Dewey's Philosophy of Science

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Roberto Gronda

Dewey’s Philosophy
of Science
Roberto Gronda
Dipartimento di Civiltà e Forme del Sapere
Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy

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Acknowledgments

This book is the outcome of many years of research. I started working on Dewey’s
philosophy over a decade ago, when I was an undergraduate at the University of
Turin. Not surprisingly, there are a great many people to whom I owe a debt of
personal and intellectual gratitude.
First of all, I am grateful to Pierluigi Barrotta for substantially encouraging and
supporting my move into the philosophy of science. Without his help, I would never
have started this work: he persuaded me that a book on Dewey’s philosophy of
science was worth writing and provided me with an ideal working environment.
I would like to thank Enrico Pasini, my M.A. advisor. I started working on
pragmatism under his supervision, and he taught me pretty much everything I know
about reading and pondering a philosophical text.
I have been fortunate to work in the Department of Civilizations and Forms of
Knowledge at the University of Pisa. Many of my colleagues spent time discussing
various aspects of my work and making invaluable comments. I would like to thank,
in particular, Raimondo Cubeddu, Adriano Fabris, Enrico Moriconi, Luca Bellotti,
Alfredo Ferrarin, and Alessandra Fussi.
I am also especially grateful to Giacomo Turbanti, Roberto Frega, Torjus
Midtgarden, Danilo Manca, Carlo Gabbani, Lorenzo Buccio, Matteo Santarelli, and
Lorenzo Azzano. They read and commented on portions of this manuscript and
made a number of insightful comments and spotted gaps in the argument.
Many people have greatly assisted me with comments in conversation or writing
on different aspects of this material over the past few years. I would especially
like to thank my Ph.D. supervisor, Massimo Mugnai, and the members of the
committee, Paolo Parrini, Rosa Calcaterra, and James Good. I also thank Giovanni
Maddalena, Sarin Marchetti, Anna Boncompagni, Guido Baggio, Gabriele Gava,
Tullio Viola, and all the members of the Pragma Group, Jorg Völbers, Mathias
Girel, Sami Pihlström, Stéphane Madelrieux, John Shook, David Hildebrand, Jim
Garrison, John Capps, Guido Bonino, Paolo Tripodi, Giuliano Guzzone, Alessandro
Pagnini, Davide Rizza, Giorgio Lando, Andrea Borghini, and Michele Ginammi.

v
vi Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Luisa for her support, patience and encouragement during
the writing of this book.
Most importantly, my gratitude goes to my parents, Orazio and Fulvia, for their
love and support through all these years. Grazie di tutto.
Introduction

Recent times have witnessed a renewed interest in Dewey’s work. In the last few
years, much has been written on his philosophies of politics and education, his
ethics, and his aesthetics; even his philosophy of religion has been investigated
at some depth.1 Though some sign of interest in it has started to emerge outside
pragmatist circles,2 Dewey’s philosophy of science is probably the only relevant

1 See,for instance, Slater (2008) and Slater (2014, Chapter 4).

2 The most influential figure in the relatively brief history of the contemporary confrontation of
analytic philosophy of science with Dewey’s pragmatist approach is Philip Kitcher. See, among
others, Kitcher (2011, 2012), in particular Introduction, Chaps. 1, and 5. In Kitcher (2014), Kitcher
espouses his views about what counts as pragmatism and acknowledges his theoretical debts toward
Dewey’s realism and naturalism. In On Not Being a Pragmatist: Eight Reasons and a Cause,
Ian Hacking denies a direct influence of Dewey’s philosophy of science on his own approach;
as he puts the matter, “I once tried valiantly to read John Dewey, but it did not click” (Hacking
2007, 45). But see also what Hacking writes in Representing and Intervening: “[m]y own view,
that realism is more a matter of intervention in the world, than of representing it in words and
thought, surely owes much to Dewey” (Hacking 1983, 62). It is hardly questionable that there
are some similarities between entity realism and Dewey’s “transformational” realism, to the effect
that our criteria for ontological commitment have to do with the instrumental capacity to interact
with the objects postulated by the best available theory. This point has been lucidly stressed by
French and Da Costa in Science and Partial Truth: A Unitary Approach to Models and Scientific
Reasoning – see French and Da Costa (2003, 177ff.). Contemporary scientific perspectivism seems
to have some points in common with Dewey’s philosophy of science, in particular in what concerns
the conception of naturalism. Ronald Giere labels his own position a “pragmatically inspired
naturalism” and insists on his debt toward the pragmatist tradition, in general, and Dewey, in
particular Giere (1999, 78) – see also Giere (2006). For an interesting analysis of the possible
contributions that a thorough understanding of Dewey’s (and Peirce’s) philosophy of science
can bring to contemporary scientific perspectivism, see Brown (2009, 218ff.). Brown argues that
scientific perspectivists – he names Van Fraassen and Giere in his text, but I think that the point
he makes holds in general – are concerned with the question of purpose and interest, and yet
“the role that purposes play in the processes of representation [...] has been fairly under-specified”
(Brown 2009, 218). Now, one of the merits of Dewey’s approach is that it provides a sophisticated
analysis of the structure of scientific practice, centered around the notion of ends in view. In this
sense, Brown holds that contemporary scientific perspectivism can benefit from a confrontation

vii
viii Introduction

aspect of his thought to have received no adequate attention from pragmatist

scholars. True, there are a few contributions that address specific features of
Dewey’s theory of inquiry; yet a comprehensive study of Dewey’s philosophy of
science is lacking.3 This book aims to fill the gap.
Now, the task of reconstructing Dewey’s philosophy of science can be carried
out from different perspectives. A purely historical reconstruction can be offered,
which aims to highlight and account for the differences between Dewey’s views on
that topic and those of his contemporaries, as well as for the different phases of
his thought.4 Alternatively, one can opt for a strongly theoretical approach, which
purports to assess the theoretical soundness and validity of Dewey’s views in light
of the most recent research in the field.
It goes without saying that both approaches are valid and essential to a better
understanding of Dewey’s philosophy of science. Yet in this work, I shall adopt
neither of these approaches. The aim of this book is to reconstruct and organize
in a systematic and coherent way Dewey’s scattered contributions to philosophy of
science. In other words, my aim is to present Dewey in his own terms – or, at least,
in terms that are as close as possible to his own self-understanding. I have reason to
believe this approach is a good choice. On the one hand, I think that a historical
work is much needed but that it has to be preceded by a detailed and accurate
reconstruction of Dewey’s philosophy of science. On the other hand, I believe that
any possible translation of the latter into contemporary terms requires the distinctive
features of Dewey’s position to be ascertained and properly assessed.
In this book, I will therefore present my semantic interpretation of Dewey’s
philosophy of science. “Semantic” here should be understood in a broad way, close
to its pre-theoretical usage: in everyday language, it is common to say that a certain
thing has a certain meaning for a certain person or that an agent knows what a
certain object means, as when it is said that she knows that smoke means fire or
that a specific symbol – say, a road sign – means that some action is allowed or
prohibited. I use “semantic” as a label to refer to the general fact that something has

with pragmatist philosophy of science; I completely agree with him on this point. Other forms of
perspectivism are Kantianly inspired: see, in particular, Massimi (2010a, 2018). For a discussion
of the strengths and weaknesses of this particular version of perspectivism, see Massimi (2016)
and Kitcher’s reply, in which he sketches the main outlines of a pragmatist perspectivism which he
considers to be theoretically sounder than a Kantian one (Kitcher 2016, 118–119).
3 The lack of interest in Dewey’s philosophy of science is certainly surprising, and yet it is not

an isolated incident in pragmatist scholarship. Indeed, with the remarkable exception of Peirce,
the concern of classical pragmatists both with science and with the philosophical reflection over
science and scientific activity has passed largely unremarked. For a very detailed reconstruction
and analysis of the pragmatist tradition in 20th philosophy of science, see Almeder (2007) and
Pihlström (2008). In Dewey’s case, however, the neglect of Dewey’s philosophy of science is
particularly bizarre since it is hardly deniable that his theory of inquiry – which is the formula
that Dewey uses to refer to what we nowadays call philosophy of science – is central to his entire
philosophical project.
4 Some excellent work has been done in this regard. See, in particular, Richardson (2002), Mormann

(2007), Howard (2003), Reisch (2005), and the recent collection of essays Pihlström et al. (2017).
Introduction ix

“meaning.” From the pragmatist perspective that Dewey endorses, being meaningful
means having the capacity to affect and modify the responses that an agent can give
to a specific environmental stimulus.
As I read it, Dewey’s philosophy of science is built around this fundamental
insight. Scientific inquiry is the process through which an agent succeeds in
developing highly refined conceptual tools that modify her modes of response and,
in so doing, improve and enrich the quality of her transactions with the objects of
her environment. This process can be described in two different ways: in naturalistic
terms, as the process of transformation of the habits of an organism complex enough
to master the use of language, and, in semantic terms, as the process through
which the significances of commonsense objects are enriched by the meanings of
the concepts that are introduced and articulated within the best scientific theories
available. To put it briefly, the idea behind this assumption is that when a scientific
theory is accepted – say, contemporary atomic theory – the commonsense object
water becomes, in some specific contexts, H2 O: the significances of the former are
modified and enriched since the agent is now capable of dealing with water in new
and more articulated forms.
These two descriptions are substantially equivalent: consequently, by privileging
the semantic reading, I by no means intend to minimize or downgrade the impor-
tance of Dewey’s naturalism. I take the semantic interpretation as somehow more
fundamental in this context and for the purposes of this study on the ground that
it makes it easier to clarify the role and function played by the different linguistic
elements that constitute scientific inquiry. Dewey’s pragmatist account of scientific
concepts, his views of the relationship between science and common sense, his
functional account of the elements of inquiry, his notion of scientific objectivity, and
his rejection of scientific instrumentalism in favor of a scientific realism revolving
around the notion of activity – all these tenets will be shown to depend on Dewey’s
fundamental semantic insight.
As should be clear from these remarks, Dewey’s approach to philosophy of
science is strongly idiosyncratic – so much so that the attempt to understand
Dewey’s philosophy of science on its own terms may seem a task unworthy of
pursuit. Accordingly, one may be led to argue that I picked the wrong approach.
After all, it might be said, the idea of translation is fascinating: you take something
and translate it into a different, more familiar language; as a consequence of that,
its philosophical import stands out clearly. So, why not try this approach instead of
undertaking an effort at reconstruction of a philosophical proposal in terms that are
so strikingly different from the ones that are in use?
The point is that translation is probably the most problematic and controversial
activity of all. It presupposes the idea that language is a kind of neutral and inert
medium that receives and faithfully transmits any content that may be formulated
within it. I reject this assumption – and I particularly reject it in the present case. I
believe that there are deep metaphilosophical differences that prevent the translation
and direct assimilation of Dewey’s views within the framework of much of classical
and contemporary analytic philosophy of science.
x Introduction

Here is the basic idea of this book: Dewey’s philosophy of science must be
framed and understood in the context of his distinctive metaphilosophical outlook;
and the reason why many of his theses in the field of philosophy of science may
easily look bizarre or unsound – to name a few examples, the idea that propositions
are neither true nor false, the idea that inquiry has to do with the reconstruction of
objects, or his rejection of the principle of compositionality – is that they are strongly
dependent on Dewey’s metaphilosophical views. As I use it, metaphilosophy does
not simply tell us what philosophy is; more importantly, it tells us what counts as a
genuine philosophical problem, as well as what counts as a satisfactory solution
to a genuine philosophical problem. It should come as no surprise, therefore,
that different metaphilosophical agendas lead to different first-order philosophical
theses.
Now, one of the most common moves that I make in this book is that of shift-
ing attention from first-order philosophical theses to Dewey’s metaphilosophical
commitments and demands. On many occasions, I will ask the reader to change
her traditional mindset and try to see things from a different perspective. I am
aware that this is something requiring a clarification. The rest of this introduction
is dedicated to providing such clarification. In so doing, I will also justify – though
mainly indirectly – the approach that I have adopted in this study, as well as its
contemporary theoretical relevance.
In their recent and much debated Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Nature of
Philosophy, Talisse and Aikin have called “metaphilosophical ascent” the shift of
attention from first-order philosophical disputes to metaphilosophical disagreement.
They have also stressed that the idea of a metaphilosophical ascent is likely to
lead to some sort of antinomy: the more you insist on the dependence of first-
order philosophical theses on metaphilosophical stances, the more you run the
risk of making philosophical disputes unsubstantial.5 And they have argued that
pragmatists “have tended to place their metaphilosophical agenda at center stage”;
that among classical pragmatists, Dewey is the one who is willing to acknowledge
the most robust role to metaphilosophy; and that his metaphilosophical impulses are
pernicious (Aikin and Talisse 2017, 137).
According to this reading, my insistence on the philosophical relevance of the
metaphilosophical assumptions of Dewey’s philosophy of science would amount
to an admission that his first-order philosophical theses – about the function and
nature of science, about scientific objectivity, and about scientific realism – have no
value independently of the framework within which they are formulated. In this
sense, the metaphilosophical ascent leads to an all-or-nothing approach to first-
order philosophical issues: disagreements on first-order philosophical theses are
relocated to a higher plane, where no genuine disagreement is possible. Rational

5 Theyformulate this point as follows: “The puzzle, then, can be posed as a metaphilosophical
antinomy. On the one hand, we seek to accommodate the thought that first-order philosophical
programs are manifestations of metaphilosophical stances; on the other, we want to preserve the
thought that genuine philosophical disagreement is possible” (Aikin and Talisse 2017, 136).
Introduction xi

disagreement – disagreement over specific philosophical theses – is transformed

into and replaced with disagreement about what metaphilosophical approach one
likes the most. And such disagreement cannot be rationally resolved: it is a matter
of personal preference.
I do not agree with Aikin and Talisse on this point, for several reasons. I mention
only a few of them. First, I think that their account of the relationship between
metaphilosophical assumptions and first-order philosophical theses is too simplistic.
They strongly distinguish between metaphilosophical assumptions and first-order
philosophical views, without taking into account the fact that the latter can also
be understood as the logical articulation of the former. Second, I believe that their
conclusion – to the effect that there is no genuine disagreement at the philosophical
level – is too rash in that it excludes the possibility that two persons can disagree at
the metaphilosophical level while sharing the same first-order philosophical theses.
In this sense, Aikin and Talisse’s argument is open to the criticism that Laudan
leveled against the hierarchical model of rationality (Laudan 1984, 43ff.).
On a more specific level, I do not share their account of Dewey’s metaphilo-
sophical commitments. They read Dewey as advancing a “sociological critique of
traditional philosophy”, and they hold that he is not looking for a “new method
for doing philosophy nor a new way to resolve traditional philosophical problems”,
but that he rather aims at a “wholesale reconstruction of philosophy.” And they
conclude that “philosophy reconstructed along Deweyan lines does not aspire to
address traditional problems”; rather the contrary, it gets over these problems and
“takes up the wholly new problems deriving from the interface of contemporary
democracy and modern science” (Aikin and Talisse 2017, 142).
My interpretation of Dewey’s philosophy is more traditional. I concede that the
sociological critique of traditional philosophy is a relevant aspect of his thought; I
also agree with Aikin and Talisse that some of the problems that Dewey addresses
are wholly new, though he couches them in the language of traditional philosophy.
For instance, there are good reasons to hold that Dewey’s conception of experience
is one of these radically new problems, which he invented. Nonetheless, I do
believe that these metaphilosophical views are grounded on a more fundamental
assumption.
As I read him, Dewey’s fundamental metaphilosophical assumption is the idea of
the primacy of activity. Accordingly, Dewey’s genuine metaphilosophical challenge
is that of translating traditional problems into a practice-oriented or activity-oriented
framework. In so doing, new problems arise; many of these traditional problems are
transformed and modified; some others lose their relevance and fade away. But here
is the point: one of the theoretical advantages of Dewey’s metaphilosophical stance
is that it is capable of accommodating and accounting for other metaphilosophical
approaches. As a consequence of that, Dewey’s philosophy is also capable of
accommodating and accounting for first-order philosophical theses that are not in
continuity with his metaphilosophy.
This claim is controversial, and I do not want to argue here for its overall validity:
there might be parts of Dewey’s philosophy that are not amenable to this kind of
treatment. But I believe that this is precisely the strategy that Dewey implements in
xii Introduction

his philosophy of science. An example may be useful here. Consider the Preface to
Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. Here, Dewey writes:
In the present state of logic, the absence of any attempt at symbolic formulation will
doubtless cause serious objection in the minds of many readers. This absence is not due
to any aversion to such formulation. On the contrary, I am convinced that acceptance of the
general principles set forth will enable a more complete and consistent set of symbolizations
than now exists to be made. The absence of symbolization is due, first, to a point mentioned
in the text, the need for development of a general theory of language in which form and
matter are not separated; and, secondly, to the fact that an adequate set of symbols depends
upon prior institution of valid ideas of the conceptions and relations that are symbolized.
Without fulfilment of this condition, formal symbolization will (as so often happens at
present) merely perpetuate existing mistakes while strengthening them by seeming to give
them scientific standing. (LW12, 4)

Here, it is clear that Dewey is not interested in denying the validity of alternative
approaches. The point is rather that of putting things in the right perspective and
order. A metaphilosophical stance that focuses on language rather than on activity
is not fated to develop wrong first-order philosophical theses: as Dewey puts it,
there is no aversion on his part to symbolic formulation, and, consequently, there
is no aversion – at least in principle – to the consequences that follow from
its adoption. Clearly, some of the first-order philosophical theses related to that
particular metaphilosophy have to be radically modified, while others have to be
abandoned. But this is not what Dewey is concerned with. As I read it, Dewey’s
criticism is directed against the idea that such an approach can be taken as primitive
and fundamental. This is what Dewey cannot accept. The fundamental level of
analysis – which does not exclude that other, less fundamental levels are possible
– is that of activity, and this metaphilosophical option is integral to the first-
order thesis, supported by the best scientific evidence available, that human beings
are natural organisms transacting with their environment. In this sense, Dewey’s
metaphilosophy is objectively assessable: it is part of a naturalistic and anti-
reductionist image of man in the world. And this is an issue that is of considerable
contemporary interest.6
Finally, there is another important aspect to which I would like to call attention.
Metaphilosophical choices are not a matter of taste; they can be rationally motivated.
For instance, it may be shown that some sort of change in metaphilosophical stance
is needed because of an explanatory lack in the existing framework of analysis.
In my view, the recent practical turn in philosophy of science is a case of this
kind.7 As I read it, the emphasis on the pragmatic dimension of scientific activity

6 What I have in mind here is Price’s distinction between subject naturalism and object naturalism,
and the debate that followed. See, in particular, Price (2011), especially Chapter 9, and Price et al.
(2015).
7 The literature on this topic is wide and far from homogeneous. See, in particular, the collections

of essays (Nersessian 1987; Pickering 1992; Schatzki et al. 2000; Soler et al. 2014; Agazzi and
Heinzmann 2015). See also the influential works of Joseph Rouse, in particular (Rouse 1996, 2002,
2015).
Introduction xiii

is a consequence of the acknowledgment of the theoretical shortcomings of the

theoretical apparatus of traditional philosophy of science.
Now, Dewey’s metaphilosophical insistence on the category of activity is
certainly at odds with traditional analytic approaches to philosophy of science. As
Giere has noticed, an interesting fact in need of explanation is why “a naturalistic
pragmatism incorporating an empirical theory of inquiry [got] replaced by a
philosophy that regarded induction as a formal relationship between evidence and
hypothesis” (Giere 1996, 347). Be that as it may, for quite a long time, philosophers
of science working in the latter tradition have largely neglected Dewey’s approach,
even though many of them – consider, for instance, Ernest Nagel, Patrick Suppes,
C. West Churchman, and Richard Rudner – had been influenced by or exposed to
it and even though some specific Deweyan theses had been incorporated into the
theoretical framework of the discipline.8
On the contrary, Dewey’s philosophy of science is strongly sympathetic with
recent philosophical attempts to understand the nature of scientific practices. This
point has been lucidly acknowledged by Hasok Chang who has repeatedly stressed
the similarities between his approach and Dewey’s views.9 But Chang is far from
being alone in stressing this point: for instance, the same has been done, though
from a different perspective, by Arthur Fine (Fine 2007, 59).
I do not want to enter into this area in detail here. My point is a general one.
I believe that the affinity between the practical turn in philosophy of science and
Dewey’s philosophy of science sets the stage for a more accurate and meaningful
understanding of the latter. But I would like to take a step further. I may be wrong
in this opinion, but I think that the debate on the nature of scientific practices is
still largely underdeveloped. The notion of practice is an elusive one: it is not clear

8 The most relevant of these contributions is Dewey’s naturalism. Thanks to Quine, who explicitly
approves Dewey’s naturalism in Ontological relativity, analytic philosophy of science was
somehow compelled to take Dewey’s pragmatism into serious consideration (Quine 1969, 26–29).
Quine’s rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction too can be seen as a pragmatist move of a
distinctively Deweyan style. Much has been written on Quine’s relationship with pragmatism (see,
in particular, Capps (1996) and Godfrey-Smith (2013b)). Barrotta has convincingly shown that the
argument advanced by West Churchman and Rudner in support of the thesis that “moral evaluations
are inevitably included in the acceptance of a theory” is strongly indebted to pragmatism (Barrotta
2018, 49ff.). It should be clear, therefore, that I am not interested in denying that some sort
of continuity exists, on some specific themes, between Dewey’s pragmatism and the subsequent
analytic philosophy of science.
9 See, among others, Chang (2011b, 211), Chang (2012, 215ff.), Chang (2014, 71), and, in

particular, Chang (2016). In the latter text, he writes: “I propose [...] a re-vitalized pragmatist notion
of ‘coherence’, implicit in John Dewey’s theory of knowledge, which is irreducible to logical
relations between statements. I define (pragmatist) coherence as a harmonious fitting-together of
actions that leads to the successful achievement of one’s aims.” The distinctive feature of this notion
of coherence is that it “pertains to an activity, not to a set of propositions,” in that it is defined “in
relation to the aims of the activity in question.” Coherence is, therefore, to be understood as “the
chief characteristic of a successful activity” (Chang 2016, 112–113). In my view, Chang’s shift of
attention from propositions to activity is a metaphilosophical move that is very close in spirit to
Dewey’s metaphilosophical approach.
xiv Introduction

how to handle it, and it is difficult to find a philosophical apparatus that could
satisfactorily account for its distinctive features. In my view, it is difficult even to
understand whether or not it has a distinctively philosophical use.
In this context, I hold that Dewey’s philosophy of science provides a useful
theoretical framework for elaborating a consistent account of scientific practices.
True, Dewey rarely uses the expression “scientific practice”; he prefers to speak of
“secondary experience,” “reflection,” and “scientific inquiry.” And yet Dewey did
a lot of work in explaining what a scientific practice is, in clarifying the criteria
of identity of scientific practices, in developing metaphilosophical tools for the
description and analysis of the normative bonds that tie their elements together, and
in elaborating a theory of the ontological commitments of a scientific practice. I am
persuaded that all this work, if adequately understood, has a remarkable relevance
in the contemporary situation.
It is for this reason that I have chosen to follow a reconstructive approach.
Clearly, this choice is far from being theoretically innocent. I do not pretend that my
reading is neutral and philosophically unengaged: reconstruction and clarification
do not mean or entail theoretical neutrality. So, even though I have tried to stick to
Dewey’s terminology, and I have abstained from introducing contemporary notions
that may lead to a harmful distortion of his views, my interpretation of Dewey’s
philosophy of science is based on the assumption that the latter is to be read as a
philosophy of scientific practices, which is couched in the language of experience
and centered around the idea of inquiry as a semantic process of reconstruction
and enrichment of the significances of the objects that are used by the agent in her
transactions with the world. This should be borne in mind when reading the book.

Plan of the Book

The first two chapters are preliminary. They are dedicated to present those concepts
that are necessary in order to understand Dewey’s philosophy of science, which is
analyzed and assessed in detail in Chaps. 3, 4, and 5.
In Chap. 1, I frame Dewey’s philosophy of science in the wider context of
his notion of experience. Notoriously, Dewey’s account of experience has posed
serious difficulties to his interpreters and has been at the center of the quarrel
between the defenders of classical pragmatism and the linguistic or analytic neo-
pragmatists. My proposal is irenic: I take Dewey’s experience to be a function
performed by living beings who have the capacity to master the use of language.
By conceiving experience as the locus of meaning rather than as a kind of object, I
focus on the metaphilosophical use that Dewey makes of the notion of experience
thus understood, showing that the notion of experience is introduced to account
for the plurality of activities or life-behaviors in which human beings are engaged.
Finally, I account for the distinctive features of those complex and highly refined
activities that Dewey calls “secondary experiences” and that we would call, in our
contemporary language, “scientific practices.”
Introduction xv

In Chap. 2, I address Dewey’s philosophy of language. This chapter strengthens

and refines the conclusions reached by the first, thus providing a more fine-
grained analysis of the structure of life-behaviors. Dewey’s theory of inquiry is
grounded in the fundamental distinction that Dewey draws between signs and
symbols and between significance and meaning. However, that distinction is easily
misunderstood. I locate the difference between significance and meaning in the kind
of response that signs and symbols solicit, and, in so doing, I explore the relevance
of Dewey’s semantic externalism and anti-representationalism. Then I proceed to
investigate the differences between commonsense and scientific concepts. I pave
the way for the formulation of the semantic account of inquiry that I espouse in
Chaps. 3 and 4.
Chapter 3 is dedicated to the analysis of the temporal pattern of inquiry. This
chapter is mainly metaphilosophical. Indeed, the thesis of the chapter is that the
import of Dewey’s idea of inquiry should be “cashed out” at a metaphilosophical
level, in terms of the language that we should use to describe the structure of
scientific activities. More precisely, I argue that Dewey’s naturalism, together with
his emphasis on the metaphilosophical primacy of the category of activity, puts a
number of relevant constraints on what counts as a good philosophical explanation
of the different phases that make up scientific inquiries. In this context, I offer a
detailed reconstruction of Dewey’s concepts of situation and tertiary quality, as well
as a new account of his highly controversial notion of warranted assertibility.
In Chap. 4, I discuss the functional elements through which scientific inquiry
is carried out. This chapter elaborates on the results reached in Chap. 2. Dewey
is explicit that all the elements that are used in inquiry – and which he calls
“propositions” – are linguistic, and that taken together they contribute to the
construction of the judgment that closes inquiry. More precisely, the function of
the existential and the universal propositions – evidence and a priori “knowledge,”
respectively – is that of constructing the significances and the meanings that will
eventually become, when inquiry has reached its satisfactory conclusion, the subject
and the object of the final judgment. One of Dewey’s most distinctive theses is that
the construction of judgment coincides with the construction of scientific objectivity.
Indeed, within Dewey’s framework, the notion of object is logical: there is no
objectivity prior to inquiry. The final part of the chapter is, therefore, devoted to
assessing Dewey’s pragmatist account of objectivity, with the aim of showing how
the latter paves the way for the formulation of a sound form of scientific pluralism.
In Chap. 5, I deal with the issue of scientific realism. Traditionally, Dewey’s phi-
losophy of science has been considered as a prototypical form of instrumentalism.
I think that this reading is incorrect and that there are good reasons to argue that
Dewey is a scientific realist. The problem is rather that of figuring out what kind
of scientific realism he embraces and defends in his texts. I reject the interpretation
– advanced by Peter Godfrey-Smith – that Dewey’s scientific realism is a form of
structural realism. Relying on the conclusions reached in the previous chapters, I
outline the main features of what I call Dewey’s articulative realism, whose key
assumption is the idea that the commitment to the existence of the entities postulated
xvi Introduction

by our best scientific theories is a matter of the kind of activities that an agent is
capable of undertaking.
A final word is due on what the reader will not find in this book. Dewey’s
philosophy of science is usually associated with his views about the relations
between science and society. So, a book on Dewey’s philosophy of science that
does not address that issue is likely to be judged incomplete or inadequate. Clearly,
I am ready to acknowledge the importance of a careful analysis of this topic for
an overall assessment of Dewey’s philosophy of science. Nonetheless, I will not
deal with it here for a few reasons. First, I believe that Dewey’s account of the
strong connection existing between scientific activity and the social context in
which that activity is carried out is theoretically secondary to his philosophy of
science. Consequently, I have preferred to focus on the issue that I consider to be
most basic. Second, there already are studies devoted to Dewey’s conception of the
relations between science and society. For those who are interested in this aspect of
Dewey’s philosophy, Barrotta’s recent book, Scientists, Democracy and Society: A
Community of Inquirers, says pretty much everything I think should be said about
that topic.
Finally, it is indisputable, in my opinion, that Dewey’s provocative thesis of
an intrinsic connection existing between science and society poses a powerful
challenge to contemporary philosophy of science. However, I also think that
Dewey’s solution is, quite inevitably, out of date: Dewey’s world is too different
from ours to believe that the conceptual tools he developed to solve his problems
can be applied to present conditions. Holding the contrary view would be totally
unDeweyan. In this case, we do not need a work of conceptual reconstruction and
clarification; what we need is, rather, an effort of critical reappraisal and original
transformation of Dewey’s conceptual apparatus. I have already done some work in
this direction.10 I hope to come up with new and better ideas in the near future.

10 See, in particular, Gronda (2018b) and Barrotta and Gronda (2019).