reason entertained by Pragmatism, and (b) its
“prospective” nature – to use James’s terminology – which goes over and above the
regressive conceptual analysis proper to the rationalistic view. To better understand
the aspects that have emerged here, one cannot help analyzing, eventually and
specifically, the peculiar concept of experience and the reasons of the central role it
plays within the philosophical efforts made by the examined authors.
20 (3) Without intending to go over the many contributions offered on the confrontation
between empiricism and the concept of experience in James a Whitehead, a recovery of
this theme is required, besides the urgency to better understand the prospective role of
reason by bringing to light the specific experiential elements on which this hinges, to
show the essential elements which underpin and make the respective cosmologies
possible.
21 For better clarity, I therefore make a distinction between the method of James’s radical
empiricism – as well as Whitehead’s pan-experientialism 19 – and the conception of
experience subsisting in both authors.
22 James and Whitehead equally feel the need to pose experience as the absolute and
original ground, antecedent to any possible subject-object, knower-known, mind-body
distinction; suffice it to say that, in his Modes of Thought, Whitehead draws James close
to Plato, Aristotle and Leibniz by highlighting the peculiarly modern style of his
thought, which he precisely characterizes as a “protest against the dismissal of
experience in the interest of system” (MT: 4). Hence, for both thinkers, such a need
immediately becomes an absolutely unavoidable methodological character.
23 (3a) As far as James is concerned, the phrase ‘radical empiricism’ is nothing but a
possible interpretation of Pragmatism. As he sharply states, once again, in his Essays in
Radical Empiricism:
The way of handling things I speak of, is, as you already will have suspected, that
known sometimes as the pragmatic method, sometimes as humanism, sometimes as
Deweyism, and in France, by some of the disciples of Bergson, as the Philosophie
nouvelle. […] I myself have given the name of ‘radical empiricism’ to that version of
the tendency in question which I prefer. (WWJ3: 79-80)
24 Radical Empiricism opposes itself to rationalism and its absolutistic 20 and monistic 21
tendencies as much as to classical empiricism, since Radical Empiricism rejects their
conception of ‘pure datum,’ of a punctual, atomic and unrelated one, by claiming the
actuality of the relations, which are and can be properly experienced. The peculiar
character of this approach resides in its referring any of its claims to the field of
experience, the latter understood as a dimension to which relations themselves belong,
being in this respect original and not derived. As James points out in his A World of Pure
Experience:
To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element
that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly
experienced. For such a philosophy, the relations that connect experiences must
themselves be experienced relations, and any kind of relation experienced must be
accounted as ‘real’ as anything else in the system. Elements may indeed be
redistributed, the original placing of things getting corrected, but a real place must

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be found for every kind of thing experienced, whether term or relation, in the final
philosophic arrangement. (WWJ3: 22)
25 It is therefore possible to understand how novelty, which underpins the pragmatic
method and sets it against all the previous “empiricisms,” relies on a radically different
concept of experience. Namely, an experience immediate but not punctual, structured
but not defined, articulated but always dynamic, opened up, granted that – as the
author claims– “our fields of experience have no more definite boundaries than have
our fields of view. Both are fringed forever by a more that continuously supersedes
them as life proceeds” (WWJ3: 35).
26 With respect to this, however, it might legitimately be asked whether and in which way
the conception of experience as structured and continuous – the one that has just been
sketched out – can coexist in James’s reflection with the so called ‘pure experience,’ a
constant reminder of his whole radical empiricism. If the time at which such theses
were expressed cannot support the hypothesis of a meaningful chance of thought,
given that they both refer not only to the same span of years, but even to the same
essays, can we attribute such a fluctuation to an ultimate fundamental indecision? How
else can such an (apparent?) opposition be explained?
27 In order to answer these questions we should carefully reconsider the same passages in
which James displays the concept of pure experience. By way of example, let us
consider the following definition, occurring in Essays in Radical Empiricism:
‘Pure experience’ is the name which I gave to the immediate flux of life which
furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories. Only
new-born babes, or men in semicoma from sleep, drugs, illnesses, or blows, may be
assumed to have an experience pure in the literal sense of a that which is not yet
any definite what, tho ready to be all sorts of whats. (WWJ3: 46)
28 According to what the passage reports, it would seem that ‘pure experience’ can be
shown only in a negative fashion, uniquely by subtraction from our most daily
experience: when can we actually claim that we are making experience of a pure ‘that’?
What is claimed here is not certainly a minor outcome, granted that James re–assesses
the field of experience by broadening it, in relation to the exclusively epistemological
borders within which it had been situated from Kant onwards, 22 but this still does not
help us to understand the compresence of two elements apparently so distant from
each other. Or, better stated, “this is not his unique merit: he offers a positive
characterization, through which experience is caught as a process, or as a stream […]
that precedes any theoretical and metaphysical differentiation. Experience must be
understood as a development, as a process. It represents a complex set of occurrences
which forge the structure of the respective original process” (Schrag 1969: 489). 23 For
pure experience is, as stated by the last of James’s quotations, an “immediate flux of
life,” in which its purity cannot be identified with something absolutely indistinct: 24
within it, “the immediately experienced conjunctive relations are as real as anything
else” (WWJ3:45-46). In other words, according to James “knowledge of sensible realities
thus comes to life inside the tissue of experience. It is made; and made by relations that
unroll themselves in time” (WWJ3: 29).25 We can then affirm that James holds
experience to be a process,26 and although this does not deprive experience itself of the
character of purity he attaches to it. James himself asserts:
According to my view, experience as a whole is a process in time, whereby
innumerable particular terms lapse and are superseded by others that follow upon
them by transitions which, whether disjunctive or conjunctive in content, are

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themselves experiences, and must in general be accounted at least as real as the
terms which they relate. (WWJ: 31-32)
29 It is not therefore necessary to alternatively opt for a concept of ‘pure’ experience or of
‘structured’ experience, on condition that we spell out the meaning of those terms. In
fact, there is a first distinction which we might detect between that and what, pure
experience and determined experience, which is unequivocally stated and that – in its
turn – is nevertheless to be understood as analysis and de-composition of a unique and
unitary moment.27 Then there is a second distinction, one which, although not definite
in James’s account, is still present and is necessary to lay down in order to understand
both his concept of experience and his peculiar radical empiricism, alongside the
pluralism which on such an empiricism relies. Such a necessity is determined by our
thought’s habits, which lead us ‘naturally’ to conceive of experience in an atomic,
punctual and unrelated sense, whereas it is just this traditional mode of thought, linked
to classical empiricism, that the philosophy of James means to dismiss. The distinction,
then, is that between this punctual concept of experience and the concept of a
continuous and relationally informed experience, the latter type being the one
endorsed by James. On such a distinction emerges a profound affinity with Whitehead’s
speculation, which deepens and systematises some of the convictions here expressed. 28
30 (3b) Whitehead comes close to an analogous empiricist perspective in those works
which have been regarded essays of epistemology or “pre-speculative philosophy”
(Lowe 1990: 92), by displaying the same insistence on the relational character of the
experiential flux. Although in his thought any reference to “pure experience” 29 is
absent, in the centrality attached to the concept of experience he points out the
experience’s characteristics as follows: i) unitariness; ii) extensionality; iii) relatedness;
iv) processuality.30 Thus, if the author affirms, as he does in The Anatomy of Some
Scientific Ideas (1917), that “we conceive ourselves each experiencing a complete time-
flux (or stream) of sense˗presentation […] distinguishable into parts” (AE: 128-129),
such a flux exhibits itself, just qua flux, both as (i) unicum and as (ii) extended. For it
represents the “unit of things real” (SMW: 152), but its nature is not punctual, given
that – qua activity of flowing – it is not circumscribable to an isolated spatio-temporal
point,31 but is rather to be understood as a “continuum” (AE: 109). Moreover (iii) such a
flowing is for Whitehead always structured,32 and its distinctive structure is given by
the dynamic interrelation between events, which constitute in some respect the
“ultimate substance of nature” (CN: 19). Namely, that an event is the «ultimate
substance of nature» not in the same sense as the Aristotelian upocheimenon, but as
“this unit factor, retaining in itself the passage of nature” (CN: 75). Furthermore, every
event is in relation with the others and with the totality of events, and this
“relatedness does not just happen, but is the skeleton of an active process of becoming
which […] is both a complex of objects and an outcome of other becomings” (Lowe 1962:
202).33 (iv) Experience, then, presents itself as a “dynamic totality,” 34 unitary but not
monolithic, united but not stable, always open and in a state of becoming, in which the
events that compose itself are themselves forms of becoming. It is starting from an
experience so conceived that Whitehead’s mature reflection will mould itself, that is,
starting from “the analysis of process as the realization of events disposed in an
interlocked community” (SMW: 152). Finally, just as James’s pure experience used to
overcome the classical oppositions of epistemological type (subject/object; knower/
known) in the same way “the metaphysical conception championed in Process and
Reality and in the coeval works is to be characterized as ontology of integral experience,

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irreducible to the model grounded in the opposition between subject and object”
(Vanzago 2001: 310).35
31 Such an “ontology of integral experience” can be translated, from a strictly
methodological point of view, not so much into a form of empiricism as into one of
“pan˗experientialism.”36 Equipped with such a type of setting, Whitehead radicalizes
some of the most modern claims, just as James’s pragmatic one, by trying nevertheless
to systematize them within a coherent methodological construction. For in Process and
Reality the author sets up an ontology which is no longer grounded in the concept of
‘substance,’ but rather in that of ‘event,’ one which leads him to conceive a radically
different universe, whose processuality and becoming are not derivative and accidental
traits, but represent its original ground.
32 Just as the described experience, even if it is a continuum, reveals itself as a plurality of
reciprocally interlocked events, in the same way Whitehead’s universe is the compound
of all the actual entities, “the final real things, of which the world is made up” (PR: 18).
The word ‘entity’ is here taken up in the same sense that James uses in Does
Consciousness Exist?, by denying conscience itself the ‘entity status.’ As James points out
in a letter addressed to Peirce:
As for what entity may mean in general I know not, except it be some imperceptible
kind of being. In my article [Does Consciousness Exist?] it meant a constituent principle
of all experience, as contrasted with a certain function or relation between particular
parts of experience. The distinction seems to me plain enough. (CWJ10: 480) 37
33 If consciousness is regarded by both authors as a function of experience, actual entities
are therefore its constitutive principle or, in other terms, the dynamic self-creating
unities at the basis of the universe. They do not refer, however, to any sort of
substance, within the borders of experience itself, as is revealed by the definition
offered in the first pages of Process and Reality: “The how an actual entity becomes
constitutes what that actual entity is; so that the two descriptions of an actual entity are
not independent. Its ‘being’ is constituted by its ‘becoming.’ This is the ‘principle of
process’” (PR: 23). In other words, on Whitehead’s view, an actual entity is:
An act of experience. The authority of William James can be quoted in support of
this conclusion. He writes: “Either your experience is of no content, of no change,
or it is of a perceptible amount of content or change. Your acquaintance with
reality grows literally by buds or drops of perception. Intellectually and on
reflection you can divide these into components, but as immediately given, they
come totally or not at all.” (PR: 68)38
34 Thus, the phrase ‘actual entity,’ as indicated by the quote above, shows some affinities,
not simply supposed, but even explicitly expressed, with James’s thought. As evidence
of this, for example, these are properly defined by Whitehead as “drops of experience,
complex and interdependent” (PR: 18).
35 From such a rapid survey one can infer that, from the pre-eminence methodologically
accorded to experience and the widening of that concept, both authors take a sui generis
pluralistic stance. For example, in the metaphysical-cosmological context James and
Whitehead are inclined to describe the universe as continuous and at the same time
discontinuous, and they identify its ground with drops of experience, according to the
former, or with actual entities, according to latter. In both cases, we are faced with a
paradox: experience, the only field and horizon of philosophical speculation, reveals
itself as a profound unity, but the cosmology which derives from it is of pluralist order.
More specifically, the paradox arises from the fact that, starting from a methodological

105
immanentistic assumption which in the one case takes the shape of radical empiricism
and in the other that of pan-experientialism, the thinkers at issue develop a “monadic
theory” of experience, one which coexists with a “pluralistic metaphysics." 39
36 Can a similar stance be possibly sustained? How can it be justified? What kind of
problems does it have to cope with and what kind of problems are those to which it
tries to offer a response? In order to clarify which answers are offered by the authors
with regard to the issue, it will be useful to face the problem of novelty, a theme to
which the present work will now direct its critical attention.
III. Between Experience and Pluralism: The Emergence

of Novelty
37 As I have anticipated, pluralism is one of the elements of affinity between the two
philosophers. According to Lowe, it should even be considered as “the subject of the
most obvious kinship between Whitehead and William James” (Lowe 1941a: 113). Still,
thus far, critical scholarship has never fully explored the view of the two authors in
relation to the theme of novelty, which figures not only among the objects of their
speculative efforts, but also and properly at the center of the delineation of a pluralistic
universe.
38 In order to note the attention accorded by the authors to this problem suffice it to
think that James devotes to the theme of novelty the last five chapters of his Some
Problems of Philosophy, and that the ultimate of the metaphysical system outlined in
Process and Reality is ‘creativity,’ which is defined by the author himself as “principle of
novelty” (PR: 21). In other words, we might therefore say that the whole cosmology of
the Whiteheadian masterpiece presupposes and testifies to this phenomenon of novelty,
so much that Whitehead can affirm that, in its wholeness, “the universe is a creative
advance into novelty” (PR: 222).40
39 In this context, then, far from considering in an exhaustive manner the problem and its
genesis in the reflection of the two authors, I shall confine myself to indicating those
aspects of the problem that are principally connected to the determination of a
pluralistic universe, that is, to showing those elements which prove helpful to respond
to the questions of the last paragraph. Let us therefore try to put the two forms of
pluralism into perspective.
40 If in the Essays in Radical Empiricism James claims that his philosophy “harmonizes best
with a radical pluralism, with novelty and indeterminism” (WWJ3: 44), such a possible
association is to be connected with the particular disjunctive-conjunctive character of
experience, already highlighted in the analyses, which is now taken up and applied to
the features of all the universe. As James himself declares in a passage of Pragmatism:
These forms of conjunction are as much parts of the tissue of experience as are the
terms which they connect; and it is a great pragmatic achievement for recent
idealism to have made the world hang together in these directly representable ways
instead of drawing its unity from the ‘inherence’ of its parts – whatever that may
mean – in an unimaginable principle behind the scenes. ‘The world is one,’
therefore, just so far as we experience it to be concatenated, one by as many
definite conjunctions as appear. But then also not one by just as many definite
disjunctions as we find. The oneness and the manyness of it thus obtain in respects
which can be separately named. It is neither a universe pure and simple nor a
multiverse pure and simple. (WWJ1: 72-73)

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41 It is therefore starting from the nexūs present in experience that the unity and
plurality of the universe are affirmed. As the author points out in A Pluralistic Universe,
Our ‘multiverse’ still makes a ‘universe’; for every part, tho it may not be in actual
or immediate connexion, is nevertheless in some possible or mediated connexion,
with every other part however remote, through the fact that each part hangs
together with its very next neighbors in inextricable interfusion. The type of union,
it is true, is different here from the monistic type of alleinheit. It is not a universal
co-implication, or integration of all things durcheinander. It is what I call the strung-
along type, the type of continuity, contiguity, or concatenation […] the synechistic
type. (WWJ4: 146-47)
42 Thus James’s pluralistic universe does not fight against any form of ‘continuism’; it
exclusively opposes monism. What is, then, the difference with monism? Where can the
evidence for this difference be more forcefully shown? According to the author,
“towards this issue, of the reality or unreality of the novelty that appears, the
difference between monism and pluralism seems to converge” (WWJ7: 74-75).
According to James, the rationalist theory, which he associates to monism, 41 by offering
a “rounded-in view of the whole of things, a closed system of kinds” (WWJ7: 55) has
operated – as a matter of fact – an a priori exclusion of the possibility of a novelty,
whereas pluralism dares to pose the following question once again: “In what manner
does new being come? […] Is it original?” (WWJ7: 75), or, again: “When perceptible
amounts of new phenomenal being come to birth, must we hold them to be in all points
predetermined and necessary outgrowths of the Being already there, or shall we rather
admit the possibility that originality may thus instil itself into reality?” (WWJ7: 76).
43 By making a stand with respect to these questions, the theory of pluralism departs
from monism. In fact, in tune with his pragmatic postulates, James answers to this
question by drawing on the field of experience:
We do, in fact, experience perceptual novelties all the while. Our perceptual
experience overlaps our conceptual reason: the that transcends the why. So the
common-sense view of life, as something really dramatic, with work done, and
things decided here and now, is acceptable to pluralism. (WWJ7: 73) 42
44 We find two remarkable aspects here: (a) on the one hand, James confirms a distance
between the purely conceptual and the experiential ground; (b) on the other hand, in
the “ulteriority” of sense–experience he detects that possibility of novelty which
rationalists and monists cannot do anything but deny.
45 Notably, as far as the first aspect is concerned, the author claims that “whatever actual
novelty the future may contain (and the singularity and individuality of each moment
makes it novel) escapes conceptual treatment altogether. Properly speaking, concepts
are post-mortem preparations, sufficient only for retrospective understanding”
(WWJ7: 54-55); as for the second aspect, instead, on James’s view “the percepts are
singulars that change incessantly and never return exactly as they were before. This
brings an element of concrete novelty into our experience” (WWJ7: 54). In particular,
James reports his personal experience on the matter, psychological and also non-
psychological, in order to testify to both this hiatus between understanding and
perceptual experience and this irreducibility of novelty, which would witness its
original being. As James in fact argues:
Psychologically considered, our experiences resist conceptual reduction […].
Biography is the concrete form in which all that is is immediately given; the
perceptual flux is the authentic stuff of each of our biographies, and yields a perfect
effervescence of novelty all the time. New men and women, books, accidents,

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events, inventions, enterprises, burst unceasingly upon the world. It is vain to

resolve these into ancient elements, or to say that they belong to ancient kinds, so
long as no one of them in its full individuality ever was here before or will ever
come again. Men of science and philosophy, the moment they forget their theoretic
abstractions, live in their biographies as much as any one else. (WWJ7: 78)
46 Therefore, novelty is for James inherent in and emerging from that “perceptual flux”
which represents the “substance of biography” proper to each of us. A flux which, on
the one hand, consistently with the exposition of the concept of experience, is “the
throughand-through union of adjacent minima of experience, of the confluence of
every passing moment of concretely felt experience with its immediately next
neighbors” (WWJ4: 147),43 but which, on the other, represents a continuous space of
novelty in virtue of the disjunctive relations in which its constitutive parts stand. As a
consequence, sustaining a pluralistic universe coincides exactly with the possibility of
affirming an “additive universe” (WWJ7: 103), to use the author’s own words, which
echo the aforementioned ones pronounced by Whitehead. For, on this point of view,
one might support the view that the two thinkers hold the same thesis: that they both
describe the same universe, that they both champion the same “creative advance of the
world” (PR: 345), to use Whitehead’s terminology.
47 Retrieving the questions from which this final part of the present work has begun, we
might now understand how, as far as James is concerned, there is no incongruence
between the immanentism proper to the radical empiricism and the pluralism sustained
in a speculative-cosmological perspective.
48 Such a possibility of understanding is given by that broadening of the field of
experience, continuous and relationally informed, which exhibits itself not only as a
wholeness of irreducible elements, but also as a wholeness in which it becomes possible
to think of the emergence itself of irreducibility, of novelty. To summarise, we might
otherwise say that such a flux and such a novelty are for James effective, in that we can
make experience of them. On the other side, however, what remains in the author’s
reflection is a discrepancy consisting in the idea that, if it is real and pragmatically
correct to affirm such a flux and novelty, it is by contrast impossible to admit any
conceptual understanding of them. For the author maintains that “conception knows
no way of explaining save by deducing the identical from the identical, so if the world
is to be conceptually rationalized no novelty can really come” (WWJ7: 78), and it is
precisely on this point that Whitehead would utterly dissent from James.
49 In fact, Process and Reality can be read as an attempt to rationalize what James gives up.
Whitehead himself, in a letter addressed to Hartshorne, having indicated the bright
minded American philosopher as a “sensitive genius” states that, on his view, he was
nevertheless “weak on Rationalization.”44 In order to better understand such a claim,
let us consider that, in his writings, on several occasions Whitehead distances himself
both from those philosophers that perpetrate the dogmatic error by sustaining the
“illusiveness and relative unreality of the temporal world,” both from those that, like
Bergson, maintain “that the intellect necessarily falsifies the notion of process.” 45 In
the same way, even James – to his eyes – might be included within these philosophers
who, even without coming to conceive of intellect as ‘falsifying,’ identify any
comprehensive and conceptual advancing of the intellect with the one proper to
rationalism. On Whitehead’s view, instead, there is a third way, a properly conceptual
one, one consisting in the attempt not only to admit novelty, but also to understand and
explain it. The central point to be acknowledged for the author is, as the

108
aforementioned passage indicates, the concept of process. Its philosophical originality

resides precisely in the attempt to rethink such a concept throughout the peculiar form
of pan-experientialism. A process which does not set up a dialectic movement, as the
one of Hegelian kind, one which, by way of Aufhebung, comes to embrace everything
into one single reality, but rather a process that is constant advancement of novelty 46
and, at the same time, affirmation of the irreducibility of its components.
50 If we can claim, after the survey that has been conducted, that the main point of
contact between the two authors is that of pluralism, now on the basis of
acknowledgement of a new status for experience we should make a final point, noticing
that their intellectual journeys depart from each other far before the pluralistic
conception outlined in their mature works. For if pluralism is shared, the difference is
to be identified in the conception of experience, of its unity and modeling.
51 Eventually, on James’s view, the unity (plural and infinite) of experience is given and
experienced, but is ultimately impossible to grasp conceptually, whereas, on
Whitehead’s view, one can approach it through the concept of ‘process.’ Whitehead, in
other words, in the attempt to understand that flux which James takes to be real but
not conceptualizable, after identifying it as a process tries to set up a true metaphysics
of the process, of a becoming which does not presuppose any substratum and does not
involve any identity posed as final term. The difficulty of its work actually resides in
this aspect: the attempt to rethink the cosmos in terms of becoming, process, without
reference to any creatio ex nihilo47 or appeal to whatever kind of transcendence. As the
author claims:
There are two current doctrines as to this process. One is that of the external
Creator, eliciting this final togetherness out of nothing. The other doctrine is that it
is a metaphysical principle belonging to the nature of things, that there is nothing
in the Universe other than instances of this passage and components of these
instances. Let this latter doctrine be adopted. Then the word Creativity expresses
the notion that each event is a process issuing in novelty. (AI: 236)
52 To conclude, on this perspective, novelty in Whitehead is documented, justified and
made possible by the becoming of the actual entities – every actual entity is a “self-
creating creature” (PR: 85) – and from their multifarious, open relationships, which
make up the unicum of the universe. For James, instead, novelty is simply admitted,
stated and acknowledged in its maximally concrete value. It is maybe for this reason
that Whitehead can be indicated as a sui generis forerunner of emergentism, 48 even
though the nexus between emergentism and pluralism would require a new, further in-
depth examination, bearing on those “fields of experience” (WWJ3: 35) to which,
according to different accents, James and Whitehead have always appealed.
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NOTES
1. Cf. in particular Lowe (1941a: 113-126), (1949: 267-296), and Schilpp 1941. Also, as far as the
Whiteheadian secondary literature is concerned, the interest towards confrontation has never
faded away, as the recent monograph by M. Weber shows: cf. Weber 2011.
2. I follow here the classical tripartition of Whitehead’s thought worked out by Metz in A
Hundred Years of British Philosophy and then taken up by Lowe. Cf. Metz 1938 and Lowe (1941b:
17).
3. Italics mine.

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4. As Whitehead himself labels the two authors (SMW: 40, 145).

5. Whitehead is indeed very timely in stressing that there is no mere fact which is by itself
neutral. With regard to this, see the whole discussion outlined both in Symbolism, which allows
us to understand the distance that separates Whitehead from naïve realism, and some passages
of Function of Reason, where the author – although addressing issues of different kind – claims:
“Nobody directs attention when there is nothing that he expects to see. The novel observation
which comes by chance is a rare accident, and is usually wasted. For it there be no scheme to fit it
into, its significance is lost” (FR: 57).
6. Cf. also SMW: 143: “The scientific materialism and the Cartesian Ego were both challenged at
the same moment, one by science and the other by philosophy, as represented by William James
with his psychological antecedents; and the double challenge marks the end of a period which
lasted for about two hundred and fifty years.”
7. My italics. From a subsequent passage one can infer that Whitehead speaks here by constantly
keeping James’s work in his mind, given that he claims: “It is equally possible to arrive at this
organic conception of the world if we start from the fundamental notions of modern physics,
instead of, as above from psychology and physiology. In fact by reason of my own studies in
mathematics and mathematical physics, I did in fact arrive at myonvictions in this way” (SMW:
153).
8. 8 See also the first lesson of the Modes of Thought, in which Whitehead includes James
(alongside Plato, Aristotle and Leibniz) among the “great thinkers [in Western Literature], whose
services to civilized thought rest largely upon their achievements in philosophical assemblage.”
And also his well-known letter to Hartshorne (2nd January 1936), in which the author states: “my
belief is that the effective founders of the renascence in American philosophy are Charles Peirce
and William James. Of these men, W.J. is the analogue to Plato, and C.P. to Aristotle” (MT: 3). See
also Hartshorne (1972: xi).
9. In order to understand the nature of the confrontation and so avoid any kind of
misunderstanding, it is useful to preliminarily bring to light a remark by Victor Lowe, one of
Whitehead’s first critics and his biographer. In an article published in 1949 he points out that the
relationship between James and Whitehead ought to be understood more in terms of
appreciation and sympathy than in terms of influence in the strict sense, also adding that in 1941
Whitehead, on the occasion of a personal conversation, had specified that “there was no question
of James affecting the direction of his thinking”; Lowe (1949: 289). This observation does not
undermine the scientific nature of the relevant critical scholarship, even the most recent one
(suffice it to consider, with exclusive reference to the year 2011, Weber’s monograph and three
articles that appeared in the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy: Weber 2011,
Soelch 2011, Stenner 2011, Teixeira 2011); it rather allows to keep a distance between the two
thinkers, and therefore a space of originality which makes the confrontation between them even
richer and profitable, without having to sacrifice any peculiar element of either in the name of
nexuses which are more supposed than given. Therefore, by dissociating myself from a radical
interpretation that would frame Whitehead’s speculative opus as a systematization of James’s
ideas (cf. Eisendrath 1971: xiii; Ford 1982: 107), I would like to survey that confrontation which
has been advanced in the last years mainly by Weber’s and Sinclair’s works on the common
themes of (epochal) time, of feeling, of consciousness and of religion (cf. Sinclair 2009; Weber
2002, 2003, 2011), in the hope to provide further contribution to the comparison, concerning the
t opic of novelty.
10. 10 The aspects at issue are certainly expression of a tendency ‘vers le concret,’ to quote what
is probably the very first text which puts Whitehead in relation to James; Wahl 1932. Of such a
tendency, expressed by the American pragmatism as well as by Whitehead’s philosophy – not to
mention Husserl’s phenomenology, although with a different emphasis – unquestionably
partakes also Bergson’s reflection. If the relationship of reciprocal respect between the latter and

112
James is well-known, largely ignored is the esteem which Bergson had for Whitehead. In fact, in
the years that immediately preceded Whitehead’s invitation to teach in the States, Bergson,
being asked for advice with regard to the names that might have restituted prestige to Harvard’s
faculty of philosophy, did not hesitate to define Whitehead as “the best philosopher writing in
English”; cf. Lowe (1990: 133).
11. My translation from Italian.
12. The immediacy of experience to which James refers his readers, as indicated by the previous
quotations, is starkly different from an understanding of the present as punctual and atomic. Far
from being a stance assumed in the gnoseological field, such a perspective takes root in the
analysis of the proper concept of “experience,” so that, on the author’s view, the present time in
its immediacy already implies a reference to the future. As James states: “The alternative
between pragmatism and rationalism, in the shape in which we now have it before us, is no
longer a question in the theory of knowledge, it concerns the structure of the universe itself. On
the pragmatist side we have only one edition of the universe, unfinished, growing in all sorts of
places, especially in the places where thinking beings are at work” (WWJ1: 124).
13. My italics. With the aforementioned claim the retrospective perspective is by no means
rejected. As James asserts in another passage of the quoted essays: “Life is in the transitions as
much as in the terms connected; often, indeed, it seems to be there more emphatically, as if our
spurts and sallies forward were the real firing-line of the battle, were like the thin line of flame
advancing across the dry autumnal field which the farmer proceeds to burn. In this line we live
prospectively as well as retrospectively. It is ‘of’ the past, inasmuch as it comes expressly as the
past’s continuation; it is ‘of’ the future in so far as the future, when it comes, will have continued
it” (WWJ3: 42).
14. Whitehead’s perspective – considered in relation to this text – is extremely sympathetic to
the pragmatic method, which, leaving aside the rest, is already explicitly evoked in the title
(Function of Reason). Such a title directly echoes those arguments worked out by James on
consciousness, the latter being understood not as an entity, but as a function, and to the same
arguments Whitehead himself devotes some significant pages in Science and the Modern World.
Cf. James’s Does Consciousness Exist? in WWJ3: 3-19.
15. For a meticulous criticism of the space occupied by ‘reason’ in Whitehead’s philosophy and a
comprehensive analysis of the text at issue, see Abbagnano 1961.
16. With regard to this issue, I shall not dwell on the parallelism subsisting between such a
definition and that of “education” worked out by Whitehead in 1923 and contained in “The
Rhythmic Claims of Freedom and Discipline”; cf. AE: 50. To such a topic I shall refer the reader to
Weber (2011: 15-17).
17. My own translation of Cafaro (1963: 11). On this aspect and on the affinities between the
concept of reason according to Whitehead and to American Pragmatism see also Rovatti (1969:
163).
18. In fact, within the framework of the universe, “what looks like stability is a relatively slow
process of atrophied decay. The stable universe is slipping away from under us” (FR: 66).
19. Cf. D. R. Griffin was the first who coined this term, precisely on the occasion of a conversation
with J. B. Cobb. Cf. Cobb/Griffin 1977.
20. In “Absolutism and Empiricism” James points out that, besides the distinctive bent of
absolutism to deny facts, “the one fundamental quarrel Empiricism has with Absolutism is over
this repudiation by Absolutism of the personal and aesthetic factor in the construction of
philosophy” (WWJ3: 143).
21. 21 With regard to this see above and, among the numerous passages of James’s last writings,
these synthetic claims taken by Pragmatism: “Pragmatism represents a perfectly familiar
attitude in philosophy, the empiricist attitude, but it represents it, as it seems to me, both in a
more radical and in a less objectionable form than it has ever yet assumed. A pragmatist turns his

113
back resolutely and once for all upon a lot of inveterate habits dear to professional philosophers.
He turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori
reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns
towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action and towards power. That
means the empiricist temper regnant, and the rationalist temper sincerely given up” (WWJ1: 51).
22. For an interesting critical analysis on the issue see Schrag (1969: 480-482).
23. My own translation from German.
24. Although, notably, some passages make room for this interpretation. On the issue see what is
stated in WWJ3: 46: “Its [of experience] phases interpenetrate and no points, either of distinction
or of identity, can be caught. Pure experience in this state is but another name for feeling or
sensation. But the flux of it no sooner comes than it tends to fill itself with emphases, and these
salient parts become identified and fixed and abstracted; so that experience now flows as if shot
through with adjectives and nouns and prepositions and conjunctions.”
25. First italics mine.
26. 26 Also Peirce, in a letter of 1905 addressed to James, criticizes his inaccurate expression of
experience, mentions that James tends to “describe it as a process.” Cf. CWJ10: 535. Peirce writes:
“As for your ‘pure experience,’ which you expressly say is a feeling, it seems to me ill-named
experience, which you describe as a process. But you never mean by experience what I mean, as
is evident from your amendment to my doctrine of pragmatism. Experience and an experiential
event or perception are, for me, utterly different, experience being the effect which life has
produced upon habits. Apparently this is something to which your theory pays little regard,
otherwise you could not call a feeling or sensation experience.”
27. In other words, the that is not chronologically prior to the what, which we might view as
matching our definite daily experience. From within the what, the necessary and specific content
of the that, it is always possible to grasp the that, – that is to say: the fact that it (a given thing) is,
– and to understand that this aspect overcomes and is not reducible to the content, indicated and
expressed in terms of what. Cf. WWJ1: 118: “What we say about reality thus depends on the
perspective into which we throw it. The that of it is its own; but the what depends on the which;
and the which depends on us. Both the sensational and the relational parts of reality are dumb;
they say absolutely nothing about themselves. We it is who have to speak for them.”
28. Cf. my own translation of Bonfantini (1972: 118): “Among the thinkers who have influenced
Whitehead a central place is held by William James, not only and not so much for his pluralism as
for his conception of experience a ‘structured lived experience,’ dominated by an immanent
relationalism, that is, for his anti -Humean and anti-atomistic empiricism.”
29. Such a concept, given its opening a window to possible anti-intellectualist or irrational drifts,
does not actually find any space in Whitehead, who rather supports, as we will shortly see, a
radical form of non naïve realism, defined by critical scholarship “pan-experientialism.” In fact,
on Whitehead’s view, the risk at stake is that of extending – opposite to any dogmatism – the
denial of its method to a denial of any type of method, discrediting, as a matter of fact and almost
completely, the same function of the philosophical practice. The author states: “Philosophy has
been afflicted by the dogmatic fallacy, which is the belief that the principles of its working
hypotheses are clear, obvious, and irreformable. Then, as a reaction from this fallacy, it has
swayed to the other extreme which is the fallacy of discarding method. Philosophers boast that
they uphold no system. They are then a prey to the delusive clarities of detached expressions
which it is the very purpose of their science to surmount. Another type of reaction is to assume,
often tacitly, that if there can be any intellectual analysis it must proceeded according to some
one discarded dogmatic method, and thence to deduce that intellect is intrinsically tied to
erroneous fictions. This type is illustrated by the anti-intellectualism of Nietzsche and Bergson,
and tinges American Pragmatism” (AI: 287).

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30. In fact, these three features are to be referred to a span of time wider than the
epistemological writings, in which Whitehead still lingers on attributing to the event the original
status as ‘process,’ describing it first and foremost as ‘extension.’ Only starting from the second
edition of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge the author will explicitly
claim, while commenting the first edition dating back to 1919: “The book is dominated by the
idea that the relation of extension has a unique preeminence and that everything can be got out
of it. During the development of the theme, it gradually became evident that this is not the case,
and cogredience had to be introduced. But the true doctrine, that ‘process’ is the fundamental
idea, was not in my mind with sufficient emphasis. Extension is derivate from process, and is
required by it” (Whitehead 1924: 202).
31. This point is for Whitehead pure abstraction: when should we ever experience a similar
instant? Remarkably, the author claims that: “The solution of the difficulty is arrived at by
observing that the present is itself a duration, and therefore includes directly perceived time-
relation between events contained within it. In other words we put the present on the same
footing as the past and the future in respect to the inclusion within it of antecedent and
succeeding events, so that past, present and future are in this respect exactly analogous ideas”
(AE: 186).
32. With regard to his inquiry on space and time, Whitehead speaks of “uniformity of the texture
of experience” (AE: 164).
33. My italics.
34. Cf. Vanzago (2001: 287).
35. My own English translation [italics mine]. From this point of view, various in-depth
treatments would be urgently required. I cannot but refer the reader here to other critical
studies. I make reference here to a) the ‘emotional ground’ proper to this new mode of
conceiving experience and hence the inclinations and the feelings that forge its inner
organization. Cf. Lowe 1941; b) the new way of conceiving subjectivity, as function in the case of
James and by way of introduction of the reformed subjectivist principle in Whitehead’s case. Cf.
Weber (2011: 21-24); Sinclair (2009: 116). With regard to this, suffice it to notice the continuous
closeness of the two authors from a methodological point of view. According to James, “the
principle of pure experience is also a methodical postulate. Nothing shall be admitted as fact, it
says, except what can be experienced at some definite time by some experient; and for every
feature of fact ever so experienced, a definite place must be found somewhere in the final system
of reality. In other words: Everything real must be experienceable somewhere, and every kind of
thing experienced must somewhere be real” (WWJ3: 81), this is perfectly in line with the claim of
Whitehead’s reformed subjectivist principle, according to which “apart from the experiences of
subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness” (PR: 167).
36. For an exhaustive account of this term, now usually attached to Whitehead’s thought, cf.
Griffin 2007.
37. 37 Letter of September 30, 1904 addressed to C. S. Peirce.
38. Whitehead adds in footnote: “Some Problems of Philosophy, Ch. X; my attention was drawn to
this passage by its quotation in Religion in the Philosophy of William James, by Professor
J. S. Bixler” (PR: 68). With respect to the comparison between the theories of temporality and
epochal time in both authors, see also Texteira 2011 and Field 1983.
39. The two reported syntagms are employed by Lowe to describe Whitehead’s position.
However, I believe that, in support of my thesis, they can equally be adopted for James’s position,
which shows this complexity and paradoxicality, already at the level of the analysis of
experience, with that peculiar oscillation between pure and structured experience analyzed
above. Cf. Lowe (1949: 290).
40. Otherwise, the author goes on: “The alternative to this doctrine is a static morphological
universe” (PR: 222).

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41. Cf. WWJ4: 9: “What do the terms empiricism and rationalism mean? Reduced to their most
pregnant difference, empiricism means the habit of explaining wholes by parts, and rationalism
means the habit of explaining parts by wholes. Rationalism thus preserves affinities with
monism, since wholeness goes with union, while empiricism inclines to pluralistic views.”
42. A few lines before, the author affirms: “We can’t explain conceptually how genuine novelties
can come; but if one did come we could experience that it came” (WWJ7: 73).
43. 43 As the author goes on: “the recognition of this fact of coalescence of next with next in
concrete experience, so that all the insulating cuts we make there are artificial products of the
conceptualizing faculty, is what distinguishes the empiricism which I call ‘radical’ from the
bugaboo empiricism of the traditional rationalist critics, which (rightly or wrongly) is accused of
chopping up experience into atomistic sensations, incapable of union with one another until a
purely intellectual principle has swooped down upon them from on high and folded them in its
own conjunctive categories” (WWJ4: 147).
44. Whitehead’s letter to Hartshorne, January 2, 1936, cit. in Lowe (1990: 346) [italics mine].
45. Whitehead (1947: 116). Subsequently, the author points out that “There are these two
prevalent alternative doctrines respecting the process apparent in the external world: one,
which is Bergson’s view, is that the intellect in order to report upon experienced intuition must
necessarily introduce an apparatus of concepts which falsify the intuition; the other is that
process is somewhat superficial, illusory element in our experience of eternally real, the
essentially permanent” (Whitehead 1947: 116).
46. Cf. PR: 222.
47. 47 Cf. Ford 1983.
48. 48 Cf. Zhok (2011: 7).
ABSTRACTS
The relationship between James and Whitehead has been underlined from the very outset by the
critical scholarship on Whitehead, as is testified by the presence of articles that appeared before
the author’s death. By dissociating myself from the radical interpretation that frames
Whitehead’s speculative opus as a systematization of James’s ideas, I survey that confrontation
which has been advanced in the last years (Weber 2002, 2003, 2011, Sinclair 2009) in order to
provide further contribution, by tackle the problem of novelty. Precisely, I concentrate on those
instances, especially the methodological ones, which are not simply akin, but rather properly
shared by the authors. In other words, I focus on those grounding ideas from which they endorse
a pluralistic universe, conceived in connection with the problem of novelty. Properly, 1) I analyze
the way Whitehead refers to James in his books; 2) I compare the roles they acknowledge to
reason, in the nexus with the concept of experience; 3) I show the importance both authors ascribe
to the problem of novelty, the main topic involved in their efforts to build up new cosmologies.

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AUTHOR
MARIA REGINA BRIOSCHI
Università degli Studi di Milano
mariaregina.brioschi[at]unimi.it

117
Symposium on Dewey’s Unmodern

Philosophy and Modern Philosophy
Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 2012

118
Symposium on Dewey’s Unmodern

Philosophy and Modern Philosophy
Edited and with an introduction by P. Deen, Southern Illinois University
Press, Carbondale, 2012
Roberto Gronda
1 The European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy is pleased to host a

symposium on Dewey’s “new” book Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy. To speak
of Dewey’s new book will seem strange to anyone who is not well-acquainted with the
history of the text, which is rather adventurous and unique. In the summer 1941 Dewey
started working on a book in which he purported to present a comprehensive view of
his philosophical position. The work kept Dewey busy for more than a year. At the end
of 1942 the manuscript that we can now read was substantially finished. However,
Dewey abandoned the completion of Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy in order
to undertake different projects – in particular, the composition of Knowing and the
Known with A. Bentley. He started working again on the book more than three years
later. In 1947 he was attending to it when the manuscript went lost. Legend would have
it that Dewey left the manuscript on a cab while going back to his house in New York
City. Other versions say that it was stolen or left in the Nova Scotia Cabin in which
Dewey had spent the summer. What is beyond question is that the book was never
published until now. We owe to Phillip Deen the merit for having brought it to life
again.
2 However, Dewey’s Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy is not a finished book, and
should not be read as we read his other works. Some sections are missing –for instance,
no manuscript is numbered as chapter 5 –, and some chapters are more similar to a
collection of notes than to a consistent discussion of a group of related theme. In his
Introduction Deen explicitly acknowledges this point: “Dewey never completed the book
that he had hoped to write” (xviii). This fact is important because it sheds some light on
the nature of the four contributions that constitute the Symposium. The aim of the
contributors – Hickman, Deen, Steiner, and Gronda – is neither that of providing an
overview of the book nor that of discussing how the different parts hang together in a
consistent whole. For those interested in a general presentation of the contents of the

119
book, we recommed Dicker’s insightful review appeared on the last number of our
Journal (Vol. 4, No. 2, 2012). On the contrary, the goal of the Symposium is to ‘exploit’
the text with the aim of highlighting the traits of originality of Dewey’s thought that
the contributors believe they have found in Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy.
It cannot be excluded that in some cases such goal has been achieved to the detriment
of a rigorous fidelity to the letter of the text.
3 The search for the novelty contained in the book explains the selective character of the
four essays, as well as their somehow provocative nature. Thus, if one has not read
Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy yet, we recommend to take a look at Dicker’s
review before starting reading the Symposium. Finally, please keep in mind that the
authors of the papers will be satisfied if they will succeed in supplying the ongoing
discussion on the significance and value of Dewey’s philosophy with new ideas and new
suggestions.
AUTHOR
ROBERTO GRONDA
Roberto Gronda, Scuola Normale Superiore
roberto.gronda[at]sns.it

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John Dewey’s Critique of Our

“Unmodern” Philosophy
Larry A. Hickman
1 In what follows I want to discuss some of the themes of John Dewey’s “new” book
Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy, recently published by Southern Illinois
University Press.1 The scholarly world certainly owes a debt of gratitude to Professor
Phillip Deen for his efforts to bring this volume to fruition. His careful research among
the Dewey Papers in Special Collections of Morris Library at Southern Illinois
University Carbondale led him to see what others had overlooked. He discovered more
than a dozen chapters of an incomplete manuscript whose date, the late 1930’s and
early ’40s coincides with the period during which Dewey famously lost a manuscript
while returning from Hubbards, Nova Scotia to his home in New York City. Now Deen
has meticulously collected, collated, and edited those materials, as well as providing a
highly informative introduction. He has been able to flesh out the narrative of their
provenance and their relevance to the rest of Dewey’s published work by his careful
reading of Dewey’s correspondence from the period.
2 To put the message of Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy in a nutshell, Dewey is
keen to explain why we have never been modern and what we should be doing about that.
Of course he does not want to deny that there was progress during the transition from
medieval to modern philosophy. But he is also clear that human history, which is of
course our cultural history, is filled with missed opportunities, stubborn resistance to
change, and fixation on old ideas long since proven threadbare and irrelevant. Here is
Deen in his introduction:
Our beliefs and institutions were developed when scarcity was a central concern,
nature was a constant source of fear, and economic production was primarily the
work of individuals. The industrial revolution changed all that […] Dewey
contended that the underlying beliefs [of modern philosophy] and their
legitimization have remained rooted in a pre-modern world. Modern technoscience
does not seek correspondence to a fixed reality, but sets elements of experience in
relation to one another in the interest of improved future conduct. It is post-
Darwinian, rejecting fixed ends and essences and turning to context, relation, and
experiment. However, philosophers still use categories developed during the search

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for the immutable – even those positivists and realist philosophers who believe
themselves to be truly scientific. (xxx)
3 Readers of this new volume encounter a Dewey who is more candid and less
constrained by the blue pencils of his editors than the more familiar Dewey of the
37 volumes of the Collected Works. His criticism on page 90 of Husserl’s
phenomenological reduction,2 for example, and his aside on page 267 about priests
hearing confessions of indulgence of libidinous imagery, are more reminiscent of the
frank expressions we find in his private correspondence.
4 In this volume we also encounter restatements of familiar ideas, now reworked, refined
and put into relation with other ideas in ways that make them once again fresh and
meaningful. Dewey’s discussion of technology in chapter ten stands out in this regard,
as do his remarks on the quest for certainty and the epistemology industry, the
relationship between theory and practice, the continuity between humans and the rest
of nature, and the reductive nature of traditional ethical theories.
5 Dewey also plays repeated variations on the theme of his well-known 1896 essay The
Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology. This book in fact brims with references to the reflex
article. Dewey’s treatment of the reflex arc has its roots in the organic, in the
physiological, in a genetic account of inquiry. Wariness in non-human animals
prefigures awareness in human beings. In the relation of organism with what is
relatively external to it, we get separation of stimulus and response only on reflection
or analysis. Stimulus is analyzed as a condition of the organism into an environing
situation and response is analyzed as preparation for further environmental
engagement. The key concepts of this narrative are organism and environment,
context and continuity.
6 These concepts, organism and environment, context and continuity are Darwinian, and
they are keys to what is missing in the modernist project. Dewey’s discussion of these
concepts and how the “medieval synthesis” prevented completion of the project of
modernity authenticates yet again his place as dialogue partner with contemporary
philosophers such as Bruno Latour, who has famously (also) claimed that “We have
never been modern.” Latour’s remark echoes a claim that is central to this new Dewey
volume: our culture continues to honor an ingrained substance-accident ontology that
seeks the essential nature of things; it honors a soul/body or mind/body split that
retards scientific and social progress; and it clings tenaciously to notions of certainty
that have their origins in classical and medieval thought and that have no place in our
technoscientific milieu. Worse, contemporary philosophers continue to be major
consumers and disseminators of these stagnant and counterproductive ideas.
7 As Dewey put the matter in a letter to Christine Chisholm Frost in 1941, “many of the
fundamental ideas of the old synthesis were not discarded but were carried over into
the systems that attempt new philosophical formulations, and thereby has prevented
the development of a synthesis which actually corresponds to the vital conditions and
forces of the present” (Dewey to Frost, 1941.01.23, 13074).3
8 The problem, as Deen succinctly glosses it, was that “Just as science was making rapid
advances in the attainment of knowledge, philosophy was asking whether knowledge
was possible at all” (xxii). In short, one of the most important of the features, and
failures, of modernity was its preoccupation with the problem of doubt, or skepticism.
Mainstream philosophy has never been modern because it is still wrestling with this

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question, whereas the technosciences have long since dismissed the quest for certainty
in lieu of a quest for the production of what is warranted and assertible.
9 The failure of modernity (the reason why “we have never been modern”) is thus due to
a series of bad choices: doubt and skepticism over experimentalism; substance over
process; structure over function; intuition and revelation over cosmological and
methodological naturalism; the soliloquy of an individual, internal consciousness over
the observable behavior of social inquiry; preference for a mind/ body split over
organic holism and acceptance of mind as “extended and embodied”; ruptures over
continuity; the unexamined values of custom over those that have been evaluated in
relevant contexts; and studied and proud ignorance of context, especially in the field of
inquiry. Each of these failures can be characterized as a failure of nerve: on one side of
the coin of modernity we find the problem of skepticism; on its obverse, the quest for
certainty.
10 If you think this claim questionable or gratuitous, then I invite you to consider the
following data from the Philosophers Index. From 1943 to 2012 the number of essays and
reviews in English with “skepticism” in the title was 2087. Lest you think it is unfair to
go back 69 years to 1943, it is worth noting that interest in the problem seems to have
increased, rather than diminished. More than half, or 1136 of those titles are from the
12 years since 2000. There are doubtless other essays and reviews that concern
skepticism but do not use the word in the title, and it is also possible that some of these
essays attack or dismiss the problem of skepticism. The point is that the concept is still
front and center in philosophical journals.
11 But if the answer to our current situation does not lie in accepting the failed project of
modernity, then neither does it lie in the central claims of what some have termed
post-modernism. Emphasis on deferral and difference merely identifies the skeptical
symptoms; it does not provide a prescription. Deferral and difference amount to little
more than skepticism on a diet. Emphasis of one side, the skeptical side, of the
modernist coin does not constitute an alternative to the failed modern project. And
despite the fact that there are still philosophers ready and eager to spend that coin, I
suggest that its value has been rendered null by the pragmatist critique of modernity.
Pragmatism is not concerned with global doubt, or with whether there are atomic
sense data, or with the conditions for the possibility of knowledge. Pragmatists take
knowledge available from work done by the technosciences seriously and they are
comfortable with what they are intellectually entitled to believe. Just as
experimentalism, fallibilism and assertion with warrant are among the tools that have
made the technosciences successful, so are they the tools that pragmatists bring to
problems of evaluating and therefore knowing. The type of intelligence that invents the
telephone, Dewey tells us, is the same type of intelligence that is called upon when the
times call for the invention of tools to address novel and pressing moral situations.
12 Of course it should also be acknowledged that doubt is important as an aspect of the
experimental methods that pragmatists hold in such high regard. But pragmatic doubt
is not the global doubt of Descartes, nor is it the false doubt of the “thought
experiments” that are popular among some writers of essays on ethics. I mean the so-
called moral dilemmas that often involve lifeboats, trolleys, or tunnels, pitting the
rescue of one person against the lives of many others.4 If Cartesian doubt is too wide,
the doubt of these “trolly problems” is too narrow: as Allen Wood has argued so
perceptively, context has been stipulated out of the assignment. There is no continuity

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with the real world in which we live. Doubt has become so focused as to become
meaningless. Pragmatic doubt is always doubt in medias res. It is contexted doubt. It is
present on those occasions when continuity breaks down. It is the doubt of problem
formation and testing.
13 Pragmatic doubt is thus neither the inflationary doubt of the Cartesians, nor the
deflationary “trolley problem” doubt of analytic ethics. Nor is it ethereal “skepticism-
on-a-diet” doubt by deferral and difference that is popular in some precincts of so-
called postmodernism.
14 It should have by now become apparent, I think, that what is called for in our current
situation is a productive pragmatism that both recognizes and avoids the errors of the
modern project at the same time that it avoids the mistakes of the so-called
postmodernist project. I have termed this type of pragmatism “post-postmodernism”
because it both anticipated what is serviceable in post-modernism, such as its rejection
of grand narratives, foundationalism, essentialism, and so on, and at the same time it
avoids the core difficulties of that project. Dewey urged us to accept an evolutionary
naturalism that accepts the fact that there is community and commonality within
human experience, that inquiry is always inquiry in context, and that it is possible to
have beliefs that are both warranted and assertible.5
15 Yes, these themes have been well and often articulated. What I am suggesting, however,
is that even though we pragmatists may know why the modern project failed and even
though we pragmatists may know what to do about it, how to address the matter in our
classes, our research, and our roles as public intellectuals – as writers of blogs and
columns in newspapers and journals of opinion – there are still those who do not seem
to have gotten the memo, who are both oblivious of the failure of the modern project
and who are among those well known philosophers to whom the reading public looks
for articulation of what philosophy is and what it does. This unfortunate situation, I
suggest, could be addressed by utilizing some of the newly sharpened tools that Dewey
provides in Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy.
16 There are, for example, prominent philosophers who continue to work in the
modernist mode. One example of such persistence is ready to hand in the work of
British philosopher Derek Parfit. Parfit’s recently published two volume work On What
Matters attempts to take us back to a time when it was thought that there were “non-
natural facts.” Here is Allan Gibbard reviewing Parfit’s book in a recent issue of the
London Review of Books:
Parfit’s theory of what reasons are is a form of non-naturalism. That there is reason
not to torment oneself or others isn’t a natural fact: it is not, that is to say, the sort
of fact we can confirm by observation, as we can with the facts of physics or
psychology. If something is a reason, that’s a fact, a fact that is not purely natural.
Parfit holds that most fundamentally we know about them by intuition. 6
17 Continuing, Gibbard writes, “Parfit cites mathematics. Pure mathematics, too, is non-
natural and known by pure thinking, not by observation. Ultimately, it is by intuition
that we know what must hold mathematically.” Again: “Parfit reports that Bernard
Williams seemed genuinely not to understand such claims, but he thinks that may be
because Williams lacked a concept that the rest of us have.” How do we know a non-
natural fact? “When we ‘see,’ as it were, that a mathematical claim must be true, we are
‘responding in non-causal ways to the validity of some kinds of reasoning’.” “If there
were no non-natural properties, Parfit tells us at one point in a tone of despair, then

124
nothing would matter. For something to matter, after all, is for there to be reason to
care about it, and facts about reasons are non-natural.” To his credit, Gibbard rejects
Parfit’s non-naturalism. “If no properties are non-natural, what follows is an either/or:
either nothing matters or Parfit is wrong that mattering is non-natural. Now it seems
beyond doubt that things matter, whereas we needn’t wholly trust in Parfit’s
metatheory of mattering.”
18 Parfit’s non-naturalism appears to be yet one more example of how we have never been
modern. His attempts to bring together elements of Kant’s ethics and the work of the
Utilitarians are supported by the contextless doubt – the deflationary doubt – of
“trolley problems,” and he has chosen intuition and revelation over cosmological and
methodological naturalism. He has decontextualized and reified facts, rather than
treating them as “facts of a case,” as Dewey would have us do.
19 Dewey’s remarks in the closing pages of Human Nature and Conduct could have been
written with Parfit in mind.
The reason [that the very meaning of the general notions of moral inquiry is a
matter of doubt and dispute] is that these notions are discussed in isolation from
the concrete facts of the interactions of human beings with one another – an
abstraction as fatal as was the old discussion of phlogiston, gravity and vital force
apart from concrete correlations of changing events with one another. (MW14.222) 7
20 And as Murray Murphy succinctly put the matter
Dewey will admit no transcendental realm of ideals, no division of the moral from
the natural, no nonsense about cognitive versus emotive meaning. Action is
’conduct’ because it is morally appraised, controlled, and guided, not from above,
but from within the natural world. (MW.14.xv)
21 But that is probably enough about how things have gone wrong. I said earlier that
Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy provides some newly sharpened tools to
address this problem. The one I want to emphasize is his claim that if knowing is
treated as a mode of technology then we finally can get past problems that have
prevented us from being modern. This is a strong claim and it puts technology at the
center of his program of resolving the difficulties that philosophy has inherited.
22 Possibly tired of defending his use of the term “instrumental” (although I suppose that
it is worth repeating once again that Dewey’s instrumentalism has little to do with
Zweck-rationalität, the bête noir of the Frankfurt School) Dewey points out that any word
can be misunderstood and then he carries on, introducing expanded, more finely tuned
meanings of technology than appear elsewhere in his work. He also offers an excellent
definition of the term “instrumental.” He has used it, he says, to “designate the
intermediate position and function of the subject matter of knowledge in the inclusive
complex of the transaction constituting human living as a going concern” (242). He
reports his fears that the term “technology” will meet the same fate as has
“instrumental.”
23 He tells us that the role or task of philosophy is to help bring to light or formulate the
needs and obstructions that constitute the practical problems and resources which, if
they were systematically used, would further their resolution” and that anything that
does this is ipso facto philosophical. He develops two senses of technology. It may be
helpful to compare this with an earlier statement that was his most succinct up to that
point. It comes from What I Believe (1930):
’Technology’ signifies all the intelligent techniques by which the energies of nature
and man are directed and used in satisfaction of human needs; it cannot be limited

125
to a few outer and comparatively mechanical forms. In the face of its possibilities,
the traditional conception of experience is obsolete. (LW.5.270)
24 This is a strong and remarkable statement, since it says that technology is by its very
nature intelligent and that its use should be expanded. As such, it runs directly counter
to contemporary treatments of technology by Martin Heidegger, Hans Jonas, and
Frankfurt School figures Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. It should be said,
parenthetically, that philosophers of technology who are our contemporaries have
moved perceptibly in Dewey’s direction. These would include Don Ihde, Andrew
Feenberg, Peter-Paul Verbeek, and others.
25 As remarkable as were Dewey’s remarks on technology in What I Believe, his remarks in
this volume are both more specific and even more remarkable. What Dewey terms
“wide” technology is knowledge producing more knowledge in systematic ways.
“Narrow” technology, on the other hand, includes those technologies now called such,
that is, technology as employed in the various disciplines. Wide technology ideally
guides narrow technology, but is also informed by such practices.
26 What has this to do with philosophy? Knowledge, Dewey writes, “is, first, a form of
technology in the methods it employs in producing more knowledge and improving its
own methods and, furthermore, is capable of being a technology in humane social
guidance of technologies now called such but whose human and social consequences
are left a matter of pulling and hauling of conflicting customs and institutions which
are hardly touched by effective use of the method of intelligence at work” (244).
27 Wide technology is what allows philosophy to serve, ideally, as what Dewey called
“liaison” among the various disciplines. Admittedly, terminology can be confusing. In
my own earlier attempts to understand Dewey’s take on technology I have used the
term “technology” to refer to what he here terms “wide” technology, and I have used
the term “techniques” to refer to “narrow” technology.
28 Dewey takes issue with the claim that “technology is indifferent to the uses to which it
is put.” “As long as that statement remains as true as it is at the present time,” he
writes, “it signifies that something else is sure to decide the uses to which it is put –
traditions and customs, rules of business and of law – which exist now because they
came into existence in the past, superficially sugared over by moralistic condemnations
and exhortations” (244). In other words, one of the reasons we have never been modern
is that we have not trusted technology in both senses of the term, wide and narrow. We
have repeated the mistakes of the Athenian Greeks. We have benefitted from technical
advances, but we have failed to place them in the proper contexts, to see the types of
values that they involve and the types of choices that they offer, and we have just
relegated them to the realm of the “material” as opposed to the “spiritual.”
29 So Dewey identifies knowing as one form of technological art. He references his 1916
logic here, drawing analogies between the role of crude ores, intermediate stock parts,
tools, and finished products in industry and the role of raw materials, intermediate
parts, tools, and products of sequences of inquiry. He undercuts the traditional
problem of appearance and reality by recasting it as a relationship between the raw (or
crude) and the finished (or refined). Metaphors of arts, crafts, and industry dominate
chapters 10 and 11 of this work.
30 Here is Dewey in what is perhaps the clearest statement in his entire published corpus
regarding the relation between the two types of technology:

126
What has been said should protect the view that scientific inquiry is one form or
type of technological art from being assimilated to the specific content of
technologies already familiarly so designated –although it is highly probable that
the association of knowing with “mind” and of technology with industries carried
on for pecuniary profit will cause some persons to indulge in continued
identification of the position here taken with the doctrine that knowledge is
subordinated to gaining some fixed ‘practical’ end of a private or ‘personal’ sort.
(246)
31 Of note here is the connection he makes between technology and mind. It is significant,
I think, that he presents his clearest statements about technology in a chapter on mind
and body: wider technology involves systematic attempts to develop new tools,
including those that are conceptual, for the resolution of the problems of organic
beings whose minds are both embodied and extended.
32 Lest there be any doubt about the “primary concern” of his discussion up to this point,
Dewey makes it clear enough on page 249. It is the task of outlining the grounds upon
which scientific knowing should be regarded as a form of technology. Whereas
epistemology tries to treat transactions wholesale, absent proper context,
technological undertakings start from need, and they are instrumental and not yet
final. The point is production of means of satisfaction of objective conditions.
33 Now there may be those, and in fact there have been those, who have suggested that
the pragmatic criticism of the modernist project is altogether too negative in tone.
There is anti-foundationalism, anti-essentialism, anti-reductionism, anti-spectator
view of knowledge, anti-mind/body dualism, anti, anti, anti. To those critics I would
suggest, with Dewey, that criticism of ideas that retard growth and development of
inquiry is itself a positive project. We do not fault those engineers who inspect bridges
and other aspects of our infrastructure for cracks and faults: we instead offer them our
support and encouragement.
34 What Dewey has given us in Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy, with the
generous editorship of Philip Deen, is an account of how and why we have never been
modern. He has illuminated the bad choices made along the way: doubt and skepticism
over experimentalism; substance over process; structure over function; intuition and
revelation over cosmological and methodological naturalism; the soliloquy of an
individual, internal consciousness over the observable behavior of social inquiry;
preference for a mind/body split over organic holism and acceptance of mind as
“extended and embodied”; ruptures over continuity; received values over those that
have been evaluated in relevant contexts; and studied and proud ignorance of context,
especially in the field of inquiry. He has called upon philosophers and others alike to
treat knowing as a mode of technology because it is “the one form of technology which
directly and systematically stimulates and promotes production of consequences, uses
and enjoyments which constitute departures from previous conditions and even breaks
in customary ways of doing things” (251).
35 In short, it is possible to heal the split between fact and value, knowing and evaluation.
Dewey challenges us to imagine that the genuinely modern can be brought into
existence.8

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NOTES
1. John Dewey, Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy, edited by Phillip Dean (Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 2012).
2. In a note on page 90 Dewey professes to find it ironic that “the so-called phenomenological
school now flourishing” claims that “the way to obtain a ‘scientific’ philosophy, binding on all
thinkers, is to forget everything that is scientific including its method of inquiry, and make a
‘subjectivistic’ or Cartesian approach, starting from the ‘pure consciousness of an individual
knower’.”
3. The Correspondence of John Dewey, 1871-1952, Larry A. Hickman, General Editor; Volume 1:
1871-1918, fourth edition; Volume 2: 1919-1939, third edition; Volume 3: 1940-1952, second
edition; Volume 4: 1953-2008, first edition. Charlottesville, VA: Intelex Corporation, 2008.
4. Allan Wood has launched a brilliant assault on these false doubts in his response to Derek
Parfit’s On What Matters. See D. Parfit, On What Matters, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, vol.
2, pp. 66-82.
5. Jim Garrison has drawn my attention to a very interesting passage in Derrida’s Grammatology,
in which he discusses the semiotic Theory of Charles S. Peirce. Derrida apparently misses Peirce’s
point that sign-interpretation need not go on ad infinitum. See Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology,
Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1976, 49.
6. Allan Gibbard, “Five Girls on a Rock,” a review of On What Matters by Derek Parfit, London Review
of Books, 7 June 2012, 23.
7. References to John Dewey’s published works are to the critical (print) edition, The Collected
Works of John Dewey 1882-1953, edited by Jo Ann Boydston, Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1967-1991, and published in three series as The Early Works: 1882-1898, The
Middle Works: 1898-1924, and The Later Works, 1925-1953. These designations are followed by volume
and page number. In order to insure uniform citations of the standard edition, the pagination of
the print edition has been preserved in The Collected Works of John Dewey 1882-1953: The Electronic
Edition, edited by Larry A. Hickman, Charlottesville, Virginia: InteLex Corp., 1996.
8. This is a play on Dewey’s remark in the introduction to the 1948 edition of Reconstruction in
Philosophy. “The genuinely modern has still to be brought into existence” (MW 12.273).
AUTHOR
LARRY A. HICKMAN
Center for Dewey Studies, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
lhickman[at]siu.edu

128
Pragmatist Historiography in
Unmodern Philosophy and Modern
Philosophy
Phillip Deen
1 It is tempting to dismiss the first half of Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy. At
first blush, it would not seem to be essential to Dewey’s foremost concern to provide a
naturalized account of knowing that avoids the hoary philosophical dualisms of body/
mind, thing/person, material/ideal, and practical/theoretical. The load-bearing
chapters would seem to be in the latter philosophical half in which he takes on the task
of developing a positive account rather than the early historical half in which he
explains how the philosophical tradition came to be in this unfortunate position. To
those familiar with Reconstruction in Philosophy and The Quest for Certainty, the account of
the rise of epistemology as the core of western philosophy may seem familiar and,
therefore, unnecessary. Though Dewey delves deeper into medieval and modern figures
than in his other historical accounts, the outline of the historical account is largely the
same. Further, you could also accuse Dewey have written a poor history. As a work of
contemporary intellectual history, it suffers. It is both too broad and too narrow,
focusing on a particular philosophical problem while also being broad and unrestrained
in its summaries of various eras. And there is little-to-none of the rigorous citation or
reliance on statistics that mark much of today’s historical writing. As tempting as it
might be, I believe it would be a great error to ignore the historical half of Dewey’s
philosophical history of modernity. In Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy, the
first half does not report and the second half argue. Rather, the historical account is a
philosophical argument.
2 To make my case, I will turn to the broader topic of pragmatist historiography – the
principles, theory and history of historical writing. “History” has various meanings,
including: 1) the actual events of the past insofar as they are connected to humanity; 2)
philosophy of history, which presents an account of the rational ordering of history or
its underlying rationality as in Hegel. This includes a periodization of the events of the
past and an account of the mechanism by which those events proceed; and 3) the

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discipline of history, including principles governing how one is to study and recount
the actual events. There are threads of each in Dewey’s vast corpus. Within his work
and that of other pragmatists, one can find intimations of a broader theory of how
human events proceed, their mechanisms, and what sort of underlying rationality (if
any) is being expressed. However, the concern here is with the discipline of history;
that is, with how to study and recount historical events.
3 I argue here that Dewey’s historical account of the unfortunate rise of epistemology is
an example of a broader pragmatist theory of the discipline of history. This theory of
history holds that value-free, objective reporting of past events is ultimately
impossible. Rather, historical writing is inevitably a history of the present and shot
through with our concerns and judgment. Once I have provided a sketch of pragmatist
historiography, both in Dewey’s work and others’, we can return to see how this
framework informs Unmodern Philosophy.
4 Cushing Strout detailed what he called the “pragmatic revolt in American history” by
authors such as Carl Becker and Charles Beard (Strout 1958). Close to the heart of this
revolution was a rejection of pure objectivity in the field of history. The earlier ‘New
History’, including Frederick Jackson Turner, James Harvey Robinson, and Harry Elmer
Barnes, directly challenged the notion that history is merely the discovery and
reportage of what happened. History is not and can not be the recounting of facts by
unbiased spectators, as historians are inevitably concerned agents within history.
Turner asserted that “each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to
the conditions uppermost in its own time” (Turner 1939: 32). The purpose of history is
then not to write what happened from some Archimedean vantage point, but to
understand how the present, with all of its continuities, divisions, and values, came
about. It is not a statement of past facts, but a genetic account of the present. 1
5 Further, the New Historians and their heirs understood their work as part of the
ongoing liberation from past superstition by scientific intelligence. History is a value-
laden endeavor by which the present is freed from the errors of the past. Hence, this is
an account of history that is scientific in temper, but one also suspicious of positivist
historians’ claim to be value-free in their recounting of the past. In the words of James
Kloppenberg, himself bo th a pragmatist historian and historian of pragmatism,
“Becker challenged the pretensions of ‘scientific’ history and argued instead that
history consists of a set of stories that enable ordinary people to locate themselves in
the sea of time. Becker conceived of knowledge, and of historical writing, as the
product of pragmatic communities of discourse” (2004: 206; see also Kloppenberg 1987).
They understood history to be a scientific discipline, but also humanistic (Strout 1958:
21-29).
6 This rejection of the spectatorial position resonates with Dewey’s own critique of the
spectator theory of knowledge, but these historians were not necessarily directly
influenced. No substantial connection between pragmatism and history appears to exist
until the interwar period. Classical pragmatist philosophers rarely wrote on the
discipline of history, with the most substantial exception being Dewey’s short selection
on historical judgments in Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (Dewey 1938: 230-43). Similarly,
the historians did not claim pragmatism as a direct influence. Beard was a close friend

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of Dewey’s and Becker once referenced pragmatism in his work, but neither presented
themselves as devotees.
7 However, there does seem to be a shared temper between pragmatism and certain anti-
objectivist strands of American historians. Becker wrote, “John Dewey’s books I find
hard to understand, but his ideas, coming to me from other writers, have confirmed a
native tendency to pragmatic theory” (Novick 1988: 151). They shared a common
sensibility reflecting a faith in scientific method wedded to a suspicion of the quest for
certain knowledge. “Pragmatism’s crusade against the worship of facts, its skepticism
about claims of objectivity, its consistent reluctance to accept a hard-and-fast fact-
value distinction, its emphasis on change and flux, on the human and social elements in
knowledge, and the stress on the practical consequences of knowledge” were shared by
the anti-objectivist historians (Novick 1988: 153).
8 Correspondingly, Dewey shared his contemporary historian’s rejection of pure
objectivity in historical writing. Echoing James’ belief that “experience” is a double-
barreled word, Dewey held that “history” has a dual meaning:
History is that which happened in the past and it is the intellectual reconstruction
of these happenings at a subsequent time. The notion that historical inquiry simply
reinstates the events that once happened ‘as they actually happened’ is incredibly
naïve. It is a valuable methodological canon when interpreted as a warning to avoid
prejudice, to struggle for the greatest possible amount of objectivity and
impartiality, and as an exhortation to exercise caution and skepticism in
determining the authenticity of material presented as potential data. In any other
sense, it is meaningless. (1938: 236)
9 Objectivity is then a set of methodological principles bearing on the conduct of
historians, a regulative ideal that is not actually attainable.
10 If historical inquiry is not the reporting of objective facts by subject-less inquirers, then
how does it proceed? Why concern oneself with what happened in the past at all?
Though Dewey was sharply critical of the philosophical tradition tracing to the Greeks,
it is wrong to conclude that Dewey believed it was possible to separate oneself from it.
Cruder criticisms of pragmatism take it to be a blithe orientation to the future with no
regard for the past. However, Dewey and other pragmatists continually strove to wed
their prospective and practical interests to historical-genetic analysis. Criticism of a
tradition requires engagement with and through it. The purpose of such engagement
with the past is not to put it in a museum exhibit as proof of our ability to catch it, or to
hold it up as a treasure to be admired, but to see how study of history is instrumental to
a desirable future. Put simply, the practical, future oriented interest is reconciled to the
historical, genetic one because historical inquiries are useful.
11 Much like the natural scientist or the engineer, the historian collects data and proposes
hypotheses that are tested in the course of future experimentation. It is not enough to
collect information about past events, but they must also present an interpretation of
those events which sets them in relation to one another and to the present. They are to
be “carried forward into the future by reasoning, then tested and validated in practice,
and used, it may be, by what might be called social engineering as a method of
controlling the social environment” (Blau 1960: 96). Judgments about historical events
are then testable hypothetical reconstructions. “The writing of history is an instance of
judgment as a resolution through inquiry of a problematic situation” (Dewey 1938: 232).
The methods by which beliefs about history are warranted are no different in principle

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than those of science, though historical and scientific inquiries have different subject
matters and, thus, different tests.
12 To cite Dewey directly, “All historical construction is necessarily selective” (1938: 234). It is
selective in at least three ways. First, previous generations selected what would be
recorded and what would not. Second, folk memory chose what would be preserved in
their traditions and carry on to the present day for historians to observe. Third,
present historians select out what is relevant to their inquiries and what is not. Data is
discriminated from mere events when it is believed that it is relevant to the concern at
hand. “Apart from connection with some problem, they are like materials of brick,
stone and wood that a man might gather together who is intending to build a house but
before he has made a plan for building it” (Dewey 1938: 232). Clearly, the historian does
not study everything simultaneously, but instead makes judgments that some events
were more central than others. Whether a specific event lies at the center or the
periphery is dependent upon the interpretive framework and practical concerns of the
historian.
13 The obvious and immediate objection is that historical judgments are true or false
insofar as they correspond to events that have already happened and thereby beyond
our control to make true. Whether Lee Harvey Oswald shot President John F. Kennedy
is a matter for the past and it is not up to us to say whether the proposition ‘Lee Harvey
Oswald shot President John F. Kennedy’ is true. Historical inquiries may discover fixed
facts, but it does not transform them into facts. Burleigh Wilkins, despite presenting a
responsible account of Dewey’s theory of historical inquiry, accused him irresponsibly
of allowing the historians to believe whatever they desired by strategic selection of
facts to suit their desired outcomes: “What are these in effect but alibis for the
historian who wishes to prejudge, or misjudge, the past? […] I fail to see that history
can fulfill any function, except for those who delight in playing tricks upon the dead”
(Burleigh 1959: 885-84).
14 It is important to note that rejection of Objectivity and the recognition of selective
interest entail neither relativism nor skepticism. Ultimately, Burleigh’s argument rests
on the assumptions that the true historian discovers fixed events and that, once we
accept the presence of practical interest in historical inquiry, one has abandoned the
search for truth. The first assumption is rejected by the pragmatist for the reasons
already given and Burleigh offered no argument in response, except those that beg the
question.
15 The second assumption is rejected by the pragmatist historian because of his
conception of truth as a regulative ideal that places limits on the desires of the
individual historian. Faith in scientific method entails a hope for consensus and the
eventual reconstruction of a problematic situation, while never forgetting that all
answers are revisable in light of further experience. To repeat with a sigh what
pragmatists have been saying for years, the pragmatist theory of truth does not reduce
truth to what pleases the individual. It may seem contradictory to assert both (a)
historical judgments reflect selection of data, proposal of hypotheses, and tests all
motivated by our practical interests, and (b) whether Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK is not
a matter of whether one desires it to be true. However, there is a way through. The
pragmatist holds that truth is something that happens to a proposition through the
process of experimentation. There is no sense of truth which does not include a process
of practically connecting concepts to perceptual experience. It simply does not make

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sense to assert that something is true but has no continuity with our own experience.
To tweak Peirce’s example, it is like asserting that an object that no one will ever, or
could ever, encounter is hard. The proposition has no meaning. The assertion that JFK
was or was not shot, when radically separated from any possible inquirer in the
present, collapses. It has no meaning for us, and that is the only meaning there is. We
may assume the position of some Objective observer, but this God-like position is either
some actual present observer(s) or some imagined future observer(s).
16 Further, as noted, histories are selective. Some events are picked out as data while
others are not on the expectation that those selected events will prove worthwhile in
ongoing inquiry. If one were to write a history of the American presidency immediately
prior to JFK’s assassination, it would have a different data set from that written
immediately after. Lee Harvey Oswald would still have led the life he did prior to the
assassination, but whether his life is counted as data for our inquiry, and the
significance of events in his life, would take on radically new meaning. The meaning of
the past, and the truth of historical judgments, are mutually determined as time moves
forward. Historical writing dialectically relates the meanings of the past and the
present, changing both. In Joseph Blau’s eloquent words, “each present has a new past”
(1960: 99).
17 For the pragmatist historian historical inquiry is then necessarily value-laden and
selective rather than Objective and value-free. This does not take place in a vacuum.
Behind historians and their inquiries is a broader social context that directs why they
inquire. “For historical inquiry is an affair (1) of selection and arrangement, and (2) is
controlled by the dominant problems and conceptions of the culture of the period in
which it is written” (Dewey 1938: 236). The historian does not work from outside of
culture, but from within one shot-through with cultural problems and inherited
cultural frameworks. Historians’ problems are not exclusively their own.
There is no history except in terms of movement toward some outcome, something
taken as an issue, whether it be the Rise and the Fall of the Roman Empire, Negro
Slavery in the United States, the Polish Question, the Industrial Revolution or Land
Tenure. […] The urgency of the social problems which are now developing out of
the forces of industrial production and distribution is the source of a new interest
in history from the economic point of view. When current problems seem
dominantly political, the political aspect of history is uppermost. (Dewey 1938: 237)
18 Like the philosopher or the social scientist, the historian is counter-intuitively
concerned with the present.2
19 Ultimately, the historian is concerned with the future as well, to address the
underlying cultural contradictions and to resolve the problems of the present. The
present reaches both backward and forward. “The selection of the end or outcome
marks an interest and the interest reaches into the future” (Dewey 1938: 237). And the
discipline of history is itself an intervention. “The writing of history is itself an
historical event. It is something which happens and which in its occurrence has
existential consequences” (Dewy 1938: 237). The historian, however slightly, redirects
history.
20 In sum, Dewey and many of Dewey’s contemporary historians abandoned the model of
the historian as reporter of mere happenings. Rather, history is a practically engaged,
value-laden practice that arises against its background cultural tensions and
assumptions and is inevitably oriented toward a desired future. It identifies problems

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and hopes to resolve them by proposing and testing hypotheses / interpretive

frameworks.
21 Dewey’s associate George Boas provided a survey of the problems an instrumentalist

history of philosophy would have to address: “(1) the specific end which the
philosophical solution was devised to attain; (2) the possibility of a given solution’s
being used for a variety of ends; (3) the survival of obsolete questions and answers; (4)
the rise of the terminal value of obsolescent ideas” (Boas 1950: 87). Boas bemoaned the
fact that no such instrumentalist history of philosophy had not been written as of 1950.
Arguably, it has still not been written. However, if these are the tasks of an
instrumentalist history of philosophy, then it is clear that Dewey was attempting to
write one in Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy. Here, Dewey tried to explain
how it is that philosophers developed solutions to contextualized problems and the
unfortunate ways that those solutions have taken on a life of their own and continue to
serve ends alien at the time of their creation. To those who have read Unmodern
Philosophy and Modern Philosophy, there is perhaps no need to explain further. What I
have written so far may obviously inform the central arguments of that text. However,
for the sake of clarification, and for those who are not yet familiar with Unmodern
Philosophy, let us make the connections clear.
22 If historical writing is necessarily a selective enterprise governed by a practical
concern to resolve present difficulties, then we must identify what concern governs
Unmodern Philosophy. Most broadly, it is the same that animates Dewey’s thought
generally; that is, the desire to extend the operation of intelligence to morals – the
realms of aesthetic appreciation, of right conduct, fulfilling social life, and so on.
Therefore, his various histories of philosophy are going to be concerned foremost not
in recounting events, or providing a sweeping panorama or various gestalten, but in
showing the frequently frustrated work of intelligence. John Herman Randall, perhaps
the best commentator on Dewey’s historicism, stated, “Where Dewey approaches most
closely to the narration of a history – as in the Reconstruction in Philosophy – it is in
following the thread of the development of method. For him, it is method rather than
vision that is fundamental in the history of philosophy, t hat reflective and critical
method that aims to reorganize and reconstruct beliefs” (1939: 78-79). 3 Similarly, and
with specific reference to Dewey’s writings on the Greeks, who occupy a central place
in Dewey’s historical account, Frederick Anderson wrote, “most of John Dewey’s
significant commentary on ancient philosophy occurs within argument for some
special phase of his own theory of inquiry. The indication, I believe, is that, in Dewey’s
eyes, the study of Greek philosophy should not be thought of primarily as the
occupation of a special academic task force, but a continuing reinterpretation that is of
general importance within contemporary philosophy” (1967: 86). 4
23 Unmodern Philosophy takes method as its central concern, and not only in the latter
conceptual half. The first three chapters engage in a roughly anthropological account
of the origin of Western philosophy in the conflicts within and between cultures.
Philosophy in any era is a reflective response to concrete social conditions. At the
origin of philosophy, increased commerce and contact between cultures called into the
question the narratives that societies tell to make sense of life. Conflicting narratives

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produced the need to invent the very notion of a fundamental object of thought, and
correspondingly, the notion of a method of thinking. Agrarian and industrial models of
Nature, corresponding to basic Greek ways of life, were proposed to make sense of lived
conflicts.
24 These incompatible narratives (and others) then necessitated a new problematization:
“How is rational discourse possible?” (36). It is the discovery of logical method itself.
Similarly, it is the identification of a proper object for thought – Nature itself. In
Dewey’s narrative, Plato’s search for method and its object was never far from his
moral concern to develop a legislative art that will overcome the disintegration of
Athenian culture and recapture their prior easy harmony. Sadly, with Aristotle, the
limitations of Greek logic – themselves reflective of Greek social contradictions and
language and of the poor state of natural science – prevented a proper theory of
inquiry and its object from being developed. “The state of invention and technology
rendered any adequate experimental analysis of nature impossible. The best that can
be done under such conditions is to organize and define critically what is already
believed, and the body of existing beliefs in absence of any technique of systematic
discovery had of necessity developed accidentally and causally” (50). Aristotle reached
the heights of what was possible, given the problems and methods available to an
ancient Greek, but his organum was critically flawed. It encompassed a logic of
discovery, but not one of experimentation. What is worse, Plato’s essential connection
between method and morals was lost as the theoretical and the practical were severed.
25 As cultural conditions changed, the problematizations shifted as well5. 5 With the
Medievals, the problem of method and its object was supernaturalized into one of the
relation between levels of reality. With the moderns, ‘How is rational discourse
possible?’ became ‘Is knowledge possible?’ Corresponding to new problematizations
came new objects: for the Medievals, it was the God as articulated in the synthesizing
institution of the Church and, for the moderns, it is the Object which is somehow other
than the Subject yet somehow potentially an object of knowledge.
26 Dewey’s history of philosophy then periodizes time and, like other historians’, it
contains an agenda. Periodizations make claims about history’s pivotal moments and
arcs, and predict where it is headed, for good or ill. Rather than a Christian two-era
periodization, in which time is divided into a period of darkness and another of
redemption following the appearance of Christ, or a Renaissance three-era
periodization in which time is divided into Greek heights, a Medieval Dark Age, and
then a time of classical rebirth, Dewey offers a four-era interpretive model. Like the
Renaissance Humanists, he sees a height of a limited humanistic naturalism, a fallow
period (while also recognizing the Church as a successful synthesis of its culture), and
the promise of a new humanistic naturalism with the advent of modern science.
However, the new naturalism has so far failed.6
27 For Dewey, modernity is still a project and he combined a strong sense of modernity’s
newness with frustration at its failure to realize. In writing Unmodern Philosophy, Dewey
repeatedly returned to Matthew Arnold’s description of modernity as “Wandering
between two worlds, one dead / The other powerless to be born” and we (un)moderns
“have a sense that their system is not their own creation, and that it by no means
corresponds exactly with the wants of their actual life; that, for them, it is customary,
not rational. The awakening of this sense is the awakening of the modern spirit” (92). 7 Hence,
we come to the pragmatist historian’s concern for the future.

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28 The next period has not yet happened. We do not have a naturalized account of
knowing, but epistemology. The latter reflects the problematization originated by the
Greeks and modified by the Medievals and (Un)moderns, but never overcome. Dewey’s
history of philosophy is then not oriented to recount simply what happened, but to
stage a critical intervention into that history, to introduce a change in existential
conditions going forward. By producing a selective narrative, he is hoping to provoke a
certain interpretive model in the reader and thereby clear the way for a better future.
Ultimately, Dewey is trying to recover the connection between method and morals that
he found in Plato, though certainly not the same method, nor the same morals. As cited
above, the historian’s selective interest is futural. Dewey is not writing a critical history
of philosophy out of a pure concern to report the events, but because it makes way for a
naturalistic culture of inquiry, a democratic community that attends to experience.
29 Recently, David Bourget and David Chalmers conducted a survey of philosophical

beliefs on thirty issues they took to be central to the discipline (Bourget and Chalmers
forthcoming). The answers they received are not as important as the questions they
asked and who they asked them of. Of those thirty questions, one was on aesthetics, one
on philosophy of religion, three or four were on meta-ethics (depending on whether
one considers the issue of free will to be primarily an ethical concern), two were on
ethics, and one on politics. The twenty-one remaining questions regarded issues of
epistemology and metaphysics. Perversely, there were more questions regarding the
significance of teleporters and zombies than either politics, God, or aesthetics. And of
the two ethics questions, one regarded whether one should reroute the trolley in the
famed thought experiment. To their credit, Bourget and Chalmers acknowledge that
their survey sample was drawn primarily from analytic philosophers at elite,
mainstream universities with Ph.D. programs. But perhaps this admission is itself an
unintentional condemnation of the state of the dominant anglophilic conversation.
30 Dewey repeatedly complained that epistemology-centered philosophy addresses the
problems of philosophers rather than the problems of men. Unless English-speaking
society truly considers the questions of faith, goodness, justice and beauty to run far
second to those of knowledge and Being (and zombies and teleporters), then Dewey’s
complaint would appear to be true today. And insofar as those questions focus on the
very possibility of knowledge of existence rather than how to know and exist well, then
he was all the more correct in his analysis. Dewey’s Unmodern Philosophy and Modern
Philosophy provides a critical genealogy that is perhaps familiar to those who know his
other works, but it is still needed despite its familiarity. Dewey’s history of western
philosophy looks to the future, toward the democratic culture that is synonymous with
a culture of inquiry. It is a prospective history of philosophy that clears the way for a
naturalize account of knowing that, Dewey hoped, would produce a richer and more
humane community.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
ANDERSON F. M., (1967), “Dewey’s Experiment with Greek Philosophy,” International Philosophical
Quarterly, 7, 1.
AUXIER R., (1990), “Dewey on Religion and History,” Southwest Philosophy Review, 6, 1.
AUXIER R., (2002), “Foucault, Dewey, and the History of the Present,” Journal of Speculative
Philosophy, 16, 2.
BLAU J., (1960), “John Dewey’s Theory of History,” The Journal of Philosophy, 57, 3.
BOAS G., (1950), “Instrumentalism and the History of Philosophy,” in John Dewey: Philosopher of
Science and Freedom, ed. by Sidney Hook, New York, Dial Press.
BOURGET D., & D. CHALMERS, (forthcoming), “What Do Philosophers Believe?,” Philosophical Studies.
DEWEY J., (1938), Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, in The Collected Works of John Dewey, Carbondale,
Southern Illinois University Press.
DEWEY J., (2012), Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy, ed. by P. Deen, Carbondale, Southern
KLOPPENBERG J., (1987), “Morton White’s Social Thought in America,” Reviews in American History,
15, 3.
KLOPPENBERG J., (2004), “Pragmatism and the Practice of History: From Turner and DuBois to
Today,” Metaphilosophy, 35, 1.
KOOPMAN C., (2010), “Historicism in Pragmatism: Lessons in Historiography and Philosophy,”

Metaphilosophy, 41, 5.
KOOPMAN C., (2011), “Genealogical Pragmatism: How History Matters for Foucault and Dewey,”
Journal of the Philosophy of History, 5, 3.
NOVICK P., (1988), That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession,
New York, Cambridge University Press.
RANDALL J. H., (1939), “Dewey’s Interpretation of the History of Philosophy,” in The Philosophy of
John Dewey, ed. by P. A. Schlipp and L. E. Hahn, LaSalle, Open Court Press.
RANDALL J. H., (1958), Nature and Historical Experience, New York, Columbia University Press.
RANDALL J. H., (1963), How Philosophy Uses its Past, New York, Columbia University Press.
STROUT C., (1958), The Pragmatic Revolt in American History: Carl Becker and Charles Beard, New Haven,
Yale University Press.
TURNER F. J., (1939), The Early Writings of Frederick Jackson Turner, Madison, University of Wisconsin
Press.
WILKINS B. T., (1959), “Pragmatism as a Theory of Historical Knowledge: John Dewey on the Nature
of Historical Inquiry,” The American Historical Review, 64, 4.

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NOTES
1. For an analysis of Dewey and Foucault on histories of the present, and of a possible Deweyan
influence on Foucault, see Auxier 2002. For more by Auxier on Dewey, religion and history, see
Auxier 1990.
2. In an impressively foreshadowing passage immediately after the one just quoted, Dewey then
turns to those who write history out of their concern for climatic changes.
3. Randall’s work has faded from the conversation, but he deserves a rediscovery. For more from
Randall directly relevant to the present article, see (Randall 1958, 3-13, 35, 39-44, 56-61; and
Randall 1963, esp. 13-27, 79).
4. My thanks to Albert Randall Spencer for making me aware of this text.
5. “Problematizations” is knowingly taken from the thought of Michel Foucault. It is no
coincidence that the intersection between Dewey and Foucault has appeared in recent writings
on pragmatist historicism. Randall Auxier’s work was mentioned in a previous footnote. I would
highlight Colin Koopman’s work on Dewey, Foucault and problematization (Koopman 2010, and
Koopman 2011).
6. Had I the space in this article, I would investigate the possibility of a parallel genealogy of
critique in Dewey’s history of philosophy. Parallel to Foucault’s extensive genealogy of
disciplinary power/governmentality, he also wrote a short account of the rise of critical reason/
Enlightenment. Given Dewey’s all too brief mention of the progressive element of modern
philosophy, the possibility of a similar genealogy of critique is intriguing (170-74).
7. As editor of the manuscripts, I can testify that Dewey typed this entire passage out in draft
after draft (as well as Malikowski’s definition of culture).
AUTHOR
PHILLIP DEEN
University of New Hampshire
phillip.deen[at]unh.edu

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The Nature of the Modern Mind

Some Remarks on Dewey’s Unmodern Philosophy and Modern
Philosophy
Pierre Steiner
1 In Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy (UPMP hereafter), Dewey develops a

comprehensive account of mindedness and a genealogical picture of the modern
concept of ‘mind.’ Chapter X, “Mind and Body”, is the longest chapter of the book. Its
three sections correspond to three different folders, yet all written in 1942. The title of
the chapter – Dewey’s own title – might sound surprising to the readers of chapter VII
of Experience and Nature, where Dewey explicitly coined the term ‘body-mind’ for
insisting on the continuity between mental qualities and non-mental qualities in
experience.1 “Mind and Body” seems like a step back, presupposing a dualism between
a mind and a body that should be reunified or put into relation. But the historical
project of the previous parts of the books makes clear that “Mind and Body” denotes
the problem that we have inherited from modern philosophy, and that Dewey wants to
dissolve.
2 Not all the chapter deals with issues pertaining to mental phenomena, and we can find
in other places of the book very interesting sections dealing with mindedness and its
study. This is the reason why the present paper will be about Dewey’s philosophy of
mind (a potentially misleading expression, as we will see) as it is developed throughout
the book, although with a special focus on the first section of chapter X. It is of course
hopeless to give a substantial account of the richness of these sections. I will present
some specific topics: the invention of the modern mind and contemporary Cartesian
materialism (section I); Dewey’s adverbial conception of mental phenomena (section II);
the new status of the brain (and of brain sciences) in that view (section III); the
importance of temporal continuity and transactions (section IV).
3 From the point of view of content, readers of Dewey’s papers such as What are states of
mind? (1912), Body and mind (1928), How is mind to be known? (1945), and of various
chapters of Experience and Nature and Art as Experience will not find, in this book, totally
new elements concerning the status of mental phenomena in Dewey’s philosophy. But –
and this is crucial – they will find a remarkable continuity between Dewey’s remarks on
mental phenomena (and the sciences pertaining to them), and historical considerations

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on the problem of knowledge, on the birth of philosophy, on the emergence of modern

science, or on the technological dimensions of intelligence. This is why the reading of
the book definitely suggests – in my view – how much Dewey’s philosophy of mind is
different from today’s orthodoxy not only in virtue of its contents (Steiner 2008), but
also and especially because of its inclusion and relations with Dewey’s broader
concerns with historical, epistemological, pedagogical and social questions.
I. The Invention of the Modern Mind and

Contemporary Cartesian Materialism
4 As Dewey already pointed out in The Quest for Certainty, overcoming the Spectator
Theory of Knowledge requires a criticism of the conception of mind that it presupposes
(LW4: 18-19). The modern problem of knowledge, namely, “how is knowledge as a
relation between an inner domain (the subject) and an outer domain (the object)
possible?” (95), presupposes a modern conception of the mind according to which
knowledge is the achievement of an individual and inner mind, facing nature and
society (67, 119), and operating in virtue of representational powers radically different
from natural forces (205). A better understanding of the historical origins of this
conception of mind as an “inner container of ideas and representations” will be of
great help for criticizing and rejecting it; and in UPMP Dewey does indeed deconstruct
this conception by virtue of genealogical considerations.
5 As Dewey reminds us, modern natural philosophy fostered a materialist mechanization
of the macrocosm and of the microcosm, including living nature: we pass from a living
nature (‘nature’ comes from the Latin ‘nasci,’ which means birth) in where it is the
absence of life which requires explanation, to an inert world in which it is living
phenomena that are peculiar. It is in virtue of this mechanization that nature could
become an object of thought, but also of manipulation. Assimilating nature to a set of
mechanisms allows one to ask not only which modes of action nature follows, but also
which modes of action it should follow (Koyré 1965): as the engineer constructs
machines and defines how they have to behave, the modern philosopher knows nature
and its laws by creating truths about it. Truth (with ignorance and error) is no longer in
nature, but in the representations we make about it. The basic form of manipulation is
experimentation, where artificially produced and controlled effects help producing
models of the artificiality of nature. In the laboratory, we manipulate a part of nature
(simplify it, purify it, isolate it) in order to turn nature into its very own model.
6 In its pervasive Cartesian version, mechanism entailed that everything that was not
mechanizable became a left-over remainder to be relegated into the realm of mind, the
res cogitans: an unextended and individual thinking substance (87), outside of nature.
The Aristotelian unity of soul and body is replaced by a Cartesian union between mind
and the body, the latter entity being defined only by its spatial and kinetic properties.
The paragon of this shift in perspective lies in the resultant appearance of qualities:
since Galileo’s Saggiatore (1623), there are primary qualities (shape, position, speed),
and secondary qualities such as colors, odors, tastes, pains, pleasures or sensations such
as dryness or coldness. Since secondary qualities are not in the world, their occurrence
is a subjective occurrence: they exist only in so far as they are in perception; they are
mental entities in the mind of the perceiver. Psychological and vital phenomena proper
to the Aristotelian ‘soul’ such as growth and movement are considered as mechanical

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(and non-mental) phenomena of the res extensa; the remainder of the ‘soul’ belongs to a
non-extended inner substance, the ‘mind’ (204-05), which is a recipient of ideas and a
producer of perceived qualities. This modern mind came to play an important role in
the explanation of the success of modern science. However, its creation and mention is
also a symptom of the imbalance between theory and practice that progressively
emerged.
7 This picture of the ‘mind apart’ stood in continuity with the way the modern scientific
mind (and its sequel, the European Enlightenment) understood itself: as the product of
individual minds (Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, …), genially
abstracting themselves from medieval traditions and prejudices, sometimes at the peril
of their life (e.g. the popular interpretation of the Galileo vs. the Church case). The
historiography of the last 50 years2 has shown how much that (self)-understanding of
the spirit of modern science is deeply misleading, if not ideological. Firstly, modern
figures such as the ones mentioned above were all deeply influenced by Greek themes
and Medieval practices (Kepler’s astrology and Platonic view of the cosmos; Newton’s
interests in alchemy and in a chemistry based on the concept of affinity; the fascination
of Copernicus, Harvey and Galileo with circular motion; Copernicus’ Pythagorean
insistence that a heliostatic universe would be simpler and more harmonious than a
geocentric universe full of epicycles …). Secondly, as Dewey points out, if it is true that
modern science has had a profound impact upon industry, the fine arts and politics, it
is not because there is a principled and chronological distinction between ‘pure’
science and ‘applied’ science, but because modern science is a product of technical,
artistic, political, military and economical innovations that occurred during the
Renaissance and Medieval times (64-65).3
8 Whereas modern science continuously developed out of its past (and not out of the
isolated minds of a few geniuses), modern philosophy remained caught in that past, in
order to provide answers and foundations corresponding to the practical upheavals of
modern science and technology. A constant theme in UPMP (and, more generally, in
Dewey’s reading of the history of philosophy) is that the emergence of modernity relied
upon an imbalance between, on the one hand, the new development of science and
technology and, on the other, the preservation and reinforcement of many dualisms
inherited from the pre-Modern area, and still present in the positivist and the
phenomenalist traditions of the 19th century (181). Amongst these dualisms, we can
mention: subject vs. object, mental vs. physical, knowing vs. doing, appearance vs.
reality, or mind vs. world. These mind-involving dualisms were used for understanding
and rationalizing the origins and the scope of modern science in relation with pre-
Modern values and ideas:
The causes of the division and dualism did not lie in the methods of the new science
as they were actually practiced nor yet in the concrete conclusions forming its
subject matter. They came from an extraneous source; namely, from uncritical
acceptance of Greek-medieval ideas which were projected into interpretation of the
new science although they were themselves both a reflection and a justifying
ground of the very attitudes the new science was displacing. (311)
9 As said above, modern philosophers took the cause of the new science as being the
alleged emancipation of the individual intellect from “everything that impeded and
diverted it from operating in accord with its own separate and independent being”
(65), suggesting how much the individual mind is and should be independent of the
outside world (MW9: 300). But modern individualism, Dewey thought, did not actually

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involve emancipation from beliefs and values from the past (witness the various
dualisms mentioned above). The fact that the heirs of modernity (namely, we
ourselves) have constantly undervalued the practical and technological roots of
modern science that can be found in the pre-modern area, by understanding modern
science as being primarily an intellectual revolution made by individual minds, is also a
symptom of the imbalance mentioned above. The consequences of modern science
upon our lives and practices have often led us to think that a change of our minds,
values and ideas was a requisite for such a change in the practical scope and powers of
science (“intelligent technology and science is necessarily the product of intelligent
minds”), so that modern science could not but go with a shift of values and ideas.
Symptomatically too, this reasoning presupposes that minds were at the source of
modern science. This heroic picture of the modern mind is still entrenched today,
notably in the history of ideas. As Dewey writes,
They [writers on the history of philosophy] write as if the mind of the philosopher,
empty of prepossessions derived from tradition and uninspired by any humane
interest of their [environment] were confronted by the universe at large, uncolored
by any local properties and untempered by any temporal preoccupations: and as if
the mind then proceeded, by direct intercourse in general with the universe in
general, to bring forth a system. (33)
10 One’s history of philosophy (and history of science) reflects one’s (often tacit)
commitments to a specific picture of mind: a reconsideration of the latter
commitments is a necessary step for a reconstruction of the former history. But it
would be terribly misleading to understand Dewey’s quote above as defending the need
for an externalist perspective on philosophical and scientific phenomena. In the history
of ideas, proponents of internalism and proponents of externalism both presuppose the
intelligibility of a distinction between a core of “intellectual” activities (a core made of
experiments, theories, data, debates, discussions, …) and a wrapping of non-scientific
or non-philosophical (social, economical, ideological, technological) facts – the
controversy being merely about the extent to which the container (the wrapping)
affects the contents. Dewey’s adverbial conception of mind and his pragmatic
instrumentalism concerning knowledge radically overcome this dualism of content vs.
container.
11 The cure for this isolation of mind from nature does not lie in a classical externalist
philosophy of mind – according to which some kinds of mental contents cannot be
defined or had in the absence of appropriate relations with the world. Finally, the
solution cannot be an even more materialist and mechanicist conception of mind, as La
Mettrie proposed in 1748 in his L’homme-machine and as many versions of cognitive
science will assert it two hundred years later4 under different guises (representational-
computational theory of mind, parallel distributed processing, computational
neurosciences …). Indeed, this would not be a departure from the Cartesian tradition,
but its supreme achievement: the mind is still inside an individual person (73), and is
now identified with a material substance, the brain, whose events “stand for” external
events (181), and thus try to reach out into an “external world” (318). What some
authors recently called Cartesian materialism5 is just the name of a new dualism. As
Dewey said in 1916, “the older dualism of soul and body has been replaced by that of
the brain and the rest of the body” (MW9: 346). The brain becomes the physical
substrate of mind (MW4: 132); the mystery of the relation between brain and
consciousness then also nurtures the problem of knowledge (MW8: 60).

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12 One’s picture of history of science and philosophy depends on one’s view of the mind,
but the latter view also depends on specific pictures of what science reaches and
teaches. Indeed, besides creeping forms of individualism and internalism,
contemporary calls for the naturalization of mental phenomena also rest upon a very
restricted conception of nature inherited from the mechanical philosophy and
nurturing itself on oversimplifications of today’s physical science: nature is reduced to
a set of mechanical interactions between material parts. What Dewey called in other
places “the materialist fallacy” (MW2: 9-14; LW17: 358) and “the analytical or reductive
fallacy” (LW10: 319) in philosophy comes from the philosopher’s fascination with some
successful scientific theories in the natural sciences. This is an ironic situation, for
Dewey remarks that very often the scientific theories (psychology in Dewey’s time, and
probably today the neurosciences) that are praised by naturalistic philosophers trying
to import their results into philosophy, are themselves based on a set of dualistic views
that originated in philosophy (stimulus vs. response, knowledge vs. action, intellectual
vs. practical, representing brain vs. represented world …) These views, Dewey says,
find their way back into philosophy and are used without even the remotest sense
of need for criticism, to say nothing of thoroughgoing revision, as standard means
of philosophical inquiry. (331)6
13 Salvation will therefore not come from more naturalism, for the scientific discourses on
mind that naturalist philosophers praise are often already contaminated by the very
dualisms one needs to get rid of.
II. Mind as a Verb

14 Dewey opens chapter X of the book, “Mind and Body,” by reclaiming his ‘adverbial’
conception of mindedness (the sources of which can be traced back to 1912, in the
paper What are states of mind?). ‘Mind’ is a word of (ad)verbal force: it qualifies behaviors
manifesting specific properties. In his Nous n’avons jamais été modernes (1991: 157), Bruno
Latour argues that words such as ‘science,’ ‘technology’ or ‘organization’ denote effects
or stabilizations, but not causes or explainers. They are, as Latour says, good substantives,
but very bad adjectives or verbs (as when one considers that science is made
scientifically). For Dewey, when we speak about ‘mind,’ the problem arises when the
adverb (“mentally”) gets transformed into an adjective (‘mental’) denoting a special
property, and then into a noun (‘mind’) denoting an entity at the source of behavior
(see also LW1: 66). Initially, the adverb denotes a specific mode of situated interaction
(and not a cause or explanatory element). The only acceptable sense of ‘mind’ as a
noun, for Dewey, is as denoting a body of organized meanings (LW1: 230; LW10: 277), a
habitual product of our past interactions with the environment, and enabling our
contemporary and future interactions with meaningful situations. Already in 1907,
Dewey argued that ideas were not psychical pieces or entities, but modes of action in
the environment: interpretations of the environment in reference to absent portions,
for the purpose of action (MW4: 83-84). In the course of Dewey’s works, that definition
will be refined and extended in order to deal with mental phenomena in general. In
UPMP, Dewey writes:
Mind and mental do not stand for things which are inventions of psychologists and
philosophers. They stand […] for important properties of activities open to
observation, the characteristics of which are so distinctive in comparison with
other kind of observed events as to demand special recognition. (207)

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15 Mind and mental events stand for properties of interactivities displayed by persons,
and not by parts of them (206). But which properties? They are modes of behavior.
Speaking about modes of behavior places us in an ontological framework in which
energies, processes and events are primary for describing natural phenomena (215).
The concept of mind, Dewey says, is made out of “conditions which exist only in
processes of active connection with other modes of energy” (322, my emphasis). Mental
or psychological properties differ from vital and physical properties not in virtue of
their nature (since they manifest themselves only in certain physico-chemical and
biological conditions (215)), but notably in virtue of their relevance in certain contexts
of observation of human behavior (214-15), when the observer deals with aspects of
behavior that physics or physiology do not describe. But which modes of behavior?
16 Here, again – as in Art as Experience (LW10: 268) – Dewey invites us to pay attention to
the uses of the verb mind (206-08).7 Minding involves attending and caring (including
affective caring), as special types of organic action: an organic action that is special not
because of some experience or of some inner psychical activity that would produce it
(attention, Dewey insists, is attentive behavior), but in virtue of the type of transactional
situation it is a part of, namely a situation in which creatures are sensitive to
meaningful qualities as instantiated in events and objects. These meaningful qualities
are publicly shared; they presuppose participation and communication (LW3: 49):
Mental phenomena represent life-functions of a physiological order transformed by
interaction with social conditions involving language and its cultural products.
(318; see also 321)
17 We are now on familiar ground: there is no mind or mental items; there are specific
ways of interacting with the environment, by displaying a sensitivity to meaningful
qualities proper to a situation or transaction (MW7: 37-38 and 54-55; MW10: 58; LW3:
37), from habitual capacities (MW14: 124), from customs (LW6: 12), and from some
enacted biography (LW3: 34). As a reminder, let me note that, for Dewey, meaning
involves aboutness (not only in thought or language, but also primarily in action and
manipulation of objects) defined with reference to rules that are shared (LW1: 147). It
does not necessarily equate with written or spoken language (LW12: 27) (just as mental
qualities are not necessarily conscious (LW1: 230; LW10: 270)).
18 Besides emotional (caring for), intellectual (attending) and volitional (intending)
aspects, minding also involves obeying (209) – this is a new and important point, as
Dewey defines here ‘obeying’ in relation with perceptual circumstances. Ideas, beliefs
and judgments are formed in relations with actual environmental circumstances.
Observation of these circumstances commits us to certain conclusions. This submission
is active, since it requires that we accept to free ourselves from some prejudices and
some preconceptions (there is no tabula rasa, of course), and to consider what natural
conditions could teach us. This capacity of epistemic freedom is acquired in practices:
We have, to speak metaphorically, to let events in, and there are so many
obstructions in the way to their admission that the attitude of submission required
is radically different from that of passive acquiescence. The obeying or submission,
the “objectivity,” involved in minding specific conditions (or the “world” generally)
is an art attained only by discipline and through prolonged practice. (209)
19 Dewey also compares this attitude of free submission to intellectual integrity (209). Two
points are important here.

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20 (1) This normativity of inquiry is not so much a conformity to epistemic rules or norms
that would be absolutely defined and respected, but rather the capacity to consider
environmental circumstances as resources for the discussion and the testing of our
hypotheses, and not as resources for the confirmation of propositions and hypotheses
defined independently of these circumstances.
21 (2) Environmental circumstances and conditions do not say or prescribe anything. It is
only in the context of inquiry that their constraining nature can appear, facing our
projects and our hypotheses. This might shed new light on Dewey’s basic realism. For
Dewey, it is well known that inquiry involves obedience to facts, a cor-respondance or
co-operation between existence and thought (MW6: 5). Dewey’s pragmatic
instrumentalism or experimentalism does not run against a basic realistic commitment
according to which objects stand – persist, change – independently of their relations to
knowers and their judgments (MW6: 117) – hence the possibility of constraint and of
experiment. As is well known, Dewey escapes from the classical and contemporary
opposition between realism and anti-realism in virtue of its view of mental activities.
Both realism and anti-realism assume that knowledge and, more broadly, mental
activities are intellectual activities, consisting in inner episodes occurring inside of
some static subject. For Dewey, knowledge and judgment are not internal, mental
affairs; they are natural modes of experiencing. Experiencing is not sensing or feeling:
it involves doing, undergoing, suffering, adjusting and readjusting with the
environment in the course of continuous and situated interactions. With idealism,
Dewey retains the creative nature of intelligence (LW4: 111); contra idealism, he asserts
that intelligence is embodied, pragmatic (and notably technological) and re-constructive,
and that there is much more in experience than knowledge, ideas and judgments
(MW6: 86; LW1: 28). With realism, Dewey acknowledges that inquiry involves
(co-)responding with facts whose constraining nature is not a fancy of our ideas or
imagination, as the quoted passage above testifies. Contra realism, Dewey denies that
the function of knowledge and, more broadly, mind, is to reflect or to represent a
reality that would be independent of experience, and that some kind of discourse (such
as scientific theories) would be able to describe facts and reality as they are, providing a
(epistemically or ontologically) privileged description of reality. On the contrary: it is
because the primary nature of knowledge and of intelligence is to make a difference in
the world that it is vain and useless to refer to some reality standing outside of
experience (our “inclusive frame of reference”, Dewey says (329)) and whose access
would guarantee the success and the acceptability of our claims and hypotheses. It is
not only the case that material actions change the world: claims and hypotheses help us
to do something in experience. More precisely, what they refer to now make (us) (ready
to) do something new, so that the world is continuously changing and changed.
Knowledge (especially scientific knowledge), for Dewey, exhibits and modifies the
range of connections, relations and potentialities that define what some thing is (182;
LW4: 213):
The fact when it is known enters into a new environment. Without ceasing to
belong to the physical environment it enters also into a medium of human
activities, of desires and aversions, habits and instincts. It thereby gains new
potencies, new capacities. Gunpowder in water does not act the same as gunpowder
next a flame. A fact known does not operate the same as a fact unperceived. (MW14:
206)

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22 If one decides to equate the “physical environment” with “what exists independently of
us,” a hopeless path is opened, aiming at describing what there is by transcending our
situated and pluralistic point of view:
How can we segregate, antecedently to experimental inquiry, the ‘physical’ chair
from the chair which is now the object to be known; into what contradictions do we
fall when we attempt to define the object of awareness not in its own terms, but in
terms of a selected type of object which is the appropriate subject-matter of some
other cognizance! (MW4: 139)8
23 Back to the quotation of UPMP above: the objectivity that thought and inquiry meet is
constraining… and objective not because it exists outside of experience, but because it
consists in relations and connections that take place between us and things in relation
with inquiry. “Letting events in,” as Dewey says, does not amount to pure receptivity,
since observational behavior also involves anticipation (211). This is a basic biological
fact, already at play in non-human organisms, where vital behavior is simultaneously in
a state of attraction towards and repulsion from actual environmental conditions (212)
(human awareness derives from this dialectics, Dewey argues). These constraining facts
are never captured all at once: in order to meet their constraining nature for testing
our hypotheses and define the consequences of our ideas, we must act.
24 Mental qualities, Dewey insists, are related to behaviors proper to persons, and not to
parts of them (their body, their brain). Indeed, it is persons who engage in interactions
with the environment (206). But modernity, too, built itself on the idea that mind was
personal (73). Still, there are alternative ways of defining what a person is: the mention
of some Ego, or of some inner consciousness, standing against the world, is not the only
way. Indeed, being a person, for Dewey, is a relational property. Persons only exist in
networks of social relations, duties and commitments, broader than morals (190). The
fact someone is a person means something more than being a human being: it means
she possesses capacities that operate “only in a group in which there exist such
relational functions as formulated liabilities, rights, duties, and immunities” (199):
It is in and because of interplay among expectations, demands, fulfillments and
evasions, with accompanying praise and blame, reward and penalty, approval and
disapproval, that modes of behavior take on acknowledged social importance and
become representative of social values; that is, of activities which are taken by the
group to be important for group welfare and perpetuation. Human beings as the
bearers of these representative functions, or offices, come into possession of the
properties that describe a personal being. (p.190; Dewey’s emphasis) 9
25 There are thus at least two questions that are opened up. Firstly: how much can the
normativity of inquiry defined above be a part of the network of commitments that
define what persons are and do? And secondly: if mind is a personal (and situated)
achievement, what about the status of the organs that are involved in this
achievement? I will follow UPMP here, where Dewey expresses important elements for
answering the second question.
III. Rediscovering the Brain?

26 The foregoing remarks have consequences for reconsidering the role of the brain in
minding behavior. The brain, Dewey says, is an organ of adaptive behavior (216): we
must try to stick to that picture when we try to understand what happens when we –
humans – think and do:

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As far as animals below man are concerned, most persons would not need argument
as a condition of believing that the brain is an organ of adaptive behavior. It is only
with respect to man, and with respect to him chiefly among philosophers, that the
brain is regarded exclusively or mainly as the organ of knowing, or more absurdly
yet the ‘seat’ of mind. When the body in general and the nervous system and brain
in particular are taken for what they are, organs of vital behavior, the problem is
not how ‘matter’ can give rise to mind, how psychical volition can move physical
muscles, nor how physical nerve-processes can get translated into ‘mental’
sensations and ideas. The problem is one of strictly scientific inquiry […] It is to
discover the characteristic or definitive differences between behavior in the way of
searching, finding out, and other modes of interactivity of organic and environing
energies. (216)
27 This is one of the clearest passage in Dewey’s work 10 where a crucial relation is
established between, on the one hand, the rejection of what I called above “Cartesian
materialism” and its implications for epistemology and, on the other, the imperious
need of achieving a scientific understanding of the real (i.e. non-Cartesian) role and
status of the brain in environmental interactions. These requirements Dewey expresses
are more pressing than ever today: for instance, many proponents of the extension of
cognitive processes in the world still endorse an understanding of the brain as the
central organ of cognitive processes, manufacturing and retrieving internal
representations or informational contents (Clark 2008). Other radical proponents of the
extension of cognitive processes in the world (Chemero 2009; Hutto & Myin 2013) insist
on the need to reject (to a large extent) that information-processing model of the brain
and the idea that the brain is a central or essential component of cognitive processing,
but they seldom mention what status one should then attribute to the brain, how the
empirical results produced in neurosciences should be understood, and more broadly
how research in neurosciences might proceed for studying the extended character of
cognitive processes,11 but also their embodied character (embodiment is not
enbrainment). These issues must figure in the explanatory agenda of what John Shook
and Tibor Solymosi recently proposed as neuropragmatism (see, for instance, Shook &
Solymosi 2013).
28 Later in the text, Dewey tries to make explicit his own view of the purposes of the
brain. We are in 1942: one year before McCulloch and Pitts’ formal neuron, six years
before Manchester Mark 1, the first computer running with stored programs and before
John von Neumann’s seminal text “The general and logical theory of automata” (at the
Hixon Symposium) where an analogy between the nervous system and computational
machines is suggested.
29 Dewey considers the classical “central telephone exchange” metaphor for the brain: it
is misleading, Dewey argues, for the brain does not transfer messages. Dewey rather
suggests, about the brain, that
It is its office to receive a large number of messages, each of which is too partial, too
incomplete, to make sense by itself (i.e., to make sense from the standpoint of the
interactivity to be finally attained) and to coordinate them so that a unified final
adaptive action will occur, which is quite different from what would be done if any
one sensory stimulus or a mere aggregate of them determined the motor outlet.
(217)
30 By talking of ‘messages’ that are received by the brain, is Dewey committed to a
classical information-processing model of the brain? Surely, Dewey’s rejection of
representationalist ontology of mind and knowledge, his insistence on the incomplete

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and partial nature of the messages, and his criticism of Cartesian materialism make it
very difficult to see him as a pre-cognitivist philosopher, for which the brain would
process, retrieve or manufacture information it would receive from sensory channels,
in order then to trigger behavioral outputs. When Dewey asserts that the activity of the
brain makes a difference so that adaptive action is possible and is not identical to a
motor output that would be stimulus-determined, he does not presuppose that the
workings of the brain just take place between sensory inputs and motor outputs. The
brain does not play a mediating role between given sensory stimulus and a piece of
motor behavior that would be the outcome of the intracranial operations: paradoxically,
this role would turn the brain into a barrier between independent sensory inputs and
independent motor parameters. True, the more complex the form of life, the more
refined the motor responses of the organism must be – and so must the brain (217), but
the brain is not an intellectual machinery in virtue of which we would be more than
reflex-life, stimulus-determined creatures. Assuming this would entail renewing with
the Cartesian-material picture Dewey wants to get rid of. The brain – like the muscles,
the nerves and the stomach – is a means through which transactions with nature and
the social world are carried on (LW16: 412). This is what we must start from. The
chapter coming after “Mind and body,” named “The Practical and the Theoretical”
includes a notable attempt by Dewey of using the results of scientific inquiry for
discussing the shortcomings of the idea that the brain would be an intellectual organ,
and hence the seat of knowledge – before the motor outputs, and after sensory inputs.
This idea is reflected in the classical separation between “higher-level” cognitive
functions that would reside in the cortical part of the nervous system, and “lower-
level” ones (related to sensori-motor behavior) related to the spinal cord and basal
ganglia. 46 years after his first considerations on the continuity and behavioral
integration of sensations and motor behavior (EW5: 96-110), Dewey writes:
The difference between the action of the spinal and basal ganglia and the cortical-
cerebral marks a division of labor within an inclusive unified scheme of behavior;
not a separation or divorce. […] The view that what goes on during deliberation and
planning involves participation of practically all organic functions, instead of the
brain alone, is proved as a matter of general physiological teaching by the
impossibility of completely closing off cerebral activity but shutting down all the
channels by which energies are transmitted to and from cerebral action. There is
simply bound to be an inflow and an overflow. On the more definitely psychological
side, the same conclusion is established by the fact that without sensori-motor
participations (sustained in turn by vital organic functions), we should not be aware
what we are thinking and planning. (260-62)
31 At the level of the nervous system, we already find a non-separation between “theory”
and “practice”: abstract, complex, idle, disengaged mental activities are never totally
off- line, since their cortical correlates require a continuous flow of energies in order to
be effective, and thus a living organism hosting them, breathing, experiencing, sensing
and moving (this is why brains in vats could not produce thought or experience
(Thompson & Cosmelli 2010)). As Dewey says, “thinking in words involves innervations
of sensori-motor tracts” (263). Conversely, sensori-motor phenomena are not
condemned to be mere inputs or outputs of intellectual operations, gateways or
consequences of knowledge (208). Online behavior never exclusively deals with some
neutral “here and now”: what we perceive and what we do take place in some history,
in tension between the past (and its sedimented products: habits and meanings) and
the future (280-281). Proponents of Cartesian materialism might argue that we must

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not confuse the background and enabling conditions for the occurrence of X with the realizers
of X. Indeed. But it is a petitio principii to consider that this distinction corresponds to
the distinction between the surrounding environment of the brain and the brain itself
(Hurley 2010). Cerebral processes are enabling conditions for the occurrence of cognitive
behavior; the realizer of the latter behavior being the organismenvironment
transaction (see below).The practical activity in which the brain is involved is not a
behavioral output: it is the whole conduct of life (218). A science of the brain must not
be brain-centered, just as psychology does not deal with psyche but with interactions of
living organisms in socio-cultural settings (315).
These biological considerations, Dewey says, are crucial for framing any theory of
knowledge. This is naturalism at work, like Dewey did in other places (from 1886
onwards), for instance when he proposed a theory of experience in accord with
biological considerations in Reconstruction in philosophy (MW12). This is, of course, a non-
reductive naturalism, for which science does not exhaust the realm of experience (16),
and for which there is no science that enjoys some privilege or exclusivity for dealing
with that which exists:
The fact that a theory of knowledge must be in accord with biological conditions of
behavior, that it must not contain factors which are openly incompatible with basic
physiological aspects of behavior, is far from signifying that these conditions of
themselves provide complete data for a theory of knowledge. (282)
32 Renewing this version of naturalism in contemporary debates is therefore definitely
compatible with a use of neuroscientific resources for criticizing theories of knowledge
relying upon Cartesian materialism and on the separation between knowledge and
action, theory and practice.
IV. A Matter of Time and Transaction

33 Dewey famously wrote in Experience in Nature that
to see the organism in nature, the nervous system in the organism, the brain in the
nervous system, the cortex in the brain is the answer to the problems which haunt
philosophy. And when thus seen they will be seen to be in, not as marbles are in a
box but as events are in history, in a moving, growing never finished process. (LW1:
224)
34 The last sentence is sometimes omitted in contemporary quotations of that passage.
True, as we have just seen, Dewey’s writings on mental phenomena in UPMP rehearse
the need to situate the workings of the cortex in a broader context. But temporality –
and not only spatial inclusion – is also the key here. Some passages of UPMP remind us
why. The isolation of the sensory system is presupposed by both those who assert that
the senses are organs of knowledge and those who claim that the senses are too poor
for generating knowledge. In both cases, there is a failure to see the genetic and
functional place of sense-organs in the “total extent of life activities” (219). It is only by
understanding this place that one can also begin to see how what human beings sense
is transformed by the social settings in which perception occurs: sensations carry
values and qualities. The classical question was to know which additional mental
ingredients were necessary for the passage from sensations to knowledge: but there are
no additional ingredients; these alleged ingredients are only abstractions from
sensations, themselves situated in cultural settings and organismenvironment
interactivities. There are never pure sensory qualities – except from a reflective/

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analytic point of view, not to be confused with actual experience. 12 Sensations are
experiential, and not physiological causes of what is experienced (227). Continuity – the
temporal extendedness of the life of the organism, instantiated in the situated growth,
development and movement – is the keypoint from which sensations should be defined
and understood (228) and, more broadly, mental events. These events are not points in
space or moments in time (222): they come from the continuity, and are directed
towards some future outcome. As Dewey says,
The theory which regards the psychological as a separate order of existence which
is merely inner or subjective is the product of an attempt to combine the fact of past
and future reference with the fiction of existence independent of interactivity with
environmental conditions. Hence the basic significance of emphasis upon the
intrinsic connection of psychological subject matter with life-behaviors,
interactivity of organic conditions with environmental ones – qualified throughout
by socio-cultural energies. (222)
35 Of course, from the thickness and from the situatedness of experience, one can abstract
different aspects, and thus different kinds of tensions (sensuous vs. ideal, impulsive vs.
thoughtful, …), but these distinctions pertain to the temporal and the spatial ranges of
the factors that are involved (225; see also Steiner 2011).
36 The second part of the “Mind and Body” chapter comes from a different manuscript,
but insists on this same question of continuity, with the use of the concept of
transaction. At that time (1942), transaction is not, for Dewey, a variety of interaction.
On the contrary: it denotes a primary situation of integration, spatially and temporally
continuous and extended, from which (interacting) elements (subject vs. object,
organism vs. environment, …) may be distinguished as phases or aspects of that
situation (322). Life itself is a transaction, extended and extending beyond the organism
(LW.12.32; MW.6.437; 235-237). As biologically-grounded events, perceptual events are
therefore not situated in sensory organs (235): “the living creature sees; it sees with and
through the eyes” (237). The last chapter of the book – “Experience as Life-Function” –
defines the subject-matter of psychological studies as human living behaviors. These
behaviors are life-functions (315). Their psychological aspects are related to their
inclusion in social conditions involving language and culture (317-18). Dewey also
defines continuity in terms of situatedness and connections:
Because everything experienced is determined by interactivity of organic-ongoing
conditions, everything inquired into and discussed belongs in a field or situation.
Fields and/or situations possess spatial and temporal togetherness of the existence
and events which constitute them. They are extensive and enduring. ‘Togetherness’
as used here covers what is often named by the words connections and relations,
and interconnections and relationships. (334-35)
37 For Dewey’s naturalism, it is well known, nature is culture (and conversely), and the
naturalist method is genetic and functional (331): a matter of investigation such as
mental phenomena must be considered from their historical context, and from their
functional role (in interactivities that are life-functions), as it is already the case with
other phenomena (breathing, cultural exchanges, …) in disciplines such as biology or
anthropology (332).

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Conclusion
38 Needless to say, much more could have been said on what Dewey brings us in UPMP
concerning mindedness and its study. In this contribution, I have deliberately chosen
to mention some specific points, putting them in relation with other parts of Dewey’s
work, but also with contemporary stakes. It is well known that Dewey extends mental
phenomena outside of the brain, in the qualities of situated interactions involving
meaning and communication; UPMP reminds us he also extends the scope and the
relevance of what a theory of mind should be. In a critical spirit close to Dewey’s,
Robert Musil wrote in 192113 that 98 % of the phenomena of our civilization boil down
to the fact that intellectual organization is running late in comparison with the
numerical increase we can find in sciences (be they natural or not) and technologies. 14
Dewey’s UPMP clearly defines some roots of that state of affairs, and its various
symptoms in history of science and in epistemology, but also in philosophy of mind. 15
Because of the interrelated character of these symptoms, the possibility of a cure in of
these domains (in philosophy of mind, for instance) can only be effective if it may make
a difference in the other domains as well.
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Company.
DEWEY J., (1969-1972), The Early Works: 1882-1898, ed. J. A. Boydston, Carbondale and Edwardsville,
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DEWEY J. (2012), Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy, ed. by P. Deen, Carbondale, Southern
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(MA)/London, MIT Press.
HUTTO D., & E. MYIN, (2013), Radicalizing Enactivism. Basic Minds without Content, Cambridge (MA)/
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LATOUR B., (1991), Nous n’avons jamais été modernes. Essai d’anthropologie symétrique, Paris, La
Découverte.
MUSIL R., (1994), Precision and Soul. Essays and Addresses, ed. and translated by B. Pike & D. S. Luft,
Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
PEIRCE C.S, (1931-1958) The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. I – VI. Ch. Hartshorne &
P. Weiss (ed.); vol. VII - VIII, A. W. Burks (ed.). Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press.
ROCKWELL T., (2005), Neither Brain nor Ghost. A Nondualist Alternative to the Mind-Brain Identity Theory,
Cambridge (MA), MIT Press.
RYLE G., (1971), Collected Papers Vol. 1, London, Hutchinson.
SELLARS W., (1963), “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” in Science, Perception and Reality,
London, Routledge & Kegan.
SHAPIN S., (1996), The Scientific Revolution, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
SHOOK J., & T. SOLYMOSI, (2013), “Neuropragmatism and the Culture of Inquiry: Moving Beyond
Creeping Cartesianism,” Intellectica, 59, 2.
STEINER P., (2008), “Délocaliser les phénomènes mentaux: la philosophie de l’esprit de Dewey,”
Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 62, 245.
STEINER P., (2011), “Who’s on First? Living Situations and Lived Experience,” Journal of
Consciousness Studies, 18, 2.
STEWART J., GAPENNE O., & E. A. DI PAOLO, (eds.) (2010), Enaction. Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive
Science, Cambridge (MA)/London, MIT Press.
THOMPSON E., & D. COSMELLI, (2010), “Embodiment or envatment? Reflections on the bodily basis of
consciousness,” in J. Stewart, O. Gapenne & E. A. Di Paolo (eds.).
NOTES
1. “Body-mind simply designates what actually takes place when a living body is implicated in
situations of discourse, communication, and participation” (LW.1.217).
2. It actually began in 1931 in London at the Second International Congress for the History of
Science, when English historians of science such as Needham or Haldane met Soviet (and
Marxist) historians of science such as Nikolai Bukharin and Boris Hessen.
3. See Shapin 1996.
4. See Warren McCulloch’s 1948 paper “Why the mind is in the head.”
5. Dennett coined the term in his Consciousness Explained, meaning by it the view that “there is a
crucial finish line or boundary somewhere in the brain, marking a place where the order of
arrival equals the order of ‘presentation’ in experience because what happens there is what you are
conscious of” (1991: 107). Teed Rockwell (2005) used the term recently with another meaning,
close to the one I rely upon here: the idea that the mind is an inner material phenomenon. Peirce
was perhaps the first author to castigate that Cartesian heritage in materialism: “Modern
philosophy has never been able quite to shake off the Cartesian idea of the mind, as something
that ‘resides’ – such is the term – in the pineal gland. Everybody laughs at this nowadays, and yet
everybody continues to think of mind in this same general way, as something within this person
or that, belonging to him and correlative to the real world” (Collected Papers, 5.128).

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6. See also Dewey’s ironic remarks on the interests of “spiritually” minded persons on modern
physics (287).
7. I would like here to quote Gilbert Ryle, whose adverbial views on mind are close to Dewey’s:
“There is one word which Shaftesbury and Jane Austen do frequently use in the same apparently
idiosyncratic way, and that a way which is alien to us and, I think, subject to correction, alien to
most of the other eighteenth and early nineteenth-century writers. This is the word ‘Mind,’ often
used without the definite or indefinite article, to stand not just for intellect or intelligence but
for the whole complex unity of a conscious, thinking, feeling and acting person” (Ryle 1971: 290).
8. See also in UPMP: “the very notion of a ‘world’ which is physical and nothing but physical is
itself a product of social factors” (317, also 314), and LW4: 105.
9. I cannot refrain from quoting here Wilfrid Sellars’ definition of what a person is, in his
Philosophy and the Scientific Image: “To think of a featherless biped as a person is to think of it as a
being with which one is bound up in a network of rights and duties […] To think of a featherless
biped as a person is to construe its behavior in terms of actual or potential membership in an
embracing group each member of which thinks of itself as a member of the group” (1963: 39).
10. See also MW4: 132, MW7: 53, MW9: 346, and MW10: 26.
11. But see recent suggestions in the collective volume edited by Stewart et al. (2010).
12. See, of course, James’ definition of the psychologist’s fallacy in The Principles of Psychology, vol.
1, chapter VII, and its influence on Dewey (for instance MW1: 118).
13. In his Geist und Erfahrung. Anmerkungen für Leser, welche dem Untergang des Abendlandes
entronnen sind, reprinted in Musil 1994.
14. See for instance Dewey’s What I believe (1930; LW.5).
15. Musil himself suggested that “mind (Geist) itself has no mind (Geist)” (Der Mann ohne
Eigenschaften, I, 40 – by the way, Dewey’s model of inquiry is probably present in the novel in the
views of the “English writer Surway” as they are presented by one of the character (II, 29)).
AUTHOR
PIERRE STEINER
Université de Technologie de Compiègne (Costech) – Sorbonne Université, France & Knowledge
and Ac- tion Lab, ENS-LSH (Lyon) / ECNU (Shangai) (associate member)
pierre.steiner[at]utc.fr

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From Mythology to Logic

Dewey’s View of Modernity and the Linguistic Nature of Experience
Roberto Gronda
1 When Dewey started working on Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy (UPMP), he
was well aware that the main aim of his new book should have been that of providing a
clear and comprehensive exposition of the philosophical views that he had formulated
in his previous works. At that time – around 1939 – Dewey was in his eighties and he
had already published almost all the great books that contributed to establish his
reputation as the most distinguished American philosopher. However, his thought was
still difficult to understand, partly because of the terminology adopted and partly
because of the seemingly counter-intuitiveness of many of his theses. This is the reason
why some of his students asked him to attempt to better clarify the way in which the
different aspects of his thought hold together in a consistent whole. UPMP is Dewey’s
answer to that felt need.
2 It is far from strange therefore that to a reader well acquainted with Dewey’s thought
the book may appear as a kind of recapitulation of the theoretical results obtained in
his later works – say, from Experience and Nature to Logic: Theory of Inquiry. Consequently,
one may be led to conclude that nothing really new can be found in UPMP apart from a
different – and quite likely, a better – exposition of what Dewey has already said in
other places. Such a conclusion is correct – at least in a certain sense. After all, it would
be very strange if Dewey had decided to dramatically change his philosophical
orientation after more than fifty years of philosophical investigations. Nonetheless,
there is something deeply unsatisfactory in that remark. Indeed, it seems as if
something very important passes unnoticed when the issue of the originality of UPMP
is dealt with from that perspective. The point is that the criterion is too restrictive: if
one believes that the originality of UPMP should be evaluated in terms of the number
of assumptions and theses that cannot be found in Dewey’s previous texts, he would fail
to appreciate what its trait of distinctive novelty is. What Dewey tries to articulate here
is something more important than a new set of theoretical concepts. His aim is rather
to define a standpoint from which to describe both the spirit and the direction of the
process of emancipation from beliefs that is usually referred to as “modernity” (170).
As will be shown in the following pages, the definition of such a standpoint represents

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one of Dewey’s most remarkable theoretical achievements since it enables him to

ground his post-Kantian account of meaning in a consistent philosophy of history.
3 Dewey’s entire theoretical work revolves around the search for a reliable standpoint for
philosophical reflection. Already in his early articles published on Mind in 1886 the
adoption of the idealistic notion of experience was functional to the development of a
general theory of meaning according to which what is real is properly defined as what
can reveal itself in human experience. To be (semantically) real is to have a meaning, to
be significant for human behavior. This is how Dewey understands – and accepts – the
fundamental idealistic insight that objectivity and subjectivity are essentially
interwoven. However, the naturalistic character of Dewey’s thought prevents him from
relapsing into those unfortunate habits of speech that caused much of the confusions
traditionally associated with German idealism. This because Dewey’s naturalistic
version of idealism does not aim at questioning the independence of reality as far as its
existence is concerned. It is an idealism of meaning and not an idealism of existence that
Dewey tries to work out, since what the activity of thinking is able to affect is the value
that a thing has for us, not the brute fact of its facticity. 1 The existence of the world is a
mystery, Dewey states in an important passage of UPMP, because it is impossible to
explain why an event has a certain feature rather than another. What science aims to
explain is not the particular quality that a thing presents, but the correlations holding
between two different classes of events. Such regular correlation – where “regular”
refers to a normative content that can take the form of concept or habit, depending on
whether the norm is apprehended reflectively or unreflectively – is the very nature of
meaning: meaning is a form, a universal; being a universal, it is a relation which
“supervenes” on the particular things in which it is somehow “embodied”.
4 The notion of mystery is particularly important in the economy of Dewey’s thought
because it provides the ground for the concept of humility. Humility means that
thought is not constitutive but reconstructive, that human beings live in a world that
they can modify according to their needs only through practical work, not through
manipulation of words. Dewey is very clear on this point: reason does not supply us
with a privileged access to t he essence of reality; all the knowledge that can be
acquired about the world (both internal and external) is the outcome of a process of
inquiry. But humility also means that the world can be understood if we do not pretend
to project our categories on it. The concept of experience as formulated in the first
chapter of Experience and Nature is a powerful statement of the possibility of knowing
things as they actually are.
5 The core of Dewey’s naturalistic version of idealism is therefore the rejection of the
metaphysical assumption that experience is essentially severed from reality. It is in the
light of this fundamental thesis that the conceptual clarification of the nature of
modernity – modernity being for Dewey that tendency of human reason to “get
everything out into the open where it can be seen and examined” (169) – acquires its
distinctive philosophical import. The search for autonomy – which is at the very same
time a search for freedom at a moral and political level – makes it possible to give a
satisfactory account of the struggles that have been scanning the rhythm of the life of
reason, as well as of the role that Dewey believes contemporary philosophy should play
in that process. The history of Western philosophy is the history of a movement from
mythology to logic, where logic means here the genealogical inquiry into the roots of
meaning.2 The human world – the world that human beings have been building up

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throughout their history – is grounded on some fundamental categories that are, in

turn, the product of human semantic creativity. There is no myth of the given in the
space of reason since there is not a single moment in which the organism is purely
receptive of events happening in the external world. Dewey’s exposure to the
discoveries of contemporary biology – which was, and this point is worthy of notice,
extremely indebted to the theoretical achievements of German speculative philosophy
– prevents him from admitting anything essentially meaningful outside the scope of
human activity. In more technical terms, since meaning is a relation, there is nothing
simpler than a relation to which the latter can be reduced. Now, according to Dewey,
modernity is precisely that standpoint from which it is possible to recognize the
semantic primacy of human creativity.
6 ewey’s aim in UPMP is to subject the vocabulary of philosophy to rigorous criticism in
order to throw out from it everything occult, everything that does not have the
necessary credentials to be authoritative for itself. The most interesting application of
this principle is the semantic analysis of the notions of object and objectivity. Its
theoretical relevance is due to the fact that Dewey’s semantic conception of object
represents the point of coalescence of three important lines of reflection: the
pragmatist emphasis on practical activity as the backbone of meaning, the idea of the
neutrality of experience, and the thesis of the linguistic nature of experience.
According to Dewey, objects are linguistic patterns of action, or, as he openly states in
Human Nature and Conduct, are “habits turned inside out” (MW 14: 127). Consequently,
in the remaining part of the present paper those three issues will be addressed with the
aim of understanding how the – and the semantic conception of objectivity that stems
from them – contribute to the process of development of the modernity. In particular,
the next section will be devoted to discussing the relation existing between activity and
neutrality. Its goal is to answer the following question: why is the controversial
assumption of the neutrality of experience necessary to formulate a sound pragmatist
conception of meaning? The final section will tackle the thorny problem of how Dewey
conceives the relation between language and experience. After Rorty’s plea for a
linguistification of pragmatism, many interpreters have argued for the importance of
the notion of experience in the economy of Dewey’s thought. It is a fact, Rorty has
correctly observed, that in the last years of his life Dewey decided to drop the concept
of experience in favor of that of culture (LW1: 371). But Dewey’s decision of replacing
the former with the latter should not be read (as Rorty suggests) as a confession of
error and as an implicit acknowledgment of the lack of viability of a philosophy of
experience. Dewey never changed his mind on that point, but simply realized that his
vocabulary centered around the notion of experience was too idiosyncratic to convey
the ideas he wanted to express. Interpreters as Koopman and Hildebrand are therefore
right in criticizing Rorty’s too easy dismissal of a concept that runs throughout Dewey’s
entire work (Koopman 2007; Hildebrand 2003). Nonetheless, the reinstatement of
experience as the fundamental category of Dewey’s naturalism cannot be the last word
on this issue because there is a strong sense in which one is entitled to say that, in
Dewey’s eyes, experience is language. Dewey’s long quotation from Malinowski’s article
on Culture published on the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences stresses the interrelatedness of
custom and artifact, ideal and material, experience and language. “[T]hat which is
called material and that which is called non-material,” Dewey argues, “cannot and do
not exist apart from each other” (291). The point is then that of understanding how
these two seemingly contradictory theses hold together: a) that language is the source

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of the meaningfulness of human experience, and b) that the scope of experience is

broader than that of language since the latter is a particular way of creating and
transforming meanings which depends – as its condition – on the existence of a larger
context in which only words become significant. As will be pointed out, the possibility
of combining them in a consistent account of meaning and objectivity relies on the
exploitation of the metaphysical (in Dewey’s technical sense) category of potentiality –
along with the correlate notion of effectiveness – which constitutes one of the ways in
which the general principle of continuity is articulated.
7 The second, more theoretically oriented part of Unmodern Philosophy and Modern
Philosophy opens with a long discussion of the philosophical meaning of the English
empiricist tradition from Locke to Hume. According to Dewey, classical empiricism
failed because of its incapacity to get rid of the epistemological and metaphysical biases
that have plagued Western philosophy. Locke and Berkeley were still committed to the
idea of substance as something lying behind phenomena, whereas Hume did not
manage to free himself from the belief in the “inherently mental character of the
immediate data of knowledge” (175). However, if they had been able to consistently
develop their argument as required by the logic of the discourse, they would have been
led to conclude that “observed events and their connections are entirely neutral with
respect to any distinction that can be drawn between ‘physical’ and ‘mental’ and that if
such a distinction is to be drawn, it must be drawn upon grounds that are extrinsic to
the observed data” (175). In doing so, they would have been led to endorse that
particular version of empiricism formulated for the first time by William James in his
Essays on Radical Empiricism. In particular, they would have recognized the fact that
experience is neutral in respect to the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity.
8 As is well known, this is a point which Dewey has already drawn his attention to in the
first revised chapter of Experience and Nature. In the context of this text, as well as in the
general economy of Dewey’s thought, the reference to James’ conception of experience
is preliminary to the definition of a new philosophical vocabulary in which it is
impossible to assume the separation of thought and reality, subject and object as an
original and irreducible fact. On the one hand, the realization of the identity – on a
semantic level – between things and thoughts entails the logical inconsistency of
skepticism and, on a broader scale, of the whole epistemological factory. The content of
the ideas that we have in mind is the same content that we find in the objects that
make up the world which we live in, and it is only because the semantic identity of
things and thoughts is there from the very beginning – and it is not a goal that we have
to create ex nihilo by bringing together two independent realities – that it is possible for
our acts of reflection to be effective in reconstructing our transactions with the
environment. On the other hand, the idea of the primacy of experience compels us to
reject any dogmatic approach to the question of the validity of the concepts (and
habits) that make the worlds of common-sense and science possible. Thus, the fact that
the most fundamental element that structures human experience –the distinction
between subject and object, thoughts and things– can be accounted for in functional
terms indirectly confirms Dewey’s thesis of the dependence of meaning on human
activity.

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9 Such issue has already been discussed at some length above in connection with Dewey’s
conception of modernity, so it is not necessary to dwell further upon it. What is
important to note here is rather the sense in which experience can be said to be
neutral. Indeed, it is important to remind that the kind of neutrality that Dewey
advocates is not metaphysical, but epistemological. Dewey is not interested in arguing
for the metaphysical thesis that the ultimate elements of reality are bits of pure
experience. As Dewey says in Experience and Nature, the goal of metaphysics is not that
of discovering the hidden nature of phenomena, but that of describing the generic
traits of existence (LW1: 50). Consequently, the neutrality that Dewey takes from James
has nothing to do with the attempt to establish how things really are. To say that
experience is epistemologically neutral means only that subject and object are logical
distinctions created within the broader sphere of experience, so that there is nothing –
no meaning, no concept, no relation – that can be said to precede experience.
10 When seen from this perspective, however, the concept of epistemological neutrality
starts showing its revolutionary force. In the ninth chapter of Unmodern Philosophy and
Modern Philosophy Dewey addresses the much-discussed issue of the subject of
experience. Echoing a well-known passage of Experience and Nature, Dewey criticizes
again those who ask “Whose experience?” whenever experience is mentioned (191; see
also LW1: 178). But the argument that Dewey offers in support of the belief that that
criticism is unwarranted is new and more theoretically powerful than the one
formulated in Experience and Nature. Surely, Dewey still accepts the explanation of
subjectivity in terms of responsibility. But he adds an important epistemological
consideration in favor of his view. He notices that it would be meaningless to appeal to
experience for verification if experience were a purely subjective event. The reason
why we look to experience as a means to settle a disputed matter is because we are
persuaded that experience is the place in which things reveal themselves to us for what
they are. “An experience that was only mine,” Dewey correctly states, “could yield only
opinions that are private to me”. Consequently, “it would follow that experience would
be incapable of furnishing the ground for any belief deserving the name knowledge
(191).
11 The thesis of the epistemological neutrality of experience implies therefore the
recognition of the fact that the latter is not of the nature of the objects of which we
have experience. Using a terminology that is not Dewey’s own, it can be said that
experience is the possibility that nature has to bring about meanings, thus constituting
a realm of being which is semantically different from that of causal explanations of
physical events. So, to treat experience as if it were an object would mean to lose sight
of its constitutive role, which is that of making meanings available. Dewey had already
drawn the attention on that particular feature of experience in the Introduction to the
Essays in Experimental Logic where he distinguished – following Scudder Klyce – between
terms, on the one hand, and “infinity and zero” words, on the other hand. While the
former refer to what is usually called an object – that is, a section of the continuum of
experience –, the latter is a sort of reminder of the “taken-for-granted whole” on the
basis of which only objects are possible3 (MW 10: 324). Experience, situation and
context are instances of “infinity and zero” words.
12 What is new and particularly remarkable in UPMP is the insistence on the naturalistic
and biological character of experience –an insistence that enables Dewey to better
explain the “mereological” relation between experience and object. In the last chapter

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of the book, significantly entitled Experience as Life-function, Dewey postulates a

definition of experience as a particular kind of life-functions “whose nature is most
clearly and fully presented in human living,” that is, a group of life-functions
happening in a socio-cultural environment. In other words, experience can be defined
as a linguistic activity – this is the sense of the reference in the very definition to the
socio-cultural environment –, the language being the medium which opens up the
access to the realm of meaning. Such an essential intertwining of biological and
cultural aspects is adumbrated in the first part of Logic: Theory of Inquiry, but here it is
the physiological ground of the unity of culture and nature that is brought to the fore
and strongly emphasized. The linguistic activity to which we give the name of
experience is the totality of the physiological activities that take place in the organism
at a given time, the linguistic activity to which we give the name of object is a
particular line of action which, being identified by a specific name or description, is
repeatable and, consequently, of the nature of universal. The structural similarity
between habits and concepts – their difference being a difference of function – that lies
at the basis of what has been called here Dewey’s idealistic naturalism is a direct
consequence of this fact.
13 As is evident, the insistence on the centrality of body is an echo of the Jamesian idea of
the organism as a sounding-board. That revolutionary idea is developed in the light of a
general philosophy of meaning, thus acquiring a new heuristic function and a broader
application. Dewey says that “the common material out of which both of these objects
[persons and things] develop” is both affective and intellectual, the distinction between
these two moments of experience being a matter of “progressive physiological and
functional differentiation and specialization within the background of body-sense as a
relatively undifferentiated whole” (193). Here the two perspectives, functional and
genetic, are significantly fused together: the difference of function – which concerns
the dimension of validity – is structurally identical to the process of differentiation –
which obviously concerns the dimension of genesis. But what is important to note is
that the functional and genetic distinctions necessarily relies on the unity within which
differentiation occurs. “Any form of an organic structure which develops and operates
without the control of the processes and requirements of the whole organism,” Dewey
argues, “is an injurious abnormality” (193).
14 The dialectical unity between experience and things should now be more clear. Their
unity is provided by the notion of activity; the tension that makes their relation
dynamic is the tension existing between background and focus, singular and universal,
undetermined and determined. In every possible course of action there is something
which is unexpected, irreducible to everything that has happened before. The
particular qualities of a thing – say, its color, or its shape –, the spatial and temporal
positions of the organism doing experience; all these aspects vary from time to time
and make the singular situation just what it is. On the contrary, the meaningfulness of
the situation is due to the persistence of habits of perception and action – and,
consequently, of concepts of reflection – that supply the agent with the means
necessary to anticipate the expected consequences of his acts, thus making it possible
to perform an intelligent course of behavior. Habits work by picking out some elements
of a situation and treating them as determined potentialities. “The qualities of a spade as
perceived and named,” Dewey states, “are the consequences that would result if it were
used (or will result when it is used)—they are anticipations of what is future at the
limited and limiting date of perception; and those of a shovel express the somewhat

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different consequences that result from use of a similar device that effects somewhat
different ends” (239). Accordingly, objects are means, instrumentalities, general
pattern of behavior that are “distinguished and identified on the ground of what, in a
given interaction, they do to us and we do to them”4 (239).
15 When it is made clear that an object is not a Gegenstand, something essentially opposed
to a subject, but is an entity whose content is entirely determined by the rule that
specifies the relation between an action and its consequences, a great step has been
made towards a more modern conception of object and objectivity. Indeed, it follows
from this constructivist insight that there is no real cleft between subject and object,
self and world, since the world is semantically homogeneous to thought. What makes
the passage from one to the other possible is, evidently, the notion of meaning.
Constructivism of meaning is therefore one of the privileged ways of access to
modernity because it shows how to get rid of all the principles of authority whose
validity cannot be traced back to the activity of human beings living in a society. We
should not accept anything which is not recognized as created by us to solve a problem
and, more importantly, which does not prove itself now to be effective in directing our
life.
16 It is difficult to deny – even from a historical point of view – that constructivism
represents the element of greatest affinity between Dewey and German and British
idealists. However, Dewey was well aware that idealism does not provide an adequate
explanation of the origin of meaning. To be a consistent philosophical position, a
revised idealism – that is, an idealism that has made the framework of contemporary
biology its own, and has been able to incorporate its fundamental principles – has to
account for the genesis of meaning in a clear and understandable way. As is well
known, according to Dewey language is the origin of meaning. In Experience and Nature
Dewey openly states that “[w]ithout language, the qualities of organic action that are
feelings are pains, pleasures, odors, colors, noises, tones, only potentially and
proleptically” (LW1: 198). The function of language is that of making the
“objectification” of feeling and the constitution of object and objectivity possible: by
being objectified, “they are immediate traits of things” (LW1: 198). This issue is taken
up again and further articulated in UPMP, where it is said that “ordered discourse does
more than preserve and transmit the funded wisdom (and foolishness) of the past”
because it “is the only agency by which reflection, inquiry, is liberated” (274). As usual
in Dewey, there is a significant shift from unreflective to reflective apprehension of
meaning – a shift which amounts, in the last analysis, to a collapse of that very
distinction. Such a collapse is very problematic, but it testifies a genuine tension in
Dewey’s thought between the emphasis on the unity of experience in all his possible
forms – primary and secondary experience are just different ways of experiencing
meaning – and the attention for the reconstructive role of reasoning, since the latter
presupposes something that has to be reconstructed. But what Dewey has in mind is
made clear by what he writes in the last chapter of UPMP: “The fact that meanings
accrue to sounds during and because of social interaction and social interception gives
the hypothesis that language as a socio-cultural medium is the source of the existence
of meaning and of understanding-intelligibility factual standing” (318). And then he
concludes: “The fact that definition of language as “expression or communication of

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thought” sets forth a secondary and derived function of language and not itsprimary
office supplies indirect confirmation of the view that the social interaction of which
language is an inherent constituent is the observationally verifiable foundation of
meaning and understanding” (319).
17 The striking similarity between the two texts shows that Dewey never changed his
mind on the dependence of meaning on language, and consequently on the linguistic
nature of the objects that make up our world. At the height of 1942-43, he was still
convinced that meaning originates in and by the use of language, as well as that the
proper function of language is that of “influencing and regulation of behavior of beings
who are engaged in conjoint undertakings of friendly or hostile, cooperative or
competitive quality” (319). One may be perplexed by such a strong continuity of views.
Provokingly, one may be even led to conclude that Dewey did not make any significant
progress on that topic in the twenty year period that separates the publication of
Experience and Nature from the composition of UPMP. It is likely that Dewey believed
that the linguistic account of meaning – drawn largely from Mead – was a completely
satisfactory explanation of the origins of meaning and objectivity, and that therefore
nothing remained to him to do but to accept it and build on it. However, it is difficult
not to be dissatisfied with his attitude towards these issues. The fact is that Dewey’s
linguistic account of meaning and objectivity risks to relapse into myth if the relation
between experience and language – between the larger world of which we have
experience and the utterances that we make – is left undetermined.
18 An example may help to elucidate this point. Dewey was deeply impressed by
Malinowski’s description of the linguistic confusions caused by the ambiguity of
context. It is not enough to tap the table and ask “What is this?” to get the desired
answer because different respondents may interpret “this” as referring to very
different things: the table, the shape of the table, its material, the act of tapping, and so
on. Words, Dewey says, “mean what they mean in connection with conjoint activities
that effect a common, or mutually participated in, consequence” (LW 12: 59). As should
be clear from what has been said above, these activities are what Dewey usually calls
“experience”. Consequently, the very possibility of linguistic agreement relies on the
existence of a context, a situation, an experience, which provides the semantic
coordinates necessary to establish the reference of the word to its object. What is worth
noting is that the context, the situation, the experience, must be loaded with meanings
since, according to Dewey, meaning cannot be ground on something different from
itself.5 In the language of Dewey’s Logic, symbol and meaning cannot be boiled down to
sign and signification (LW12: 58-60). Now, being loaded with meanings, the background
experience is of linguistic nature. Dewey seems to acknowledge this fact when he
writes: “Chair, spade, or house are meanings as well as physical things. And this
statement means more than that the words have meaning. It signifies that the things
called by these names have meanings and that if we eliminate or exclude the meanings,
the things in question are no longer spades, chairs or houses” (294).
19 The problem with that position is that, having started with the assumption that
language is the only source of meanings, we are led to conclude that – at least in a certain
sense – everything is language. But by blurring the distinction between language and
the larger context in which only the use of language is possible we do not enhance the
explanatory power of the theory, but rather we dramatically affect its validity. This is
the difficulty which we have hinted at above; a difficulty that, to my knowledge, Dewey

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never explicitly discusses in his texts. Nonetheless, one particularly promising

approach seems to emerge from the tenth chapter of UPMP, in which a certain number
of insights originally formulated in Experience and Nature are developed. In the
remaining part of the article I will try to provide a consistent picture of that rather
sketchy outline of explanation.
20 It is evident that the key to the solution to this difficulty is a correct interpretation of
the sense in which one is entitled to say that “at least in a certain sense everything is
language”. To recapitulate: Dewey maintains that our world is a world of qualities that
are organized and structured in objects only because these qualities are perceived as
potentialities of action. But the biological “potentialities” that make the experience of
meaningful objects possible are habits of behavior. Dewey is clear on this point: “As
objects of perception they not only are not isolated qualities but they are not sets or
arrangements of qualities of the organs immediately engaged save as these organs are
what they are in virtue of modifications undergone in previous interactions of use and
enjoyment: that is, they are what they are by virtue of attitudes, tendencies, and
dispositions that are acquired and now habitual” (239). And then he adds: “The
qualities of a spade as perceived and named are the consequences that would result if it
were used (or will result when it is used) – they are anticipations of what is future at
the limited and limiting date of perception” (239, italics added).
21 This passage has already been quoted above, but it is worth quoting it again because of
the importance of the equivalence introduced by Dewey between perception (perceived)
and language (named). The function of language is to give a name to the possible
consequences of an action, thus enabling the agent to abstract from the particular
conditions in which the object is experienced. In the light of this consideration,
Dewey’s argument can be reconstructed as follows: there is a strong functional
continuity between experience and language, context and linguistic utterances, since
both are meaningful transactions with the environment – stated differently, both are
ways of making experience of meanings. Every acquisition of concepts presupposes and
entails the acquisition of a new set of words that modify our vocabulary. Words are
ways in which a cooperative action is brought about and a community is established
(320). Through linguistic utterances the agent selects a part of the general situation in
which he and the other organisms live as particularly remarkable with respect to a
specific purpose, and in doing so he constitutes an object that different agents can
share in a common experience.
22 It follows from what has been said that in the passages mentioned above Dewey reads
the conceptual couple actuality/potentiality in the light of the psychological
distinction between focus and background. Accordingly, the notion of potentiality
plays a twofold role in Dewey’s account of meaning. On the one hand, the qualities of
organic action are structured in different objects because the habits acquired in
previous linguistic transactions with the environment bring to light their semantic
potentialities. The constancy of our habits supplies the basis of the meaningfulness of
our world. On the other hand, when these qualities are explicitly named they are
further objectified, and a common world is created out of an undetermined horizon of
possibilities. By uttering a word or a sentence, the potentiality of a very limited section
of the situation is emphasized, and the attention of the participants is called to the
possible course of action that the utterer wants to carry out or oppose. So, conversely,
there are two different ways in which potentiality can be realized and turned into

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actuality. The first one consists of the actualization of the potentialities of nature.
Experi- ence is the name that Dewey uses for this first-level actualization. Indeed, it is a
central aspect of Dewey’s naturalism that the (linguistic) constitution of meanings
should not be conceived as a subjective act of will, but as the realization of forces
already at work in nature. The second-level actualization is performed when the
utterance of a word or sentence selects an object – that is, of a group of qualities
viewed in terms of their potentialities – out of a background which provides the
general context in the light of which only that actualization is possible.
23 There seems to be something paradoxical in the conclusion that the modern conception
of object and objectivity developed by Dewey is ultimately grounded on the old
conceptual couple potentiality/actuality. It is contradictory, one may argue, to criticize
modern philosophy for not having been able to get rid of pre-modern categories, and,
at the very same time, to reintroduce notions that have been fatally undermined by the
scientific revolution. But it is not the old notion of potentiality that Dewey aims to
reinstate. Rather, it is a semantic version of the relation between potentiality and
actuality that Dewey tries to formulate. To say that the relation between potentiality
and actuality is of semantic nature means that it is not biologically determined, even
though it is biologically-grounded. There are many different possible ways of
actualizing a set of natural potentialities; in different contexts of action different
potentialities of the situation stand out as relevant, and ask for actualization. The act of
constitution of an object is an act performed by an organism that, to be effective, has to
be respectful of the “objective” potentialities of the situation. The conceptual couple
potentiality/actuality acquires therefore a completely new significance in the
framework of Dewey’s philosophy: it is the single theoretical hypothesis that justifies
the adoption of an experimental method of inquiry, and paves the way for a naturalistic
explanation of certain extremely complex organisms’ capabilities to enter into
meaningful transactions with their environment. Far from being a relapse into
unmodernity, it is the way in which it becomes possible for philosophy to get rid of a
limited and unsatisfactory conception of object and objectivity which is rooted in the
dogmatic and pre-modern separation of soul and body, and whose influence has
hindered the development of an experimental approach to the comprehension of the
world that supports or frustrates our activities.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
DEWEY J., (2008), The Middle Works of John Dewey, Volume 10, 1899-1924: 1916-17, Human Nature and
Conduct, edited by J. A. Boydston, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.
Dewey J., (2008), The Middle Works of John Dewey, Volume 14, 1899-1924: 1922, Human Nature and
Conduct, edited by J. A. Boydston, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.
DEWEY J., (2008), The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 1, 1925-1953: 1925, Experience and Nature, edited
by J. A. Boydston, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.

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DEWEY J., (2008), The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 12, 1925-1953: 1938, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry,
edited by J. A. Boydston, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.
DEWEY J., (2012), Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy, edited by P. Deen, Southern Illinois
University Press, Carbondale.
HILDEBRAND D., (2003), “The Neopragmatist Turn,” in Southwest Philosophy Review, Vol. 19, No. 1,
January.
KOOPMAN C., (2007), “Language is a Form of Experience: Reconciling Classical Pragmatism and
Neopragmatism,” in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 43, No. 4, Fall.
ROCKFELLER S., (1991), John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism, Columbia University
Press, New York City.
NOTES
1. The theoretical advantage of Dewey's naturalistic way to idealism can be easily appreciated if
attention is focused on the distinction between actions and acts: the latter are mechanical
responses to stimuli while the former are bits of behavior characterized by the unity of a
purpose. Now, the difference existing between an act and an action is all the difference that is
relevant – at least from a pragmatist perspective – between reality and unreality. Reflex acts do
not possess meaning – or, better said, are not instantiations of meaning – since there is no unity
of action and consequences that can be discovered in them: in all these cases, indeed, stimuli are
not interpreted in the light of possible responses which they can bring about. There is a causal
rather than a rational relation between them. This very same point can be expressed in many
other ways: it can be said for instance that reflex arcs are not meaningful because nobody pays
attention to them in normal – that is, no pathological – transactions with the environment; or it
can be said that acts as simple as the blinking of an eye or the jerking of a knee are not part of
our experience because it is impossible to transform them into a sign of something other. What is
common in all these remarks is the insight that reflex acts cannot be said to be real because they
have no semantic value: they do not tell us anything relevant about our world.
2. This is not how Dewey employs the notion of logic in this and other texts, but there is a sense
in which it is possible to say that that use of logic grasps an important insight that undergirds,
Dewey's thought, that is to say, the idea that the goal of every act of reflection – whose structure
is clarified by a logic of inquiry as that espoused by Dewey in his logical texts – is that of revising
old habits, thus creating a more intelligent and “self-conscious” pattern of activity. The
definition of philosophy as a “generalized theory of criticism” makes sense only in this context
(LW1: 9; see also UPMP: 315-6).
3. “[T]he words 'experience,’ 'situation,’ etc., are used to remind the thinker of the need of
reversion to precisely something which never can be one of the terms of his reflection but which
nevertheless furnishes the existential meaning and status of them all” (MW 10: 324). For an
analysis of the extremely controversial relationship between Dewey and Scudder Klyce, see
(Rockfeller 1991).
4. From what has been said one may be led to conclude that experience – that is, totality of the
physiological activities taking place in the organism – has nothing to do with the constitution of
meaning since meanings are particular, well-determined habits of behavior. Now, an objection
along these lines is unwarranted for two reasons. Firstly, it presupposes the possibility of
distinguishing in a systematic way the part from the whole, while it is this very difference that is
criticized by Dewey with the emphasis on the primacy of activity. Secondly, it relies on a
profound misunderstanding of the nature of meaning. Indeed, it is important to remind that

164
according to Dewey – and this is undoubtedly one of his permanent Hegelian deposits – the
universality of a general rule turns out into abstractness – which means uselessness in Dewey's
practice-centered thought – if it cannot be realized in and by the particular qualities on which it
accrues. A meaning is real only when it is an object of which we make exper ience in a particular
situation. Even concepts – which are by definition hypothesis – acquire semantic validity only
when they show their effectiveness in reconstructing a problematic situation. It is for this reason
that Dewey puts so much emphasis on the notion of quality and qualitative thought: the
universality of meaning finds both its realization and its origin in the singularity of the
encompassing situation.
5. It is not possible to deal with this problem in detail here, but it has to be remarked that one of
the greatest difficulties of Dewey's linguistic theory of meaning is precisely that of
understanding why he rejects so fully the very possibility of there being a meaning outside and
independently from language. The point is that, according to his views, meaning is a relation
between antecedents and consequences. Now, a relation of this kind can be established (and
preserved) on a purely biological level by the capacity of retention of body (habit). Dewey
correctly argues that thanks to language we objectify a feeling, thus turning it into the quality of
an object. But he does not explain why the process of objectification cannot be performed by
purely biological habits. Dewey only indicates the difference between animal needs, impulses,
and appetites, on the one hand, and the ways in which human beings articulate these organic
manifestations, on the other. In an unpublished manuscript that Phillip Deen has been kind
enough to show me, Dewey writes: “The transformation of hunger, of the methods of satisfying it
and the qualities of enjoyment that attend the latter are a case in point. The physical gnawing of
extreme hunger may become a highly emotionalized apprehension for the fate of loved ones or
of one’s community; the method of satisfying it may consist of highly indirect processes of
agriculture, transportation and trading—together with all the emotional values associated with
fire and the hearth; the final enjoyment may take the form of formalized banquets as well as the
simpler joys of the family board, etc..” But nobody can be interested in denying this fact. The
point is rather that of clarifying how that transformation is possible. This amounts to ask: Why is
Dewey led to conclude that animals do not experience meanings? Is this conclusion consistent
with his radical naturalism? As should be clear, what is at stake here is the very possibility of a
non-reductive naturalism.
AUTHOR
ROBERTO GRONDA
Roberto Gronda, Scuola Normale Superiore
roberto.gronda[at]sns.it

165
Essays

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Was Art as Experience Socially

Effective?
Dewey, the Federal Art Project and Abstract Expressionism
Roberta Dreon
1 From a comprehensive reading of his work it is by now clear that Dewey’s aesthetics –
using the term in its broad, colloquial sense – stemmed from very strong political and
social demands, and sought to be translated into concrete actions. 1 In publishing Art as
Experience in 1934, at the age of 75, the American philosopher did not intend to fill a
specific gap in his thought by developing a philosophy of art. His point was certainly
not to describe a supposedly independent field of art by outlining the alleged
conditions of existence and interpretative categories of art itself. In contrast, Dewey
claimed it was necessary to inquire into the reasons for the current isolation of
aesthetic experience compared to other vital practices, to ask what functions the arts
could perform compared to other forms of experience and whether these functions
were performed adequately, and finally to help change them if necessary “by restoring
the continuity of aesthetic experience with the normal processes of living.” 2
2 One of the fundamental convictions characterizing both Dewey’s thinking and his
conduct was that active participation in artistic practices, in terms of both production
and reception, is a significant component of social and political action. The abolition of
barriers between elitist arts and other cultural forms, in his view, would encourage
greater accessibility to artistic practices. On the other hand, promoting cross-
distinctions between good and bad artistic experiences would contribute to the
education of citizens, making them more aware and more able to contribute to
common life. According to Dewey, we need a more subtle form of discrimination: some
experiences are good because they are fruitful, innovative and able to enhance life
experiences, as well as to call into question consolidated habits of behavior and
thought, while other experiences are bad because they are ineffective: because they
restrict themselves to glibly confirming existing situations, without any significant
reworking.3 Above all, however, Dewey’s basic thesis was that an aesthetically
significant and rich experience can be a basic factor in building a participatory
democracy, provided it is not confined to museums or the leisure time of a privileged

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few, expunged from the factories, and considered extraneous to politics and ethics, as
well as scientific inquiry. Clearly this conception of democracy was not defined solely
in terms of formal procedures, but was considered capable of responding to individuals’
needs for satisfaction and self-fulfilment, while at the same time not imposing on each
of them a predetermined hierarchy of values and goods, not least thanks to the critical
role that culture could perform with respect to consolidated habits and pre-reflective
morality.4
3 Although this concept was only fully developed in Art as Experience, many elements had
been anticipated in earlier decades: not only with The Public and Its Problems in 1927 and
Experience and Nature in 1925, but also in 1922 with Human Nature and Conduct, and much
earlier with Democracy and Education (1916), and even the first version of Ethics in 1908.
This assumption also shaped Dewey’s pedagogical practices and in particular his
Laboratory School, where the arts were not simply introduced to enrich curricula by
guaranteeing access to the most refined cultural traditions. Rather, they were taught
and practized as activities capable of meeting young people’s vital needs, of enhancing
their skills and channeling their energies, in such a way as to help them acquire a range
of “intelligent habits” – that is to say, flexible and fruitful ones, capable of encouraging
forms of critical reappraisal within shared practices.
4 This same belief was also at the basis of Dewey’s involvement in a number of social
initiatives, such as Jane Addams’ Hull House, where artistic and craft activities, in the
wake of the Arts and Crafts Movement, were intended as at least partial contributions
to the problem of urban economic and cultural poverty in Chicago at the turn of the
nineteenth century.
5 On the other hand, it is plausible that the worsening of the economic and social crisis in
the USA in the late twenties helped to reinforce Dewey’s decision to deal extensively
with the aesthetic implications of his thought, starting from his criticism of the
“museum conception of art,” rooted in the “compartmentalisation” of life produced by
industrial capitalism.
6 Victoria Grieve’s painstaking reconstruction has finally shed light on the direct
influence of Dewey’s thought on the development of the Federal Art Project – an
influence that was broadly exercised through Dewey’s ethical and political reflections –
gaining ground thanks to the prevailing crisis – but which was also directly exerted on
Holger Cahill, the head of the federal programme in support of artistic practices
between 1934 and 1938.5
7 It is evident that the cultural policy of the Federal Art Project cannot be regarded as a
practical translation of Dewey’s ideas, as many different factors and people were
involved in the programme. However, it is equally clear that according to Dewey’s
explicit assumption, the value of a theoretical concept should be measured by its ability
to respond to human needs, that is to instances arising from our daily interactions with
both the natural and social environment to which we belong. In other words, Dewey
believed that the strength and resilience of an idea must be measured through the
contribution it can make to changing problematic conditions by revising or improving
them.
8 For this reason, in the present paper6 I aim to closely investigate certain aspects and
historical consequences of US cultural policy between the nineteen-thirties and the
immediate aftermath of the war in the light of some theoretical assumptions they
imply, and which appear to be variously connected to Dewey’s reflections. As has just

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been noted, the largely transdisciplinary pragmatist assumption behind my argument

is that it is necessary to acknowledge the reciprocal influence whereby a given
theoretical conception is fruitful to the extent that it is capable of providing original
answers to the problems arising in a specific historical context, while at the same time
opening up new paths to be followed. The thesis which lies at the basis of Dewey’s
critique of compartmentalisation and the neat separation between facts and values is
that the effectiveness of the tools used for analytical reflection must be measured
against their capacity to modify the conditions of immediate qualitative experience –
by either enriching or impoverishing it.
9 Obviously the influence of the American pragmatist first on the policies of the Federal
Art Project and subsequently on Abstract Expressionists features both progressive
aspects and more controversial points. Therefore I believe that an examination of some
lights and shadows of these historical phenomena can in turn help us to rethink
Dewey’s theoretical approach to the arts and aesthetic experience as important
opportunities for establishing democratic life.
10 Firstly I shall argue that Dewey’s conception of art and aesthetic experience appears to
have made a decisive contribution in expanding opportunities to enjoy the arts and in
promoting widespread practices with the potential to be aesthetically satisfying.
Dewey’s ideas actually led to an undermining of the unquestioned hierarchy between
the fine arts and crafts, between popular culture and design, etc. More problematic are
their connections with a cultural policy aimed at building an American cultural identity
in opposition to the dominant European one. Further questions regard the emergence
of a wider art market.
11 Secondly, I will consider Dewey’s influence on the Abstract Expressionists – an
influence which is almost immediately evident in the way it shifted the artistic focus
from art objects toward the experiential dimensions of artistic practices. Some
problems regard the onset of a new fracture in terms of the accessibility of this kind of
work for a general audience. Further difficulties are connected with a certain
reinforcement of the conception of the artist as creative genius and with the related
interpretation of artistic creation as extreme subjective expression.
I. Openings of a Cultural Policy

12 First of all I would like to stress that the proponents of the cultural policy of the Federal
Art Project saw the so-called Great Depression as a social and cultural opportunity, in
open conflict with conservatives, who believed that every resource being spent in those
sectors was wasted in a period of severe austerity. This point must be underlined,
notwithstanding all the limits of any operation in support of a national cultural policy
such as the one advanced by the Roosevelt administration in the nineteen-thirties.
13 In particular, the Deweyan Holger Cahill sought to turn the profound crisis into an
opportunity for democratizing access to culture and the arts, by working through two
complementary channels.
14 On the one hand, he carried out a series of measures to facilitate access to the highest
and most traditional artistic culture by disseminating temporary exhibitions as far as
the most remote provinces of the United States and by paving the way for the
popularization of art and for artistic debate in popular magazines, not least through a

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widespread use of radio broadcasts. On the other hand, Cahill sought to deconstruct
traditional established boundaries between the fine arts and crafts by promoting the
establishment of an Index of American Design, which aimed to collect and reproduce
the finest historical and contemporary American craft products.
15 The breaking down of the boundaries between high and popular culture mainly
occurred through a far-reaching reform carried out by several American museums,
under the direct influence of John Cotton Dana. The latter sought to apply to museums
– especially the Newark Museum in New Jersey – the same change that he had brought
to the libraries he had previously directed. Museums and libraries were viewed not
simply as places for storing and revering products of high culture, but as active
workshops for developing skills and for engaging with the techniques, contents and
theoretical assumptions of past works, with their actual fruition and new artistic
possibilities in view. Many areas were opened to the public, and new opening times and
reduced admission charges were offered. Above all, a significant change in this
direction with regard to museum investments took place: instead of continuing to
acquire works from the past, especially European ones, which had particularly
exorbitant prices, it was decided to focus on the purchase of craft products and
especially products from the emerging field of industrial design, thus for the first time
calling into question the distinction between works of art and industrial products –
something destined to become a central feature of much twentieth-century art.
16 On the other hand, from a Deweyan perspective the financial support of many
unemployed artists was effective in at least two ways. On the one hand, artists were
hired to produce murals or posters, that is, not primarily objects to be relegated to
museums, but artifacts to be displayed in public places, and capable of reworking their
common cultural roots in an innovative manner. On the other hand, artists were
treated as workers rather than as extraordinary geniuses, that is as individuals able to
contribute with their own specific personal practice to a wider, shared practice. 7
17 It is evident that these phenomena as a whole entail and are based on a conception of
artistic creation and enjoyment, as well as of the relations between individual initiative
and social context, that differs significantly from that of the late-Romantic tradition. 8
As Dewey clearly states in Art as Experience, the expressive act cannot be identified with
an anthropological version of creatio ex nihilo; clearly, the creating subject plays a
crucial role, but as an individual medium rather than as a genius sparking a process.
Expression, as Dewey said, consists in a peculiar transformative process through “the
alembic of personal experience”9 of materials which originate from a common world.
Besides, an object becomes “expressive” not when it externally conveys a subjective
mental state or emotion, but when it constitutes an opportunity for innovative
experiences of the shared world for those who appreciate it.
18 It should be pointed out in this regard that many of the future Abstract Expressionists
were subsidized by the Federal Art Project. Some of them maintained such a shared,
participatory approach to artistic production, as in the case of Joseph Albers. Others
cultivated the myth of a subjective expression of their emotions that was carried to
extremes, in conflict with Dewey’s position – a conflict which has not been picked up by
scholars, but which I shall return to in the fifth section of this paper.
19 Finally, one of the most successful initiatives of the Federal Art Project, sponsored by
Cahill himself, must be mentioned: the establishment of Community Art Centers. These
were not meant as spaces for merely enjoying existing works of art, but as active

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resources for promoting artistic production from the bottom up. Seen from the point of
view of Dewey’s democratic aesthetics, one of their most important aspects can be
identified as the opportunity they provided to acquire various techniques, as well as
new appreciation and production habits and skills, which could prove satisfying for
individuals and re-accustom them to the aesthetic enjoyment of their own work.
Indeed, as early as in 1922, in Human Nature and Conduct, Dewey had stated that
equating work with exertion should not be taken as a natural given, but rather as the
consequence of a by now hardened, regressive habit caused by industrial capitalism,
and in particular of the one-sided pursuit of profit.10 Besides, Community Art Centers
were intended to serve as places for social gatherings and shared enterprises.
Individual activity here stemmed from a plural context through sharing or
diversification, or – far more often – through conflict, and it was on this public testing
ground that it had to measure its own effectiveness.
II. Building an American Cultural Identity

20 As I mentioned earlier, there are also some problematic aspects to the Federal Art
Project.
21 One of the most controversial issues is connected with the strong affirmation of
American cultural identity made by New Deal reformers in opposition to the then
dominant European culture. This need was especially felt with regard to the creation of
the Index of American Design, coordinated by Constance Rourke. Indeed, it was not
simply a question of recovering a true American identity through the uncovering of
artefacts capable of expressing it as far as in the depths of American provincial villages.
Rather, the need was primarily to bui ld the identity of an imaginary authentically
American community by drawing on non-unitary, composite and highly differentiated
cultural traditions, choosing some aspects over others, and simplistically favoring their
common features while rejecting those deemed incompatible. A striking example of the
cultural as well as political implications of this project was the dismissal of native
Indian cultural products, which were considered alien to true American culture. In
other words, the New Deal reformers were implicitly “inventing a useful past,” as
Victoria Grieve writes, while remaining largely unaware of the constructivist nature of
their operation.11
22 From this point of view, the Federal Art Project played a central role in a powerful yet
uncritical ethnomimetic strategy – to use an anthropological expression – that is, in
creating an image of American culture, and of the cultural self-representation that
Americans were building.12 And this aspect is probably strongly connected to the
traditionalism that characterized much of the artistic production supported by the
Federal Art Project and which led subsequent proponents of abstract art to decisively
reject it.
23 No doubt, the cultural policy of the Federal Art Project did not merely lead to a
democratization of access to the arts, but also contributed – in a politically and
economically delicate moment – to building an American identity in contrast to the
European one, which tended to be perceived as a non-inclusive and closed identity.
24 However it is clear that this demand conflicts with Dewey’s approach. It is well known
that in his criticism of the so-called museum conception of art, he attributed the latter
to capitalist industrialization – to the undisputed primacy of the right to property,

171
regarded as a natural principle rather than as a social construct – as well as to a

compartmentalization of life tending to expunge aesthetic pleasure from work by
confining it to the sphere of leisure time.13 Dewey also insists on the nationalistic and
imperialistic claims that have historically characterized the creation of the first great
European museums, starting from the Louvre. He was deeply conscious of the role
played by cultural and artistic heritage in the symbolic and political affirmation of
national identity, and regarded it as one of the factors that had historically led to the
establishment of the “museum conception of art,” to the fetishization of artworks and
their distancing from life experiences.14
25 In his analysis, the American philosopher strongly stresses the connection of art to its
social context and, ultimately, of artistic experiences to the community in which they
are rooted, in which they live and die. The roots of individual acts of expression in
previous experiences belonging to a shared world is underlined too. Nevertheless, from
a Deweyan point of view it is not a question of hoping merely to restore shared past
conditions and habits of appreciation on the part of communities – that is, of artificially
creating a past and tradition that no longer exist; rather, it is a matter of asking
whether a certain aesthetic experience or work of art from the past is still capable of
meeting the demands of today’s shared life, and, if so, which ones. Nor should the artist
limit himself to celebrating the common matter from which he draws his own energies,
confirming traditional social expectations and habits. If his role is to mediate and not
initiate the process of artistic expression, this does not mean that he has merely to
translate what was previously there, because creation implies transformation, a
reworking of earlier materials and energies into something new, which is truly able to
offer experiences of the world that are different from previous ones, in contrast to a
settled tradition, ensnared within its own habits. Artistic production is part of the
social space whence it comes and in which it is rooted. It does not merely reflect this
space, but somehow also operates within it, contributing to defining it from within, in a
process which nevertheless remains structurally open. The same applies to fruition: it
is not a matter of restoring a world buried and preserved through artworks, but rather
of inquiring whether and in what ways these works are still a vital part of our
contemporary world, whether they are capable of operating within this world so as to
modify it – first of all by questioning our own expectations and our most ingrained
habits, and by broadening and enriching our own interactions with the natural world
and others.
26 We are thus forced to conclude that these theoretical arguments – which would indeed
have been difficult to apply in practical terms – were set aside in favour of a political
strategy centered on identity-building, and reflecting the tragic historical and political
circumstances of its conception. In this regard, it is worth recalling that on the eve of
the Second World War conservatives went so far as to accuse the Federal Art Project of
supporting communism and not adequately sustaining the USA and American cultural
identity.
III. The Positive and Negative Aspects of Creating a

Market for Cultural Heritage
27 Another controversial aspect of the Federal Art Project we have to consider now
regards the creation of an art market which was mainly directed to the middle classes

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as a way of meeting the chiefly symbolic needs of this sector of the population, while
overlooking the “aesthetic needs” of all other citizens. Dewey showed he was fully
aware of the problem when he argued that “the conditions that create the gulf which
exists generally between producer and consumer in modern society operate to create
also a chasm between ordinary and esthetic experience.”15
28 Historically among those who supported the Federal Art Project there were those who
were resolutely opposed to market economy, and who saw the opening up of culture to
the economy as the beginning of an inevitable process of commodification of art and
culture as well. But there were also more progressive tendencies, which saw the
opening up of arts and culture to markets and industrialization as an opportunity to set
in motion processes of democratization of consumption, accompanied by the
deconsecration of items the possession of which was restricted to a very limited elite. 16
Cahill belonged the latter group and his line prevailed.
29 On the one hand, the opening up of museums to crafts and industrial design, together
with the creation of the Index of American Design, expanded the range of artworks that
could be purchased from works of “high” art alone to cultural goods in the broader
sense – which, as Bourdieu has shown, range from classical music to furnishings,
clothing and culinary choices.17 This clearly represents a decisive break from the
previous situation.
30 On the other hand, the ever wider use of advertising, both in printed form (through
posters and billboards, as well as magazines) and by radio, together with the
increasingly systematic use of marketing techniques, effectively produced a striking
expansion of the market for artistic goods, which became accessible to the American
middle class. At the same time the emergence of a strong domestic demand for this
kind of goods contributed to making artistic production gradually independent of
government support.
31 However it is clear that even if Dewey was deeply conscious of the social implications of
the construction of an art market, his criticism of what in Europe was called the
“differentiation of the aesthetic” did not consist in naively invoking a late romantic
return of art to life by ingenuously ignoring its economic structures. Recognizing that
aesthetic and artistic practices are not foreign to and autonomous from other forms of
human interaction with the environment also entailed admitting that artistic
production is never independent from economic structures – be it the case of
Renaissance customers commissioning a work from a craft workshop, or in that of a
nineteenth-century German prince supporting a poet through a life annuity.
32 The fact of having an increasing numbers of people willing to pay for cultural goods
that had become accessible to the average American was no bad thing in itself: indeed,
it partly contributed to the deconsecration of a sphere of cultural heritage and
activities the exclusiveness of which had until then confirmed existing social divisions.
Yet, it is clear that from a Deweyan point of view we should still ask ourselves whether
promoting the consumption of cultural goods through wide-scale purchases represents
the only or main way of favoring a more democratic and satisfactory enjoyment of a
shared world.
33 Obviously it would be reductive as well as unfair not to recognize that establishing a
wider art market is a very different thing from building cultural democracy. Dewey
basically understood democracy as a form of shared life in which individuals are able

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both to make critically aware choices and to enjoy and intensify the qualitative aspects
of their experience. The kind of “consummatory experience” he was referring to is not
a form of consumerism, based on purchasing, exhausting and discarding products.
Instead it is a sort of experience in which the satisfaction of the human need for
qualitatively rich and intense relationships is expansive and energetic. 18
34 However we must admit that a lot of work remains to be done in formulating possible
alternative relations between aesthetics, politics and economy – indeed, there would be
much need for this in the present historical circumstances. Dewey’s ideas are
promising but we require a more carefully articulated and detailed discourse on the
relations between the arts and other life practices – in particular, alternative proposals
concerning modes of production and fruition that take into account both economic and
social factors.
IV. From the Federal Art Project to Abstract

Expressionism
35 The argument that Dewey’s thinking profoundly influenced so-called Abstract
Expressionism was brought forward by Stewart Buettner as early as 1975. Several years
later – in 1998 – Maurice Berube provided further historical evidence in support of the
theory.19
36 Many of the most successful American abstract artists during the following years were
economically sustained by the Federal Art Project, including many extremely different
personalities such as Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Marck Rothko,
Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb and Clyfford Still.
37 However, now that a reconstruction of the Federal Art Project from a history of culture
perspective is available, the picture appears much clearer and confirms the links
between Dewey’s approach and American Abstractionism in the forties and fifties,
something which had already clearly been noted by Buettner. This kind of comparison
nonetheless also reveals a number of discontinuities, especially regarding the social
implications of an artistic movement which was itself extremely varied.
38 I shall begin from the dissolution of the Federal Art Project.
39 On the eve of World War II, federal support programmes for the arts and culture
entered into crisis. They were attacked above all by conservatives and in some cases
were even terminated. They were accused by conservatives of promoting forms of
socialism, or even of supporting communism, while not sufficiently supporting
American cultural identity as opposed to European culture. Yet some critics also came
from less nationalistic fringes: they argued that systematic (rather than merely short-
term) national support for the arts might, in the long term, lead to the control of
cultural production by the state – and it was precisely on this front that a bill aiming to
transform Federal Art Project interventions into a stable Federal Bureau was voted
down. However, criticism was also leveled by artists with reference to the quality of the
models, contents and results provided by painters subsidized by the state. The
Association of Fine Arts, which grouped together 5.000 registered artists, railed against
the lowering of “truly artistic” standards to those of the common man. In 1939 Clement
Greenberg wrote that popular culture, and even more so “average” culture, would

174
destroy the avant-garde and all merit, because they brought about a dangerous
confusion in evaluation standards.20
40 In addition, industrial production, directly or indirectly related to war needs, was
rapidly increasing, reducing the need for government support that had been so strong
during the previous economic and social crisis.
41 In the more specifically artistic sphere, the realism that characterized artistic
production in the nineteen-thirties was interpreted as provincialism, and abstract art
was now perceived as the main path to be followed in the pursuit of an originally
American and truly innovative art.
42 It may be argued that in the USA some of the assumptions of pragmatist aesthetics
implied by the cultural strategies of the nineteen-thirties became outdated or were
radically reinterpreted in the nineteen-forties.
43 Firstly the process of problematization of the traditional separation between the
production of high art and popular culture entered into crisis. This distinction was not
so much confirmed as replaced by that between avant-garde, experimental culture and
traditional culture. Like the fine arts, avant-garde art remained elitist, certainly with
regard to the actual prospects of it being interpreted by the public, and possibly in the
intentions of at least some of its producers.
44 I do not think it can be argued that the continuity between the arts and life was
annulled. Certainly, however, the focus shifted from the possibility of artists’ direct
involvement in their community to a clear emphasis on subjective expression. At most
it can be argued that the social significance of artistic practices was not set aside, but
that it changed direction dramatically: instead of a project for the democratization of
culture and the cultural emancipation of all citizens, abstraction acquired a critical,
negative significance in relation to the existing world, social institutions and the so-
called cultural industry – to use Adorno’s lexicon.21
45 Josef Albers’s case was different. He had been familiar with Dewey’s educational
theories since his teaching days at the Bauhaus, and in his educational practices at the
Black Mountain College he seemed to share the idea of a non-elitist approach to the
arts, conceived as not separate from life and from individuals’ everyday experiences,
but as an integral part of their education and existence. As mentioned by Buettner, two
years after the publication of Art as Experience Josef Albers published his first English
language article, entitled Art as Experience, in which he attempted to show – by
combining Bauhaus ideologies and Deweyan phraseology – how art could no longer be
removed from ordinary life.”22
V. Dewey and Abstract Expressionism

46 Stewart Buettner has already reconstructed the influence Dewey exerted on Jackson
Pollock through the latter’s acknowledged master, Thomas Benton, and on Robert
Motherwell. Motherwell is commonly considered the most intellectual figure in that
constellation of artists: he had read Art as Experience and studied under Meyer Schapiro,
Dewey’s colleague at Columbia, from whom the pragmatist philosopher had requested
an opinion on the final chapters of the book before its publication.
47 Maurice Berube has further backed Buettner’s theory with interviews and accounts
that confirm how widely held Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics was among the Abstract

175
Expressionists. Particularly significant is an interview by Robert Mattison Staltonsall

with Robert Motherwell, who expressly acknowledged his debt to Dewey, so much so
that he even referred to the sort of experimentalism he was practizing in painting as
“radical empiricism.”23 Another important document consists in a collection of
interviews with six exponents of Abstract Expressionism – Motherwell, De Kooning,
Rothko, Hoffman, Gorky and Mark Tobey – conducted by William Seitz for his
dissertation, published in 1955. Additional evidence for the spread of Dewey’s thought,
whose texts were not only read but also presented and discussed in various artistic
circles at the time, is provided by the fact that Seitz himself, as recalled by Berube, was
one of these artists. A practicing painter and young employee of the Federal Art
Project, Seitz frequented abstract artists’ gathering places such as The Cedar St. Tavern
and The Club.
48 In general, I believe that Buettner’s analysis of Dewey’s influence is correct, but needs
to be integrated by also taking account of the social implications of Abstract
Expressionism I have mentioned above.
49 No doubt the most striking parallel between Dewey’s theories and the works of Abstract
Expressionists is to be found in his decisive shift of attention from the aesthetic
product to the experience of which it is the result. As in the case of the Abstract
Expressionists, disputing the primary role of objects does not mean that material
aspects are considered marginal. On the contrary: materials, colors and techniques are
of great significance, but instead of being regarded as ingredients designed to create a
work of art as a particular kind of thing, they are understood as materials and energies
in action, together with perceptual and motor habits, bodily and mental techniques of
selection, revision and interpretation, and active and passive dispositions that
contribute towards creating an innovative experience. Certainly the action of dripping
paint onto canvas produces a certain kind of thing – possessing, among other features,
a very high economic value – but a work of art consists primarily in a certain type of
practice: a qualitative interaction with an environment within a complex space, where
the artist feels himself to be an integral part of this space, rather than an external
consciousness controlling the product before him. For this reason the name “Action
Painters” which Arnold Ronsenberg gave to some of these painters helps appreciate
their affinity with Dewey’s approach.
50 From Dewey’s criticism of the idea of considering art as being primarily a certain kind
of entity comes his argument against confining art to museums, turning it into
“ethereal things” and removing it from active social life. On the one hand, most of
these artists, who had been members of the Federal Art Project for various reasons, no
longer regarded the isolation of art in museums as acceptable. On the other, both
practical and theoretical reasons contributed to challenging the “museum conception”
of art. A tendency to paint large canvases came partly from the very strong stress
placed by the former federal programme on murals, on paintings often incorporated
directly within collective urban contexts. But it also probably came from Dewey’s idea
that the artist’s relation with his/her work is not frontal, that it no longer implies a
complete control of the canvas, as is usually implied by representational paintings. The
artist in turn is conceived as part of an environmental game he engages in from within.
He does not dominate the environment, but structurally relates to it, first of all through
his whole body. To this point we must surely add the fact – noted by Buettner – that the
work of these painters was initially rejected by traditional museums, who obviously felt

176
that these experiments diverged from their established canons. The rejection of the
“museum conception” was not only active and therefore intentional, but was also
borne.
51 A more complex crux concerns the role attributed to emotions in artistic expressions. It
must be said that seeking points of contact in a conception of painting as an outward
expression of the artist’s subjective emotions is misleading.
52 A conception of artistic creation of this type is certainly present in many artists from
this group. Jackson Pollock’s words are especially revealing in this respect: “A method
of painting is a natural growth out of a need […] I want to express my feelings rather
than then illustrate them [because] the modern artist expresses his feelings rather than
imitating [nature].”24
53 However, this kind of interpretation is very far from Dewey’s perspective, who, as
recognized by Buettner, assigns a central role to emotions in artistic creation, but does
not understand them in terms of expressed subjects – whereby a dark color would
express the artist’s anger, for instance, and black, rapid, angular strokes his
aggressiveness. The artist’s emotions should rather be understood as a form of
sensitivity which is not primarily cognitive, which makes it possible to guide a new
elaboration of available materials: a certain emotion serves as an implicit criterion for
their selection and new composition, and controls the rhythmic progression according
to which a certain interaction takes place, implicitly testing its effectiveness. 25 It seems
that Robert Motherwell in particular had in mind the idea of claiming an emotional
rather than an intellectual base for artistic expression.
54 But in this case too there is a clear tendency on the part of both the Expressionists and
their interpreters to equate the emotional with the irrational. Dewey is profoundly
distant from this kind of assimilation, as his criticism of the alleged primacy of
cognitive experience to the detriment of the qualitative and aesthetic aspects of
immediate experience acknowledges that the latter has an irreducible significance and
constitutes a form of awareness. But it is likely that with respect to this aspect it was
European Surrealism, rather than Dewey, which exerted a decisive influence on the
Action Painters – and it is worth pointing out that Croce himself misunderstood Dewey
on this point.26
55 However, although aspects of this kind might seem very far from the question of the
historical effectiveness of Dewey’s aesthetics, they actually evidence a new swing in the
perception of the artist’s role in society.
56 The Federal Art Project led to a democratic demythification of the role of the artist,
who was seen as a worker who responds to shared social needs and helps to define
experiences which are not merely individual. In contrast, Abstract Expressionism led to
a new glorification of the “artist-as-martyr” figure, to a renewed version of the late
Romantic genius, spiced up by a touch of social marginalization. And even a superficial
consideration of this phenomenon reveals that all of this led to deep changes in the art
market. Works by American artists achieved sky-high prices over the years, not only in
comparison to works from the federal programme years, but also compared to
European abstract artists who did not have a significant market in the United States. 27

177
V. A Balance?
57 As previously affirmed, it would be tritely incorrect to consider the policy of the
Federal Art Project, or the culture pursued by American abstract avant-garde artists as
mere translations of Dewey’s thought.
58 However, as is well known, his pragmatism forces philosophy to deal with “problems of
men,” or at most with more or less institutionalized forms of relation between those
who produce art and the communities who support them and benefit from artistic
production. On the contrary, it is not a question of merely examining the role played by
the arts in social practices, but also of understanding the extent to which a theoretical
investigation can identify solutions and establish what can or must be done.
59 As I have sought to argue in this article, the attempts to translate certain Deweyan
principles into a cultural policy were partly positive and partly more ambivalent. The
point is that these attempts were grafted onto pre-existing social relations and their
own largely unconscious, habitual demands. In other words, a common space, shared
peacefully or more frequently in a conflictual manner, existed prior to these kinds of
cultural policies, which were pursued at various levels – giving these levels different
directions and actively contributing to their transformation.
60 As already noted in the introduction, I believe we must seriously consider Dewey’s
suggestion to formulate a philosophy of art which, far from being “sterilized,” can
make “us aware of the function of art in relation to other modes of experience,” and
especially show “why this function is so inadequately realized” by identifying “the
conditions under which the office would be successfully performed.” 28 But we must also
acknowledge that philosophy alone is unable to take into account certain issues or
articulate certain details which are evidently not only implementary, but are the actual
means that contribute to establishing the goals to be achieved. 29
61 From this point of view, the role of philosophy can no longer be that of providing a
preliminary delineation of the field of play of the empirical sciences. Instead,
philosophy must be seen to operate within a process of collaboration which, while
capable of offering some guidelines, is not self-sufficient, but rather requires one to
establish with others what can or must be pursued, starting from an assessment of how
this goal might be achieved.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ALEXANDER T.M., (1987), John Dewey’s Theory of Art, Experience and Nature. The Horizons of Feeling,
Albany, State University of New York Press.
BENJAMIN W., (1955), Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, Frankurt a. M.,
Suhrkamp.

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BERUBE M., (1998), “John Dewey and the Abstract Expressionists,” Educational Theory, 48/2,
211-227.
BLUMENBERG H., (1957), “Nachahmung der Natur. Zur Vorgeschichte des schöpferischen
Menschen,” Studium Generale, 10, 266-283.
BOURDIEU P., (1979), La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement, Paris, Minuit.
BUETTNER S., (1975), “John Dewey and the Visual Arts in America,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, 33/4, 383-391.
CIMINELLI M.L., (2008), “Salvaguardia del patrimonio culturale immateriale e possibili effetti
collaterali: etnomimesi ed etnogenesi,” in L. Zagato (ed.), Le identità culturali nei recenti strumenti
Unesco, Padua, Cedam, Padua, 2008.
DEWEY J., (1916), Democracy and Education, New York, Macmillan.
DEWEY J., (1983), Human Nature and Conduct, in Volume 14: 1922 of The Middle Works, 1899-1924,
(MW), Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press.
DEWEY J., (1988), Three Independent Factors in Morals, in Volume 5: 1929-1930 of The Later Works,
(LW), Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press, 279-288.
DEWEY J., (1985), Ethics, in LW 7.
DEWEY J., (1989), Art as Experience, in LW 10.
DEWEY J., (1991), Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, in LW 12.
DREON R., (2007), Il sentire e la parola. Linguaggio e sensibilità tra filosofie ed estetiche del novecento,
Milano-Udine, Mimesis.
DREON R., (2012), Fuori dalla torre d’avorio. L’estetica inclusiva di John Dewey oggi, Genova, Marietti
1921.
FESMIRE S., (2003), John Dewey and Moral Imagination. Pragmatism in Ethics, Bloomington, Indiana
University Press.
GRIEVE V., (2009), The Federal Art Project and the Creation of Middlebrow Culture, Urbana and Chigaco,
University of Illinois Press.
JAY M., (2002), “Somaesthetics and Democracy: Dewey and Contemporary Body Art,” Journal of
Aesthetic Education, 36/4, 55-69.
KRISTELLER P. O., (1983), “‘Creativity’ and ‘Tradition’,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 44/1, 105-13.
MATTERN M., (1999), “John Dewey, Art and Public Life,” The Journal of Politics, 61/1, 54-75.
MELVIN G., (1992), “The Social Philosophy Underlying Dewey’s Theory of Art,” in J. E. Tiles (ed.),
John Dewey: Critical Assessments, Volume III: Value, Conduct and Art, London and New York,
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SENALDI M., (2007), “Art as Experience e l’arte contemporanea,” in L. Russo (ed.), Esperienza estetica.
A partire da John Dewey, Palermo, Aestetica Preprint, 2007.
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NOTES
1. This thesis was already put forward by Melvin 1992, in an old article. Robert Westbrook
particularly emphasized the intertwining of aesthetic, social and political issues in his work John
Dewey and American Democracy (Westbrook 1992). More recently the same claim was made by
Mark Mattern (Mattern 1999); it has also been originally developed by S. Fesmire in his book John
Dewey and Moral Imagination. Pragmatism in Ethics (Fesmire 2003), which focuses mainly on the
aesthetic implications of ethics.
2. LW 10: 16.
3. What is of central importance here is the distinction between rigid, obtuse behaviours and
intelligent, flexible habits capable of fostering opportunities for experiences other than those
already consolidated, which is outlined by Dewey in his Human Nature and Conduct, MW 14. The
basic assumption of this study in “social psychology” is particularly interesting: that man is not
only a naturally social individual, but also an organism whose behavior is structurally mediated
by habits.
4. On this point see the previously cited volume by Westbrook, who points out that Dewey’s
critics accused him of not providing a substantive definition of values, with a positive,
hierarchical order for them (in particular see “Constructing Good,” Westbrook 1992: 402). But the
point is that for Dewey such determination is not possible, not only out of respect for each
individual’s “capabilities,” but above all because he believed that moral situations are
structurally indeterminate: it was clear in his mind that in most of the existential situations in
which we have to take a decision we have different criteria at our disposal that are equally good
and shareable but in conflict with one another and which render our decision uncertain and
without any unambiguous outcome, if not retrospectively (see Dewey, Three Independent Factors in
Morals, in LW 5: 279-88).
5. See Grieve 2009. The text is a wide-ranging and detailed source of Federal Art Project cultural
history and much of the information I have used in these paragraphs has been drawn from it.
6. I have instead examined the more strictly theoretical aspects of Dewey's aesthetics in Dreon
2012, as well as before that in two chapters devoted to Dewey in Dreon 2007.
7. I think it is in this that we can interpret Mark Mattern’s thesis, which assigns an important
role to the arts in the public life of a democracy, because art “is a form of communication.”
Indeed, Dewey often argued that the term “communication” should be literally understood as
“doing something in common” (Mattern 1999: 54). The connection between “communication”
and “common” can be found both in Art as Experience (LW 10: 248), and in the following volume
Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (LW 12: 52), as well as in the earlier text citied by Mattern, Democracy
and Education (Dewey 1916: 4).
8. On this point see Blumenberg 1957 and Kristeller 1983.
9. LW 10: 88.
10. MW 14, see chapter 9, “Changing Human Nature.”
11. See Grieve 2009, chapter 2, “Inventing a Usable Past.”
12. On this point see Ciminelli 2008.
13. On these aspects see in particular Dewey, MW 14.
14. These are now extremely relevant issues in Europe, as well as elsewhere. On these matters,
see Zagato (ed.), 2008.
15. I shall quote here the impressive paragraph leading up to this statement in Art as Experience,
which reminds one of Bourdieu’s La distinction: “The nouveaux riches, who are an important
byproduct of the capitalist system, have felt especially bound to surround themselves with works
of fine art, which, being rare, are also costly. Generally speaking, the typical collector is the
typical capitalist. For evidence of good standing in the realm of higher culture, he amasses
paintings, statuary, and artistic bijoux, as his stocks and bonds certify to his standing in the

180
economic world. Not merely individuals, but communities and nations, put their cultural good
taste in evidence by building opera houses, galleries, and museums. These shows that a
community is not wholly absorbed in material wealth, because it is willing to spend its gains in
patronage of art. It erects these buildings and collects their contents as it now builds a cathedral.
These things reflect and establish superior cultural status, while their segregation from the
common life reflects the fact that their are not part of a native and spontaneous culture” (LW 10:
14-15).
16. 16 On this aspect see Walter Benjamin’s famous essay Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner
technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (Benjamin 1955), where loss of aura is perceived as an ambivalent
phenomenon: at most it might carry the opportunity for a future democratisation of art
appreciation.
17. See Bourdieu 1979.
18. References of this kind are numerous not only in Art as Experience, but also in Dewey’s ethical
reflections, where it is very clear that a democracy geared towards the establishment of the
common good (although it would be better to speak of “common goods” in the plural) must
promote individual happiness. See LW 7: 198.
19. The seminal article on Dewey’s influence on Abstract Expressionists is that by Stewart
Buettner, John Dewey and the Visual Arts in America, (Buettner 1975). Several years later a text by
Maurice R. Berube, John Dewey and the Abstract Expressionists (Berube 1998) was published. In Italy
an essay appeared by Marco Senaldi, based on previous ones (Senaldi 2007).
20. See Grieve 2009: 175.
21. An interpretation of this kind is favoured by Jay 2002.
22. See Buettner (1975: 389).
23. See Berube (1998: 219-20).
24. Cited by Berube, 1998: 217.
25. For an in-depth discussion of the concept of emotion and its role within aesthetic expression,
I would refer to the second and third chapters of my aforementioned book, Fuori dalla torre
d'avorio (Dreon 2012).
26. For a detailed analysis of the exchange between Dewey and Croce,one see Alexander 1987,
chapter 1 “The Pepper-Croce Thesis.”
27. Consider for example the difference in price between Dubuffet’s and Fautrier’s works. The
two painters are often considered “brother-artists” by critics, but while the former was active in
the US art market, the latter worked in the European one.
28. LW 10: 17.
29. The implied reference is to Dewey’s criticism, continually problematising our habitual
opposition between means and ends, which, however, I cannot deal with in this paper.
ABSTRACTS
The purpose of this paper is to consider Dewey’s influence on American artistic culture between
the nineteen-twenties and the nineteen-fifties by focusing on the social and political implications
of his approach to art in terms of experience. This entails recapturing, in a concise form, the
impact of Dewey’s thought on the development of the Federal Art Project and on Abstract
Expressionism. On the basis of the pragmatist assumption that the soundness of a theoretical

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proposal is to be measured according to its capacity to meet the difficulties arising in our
everyday interactions, the present paper systematically examines the theoretical implications of
Dewey’s aesthetics in the light of the historical consequences of a specific cultural policy.
Dewey’s conception of art and aesthetic experience appears to have made a decisive contribution
by providing new opportunities to enjoy the arts and by widely promoting practices with the
potential to be aesthetically satisfying. Dewey’s ideas actually led to an undermining of the
hierarchy between the fine arts and crafts, between popular culture and design, etc. More
problematic are their connections with questions of cultural identity and of art market. Dewey’s
influence on the Abstract Expressionists is evident in the way it shifted the artistic focus from art
objects toward the experiential dimensions of artistic practices. Some problems regard the
accessibility of this kind of works for a general audience and a certain reinforcement of the
conception of the artist as creative genius, included the related interpretation of artistic creation
as extreme subjective expression.
AUTHOR
ROBERTA DREON
University Ca’ Foscari, Venice, Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage
robdre[at]unive.it

182
Neopragmatism Viewed by
Pragmaticism
A Redescription
Ivo Assad Ibri
“Nominalists see language merely as signs and

sounds used by human beings. One of the things
we want to do with language is to get food,
another is to get sex, and yet another is to
understand the origin of the universe,”
Rorty, EHO, 127.
“Nominalism is a deadly poison to any living
thought,”
Peirce, NEM 3, 201.
I. Introduction
1 Those who are familiar with Peircean philosophy will soon realize, after a brief perusal
of some of the better-known texts of Richard Rorty, that they have entered a universe,
as far as their presuppositions are concerned, totally contrary to those adopted by
Peircean philosophy. This universe is designed under various conceptual points, which
we will call “neo-pragmatist theses,” namely:
A. refutation of the concept of representation for its alleged association to ‘non-human fixed
essences’;
B. denial of the possibility of truth as correspondence, for which he uses the ‘mirror of Nature’
metaphor.1 This thesis is evidently closely linked to the previous one;
C. replacement of the concept of discovery by that of invention;
D. defense of nominalism in the face of a metaphysical realism;
E. denial of the role of language as a medium between subject and object;
F. introduction of the term ‘redescription’ in lieu of fixed truths, contemplating the factual
contingency of human life.

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G. attribution to language of the essential role of tool with which solidarity is forged within a
democratic society – constituted, as such, of citizens who freely express their ideas – seeking
to mitigate human pain and cruelty;
H. replacement of philosophy by literature, as a more efficient tool for the development of
people for the exercise of their solidarity-creating language.
I. proposition of the term ‘irony,’ to define an anti-essentialist, desacralized philosophical
attitude that abdicates from argumentations based on truth in favor of a more efficient
vocabulary for the discussion of ideas. Rortyan pragmatists are self-defined ‘ironists’ (p.
136-45 CIS).
2 To all who adopt these viewpoints, notwithstanding their rather summarized

presentation, Rorty called pragmatists, declaring himself a particular follower of the
tradition of the pragmatist thought of Dewey and James.
3 Rorty also lists some other traditional names for support, albeit partial, of his theses,
such as Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, and Wittgenstein. References to Peirce are
very topical, evidencing a poor reading of Peircean works, restricted to a few texts of
his youth.
4 That collection of Rortyan theses would suffice, I guess, for a serious scholar of
Peircean works to suggest his exclusion from the roster of those who agree to take part
in the group that Rorty calls frequently in his writings, ‘we pragmatists…’ In addressing
some of the points of discord between Peirce and Rorty, I will endeavor to justify the
reason for this exclusion. I will examine, in general, as befits the limited space of this
article, some of these theses, and try to explain what a critical position would be, based
on Peirce’s philosophy. It must be pointed out, however, that none of the Rortyan
theses, as detailed above, are admissible within the context of Peirce’s system of ideas
and, for this reason, to continue using the term ‘pragmatism’ to designate two, wholly
antagonistic, theoretical standpoints will cause, at least, confusion. Accepting Peirce’s
exemplary suggestion that the designation of concepts should be the object of an
Ethics,2 it is well worth retrieving his term ‘pragmaticism,’ 3 which he once adopted, to
distinguish his conception of pragmatism from those that followed his creation in 1878.
4
5 In fact, the term ‘pragmaticism’ emerges well after the creation of the doctrine in
Peirce’s youth. The later development of Peirce’s philosophy, which became
increasingly realistic and strongly metaphysical, incorporated additional meanings to
pragmatism, turning it into a consequence of the relationship between his three
categories, definitively formulated after 1902, when he expounded his Phenomenology
in final form. Peirce’s pragmatism becomes a generalized relationship between the
general and the particular,5 in which the expression practical consequences, stated in
original proposition of the maxim in 1878, assumes an increasingly ontological
meaning, necessarily extending the sphere of human conduct to the conduct of all real
objects.6 This extensionality of the concept of pragmatism derives, in fact, from the
categorial symmetry7 between the phenomenological and ontological spheres,
fundamental for the conception of Semiotics as a science that conceives meanings
beyond human language.
6 Peirce’s mature philosophy comprises a system of interlacing ideas, suggesting a
nonfoundationalistic hierarchy between its diverse disciplines, notwithstanding such
system being concerned with genetic issues, such as his conception of cosmogenesis. 8

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7 Rorty shares the tradition dating back to Nietzsche, as well as the majority of
philosophers who strongly refute metaphysics – anti-essentialists, as they call
themselves.9 However, among the many possible questions, it should be asked of an
instrumentalist or utilitarianist pragmatist whether theological metaphysics, for
instance, as a source of beliefs of common sense, should be the object of such radical
rebuttal. Should not these beliefs be somehow considered, for their utility to human life,
comforting men in their inexorable finitude before the hard impact of facts, bringing
some hope of life to the destitute? Would this consideration not suffice to admit a sense
of religiousness as something ‘pragmatic’? Is there not, deep down in the radical
rebuttal of theological metaphysics, not so much an epistemic issue as Kant put it, but
rather a reaction against religious institutions that have historically imposed, to an
extremely human tendency, viz., an attraction to transcendence, social habits and a
morality associated with the exercise of power? Why are the two features, namely, the
utilitarian experience and the metaphysical refutation, not set aside here, rather than
tossing both out, the bath water and the baby, as popularly said? Seemingly, this issue
brings a specter of reproach: some things are useful; others do not seem allowed to be.
Could this propensity toward transcendence not also be merely poetic? Is conduct not
pragmatically characterized on seeing Nature sacralized by a pantheistic conception of
divinity – an opening for a silent and transcendental dialogue with each natural being?
Why should this potentially poetic baby be tossed together with the dirty water of the
moral dogmatism that restrains the human erotic impulse? Are not ‘redescriptions,’
understood as a deeper rereading of the diversity of facets that human experience
undergoes, applicable here?10
8 In my view, questions such as those are well worth asking. Deflating philosophy to the
extreme may involve suppressing from it vital components that keep it alive. Perhaps
this is Rorty’s strategy: once anorexic, it can be replaced by literature.
II. On the Concepts of Representation and Truth

(Theses A and B)
9 Rorty sees the concept of representation invariably associated to an external world
endowed with ultimate essences, which it should mirror. He does not acknowledge any
utility of that concept for human purposes. I believe, however, that this concept
requires – and I here apply again an expression dear to neopragmatists – redescription.
This redescription would seek precisely to understand ‘representation’ within a
criterion of meaning acknowledged by neopragmatism, namely, through its utilitarist-
instrumentalist angle.
10 Primarily, it is necessary to ‘redescribe’ the world,11 of which the alleged
‘representation’ would be the mirror. Rorty invariably refers to a near pathetic intent of
representationists toward a precision derived from a determinist world view, such as
that outlined in Enlightenment. This view, however, has long broken away from
contemporary science and the philosophies more apprised with its history. For a long
time ontological determinism has ceased to be the hope not only of those who make
science, but also of those who make it a metalanguage, namely, the epistemologists.
Nevertheless, in various passages of his works,12 Rorty insists in attributing such a
determinist view to representationists, as if wishing to adopt a convenient general
strategy to discredit his adversary, who would be nurturing a world view derived from

185
a belief in an all-foreseeing mathematical God in his project, remaining for man to

discover what final laws, with a status of divine essences, were thought by Him. It would
be fitting to ask why the right of vocabulary change is not granted to representationists.
They would say that no respectable science would expect a determinist behavior from
its objects,13 finding it natural to obtain a dispersion of results capable of being dealt
with statistically through probability functions.
11 Why then would the term representation be justified for a theory? If, on the one hand,
representation means an exact, mirroring, image of particular objects, human knowledge
would have no utility, according to the valuation criterion adopted by neopragmatism.
Alternatively, on the other hand, if representation is associated with final, fixed
essences, it must also be agreed that no utilitarian function would be found in it.
However, let us reformulate the concept of representation as a theoretical prediction of
future conduct of its objects.14 I believe that this function of representations, namely, to
anticipate the future conduct of its objects, characterizes what Peirce meant with he
claimed that the meaning of a positive theory lies in the future, 15 namely, in its capacity
of foreseeing the future course of acts. Here, incidentally, when we refer to ‘objects’ or
‘facts,’ we are faced with Rorty’s suggestions that we should avoid these expressions,
altering our vocabulary. Notwithstanding his acknowledgement of the utilitarian
function of the predictability of theories, he forbids philosophy to speculate on the
reason for the success or failure of such predictions, as if such speculation were
ultimately guided by the pretense of discovery of concealed essences or realities. Here, I
believe, lies the crux of the matter of representation and truth, as viewed by
neopragmatism. To Peirce’s pragmaticism, to represent means the primary function of
our rationality in predicting what may occur in the future course of facts, and to guide
our own behavior by the unveiling of the theories on what has not yet happened. To
neopragmatism, representation embodies in its concept a static world-view, permeated
with non-human entities, concealed metaphysical essences and other ghosts more
commonly associated to a theological determinism. Applying the vocabulary used by
neopragmatism, if we deflate the objects of representations from this anachronistic
view of a theological determinism, incidentally suggested by Rorty for the sake of
argumentative strategy, I suppose, then representation would be simply associated to
objects endowed with habits of conduct,16 the knowledge of which is of extreme utility to us
to plan how we should act to accomplish our purposes. But, viewed under an
indeterminist light, a world endowed with randomness would emerge from that alleged
Rortyan mirror as extremely clouded, incorporating this metaphor to another
formulated by Popper (1972) in his brilliant work ‘Of Clouds and Clocks,’ 17 and such a
world image could not be associated with any precise theory. I believe, however, that
instead of trying to save this metaphor about the mirror, it would be much better to
break it once and for all, fearless of what tragedy could befall philosophy in the next
seven years, considering that Rorty always seems to keep mystics and believers of a
reality essentialized by something non-human18 under the focus of his criticisms. The
conceptual inutility of the mirror metaphor is distinguished by the fact that no clear
image can be seen in it, given the indeterminate nature of the object. In spite of this
indetermination, the positive theories may be perfectly classified by their adherence
capacity between the course of facts and the predictions of those theories. This concept
of adherence, common in factual sciences, would be justified by a conception of
structural correspondence between the rule of conduct that subsumes facts in its
phenomenical manifestation and its theoretical representation, notwithstanding how

186
fallible19 all our affirmations on the world might be. We refer here to the Peircean
conception that all our positive theories are fallible, not only associated with an
indeterministic conception of world, but also linked to the randomness seen in human
actions.
12 Clearly, then, theories that show good adherence to the course of facts may be
considered true, without being a definite truth or associated with anachronically
metaphysical determinisms. I would suppose that a highly cultured scientist would
certainly refuse to acknowledge his theories as mere useful tools, but would rather say
that many of them are true, albeit admitting that better theories – meaning more
adherent –20 could emerge, and that those regarded today as possessing good adherence
could lose this quality, as a result of the discovery of new phenomena.
13 Obviously there is a radical difference between what pragmaticism sees as a true theory
and what Rorty states is a useful theory. Pragmaticism possesses a necessary realistic
presupposition – not a realism that is so called for admitting the existence of an
external world of objects independently of what we say about them, thus contrary to a
subjectivist idealism. A pragmaticist realism proposes the hypothesis that the world
contains habits of conduct, namely, general rules associated to the regularity seen in
particular events. This hypothesis is useful to explain the reason why some theories are
adherent and others not, thus redeeming the concept of fallible truth.
14 There are historical reasons that induce us to suppose the existence of an evolution of
human knowledge, a growth in our repertoire of adherent theories. Peirce adopts,
concomitantly, an evolutionist cosmology in which real thirdness grows in the
universe, in tandem with a constant insertion of the diversity that complexifies it. The
pragmaticist hypothesis that investigation tends toward a final agreement of opinions
is solely based on that evolutionist conception, representing an asymptotic growth
tendency of the Peircean category of thirdness. This brief synthesis of the evolutionary
intertwinement that both epistemology and ontology have in Peirce’s philosophy, seeks
only to refute Rorty’s affirmation that Peirce would have claimed that investigation
tends to find a finished reality of essences that would constitute its purpose. 21 Similar
to many other opinions of Rorty about the history of philosophy, this point of Peirce’s
philosophy would require a redescription whose target would be to eliminate this
ubiquitous mystical-theological nature that Rorty attributes to all those who speak of
some reality beyond the language practiced by mankind.
III. On Discovery and Invention (Theses C and D)

15 Scientific theories, according to neopragmatists, are inventions that scientists create in
order to have problem-solving ‘tools’ at their disposal. It stands to reason that,
although theories regarded as true are useful, it does not necessarily follow that
‘utility’ is the guiding criterion for the establishment of a theory for which there is a
catholic consensus on its truthfulness. Also, if a general structure that regulates the
conduct of objects – their habits, to use an expression employed by pragmaticists – is
not discovered, then there is no way of explaining why some theories are adherent and
others not. True theories are, in general, adapted to empirical data, under the
presupposition that its predictive form retains the adherence verified experimentally.
16 Ultimately, the issue refers to the nominalist or realist stance before the world. Peirce’s
scholastic realism22 presupposes that there are laws that act on the objects that we

187
endeavor to know, albeit being laws with varying degrees of cloudiness, according to
Popper’s metaphor.
17 Evidently, based on a nominalist approach, Rorty will not consider any differentiation
between invention and discovery, since language has the status of tools that must work.
18 Should we, however, wish to reflect why they work, we will be in touch with “things
greater and more powerful than everyday human existence.”23
19 Indeed, to confuse discovery with invention elicits, tacitly, in my view, two ominous
aspects for philosophy, namely, non-acknowledgment of the otherness of the world,
which leads to an indistinction between reality and fiction. For no other reason, Rorty
proposes matter-of-factly the replacement of philosophy by literature, after
suppressing from the former all contact with world otherness.
IV. Mediation and Redescription (Theses E, F)

20 Rorty also does not admit that language is mediation between subject and object, due to
the fact that, to him, language has an autonomy that turns his neopragmatism,
according to some commentators, into a type of ‘linguistic idealism.’ 24 In fact, it seems
that Rorty considers the role of mediation as less noble for language, seeing that it
would have a role of representation of the characteristics of the object, having to submit
to it in order to acquire meaning. In actual fact, this denial of the mediating role of
language derives, to my mind, from the early theses based on the nominalism that
characterizes neopragmatism.
21 Description and redescription are Rortyan concepts that replace the concepts of truth
and representation, as they are seen, of course, by neopragmatism. There are, however,
serious problems that neopragmatism would encounter when one resorts to the
pragmaticist thesis that the meaning of a positive theory is its esse in futuro or, as
mentioned before, its predictive power. How, then, to describe the future? Can
description and inference, here, be considered equals? The word describe, consistent
with nominalism, could not be applied to general objects, but solely to particular
objects. Therefore, under this vocabulary, how does the predictive function of theories
work? How, in this case, can ‘redescription’ be understood? Would it be the formulation
of ad hoc hypotheses on what did not work out?
22 Here I see the deepest contradiction in the neopragmatist claims. They defend language
as a tool, but not at all connected with any representation of a real world. On the other
hand, representation of reality, in the sense of being constituted of positive theories, is
the only available way we have to predict its future course – without this, language
would be a worthless tool, and therefore its required role of being only a useful
instrument to deal with human experience would inexorably fail. In any sense that
language is successfully predictive of the course of experience, then it is somehow
committed to the representation of the conduct of its real object. And such
representation has nothing to do with mirrors – indeed a metaphor that could be useful
if understood as related to reflection, whose ancient root, the Latin refletire, would
fairly describe the hard work of the human mind to correct theories based on the
external images formed by the human actions they have induced. In fact, this would be
a rich metaphor, namely, mirror as referring to the reflexive dialogue between the
inner side of our thoughts and the external side of our actions, in a self corrective

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process. This, by the way, is the true core of Peirce’s pragmatism 25 from which
neopragmatism passes quite far away.
V. On Community and Solidarity (Thesis G)

V.1
23 I recall when, still an engineering student during the late 60s, a professor of the physics
of relativity suggested to lower-income students to purchase the Russian edition of a
book on the theme of the course, which cost a fifth of the American price. Obviously
subsidized by the Soviet Government, the book dealt with the same physics as the
considerably more expensive book published in the United States. Even at that time,
this made me wonder why two ideologically dissimilar societies that were then
competing for who would have the greatest power to destroy the world, 26 promoting a
frightening and tense cold war, could produce the same physics? Could there not be a
leftist, revolutionary Physics, with descriptions and redescriptions invented by soviet
physicists, seeking to distinguish themselves from a bourgeois, capitalist and decadent
science?
24 Nevertheless, the truth was that physicists from the western and eastern blocs,
constituted a community of researchers above ideological, cultural and historical
idiosyncrasies. Is this fact not proof that this community had a common base reaching
beyond a mere sharing of opinions derived from conversation and creative use of
language? Were theories not guided by a similar dialogue with world otherness
constituted by the objects of common experience, which imposed an equal set of
theories accepted as true? In this case, if language conferred form to the world, why
were not distinct forms, customary to societies who affirmed themselves by
establishing among them all kind of distinctions, made possible?
V.2
25 The force of the otherness of facts, I hold, is the only base on which to settle a
community, whether scientific or comprising citizens of some society. To reduce the
possibility of a community to free democratic conversation, as the neopragmatist
school does, is to presuppose, on the one hand, that the agreements that supposedly
reach a common good be spontaneously extendable to the whole of society and that, on
the other hand, be effectively complied with.
26 Various counter arguments may be raised against this neopragmatist position. As far as
the extendibility of an accord to the totality of mankind is concerned, one may ask
whether, in defense of the power of language to constitute communities, there is not an
indispensable, albeit tacit, admission of an ethics of good feelings, sufficiently fragile I
suppose, on which to lay the hope of human solidarity. On the other hand, a
presupposition that reciprocal agreements are complied with requires an inability to
lie and a capacity to forgo self-interests, in order that such compliance does not deviate
from its course.
27 Pragmatism, in its Peircean inception, had as its golden rule a logical commitment
between thought and action, a commitment of coherence that would finally confer
meaning to discourse, to language. For this reason, it had, along with its logical-

189
semantic dimension, an ethical dimension: action would materialize in the outer plane
open as common experience, by which the truth of statements is either affirmed or
denied. Under this conception, language lies solely within the dimension of the inner
world of men, namely, the world of possibilities that can influence their actions. I hold
that pragmaticism, ultimately, is a relationship of commitment between inner and
outer worlds, in which acting is how an indeterminate generality of concept is
determined, within a theater of reactions open to common experience.
28 To base humanity’s shortcomings on democratic conversation is to scorn the instance
where language, which has facticity as reference, may appear as fact, namely, human
action that, in the pragmaticist view, is the way in which language emerges from its
inner world and enters the outer world. While not doing so, basing its accords only on
itself, on its inventions of world, on the sophistic power of persuasion through rhetorical
seduction, I fear then the possibility of a reign of terror, of domination, as history often
shows, following thus an opposite path to that presupposed by neopragmatists.
29 Naïve and uninformed is, at best, the supposition that the model of American
democracy is ideally exportable to other societies of deeply distinct historical
backgrounds, culturally dissimilar to it. One must, however, acknowledge that
democracy is a necessary condition for a society that theoretically respects individual
citizen rights. However, it does not follow that democracy suffices in a reciprocal
society, as required by Rorty.
30 We agree that Rorty’s project of a solidary society, as described by him, is utopian. This
project, however, would not be utopian because of an ideality in communion with other
social utopias that the history of ideas records, but rather because it is indeed based on
the naïve hypothesis that the solidarity and good will of American society would be
disseminated throughout the planet, by the freedom provided by democracy. Would it
suffice for men to converse and exchange vocabulary when it lost its utility? Could one
also ask why would men be sympathetic, forming a community of common interests
solely because they are free and share a language? If American society reveals an
appearance of reciprocal community, would it not be derived from a specific culture,
from a historical contingency that is not the same in other societies? There are many
democracies in emerging nations in which the political class is really solidary, but only
amongst its members, promoting and practicing a cronyism that cloaks privileges,
corruption, nepotism and other illicit acts. Solidarity, as such, is a fact in any society,
although confined to interest groups.
31 Solidarity sustained on an idea of common good would require, on the one hand, the
effective individual will of each of its members toward this idea and, on the other hand,
a culture in which the acknowledgment of ethical values placed in its practice
represented a community habit.
32 A society judges its politicians pragmatically, namely, by the degree of logical
consistency between discourse and conduct. A philosopher’s abilities would not be
required here: the common citizen is not satisfied with what a public figure declares.
Having voted for him, for his promises, this citizen will demand such consistency:
effective conduct will have the final word – the manifest form of language, open to the
factual experience of everyone.

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VI. Conclusion
33 I recall a creative passage, attributed to Einstein:
Theory is when you know all and nothing works. Practice is when all works and
nobody knows why. In this case we have put together theory and practice: nothing
works […] and nobody knows why!
34 Notwithstanding the hilarious nature of his conclusion, which pessimistically associates
the negative aspects of theory and practice, it holds some truth in its premises, already
mentioned by Kant in a more refined way, in the Introduction to his first Critique,
when he says that ‘while reason without experience is empty, experience without
reason is blind,’ criticizing, in one fell swoop, both rationalism and empiricism.
35 Reducing theories to mere tools that represent nothing only serves a blind practicalism,
on the one hand or, on the other hand, a practicalism whose occasional success or
failure cannot be explained.
36 We cannot simply consider failures as instances that occasion ‘redescriptions’ or
‘exchange of vocabularies.’ We must understand what caused them, searching for the
general rule that governs the path of otherness in relation to which our actions were
ill-fated. Language and theories as mere tools do not grant this status of generalization
that we seek: we want to learn beyond a mere empiricism that allows for contingent
solutions, as if we were strolling through a stretch of an exponential function and had
taken it as linear: soon a gamut of new experiences would denounce this redescription
as a naïve illusion. Failure and error force us to a more wide-ranging dialogue, beyond
our own language: toward objects taken in their integrity, namely, in their unveiling as
existence open to experience and in their habit of being that surpasses the contingency
of mere particular existence.
37 There are many profound ideas that the history of philosophy has discussed, and which
Rorty seems to ignore: they orbit in this interaction between theory and experience,
involving the general and the particular interplay; in the conditions of apprehension
and perception of generality in contingency; in language as a network that captures
aspects of the real, turning them into objects of reflection, with the necessary
consideration of their otherness.
38 I cannot see why, in Rorty’s words, ‘the mysterious and concealed reality of the world,
much greater than us, humans’ can be more barred to us than that which conceals the
innerness of men. On the contrary, world facticity conceals nothing in an immediate
manner other than what appears mediately, cognizable through inference. However, if
we consider that, pragmatically, language is only revealed in action as its unveiled
aspect, without that instance in which it is exteriorized as determination, it is
meaningless. This is a requirement of pragmaticism, that sees in the action the outer
aspect of thought and, consequently, of language. The conversation of men is, no doubt,
necessary, but for pragmaticists it is insufficient for something as important as human
solidarity to support itself.
39 The realistic conversation of pragmaticists goes beyond human language. Semiotics is
the science that considers that men not only converse among themselves, but also
reflexively with the actions and the world facts with which they interact, and which,
incidentally, is also endowed with a language constituted by an interchange of signs
and meanings present in Nature. Nominalism could only lead to an anthropocentrism,

191
and this philosophical approach has been responsible for us to consider Nature as
something foreign to humankind, something devoid of language. 27 More than ever, had
Peirce had a close relationship with Rorty, he would resume his proposal to change the
name of pragmatism to pragmaticism, leaving the former to a doctrine that has
nothing to do with his philosophy. Under these circumstances, he would surely say: we,
pragmaticists, absolutely refute what you, neopragmatists have been saying.
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Seattle, University of Washington Press.
BRANDOM R. (ed.), (2000), Rorty and His Critics, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass. Blackwell.
BRODSKY G., (1982), "Rorty’s Interpretation of Pragmatism,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce
Society, 17, 4, 311-38.
HAACK S., (1993), Evidence and Enquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemolog, Oxford and Cambridge,
MA, Blackwell.
HOOKWAY C., (2005), “The Pragmatist Maxim and the Proof of Pragmatism,” Cognitio, São Paulo, 6,
1, 25-42.
IBRI I. A., (2009), ”Reflections on a Poetic Ground in Peirce’s Philosophy,” Transactions of the Charles
S. Peirce Society, 45, 3, 273-307.
IBRI I. A., (2011), “Semiotics and Epistemology: The Pragmatic Ground of Communication,” in Rosa
M. Calcaterra, ed., New Perspectives on Pragmatism and Analytic Philosophy, Amsterdam, Rodopi,
71-82.
IBRI I. A., (2010), “Peircean Seeds for a Philosophy of Art,” in Haworth K., Hogue J., &
Sbrocchi L. G., (eds.), Semiotics 2010. The Semiotics of Space, New York, Legas Publisher, 1-16.
IBRI I. A., (2012), “Choices, Dogmatisms and Bets,” Veritas, PUCRS, 57, 2, 51-61.
FORSTER P., (2003), “The Logic of Pragmatism: A Neglected Argument for Peirce’s Pragmatic
Maxim,” Transactions of the Charles Sanders Peirce Society, 39, 4, 525-45.
FORSTER P., (1997), “The Logical Foundations of Peirce’s Indeterminism,” in J. Brunning &
P. Forster (eds.), The Rule of Reason: The Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, Toronto, University of
Toronto Press.
LISZKA J. J., (2009), “Re-Thinking the Pragmatic Theory of Meaning,” Cognitio, São Paulo, 10, 1,
61-79.
MARGOLIS J., (2007), “Rethinking Peirce’s Fallibilism,” Transactions of the Charles Sanders Peirce
Society, 43, 2, 229-49.

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PEIRCE Charles S., (1931-58), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vols. I-VIII, Charles Hartshorne,
Paul Weiss, and Arthur Burks, eds., Harvard University Press (referred as CP).
PEIRCE Charles S., (1992-98), The Essential Peirce. Selected Philosophical Writings vols. 1-2, N. Houser et.
al. (eds.), Bloomington, Indiana University Press (referred as EP).
PEIRCE Charles S., (1976), The New Elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce., 4 vols, Carolyn Eisele
(editor), The Hague, Mouton (referred to as NEM).
RORTY R., (1979), Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press
(referred as PMN).
RORTY R., (1982), Consequences of Pragmatism, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press (referred
as CP).
RORTY R., (1989), Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
(referred as CIS).
RORTY R., (1991), Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Volume 1, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press (referred as ORT).
RORTY R., (1991), Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press (referred as EHO).
RORTY R., (1998), Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press (referred as TP).
RORTY R., (1999), Philosophy and Social Hope, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books (referred as PSH).
TURLEY P., (1977), Peirce’s Cosmology, New York, Philosophical Library.
NOTES
1. As it appears, exemplarily, in the well-known Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton, NJ,
Princeton University Press, 1979, 10.
2. See “Ethics of Terminology” in CP, 2. 219-226 / EP2 263-266.
3. CP 5.414 / EP2 334-335. In this paragraph, Peirce did write: “So then, the writer, finding his
bantling ‘pragmatism’ so promoted, feels that it is time to kiss his child good-by and relinquish it
to its higher destiny; while to serve the precise purpose of expressing the original definition, he
begs to announce the birth of the word ‘pragmaticism,’ which is ugly enough to be safe from
kidnappers To show how recent the general use of the word ‘pragmatism’ is, the writer may
mention that, to the best of his belief, he never used it in copy for the press before today, except
by particular request, in Baldwin‘s Dictionary. [See 1-4.] Toward the end of 1890, when this part
of the Century Dictionary appeared, he did not deem that the word had sufficient status to
appear in that work. [But see 13n.] But he has used it continually in philosophical conversation
since, perhaps, the mid-seventies.”
4. Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” Popular Science Monthly 12, 286-302; CP-5, 388-410 / EP1
124-141.
5. In CP-5.170, Peirce claimed: “The validity of induction depends upon the necessary relation
between the general and the singular. It is precisely this which is the support of Pragmatism.”
See interesting approaches of pragmatism in Altshuler (1978), Forster (2003), Hookway (2005) and
Liszka (2009).
6. I considered this ontological consequence of pragmatism in, for example, Ibri (2011).

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7. 7 I have used the expression “categorial symmetry” due to the indifferent validity of Peirce’s
three categories for subject and object domains. See, for instance, Ibri (2012).
8. See on this subject Turley (1977).
9. An example of Rorty’s anti-essentialism can be found in his “A World without Substances and
Essences” Rorty (1999).
10. 1My claim is that poetic experience can be considered from the point of view of Peirce’s
pragmaticism, however fully connected with his ontology. See Ibri (2009) and (2010).
11. Notwithstanding ‘world’ being what is most lacking in the neopragmatism discourse.
12. See his insistence on the concept of ‘exact representation’ in, for instance, ORT, 99 and PMN,
377.
13. In CP 1.9, we read “In those sciences of measurement which are the least subject to error –
metrology, geodesy, and metrical astronomy – no man of self-respect ever now states his result,
without affixing to it its probable error; and if this practice is not followed in other sciences it is
because in those the probable errors are too vast to be estimated.” See also NEM-III/2, 897.
14. In CIS, 5-7, Rorty criticizes the conception of language as mediation between subject and
object.
15. In CP 5.427/ EP 2.340, Peirce said “The rational meaning of every proposition lies in the
future. How so? The meaning of a proposition is itself a proposition. Indeed, it is no other than
the very proposition of which it is the meaning: it is a translation of it. But of the myriads of
forms into which a proposition may be translated, what is that one which is to be called its very
meaning? It is, according to the pragmaticist, that form in which the proposition becomes
applicable to human conduct, not in these or those special circumstances, nor when one
entertains this or that special design, but that form which is most directly applicable to self-
control under every situation, and to every purpose. This is why he locates the meaning in the
future time; for future conduct is the only conduct that is subject to self-control.”
16. In many passages, Rorty encourages the adoption of creative vocabularies. See, for example
CIS, 20.
17. Popper (1972), "Of Clouds and Clocks,” in Objective Knowledge, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 206-55.
18. See, exemplarily, TP, 226.
19. Margolis (2007) and Foster (1997) are good examples of interesting discussion of Peirce’s
fallibilism.
20. I would suggest that adherence actually is a better term to use instead of truth, as the latter
somehow induces minds not acquainted with the concepts of indeterminism and fallible
knowledge, as claimed by Peirce, to think on fixed essences, like Rorty insistently does. Truth,
then, would be only used under the consideration that theories are fallible and, consequently,
they must be changed whenever experience imposes such change in any demanded degree.
21. ORT, 131.
22. At this point, scholars should remember the classical and pioneering work by Boler (1963).
23. EHO, 28.
24. Such as mentioned by Brandom (2000: 160).
25. In CP 8.272, we can read such reflexive aspect of Peirce’s pragmatism: “Pragmatism is correct
doctrine only in so far as it is recognized that material action is the mere husk of ideas…But the
end of thought is action only in so far as the end of action is another thought.”
26. I recall that the soviets showed their concern for their inferiority in being capable of
destroying the planet only 20 times (!) over, while the Americans were capable of doing it 22
times (!).
27. “The world does not speak. Only we do” (CIS, 6).

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ABSTRACTS
There are significant differences between the neopragmatism as formulated by Rorty, based on
James’ and Dewey’s pragmatism, and what Peirce, in order to distinguish his own approach from
the last two thinkers, called pragmaticism. I take in this paper the concept of solidarity as a
focus, from which those differences will be implied, albeit many other points could be chosen. I
highlight that the usual Rorty’s sentence beginning with ‘we pragmatists…’ shall necessarily
exclude Peirce. Exemplarily, I could mention the concepts of representation, which for Peirce has
nothing to do with mirror, and of truth that, for him, also has no relation at all with fixed
essences. Those differences will not only mark a very clear border between the two concepts of
pragmatism, but also will question how the idea of community can be supported only by
dialogical agreements, without the anchor of common open human experience. Pragmaticism
and neopragmatism differ not only regarding their specific range of philosophical problems but,
moreover, on what kind of problems they really consider as genuinely philosophical.
AUTHOR
IVO ASSAD IBRI
Center for Pragmatism Studies, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo – Brazil
ibri[at]uol.com.br

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Chicago Pragmatism and the

Extended Mind Theory
Mead and Dewey on the Nature of Cognition
Roman Madzia
Introduction
1 In his recent book The Pragmatic Turn, Richard J. Bernstein writes that a philosopher
comes alive and speaks to us from the past when his work becomes a fertile source for
dealing with current philosophical problems, when his work can be engaged in novel
ways. In what is to follow, I would like focus on the question of how the philosophy of
pragmatism can possibly contribute to current discussions concerning the nature of
cognition instigated by recent findings in cognitive science. I will also try to show that,
in many respects, contemporary cognitive neuroscience has been arriving at
conclusions reached long ago by two representatives of the Chicago school of
pragmatism – George H. Mead and John Dewey. At the same time, I will attempt to view
their work through the prism of these new findings. The way I am going to proceed in
this paper will be the following: First, I am going to examine the methodological
starting points of these two thinkers in their inquiries into the nature of cognition. On
the background of these, I am going to take a closer look at some pragmatic
ramifications of recent research in particular areas of cognitive neuroscience. Second,
elaborating on Mead’s theory of the act (with its four stages – impulse, perception,
manipulation, and consummation) I will point to numerous striking similarities
between the pragmatists’ treatment of the notion of cognition and ideas recently
suggested by defenders of the extended mind theory. As a point of transition between
the first and the second step, I am going to present an argument in favor of a possible
pragmatic redefinition of the notion of representation, originally formulated by one of
the advocates of the extended mind theory.

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Cognition As An Organic Unity – Dewey’s Criticism Of

The Reflex Arc Concept
2 Where specifically does cognition stop and action begin? Traditionally, philosophers
(and to date also the majority of cognitive scientists) have tended to think of the
relation between perception, action, and cognition in terms of what Susan Hurley once
dubbed the “classical sandwich” paradigm. In her words, “this conception of the mind,
widespread across philosophy and empirical sciences of the mind, regards perception
as input from world to mind, action as output from mind to world, and cognition as
sandwiched between” (Hurley 2008: 2). In this methodological view, cognition is
considered some sort of a central process, taking place in our skulls, which transforms
and processes perceptual inputs caused by the contingencies of our environmental
surroundings. Action, on the other hand, is usually viewed as some sort of a “servant”
to the central cognitive processes, that is, as their mere bodily-instrumental output. At
a certain level of analysis the problem of the relation between perception and action
can be defined as a problem of the relation between stimulus and response. The main
contention of psychological research in Dewey’s time was that, if we are to explain
what cognition is, we first have to give an account of the process by which perceptual
inputs are transformed into motor action. Everything that happens in between can be
called cognition. Hence, in order to explain the nature of the central process, we have
to examine how the peripheral processes are transformed into one another. However
reasonable such a position may seem, Dewey’s seminal 1896 paper The Reflex Arc Concept
in Psychology1 considers such an outlook on the nature of cognition to be deeply
misleading.2 In this paper Dewey executes a thoroughgoing critique of psychological
methodologies that have found their goal in the program of establishing causal and
nomological relations between stimuli and responses. Within this view, perceptual
stimuli are taken to be independent sensory particulars which trigger in the organism
cognitive processes that eventually lead to a motor discharge as a consequence of this
processing. The crucial problem with such a heuristic approach is that it tends to
apprehend external stimuli, internal processing, and external response as ontologically
independent entities, clearly delimited from one another. Under this analysis, Dewey
writes:
The sensory stimulus is one thing, the central activity, standing for the idea, and
the motor discharge, standing for the act proper, is a third. As a result, the reflex
arc is not a comprehensive, or organic unity, but a patchwork of disjointed parts, a
mechanical conjunction of unallied processes. (EW 5: 97)
3 Drawing upon an example of a child seeing a candle introduced first by James in the
second chapter of his Psychology, Dewey illustrates the practical working of the reflex
arc mechanism. The situation is that of a small child that, after seeing a burning candle
in her vicinity for the first time, reaches out to its flame and gets burned. The ordinary
interpretation of that situation from the viewpoint of the reflex arc theory would hold
that the sensory datum of a light serves as a stimulus to the child, leading eventually to
the execution of a motor response in the form of trying to grasp the flame. The
resulting burn is, subsequently, a stimulus to withdrawing the hand and so on. Dewey
argues that the basic defect of such a theory is the idea of the possibility of dividing the
unity of human action into ontologically and temporally separated units. In other
words, Dewey’s main dissatisfaction with the classical construal of the reflex arc
concept lies in the fact that it has misdirected the attention of psychologists from the

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real issue of trying to understand the phenomenon of human action to an exclusive

focus upon the parts or stages of the action (cf. Campbell 1995: 34). Whenever we try to
divide experience or action into ontologically distinct pieces, we find ourselves unable
to put them back together again. The traditional reflex arc concept, thus, has to be
replaced by a new heuristic approach in which the stimulus, central reaction, and
motor response are taken merely as functional moments of larger organic unity of
action:
Upon analysis, we find that we begin not with a sensory stimulus, but with a
sensori-motor co-ordination, the optical-ocular, and that in a certain sense it is the
movement which is primary, and the sensation which is secondary, the movement
of body, head and eye muscles determining the quality of what is experienced. In
other words, the real beginning is with the act of seeing; it is looking, and not a
sensation of light. The sensory quale gives the value of the act, just as the
movement furnishes its mechanism and control, but both sensation and movement
lie inside, not outside the act. (EW 5: 97)
4 What Dewey urges us to do here is to shift our focus from seeing the child as a simple
stimulus-response mechanism to an embodied creature situated in an environment,
trying to achieve specific goals. That is why in order to understand human action we
have to start with “larger co-ordination” of the live creature engaging in purposeful
action and interacting with its environment. In such a picture, Dewey holds “the act is
seeing no less than before, but it is now seeing-for-reaching purposes. There is still a
sensori-motor circuit, one with more content or value” (EW 5: 98). As Leszek
Koczanowicz has observed, the act of coordination is for Dewey the only psychological
reality (cf. Koczanowicz 1990: 49). The new methodological approach in psychology,
proposed by Dewey, enabled not only him, but more importantly Mead, to introduce
into psychology the notion of action as a unit of inquiry. Conscious action always starts
as a goal-directed activity that engages the whole organism. What should be
emphasized at this point is that in Dewey’s view the action-goals are present in the acts
from their very beginning; and they fulfill there at least two crucial roles. They are,
first, instigators of action and, second, regulatory elements directing sensori-motor
capacities of the organism towards successful completion of the act. Initially, the child
sees the candle as a plaything which leads her to reach out to its flame. The sensory
stimulus of the candle, however, not only serves as an initial element or cause of action,
but also plays an important role during the motor act of reaching itself as it regulates
the movement of the hand, etc. On the flipside, the movement of the child may modify
the sensory stimuli coming to her perceptual apparatus: “the sole meaning of the
intervening movement is to maintain, reinforce or transform (as the case may be) the
original quale” (EW 5: 99). As simple a process as the one of reaching out to a candle
may seem, in Dewey’s view it cannot be depicted as a mere stimulus-processing-
response chain. Rather, it involves quite a sophisticated mechanism of creating what
Andy Clark calls “action-perception loops” (e.g. Clark 2008: 71, 74-75). In other words,
according to Dewey, in the process of cognition, perception is not separable from
action for it controls the process of action as a goal-directed behavior from the very
beginning until its successful completion. By the same token, action, i. e. its motor
component, oftentimes transforms the character of perceptual experience.
5 Through motion the active organism continuously affects the character of its
perceptual experience, just as the character of perceptual experience affects the ways
in which the organism moves. In the process of cognition, therefore, the organism and

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the world enter into what Clark calls continuous reciprocal causation, which occurs when
some system is both continuously affecting and simultaneously being affected by
activity in some other system (cf. Clark 2008: 24).3 Cognition, Dewey holds, is a goal-
directed activity of a physically embodied and environmentally embedded creature. At
the most basic level, cognition is not inherently contentful or intentional (in the
classical Brentano’s sense), rather the process of life as such, if we interpret it as a
process of continuous organic adjustment, is a process of cognition. In this
fundamental conviction, the Chicago pragmatists anticipated contemporary systems
theory as represented, for instance, in the work of Humberto Maturana: “Living
systems are cognitive systems and living as a process is a process of cognition. This
statement is correct for all organisms, with or without nervous system” (Maturana &
Varela 1980: 13). The division of the continuum of human perception and action into
stimuli and responses is, therefore, an artificial one. In this regard, Joas remarks:
“according to Dewey, unless we make an anticipatory judgment about the action in
which stimuli and responses are joined together, we can speak only of a temporal
succession and not of the causal relation implied by the stimulus-response model”
(Joas 1985: 66). From the methodological point of view, Dewey’s pragmatic
understanding of action as a value-laden and goal-directed activity 4 necessarily
precedes its subsequent functional division into stimuli and responses (cf. EW 5:
96-105). The child perceptually detects the flame in the first place because she sees it as
something to be played with, which is why she executes a series of more or less skillful
bodily movements to change the character of the experienced candle from being
merely present into being available.
6 What does this mean from the perspective of inquiry into the nature of action? I am
convinced that there are at least two crucial points to be drawn from the naturalistic
accounts of cognition of the Chicago pragmatists. First and foremost, as Kilpinen
recently remarked, in pragmatism “action is a universal phenomenon which in itself
begs no explanation but rather makes the starting point for explanations” 5 (Kilpinen
2008: 1). Secondly, in light of this strictly naturalistic approach to cognition we cannot
consistently try to explain it solely in terms of what is going on in our heads. In
contrast to mainstream philosophy of mind, pragmatists do not take the mind or its
capacity for cognition as self-contained puzzles but rather as phenomena which
evolved to “make things happen” (Clark 1997a: 1), to guide action and enable more
effective coping with the environment. In short, the brain is an organ for controlling
the biological body, rather than a disembodied logical reasoning device. In pragmatism,
the explanation of action thus both genealogically and heuristically precedes the
explanation of mind and high-order cognitive processes.
7 In Deweyan perspective, the basic characteristics of experience understood in terms of
skillful attunement to the world and its implicit practical understanding have to be
taken into consideration if we want to analyze the child’s action. 6 As Alva Noë once put
it: “perception is not something that happens to us or in us. It is something we do”
(Noë 2004: 1). Action and perception are two sides of the same coin, they are the means
of our exploratory dynamic engagement with the environment. If cognition is the kind
of thing that can be localized anywhere, according to Chicago pragmatists it cannot be
situated exclusively in our heads (cf. Mead 1934/1967: 112). In the same manner as
Dewey and Mead in the past, Clark currently maintains that “the actual local
operations that realize certain forms of human cognizing include inextricable tangles
of feedback, feedforward, and feed-around loops: loops that promiscuously criss-cross

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the boundaries of brain, body, and world. The local mechanisms of mind, if this is
correct, are not all in the head. Cognition leaks out into body and world” (Clark 2008:
xxviii).
Cognition and Action Overlapped – The Pragmatic

Significance of Attitudes
8 In his theory of the act, Mead’s main concern is to provide a fully naturalistic
explanation of cognition that revolves around these fundamental principles. In
contrast to classical Watsonian7 behaviorism Mead’s social behaviorism holds that it is
not necessary to explain away consciousness altogether as long as we do not treat it in
Cartesian terms as an inner experiential space accessible solely from the first-person
perspective:
Watson apparently assumes that to deny the existence of mind or consciousness as
a psychical stuff, substance, or entity is to deny its existence altogether, and that a
naturalistic or behavioristic account of it as such is out of the question. But, on the
contrary, we may deny its existence as a psychical entity without denying its
existence in some other sense at all; and if we then conceive it functionally, and as a
natural rather than a transcendental phenomenon, it becomes possible to deal with
it in behavioristic terms. In short, it is not possible to deny the existence of mind or
consciousness or mental phenomena, nor is it desirable to do so. (Mead 1934/1967:
10)
9 Mead, thus, does not see a problem in postulating an inner domain of experience as
long as we ascribe it only with proper functional, but not ontological, status. What
proper functional status means, in this regard, is that in order to explain action we can
postulate existence of neural events in the central nervous system which sensitize the
perceiving organism to certain kind of perceptual stimuli and enable it to act toward
them. Mead calls these neural paths attitudes, and defines them as non-propositional
and sub-personal beginnings of acts in terms of specific readiness of an organism to
perform all sorts of responses towards perceptual objects. They are inner, however,
“not in the sense of being in another world, a subjective world, but in the sense of being
within the organism” (Mead 1934/1967: 5). Attitudes are an integral part of the act
although they are not subject to direct observation: “The external act that we observe
is a part of the process which has started from within” (Mead 1934/1967: 5). A skeptic
might ask whether this sort of treatment does not commit us, again, to exactly the
same kind of mind-first explanation against which pragmatism argues. As serious a
concern as it may seem at first glance, if we recall Dewey’s 1896 article it becomes clear
that attitudes are not in any way to be equated with reflective mental states. Attitudes
come into existence in higher-order organisms endowed with central nervous systems.
On the basis of the organism’s active behavior and problem solving, attitudes come into
existence as neural pathways encoding bodily habits which are responding to certain
kinds of environmental stimulation. For Mead, the very concept or idea of an object is
to be equated with “such an organization of a great group of nervous elements as will
lead to conduct with reference to the objects about us” (Mead 1934/1967: 70-71). 8
10 In his treatment of attitudes, Mead strictly preserves the conceptual and
methodological pattern laid out by Dewey in The Reflex Arc Concept. Following Dewey,
Mead takes the relation between stages of the act as being not primarily causal but
rather functional. Functionality, for that matter, presupposes purposiveness. In words

200
of W. Teed Rockwell: “For Dewey […] all experience is constituted by its relationship to
the world and the goals of the experiencer” (Rockwell 2005: 88). In Mead’s theory of the
act, this strand of thought is elaborated in his notion of natural teleology of attitudes.
In other words, attitudes play a pivotal role within the act as purposive, goal-directed
elements that control certain course of action from the beginning until the very end.
11 Mead’s concept of teleology of attitudes built upon Dewey’s model of organic action is
currently gaining in credibility due to the recent extensive research into mirror neurons.
9
These neurons were accidentally discovered by a group of Italian neuroscientists led
by Giacomo Rizzolatti during their research into the ventral premotor cortex in
primates which is responsible for grasping and manipulating objects. Rizzolatti’s group
noticed that certain groups of neurons fired not only when a primate was executing a
certain motor action but, surprisingly, also when one primate was merely watching
another primate (including humans) doing the same thing. 10 What is important for our
discussion here is that mirror neurons are not a new kind of neurons. What Rizzolatti
and his colleagues have found, to their own surprise, is that the mirror function is
played by the neurons responsible for sensorimotor operations. Referring explicitly to
Mead, Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia claim that:
‘We look because we handle, and we are able to handle because we look’, are the
words used almost a century ago by George Herbert Mead to emphasize how
perception would not be possible ‘without a continued control of such an organ as
that of vision by such an organ as that of the hand, and vice versa’ [Mead 1907: 388].
Without this mutual control we would not be able to pick up our cup of coffee.
However the analysis of the visuo-motor transformations operated by the AIP-FS
neurons indicates that the seeing which guides the hand is also (and above all)
seeing with the hand, by which the object is immediately coded as a given set of
invitations to act. (Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia 2008: 50)
12 The relevance of the pragmatic concept of action represented by Dewey and Mead for
contemporary cognitive neuroscience cannot be clearer. The findings of Rizzolatti and
Sinigaglia confirm on empirical grounds not only the very intimate connection
between perception and action, but also the goal-directed nature of action in certain
higher-order organisms.11 Moreover, findings in mirror neuron research also seem to
indicate the existence of attitudes. Analogically to Mead’s example of grasping a
hammer, Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia provide their own example with grasping a cup of
coffee:
[w]e will grasp it in different ways depending on whether we are picking it up to
drink from it, to rinse it, or simply to move it from one place to another. Moreover,
our grip on the cup varies according to the circumstances, whether we are afraid of
burning our fingers, or the cup is surrounded by other objects; it will also be
influenced by our customs, habits, and our inclination to adhere to certain social
rules and so on. (Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia 2008: 36-37)
13 The present conclusions seem to indicate that Dewey and Mead were right in
maintaining that the simple stimulus-response model of action that is still being
advocated (in however refined a formulation), is simply inaccurate as a paradigm for
explaining the nature of action in higher-order organisms. The one-dimensional model
of having a perceptual stimulus of a cup of coffee → reaching for it → grasping it, etc.,
is incorrect because in the course of action all these elements work in parallel, the arm
moves towards the cup and contemporaneously the hand already assumes the shape
necessary for grasping it. If we now recall that, in Mead’s view, the concept of object is
to be defined in terms of an organization of neural paths that will lead us to certain

201
kinds of conduct with reference to certain perceptual stimuli, we can see why he calls
distant perceptual objects as “invitations to conduct” (Mead 1938: 280). In Mead’s
words: “Man lives in the world of Meaning. What he sees and hears means what he will
or might handle” (Mead 1926/1964: 294).
14 Cognizing organisms are thus not to be understood as disembodied computing engines,
but rather as cognitive agents, situated in environments where they pursue their
practical goals on the basis of what James J. Gibson called affordances. According to
Gibson: “affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides
or furnishes, either for good or ill […] I mean by it something that refers to both the
environment and the animal in a way that no existing term does. It implies the
complementarity of the animal and the environment” (Gibson 1979: 127). In this
respect, comparative psychologist Louise Barrett makes an insightful point:
“Affordances are ‘organism-dependent’ […] because they reflect the degree to which an
animal with a particular kind of nervous system can detect and make use of particular
kinds of environmental opportunities” (Barrett 2011: 98). Similarly, Mark Johnson
remarks that the whole process of perceiving affordances and subsequent concept
formation “is loosely goal-directed and has always a built-in teleological aspect, since
organisms have implicit values they are trying to realize […], protecting themselves
from harm, reproducing, and, in more advanced cases, actualizing their potentialities
for growth and fulfillment” (Johnson 2007: 159).
Representation Through Action

15 From the point of view of the argument I am endorsing here, Mead’s crucial concept of
attitudes elaborated in light of Dewey’s abovementioned 1896 article enables us to
redefine the notion of representation on pragmatic grounds. As we have seen, attitudes
are outcomes of adaptive strategies of higher-order organisms. These attitudes take the
form of neural pathways12 enabling them to accurately respond to certain perceptual
stimuli in the course of their goal-directed action. Attitudes, therefore, are adaptive
neural elements that provide for effective coupling between an organism and its
environment. They enable the organism to trigger adequate habitual responses in the
presence of the stimuli that may lead them to fulfillment of their pragmatic goals. From
the pragmatic point of view, the radical situatedness of the organism in its
environment results in the need for creating certain strategies that enable the
organism to develop close and cost-effective ways of coupling with it.
16 Attitudes, manifesting themselves in the human action in the form of habits 13 are, I
maintain, examples of exactly this kind strategy. Such a notion of the nature of
attitudes (habits) has, in my view, extremely important ramifications for the classical
notion of representation. If, on the one hand, there is no ontological gap between an
organism and the environment and, on the other, attitudes and habits are formed as
the cognitive agent’s action-maps of the environment itself, then we no longer have to
think of representations in terms of creating models of the external reality. Rather, we
should understand them as models of interaction with it. Cognitive agents, thus, do not
have to create rich inner models of the world, instead they can “use the world as its
own model” (Brooks 1991: 1). Such a view of representation as creating models of
interaction resonates also with Charles S. Peirce’s words: “we have direct experience of
things in themselves. Nothing can be more completely false than that we can

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experience only our own ideas” (CP 6.95). According to the pragmatists, mind and
nature are ultimately the same thing, which means that in the process of cognition the
mind engages the environmental structures and reaches out into the world: “We can
approach the noumenal nature of reality only through the noumenal nature of thought
[…] the experience in which human beings are involved, is the constituent part of
reality which they judge” (Mead 1929/1964: 339). In a similar vein, Rockwell points out
that “there is no need to make a copy of the world inside the head in order for us to be
aware of our environment if our consciousness is partly embodied by the environment
itself” (Rockwell 2005: 86). If cognition functions within the brain-body-world nexus,
the problem of how our quasi-inner-representations match up with the world does not
even come up.
17 I propose, following the distinction introduced by Mark Rowlands, that the kind of
human action that executes attitudes and habits in our practical engagements with the
world could also be called – deeds (cf. Rowlands 2006: 95). According to Rowlands, deeds
occupy the logical space between what he calls actions (which are intentional courses
of action perceived and carried out on the personal level of consciousness) and doings
(non-intentional movements, of which we are not aware and which serve no purpose
connected with action).14 From the pragmatic point of view, deeds could be defined as
individual instances of habits. To use Rowlands’ example, deeds include such things as
the positioning of fingers in catching a ball that is flying toward us, or the movement of
our fingers while playing the piano. They work at sub-personal level of consciousness
and as models of interaction with the environmental structures they attune us to the
world. Deeds are pre intentional acts – we usually do not think about them in the
execution of our everyday tasks, and yet, as expressions of attitudes and habits they
effectively map appropriate worldly structures and enable us to achieve our pragmatic
goals. We employ them in accurate positioning of our legs when walking the stairs,
spontaneous motor operations when driving a car etc. With Michael Wheeler, we can
call deeds “action-oriented representations” (Wheeler 2005: 197). Deeds re-present the
existing world not as an internal image but as a virtual space of action. What is
represented by means of deeds is not knowledge that the environment is so and so, but
knowledge of how to negotiate the environment. In the action-oriented approach, says
Wheeler, “how the world is is itself encoded in terms of possibilities for action” (Wheeler
2005: 197, original italics). According to pragmatists, mind and nature are, ultimately,
the same thing, which means that in the process of cognition the mind engages the
environmental structures and reaches out into the world. To paraphrase James’
example, deeds represent the appropriate worldly structures in a similar way as the
shape of a key matches with a particular lock. Neither the lock, nor the key, can by
themselves open the door; they can do it only in conjunction with one another.
Following Dewey, representation is, thus, not primarily a noun. Rather, we should
understand it first and foremost as a verb. By means of deeds we off-load our cognitive
burden partly onto the permanent bodily and environmental structures on which we
can rely and achieve our practical goals (cf. Noë 2009: 97-104). 15
18 As Rowlands also shows, the concept of deeds is able to satisfy the analytic criteria
commonly regarded as sufficient for an item to qualify as representational. There are,
it is generally accepted, five such criteria (for a more detailed account cf. Rowlands
2006: 114):
1. Informational condition16 – an item r qualifies as a representational item only if it carries
information about some state of affairs s that is extrinsic to it.

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2. Teleological condition – an item r qualifies as representational only if it has the proper

function either of tracking the feature or state of affairs s that produces it, or of enabling an
organism to achieve some goal in virtue of tracking s.
3. Decouplability condition – item r qualifies as representing state of affairs s only if r is, in an
appropriate sense, decouplable from s.
4. Misrepresentation condition – item r qualifies as representing state of affairs s only if it is
capable of misrepresenting s.
5. Combinatorial condition – for an item r to qualify as representational, it must occur not in
isolation but only as part of a more general representational framework.
19 From the pragmatist perspective, if the concept of representation has any content at
all, it is precisely the above-mentioned one. If we should illustrate what such a
representation through action looks like in practice, let us imagine the following
scenario. I enter a dark room, and in order to be able to see I hit the switch of the lights.
If the lights go on, then we can determine whether the deed of hitting the switch
counts as representational of certain features of my environment on the basis of the
above-listed conditions. The deed of hitting the switch counts as representational
because, under the informational condition it, e.g. tracks the location, shape and size of
the switch. The deed is teleological because it has the proper function of achieving a
practical goal in virtue of tracking the environmental state of affairs s. The deed is also
decouplable from the state of affairs it tracks because I can later remember and
demonstrate how I hit the switch replicating the same act. Obviously, in the process of
representation through action, I can also misrepresent my environment in many ways.
Eventually, the deed in question can be combined into a more general representational
structure (by means of hitting the switch I try to pursue some further goals – finding a
book etc.). It could, therefore, be maintained that attitudes and habits, in the form of
deeds represent the appropriate environmental structures if we can achieve particular
goals by means of enacting the habits in our action; simply put – deeds represent if we
can get things done using them. Successful employment of deeds in the world means
that they are correct representations of the appropriate environmental structures
since they stand the test of practical action. This is not to say that they represent the
world in terms of accurate copying it, but rather in terms of accurate coping with it. 17
20 An obvious argument against such a view would be, whether we, in fact, need such a
notion of representation. Would it not be better, after all, to get rid of the notion of
representation altogether, since its definition given above strays much too far from
what we usually take representation to mean? In my opinion, it would not. Successfully
employed habits and attitudes tell us something important about the world – they
inform us that we can rely on it and, thus, make it available to us. They enable us to be
at home in the world by making it transparent, in other words – they re-present it. 18 It
should be noted, however, that such a process representation through action unfolds
on a non-propositional, non-intentional, and sub-personal level of consciousness and
should not be understood as a process of matching “inner pictures” in our heads
(mental content) with the world “out there.” Representation, in the pragmatist
rendition, is thoughtless. That is to say, it is a bodily process of enacting the world by
means of our habits (deeds) and, for most of the time, does not need to be mediated by
mental content.
21 Since our minds are a genuine part of nature, they do not have to copy the world in its
entirety. In fact, they are not even able to do so. As Noë convincingly shows, our

204
memory is rather weak in storing detailed information about the surrounding

environment (cf. e.g. Noë 2004; 2012). This fact, however, makes very good sense from
the evolutionary point of view. It would be energetically as well as computationally
extremely costly (and consequently disadvantageous) for any organism to create and
store inner representations of environmental structures. An organism with this kind of
cognitive strategy would be at a great disadvantage in comparison to an organism
which had merely developed effective strategies for detecting necessary environmental
information when needed. In this respect, Clark writes: “In general, evolved creatures
will neither store nor process information in costly ways when they can use the
structure of the environment and their operations upon it as a convenient stand-in for
the information-processing operations concerned. That is, know only as much as you
need to know to get the job done” (Clark 1997a: 46). If this heuristic picture, vividly
dubbed by Clark the “007 Principle,” is correct, i.e., if it is true that cognition has
evolved in order to work in such close conjunction with environmental structures
appropriate for reaching the cognitive agent’s goals, then cognition is realized not only
by internal neural mechanisms but also by the world itself. In this regard, Mead
remarks: “[c]onsciousness is functional, not substantive; and in either of the main
senses of the term it must be located in the objective world rather than in the brain”
(Mead 1934/1967: 112). By the same token, if organisms enact certain environmental
structures in the course of their problem-solving activities, these structures become in
a way their cognitive architecture. In other words, we can reasonably say that
organisms are not passive recipients of the environmental pressures but on the
contrary, they are active “managers” (or “engineers”) in constructing their cognitive
niches, which can be, following Clark, defined as an outcome of “the process by which
animals build physical structures that transform problem spaces in ways that aid (or
sometimes impede) thinking and reasoning about some target domain or domains”
(Clark 2008: 62).19 Cognitive niches, then, are used by organisms as environmental
structures for off-loading some of the practical and cognitive burdens of their actions
directly onto the world. However, as Rowlands points out, “division of epistemic
burden requires division of epistemic credit” (Rowlands 2003: 179). Representation, we
can therefore contend, does not take place exclusively in our heads, as classical
epistemologists would hold, but, at least in part, also in the world itself by being
enacted in our action.
Mind and Body Extended – Mead’s Theory of the Act

22 The concept of cognition and representation as processes taking place, at least partly,
in the world makes an important case for a pragmatic defense of realism. Too often
pragmatism has been accused of being a subjectivist philosophy which denies the
existence of objective facts independent of our mind. In light of what we have
considered so far, ho wever, it becomes clear that the pragmatist theory of knowledge
actually opposes such views. An illustrative example of this is Mead’s theory of the act.
In the remainder of this paper, I would, therefore, like to analyze how the above-
mentioned conceptual foundations are embodied in his pragmatic theory of cognition
and action.
23 In Mead’s metaphysics, an act is to be understood as a fundamental unit of human
experience (e.g. Mead 1938: 66). In fact, “wherever we find living forms, we find acts”

205
(Mead 1927/1982: 108). Acts are, either reflective or unreflective, ways of being in the
world of all living forms. In the life process, acts set up a space of the dialectics of
means and ends in which living forms maintain and replicate themselves. Mead was
convinced that the life processes in nature manifest what Clark calls adaptive coupling,
which “occurs when a system (typically a plant or animal) evolves a mechanism that
allows it to track the behavior of another system (a predator, or a source of food or
energy)” (Clark 1999: 347). As Cornelis de Waal remarks, we can trace the processes of
adaptive coupling from events as relatively simple as the sunflower turning towards
the sun, up to very complex human behavior such as browsing the Internet (cf. Waal
2002: 19). What these, indeed very diverse, processes have in common, though, is their
teleological nature – they are aimed (although mostly unreflectively) at achieving goals
in the life-process: “All acts, as such, are teleological. They move towards a result which
is a success or a failure” (Mead n.d./2011: 21).20 Goal-directed behavior (teleology of the
act) is, thus, according to Mead the basic characteristic of all living forms (e.g. Mead
1938: 640). Mead would, thus, undeniably agree with contemporary findings of the
philosopher of cognitive science, Radu J. Bogdan, who holds that goal-directedness
should be viewed not only as a successful life-strategy, but in fact as one of the very
conditions for survival and replication of all living forms (cf. Bogdan 1994: 19). 21
24 As indicated above, Mead’s theory of the act unfolds within the conceptual scheme
delineated by the stage of impulse on the one end, and that of consummation on the
other. Each act begins at the stage of an impulse which is defined by Mead as “a
congenital tendency to respond in a specific manner to a certain sort of stimulus, under
certain organic conditions” (Mead 1934/1967: 337). By contrast, an act finds its
completion in consummation which can be characterized as a successful finishing or
satisfaction of the particular course of action (cf. Mead 1938: 36). As indicated above,
the impulse already contains, in itself, its goal (end-in-view) that would, thus, under
ideal environmental conditions, lead the organism directly to the stage of
consummation. In the case of higher-order organisms, however, this situation almost
never takes place. This is why Mead introduces into his analysis of action two
mediatory phases of the act, namely – perception and manipulation. The very
occurrence of an impulse, Mead holds, indicates increasing lack of adjustment between
an organism and its environment that urges the organism to employ a series of
adaptive strategies (change of spatial position, movement, active searching for stimuli,
etc.) that help it successfully achieve its goals. The lack of adjustment between an
organism and its environment is therefore surmounted by means of mediatory phases
of the act. The teleological character of the impulse sensitizes the organism to certain
kinds of stimuli:
The process of sensing is itself an activity. In the case of vision this is most
evidently the case. Here the movement of the eyes, the focusing of the lens, and the
adjustment of the lines of vision of the two eyes require a complicated activity
which is further complicated by the movements of the eyes which will bring the
rays of light coming from all parts of the object upon the center of clearest vision.
(Mead 1938: 3-4)
25 In the phase of perception the organism, with reference to its goals, actively brings into
focus the appropriate characteristics of the environment. Arguing against Russell,
Mead holds that perception (with vision being its paradigmatic example) is nothing like
a camera which only passively receives “the data” from its environment (cf. Mead 1938:
133). There is nothing like the given, which is to say that the content of perceptual

206
experience is not only goal-relative but also deeply movement-dependent: “The sensing
of the object as so located that the organism takes a definite attitude toward it,
involving possible movement toward or away from the object, is thus a part of the
process of perception” (Mead 1938: 4). Nowadays, almost exactly the same point is
made by Noë when he says: “The basis of perception, on our enactive, sensori-motor
approach, is implicit practical knowledge of the ways movement gives rise to
stimulation” (Noë 2004: 8). In other words, in the process of perception the organism
has to perform certain practical strategies if it wants to bring the perceptual object into
an appropriate focus. The very phase of perception bears with it, therefore, an
important normative dimension. In the process of perception, the organism
understands (however unreflectively) what it is supposed to do, if it wants to reach a
distant object in a particular way.22 At that point, however, we can see that the
traditional line between perception and thinking could be put into question. It might
no longer be true that thinking is an entirely inner activity based on the computational
processes occurring inside our skulls. By contrast, in the pragmatic view, it is the
implicit practical understanding of changes in the perceptual field on the basis of
bodily movement that could possibly be regarded as the origin of thinking. It should
also be noted that in this enactive paradigm it is the world itself on which the animal
relies. The organism does not have to create some inner representations of the worldly
structures if it is sufficient for it just to create appropriate ways of interaction with
them in terms of bodily movements.23
26 At the stage of perception, Mead distinguished between what he called contact and
distant experience: “The human animal is sensitive with five channels for experience; but
all of these reduce to distance experience and contact experience” (Mead 1927/1982:
107). Contact experience is the immediate presence of the environment as it appears in
unmediated physical opposition. By contrast, distance experience is the kind of
experience we have of objects which are not within our reach. In opposition to the vast
majority of the epistemological tradition, for Mead contact experience is more basic:
“Reality reduces to possible future experiences” (Mead 1927/1982: 118). As de Waal
eloquently puts it: “True to his pragmatism, Mead maintained that the meaning of a
distance experience is the future contact experiences it represents” (Waal 2002: 21-22).
Again, we arrive here at the notion of affordance – according to Mead a distant object
in our experience is completely laid out in terms of possible actions we can carry out
toward it: “The object in perception is a distant object. It invites us to action with
reference to it, and that action leads to results which generally accomplish the act as a
biological undertaking” (Mead 1938: 12).24 In Mead’s view, the objects invite us to get
into tactile contact with them, to manipulate and transform them, which is why Miller
has called him a “haptic philosopher” (Miller in Mead 1982: 12). Alva Noë has recently
made a similar point when he states that all perception is touch-like (cf. Noë 2004: 1).
For Mead the ultimate test of experience lies in haptic contact, within which the
validity of distant perceptual experience is examined.25 Perception, involving
movement towards a distant object, and leading ultimately to the consummatory stage
of the act, applies, in Mead’s view, to all animals.
27 With humans, however, Mead distinguishes another functional stage of action, namely
the stage of manipulation. In the case human beings, the distance experience is
connected to the contact experience by means of eye-hand coordination. The phase of
manipulation, therefore, intervenes between perception of distant objects and

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successful completion of the act at the stage of consummation. For Mead, the role of
the hand in the development of human intelligence is of crucial importance.
Manipulation can be defined as human activity of transformation and exploitation of
the environmental structures in order to achieve particular goals of action. The human
animal, as Mead would call our species, does not proceed from the stage of perception
directly to consummation but due to the high development of the hand, with its
opposition of the thumb, is capable of delaying her response to environmental stimuli:
“the process of exercising intelligence is the process of delaying, organizing and
selecting a response or reaction to the stimuli of the given environmental situation”
(Mead 1934/1967: 100). The existence and physiological structure of the hand enables
human beings26 not to devour the desired object immediately but manipulate,
reorganize or transform it in order to achieve further goals. In the opinion of Cornelis
de Waal, the hand is, for Mead, in “many respects even more characteristic of human
intelligence than the brain” (Waal 2002: 26). Humans are tool-using beings that use
“implements that can extend the length or power of the hand” (Mead 1927/1982: 119).
Mead suggests that by means of tools we can enlarge our body-schema and use those
tools as an actual extension of our limbs. As Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia have noted, the
validity of this startling insight of Mead’s has been recently confirmed by research
conducted under the lead of Atsushi Iriki. What Iriki’s team has, famously, found
during their research of monkeys’ brains is that those individuals that had been trained
to use a rake when reaching for food exhibited enlarged cortical representations of the
hand and arm. More specifically, the brain cells that are sensitive to both the look and
the feel of the hand and arm treated the rake extension of the arm as if it were part of
the body, that is – as if it were the arm itself (cf. Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia 2008: 74-75).
That is to say, the rake outright entered the monkey’s body-schema and became
temporarily a part of its body27.27 From the philosophical point of view, these findings
suggest that the plasticity (especially) of human brains enables us, as Clark maintains:
To enter into deep and complex relationships with nonbiological constructs, props
and aids […] it is our special character, as human beings, to be forever driven to
create, co-opt, annex and exploit nonbiological props and scaffoldings We have
been designed by mother nature, to exploit deep neural plasticity in order to
become one with our best and most reliable tools. (Clark 2003: 5)
28 By means of tool-usage, human beings actively manage their body-schema.
Consequently, they also transform their peripersonal space, i. e. the space within our
reach.28 What was merely present (distance experience) suddenly becomes available.
“Where do we stop and where does the rest of the world begin?,” asks Noë (2009: 80). In
his opinion, there is no principled reason to think our bodies stop where we think they
do. Similarly, Dewey once wrote: “The epidermis is only in the most superficial way an
indication of where an organism ends and its environment begins” (LW 10: 64). The
Chicago pragmatists, as well as the defenders of the extended mind theory, contend
that technology increases our access to the world, which is to say that it increases the
extent of what is, or at least can be, available for us. Our worlds are, therefore, not
confined to what is memorized, perceived or “represented” inside our heads. We are
creatures that, due to our mastery of technology, extend our minds29 and bodies
outside our skinbags.

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Conclusion
29 In the pragmatic view, we can therefore conclude, cognition is a way of close coupling
between an organism and its environment. It is not something that happens exclusively
in our heads. The world itself is immediately given to us due to our practical strategies
of active engagement with the environmental structures. Thus, unlike classical
empiricists, pragmatists maintain that the world does not come to us for free, it only
shows up if we actively develop practical strategies of hooking up with it. In the version
of pragmatism Dewey and Mead advocated, these practical strategies are encoded in
our brains and bodies via attitudes and habits which attune us to particular worldly
structures. Habits (executed in the form of so called deeds), then, as I was trying to
argue, can be described as representations of these worldly structures if, by enacting
them in our actions, we can accomplish our practical tasks. Successful employment of
deeds in the world means that they are correct representations of the worldly
structures they refer to since they stand the test of practical action. From this
perspective it seems that pragmatism does not necessarily have to get rid of the notion
of representation altogether. What it ought to do, on the other hand, is to reformulate
it in terms of action. Representations, then, will cease to be defined in terms of pictures
magically matching the outer world but will be situated where cognition unfolds, that
is, in the world itself. If we adopt such a view, it is clear that, from the pragmatic
perspective, we represent the world not so much in our heads but, much rather,
through our bodies and embodied action in it.
30 The main contention of contemporary advocates of the extended mind theory saying
that cognition is something which unfolds in the world (at least as much as in our
heads) is not a new one. As I was trying to argue in this paper, Mead and Dewey held
this position a century ago. However, this is not to mean that pragmatists cannot learn
anything from the extended mind theory. Quite the contrary. Since pragmatism has
always been a philosophical school aiming at conceptual clarity and “empirical
responsibility” (Lakoff & Johnson 1999: xi), it is through the prism of the extended
mind theory that we – pragmatists – can learn how to read our own classics in new and
inspiring ways. Peirce once wrote: “modern philosophy has never been able quite to
shake off the Cartesian idea of the mind, as something that ’resides’ – such is the term –
in the pineal gland. Everybody laughs at this nowadays, and yet everybody continues to
think of mind in this same general way, as something within this person or that,
belonging to him and correlative to the real world. A whole course of lectures would be
required to expose this error” (CP 5.128). Today, we can see that Peirce was extremely
optimistic about how long it would take to finally overcome Cartesianism. Even after
decades of consistent opposition against it, the Cartesian picture of mind still holds
captive a good portion of the contemporary philosophy of mind (mostly through
various forms of internalism). That is why a firm alliance between pragmatism and the
extended mind theory should be urgently pursued.

209
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Herbert Mead, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
MEAD G. H., (1932), Philosophy of the Present, La Salle (IL), Open Court.
MEAD G. H., (1934/1967), Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist, Chicago,
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211
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(ed.), Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
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ROCKWELL W. T., (2005), Neither Brain Nor Ghost. A Non-dualist Alternative to the Mind-Brain Identity
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NOTES
1. Although we are able to offer no historical evidence, Mead’s profound interpreter and, at the
same time, one of his best students – David L. Miller holds that this article of Dewey’s must have
been an outcome of mutual intellectual interchange between Dewey and Mead at the start of

212
their careers first in Ann Arbor and later in Chicago in 1890s (cf. Miller 1973: 32). Whether this is
really the case is probably going to remain an open question. How- ever, as Joas shows, even
Mead’s crucial early paper The Definition of t he Psychical (1903) should be appreciated as a
considerable refinement of the ideas, presented in Dewey’s criticism of the reflex arc concept (cf.
Joas 1985: 69-89).
2. As James Campbell pointed out, Dewey’s publication of this essay in Psychological Review
should be viewed from the broader context of Dewey’s critical reception of the movement of so-
called the ‘New Psychology.’ Cf. also Campbell (1995: 31-38).
3. Cf. also Clark (1997a: 163; 1997b: 476).
4. “…biological concepts are not merely causal but functional as well. Functions presuppose
purposes and goals. Dewey portrays experience as fundamentally purposive in opposition to the
position that Dewey calls sensationalistic empiricism, which sees experience as discrete sense
data that are intrinsically irrelevant to the goals of the perceiver. For Dewey there is no such
thing as a raw feel; all experience is constituted by its relationship to the world and the goals of
the experiencer” (Rockwell 2005: 88).
5. According to Kilpinen, by reversing the heuristic focus from what he calls “mind-first-
explanation of action” (characteristic of both the phenomenological as well as the analytic
tradition) to explanation of how organic habits are established the philosophy of pragmatism
brought about the “Copernican revolution in conceptualization of action.” Cf. Kilpinen (2008).
6. At present, this position is defended by thinkers like Alva Noë or Evan Thompson under the
label of ‘enactivism,’ or ‘actionism’ (cf. Noë 2012), of which the pragmatist philosophers are
early predecessors. Cf. esp. Noë (2004, 2009, 2012), Varela, et al. (1991).
7. Mead regarded Watsonian behaviorism as an incorrect theory that can be refuted on
empirical grounds. Cf. Joas (1985: 113).
8. Mark Johnson, referring to the work of an Italian neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese arrives at a
very similar notion when he writes that a concept of an object is: “a model of structures of
recurring organism-environment coupling, and it is a model for possible perceptions and actions
that one might experience” (Johnson 2007: 159).
9. Mirror neurons are neurons that fire both when an animal acts and when the animal observes
the same action performed by another. Thus, the neurons mirror the behavior of the other, as
though the observer were itself acting. Such neurons have been directly observed in primate and
other species including birds. In humans, brain activity consistent with that of mirror neurons
has been found in the premotor cortex, the supplementary motor area, the primary
somatosensory cortex and the inferior parietal cortex (cf. Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia 2008; Iacoboni
2008).
10. The discovery of mirror neurons also has p rofound implications for contemporary
assessment of Mead’s views on social cognition as the recent research seems to suggest that there
is an imitation taking place at a fundamental level of social conduct (e.g. Iacoboni 2008). If this is
really the case, some authors conclude that Mead’s views on the nature of imitation and origins
of selfhood (as included for instance in Mead (1934/1967: 51-61)) are essentially mistaken (cf.
Turner 2007, for a reaction to his views, for instance, Lizardo 2007). While I do think that the
discovery of mirror neurons implies a need to redefine the pragmatic treatment of imitation, I
disagree with Turner in his view that just because there are some imitative processes involved in
human social cognition, we should altogether discard the idea that the self is the product of
social in teraction. The imitation taking place d ue t o mirror neurons is t aking place at sub-
personal, pre-reflective level of consciousness and thus cannot, by itself, undermine the
classical notion of the self as a product of reflective social interaction with which Mead was con-
cerned the most. In the present article, however, I will have to leave these questions aside as my
primary go al here (which is the analysis of the pragmatic views on the nature of cognitive

213
processes as such) and the space limita tions do not allow me to deal with these questions in the
depth they undoubtedly deserve. For a detailed treatment of this topic see Madzia (forthcoming).
11. In this regard, Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia talk about the subset of mirror neurons which they
have called “canonical neurons” (cf. Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia 2008: 79-80). Canonical neurons
reflect affordances, they fire when an animal perceives an object that affords certain kind of
action.
12. Johnson describes them in terms of activation patterns and synaptic weights (cf. Johnson
2007: 157-160).
13. 13 In this article, I propose to interpret habits as embodied manifestations or performances
of attitudes. Although Mead himself does not make such a distinction, it certainly does not
contradict his theory. Cf. Mead (1934/1967: 8–13, 125–134), Quéré (2011: 153–154).
14. Cf. Rowlands (2006: 93-111).
15. With a little bit of exaggeration we can say that without habits we would not be able to make
it through the day. If we would be forced, on a daily basis, to figure out the most basic traits of
our everyday lives over and over again, our intellectual capacities would soon surely break down.
16. A pragmatic account of representation through action might probably do just fine without
the informational condition altogether. The reason for this is primarily because it is not very
clear what the term “information” means in this particular context. As Hutto and Myin argue, a
truly naturalistic pi cture of cognition should abandon the i dea that cognition is primarily
contentful and intentional. In this respect, cognition should not be t aken primarily as “
informational content processing” but rather as a process of adjustment of a living organism to
its environment. In that respect, Hutto and Myin propose that the notion of information could
(and should) be replaced by covariance (cf. esp. Hutto & Myin 2013: 63-71). Indeed, Hutto and
Myin’s concept of covariance is, from the pragmatist perspective, much better suited for the talk
of cognition than “information.”
17. It also makes a very good sense to say that if we want to effectively cope with the world, our
actions should be led by rules of some specific kind. Within the realm of the extended mind
theory, however, the normative dimension of embodied action is still quite an underdeveloped
project. A promising outline of how the extended mind theory might proceed along these lines
was proposed, for instance, by Menary (2007).
18. Representations defined in terms of deeds are, in this sense, also universal. Deeds embody
habits, and one habit can be used to respond to multiple particular environmental situations
(say, the skill to hit the switch of the light – by the same habit we can switch lights on in many
places). Miller calls them “open” because, he says, “we do not know in advance the detailed
character of particulars to which they may apply” (Miller 1973: 99). Since deeds are instances of
habits, they, in a sense, transcend environmental particulars to which they respond, they are
action-universals.
19. In Mead, we can find reference to something that might be called cognitive niche as well: “A
social organism – that is, a social group of individual organisms – constitutes or creates its own
special environment of objects just as, and in the same sense as, an individual organism
constitutes or creates its own special environment of objects (which, however, is much more
rudimentary than the environment constructed by a social organism)” (Mead 1934/1967: 130).
20. For a similar point, cf. Mead (1910/1964: 105-06).
21. According to Bogdan, the teleological adaptation could be almost identified with life itself
(Bogdan 1994: 28-38).
22. This characteristic of animal perception is clearly visible for instance during their hunting
for prey.
23. In Mead, we can see exactly this point in his explanation of the paradox of duality of
perceptual content. Cf. Mead (1938: 240-51).

214
24. In the same manner Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia call perceptual objects “action proposals.” Cf.
Rizzolatti &Sinigaglia (2008: 35).
25. In this respect, Mead interestingly comes close to ancient Stoics who, in their discussion with
the skepticism of the middle Academia (Arcesilaus), introduced the notion of the gr aspable
presentation (katalēptikē phantasia). Cf. Hankinson (2003: 271-73).
26. Mead was aware of the fact that similar situation applies for instance to apes as well. Cf.
Mead (1938: 136-37).
27. Cf. also Noë (2009: 79-80).
28. As opposed to the so called ‘extrapersonal space,’ that is, the space out of our immediate
reach.
29. Would it not, however, suffice to say that our use of those tools is merely instrumental and
that all the “real” cognitive processing takes place solely inside our heads? This criticism is
undeniably a legitimate one and the discussion over it is still in progress – so far, with no clear
winners. However, as Clark (1997a, 2003, 2008) illustrates through a vast number of practical
examples, the evidence that practical action on certain environmental structures and tools in
some cases really constitutes cognitive processing is overwhelming. The cognitive architecture
that humans are inclined to construct seems not only to complement and enhance our ‘inner’
cognitive processing but also, if it were to be removed, then some of our cognitive competences
would be either diminished to the minimum or would even never develop (Krueger 2011: 646).
For the criticism of the views presented by Clark, cf. Adams & Aizawa (2001, 2007/2010), Rupert
(2009).
ABSTRACTS
The goal of this paper is twofold. First, it examines the pragmatic ramifications of recent
research in certain areas of cognitive science (embodied mind theory, extended mind theory).
Second, it shows how the Chicago pragmatists (George H. Mead, John Dewey) not only envisioned
these findings but also how, within certain strains of cognitive science, their work is explicitly
appreciated for important preliminary insights which help us interpret the outcomes of current
research. The argumentative line of the paper revolves around Mead’s and Dewey’s treatment of
the relation between perception and action. Cognition, in the view of the Chicago pragmatists, is
not divisible into atomistic, ontologically disconnected units but rather should be seen as an
organic circuit within which stimuli and responses are mutually interdependent phases of an
ongoing goal-directed active involvement of the organism in the environmental structures.
According to Mead and Dewey, as well as the presently burgeoning branch of cognitive science
called the “extended mind theory,” cognition is not something that takes place exclusively in our
heads but should be rather seen as an objective relation between organism and the environment.
On the background of Mead’s theory of the act (with its four stages – impulse, perception,
manipulation, and consummation) the author points to certain surprising similarities between
the pragmatists’ treatment of the notion of cognition and ideas recently suggested by defenders
of the extended mind theory.

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AUTHOR
ROMAN MADZIA
Masaryk University, Department of Philosophy
roman.madzia[at]mail.muni.cz

216
Neuropragmatism: A
Neurophilosophical Manifesto
Tibor Solymosi and John Shook
The question of the integration of mind-body in

action is the most practical of all questions we
can ask of our civilization. It is not just a
speculative question; it is a demand: a demand
that the labor of multitudes now too
predominantly physical in character be inspirited
by purpose and emotion and informed by
knowledge and understanding. It is a demand
that what now pass for highly intellectual and
spiritual functions shall be integrated with the
ultimate conditions and means of all
achievement, namely the physical, and thereby
accomplish something beyond themselves. Until
this integration is effected in the only place
where it can be carried out, in action itself, we
shall continue to live in a society in which a
soulless and heartless materialism is
compensated for by soulful but futile and
unnatural idealism and spiritualism.
John Dewey (1927/LW3: 29-30)
1 Neurophilosophical pragmatism, or neuropragmatism, is a scientifically informed
treatment of cognition, knowledge, the body-mind relation, agency, socialization, and
further issues about these basic matters. Neuropragmatism is capable of grappling with
philosophical questions arising at many levels, from synapse to society. There is much
at stake, as the opening Dewey quotation claims. With its firm grounding in science,
neuropragmatism may be the best equipped philosophy for dealing productively with
the challenges facing our culture, as developments in neuroscience and

217
neurotechnology bring about both better means for dealing with problems, old and
new, and ways of creating new problems, today and tomorrow.
2 The amazing progress of the behavioral and brain sciences have confirmed many of
pragmatism’s core claims, culminating in a resurgence of neopragmatism and then its
fresh flowering in neuropragmatism. The recovery of the concept of dynamic embodied
and embedded cognition and the renewed appreciation for the brain’s systems as
evolved functions have together carried many researchers towards the tenets of
neuropragmatism. Scholars bold enough to draw conclusions about the nature of mind,
the dynamic nature of human knowledge, and the practical criteria for judging
epistemic success unite the cognitive strands of neuropragmatism. Searching for such a
comprehensive reunion of science and philosophy should not be disdained. In the
words of the editors of a recent book on embodied cognitive science,
We need to put together conceptual analyses of the notions of representation,
computation, emergence, embodiment, and the like, with empirical work that
allows us to bring together ecological, dynamic, interactive, situated, and embodied
approaches to the scientific study of cognition. (Calvo and Gomila 2008: 15)
3 Neuropragmatism offers a philosophical intersection for coordinating this pluralistic
effort. The prefix ‘neuro’ does not portend a reductionistic agenda is intended by the
term neuropragmatism. Quite the opposite: the anti-reductionistic, pluralistic, and
interdisciplinary tradition of pragmatism remains securely at the heart of
neuropragmatism. All the same, a philosophical position on cognition and mind must
cohere with the best neuroscience available.
4 We begin with a brief history of pragmatism and the sciences of life and mind. From
this history, we update pragmatism in this neurophilosophical form by introducing
twelve theses of neuropragmatism. These theses emphasize the connections between
pragmatism and the sciences of life and mind, and propose research programs for
engaging scientific researchers as well as for navigating the consequences of research
for the larger public.
Classical Pragmatism and Neuropragmatism

5 Pragmatism has from its origins formulated philosophical theories about culture,
intelligence, and knowledge in ways that respect biology, anthropology, and cognitive
science. Classical pragmatism was the original American cognitive science and
neurophilosophy. Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead
were all experimental psychologists who tried to reform philosophy in light of
evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, and brain science. Indeed, most of the
early American psychologists and sociologists had strong pragmatist leanings.
Pragmatism is vitally interested in entirely naturalistic accounts of intelligence and
agency, so that all other fields of philosophy from epistemology to ethics can be
reformed in turn. By integrating science and philosophy together, pragmatism
prevents both scientism and speculation from inflating debilitating dualisms.
6 Pragmatism has always viewed itself as essential to a complete and consistent
naturalistic worldview. Any naturalism has to explain how rationality, intelligence, and
science are possible within the natural world. Pragmatism has serious opponents not
interested in advancing naturalism. At the turn of the 20th century, major
philosophical options were few: common sense empiricisms; neo-Kantian rationalisms;

218
phenomenologies; and neo-Hegelian idealisms. Common sense empiricism sought pure

sensory impressions or sense data: ideas that carry information about nature untainted
by any thought, so that cognition simply combines and rearranges that original
information into knowledge systems. Neoantian rationalisms, noticing empiricism’s
deep problems, postulated non-empirical rational principles to account for scientific
knowledge. However, such rationalism fed into anti-naturalism and dualism, as did the
phenomenologies that prioritized qualitative experience over nature or biology.
Reconciling empiricism and rationalism by adding historicism, neo-Hegelian cultural
psychologies stumbled onto the way that knowledge gradually grows from the
interfusion of evidence and reasoning in social contexts. John Dewey and George
Herbert Mead further naturalized this cultural historicism by incorporating Darwinian
evolution and experimental psychology (Cook 1993, Popp 2007). They proposed a
pragmatic naturalism in opposition to naïve empiricism, static representationalism,
reductive materialism, methodological individualism, and animal behaviorism. To
accomplish this pragmatic naturalism, pragmatists explored metaphysical issues such
as radical empiricism and direct perception, teleological accounts of living systems,
non-reductive emergent naturalisms, and perspectival and process ontologies. Not
surprisingly, neurophilosophers and especially neuropragmatists have been gradually
rengaging these wider issues.
7 Pragmatism went into eclipse in philosophy departments by the 1930s due to analytic
and linguistic philosophy along with imports from European positivism. Yet pragmatic
ideas continued to flourish in the social sciences from psychology and linguistics to
sociology and anthropology. The neopragmatism of the 1970s and 80s, especially in the
hands of Richard Rorty, was well known for its linguistic and epistemic
conventionalism, but not for its congruence with the latest brain science. Hilary
Putnam’s meaning externalism and pragmatic realism (Putnam 1999) also helped to
make actual human cognition relevant to philosophical debates. Some philosophers
inspired by W. V. Quine’s kind of naturalism (which sustained the Deweyan point that
cognitions and knowings must be natural events amenable to scientific study)
demanded continuities between science and philosophy and pulled analytic philosophy
back from pure rationalism (e.g. Dennett 1991). As the new cognitive and brain sciences
emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, they had benefited from the seeds of pragmatism and
began to sow their own; and when analytic philosophy began to take the brain seriously
once again, it encountered these pragmatic ideas. Rationalist analytic philosophers,
strong AI proponents, and excessively cognitivist researchers rebelled against such
pragmatism. For example, Jerry Fodor has called pragmatism “the defining catastrophe
of analytic philosophy of language and philosophy of mind” (2003: 73-4). However,
some analytic philosophers have been returning to parts of pragmatism in various
ways, driven by respect for science and its discoveries.
8 Recognition that pragmatism was receiving much re-confirmation in the brain sciences
was noticed in the 1990s by scholars such as Mark Johnson (1987, 1993, 2007) and the
late Francisco Varela (1991). Neuroscientists like Jay Schulkin have also recognized
pragmatist themes (Schulkin 2000, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2011, and 2012). A younger
generation fluent in both classical pragmatism and the latest neuroscience was in the
best position to take stock of matters, such as Anthony Chemero, W. Teed Rockwell, and
Tibor Solymosi. Solymosi recently coined the term “neuropragmatism” (2011a). From
its grounding in the current behavioral and brain sciences, neuropragmatism confirms
many core views of traditional pragmatism. Neuropragmatism continues to reform

219
philosophical views about such things as the mind-body relation, the function of
intelligence, the nature of knowledge and truth, the nature of voluntary agency and
responsibility, the function of social morality, and the ethical ways for dealing with
new technologies. Along the way, it distinguishes itself from other neuroscientifically-
based philosophical outlooks.
Twelve Theses of Neuropragmatism

9 This section offers twelve theses of an ambitious neuropragmatism that deals with core
philosophical issues. The first three are grounded in biology and anthropology. Many
theoretical views across cognitive science and neuroscience regard them as
foundational.
1) Animals are goal-oriented organisms, and their nervous systems function to sustain
life in arious practical ways.
2) Cognition in all its manifestions (viz., intelligence, mind, or consciousness) is
embodied and not explicable apart from that bodily context.
3) Human cognition in all its modes should primarily be studied and comprehended in
terms of its practical service for the ways that humans live.
10 Neuropragmatism emphasizes four additional theses, supported by behavioral and
brain sciences, which enlarge the significance of the first three.
4) Cognitive systems are dynamically adaptive to organism-environment interactions,
to deal with shifting conditions of situations as practical goals are pursued.
5) Under pressures from dealing with the environment, the brain modifies its neural
connections to improve practical performance. The measure of this neural learning is
improved habitual efficiency at specific routine tasks.
6) Complex cognitive processes are the work of the central and peripheral nervous
systems’ effectively coordinating behavior – between bodily systems (e.g., the
endocrine and exocrine systems) and towards unified action of the organism – for
reliably achieving variable goals in a changing environment.
7) Human intelligence has so many cultural features for facilitating cooperative aims
that it should primarily be studied and evaluated largely in terms of its service for
socio-cultural goals.
11 Five more theses of neuropragmatism remain to be mentioned, but we pause here for
some elaboration of the first seven theses.
12 Neuropragmatism is tightly allied with theories of neuroplasticity, the vast
unconscious, reason-emotion-volition integration, embodied cognition, and the
extended mind. All these theories have prototypes in the works of classical pragmatists.
Combating any philosophy of mind that depicts mind as fundamentally passive,
receptive, representational, cognitivist, or mechanistic, the classical pragmatists
sought to understand the mind in its biological medium. All of the nervous systems in
all of their functionings for living must be taken into account. William James lent
scientific respectability to the notion that the fringes and margins of consciousness
extend deep down into entirely unconscious emotional and intuitive cognition. The
pragmatists affirmed that cognition is basically about applying learned habits to
ongoing situations demanding immediate active responses from the organism. Since
the environment is never the same, cognition therefore depends on continuous

220
learning, which is the dynamic development of specific habits through the nervous
systems’ modifications, as the brain’s neurons grow or modify their interconnections as
the organism perceptually manages its situated experiences of interacting with its
world (see James’s statement of the brain’s plasticity in James 1890, chap 4). Also
recognizing how centers of the brain are typically involved in many kinds of
coordinated tasks, the classical pragmatists resisted the notion that each part of the
brain deals only with narrow tasks or specific sorts of representations. As integrated
phases within the continuity of brain processes, the traditional schema of perception,
reasoning, emotion, and will cannot be mechanically separate and only temporally
related in a series leading to action. Sensation, thought, feeling, and volition are
interfused; they are discriminable but not separable aspects of the continuous flow of
neural activity (Gazzaniga 1992, Damasio 1994, 1999).
13 Neuropragmatism continues pragmatism’s emphasis on the way that human cognition
is not just geared with the world but tightly interwoven into the organism’s
interactions with the environment, forming an organic whole. This fusion makes it
impossible to draw a definitive line between the world beyond the skin of an organism
and where cognition begins. Although the brain is obviously the locus of cognition, it
does not necessarily follow that only brain events suffice to account for all the
functions and features of cognition. William James’s notion of radical empiricism
depends on treating mind and world holistically, and John Dewey’s empirical
naturalism finds mind embodied and embedded in organismenvironment transactions.
In a chapter of Dewey’s 1925 Experience and Nature, entitled “Nature, Life and Body-
Mind,” he writes,
Every “mind” that we are empirically acquainted with is found in connection with
some organized body. Every such body exists in a natural medium to which it
sustains some adaptive connection... The natural medium is thus one which
contains similar and conjunctive forms. At every point and stage, accordingly, a
living organism and its life processes involve a world or nature temporally and
spatially “external” to itself but “internal” to its functions. (Dewey 1925/LW1: 212)
14 The organism’s effective coordination of modifying its environment (natural and
social) exemplifies cognition. Pragmatism has always refused to treat neurons (and any
other brain cells such as glia which may modulate brain activity) as the exclusive place
where cognitive meaning is enacted – neurons are essential to, but not entirely
constitutive of, cognition. Neuroscience properly studies the interrelated processes of
brain activity, but cognitive neuroscience cannot help explain the processes of learning
and knowing by referencing brain activity alone in isolation from any context.
Philosophy, for its part, will be unable to show how to integrate body and mind if
knowledge is examined quite apart from any bodily context. Pragmatism’s resistance to
atomistic and reductivist naturalisms is nowhere more evident than in its treatment of
experience and mind as dynamic, systemic, contextual, ecological, and social.
15 Biology cannot study life with utter disregard for the environment; nervous systems
qua biological systems must not be studied any differently. The same goes doubly for
the functions in which such systems take part, such as cognition. Cognition, therefore,
is not to be solely done within the head in the end but is rather understood in terms of
life and living within environments. Grounding mind in biology takes life seriously.
What are the existential truths of life? As Michael Schwartz and Osborne Wiggins
describe life, there cannot be any firm or fixed divisions between organic bodies and

221
their environment. Schwartz and Wiggins offer the following existential truths about
life:
1. Being vs. non-being: Always threatened by non-being, the organism must constantly re-
assert its being through its own activity.
2. World-relatedness vs. self-enclosure: Living beings are both enclosed with themselves,
defined by the boundaries that separate them from their environment, while they are also
ceaselessly reaching out to their environment and engaging in transactions with it.
3. Dependence vs. independence: Living beings are both dependent on the material
components that constitute them at any given moment and independent of any particular
groupings of these components over time (Schwartz and Wiggins 2010).
16 What is true of life is also true of mind: mind cannot be comprehended except through
what it does, and what mind does is transcend itself by ceaselessly modifying its lived
environment. By studying those modes of modification the mind is studied, and
nowhere else. At no time does an organism’s activities or cognition deal with some
‘external world’ that can be specified independently from the organism. An organism
can neither perceive nor interact with ‘the world at large,’ but only confront its own
‘life-world’ that it can experience and modify. There is no point to first specifying what
the external world is like and then asking how an organism cognizes that world.
Neuropragmatism, like classical pragmatism before it, studies cognition as it actually
transforms the lived environment. The organism’s environment is not the same as the
external world. Jacob von Uexküll used the term Umwelt for the ‘life-world’ that a
species tries to grapple with. Dewey’s conception of ‘experience’ as doing-undergoing,
Heidegger’s use of Erlebnis, and Richard Lewontin’s environmental constructivism
similarly point to this conception of the available life-world with-in which cognition
does its work (see von Uexküll 1926, Lewontin 1985, Godfrey-Smith 1998, Thompson
2007, Berthoz and Christen 2009).
17 In a basic sense, the sciences all realize how cognition is localizable to organic bodies
dealing with their environments, and that cognition cannot be spiritually or
Platonically independent from organic matter. Pragmatism, and neuropragmatism,
tend to agree with recent theories about ‘embodied cognition’ that offer more specific
implications of this organic embodiment for humanity. As Margaret Wilson expresses
embodied cognition’s claims (Wilson 2002), cognition is situated by taking place in the
context of a real-world environment, and inherently involves perception and action.
Wilson recounts the ways that cognition is for action. The function of the mind is to
guide action, and things, such as perception and memory, must be understood in terms
of their contribution to situationappropriate behavior. Cognition must be understood
in terms of how it functions under the pressure of real-time interaction with the
environment.
18 The invention of symbolic representation and written language takes advantage of the
way that cognition specializes in dealing with transactions with deliberately modified
aspects of the environment. Human cognition can off-load cognitive work onto the
symbolic environment so that it holds or even manipulates information for us. We
harvest that information on a need-to-know basis. That makes the environment part of
the cognitive system. The information flow between brain, body, and world is so dense
and continuous that, for scientists studying the nature of cognitive activity, the often
used term ‘mind/brain’ is not a sufficiently meaningful unit of analysis. The production
of cognitive activity does not come from any such “mind/brain” alone but rather is a

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dynamic nexus of brain, body and the environmental situation. These interactions
become part of our cognitive systems. Our thinking, decision making, and future are all
impacted by our environmental transactions.
19 These core views of neuropragmatism and (non-representational) embodied cognitive
science can be extended to form judgments on classical philosophical problems about
the mind-body relation, the natural basis for the highest cognitive functions, and the
cultural origin of creative reasoning. For human cognition, managing the lived
environment is not just biological but social as well. We must regularly manage each
other and our institutions. Distinctively human cognition is from birth (and perhaps
before birth) a matter of brains cognizing together in concert. For humans, experience
is culture – cognizing the environment is thoroughly shaped by the transmitted modes
of cultural activities engaging human nervous system.
20 Additional theses of neuropragmatism, together distinguishing it from most other
neurophilosophies, suggest ways to handle these issues.
8) Cartesian materialism still pervades too much psychology and philosophy of mind by
demanding strict localization of rationality, prioritization of self-consciousness’s
powers, and the quest for perfect representational knowledge of a fixed external world.
The brain exhibits much dedicated modular architecture, but massive parallel and
networked processing is dominant. The brain is not hierarchical, but more democratic.
Nerve centers across the brains are intricately interconnected with each other, so most
any part of the brain has some direct or indirect systemic link to every other part of the
brain. There is no inner Cartesian theater where all information is gathered and
simultaneously experienced; experience at best displays rough continuities. There is no
executive command center giving orders to the rest of the brain; deliberation at best
guides habitual motor action. Ordinary cognition does not primarily aim at static
representation in general but at dynamic adequacy in specific situations.
9) The most sophisticated modes of human cognition are developments and
assemblages of lower-level cognitive processes. These complex modes of thought,
seemingly far from mere matter or biology, remain embodied and functional for
practical success. Higher selfconscious cognitive processes (reflection, inference,
hypothesis testing) are socially invented and taught capacities to attentively focus on
ways to generalize practical habits for flexible use. These higher social capacities serve
to coordinate group cooperative practices where some creativity is needed to maintain
efficiency in the face of unstable conditions. Among these social practices are linguistic
communication, symbolic representation, and logical inference. As our notion of the
“self” is bound up with these capacities, the self must be another socially constructed
artifact of culture.
10) Imagination and memory1 add a contemplative ‘space’ where techniques can be
experimentally attempted on related problems. Even pure imagination, conceptual
play, and aesthetic contemplation are creative capacities existing to refine practice,
even though we can also perform them in isolation from practical concerns. These
creative modes permitted, among other things, the fixation of concepts and select
relations among concepts, leading to reasoning. The most complex modes of rational
thinking (i.e., logic, scientific method) are refined developments from integrating
component cognitive processes. Such things as logic, science, and all sophisticated
modes of creative intelligence are culturally-designed and educationally-transmitted
technologies.

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11) Knowledge is the result of experimental problem solving. The epistemic criteria for
knowledge is the technological test of practicality. Scientific knowledge is continuous
with technology and ordinary practical skill. Much of human experience, most of
morality, and all of knowledge are emergent features of social epistemic practices. All a
priori, conceptual, and linguistic truths are internal to a social epistemic practice, and
cannot be directly or simply used to criticize some other practice. Because no a priori
conceptual rigidity can dictate terms of empirical adequacy, only the practical
adequacy of a knowledge system is relevant to its validity. For example, no folk belief
system rules over any scientific field, and scientific fields should respect pluralism and
seek coherence, not unity. By avoiding epistemic dualism and reductivist monism, both
epistemology and ethics can be naturalized, by showing how they fit in the natural
world of encultured humans.
12) What seem to be ‘a priori’ and necessary truths are only habits of cognition so
habitually ingrained that our brains either use them unconsciously or our thinking
predominantly relies on them without question. Evolution produced the infant human
brain capable of speedily acquiring crucial functional habits because all humans need
them, and additional functional habits are acquired when culture indoctrinates them
into children. Habits are not unyielding reflexes; advanced learning is capable of
questioning and amending any a priori truth through empirical inquiry and science.
Because the a priori does not float freely from actual brain development, learning, and
language, there is no logic-practice gap. Reason can be naturalized, because its
processes and results can be shown to fit in the natural world of embodied and
encultured humans.
21 These twelve theses of neuropragmatism permit it to offer an ambitious
neurophilosophy. Having stated these core theses of neuropragmatism, we may step
back and survey wider intersections of neuroscience and philosophy. To establish itself
as a fully legitimate neurophilosophy with a claim to some leadership role,
neuropragmatism’s mode of dealing with the mind must be scrutinized.
Neuropragmatism and the Mind

22 Leaving behind reductionism and eliminativism, pragmatism has always sought ways to
show how to avoid dualism and representationalism. The Cartesian claim that mind
and body have entirely different properties is demonstrably false. Lingering claims that
consciousness has unnatural properties similarly rest on philosophical confusions and
ignorance of brain science. Mental activity, conscious and unconscious, is a natural
process involving the nervous system – as such it is entirely open to scientific inquiry.
23 Neurophilosophy and neuropragmatism can show how to coordinate the functionalities
of thought with the functionalities of nervous systems. Examples include: thinking and
nerve activity both have temporal durations; they are both found in localized living
centers rather than diffused through all of nature; they both consist of relational
continuities rather than atomic accumulations; they are both dynamic rather than
static; they both display growth and decay; they both function in attending to practical
dealings with the environment; they both primarily aim at maintaining the organism’s
well-being. Even the most ‘subjective’ parts of consciousness, such as the feelings and
qualia noticeable in self-consciousness, are aspects of the dynamically functional flow
of thought. No pragmatism would seek to ‘reduce’ felt qualia to nervous activity or

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anything else to prove that they are natural. The old metaphysical formula demanding
identity of all properties for genuine identity was rejected early on by pragmatism and
is no longer taken seriously beyond arm-chair philosophy. For science, functional
identity is quite sufficient: where two phenomena are strongly correlated and display
the same functionalities, the two phenomena are rightly regarded as the same natural
process observed from different perspectives. Qualitative feelings happen where
nervous systems achieve certain degrees of complexity in their transaction with their
respective bodies. Subjectivity need not be treated as anything spookily “unnatural.”
The mysteriousness of subjectivity quite vanishes. Subjectivity and perspective are
precisely what would be naturally expected when specific brains generate specific
experiences. You have a very different perspective from anyone else, because you are
directly experiencing through your unique nexus of your brain, body, and world, and
not from mine or any other’s nexus.
24 The lived experience of cognition reflects its neurological basis. Unscientific
philosophies point to features of experience or thought allegedly lacking dynamic
functionality or integration with action. Worse, anti-naturalistic philosophies further
claim that scientific naturalism can never integrate them with energetic matter.
However, neurological investigations (much less any sound phenomenology, such as
that of pragmatists) have not been able to confirm such static and aloof features of
consciousness. Interestingly, such supposedly ‘pure’ or ‘inert’ parts of experience
(sense data, intense qualia, and the like) are actually detectable by those seeking them
only after the most intense cognitive effort to distill them from the ordinary flow of
active experience. There simply is no avoiding dynamic and creative cognition.
Consciousness is intensely qualitative, to be sure, precisely because the brain puts so
much work into that phase of experience. Theories of mind comfortable with taking
purity, passivity, receptivity, or representation as basic modes of cognition must be
rejected as incompatible with neuroscience. All the same, neuroscience is at liberty to
develop specialized theories about micro and macro brain systems, borrowing and
modifying terms as it may require. No folk psychology or linguistic conventionalism
can dictate terms of scientific inquiry into the nexus of brain, body, and world. The
dream of the unity of science having dissipated, teleological and intentional terms can
be legitimate features of successful empirical studies at every level from the social to
the synaptic (although mechanistic causality seems to dominate at molecular levels).
Indeed, the choice between teleological and mechanistic modes of explanation may not
be forced. Some naturalisms, like Dewey’s, propose that mechanism is visible in
teleological systems when analyzed closely enough, but it only means that teleology
requires mechanistic parts even while no mechanistic explanation could ever suffice
for the whole. After all, wholes typically have genuine powers and properties that no
aggregate of parts could have. This is not duplication of causal powers, as reductionists
fret, but only the recognition of compatible kinds of causal powers at different scales
and systems of nature. The pluralistic stance of pragmatism and neuropragmatism is
hospitable to continuities of terminology and causality at multiple levels of brain
science.
25 Higher human cognition can occasionally achieve sustained reflective passivity, open
receptivity to experience, and sophisticated representations of the so-called external
world. Neuropragmatism cannot deny that humans can do these things. Yet it must
undertake explanations for their existence without permitting them to assume any
fundamental role in ordinary cognition. Neuropragmatism tends to favor the idea that

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sophisticated symbolic capacities of human intelligence are the scaffolding on which

the extended mind of linguistic sociality operates. Basic cognition is not symbolic or
representational; but human societies design their environments in ways that offload
cognitive work onto the manipulation of external symbols. Rationalism in general
makes it difficult to account for cognition and knowledge in any natural terms.
Cartesianism was the height of presumptive rationalism by taking our most
sophisticated forms of communication (replete with analytic meanings and necessary
truths) as essential to all consciousness and cognition. Later representationalisms
sustained this obsession with static symbols, rendering it difficult to naturalistically
explain even how children acquire linguistic competence.
26 Neither static nor computational representation characterizes ordinary cognition.
Reliance on representation leads to a postulation of foundational perceptions.
However, experience is not ‘built up’ from purer building blocks of direct information
from nature. Connectionism comes closer to dynamical and distributed cognition but
may still contain aspects or elements of representationalism. Neuropragmatism, like
other neurophilosophies, takes close notice of the way that the brain rapidly merges
diverse streams of stimuli from all sources in order to guide effective action in the lived
moment. All cognitive processes (and hence all conscious experiences too) are fusings
of information about external sensations, motor control processes, and internal
feedback from the body. There is no pure sensation, no pure will, and no pure feeling.
There are no dichotomies between sensation, emotion, and reason – these aspects of
cognition work together as they guide behavior. Even in the simplest case of behavior,
these fusions are evident. Simplistic associationism is inadequate because organic
circuits create new wholes that are not merely sums or sequences of their parts. In a
genuine organic circuit of perception, action, and consequence (e.g., the child’s
reaching for a flame, only to learn that fire painfully burns), the meaning of the
perception includes the prior action done to gain that perception (e.g., the turning of
the gaze towards an object); the meaning of the action includes both a desire (e.g., to
touch that object) and more perception (e.g., to guide the reaching); and the meaning
of the consequences of the touching includes the guided action of touching (e.g., the
felt pain is not just felt pain, but the pain of touching that object). The next time the
child sees the flame, he sees a hot flame, and when he reaches for that flame, he reaches
for a painful touch. From now on, for that child, an idea of touching that flame
simultaneously contains the idea of pain (this sort of example is discussed in James
1890 and Dewey 1896/EW5).
27 In general, most of the meaning in perceiving things consists of anticipations of
potential reactions upon dealing with those things (Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia 2008;
Iacoboni 2008). Organic circuits result in holistic organic wholes of experience.
Experience is thoroughly imbued with prospective values of action. That is why we
directly experience meanings and values in the world around us. If meanings or values
were only interior mental states, then our experience of an external object would be
stereoscopic, a sort of double perception. We would observe the external object as a
meaningless material thing, and simultaneously observe it as a useful object to be
employed, as if one ‘eye’ saw the world as it is in itself, while another ‘eye’ saw objects
as meaningful and valuable. Does lived experience ever seem like this? Hardly – we
immediately and directly observe significant, meaningful, and valuable objects without
any double ‘vision’ or contrast between an external world and an internal world.
Meanings and values are where they appear to be: embodied in the things that we know

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how to use. Meanings and values are instances of achieved practical knowledge
through learning. Knowledge is built up from our experimental attempts to
productively manage our deliberate modifications to the environment. Static
representationalism, correspondence theories of knowledge, and Cartesian materialism
are not viable theories of mind and intelligence. Neuropragmatism allies easily with
theories of active perception (Hurley 1998, Noë 2005, Pred 2005); somaesthetics
(Shusterman 2008); naturalizing intention (Grammont et al. 2010); ecological
psychology (Gibson 1986, Heft 2001); ecological cybernetics (Bateson 1972, Hoffmeyer,
ed. 2008); social cognition and social epistemology (Fuller 1988, Wilson 2004);
neurosociology (Franks 2010); extended mind (Clark 1997, 2008; Noë 2009; Menary
2010); neurophenomenology (Varela, et al. 1991, Petitot, et al. 1999, Gallagher 2005,
Thompson 2007), and radical embodied cognitive science (Chemero 2009). Even aspects
of connectionism and dynamic systems theory may contribute to the proper synthesis
of these positions (Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2002), provided excessive
representationalism is avoided (Freeman 2001, Rockwell 2005).
28 To ask, “Is mind just in the brain?” is problematic. ‘Mind’ is ambiguous: it can refer to
the localized centers of cognitive processing, or it can refer to the networked channels
of meaningful information. Localized mind is where brains act; philosophical options
are common substantial cause, or dual aspect monism, or outright ontological identity.
Networked mind is wherever brains are coordinating action through communication,
and therefore much of intelligence is an emergent feature of human communities
modifying environments. Mind is dependent on brains, and cognitive functions are
brain functions, either of single or multiple brains. Neurons are all about systemic
communication, across synapses and across the room. Many cognitive functions (and
all higher cognitive functions) only operate through people – viz., social organisms
with nervous systems – in communication with each other about the common
environment. Human psychology must be social and ecological.
29 The ‘theory of mind’ ways of trying to explain how humans try to understand each
other’s beliefs and motivations take matters exactly backwards. We do not really start
from our own concepts of what constitute the mental life and tentatively test them
against the empirical data of others’ behaviors. For babies could never do any such
thing. To presume so is to believe as if each baby was born a positivistic scientist or a
cultural anthropologist. Infant brains do respond to others’ behaviors, like displays of
emotion, but they respond not with thought but with deed. Because feelings are
intimately connected with behaviors (through such things as systems of mirror
neurons), it is the joint behaviors that build up the mind. The baby is doing the same
things as the adult, not thinking the same things as the adult. The pragmatist always
looks to the social behaviors underlying cognition. After all, how could the developing
infant brain be using complex concepts so soon to interpret adult behaviors?
Rationalists might suppose that they are, but babies do not need such refinements so
soon (and given the diversity of cultures, it is a good thing that babies do not need
them – for the diversity of cultures shows that they do not have them).
30 Generally, first we comprehend the minds of others by living with them in infanc y and
childhood, and then we gradually apply cognitive categories to our own developing
modes of experience. Babies are born individuated but not as individual selves. Babies
do not start out as solipsists, intimately acquainted with their private mental states
while ignorant of those of others. It is not enough merely to have a consciousness of

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passing mental states – higher human cognition about individual minds is far more
than just being awake and aware of one’s environment. Sustained mental individuality
is far more complex than having passing mental states. Put another way, a child
gradually learns how to treat people as having mental individuality right along with
her own growing sense of mental individuality. A child only gradually develops the
notion that she has an internal mental life, distinguishable from her absorption in her
environment, by participating in the living cognition of the community around her. For
example, knowing what beliefs are, and knowing that one has beliefs as distinguished
from the beliefs of others, is a far more sophisticated ability than merely having
transient beliefs. Individuality is an emergent social category, not a biological or
metaphysical category – no one is born as an individual self. Like every other role, one
learns how to be an individual only within a community (and that is why different
cultures apply differing notions of individuality). The way that even babies have
personalities is not a refutation, but a confirmation of this social theory of the self,
since the growing infant learns how to be treated as an individual by being treated in
ways particular to her personality (and only later on will she realize that she has a
personality). Although there are numerous broad continuities between animal and
human cognition (Fetzer 2005, Hoffmeyer 2008), as would be expected given evolution,
human cognition displays some notable discontinuities from animal mind because we
are now so intensely cultured animals. By taking higher cognition and self-
conciousness, like all human communication, as fundamentally social,
neuropragmatism is aligned with Peircean semiotics (Peirce 1991, Sebeok 2001), the
social mind (Valsiner and van der Veer 2000), symbolic interactionism (Blumer 1969),
developmental consciousness (Bogdan 2010), and biosemiotics (Barbieri 2008).
31 Cognition and culture are thoroughly natural. The biological evolution of the human
species, and the cultural evolution of complex human associations, suffice to explain all
features of cognition.2 The two modes of evolution are not disjunctive – no form of
cognition is independent from either mode, although most complex forms of human
cognition are primarily cultural in origin and function. Nothing spiritual or
supernatural is needed to account for mind. The highest modes of human cognition aim
at social competence, technological expertise, and knowledge of reality. Culture
educates members of society into various forms of responsible intelligence and expects
their satisfactory use for group goals. These cognitive modes amount to technological
skill and ultimately answer to pragmatic criteria of success set by societies. Basically,
culture is technology. Social learning and teaching was the first technology, and all else
followed (Sterelny 2012). All epistemology must be social and technological; no
philosophical theory of reason, knowledge, or truth can float freely apart from
learning’s origins in education and experimentation, or avoid answerability to practical
social justification within cultural contexts.
32 Objectivity aiming at warranted truth is possible through commonly accepted social
standards of responsible practices for dealing with the environment. Both society and
nature provide the empirical checks on postulated theories. Because we are an evolved
species, and social epistemology and reason can be naturalized, there is sufficient
reason to be critical realists: we can be confident that cognition tracks the general
features of nature, and confident that science is gradually becoming more reliable
about tracking the fine details of natural processes. We do not have to worry that
human knowledge may be wildly incorrect or ignorant about the environment. Nature
is not some mysterious ‘thing in itself.’ For we can explore and understand nature, with

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much thanks to our cultural activities that have grown from natural processes for
getting about in nature in the first place.
33 The role of reason and the problem of ‘free will’ need to be dramatically re-thought.
The ‘decisions’ that occur during conscious deliberation are not some sort of
instantaneous moments, or detached initiators of voluntary conduct, or products of
emotionally detached rationality. Conscious monitoring of conduct is thoroughly
interfused with ongoing motor control of muscles and internal and external sensory
feedback. Agency consists of a capacity to creatively refine control over habitual
practice by judging observed success, so both frontal and motor cortex regions are
simultaneously and interrelatedly involved. Conscious deliberation is therefore broadly
distributed across the cortex, and not just some ‘after the fact’ reporting of what some
unconscious processing does entirely on its own. Proposals that consciousness does no
work guiding conduct must postulate both epiphenomenalism and epicognitivism.
Epiphenomenalism declares consciousness to be real but powerless, an after-the-fact
ghostly spectator on the life of the brain. Epicognitivism offers a cortical basis (some
call it the ‘interpreter’) for epiphenomenalism, but its postulation of a surplus brain
center that does no real work clashes with evolution. Brain centers that generate
consciousness must have an efficacious role in conduct (as James argued in 1890). This
conclusion does not mean that consciousness as such has its own natural causal powers
(there is no route back to dualism or Cartesian materialism here), but only that
consciousness of higher cognitive efficacy is no illusion, but an accurate report. Indeed,
for pragmatic naturalism, holding that consciousness is a real aspect of the natural
efficacies of higher brain cognition can make sense.
34 Reflective deliberation is therefore no illusion or irrelevant luxury either: it is a useful
imaginative function for specialized human cognition for problem solving.
Responsibility in turn is the degree to which one can successfully use reflective
deliberation to guide conduct in socially appropriate ways. As philosophers from John
Locke to John Dewey (1932) and Daniel Dennett (2003) have argued, our capacities for
practical deliberation, normative conduct, and degrees of moral freedom naturally
grow together and remain culturally fused together. The intense degree of human
sociality accounts for the way our species encourages normative conduct using
normative moral responsibility in addition to the older primate emotional motivations
of love, kindness, and charity. However, the intense sociality of human life requires the
thoughtful management and adjustment of multiple social roles and responsibilities, in
turn requiring dynamic moral problem solving about what to do from situation to
situation. Moral concepts such as responsibility, freedom, autonomy, and blame have
distinctive functional roles in creatively sustaining the community life of human
societies.
Neuropragmatism and Neurophilosophy: Conflict Over

Image
35 William James was among the first philosophers to take brain science and what is now
called embodied cognition to be highly relevant for all core philosophical issues, as his
monumental The Principles of Psychology illustrates. The pragmatist force of James’s
vision of all of nature’s interrelated processes, including mind, is carried on through
John Dewey’s philosophy. As Dewey wrote,

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To see the organism in nature, the nervous system in the organism, the brain in the
nervous system, the cortex in the brain is the answer to the problems which haunt
philosophy. And when thus seen they will be seen to be in, not as marbles are in a
box but as events are in history, in a moving, growing never finished process.
(Dewey 1925/LW1: 224)
36 This statement is clearly a statement of neurophilosophy and supplies what the authors
endorse as the neuropragmatist’s motto (see Solymosi 2011a). It goes all the way from
synapse to society; from cortex to culture. While many neurophilosophers today may
appreciate Dewey’s bold claim here, it is worth noting that the standard orthodoxy of
most neurophilosophers is inadequately pragmatic and overly Sellarsian or positivistic.
That is, their understanding of experience, and thus science, is simplistic. According to
the neurophilosophical orthodoxy, the main concern for philosophy is the
reconciliation of two opposing views of humanity, the scientific on the one hand and
the manifest or humanistic on the other. The job of philosophy is to navigate the
rapprochement of these two views.
37 While there is some disagreement on the nature of this reconciliation – generally
understood, the conflict’s most popular solutions have been eliminativism and
constructivism – the neuropragmatist solution to the conflict is to reconstruct the
philosophical notion of science’s aims and results that leads to competition between
the two images in the first place. This conflict, however, is not merely a theoretical
problem for philosophers. It has manifested itself socially in the academy as the two
cultures described by C. P. Snow (1959). There is a desperate need for rapprochement of
some sort, as there are real life consequences across the life sciences and out beyond
the ivory tower into areas like public policy.
38 Despite great similarities between mainstream neurophilosophy and neuropragmatism,
there is a crucial difference between them.3 This difference resides in the different
conceptions of experience. This difference subsequently sets up distinct conceptions of
science, and therefore different resolutions to the conflict between the scientific image
and the humanistic or manifest image.
39 The philosophical project of rapprochement is taken up in various ways by the many
philosophical traditions. The specific differences between mainstream
neurophilosophy and neuropragmatism come down to how the problem is articulated
and thus how it is solved in light of that articulation. Generally speaking, however, the
conflict is a genuine one felt by most parties. The concern is that the scientific image
ultimately shows the humanistic one to be illusory, thereby bringing into serious doubt
genuinely human concerns about dignity, freedom, responsibility, and living a good
and meaningful life. Science, it is feared, will rob us of our humanity.
40 For mainstream neurophilosophers, like Paul and Patricia Churchland, Owen Flanagan,
and Daniel Dennett, their conception of science differs in significant respects from the
neuropragmatists’ view. Moreover, the conception of cultural tradition, what Wilfrid
Sellars influentially called the manifest image, similarly differs between
neurphilosophy and neuropragmatism. The main distinction is the difference in how
each position conceives of experience, and subsequently of science. Patricia
Churchland (1986: 302-3; and 2002: 107-12) articulates the problem in terms of scientific
theory versus folk theory, and then, as she often does in the latter work, refers to Quine
and his pragmatism. The neuropragmatism we advance here is similar to this branch of
neopragmatism but, as will become clearer, stands in stark contrast to the conception

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of science based on an inadequate conception of experience. The Churchlands (1998:

25ff) continue this discussion in terms of folk psychology versus scientific psychology,
and mention the origins of these ideas in Sellars (ibid: 4ff). Paul Churchland further
distances himself from pragmatism in his recent book (2012: 128ff; see Rockwell 2011
for a strong treatment of Churchland’s previous pragmatist leanings). Flanagan’s
recent statement of his philosophical project is in these terms but with a greater
pluralism, extending the Sellarsian dyad to a sextet (see 2007: 5ff). Dennett (2008) is
also a clear and accessible statement of the problem, even as he has unwittingly
affirmed most of the neuropragmatist materials for its solution.
41 While both positions see the manifest or humanist image developing first and
providing the framework out of which science and its image develop, mainstream
neurophilosophers see the two images as competing with each other for the truth. The
truth of science is taken as value-free and objective, whereas the truth of the manifest
image is value-laden and subjective. Notice that this conflict is yet another version of
mind-body dualism, in which the properties of each, science and culture, are mutually
exclusive. Sellars articulates the question that philosophy faces as this: “How, then, are
we to evaluate the conflicting claims of the manifest image and the scientific image
thus provisionally interpreted to constitute the true and, in principle, complete account
of man-in-the-world?” (Sellars 1963: 25)
42 This conflict is generated for mainstream neurophilosophy largely due to residues of
logical positivism, which is based on a Humean conception of experience. Like
Descartes’s rationalistic view of the soul, Hume’s empiricism fits the model of the
spectator theory of mind that Dewey criticized. Today we recognize such a view as
Cartesian materialism. While neurophilosophers like the Churchlands, Dennett, and
Flanagan would balk at being called Cartesian materialists, they succumb to the
modified account of it (as described by Rockwell 2005). It may not be that there is one
specific place in the brain where experience all comes together, but they suppose that
there is a specific space delimiting experience: the brain itself.
43 The neuropragmatist denies this limited range of experience or mentation. Recall the
neuropragmatist’s motto: that the problems of philosophy are generated from the
failure to recognize the dynamic processes embedded within larger processes; that the
cortex is in the brain, the brain in the nervous system, the nervous system in the
organism, and the organism in nature; that, moreover, each of these ‘things’ are not
simple or static substances but dynamic and growing processes. When thus seen, we are
better speaking not of mind as a noun but of mind as a verb: an organism does not have
a mind, rather an organism minds. Indeed, our scientific activity should not be
inquiring into the mind but into the process of minding. Mentation goes beyond the
cranium, suspended in a cultural medium of communicating humans.
Neuropragmatism would not achieve the naturalization of consciousness and mentality
by limiting it to a single brain, ignoring how human brains become distinctively human
only when wired together. If other neurophilosophers cannot see the ‘wires’ of sight
and sound that is because a too narrow scientism has rendered those into meaningless
physical entities already. One might as well do that to all the signaling wires of the
nervous system and be done with meaning altogether. Avoiding that eliminative dead
end, the only alternative is to take seriously the way that both the phenomenology of
lived human experience and the physicality of brains interacting with each other and
the environment exist in natural spaces much larger than the confines of any cranium

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taken singly. It seems like we are directly experiencing the external world because we
really are. The unsurprising fact that complex natural systems of brains and
environments can be distorted and deceived into illusions and hallucinations no more
proves that consciousness is all in one’s head than hacking a computer network proves
that the world wide web is all in one’s computer.
44 Even where some mainstream neurophilosophers would not deny that experience and
intelligence are partially social, they have not dealt with the full implications of
viewing humans and all their cognitive products as encultured. Another problematic
residual aspect of Humean experience in logical positivism is the maintenance of the
fact/value dichotomy (Putnam 2002). This issue, too, is complex as each of the
aforementioned neurophilosophers have held varying views throughout their careers.
Regardless, this dichotomy fits the general pattern that neuropragmatism seeks to
eliminate. Among the reasons mainstream neurophilosophers have such difficulty in
their efforts to reconcile the manifest image with the scientific image is the question of
what to do with value (or mentality) in an ontology of value-free facts (or bodies)?
Eliminativism is one strategy; constructivism is another. The former fails to keep the
sacred aspect of the manifest image, which many find a dissatisfying, if not a terrifying
proposal. The latter is left making qualifications upon qualifications about what is
meant by manifest terms like consciousness in ways that end up making their readers
wonder whether consciousness is real or illusory. This too is unsatisfying.
45 The residues of ordinary language philosophy and the ‘linguistic turn,’ which is based
on a neo-Kantian view of cultural mind, have not helped matters. By encouraging some
philosophers to suppose that they have privileged access to analytic truths grounded in
enlanguaged culture, a battle arose between linguistic a priorists and
neurophilosophers over who had the right to dictate the nature of the self. This battle
only sustained the dualistic terms of the debate into the late twentieth century, as
neurophilosophers felt pushed into viewing culture as a competitor to the scientific
image of humanity. Ironically, humanists fearful of scientism have only perpetuated
the worry over an inhuman theory of self which an improved cognitive neuroscience
would prevent.
46 Neuropragmatism evades these problems of dualism by integrating science and culture.
Neuropragmatism conceives of science (like all modes of intelligence) as an inherently
evaluative and thus value-laden method that provides provisional instrumental truths
as guides to practical action in the world – not a method of justifying static
propositions that objectively mirror or correspondingly represent the non-human
external world. This difference between conceptions of science is central to
understanding the difference between neurophilosophical reconciliation and
neuropragmatic reconstruction. In his articulation of the conflict between science and
common sense (i.e. the humanist or manifest image), Dewey argues that the subject-
matter of both science and common sense is one and the same. The subject-matter is
experience, conceived as the dynamic interaction of organism and environment:
“Things interacting in certain ways are experience” (Dewey 1925/LW1: 12); experience
is “the manifestation of the interaction of organism and environment” or simply “an
interaction of organism and environment” (Dewey 1939, 531). What distinguishes
science from common sense is the mode of inquiry, specifically the experimental
method developed into the sophisticated technological and industrial affair that
produces the most secure knowledge humanity has about the world to date.

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47 Dewey argues that common sense is concerned first and foremost with “practical uses
and enjoyments” of our existential situation, “with ‘the ordinary affairs of life,’ in the
broad sense of life” (Dewey 1938/LW1: 71-2, 69). Another important point Dewey makes
about common sense is that it is not static and fixed but always changing in response to
the dynamic environment. We see this progression in the history of the humanities,
broadly speaking, from myth to mythology to dogma and scripture to Chaucer and
Shakespeare through to contemporary poetry, novels, films, and so forth. In one way or
another, these affairs are concerned with our everyday lives, not as isolated events but
as living experiences, as social interactions with each other in a world, actual and
imagined. Through them we see how life could be lived and could be experienced
(Bywater 2010). They not only affect our consciousnesses but bring about qualities in
both familiar and novel ways so as to encourage or admonish specific ways of life. They
are at the heart of our moral lives. In abstracting beyond the particulars of common
sense, Sellars and others end up stopping or freezing a dynamic living process.
Snapshots have their place, surely, but to take the snapshot for the whole is to lose out
on the entirety and the richness of life.
48 Science develops out of the same subject matter as common sense, with a concern for
practical affairs of ordinary everyday life. When wholly successful, the results and the
methods developed by science feedback into the commonsense world “in a way that
enormously refines, expands and liberates the contents and agencies at the disposal of
common sense” (Dewey 1938/LW12: 72). Unfortunately, Dewey notes, this feedback has
not been nearly as successful as it needs to be, never amounting to more than providing
new tools for upholding tradition, yet never fully critiquing tradition. This is due in
part to the tendency of the practitioners and outside observers of science to finalize the
results and methods of science. Sellars does this in setting up the opposition between
the manifest and scientific images as though they both could be the complete and the
final word on matters. Dewey describes the dissolution of the problem of reconciliation
when we see that “[s]cientific subject-matter is intermediate, not final and complete in
itself” (ibid., 72). Science is a provisional and ongoing cultural technology, one of the
most humanistic endeavors humans undertake.
49 Taken and frozen at any intermediate stage, however, the products of scientific inquiry
seem to be isolated objects, set apart from the situations in which they were originally
encountered. As science progresses, it becomes ever-more removed from practical
affairs as its proximate goal is to develop knowledge for its own sake – not to be
developed within the lived-in environment of ordinary life. This is not its only goal: the
products of science are empowering when properly integrated into the humanities and
ongoing cultural life. Science, when seen as just a phase within the interaction of
organisms with their environments in the process of life, has consequences and
applications outside of itself, in the commonsensical world, with which the humanities
are primarily concerned. The neuropragmatist conception of experience thus seeks to
establish and cultivate the continuities between science and the humanities, between
the scientific image and the manifest images, to improve the richness of living
experience in a never-ending process of growth –just as the neuropragmatist motto
implies.4

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Conclusion
50 Pragmatism started off at a time of significant scientific and technological change. The
industrial and Darwinian revolutions, as well as the American Civil War, brought about
both a sense of crisis and a vision of hope for what humans could do should they work
together toward a common goal. Today we are still wrestling with the consequences of
Darwinism and industrialization. Yet we have further difficulties with which to wrestle
than the classical pragmatists. For among the consequences of Darwinism and
industrialization is a globalized information society that has the means of yielding both
life-saving, life-improving medical care and the willful creation of biological warfare as
well as the inadvertent diseases effected by industrial life and life in an information
society. The successful scientific models that inspired the classical pragmatists were
those of physics, chemistry, and early biology. Neo-Darwinian models of life and the
impressive rise of the cognitive and behavioral neurosciences 5 provide new inspiration,
new tools, new hopes – and new challenges.
51 The consequences of these new sciences for our understanding of ourselves and our
world are not only undeniable and promising; they are also more threatening. Physics
provided a cultural transformation in how we alter our environments and generate
energy. But it did not seem to threaten our moral, spiritual, and intellectual lives with
any significant conceptual change. Indeed, the changes were seen initially as liberating,
until much more recently. With physics, the moral threats came from increased
pollution of our environment, and, with the Bomb, the very real possibility of mutually
assured destruction. Chemistry likewise gave us new materials and fuels as well as
chemical warfare and new means of substance abuse. Biology similarly brought benefits
and dangers, from longer life spans to biological warfare. But biology brought with it a
renewed sense of crisis for the human self-conception. Physics may have displaced the
center of the universe from the Earth, but the belief in Cartesian dualism left the
human soul seemingly intact. Biology, especially after Darwin, opened “the gates of the
garden of life” to experimental methods (Dewey 1910: 7). Now opened, the challenge to
pragmatism is the threat science, especially the neurosciences, poses to our cherished
ideals. For the challenge is not only to bring the products of neuroscientific inquiry to
bear on morals and politics, as so many researches are eager to do today, the challenge
is to use such data in order to bring the experimental method and attitude toward
morals and politics as well.
52 The more we learn about how the most complex product of evolution of which we
know – the human nervous system – the more is at stake. To what ends we use this
constantly growing trove of information is a greater concern than any specific
scientific question itself. Neuropragmatism is the philosophy best suited for guiding
humanity through this new intellectual and moral terrain.

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NOTES
1. We anticipate further advances in not only in the neuroscience of memory but in cultural
evolution to provide further insights into the nature of how it is individual humans remember
within their situated cultures. Our claim here is simply that the information provided by memory
(however memory works) works with imagination (which is not a faculty but a dynamical process

238
that operates across brain, body, and world). See Johnson 1987, 1993, 2007, Shusterman 2008, and
Bywater 2010.
2. Our position does not here depend on which of the various theories of cultural evolution
prevail. We are sympathetic with the approach Philip Kitcher has taken to the evolution of ethics
and culture. In The Ethical Project (2012), he takes up a Darwinian perspective to culture without
necessarily tying the evolutionary success of cultural practices to their genetic or reproductive
success. See Kitcher (2012: 104-10); Kitcher 2003; Godfrey-Smith (2009: 147-64); and Sterelny
2012. Kitcher and Godfrey-Smith have both claimed affinities with classical pragmatism,
especially Dewey’s.
3. For a more extensive discussion of the differences in reaching rapprochement between
neurophilosophical reconciliation and neuropragmatic reconstruction, particularly with regard
to the neuroscience of freedom, see Solymosi 2011b.
4. Central to this continuity between science and common sense is Dewey’s principle of
continuity. The neuropragmatist motto from Dewey, quoted at the start of this section, is one
expression of this principle. For Dewey’s mature statements on the postulate of continuity, see
Dewey 1938/LW12: 26 and 30-1. See Johnson 2007: 122-3; Popp 2007; and Solymosi 2011a: 352ff.
5. We hasten to add the role of computer and information sciences both in advancing our
understanding of biology and neuroscience and in significantly modifying our everyday lives.
Without the shared questions about the nature of mentation, we would never have had the
insights raised by the Turing Test, nor the application of those insights to biological phenomena.
Furthermore, the further application of computer and information sciences to everyday life
have, unfortunately, brought about a rise in disease that comes with a more sedentary lifestyle
made possible by greater ease of communication.
ABSTRACTS
Over the past three decades, cognitive science has been making a turn towards pragmatism. Here
we outline steps towards completing this turn. As a handful of cognitive scientists and
philosophers have been arguing more recently, the insights of William James, John Dewey, and
George Herbert Mead are not only being re-discovered, they are also proving rather prescient in
light of growing research. The new field of neuropragmatism aims to take these insights seriously
and further into new directions for both pragmatism and cognitive science. In this manifesto, a
brief history of the relationship between classical pragmatism and the sciences of life and mind is
offered as a background for twelve proposed theses of neuropragmatism. These theses serve as
general guidelines for further philosophical and scientific research. To illustrate the possibilities
and consequences of this neuropragmatic framework, neuropragmatist views on traditional
questions of philosophy of mind, such as the mind-body relationship, are situated among other
leading philosophical perspectives, like enactive, embodied, and embedded theories of cognition
and mentation. Such views, however, when taken from a neuropragmatist perspecitve, have
significant consequences for the philosophical project of reconciliation between what Wilfrid
Sellars called the scientific and manifest images of humanity. The difference in conceptions of
experience and subesequently science are crucial for understanding the difference between
Sellarsian neurophilosophy and neuropragmatism, as well as how to reach rapprochement
between the sciences and the humanities.

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AUTHORS
TIBOR SOLYMOSI
Southern Illinois at Carbondale
tibor[at]neuropragmatism.com
JOHN SHOOK
University of Buffalo
jshook[at]centerforinquiry.net

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Book Reviews

241
John LACHS, Stoic Pragmatism

Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2012, 204 pages
Matthew Caleb Flamm
REFERENCES
J. LACHS, Stoic Pragmatism, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2012, 204 pages.
1 The point of view endorsed in John Lachs’s Stoic Pragmatism is easy to state, yet
profound in its application. If pragmatists can be accused of sometimes under-
appreciating the irremediable, and stoics of sometimes being fatalist in a manner that
shuts out real possibilities, the two orientations may need each other. His perspective
combines a pragmatic commitment to amelioratory achievement and a stoic
recognition of unbridgeable limits. As the book conveys, the marriage of stoicism and
pragmatism is a reflection of Lachs’s long-tread reflective journey, both in life and in
print.
2 Lachs invokes stoic pragmatism in order to express the need for one’s willingness to
make the world better, yet to remain prepared for realism about lost possibilities, and
to possibly surrender the fight when its continuance is futile. Not unlike individuals in
a working marriage, each school affirms a key philosophic virtue the other seems to
lack, so their union is one of potential mutual empowerment. Lachs suggests that, left
alone, the two orientations risk a corresponding vice of excess, for: “stoics give up too
soon and pragmatists make the mistake of never wanting to give up” (23).
3 Like most of Professor Lachs’s works, this book is wonderfully free of technical jargon,
and refreshingly strives to be actually philosophical, rather than accidentally so by way
of obtuse theoretical frameworks. Lachs provides original diagnoses of key problems
and offers sound proposals for ways through. The results are so obviously rewarding
and apropos of genuinely philosophic reflection that it is unseemly to offer any formal
critical reaction. And so, here I merely offer a reader’s reaction.
4 Perhaps, one might be tempted to argue, the marriage of pragmatism with stoicism
risks anachronism. Given the lack of kindred scholarly efforts and the historical leap

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between eras in comparison there might be expected to be something obviously

connecting the two, something more than the characteristics offered above. But Lachs’s
book is far more interesting than a sheer exercise in historical association, or
theoretical reconciliation. Whether or not stoicism and pragmatism actually need one
another is irrelevant: the point is, for Lachs, they do, and in his hands their marriage
conduces to novel philosophic prescriptions. “Age clarifies.” Lachs opens. “In the
course of a life of reflection, one’s attitude to the weightiest questions emerges only
slowly” (1). And, it would seem, the time during which that attitude slowly emerges,
the binding thread of various considerations can remain unacknowledged. “It was,” he
continues, “only recently that I managed to characterize my attitude to life as that of a
stoic pragmatist. Once I did, it was easy to find traces of the position in earlier writings
and in my decisions at crucial points in life” (1). So Stoic Pragmatism is in a significant
sense a work of intellectual autobiography, though by no means of the sensational
kind, spinning tales of personal struggle and triumph; instead, it is appropriately
philosophic, a thoughtful exercise in self-evaluation that inventories the main
trajectories of motivation behind the author’s various preoccupations and applies them
to various key questions.
5 The book is relatively short, divided into four chapters, with a very brief introduction
and a philosophically confessional epilogue. The chapters thematically develop the
book’s overarching aim of deploying stoic and pragmatist strategies to resolve
fundamental questions. The opening chapter, “What Can Philosophy Do to Make Life
Better?” unequivocally establishes the target audience to include, if not privilege, the
non-philosophical. While the treatment of major philosophers is hugely abbreviated
and glossy, the presentation is appropriate for the purposes of the chapter and larger
book. In just the first five pages Lachs covers the gambit of Thales, Plato, Aristotle, the
British Empiricists, Continental Rationalists, and yes, Kant and Hegel! Certainly the
discussion here is rapid-fire, roaming, conversational, and generally for the benefit of
the unacquainted.
6 No doubt many of Lachs’s characterizations of historical schools and figures are canned
echoes of hundreds of classroom conversations he has developed for undergraduate
students over the years: but they are the more charming and persuasive for that. Lachs
has a true gift for bringing philosophy to life, for inviting the uninitiated into a table of
conversation to which they perhaps never thought they were invited: “Plato’s so-called
theory of forms amounts to the idea that everything has a nature that it shares with
other beings of the same kind” (4). Characterizations like these reflect the “vintage”
charm of Lachs’s invocation of philosophers and their ideas. The discussions are sincere
and penetrating because they are inspired, rather than merely provoked, by major
philosophic schools and figures. And besides, Lachs’s worthy larger aim is to guide lay
philosophic readers through some rather fat thickets of historical growth; ability to so
guide requires knowledge of their depths. What counts in such an endeavor is not
achievement or resolution of some new theoretical puzzle, but the opening of historical
vistas capable of helping one appreciate the relevance of philosophy to life.
7 Accordingly, Lachs considers whether philosophy can any more produce public
intellectuals. He identifies three ways that the discipline in its professional structure
discourages “engagement with the broader public”. Preferring argument over
knowledge of current affairs and facts, incentivizing and rewarding technical
obtuseness and obfuscation, and the misconceived categorization of philosophy

243
alongside physics and anthropology, and/or science-directed inquiries that unfairly pit
philosophy against more empirically-grounded rivals: all three of these, Lachs argues,
account for the “retreat” of philosophy into the Ivory tower and its “abandonment of
the traditional role as the critic of our beliefs and practices” (17). These criticisms of
the professional obstacles to genuine philosophic reflection are not only fair, but much
needed. John Lachs has achieved enough, to say nothing of occupied enough of a place
and time in the profession, to have earned a stature to be able to say such things and
expect someone to listen. This example of “power speaking truth to power” is rare,
and, whether it bears fruit in the present case, it well may have done so in the past. For
some amount of years Lachs has not hesitated holding views to which some of his
closest colleagues object, and, as he confesses in the book’s epilogue, has raised
objections to powerful administrators. Such sincere fidelity to conscience and truth is,
to say the least, admirable and rare.
8 Lachs’s purpose of achieving larger connections is one that has been fairly consistent
throughout his philosophic career, at least since the mid-90’s, addressing himself to the
worthy question: why philosophy? Why does it matter? In Stoic Pragmatism Lachs
appears to be taking a longer inventory of things, squaring his early-career defenses of
epiphenomenalism and discussions of human nature and mediation (see especially
Intermediate Man [1981] and Mind and Philosophers [1987]) with his current point of view.
Not dissimilar from the inventory taken by Lachs’s philosophic model, George
Santayana in the “Apologia” he published in the Library of Living Philosophers edition
devoted to his thought, Lachs sees tremendous continuity between his current and
earlier perspectives: “Once I [settled on the ‘stoic-pragmatist’ characterization of my
attitude] it was easy to find traces of the position in earlier writings and in my
decisions at crucial points in life” (1).
9 Chapter three of the book illustrates Lachs’s original ability to think through
fundamental issues using the resources of American philosophy as his guide. He
critically considers forms of “human blindness” as provoked by claims in William
James’s famous essay of the same title, and, using James’s famous discussion of “moral
holidays” in his Pragmatism lectures, sets up an interesting framework for considering
the sharp contrast between James and his absolutist nemesis Josiah Royce. The implied
critical wedge of Lachs’s deft analysis is the naturalist perspective of his philosophic
forebear, Santayana. Lachs does a great job of exposing the too-overlooked, but
nevertheless shared moralism of James and Royce. He pulls out the senses in which
James’s “Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” reveals him to possess the “same moral
fervor” as his erstwhile adversary Royce. Lachs’s treatment of the interesting relation
between James and Royce is clearly the result of a close study of Santayana, as is
inferred from the fact that he is so easily able to call their moralistic bluff.
10 One point of criticism I must identify, Lachs’s open-palmed stance and ground-level,
common-sense narrative at times loses some of its power when certain unnecessary
moral assessments seep into considerations. These tend to bubble up, revealingly, in his
occasional indulgences in sharp personal criticism or reprimand. On multiple occasions
Lachs chides logic-chopping philosophers of language for their phoniness, and calls out
merely “professional philosophers” for setting up obstacles to genuine philosophic
engagement. These laments are mostly well-taken, and well-placed, for example in the
first-chapter section “Can Philosophy Produce Public Intellectuals Today?” where, as

244
indicated, he justifiably calls attention to the various senses in which the “profession”
has set up obstacles to genuine philosophic engagement.
11 But these observations are sometimes combined with unfortunate remarks that
unnecessarily reveal Lachs’s personal aversions, as when he emphasizes the unique
duty philosophers have of practicing what they preach: “…inner divisions are relatively
harmless in the case of chemists, whose professional views may have little bearing on
their lives. But lawyers who violate the laws, atheist priests, bankrupt financial
advisors, and obese physicians, along with irrational philosophers, rightly arouse
suspicion” (18-19).
12 One cannot help wincing a bit at such characterizations. The point about disingenuous
philosophers is worth making, but one wonders whether it adds anything to the point
to offer directly unflattering descriptions—among others he makes, Lachs mentions
William Bennett’s “excessive bouts of gambling” and the “spewing” of “mindless
Leninism” by Hilary Putnam. Perhaps more hazardous: why say anything of professions
or disciplines that allegedly require more or less coordination of “inner and outer”
convictions and commitments? It all seems a rather slippery slope to travel for a
narrative that is so otherwise balanced and seeking of reconciliation and relief from
impenetrable puzzles. It is not clear but, whether or not Lachs is suggesting that obese
physicians have anything in common with rapping philosophers (Cornel West is
suggestively included in the discussion), their very association seems curious at best. I
simply suggest that this occasional injection of personal bias undermines the otherwise
refreshingly open-minded narrative of which Lachs is a veritable master.
13 I must leave to other more qualified commentators the task of fully evaluating the
various interesting remarks Lachs makes about the challenge pragmatists face
regarding questions of ultimate limit, including especially, the problem of death. It is
enough here to saythat the challenge has been raised, and that Lachs takes seriously
the idea that it may be a problem for the pragmatist orientation specifically: “It is
understandable that critics should hold pragmatism accountable for what it says about
death” (53). Perpetual improvement of life (“amelioration”) being the hallmark of
pragmatism, it makes sense that final ends fail to find a comfortable category in the
pragmatist framework. That said, as Lachs takes pains to show, pragmatists do attempt
an answer: “The question of what pragmatists would have us do in relation to death has
a simple answer: fend it off one day at a time” (60). “Work on death” may not sound
like an immediately helpful strategy to those in perilous distress over it, but it does
seem a reasonable way of expressing what is likely the only recourse pragmatists have
if, as Lachs holds, its sole commitment is to the “improvement of life here and now”.
14 This book should be front-listed in general undergraduate courses on philosophy, and
pushed and marketed in bookselling contexts aimed at audiences of broad intellectual
interest. The presentation is intellectually conversational, and helpfully devoid of
technicaltheoretical complications. Professor Lachs proves himself here, as in previous
publications, to be an ideal purveyor of philosophic ideas to an inquisitive public.

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AUTHORS
MATTHEW CALEB FLAMM
Rochford University
mflamm[at]rockford.edu

246
José MEDINA, The Epistemology of

Resistance
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012, 352 pages
Roberto Frega
REFERENCES
José Medina, The Epistemology of Resistance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 352
pages
1 The new book from José Medina offers an inspiring exploration of how the recent
discussions of “epistemic ignorance” can be put to work to unveil and denounce new
forms of oppression. José Medina accomplish this task by combining four different
tradition: American pragmatism, Wittgenstein, Foucault, and feminist and race studies.
This original blend of different traditions gives the book its distinctive flavor and
accounts for its originality.
2 One way to read this text is to see it as a book in political philosophy rooted in the
tradition of nonideal theory, and therefore committed to a wide concern for social
issues. This concern is formulated in an explicitly epistemic tonality. Medina tries
indeed to work out some of the epistemological assumptions that according to him
underlie and perpetuate forms of social oppression. Put in a nutshell, the idea is to
unfold the epistemic resources and obstacles involved in the normative dynamics by
which oppression is produced, reproduced, contested and finally overcome. To reach
his goal, Medina relies on the notion of epistemic injustice, recently introduced in the
philosophical debate by Miranda Fricker, to define his own concept of epistemic
resistance. Starting from the assumption that there exists distinctly epistemic kinds of
injustice, and that oppression has a distinctive epistemic dimension, Medina defends
the idea that we need to explore the typical epistemic resources on which social actors
can rely to contrast the forms of social oppression affecting them.

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3 By “epistemic resistance,” the author means “the use of our epistemic resources and
abilities to undermine and change oppressive normative structures and the complacent
cognitive-affective functioning that sustains those structures” (3). Epistemic resistance
is clearly a political act, as it is addressed against injustices that are embedded in social
relations. This resistance model is introduced with the explicit aim of overcoming the
standard dualism between consensus models and agonistic models by relying on what
Medina takes to be a broader understanding of democratic life as being based on
communicative engagements.
4 The political meaning of resistance developed by this book derives also from a second
source, which is a contestatory conception of democracy. Relying on works from
Elizabeth Anderson and Iris M. Young, Medina assumes a model of democracy based on
the notion of resistance rather than on the notion of consensus. His main idea is that
“in democratic societies, given their commitment to free and equal epistemic
participation, there is a prima facie interest and obligation to detect and correct the
systematic disparities in the epistemic agency that different members of society can
enjoy and the inequalities associated with them” (4). The obligation to combat
epistemic injustices derives therefore from the previous acceptance of an epistemic
justification of democracy. Contestation is an essential feature of democracy, and the
epistemic resistance refers to the epistemic and political mechanisms that sustain it.
5 Here we should see the first element of interest for pragmatists, since Medina,
following Anderson, considers Dewey’s experimentalist account of the epistemic
powers of democracy as the best instantiation of the resistance model, given – they
both contend – the central role Dewey assigns to contestation and dissent as central
virtues of democracy. According to both scholars, compared to other models, Dewey’s
is “the only model in which dissent is epistemically productive.” The importance of
epistemic resistance is therefore to be seen within the framework of an epistemic
justification of democracy: democracy is the only regime that renders conflict
epistemically productive. Thanks to this, democracy can assign a positive value to
diversity, interaction, and dynamism: “it is because we want to exploit the benefits of
productive dissent that we need to recognize and take advantage of the heterogeneous
situated knowledge of diverse agents.”
6 Starting from these broad assumptions Medina defines the two normative
requirements that inform his understanding of democracy and that pave the way for
his analysis and critique of epistemic oppression and resistance. The first requirement
is the Expressibility Requirement: it “demands that the different groups that a social body
can contain have the opportunity to coalesce in a public with expressive capacities, so
that they can articulate their shared experiences and perspectives.” Expressibility
requires that spaces and opportunities for group formation be provided. The second
requirement is the Responsiveness Requirement, according to which “the social and
epistemic conditions of communication and interaction be such that the expressions of
a public have the proper uptake by other publics and by society as a whole” (9). The
study of epistemic injustices is the study of how these minimum requirement can fail,
and of the negative effects on democratic life produced by these failures.
7 Medina’s focus is restricted to two specific forms of oppression which are racial and
gender inequality, to which Medina assigns a specific epistemic significance. Indeed,
“in contexts of sexual and racial oppression there are cognitive-affective deficits that
amount to specific forms of epistemic insensitivity: the inability to listen and to learn

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from others, the inability to call into question one’s perspective and to process
epistemic friction exerted from significantly different perspectives” (17-8). This lack of
knowledge for Medina is at the same time a lack of self-knowledge (of who I am as a
situated agent) and a lack of social knowledge (of social inequalities, and situations of
asymmetry and oppression). Here we can grasp the political relevance of an analysis of
social oppression and inequality developed in terms of epistemic conditions.
8 The book articulates these general theoretical assumptions in details. It proceeds first
to define the basic epistemological terminology adopted (chs. 1 and 2). It then puts
these concepts to use in exploring the different epistemic dimensions of social
experience, providing specific emphasis to the moral and political implications of the
epistemic dimensions of silence and ignorance (chs. 3 and 4). It then proceeds to work
out a theoretical model of epistemic resistance to counter present forms of social
oppression (chs. 5 and 6). One of the central thesis that the book defends is that of a
reciprocal co-implication of the epistemic and the political. This thesis has two main
corollaries. The first is the attribution of moral and political meaning to epistemic
states, as it is the case in the claim that agent bear moral responsibility for their
ignorance. The second corollary is the symmetrical emphasis on the epistemic
dimension of morality and politics, exemplified by the idea that morality and politics
are rooted in specific epistemic virtues, among which Medina emphasized
“metalucidity.”
9 From the epistemic perspective adopted by Medina, “inequality is the enemy of
knowledge.” As a consequence, social injustice and epistemic injustice are two faces of
the same coin. In a nutshell, the argument claims that oppression produces inequality;
inequality produces epistemic injustice, and epistemic injustice in turn impoverishes
our democratic life. According to Medina, while oppression is clearly asymmetrical, its
epistemic consequences affect both oppressors and oppressed, albeit not in the same
way. This point is strategic in Medina’s argumentation, because one of the conclusions
he wants to bring home is that epistemic oppression harms oppressors as well,
producing damages that according to studies in feminism and race theory can be
conceptualized as specific forms of ignorance and epistemic vices. Among the vices that
privileged groups are likely to contract Medina lists epistemic arrogance, epistemic
laziness, and close-mindedness. These are epistemic vices because “they affect one’s
capacity to learn from others and from the facts; they inhibit the capacity of self-
correction and of being open to corrections from others” (31). Symmetrically, Medina
identifies three epistemic virtues that tend to be associated with the social experience
produced by oppression: humility, curiosity/diligence, and open-mindedness. Medina
is clear in emphasizing that virtues and vices are not attributes of social groups but
correlates of experiences. The upshot of this analysis is that marginalized people may
have privileged access to social knowledge as they tend to develop a subversive lucidity
(defined as the sum of the three epistemic virtues) out of which they “are likely to
detect and overcome blind spots and to develop new forms of lucidity that can enrich
social cognition” (45). People belonging to oppressed groups are likely to gain “meta-
lucidity,” a “capacity to see the limitations of dominant ways of seeing. [...] This meta-
lucidity has a critical and subversive potential: it provides insights into the functioning
of perspectives that makes it possible to redraw our cognitive maps, to redescribe our
experiences, and to reconceptualize our ways of relating to others” (47).

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10 These are the theoretical bases of the analysis of the epistemic dimension of social life
on which Medina relies to invoke resistance as a moral and political virtue. Resistance
has a positive epistemic function because it provides friction, and friction is essential to
assure the alignment between our beliefs and attitudes and reality. Our capacity to
resist received social schemes, ways of seeing and perceiving, and consolidated habits is
therefore transformed into a propeller of social change. And because in the last resort
each of us is responsible for her way of knowing, this claim provides the starting point
of the whole normative argument Medina develops to defend the idea that agents
should be considered morally responsibility for their beliefs and epistemic virtues,
which in turn implies the idea of a moral and political culpability for ignorance.
11 To explain Medina’s strategy we need to introduce a further specification: relying on
authors like Shannon Sullivan and Charles Mills, Medina emphasizes the tacit and often
unconscious dimension of virtues. To this extent he introduces the concept of “active
ignorance” precisely to identify a form of ignorance that protects itself through
psychological and socio-political mechanisms of defense. He equally explores how
social imaginaries contribute to the preservation of social ignorance by determining
the space of what is sayable and acceptable and what is not. What is socially thinkable
affects the epistemic credibility of a subject as it tends to pre-define the discursive
space in which he will orient himself. Another concept he introduces to describe the
epistemic dimension of social oppression is that of “meta-blindness.” Meta-blindness is
the blindness to one’s own blindness, which therefore concurs to reinforce blindness.
The distinction between blindness and metablindness serves specific critical purposes
such as the critique of race-blind politics.
12 The distinction between blindness and meta-blindness serves also to ground the
detailed analysis of silencing as a social process through which oppression is created
and maintained. Following Miranda Frickers’ analysis of hermeneutical justice, that he
develops and expands considerably, Medina insists on the social dimension of this
specific form of epistemic ignorance. Medina develops a pluralist approach to epistemic
injustice according to which a society is fragmented into interpretative communities,
so that injustices affect individuals according to the community they belong to. “Social
silences and hermeneutical gaps are incorrectly described if they are uniformly
predicated on an entire social context, instead of being predicated on particular ways
of inhabiting that context by particular people in relation to particular others” (90).
The long discussion of Frickers’ thesis is precisely aimed at providing an analysis of
epistemic injustices that takes social circumstances into account. This is an important
and original contribution Medina brings to the debate about the nature of epistemic
injustices.
13 It is indeed because he can show that epistemic injustices have a social basis that
Medina can derive normative conclusions from his analysis. In particular, by relying on
analyses developed by Iris M. Young and Larry May, Medina introduces the idea of a
shared responsibilities for our epistemic weaknesses: “communities share a collective
responsibility to do everything they can to facilitate everyone’s ability to participate in
meaning-making and meaning-expressing practices” (109). Duties are proportional to
the degree of marginalization of the groups we interact with, so that responsibility will
have to be determined relationally and positionally: “whether individuals and groups
live up to their hermeneutical responsibilities has to be assessed by taking into account

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the forms of mutual positionality, relationality, and responsiveness (or lack thereof)
that these subjects and groups display with respect to one another.”
14 The normative requirement that Medina establishes through his analysis of the social
causes of epistemic oppression is expressed through the thesis of the “cognitive
minimums” that opens ch. four. The cognitive minimum states that “responsible
agency requires that one be minimally knowledgeable about one’s mind and one’s life,
about the social world and the particular others with whom one interacts, and about
the empirical realities one encounters” (127). If one then admits that self-knowledge
can be attained only in the absence of systematic distortions and of cultivated forms of
blindness and ignorance, the normative argument in support of affirmative actions for
removing epistemic ignorance follows. Medina’s idea is that epistemic ignorance puts
agents in states of reduced autonomy. This holds for oppressed as well as for
oppressors. “Systematic injustices produce irresponsible agents, for they tend to lack
knowledge of themselves, of others, and of the world” (131).
15 Given the connection between knowledge and responsibility, Medina explores at great
length the thesis of an obligation to know considered as the reverse of a moral
culpability of ignorance. Medina contends that there are specific forms of ignorance
which are not excusable, and therefore enables to identify precise forms of
responsibilities: of agents, of educators, of communities. Given Medina’s contextualism,
the extent of an agent’s obligation to know is limited by the social and cultural horizon
of his experience. Medina identifies three criteria that may be used to prioritize our
obligations to know on which to rely to order our obligations according to a criteria of
relevance. The three criteria are: (a) a maxim to prioritize others according to
proximity, taking as a guideline the idea of sharing of resources and/or social spaces, of
being co-participant in social domains; (b) a maxim of openness and vigilance in always
trying to find out more about others; and (c) a maxim of shared responsibility between
community and individuals in determining relevance. These maxims are proposed as
guidelines that should facilitate individuals and communities in checking the
appropriateness of their perceptions.
16 Chapters five and six present the most constructive part of the argument, where
Medina articulates his political vision of epistemic resistance as a sum of strategies
aimed at contrasting and overcoming forms of social oppression. In chapter five
Medina introduces the normative concept of “meta-lucidity,” identifying what he
describes as the “epistemic heroes” whose everyday struggles contribute to restore
epistemic justice. This is the chapter where Medina engages most intensely with the
idea of an emancipatory role of the oppressed based on the epistemic virtues that they
have developed to survive to the manifold forms of social and epistemic oppression
they undergo. In particular, Medina relies on post-colonial and feminist thought to
emphasize the epistemic distortion that is produced when racialized images of the
oppressed circulate in the social body: racial others are no more perceived in their own
identity but as the effect of a boomerang perception (Spelman): the white perceives the
racialized other only through the image he himself has created, projected onto the
other and received back. Epistemically, the experience of invisibility shows to agents
affected by it that social perception is fallible: because they see things others do not,
they become aware that there is always more to be seen than what is seen: they can
therefore develop the attitude of “being always on the lookout for more, forever more,
which is based on the experience that there can be more than what is seen” (192). Meta

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lucidity is an indispensable attitude for those that live in conditions of oppression if

they want to maintain epistemic responsibility. The oppressed are epistemically
favored because their experience produces the clash of different perspectives, what
W. E. B. du Bois called “double consciousness.” Double consciousness can bring with it
the capacity to shift between visions and therefore acquire critical capacity. But it can
also produce cognitive dissonance. Here Medina relies on Linda Alcoff’s project of a
transformative and reconstructive approach to white identity: whites must learn to
accept the socio-historic genesis of their biased identity in order to transform it. The
central point is that discrimination and oppression are rooted in deep habits that are
difficult to undo. As a consequence, long processes of learning and transformation are
required. “We need to explore ways in which subjects can reconstruct their
perspectives and learn to inhabit them in new ways, so that they can reconstitute their
positionality and relationality in a racialized social environment” (220). The overall
argument, to which we are already familiar, is that transformation requires friction
and resistance in order to disrupt consolidated habits. In its turn, friction produces
awareness, which in its turn favors the transformation of habits. As identities are
socially shaped, processes of personal transformation are essentially social.
17 To make sense of the intrinsically social dimension of these processes Medina relies on
John Dewey’s theory of the publics and on G. H. Mead’s theory of the generalized other:
following Dewey Medina remarks that “a social network becomes an organized social
group or movement […] when and because its members engage in communication with
one another and make their problems interests, and goals explicit” (226). Mead is
invoked shortly after to defend a position of epistemic perspectivism: “the epistemic
friction produced by the interaction of heterogeneous standpoints can yield a critical
awareness of multiple ways of perceiving and can point in the direction of change, of
the melioration of our perceptual attitudes and habits.” Both references have to be
understood with reference to the central role pragmatist epistemology assigns to
friction as a distinctive feature of human experience. For Medina as well as for the
pragmatists friction is the starting point for changing habits. Friction can both disrupt
existing habits and foster the formation of new ones.
18 Still from pragmatism Medina draws the idea that social transformation requires a
transformation of social imagination. Imagination is crucial because it engages will and
is therefore closer to action than reason. In addition imagination is positional: it
concerns our relation in the world and to others. Thirdly, following Dewey Medina
emphasizes the experimental and creative role of imagination: “in the dramatic
imagination we explore our inhabitation of possible scenarios that, insofar as they
concern forms of social positionality and relationality, call for moral and political
reactions” (256). Hence the idea that the interaction between social imageries may
favor processes of imaginative resistance. In fact, “imaginations with different moral
and political sensibilities can function as epistemic counterpoints to each other.”
Therefore, “by comparing and contrasting their imaginative resistances, people can
become sensitive to other ways of imagining and inhabiting worlds of possible
experiences” (256).
19 Imagination is favored by Medina also because it operates at the interface of individual
and society: whereas it is always individuals that imagine, they do it by relying on
materials that are forged by social relations. A further element Medina draws from
pragmatism to develop his theory of resistant imaginations is James’ pluralism:

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imagination enables us to see the meaningfulness of other’s lives. In this sense,

imaginative pragmatism is the habits of always seeing an alternative, of seeing things
in perspectives. Medina relies on James as against what he presents as a Peircean and
Meadian conception of consensus pluralism to defend a more agonistic view of
pluralism in which conflict is at the same time productive and never solved.
Pragmatically, he sees agreement as a temporary and instrumental achievement: in
social life as well as in political practice unification is searched only for matters of
action, not truth: “the possibilities for epistemic friction and resistance are qualified
and constrained for the sake, not of consensus and unification, but of coordination and
cooperation” (283). This pragmatic understanding of pluralism is then radicalized by
relying on a foucaultian conception of power to introduce a conception of “guerrilla
pluralism” in which epistemic friction is now seen merely as a form of resistance
against oppression. Friction is sought for its own sake. The goal is not to increase
knowledge but resistance to power. Guerrilla pluralism does not seek to resolve
conflicts but to energize them. Medina goes at great length in describing and
comparing these competing views of pluralism, proposing in the end a combination of
both which praises Foucault’s disruptive force and James’ creative potential. In
conclusion, it is by relying on a cultivation of epistemic virtues, by denouncing so far
still unrecognized forms of culpable ignorance and by fostering new resistant
imaginaries that Medina proposes a normative account of how social oppression can be
contrasted and reduced.
20 All in all, José Medina has written an original book which masterfully combines
continental and American traditions and which addresses important topics in
contemporary social and political philosophy, showing why we should pay more
attention to the epistemic dimension of our everyday interactions. In this way, the
volume offers a new and fresh interpretation of the foucauldian adage that “knowledge
is power,” one in which the creative and constraining forces that shape our everyday
lives are brought into the focus of the shared responsibilities on which social life is
built.
AUTHORS
ROBERTO FREGA
CEMS-IMM (EHESS/CNRS)
fregarob[at]gmail.com

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HOLLSTEIN B., JUNG M., KNÖBL W.,

(WHg.), Handlung und Erfahrung. Das
Erbe von Historismus und
Pragmatismus und die Zukunft der
Sozialtheorie [Action and experience.
The legacy of Pragmatism and
Historism and the future of Social
Theory]
Frankfurt a. M., Campus, 2011, 381 pages
Andreas Hetzel
REFERENCES
Hollstein B., Jung M., Knöbl W., (WHg.), Handlung und Erfahrung. Das Erbe von Historismus
und Pragmatismus und die Zukunft der Sozialtheorie [Action and experience. The legacy of
Pragmatism and Historism and the future of Social Theory], Frankfurt a. M., Campus,
2011, 381 pages
1 The anthology gathers the results of a symposium held on the occasion of Hans Joas'
60th birthday in November 2008 at the Max-Weber-Kolleg in Erfurt. Its clear systematic
focus on the integration of the historicist and the pragmatist legacy in current social
theory marks a pleasant difference from the eclecticism of a typical festschrift. The
editors succeeded in obliging all contributors to each take up and develop a specific

254
aspect of the comparison of both theories. As a result, the contributions complement

each other extremely well and add up to a coherent overall impression.
2 I will first present several contributions I consider to be particularly innovative and
subsequently phrase a fundamental question regarding the relation of pragmatism and
action theory. The editors suggest in the introduction to interpret Joas’ oeuvre as an
attempt to merge a historicist perspective on the formation of social orders and
institutions that rejects the idea of objective historico-philosophical laws of
progression with a pragmatist theory of action. They point out, however, that in Joas’
numerous and rich analyses in the fields of sociology of religion, the sociology of
violence and the sociology of social norms, this metatheoretical bridge remains largely
implicit.
3 Against this backdrop, the contributions of the anthology strive to make the
connection explicit. The leading assumption is that both pragmatism and historism
could benefit from a dialogue that would allow for the historicist concept of experience
and the pragmatist concept of action to mutually revise each other: A concept of action
enhanced by experience theory could avoid the perils of a teleological reduction, while
a concept of experience enhanced by action theory conversely escapes the pitfalls of
relativism inherent in historism.
4 The first section of contributions addresses the “Legacy of Pragmatism and Historism”
in current social theory and is opened by Matthias Jung's “Verkörperte Intentionalität
– Zur Anthropologie des Handelns” [Incorporated Intentionality – On the Anthropology
of Action]. Pragmatism and historism are complemented here by philosophical
anthropology as well as recent cognitive science, which allows to not merely postulate
a continuity between human life as biological existence and as a “cultural form of life
mediated by symbols” (25), but to actually comprehend this continuity in detail. The
theory of socially mediated intentionality hinted at in Joas’ writings could thus be
placed on a sound scientific basis. Jung claims that by synthesizing historicist and
pragmatist motives, Joas ceases to interpret intentionality in a mentalist and
teleological way. Consequently, and as opposed to Husserl and Searle, he does not
interpret it as a basic, preexisting feature of the mind, but instead intents to show how
it emerges in the context of specific actions. According to Jung, Joas in The Creativity of
Action conceptualizes intentionality as “reflexive articulation and continuous
adaptation of the sense of action” (28) in specific situations, and in doing so heeds the
pragmatist as well as anthropological intuition that all action is essentially
incorporated and situated. This situatedness implies a continuity of nature and culture
on one hand, and a continuity of action and experience on the other hand. Jung’s main
point is to show that this continuity can be further underpinned by recent results in
the field of cognitive science, especially Alva Noë’s encativism, which consistently
interprets perceptions as actions. Following the work of Michael Tomasello, Jung also
believes to be able to describe the transition from individual to collective intentionality
without having to resort to mentalist approaches: In “triangular scenes of shared
attention” (42), where “the attention of the child and the attention of the adult
oscillates between the interacting parties and an object of mutual interest,” collective
intentionality emerges from situated physical activity.
5 While this multiple comparison of theories is certainly thought-provoking, it does leave
the reader wondering whether Jung isn’t omitting several major differences between
cognitive science and pragmatism, as for example the tendency of cognitive science

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approaches to reduce experience to a mere processing of information, which is

incompatible with the openness of the pragmatist concept of experience. Also, to speak
of an “anthropology” of pragmatism is far from innocent, as the efforts of at least parts
of the 20th century german-speaking anthropology to determine an essence of human
nature are hardly reconcilable with the acosmism and tychism of pragmatism (on the
incompatibility of anthropology and pragmatism see Rölli 2010).
6 Tychism is also the main focus of Richard Bernstein’s essay “Die kreative Rolle der
Imagination” [The Creative Role of Imagination], that places Joas’ theory of creative
action in the context of classic pragmatist theories of creativity. In contrast to the
common myth of theoretical decline that glorifies Peirce as an original genius of
pragmatism while scolding James, Dewey and Mead as end products of a watering down
of the pragmatist founding father’s insights, Bernstein shows that James’ and Dewey’s
creativity theories can be interpreted as original and congenial transformations of
Peirce's anti-necessarist cosmology.
7 The idea of the living option James unfolds in “The Will to Believe”: an unguarded
hypothesis that will only be justifiable post festum by the consequences of the actions it
initiated, is a transformation of Peirce’s Tychism, as is James’ theory of the
pluriversum. Likewise, Peirce’s legacy is represented and developed further in new and
interesting ways in the vital role of imagination in Dewey’s theory of research as well as
his ideal of a creative democracy.
8 While Bernstein traverses all three classics of American pragmatism, Charles Camic
deliberately chooses a smaller section for his contribution, which deals with the
transformations of Dewey’s concept of intelligence (“Wandlungen des
Intelligenzbegriffs bei Dewey”). Camic also starts with a reading of Joas’ The Creativity of
Action as a theory of “creative intelligence” (71) strongly inspired by Dewey. He takes a
fascinating trip through the history of ideas of turn of the century Chicago, to the very
moment when Dewey, at that time still strongly influenced by Neo-Hegelianism,
transferred to the University of Chicago. He shows that three competing concepts of
intelligence were one of the crucial subjects of the debates taking place at the
University of Chicago during that time: a group of humanists and social scientists
surrounding Albion Small, Charles Henderson and Thorstein Veblen tried to interpret
human intelligence as an autonomous capacity irreducible to animal intelligence. They
were opposed by a group of naturalists around C. O. Whitman and Henry Donaldson
that, being ardent Darwinists, instead tried to find continuities between human and
animal intelligence. Eventually, a third group of experimentalists (Charles Davenport,
Jacques Loeb and others) emerged. It shared the naturalist starting point, but argued
that certain phenomena claimed by strict naturalists as evidence for intelligence,
among them “purpose, reflex inhibition, […] structure of the nervous system” (78), in
and of themselves could not be interpreted as sufficient criteria for human intelligence.
Camic convincingly highlights the fact that although Dewey never intervened in those
debates during his Chicago era, it would leave a deep impression on his future theory.
According to Camic, Dewey’s own theory of intelligence, that was repeatedly modified
in different phases of his work and is based on the elements projection, prediction,
outline, inference and testing of hypotheses (see 85) rejects an assumption shared by all
three parties of the Chicago debate: that intelligence can be reduced to a choice
between different options and a strategy of situational adaptation. In contrast, Dewey
places a much stronger emphasis on the imaginative and anticipative components of

256
intelligence that – and here Camic seconds Bernstein’s contribution – are also pivotal
for a theory of creative action.
9 A second section of contributions is summarized under the heading “Historismus und
Pragmatismus: Verschränkungen, Fortführungen und Korrekturen” [Historism and
Pragmatism: Entwinements, Continuations and Corrections]. Its opener is a comparison
of the philosophies of religion of Dewey and Ernst Troeltsch by Friedrich Jaeger.
Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy of religion is interpreted here as a “version of civil
religion” (108), whereas historist Troeltsch “does not permit himself a turn towards
civil religion” (108); more so than his American contemporary, he is thus able to
account for the antinomies of the process of social modernization.
10 Dewey's naturalistic concept of god, which secularizes god “to a forward-striving
intentionality of human life practice” (117), leads to a “culturally religious system of
Social Gospel” (111) quite compatible with the “set of values of the American consumer
society” and thus forfeits the critical impetus of religion. In contrast, Troeltsch’s
insistence on the autonomy of religion, according to which a strong community can
only be a community of substantial metaphysical convictions (see 118), retains a
stronger potential to object against the pathologies of modern society.
11 Hans-Joachim Schneider in his brilliant essay “Jenseits von Gemeinschaft und
Gesellschaft: Prozesse der Differenzierung und Individuierung aus der Sicht der
Chicago School of Sociology” [Beyond Community and Society: Processes of
Differentiation and Individuation from the Perspective of the Chicago School of
Sociology] points out the significance of pragmatist action theory for the emergence of
a reconstructive method within the Chicago School. His contribution aims to show that
the Chicago School, based on Mead and Dewey, was able to conceptualize the
connection between “sociation and individualization” (131) in a much more reflective
way than the contemporary European sociology, whose protagonists, Durkheim and
Weber, under a strong Neo-Kantian influence interpreted social integration mainly as
an unobstructed merging into social functional contexts and value systems.
12 Neither Durkheim nor Weber recognize any leeway for creative action that doesn't
merely spot and utilize niches in the social fabric, but generates those niches in the
first place. By integrating Mead's and Dewey's theories of creative action into their
qualitative analyses on migrant workers, criminals, youth groups, new forms of
housing etc., the protagonists of the Chicago School in their material studies provide a
perspective that accounts for the agency of the actors investigated also on a
methodological level. Schneider argues that Joas’ theory of creative action could be
reconstructed as the belated “theoretical approach underlying the empirical studies of
the Chicago School” (132). However, as a critical sideline it should be mentioned that,
being an action theoretical approach, it tends to lose its grounding in the empirical data
and explicitly does not proceed in terms of a grounded theory. Seeing that, it would be
more accurate to consider Joas at least not as the only successor of the Chicago School,
contrary to what Schneider suggests. Exponents of Cultural Studies such as Williams,
Hall, Kellner, Grossberg and Fiske, whose theories of counter hegemonic action (see
Winter 2001) are acknowledged neither by Schneider nor Joas himself, even though
they explicitly place themselves in the tradition of pragmatism (see e.g. Shusterman
2000; Salaverria 2007: 206ff.; Winter 2008).
13 Hans Peter Krüger in his contribution juxtaposes John Dewey’s and Helmuth Plessner’s
theories of the public sphere, which were developed roughly around the same time. He

257
states that while for Dewey a public sphere emerges every time a third person is
affected by the consequences of a direct interaction between two others and begins to
critically reflect those consequences, Plessner conceptualizes the public sphere as a
facilitation of personal conduct between “strangers who may remain strangers to each
other, who are not related among themselves and do not necessarily share the same set
of values” (160). Plessner’s and Dewey’s theories of the public sphere are much better
equipped to accommodate for the dual contingency of modern social conditions than a
Kantian theory, which would link the public sphere to the public use of one singular
reason. In contrast, for Dewey and Plessner it is precisely the absence of a singular
reason a priori encompassing every individual, that makes public debates both
necessary and possible.
14 A third group of contributions explores historism and pragmatism in various
disciplinary fields [“Historismus und Pragmatismus in verschiedenen disziplinären
Feldern”]. In constant dialogue with Joas’ more recent works on secularization, José
Casanova begins with the question “Welche Religion braucht der Mensch?” [What kind
of religion does man need?] and in doing so distances himself from the monism he
perceives to be underlying Joas’ complementary question: “Does man need religion?”
Casanova rephrases the preoccupation with religion (in singular) in the modern era (also
in singular) in a historist way and breaks it down to several pairs of conceptual
opposites: individual experience of transcendence versus the socially sacred, socially
undifferentiated communal cults versus differentiated religious communities, as well
as religion versus magic. None of these historical conceptual constellations can be
reduced to one of the other two; and the complex interaction between them is reflected
both in the sociological classics, which can't be reduced to a singular narrative of
secularization, and in the religio-philosophical elaborations of the founding fathers of
pragmatism.
15 Hans Kippenberg in his contribution “Zur Kontingenz religiösen Gewalthandelns” [On
the contingency of religious Violence] also rejects a simplifying perspective on the
relation of religion and modernity that informs for example Jan Assmann’s thesis of the
intrinsic violence of monotheism.
16 In the fourth group of essays, which is summarized under the heading “Zwischen
Dilthey und Mead: Hans Joas und die gegenwärtige Sozialtheorie” [Between Dilthey and
Mead: Hans Joas and current Social Theory], Wolfgang Knöbl’s exploration of macro
theory between pragmatism and historism (“Makrotheorie zwischen Pragmatismus
und Historismus”) stands out as particularly remarkable and is also the most accurate
realization of the theoretical program phrased by the editors in the introduction. The
essay first states a “crisis of macrosociology” (273), which has almost completely ceased
to develop since Habermas and Luhmann. As evidence, he cites Renate Mayntz’s thesis
that “when reconstructing macro processes, one always has to bear in mind
multicausal causation as well as the historicity and processuality of the macro
phenomena in question” (274), which, according to Knöbl, leads Mayntz into a kind of
macrosociological skepticism. But this skepticism regarding the “basic principles of
social reality” (275) is running danger to misconceive social reality just as much as a
complementary historico-philosophical dogmatism. Knöbl interprets Joas’ attempt to
turn the concept of contingency itself into the central macrosociological
methodologeme on the basis of pragmatism and historism as a possible solution to this
dilemma. The (Hegelian) objective laws of historical progress that keep making an

258
impact on macro-sociology could then finally be abandoned “in favor of analyzing the
specific contextual conditions of the formation and generation of newly appearing
social processes” (295) (– a historism almost reminiscent of Foucault). Knöbl then
points out that while Joas has not yet performed this turn towards a “contingency
sensitive macrosociology” (300), it is hinted at in his more recent work. Contingency
then would play the role of “the macrosociological counterpart to the creativity of
action” (307).
17 While overall the anthology is inspiring in every respect, it must be critically remarked
that it does not take note of earlier attempts to join historism and pragmatism, as for
example Ferdinand Fellmann’s ambitious project to move Wilhelm Dilthey’s philosophy
close to Peirce, James and Dewey (see Fellmann 1991). The recent international
discussion regarding the relevance of pragmatism for qualitative social research (for a
resume e.g. Frega 2011) could also have enriched some of the contributions.
18 A concluding question concerns the tacit assumption of most authors (who herein
follow Joas) that pragmatism can be adequately interpreted as action theory. In stark
contrast to Richard Bernstein’s attempt to distinguish action from practice (see
Bernstein 1971) by arguing that practice was never able to shed the Marxist legacy of
objective determinants whereas action connotes free and self-opinionated actors, I
think that pragmatism is described more accurately as a theory of practice than a
theory of action. Aristotle considers practice as an act that is collective, contingent (he
repeatedly classifies it as that realm of being where things could always be different),
and an end in itself that can be neither reduced to extra-practical foundations nor ever
entirely transparent on a theoretical level (see Hetzel 2008). From the perspective of
philosophical action theories (and I suspect that theories of communicative and
creative action are included here), a subject that already exists prior to practice makes
use of specific means to realize its intentions by manipulating social situations in
accordance with social norms. In this manner, actions are ultimately conceptualized as
based on the acting subject, and in so doing the subject is elevated to a condition of
possibility of action. Joas and his followers in their self-characterization as action
theorists seem to pursue precisely this legacy adopted from Weber and Habermas. But
this is a difficult legacy to reconcile with classic pragmatism, which is centered on a
concept of experience that rejects the idea of an autonomously acting subject.
Experience in general constitutes e.g. for Dewey a “complete interpenetration of self
and world of objects and events” (Dewey 2005: 18), an interpenetration that no longer
allows to distinguish a subject-pole of experience from an object-pole on more than a
merely heuristic level. With direct reference to James, Dewey writes: “Experience is
‘double-barreled’ in that it recognizes in its primary integrity no division between act
and material, subject and object, but contains them both in an unanalyzed totality”
(Dewey 1958: 8). The “place” of experience for Dewey lies in the act of experiencing
itself rather than within the subject that makes the experience. One could say that
Dewey unfounds or desubjectivates experience: experience as “doing and undergoing
in alternation” (Dewey 2005: 46) can’t be adequately described in terms of action theory
nor perception theory. While making an experience, the subject does not exist
beforehand in order to later make an experience, but emerges only along with it: it is
undergoing rather than actively “making” the experience.
19 This conceptual design corresponds more to theoretical endeavors like Whitehead’s
process philosophy, Cornelius Castoriadis’ theory of a social imaginary, the actor-

259
networktheory (on its pragmatist legacy most recently Wieser 2012), the philosophy of
Deleuze and Guattari (whose proximity to pragmatism is pointed out in Rölli 2008) or a
deconstructivist social theory (see Mouffe 1996) than to the action-theoretical tradition
that for Joas includes authors like Parsons, Weber, Durkheim, Tönnies and Simmel. His
creative action is an addition to the rationally and normatively orientated actions this
tradition explores much rather than a transgression of the action theoretical
framework as such. I don’t mean to imply that the subject- and action-critical tradition
I have cited above is the only possible alternative to action theory. I do believe,
however, that a dialogue between subject-critical theories of practice and subject-
centered theories of action would deepen the socialtheoretical reception of pragmatism
beyond the scope of what the – otherwise groundbreaking – contributions of Handlung
und Erfahrung have already accomplished.1
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BERNSTEIN R., (1971), Praxis and Action: Contemporary Philosophies of Human Activity, Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press.
DEWEY J., (2005), Art as Experience, New York, Penguin.
DEWEY J., (1958), Experience and Nature, New York, Dover Publications.
FELLMANN F., (1991), Symbolischer Pragmatismus. Hermeneutik nach Dilthey, Reinbek, Rowohlt.
FREGA R., & F. CARREIRA DA SILVA (eds.), (2011), “Pragmatism and the Social Sciences: A Century of
Influences and Interactions,” European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 3, 2.
HETZEL A., (2008), “Zum Vorrang der Praxis,” in A. Hetzel, J. Kertscher & M. Rölli (eds.),
Pragmatismus. Philosophie der Zukunft?, Weilerswist, Velbrück.
JOAS H., (1996), Die Kreativität des Handelns, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp.
MOUFFE C. (ed.), (1996), Deconstruction and Pragmatism, London and New York, Routledge.
RÖLLI M., (2008), “A pragmatism of difference? Gilles Deleuze’s pragmatic move beyond
structuralism,” in Deleuze International, [deleuze.tausendplateaus.de/1/2008].
RÖLLI M., (2010), “Die nicht-anthropologische Philosophie des radikalen Pragmatismus,” in Sic et
non. zeitschrift für philosophie und kultur. im netz, [sicetnon.org/content/pdf/
roelli_anthropologie.pdf].
SALAVERRÍA H., (2007), Spielräume des Selbst. Pragmatismus und kreatives Handeln, Berlin, Akademie.
SHUSTERMAN R., (2000), Performing Live, Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
WIESER M., (2012), Das Netzwerk von Bruno Latour. Die Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie zwischen Science &
Technology Studies und poststrukturalistischer Soziologie, Bielefeld, Transcript.
WINTER R., (2001), Die Kunst des Eigensinns. Cultural Studies als Kritik der Macht, Weilerswist,
Velbrück.

260
WINTER R., (2008), “‘Populärkultur leben.’ Erfahrung, Macht und Alltagspraxis in den Cultural
Studies,” in A. Hetzel, J. Kertscher and M. Rölli (eds.), Pragmatismus. Philosophie der Zukunft?,
Weilerswist, Velbrück.
NOTES
1. Translated by Julia Schleinkofer
AUTHORS
ANDREAS HETZEL
Technische Universität Darmstadt
a.hetzel[at]phil.tu-darmstadt.de

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European Journal of Pragmatism and

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