LIS 450 PT. Pragmatic Technology: Notes on Dewey

Context—rapid change; technological developments; scientific advances; uncertainties

Reconstruction of philosophy—"spectator theory of knowledge" as prescientific world view; "root of most philosophic evil"; experimentalist philosophy; invert relation between science and philosophy

Anti-dualism—real/apparent; science/art; subject/object; individual/social; school/society; material/conceptual

Logical theory—Dewey's "first and last love"; as inquiry into inquiry; logical forms accrue to subject matter, originate in inquiry, control inquiry

Some keywords:

Knowledge—vs. knowing; knowing and acting intimately related; warranted assertibility

Experience—"ordinary experience"; things are what they are experienced to be; is "an affair primarily of doing"; transform felt situation into aesthetic experience; lived experience; "window shade" example; temporal vs. spatial development of experience

Situation—both a context and a matter for inquiry; given all at once as a qualitative whole; a context in which the processes of inquiry transform the context; ecological theory of experience

Continuity—moral, social, political problems; learning as extracting meaning from experience

Education—as preparation for life is a self contradiction; "watertight container" example; interactivity and continuity of experience

Inquiry—"controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into ... a unified whole"

Reflection—going outside the immediate situation; finding a tool to operate upon the situation; proposal not solution; every reflective experience an instrument for the further production of meaning (two ways)

Technology—means of resolving a problematic situation; includes science, fine and applied arts; hammer, phrase, organization