James Campbell, Philosophy Dept at The University of Toledo, USA: Aesthetics as Social Philosophy

This paper is an exploration of John Dewey’s Art as Experience as social philosophy. The volume’s themes - recognizing human roots in animal existence, expanding the continuities of normal human experience with its most fulfilling moments, rejecting any attempts to escape from our natural world to seek salvation in some place better, and refusing to accept individual solutions to social problems - all reflect parallel themes of Dewey’s broader social thought. Further, his attempts to recover discussions of art from rarified and academic contexts, and his exploration of the educational and communicative possibilities of art, indicate the social importance of aesthetic living. We must be careful to emphasize, however, that Dewey did not offer a social philosophy and write on aesthetics too.  Rather, he considered the importance of the aesthetic as part of his social philosophy.


Philipp Dorstewitz, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at University of Maastricht, Holland: Social Planning after the Image of Dewey's Science

Dewey conceptualizes scientific inquiry as a creative process of resolving problematic situations.

The present contribution develops a model of Dewey's inquiry process. It identifies the main activity modes of scientific research (hypothesis formulation, reasoning, and experiment) as concurrent and mutually dependent practices that centre on the production of warranted beliefs and values. Dewey's "rhythm of situations" builds the temporal context of this process-model of inquiry. The model envisages the formation of an inquiring community as a transactive process within unfolding problematic situations. The formation of a community of inquiry around a scientific project is a continuous process, which corresponds to research activities.

This model of scientific research will be compared to a "transactive rationality model" which I have developed in collaboration with Prof. Shyama Kuruvilla from Boston University. The transactive rationality model proposes to interpret good planning as a form of Deweyan inquiry. Here I aim to demonstrate the potential convergence between models of policy deliberation and scientific research.

Dewey showed how scientific inquiry is based on a logic for intelligent problem-solving, whereas I spell out how Dewey's inquiry model can be applied to contexts of planning and policy-making. Is this a mere tautology that shows how a logic of problem-solving can also be applied as a logic for resolving problems? I would happily accept this charge if I could establish that some progress was made on the way. My aim is to integrate the pragmatist conception of inquiry with a revised notion of rationality in planning. I hope the result is a rationality model better apt to deal with complex, problematic, and insufficiently understood situations, more able to incorporate democratic ideals, and less prone to uninspiring, alienating and morally insufferable consequences.


Angel Faerna/Ramon del Castillo, Faculty of Humanities at Universidad Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo, Spain/Philosophy Dept at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid, Spain: Dewey on Experience: Ethics, Politics, and Value Theory

Most issues concerning the interpretation of Dewey's philosophy hinge on the meaning that one should attach to the term experience in Dewey's conceptual framework. Further, it can be argued that it is the meaning of experience as disclosed in his ethical, political and normative views that makes full sense of other, more "theoretical" or epistemological statements in Dewey's work.

We will focus, then, on that concept of experience which is relevant to understand Dewey's criticism of classic moral philosophy, his general analysis of valuation, and his political approach to the problems of democracy, community, and the public. We will argue that Dewey's Ethical-Political philosophy is a resource to think about what ways of thinking may have contributed to today's global economic crisis and as a guide to the possibility of a post-ideological politics.

Of course, Dewey's political thought depends on his conception of ethical life, ultimate ends, and the human flourishing, as these topics were presented in his essays more explicitly devoted to moral- and value-theory; but it also depends - we will suggest - on his broader description of vital entanglements and generic traits of existence that he described in Experience and Nature. We will also talk about the dialectics between culture and experience: why experience without culture can induce certain blindness on human beings. And why culture without experience can be a dangerous type of reification.


Walter Feinberg, Dept of Educational Policy Studies at University of Illinois at Urbana: Teaching Religion in Public Schools: A Critical Appraisal of Dewey's Ideas on Religion and Education

In this paper I propose to align Dewey's ideas on religion and education with the requirements of a post modern, religiously plural liberal society. By post-modern I mean a society that embraces multiple perspectives and conflicting narratives. By religiously plural, I mean a society where competing religious denominations have the same legal status, and by liberal, I mean a society where the individual person is both the object and the subject of moral action. Although such a society is consistent with Dewey's general philosophy and its emphasis on community, plurality and enriched experience, I argue that his writing on religion has a hegemonic side to it and is in tension with his concern to promote community and plurality. In this paper, I draw on recent movements to teach religion courses in the United States to suggest ways in which this tension can be resolved in public schools without rejecting any one religious orientation.


Richard Hall, Department of Government and History, Fayetteville State University, NC: The Deweyan Aesthetic of Charles Ives

My thesis is that Ives' philosophy of music is fundamentally Deweyan in character, and his music may be fruitfully understood as a practical enactment, as it were, of Dewey's aesthetics. To demonstrate this, I shall give a brief summary of the main ideas of Dewey's aesthetics as it bears on Ives' conception of music, and then show how Ives holds the same ideas and gives them musical expression. We shall subsequently see that Ives' philosophy of music and the music itself is fundamentally "Deweyan" in its anti-dualism, as directed against the following: (1) the dualism of so-called aesthetic experience (one that is, in Kantian terms, purely disinterested for example) and ordinary experience-Ives insists on their continuity. (2) the dualism of art and life as represented by the sequestration of pictures and sculpture in museums and of music in concert halls-Ives believed that music in particular should be integral to life as lived; (3) music (and art in general) far from being a dispensable ornament of society is vital to our collective well-being, and (4) the dualism between popular (vernacular) music (art) and classical (cultivated)-Ives freely wove popular hymn tunes and marches into his symphonic structures.


Larry Hickman, Dewey Center at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, USA: Genuine Concepts in Dewey's Pedagogy

As a part of his work in logic and educational philosophy, Dewey described methods of inquiry that are capable of producing what he termed "genuine" concepts, which he distinguished from nominal concepts. After examining this distinction in some detail, I consider cases in which it can play a crucial role.


Robert E. Innis, Dept of Philosophy University of Massachusetts Lowell: The 'Quality' of Philosophy: On the Aesthetic Matrix of Dewey's Pragmatism

The category of 'quality' joins the two differently pitched but exemplary pragmatisms of C.S. Peirce and John Dewey at their deepest phenomenological, categorial, and semiotic levels. It can and should play a central role in any exploration of the 'forms of sense' that define the ultimate matrices of world apprehension. It is the uncovering of these matrices that make up one of the main tasks of the types of philosophy exemplified in their work.

In a little known article, "Peirce's Theory of Quality," originally published in The Journal of Philosophy in 1935, Dewey specified, with brevity and force, the philosophical and methodological nature and implications of Peirce's fundamental discovery of an all-pervading 'firstness' in mental - which for Peirce ultimately meant semeiosic - action. In other essential writings, looked at from an expanded and transformed epistemological perspective, Dewey attempted, though without making thematic at every point the connection with Peirce, to develop and apply the notion of quality, especially in two deeply provocative essays, "Qualitative Thought" and "Affective Thought," and in his indispensable Art as Experience, in which the category of 'quality' is ever-present. In this focal book quality is systematically connected with the imaginative production of 'expressive' forms and sign-configurations. These are, from a Peircean point of view, properly called 'iconic' and they encompass, within Dewey's framework, the attendant forms of artistic as well as aesthetic experiences. These qualitative forms and the structures within which they are apprehended, however, are by no means restricted to art. Dewey's thinking about quality is in effect not just an 'expansive gloss' on the work of Peirce. It makes explicit and extends, especially, but not exclusively, in a reconfigured aesthetic realm, the complex paradigmatic importance and heuristic fertility of Peirce's fundamental discovery for philosophy and its concerns, that is, for a philosophy governed by a radically empiricist orientation.

A philosophically nuanced semiotics of the qualitative, accordingly, would go beyond art and the aesthetic and the iconic as such and would encompass, as reflective task, all those dimensions in which experience is universally mediated through signs in their qualitative specificities. In this sense both Dewey and Peirce are joined in the common task of sketching, in the words of Arthur Bentley, "the living behavior of sign-using men in a long-time world."


Jacquelyn A. Kegley, California State University Bakersfield: Redefining Individuals and Creating Communities: Dewey and Royce in Dialogue

John Dewey, in his classic book, The Public and Its Problems[1] asserts that "The clear consciousness of a community life, in all its implications, constitutes the idea of democracy."[2] Dewey was writing in a time when there were grave doubts about democracy. He and others, including fellow philosopher, Josiah Royce, bemoaned the loss of a sense of a 'public.'[3] At the heart of the issue, at least for Royce and Dewey, was a false notion of democracy based on an atomistic individualism centered in notions of innate human characteristics of free will, rationality and natural rights. They were also concerned about the loss of the individual in anonymous associations and the failure of newspapers to provide the critical voice needed in a creative and functioning democracy. Given, these circumstances, Dewey argued for a redefinition of individualism and a rebuilding of community. These themes were also central to the public philosophy and thought of Josiah Royce.[4] Most significantly, these concerns remain relevant today. Thus, Michael Sandel, political philosopher, in addressing the problems of contemporary democracy, argues that we must overcome the "pathology of uncritical acceptance of rights, fairness, and individual choice and return to notion of responsibility, civic duty, and common good."[5]

This paper will argue that by placing the thought of Dewey and Royce in dialogue on the central issues of redefining 'individualism' and 'creating genuine communities,' a number of commonalities of concern and ideas between the two philosophers will be revealed. In addition, the exploration of subtle differences in thought and emphasis will help refine the thought of both and thus produce some key ideas and arguments worth pursuing in our contemporary context.

The commonalities between Dewey and Royce are many and all are instructive for our central concern of redefining individuals and rebuilding communities. Thus, both philosophers addressed notions of the 'lost and/or isolated individual,' and both were concerned to provide conditions that developed individuals capable of achieving their full potentialities and full and rewarding experiences and lives, and yet also capable and concerned to contributing in creative ways to the common life. Both philosophers discussed functional and dysfunctional communities; criticized an individualism tied in with property rights and economic and pecuniary values; advocated a need for critical voices against self-interest disguised as seeking the common good; sought to expel false notions of the nature of science and spelled out a proper role for science in public discussion and policy. Finally, Dewey promoted the role of genuine communication in building communities, while Royce developed his doctrine of interpretation as the means for creating genuine communities. This paper will expand on these commonalities while explicating subtle differences that add important dimensions to each philosopher's work making their contributions to contemporary discussions even richer and more valuable.

[1] John Dewey, 1957, The Public and Its Problems, (New York: Henry Holt Company and 1965: Ohio University Press).
[2] Ibid. 149.
[3] Walter Lippman, The Phantom Public (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1925 and Josiah Royce, "On Certain Limitations of the Thoughtful Public in America," in Race Questions, Provincialism and Other American Problems, 1908, (New York: Macmillan Company).
[4] See: Josiah Royce, "Provincialism," (1902); and "On Certain Limitations of the Thoughtful Public in America," in Race Questions, Provincialism and Other American Problems, 1908, (New York: Macmillan Company); The Philosophy of Loyalty,1908, (New York: The Macmillan Company); 1889, "Reflections After a Wandering Life in Australia," I and II, Atlantic Monthly 63, 615-86 and 813-28; 1856, California, from the Conquest in 1846 to the Second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco [1856]: A Study in American Character, (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Company, and 1885, "The Squatter Riot of '50 in Sacramento: Its Causes and Its Significance," Overland Monthly, n.s.6 225-46.
[5] Michael Sandel, 2005, Public Philosophy, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.


Wojciech Malecki, Dept of Polish Philology, Wrocław University, Poland: Against Formulaic Criticism (and Other Occultist Monomanias): A Deweyan Approach to Contemporary Literary Studies

There is no doubt that the rise of so-called "theory," which began, roughly, in 1970's, has had a lasting impact on the field of literary studies, yet scholars are still struggling to determine whether this impact has been positive or rather disastrous. On the one hand, for example, it is argued that theory has allowed literary studies to be more self-conscious and refined in methodological terms, and that it has liberated the field from the grip of narrow, disinterested aestheticism. On the other, however, theory is accused of turning literary studies into a subdivision of cultural anthropology, or into a form of political activism aimed at destroying all things sacred and reasonable, or into a rather bland and uninspired activity which boils down to applying various methodological stencils to a given work. In this paper, I am going to focus on this latter criticism insofar as it is made by Dewey-inspired authors such as Arthur Efron and Richard Rorty. In particular, I am going to show how they deploy Dewey's ideas to diagnose the problem and to propose some remedies to it.


Hugh McDonald, New York City College of Technology, USA: Dewey’s Theory of Values

There has been much confusion in the literature about Dewey’s theory of values. Some have denied that Dewey has a notion of intrinsic value.[1] Dewey has also been taken as a conativist by a number of authors,[2] despite his sustained critique of conativism in “Theory of Valuation.” Moreover, Donald Lee has argued that the value theories of the pragmatists are “similar enough” to warrant common treatment. In this paper I will examine Dewey’s theory of value in detail, in the hope of clarifying its main outline and thereby distinguishing it from conative theories. By examining Dewey’s theory of value in detail, I hope to thereby distinguish it both from that of C.I. Lewis and the other well-known pragmatists.

[1] Beardsley, M., “Intrinsic Value,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 26, 1965, p. 6 ff. However, this is a misreading, as Gouinlock, inter alia, has extensively documented. (For Gouinlock’s view see John Dewey’s Philosophy of Value (New York: Humanities Press, 1972). One need only read the first and last chapters of Experience and Nature to realize that Dewey did not reject intrinsic value, only foundational grounding in intrinsic value.
[2] See, inter alia, Mitchell, E.T., “Dewey’s Theory of Valuation,” Ethics, LV, 7/1945, 287-97; and Vivas, E., The Moral Life and the Ethical Life, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1950, p. 108. Cf. Bennett, J., “Beyond Good and Evil: a Critique of Richard Taylor’s ‘Moral Voluntarism’,” Journal of Value Inquiry, XII, 4, 1978, 313-319, in which Dewey, along with James, is associated with the theory that good consists in something “being desired.” Katz (op. cit., ch. 2) makes a similar charge. Holmes, in “John Dewey’s Moral Philosophy in Contemporary Perspective” (Review of Metaphysics, XX, 1, 1966, 42-70) argues that Dewey’s early vocabulary is conativist (p. 55).


Ludwig Nagl, Philosophy Dept at Vienna University, Austria: 'The religious': Dewey´s post-Feuerbachian 'sublation' of religion - and some critical, Roycean considerations

In my paper I will argue that Dewey´s concept of "the religious" - while being influenced by elements of the Kant-Hegel discourse about the philosophical locus of religion - does inherit and transform, in its center, thought figures that were first formulated in left-Hegelian discourse, especially in Feuerbach´s "projection theory". Like Feuerbach, Dewey tries, on the one hand, to de-absolutify, and on the other to "humanize" and re-appropriate, what he sees as the core of mankind´s religious energies. In A Common Faith he advocates a de-essentialized and "naturalized" re-reading of (the formerly dogmatical, and potentially dangerous) religions: the "religious."

Dewey´s position, in A Secular Age, may seem promising since it goes along with, and promotes, the popular, anti-Cartesian (i.e. anti-binary, but nevertheless non-dialectical) thesis of a self-differentiating "continuum" between man and nature. If, for a moment, we make use of Charles Taylor´s tri-polar categorization of contemporary attitudes toward religion,[1] Dewey is neither, a), a believer in a transcendent,"supernatural" God, nor, b), an anti-humanist of the Nietzschean type, who harbors a deep distrust vis a vis the successor category of "the absolute", man, but rather, c), a "community-oriented" humanist who hopes that mankind, in the long run (supported, inter alias, by a functional, "adjectival" ideal of "the religious") will manage to deal with, and to overcome (most of ) its limits.

As a publico-ethical maxim, this political "humanism" has great merits. The question remains open, however, how well argued philosophically Dewey´s (version of) of the "projection theory" of religion really is. My paper will deal with this question in three steps:

First, I will explore aspects of Dewey´s claim by discussing a recent article by the Frankfurt philosopher Thomas M. Schmidt, in which he argues that „"Dewey´s approach to religion contains an argumentative potential which is still underestimated:"[2] This potential, Schmidt writes, rests on Dewey´s thesis "that a naturalistic concept of religious experience has not to stop short at a reductionist causal explanation of religious phenomena." Dewey´s pluralized, and socialized concept of "the religious" can thus - in the wasteland of contemporary dogmatic reductionisms - contribute to the re-opening of a new philosophical exploration of religion "after the criticism of religion."

2. But Dewey´s transformation of religion - as will be shown in step two of my argument - is open to criticism: Some questions concerning Dewey´s successor concept of "religion", "the religious", will be formulated by reflecting on Richard Rorty´s reading of Dewey (2.1), and by analyzing Hilary Putnam´s recent remarks on Dewey´s "projection"-concept (2.2).

3. The final part of my presentation will be dedicated to Josiah Royce, who - in spite of sharing with Dewey the socio-communal approach toward religion - tried to philosophically re-read religious motivations (within the framework of his late "peirceanized" pragmatism) in a manner significantly different from Dewey´s.

[1] See Charles Taylor, "Die immanente Gegenaufklärung," in: Ludwig Nagl (Ed.), Religion nach der Religionskritik, Wien-Berlin 2003, p. 60-85.
[2] Thomas S. Schmidt, "Empirischer Naturalismus, demokratisches Experiment und die Erfahrung des Religiösen. John Deweys Philosophie der Religion," in: Jahrbuch für Religionsphilosophie, Frankfurt am Main, Band 7, 2008, p. 37-59


Stefan Neubert/Kersten Reich, Dewey Center Cologne and Dept of Pedagogy at University of Cologne: Deweyan Pragmatism and the Program of Interactive Costructivism - John Dewey and Zygmunt Bauman on Human Affairs

In our talk we want to open up a dialogue between Deweyan pragmatism and the postmodern sociology of Zygmunt Bauman (*1925). Writing from the perspective of the Cologne program of interactive constructivism we think that Bauman can be a promising dialogue partner not only for present-day Deweyan pragmatism but also generally for theories of culture and society in our time. We suggest that cultural and social theories are always constructions out of the contexts of their time. In accord with Deweyan pragmatism we see the continual need of reconstruction and the need of taking into account the openendedness of cultural and social developments in which we are involved. Bauman's sociological descriptions and analyses of human affairs in modernity and postmodernity can be taken as a challenge and occasion for reconstructing pragmatic and constructive philosophy today. We proceed in several steps and discuss among other things both author's contributuions to themes like emancipation, individualism and capitalism, freedom and culture, work and labor, democracy and education.


Gregory Pappas, Philosophy Dept at AM Texas University: Dewey’s Ethical-Political Philosophy as Resource in Today’s Economic Crisis and as a Guide to a Post-Ideological Politics for the 21st Century

Dewey's Ethical-Political philosophy is a resource to reflect about what ways of thinking may have contributed to today's global economic crisis and as a guide to the possibility of a post-ideological politics. First, I present one common assessment of today's global situation. I hold that one could argue that Dewey warned us about our current crisis and that he provided a philosophical framework to understand what has happened. There is today much disillusionment with ideological ways of thinking about broad social policy questions and with how ideological oppositions dominate political discourse. It has become common to call a politician a "pragmatist" if he/she does not make decisions or judgments based on ideology (more recently with Obama), but there are different understandings of what this "pragmatist" label really means in politics. This is obvious from the recent discussions in magazines and blogs, about "what sort of pragmatist is Obama" [http://www.obamaspragmatism.info/? Comparing and evaluating these different conceptions of "pragmatism" in politics is important in the hope for a less ideological politics. We must have an idea what sort of politician is needed if we are ever to transcend how opposing ideologies have dominated politics. I want to contribute to this discussion by examining what is an ideal "pragmatist" politician or what would make someone a "pragmatist" politician according to Dewey's ideal of democracy. I compare Dewey's view with the recent "pragmatist" ones of Richard Posner and Robert Talisse. I argue that for Dewey the ideal political leader must be committed to more than fallibilism, experimentalism, or "what works". In this regard, he would be opposed to a recent trend of "pragmatist" political thinkers that are doing all they can to evade moral or value commitments from their political theories and conceptions of the ideal politician.


Ahti Pietrarinen, Philosophy Dept at Helsinki University, Finland: " Dewey betwix the One and Many-World Philosophies" A Hedgehog who Thought to be a Fox: Dewey betwixt the One and Many-World Philosophies

What was Dewey's absolute presupposition upon which he came to see pragmatism as a defensible method of doing philosophy? Did he have one? Berlin classified thinkers as Foxes and Hedgehogs: I rephrase the distinction in terms of philosophers who take possibilities as real (many worlds) and those who do not (one world). I argue that Dewey's philosophy of experimental logic appreciates, to a degree, the value of metasystematic approaches to scientific inquiry learned from his teacher Peirce, but that he interpreted and applied these approaches in the broadly Jamesian fashion. Ultimately, Dewey was a universalist about meaning, who (i) discourages falsification of philosophical claims, (ii) suggests a naturalistic interpretation of habits, and (iii) evaluates the identity of problematic situations with respect to the one, actual world.


Krzysztof (Chris) Piotr Skowroński, Institute of Philosophy, Opole University, Poland: Social and Political Powers in John Dewey's Aesthetics

The meaning of the term "powers" which I propose to use in the context of the arts and aesthetics, deals with various types of pressure, coercion, domination, control, and influence imposed, by some agents and/or centers of powers upon others, which leads to the reorientation, in those others, their understanding of the aesthetic, the arts, and the beautiful. More precisely, I have in mind such situation(s) in which an agent or a group of agents, by using pressure, coercion, domination, control, and influence, make(s) it necessary for other person(s) to modify in some way previously held position on or attitude towards the aesthetics, the arts, and the beautiful. This imposition can be exercised upon others intentionally or not and directly or indirectly; nevertheless, without this imposition the previously held position or/and attitude by those others would not have been changed, modified, and/or reconsidered.

John Dewey recognizes different types of powers within a given social group and among groups, seeing the arts in the perspective of social conditions, economic background, and historical heritage. More crucially, Dewey's aesthetics demonstrates how much democracy, understood as a way of living in a social and political system, can modify the previously held views on the beautiful, enrich the quality of aesthetic experience, and broaden the spectrum of artistic practice. For example, the tremendous access of youth to artistic education causes them to become sensitive to things impossible for them to know in social and political systems with restricted access to a free education. Also, Dewey has drawn our attention to how much the promotion of a given model of freedom, responsibility, and education can influence our perception of the arts and the role of the arts in the social life. For example, the promotion of pluralism in the area of politics and the promotion of democracy in the area the social life, convert into the promotion of pluralism and democracy in the arts and aesthetics.

However, this unavoidably encourages us to exclude, diminish the role, and/or have reservations about the types of aesthetics that are not pluralistic and not democratic, along with the social and political powers they refer to in this way or another. This embraces: the elitist and aristocratic concepts of the arts; the absolutistic concepts of values; the religious types of aesthetics that assume a transcendental approach; and those avant-garde concepts of the beautiful (and the good), according to which the fragmented, kaleidoscopic, and illogical "structure" of the world makes it hardly possible for all of us to think of aiming at one direction in the process of ameliorating the world morally and of beautifying it aesthetically.


Ignas K. Skrupskelis, South Carolina University, Dewey, Pragmatism, and the Naturalization of Freedom

At times, I will have to make broad and rough historical generalizations, because my purpose is not to clear up some detail in Dewey's thought, but to identify his distinctive contribution to the stock of available philosophical alternatives. My question is thus: what possible way of thinking about the world and our place in it does Dewey develop and advance? I dislike the term pragmatism as a name for his philosophy, because it directs our attention to questions of method, whereas Dewey's importance lies in that he articulates a vision of reality grounded in the biological sciences. Dewey is not primarily a pragmatist, but a naturalist of a distinctive kind. It is my purpose to sketch out just what is distinctive about Dewey's version of naturalism.

The older naturalism working within newtonian mechanics was reductionist. By constrast, Dewey's naturalism is contructive. The key conception of this newer, biologically grounded, naturalism is the conception of man as just an organism interacting with its environment. This conception, without drawing a hard line between human beings and other organisms, provides a framework for thinking about ourselves.

I select the problem of freedom to show Dewey's constructive side. A naturalistic conception of freedom should satisfy certain conditions. First, it should identify the experiences upon which the traditional conception of freedom, as a non-natural ability possessed solely by spiritual substances, has been based. Second, it should show that the ability is a real one. Third, it must show that freedom is an ability which some organisms have evolved because it contributes to their survival. Fourth, since all natural abilities have degrees, since we can always speak of there being more or less of a particular ability, the concept of freedom also should allow of degrees. The fourth condition implies, that we can become freer through appropriate education, in much the same sense that we can become stronger though proper exercise. Fifth, there is the requirement of continuity. Human beings cannot be the only organisms with freedom, although they probably have more of it than others do.

A naturalistic conception of freedom requires a non-newtonian universe, that is, a universe with some contingence in it. It must also be a universe with genuine novelties, because only in such a universe does freedom as a natural ability confer an advantage to the organism. I argue, primarily on the basis of his 1928 text "Philosophies of Freedom," that Dewey's conception of freedom, although not always explicitly, is a naturalistic one. It fits into his general program of reinterpreting all human abilities in the light of the biological sciences.