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Nature as Event: A Study on John Dewey’s Naturalism

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John Dewey’s naturalism requires viewing nature and experience from the perspective of holism, emphasising the continuity between these two. To Dewey, nature is not a fixed entity, but an event in an ongoing process of unfolding. The temporality of an event can meet Dewey’s requirement of constructing a philosophical notion about change and development. The event has a relatively stable structure. The continuity between living things and non-living things becomes possible because of the characteristic transactions of events, and experience thus becomes something emergent in nature and actively intervenes in its unfolding. The emergence of human intelligence and the application of language has lifted nature to a controllable and operable plane, making experience a crucial guide for the unfolding of nature.

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Naturalism dominated twentieth century American philosophy.1 Naturalism is a philosophical worldview that relies upon experience, reason, and especially science for developing an understanding of reality. Naturalism demands that these three modes of understanding together shall control our notion of reality. Varieties of naturalism emerge because the many essential factors of experience, reason, and science can be coherently related in numerous ways. All naturalisms demand that experience, reason, and science be taken most seriously so that no fourth mode of understanding can be permitted to override them. This triadic unity moderates the excesses of phenomenalism and idealism, and filters out spiritualism and supernaturalism for their introduction of radical and mysterious discontinuities into knowledge and reality. Scientific method and knowledge play a crucial role in all naturalisms. Varieties of naturalism may be distinguished along three dimensions: the degree of ontological confidence given to science; the breadth of explanatory discretion given to science; and the number of scientific fields permitted to describe reality. From the logically possible combinations resulting from these dimensions, seven viable varieties of naturalism are distinguished and contrasted. Each of these varieties of naturalism has had champions in the course of twentieth century American philosophy, such as Dewey, Whitehead, Santayana, Quine, Sellars, Davidson, Churchland, Putnam, and Searle. The conclusion discusses the three major competitors during the twentieth century for the title of the “genuine” naturalism: Reductive Physicalism, Non-Reductive Physicalism, and Perspectival Pluralism. The struggles among these great naturalisms and the other viable varieties of naturalism have been bequeathed to the twenty-first century, and their outcomes may decide the ultimate fate of naturalism itself. Stage One: Science, Knowledge, and Reality. There are six primary options when considering whether science yields knowledge about reality: 1. Reality cannot be known at all—radical skepticism. 2. Reality only consists of what science cannot know about—only other non-sciences know reality. 3. Science rarely gives reliable knowledge about reality—other non-sciences know reality far better. 4. Science is able to give increasingly reliable knowledge about reality. 5. Science is the only source of knowledge about reality. 6. Reality only consists of what science knows about. Each of these six options present pathways to many different worldviews. Because naturalism at minimum presupposes that the knowledge about reality provided by science can seriously rival any other alleged source of knowledge, options 1, 2, and 3 are rejected by naturalists. Options 4, 5, and 6 can lead to varieties of naturalism. (4) Science is able to give increasingly reliable knowledge about reality. There may be other ways besides science for knowing reality, but those ways are not better than science. Science needs assistance from other ways of knowledge to fully understand reality. This option searches for a comprehensive worldview formed by blending together ways of knowledge. Two interesting varieties: (4)A. Ontological Dualism: there are two (or more) kinds of reality, knowable through two or more ways. For example, perhaps introspection is a non-scientific way of knowing reality because we are consciously aware of mental realities that science can never explain—leading to Mind-Body Dualism. (4)B. Synoptic Monism: there is only one kind of ultimate reality, but it is knowable through two or more ways. We consciously know of realities (perhaps mental in nature) that science cannot fully explain. Varieties include Dual Aspect Monism and also Panpsychism, which holds that the natural world explored by science is ultimately composed of entities that have a mental/spiritual aspect. Unlike option (4)A, synoptic monism can be used to develop kinds of naturalism. (5) Science is the only source of knowledge about reality. The only type of knowledge is scientific knowledge. However, some of reality consists of entities that cannot be known by science, simply because science is not designed to provide knowledge about these entities. Two interesting varieties: (5)A. Perspectival Realism: we are acquainted with the entities unknowable through science because we experience these entities in some other way. For example, much of experience that provides the data for science is not itself also known by science. Specific types include Emergent Naturalism (mental entities emerge from, but are not reducible to, physical entities) and Pragmatic Naturalism, which both offer...
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:In this paper, I will press Dewey's talk of the self, consciousness, and self-consciousness as it is developed in Experience and Nature together with some attention to Dewey's other great experiential text, Art as Experience. I will suggest that Hegel's developmental and dialectical understanding of self-consciousness occurs in Dewey's work, albeit in naturalized form. My claim is not that Dewey reproduces Hegel's dialectic, or that Dewey's notion of self-consciousness emerges as isomorphic with Hegel's own. In fact, developing this understanding of consciousness and self-consciousness leads me to conclude that for Dewey, these are roughly equivalent to experimental inquiry and science. To inquire, I claim, is to be 'conscious of.' To inquire experimentally, deliberately, and methodically is to conduct science. Consciousness and selfconsciousness emerge as activities, rather than as all-pervading states of the organism. In a claim similar to one Hegel makes in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Dewey maintains that intellectual activity—thought and reflection—is the proper occasion for self and other-awareness. The moments of pause, doubt, and unsettlement that Dewey claims are the beginnings of experimental inquiry are also the proper beginnings of consciousness. Dewey's particular take on consciousness is at one with his emergent, as opposed to absolutist, understanding of the self.
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Article
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Article
Pragmatism is an emergentist version of non-reductive naturalism: subjectivity arises as a natural development of certain kinds of organisms and their interactions with their environment. Subjectivity must be understood dynamically, in relation to (habits of) action; therefore, pragmatism is a philosophical anthropology, not just a philosophy of mind. Pragmatic naturalism not only avoids scientistic reductions of subjectivity but is compatible with a reconceptualized transcendental perspective on subjectivity; however, the problem of (transcendental) solipsism must not be ignored. Pragmatist philosophy of mind and subjectivity must engage with metaphysical questions about the way(s) the world is for us, in a manner ultimately connected with ethics.
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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.
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