James Garrison

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dewey on Metaphysics, Meaning Making, and Maps James W. Garrison Blueprints and maps are propositions and they exemplify what it is to be propositional.1 [E]very characteristic trait is a quality.... produced and destroyed by existential conditions.2 John Dewey's claim that there are metaphysical generic traits of existence the theory of which provides "a ground-map" for cultural criticism remains controversial. I will work along two intertwining lines to try and clear things up a bit. First, many assume that his reference to a metaphysical map is a metaphor. My paper will show that he uses the idea of a map consistently in many different places throughout his career. Second, my paper will examine how Dewey functionally coordinates ordinary existential traits and their maps within his theory of judgment. We will find that the generic traits and the ground-map of criticism connect in much the same way. Before examining Dewey's theory of judgment, I want to say something about where Dewey's metaphysics fits into his empirical "denotative method." In the conclusion, we wiU look at where metaphysics fits into the architectonic of his entire phUosophy. In between, we wiU examine maps functioning as propositions (especiaUy logical and mathematical universals) as weU as ever-evolving guides to unending inquiry in an unfinished and unfinishable universe. Eventually we wiU see why Dewey insists that "the social" is "The Inclusive PhUosophic Idea." Metaphysics, for Dewey, is simply one tool of cultural criticism among others. First and Last Philosophy in Dewey's Denotative Method Dewey's "denotative method" moves from the immediately given intuitive meanings of qualitative "having" of experience that impart a "sense" of a qualitative, organically whole TRANSACTIONS OFTHE CHARLES S. PEIRCE SOCIETY Vol. 41, No. 4 ©2005 O situation from whence we may select traits, through the experience of "significant " linguistic meanings, such as the propositions of judgment, to the experience of "knowing" as the product of the logical process of inquiry, and back again to primary experience.4 Each phase interpenetrates every 3 other. Here is how Dewey describes the trans-action between primary, noncognitive and secondary, cognitive experience in his original (1925) >■$ introduction to Experience and Nature: ^r There are two avenues of approach to the goal of philosophy. We may " begin with experience in gross, experience in its primary and crude forms ^ [e.g., traits].... Or, we may begin with refined selective products, the a most authentic statements of commended methods of science [e.g., ¿q maps], and work from them back to the primary facts of life. ^ P TT ϕ > Philosophy may start with either immediate existential experience or the 3 experience of mediating meanings. While we may distinguish these two L starting points, we should never construct a dualism from them since both jx occur within experience.6 Dewey explains that "the subject-matter of primary experience sets the problems and furnishes the first data of reflection ""O which constructs the secondary objects of reflection."7 Further, "crude or macroscopic experience" provides the "test and verification" of the secondary objects of reflection. Secondary objects "explain the primary objects, 2 they enable us to grasp them with understanding!'9 The two starting points " differ in direction, but eventually they close to form a circle of expanding? dence. They may then pioneer new pathways, or, having different values, D choose to construct different kinds of maps. ^ Douglas Browning distinguishes "three phases of discussion of the start- 0 ing point."23 The first concerns "the designation of a certain subject matter P1 referred to under the names 'experience' and 'my life'."24 Dewey's empirical « denotative method selects aspects from immediate qualitative experience. The >% second phase involves two things: First, "a reflective moving away from and looking back upon that subject-matter" and, second, "the bringing of a puta- S tive characterization against it." Browning's example of characterization is g "the catalogue of the generic traits of experience." The generic traits are not S antecedent to inquiry; rather they are the products of reflection used to char- 5 ' acterize primary experience. Browning observes that characterization is always ^ provisional; as we wiU find, Dewey insists that the theoretical map proposi- ^ tionaUy representing the existential...

In the end, works of art are the only media of complete and unhindered communication between man and man that can occur in a world full of gulfs and walls that limit community of experience. Occasionally, thoughtful people familiar with both Walt Whitman and philosophical pragmatism will remark on their affinity.1 Some have even argued, correctly, that Whitman influenced American pragmatism, especially the writings of William James and to a lesser extent John Dewey.2 For instance, Raphael C. Allison (2002) insightfully remarks: “Just as for James, for Dewey it is the communicability of Whitman’s art that makes it significant.”3 He then cites some of the best passages in Dewey’s entire corpus to warrant his..

Although Richard Rorty has done much to renew interest in the philosophy of John Dewey, he nonetheless rejects two of the most important components of Dewey's philosophy, that is, his metaphysics and epistemology. Following George Santayana, Rorty accuses Dewey of trying to serve Locke and Hegel, an impossibility as Rorty rightly sees it. Rorty (1982) says that Dewey should have been Hegelian all the way (p. 85). By reconstructing a bit of Hegel's early philosophy of work, and comparing it to Dewey's metaphysics and epistemology we can see that Dewey was indeed Hegelian all the way and that Rorty has constructed a false dilemma. We also gain some interesting insight into Dewey's philosophy by viewing it in terms of labor, tools and language.

[Cause and effect], if they are distinct, are also identical. Even in ordinary consciousness that identity may be found. We say that a cause is a cause, only when it has an effect, and vice versa. Both cause and effect are thus one and the same content: and the distinction between them is primarily only that the one lays down, and the other is laid down.1In the quote above, Hegel claims that cause and effect are only distinct from a particular point of view. A cause only becomes a cause when it has an effect, thus the two apparently opposing terms reverse their roles. The effect is the cause of the cause, and the cause is the effect of its own effect. This article begins with a discussion of what we believe to be ..

This chapter presents a constructivist reading of Dewey's work by establishing a line of development between Dewey's 1896 essay on the reflex arc and the social constructivism explicit in his later works. It demonstrates the relevance of classical Pragmatism to current issues in the philosophy of education, highlighting key theoretical and conceptual components of the cultural construction of meanings, truth claims, and identities. It also looks into Dewey's short essay “Knowledge and Speech Reaction” to identify the connection between speech acts, the constitution of stimuli by responses, and the construction of knowledge objects by the operations of inquiry.

In this essay, Jim Garrison explores the emerging scholarship establishing a Hegelian continuity in John Dewey’s thought from his earliest publications to the work published in the last decade of his life. The primary goals of this study are, first, to introduce this new scholarship to philosophers of education and, second, to extend this analysis to new domains, including Dewey’s theory of inquiry, universals, and creative action. Ultimately, Garrison’s analysis also refutes the traditional account that claims that William James converted Dewey from Hegelian idealism, after which Charles Sanders Peirce inspired him to rebuild his instrumentalism along radically different lines.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that however impressive and useful its results, neuroscience alone does not provide a complete theory of mind. We specifically enlist John Dewey to help dispel the notion that the mind is the brain. In doing so, we explore functionalism to clarify Dewey’s modified functionalist stance and argue for avoiding “the mereological fallacy.” Mereology is the study of part-whole relations. The mereological fallacy arises from confusing the properties of a necessary subfunction with the properties that derive from the unity of the whole functional coordination. We conclude that the mind is a complex distributed biologicalsociocultural function that is not simply located anywhere and, therefore, is not completely in the possession of any one : it occurs wherever it has consequences.

John Dewey is considered not only as one of the founders of pragmatism, but also as an educational classic whose approaches to education and learning still exercise great influence on current discourses and practices internationally. In this book, we first provide an introduction to Dewey's educational theories that is founded on a broad and comprehensive reading of his philosophy as a whole. We discuss Dewey's path-breaking contributions by focusing on three important paradigm shifts - namely, the cultural, constructive and communicative turns in 20th century educational thinking. Secondly, we seek to recontexualize Dewey for a new generation who has come of age in a very different world than that in which Dewey lived and wrote. We provide examples of such recontextualization by connecting his philosophy with six recent and influential discourses (Bauman, Foucault, Bourdieu, Derrida, Levinas, Rorty). These serve as models for other recontexualizations that readers might wish to carry out for themselves.

Having taken the linguistic turn, neo-pragmatists eschew "experience." Prominent among them are Richard Rorty and Robert Brandom who admire Wilfrid Sellars's critique of the Myth of the Given. Brandom affirms, "I have by and large followed my teacher [Rorty] in rejecting the notion of experience as too burdened by noxious baggage—in particular, by the Myth of the Given—to be worth trying to recruit for serious explanatory and expressive work in philosophy".2 My paper removes the burden supposedly imposed by the myth by resorting to Dewey's Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, especially chapter 8, "Immediate Knowledge: Understanding and Inference" where the reader finds arguments against immediate...

[Cause and effect], if they are distinct, are also identical. Even in ordinary consciousness that identity may be found. We say that a cause is a cause, only when it has an effect, and vice versa. Both cause and effect are thus one and the same content: and the distinction between them is primarily only that the one lays down, and the other is laid down.The Logic of Hegel, Translated from ““The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences,”” 3rd ed., trans. William Wallace, §153; hereafter cited as ““Lesser Logic”” parenthetically in the text by section number. Similarly, in the Science of Logic Hegel writes: ““Cause is cause only in so far as it produces an effect, and cause is nothing but this determination, to have an effect, and effect is nothing but this, to have a cause. Cause as such implies its effect, and effect implies cause; in so far as cause has not yet acted, or if it has ceased to act, then it is not cause, and effect in so far as its cause has vanished, is no longer effect but in indifferent actuality””. See also Hegel’s discussion of rain and wetness, color and pigment, and act and motion in ibid., 560–61.

Harvey Siegel’s conception of critical thinking is riddled with unnecessary and confusing dualisms. He rigidly separates ‘critical skill’ and ‘critical spirit’, the philosophical and the causal, ‘is’ and ‘ought’, and the moral and the epistemological. These dualisms are easily traced to his desire to defend an absolutist and decontextualised epistemology. To the Deweyan naturalist these dualisms are unnecessary. Appealing to the pragmatist notion of beliefs as embodied habits of action evincing emotion, I show how language, meanings and the mind, including the mind of the critical thinker, emerge from our biological being.

Recently, feminists like Jane Roland-Martin, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, and others have advocated a conversational metaphor for thinking and rationality, and our image of the rational person. Elizabeth Young-Bruehl refers to thinking as a “constant interconnecting of representations of experiences and an extension of how we hear ourselves and others. There are numerous disadvantages to thinking about thinking as a conversation.We think there are difficulties in accepting the current formulation of the conversational metaphor without question. First, there is danger that we will lose important dialectical connections like that between the self and society. Second, the conversational metaphor alone cannot fully express the way conversations are constructed. We will want to take up the notion of narrative as a metaphor for thinking advocated by Susan Bordo, Alasdair MacIntyre, Jerome Bruner, and others, including Mary Belenky and her colleagues.Eventually, we want to champion narrative and the dramatic narrative of culture as a metaphor for thinking that involves such expressions as sights, insights, silences, as well as sounds, moments of mood and poetic moments. The dramatic narrative provides the structural possibilities needed to criticize certain kinds of conversations, in order to talk about the relations of public and private, self and society and most importantly, about the drama of our lives within and without.The dramatic narrative for thinking helps dispel the dangerous dualisms of mind and body that not even conversation or narration alone can banish, and allows us to frame questions about education that do not require us to separate mind from body. The dramatic narrative metaphor for thinking lets us show who we are, act out what we think, and reconstruct rationality to reflect what many women, and some men, do.

Against the background of the Deweyan tradition of Democracy and Education, we discuss problems of complexity and reductionism in education and educational philosophy. First, we investigate some of Dewey’s own criticisms of reductionist tendencies in the educational traditions, theories, and practices of his time. Secondly, we explore some important cases of reductionism in the educational debates of our own day and argue that a similar criticism in behalf of democracy and education is appropriate and can easily be based on Deweyan terms. Thirdly, we draw some more general conclusions about complexity and reductionism as challenges for democracy and education. Among other things, we argue that powerful social tendencies of capitalist competition and social Darwinism support reductionisms in education and put the democratic project at risk. The tensional relation between democracy and capitalism constitutes a major challenge for educational philosophy in our own time as much as in Dewey’s.

We explore some aspects of the elusive idea of a "teachable moment" with a special emphasis on the role of emotion, intuition, and imagination as well as intuition, paradox and possibility. The teachable moment occurs when students and teachers genuinely share an interest in better understanding something, some situation, or, in the case discussed, some text, and wish to inquire into the object of mutual concern together. Some of the aesthetic elements of John Dewey's theory of inquiry serve as a way to gain insight into the "logic" of creating and sustaining teachable moments

We concentrate on four questions among the many posed by this special collection of papers on Pragmatism and the Hispanic world. They are, first, what took pragmatism beyond the borders of the United States and into the Hispanic world? Next, what are the ideas of Dewey that have had the greatest impact on Hispanic culture? Third, what are the past and present obstacles that has kept the Hispanic world from using pragmatism to deal with many of their educational and social problems? Finally, why does pragmatism still hold great promise and potential for the Hispanic world?

My paper concentrates on Peirce’s late essay, “Issues of Pragmaticism,” which identifies “critical common-sensism” and Scotistic realism as the two primary products of pragmaticism. I argue that the doctrines of Peirce’s critical common-sensism provide a host of commendable curricular objectives for democratic Bildung. The second half of my paper explores Peirce’s Scotistic realism. I argue that Peirce eventually returned to Aristotelian intuitions that led him to a more robust realism. I focus on the development of signs from the vague and indeterminate to the determinate and universal. The primary example will be the evolution of the very idea of number. I believe we will never arrive at the end of number history because we can never fully contain creativity. I draw similar conclusions for the idea of curriculum. Whether or not there is an end to the evolution of signs in Peirce is a matter of debate. I incline toward the opinion there is not, though I am unsure. I conclude by arguing that rationality itself is but the form and structure of poetic creation and that we should embrace paradox and even contradiction rather that become caught in totalizing and totalitarian end of history stories.