Dewey’s Theory of Knowledge

Abstract

A central theme to be found in Dewey's writings is his criticism of theories of knowledge proposed throughout history of West ern philosophy. None of once familiar isms, whether it be a variant of empiricism, rationalism, or idealism, escaped Dewey's scrutiny. And each in its turn proved to be unacceptable to Dewey, because it was found that each rested upon what Dewey referred to as the philosophical fallacy, namely the conversion of eventual functions into antecedent existence, or fallacy of selective em phasis.1 Basically, this fallacy amounted for Dewey to emphasis of one aspect of scientific inquiry to exclusion of rest, and taking features characteristic of that aspect as paradigmatic for purpose of accounting for knowledge. Thus, for example, advo cates of what Dewey called sensationalism*, for whom knowledge was to be explicated in terms of an immediate acquaintance with a perceptual given, emphasized an aspect of scientific inquiry, viz., that inquiry is engaged in only when some given situation is prob lematic, without regard to fact that even those features of a problematic situation, which are taken to be given and stable fea tures for purposes of resolving problem, are so taken only pro visionally, depending upon whether ensuing inquiry is successful in resolving problem at hand. The question remains, however, whether all problems one would expect an adequate theory of knowledge to handle are in fact settled when scientific method itself is taken as paradigmatic for purpose of accounting for knowledge. This is to ask whether instru mentalism, as Dewey conceived it, is itself an adequate theory of knowledge. I cannot attempt an exhaustive answer to this question here, if only because I cannot specify, nor am I confident that any one to date has specified, all conditions of adequacy a theory of knowledge must meet. What I shall do instead is consider some criticisms raised against Dewey's instrumentalism which were in