Research Paper On John Dewey

In John Dewey's essays he attempts to criticize and reevaluate the traditional distinction between theory and practice. His account of the motivation behind its intellectual progression is attributed to the depreciation of action and ‘doing’ within society, and the cultivation of this sensibility by philosophers, who tended to idealize reality as eternal and immovable so that a spectator theory of knowledge was satisfactory. He ascribes the reason for the ‘quest for certainty’ to an assumption about a fixed state of affairs in reality and rationality upon which our knowledge can be based. Dewey does not believe there is an absolute certainty to attain, and in his essays, he describes why theory and practice are inextricably linked. For Dewey, …show more content…
Originally, work and ‘doing’ to accomplish goals was offered down to serfs and slaves, because doing and making was associated with matter (which is faulty) and thinking about spirituality and immaterial principles was only an activity that could be pursued by those who could give their work to the former. Experience with “the pathos of unfulfilled expectation, the tragedy of defeated purposes and ideals, and the catastrophes of accident” is also partially to blame for the distinction (Haack 183). When philosophers could theorize about a certain state of affairs, it was beneficial to them because they could either change themselves or their environment to escape the “perils of evil” (Haack 384). However, traditional theories of knowledge rely on dogmatic assumptions about the nature of truth to predict how things are, regardless of our effect upon the world, “They glorified the invariant at the expense of change” even though change is …show more content…
He argues that the organs of speech alone may suffice to make statements which are about what is known already and that these statements regard only the past, so the proposition and state of affairs merely summarize each other’s truth or falsity. The pragmatist should instead consider only those statements which contain doubt concerning its truth and statements which search for the truth in propositions, because the former relies on prejudice or dogmatism about what already is, whereas the latter inquirers about what might be relevant now or for future scientific problem-solving. Even assured propositions contain some element of flexibility for further inquiries into their truth and are known to have undergone prior testing. Thus, he says statements should be framed to indicate what is required to test their claims, and all untested claims are to be regarded as hypothetical and conditional to the investigation. Therefore, Dewey’s pragmatic epistemology is primarily concerned with the future, and propositions are a catalyst to produce further inquiry and action. “It is a sign of the progress of events toward their termination, their fulfillment, their consequences.” (Haack