Dewey's Empirical Naturalism

Dewey's empirical naturalism is pragmatically naturalist empiricism based on his reconstruction of the conception of experience.He criticized the empirical views of the traditional philosophies, including the Greek's notion of experience as an opinion and arts, the view of experience as barrier for knowledge in the idealism of modern philosophy, and the doctrine of experience as the origin of knowledge in British empiricism, and thus Dewey reconstructed the new empirical theory surpassing the subject-object dualism.As the great master of American originated pragmatism, Dewey inherited in his thoughts deep traditional American naturalism, he had experienced directly the huge changes happened in the 19-20 century turn in the society of the US, and actively looked on the scientific achievements in such areas as physics and psychology, and combined Hegelian holism, Darwinian evolution and the classical pragmatism, and rendered the efficient method that could be applied to the areas of education, politics, morals etc.Dewey's naturalist empiricism is not only a philosophical ontology, but an epistemology as well as a methodology, which provides us a thinking approach for various problems in reality. Dewey's empirical method is connected to phenomenological method, typically represented in the directivity of knowing experience, perspicuity and scientific quality grasping the appearances. Dewey's empirical naturalism is communicable to Heideggerian Existential philosophy, due to their opposition of quest of fixed certainty and claiming for the significance and values of life-world which is open for implementation by practical activities. Further development of his empirical method could render the structure of experience, and may lead to empirical constructivism and a philosophical methodology based on empirical world and multi-layered structure.As the representative of the golden age of American pragmatism, John Dewey's philosophy assembles the characteristics of the American pragmatism, and it typically reflects the American time spirit (Zeitgeist) during his life time.And that spirit is a response in thought to the trend of times, such as the radical social transform caused by the industrial revolution, the impact of evolution upon the traditional Christianity and national traits originated from European cultures. Dewey's philosophy as the time spirit could be traced back to the modern epistemology of idealism and empiricist, the American traditional naturalism, and the impact caused by the big social changes happened in America during the century turn decades.The scientific revolution in the areas such as biology, physics and psychology impact upon the tradition world view facilitated the practical turn in the current philosophy; Dewey's empirical naturalism is one of such typical philosophy theorems. Dewey's naturalistic empiricism is such one claiming practice and activities. His primary experience, emphasis on intuition, emotion and feelings counteract the worship of ration in the traditional idealism, and his philosophical focus is on the practice and action moved the main horizon from the rational perception and pursuit for the certainty of knowledge to experiential real world of the mankind. In this important viewpoint, Dewey's empirical theory shares with Heidegger's existential theory about the man thrown into the life-word, Marx's practical theory. Dewey started from the reconstruction of experience.Experience, which was regarded as an obstacle in the way of human being tried to access knowledge, is renewed by Dewey, and carries new meanings.It included not only the experienced things by the organism, man included, in the actual situations, but also the conscious actions and sensations, and the process of experiencing. In the reconstruction of experience, Dewey composed experience with primary experience and reflective experience, and found the ontological meaning of the primary experience for knowing, its value of verification for truth, and its dispensability for the enlargement and enrichment of the meanings of the experiences. He also found out the selective action in the experience, which is shown in the experiencing process, objects and situations. The choice action is the source of liberty, and the selective tendency avoids the troubles of relativism and nihilism, which is generally ignored by the relativism and post-modernism.Dewey's critic on the traditional philosophy dualism is based on his hope for building a totally new philosophy from a different view angle.He used the so-called experience method to criticize the separation of practice and knowledge in the traditional epistemology, since the actually changing experience situation refutes philosophy enter into knowledge or reality's other channels, so the internal connection between knowledge and actions is testified by functionalism and behaviorism psychology, and the action is the foundation from which knowledge engenders and was given meanings. And even in his later period, Dewey tried drastically to replace the knowledge with culture, and "impulse-action" mode.Such philosophy blazoning forth practice and actions is encouraged by the scientific achievements typically shown in physics and psychology, and partially driven by dramatic social changes due to the modern technologies.The "anxiety for actions" results to "action paradox":The more anxious the philosophical theory and philosophers want to participate into the social and political actions which embodied with the corresponding time characteristics, the more frustrated the results would be, since the applicable boundary and conditions for the theory are generally ignored.Dewey changed the meaning of the nature,replacing the meaningless natural reality with terrestrial nature. He acutely scrutinized the naturalism connotation of Darwin evolution for philosophy, and combined the evolution basic theorem with reconstructed empiricism, which he called experimental naturalism.Deweyian naturalism is in accordance with his experimental method and denotation method. The nature is shown in our actual experiences in its own style to us, and its degree depends on our experience's extension. Dewey's explanation to his experimental naturalism could be concluded with 5 principles:continuity, contextual feature, entity-connection, interaction-transaction and contingency. All of them are not limited within experience, but reach the nature, the world, the human organism and the historical categories. They provide explicit explanation to Dewey's experimental naturalism, and also it is indispensable prerequisite for interpretation of his enquiry theory and ethical value theory. The continuity principle is a natural presumption upholding his dynamic process conception and scientific methodology based on induction. The situation is place where experiences happen. Dewey refuted the absolute fixed one but insisted on Hegelian wholeness and general connection. The claim of interaction and transaction is a theoretical tool for Dewey to construct participating-mode democracy. And contingency stands for the continuous changing of the world and the experience, and labels a kind of growth always breaks through any anticipation. Dewey discovered a philosophical view-angle:time situation, which is neglected. The situation principle does not cover those of places, but also the time and history; it represents the connections of the historical events in the dimension of time.Dewey's focus therefore transferred to the experience reality, and the experimental method how to utilize science knowledge. What Dewey aims in the construction of philosophy is to rescue philosophy from the deadweight burdens of metaphysics and epistemology, and to open a new approach to bridge the reality and the ideal.According to Dewey, realization of consummate experience and construction of fine society is dependent on empirical method. All theories and knowledge are no more than means for an end-in-view and practices, and philosophy is not an exceptional doctrine questing for solid certainty. Dewey's focus lays in the actual life instead of outside materials, and in how to extend the scientific experimental method to the ordinary life instead of setting up barren speculative doctrines or pure intelligent games.Dewey tried to generalize the scientific enquiry method to sociology and humane areas, to make it an efficient tool for cultural reconstruction. In one word, knowledge is not ultimate purpose, but tool for human being to construct the world and realize the life values.Dewey unconcealed the foundational bearings of contingency through the actual situation of experiences; uncertain future renders an open world full of possibilities, and an enriched world demands a similarly open and abundant structured experience method.Method is supreme, because according to Dewey, all theories and knowledge are merely tools for some purpose and values, rather than final pursued consequences. They are neither some kind of certain fixed value outside of human happiness, rather a guidance tool of practice and actions for designed and anticipated purpose.Dewey's experimental method leads directly to multi-layer methodology. The multi-layer methodology embodied in the perception structure constructed in the primary experience, and also expressed in the reflective experience.The intuition and perception don't have a distinguish division as Kant imagined, and the various perception schemas penetrated in the intuition, which is an ontological relation of us as human being and the world, and is a active grasping. The perception structure could be expressed as multi-layer structure, instead of a single point. Ordinarily, a multi-layer structure of knowing leads to precise and exact mastering of the multiple and complex factors.But the intellectual economical principle requires simplification, which is needed by thinking as well as the social communication. And the 3-layer structure is one of the most typical ones.One primary point of multi-layer method is about the conflict mode in the different layers, which is the interaction and communication between the elements in the layers and the most fundamental one is that between the two neighboring layers.The multi-layer method is a kind of phenomenological extension of Dewey's experience method, and therefore the intellectual resources of phenomenology could be transplanted to the experience method, enriching the construction of experiences.With retrospective thinking upon Dewey's philosophy, I discovered some problems and troubles in it, for instance, his philosophy was in a changing process, so some expressions are ambiguous and caused misunderstandings, the absence of dialectic in his philosophy, and misuse of some source of science and philosophy which indicates his confuse on the relation between philosophy and science.However, all those may inspire our philosophical thinking in the future.