Pragmatic imagination: The reconstruction of *inquiry, *criticism and normativity in John Dewey's philosophy

This dissertation defends a pragmatic notion of imagination. Imagination is given a novel significance in the pragmatic tradition. Suffice it to say that along with most of the traditional concepts of philosophy treated by pragmatic thinkers, the pragmatic imagination serves as a distinct transformation of theories of imagination that have been proffered in the history of philosophy. It is argued in this dissertation that Pragmatic imagination is the key to understanding Dewey's philosophy, and consequentially the issues he treats philosophically. Pragmatic imagination is especially relevant to epistemology, ethics and political philosophy, philosophy of mind, and metaphilosophy. Dewey's notion of philosophy is here interpreted as imaginative reconstruction. The very attempt to define philosophy and introduce the areas of philosophy that exhibit the centrality of imagination will require introducing the notions of experience and imagination and exploring their relationship. The deeper conceptual articulations with regard to the full range of consequences denoted by 'pragmatic imagination' will be developed accordingly. To fully understand his version of pragmatism is to grasp the relationship between the functions of imagination and philosophy, an activity he refers to as the 'criticism of criticisms'. This exposition and argument for the centrality of imagination in the criticism of criticisms is followed by a fuller treatment of the role and function of imagination in human inquiry with respect to the attendant consequences for issues outside of metaphilosophy. This centrality is demonstrated in three specific areas thereby illustrating the consequences of this reconstruction. These areas are the (1) general theory of inquiry, (2) the philosophy of social science, and (3) his theories of action, and thus ethics.