When1: 1896
When2: 1938
Who: John Dewey [Dewey, John]
What: philosopher/educator
Where: USA
works\ Psychology [1887]; Study of Ethics [1894]; Reflex arc concept in psychology [1896]; School and Society [1907]; How We Think [1910]; Democracy and Education [1916]; Human Nature and Conduct [1922]; Experience and Nature [1925 and 1929]; Quest for Certainty [1929]; Art as Experience [1934]; Logic [1938]
Detail: He lived 1859 to 1952, was pragmatist, and studied social and psychological processes of problem solving and inquiry. In logic, he developed the idea of statement truth based on context {warranted assertibility}.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is about consummatory experience and secondary qualities.
Education
Children should learn by doing practical things and experiments and by having social experiences. In this way, they learn how to solve problems. They can have more equality, with less social division. People learn by doing {theory of inquiry}.
Epistemology
Inquiry involves having problem in a context, making hypothesis about solution, testing hypothesis in context, refining hypothesis, and retesting. Inquiry is a way of adjusting to environment and is how people unify and order contexts. Inquiry solves problem in context, so people can take proper action for that context. Inquiry can be useful for science, society, and individuals.
Testing ideas involves observing effects {instrumentalism, Dewey}. If idea works or is good, people believe it, but only in proper context. Theories give truths only about observable world. Truth is not final, eternal, or perfect but evolves with time and environment. All knowledge can be false {fallibilism, Dewey}.
Ethics
Human action is for solving psychological and social problems. Through inquiry, people can grow in ability and experience. Means and ends can unify.
Metaphysics
Human action shapes reality. Reality changes and grows.
Politics
Experienced empirically derived laws determine political values.
Democracy is an experiment to allow people and society to grow stably.
Social Sciences>Philosophy>History>Ethics
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Date Modified: 2022.0224