Essays in Experimental Logic


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In this early collection of formative essays, acclaimed American philosopher John Dewey argues that the idealistic, realistic, and analytic schools of philosophy fail to take into account the pragmatic and experimental nature of experience - common to science and practical experience, but alien to the abstract theorizing of coherentist and correspondence theories of logic.

Here we find the essential groundwork for the mature naturalistic and process-oriented metaphysics that Dewey would elaborate in his later mature works such as Experience and Nature and Logic: The Theory of Inquiry.

In his long introduction, Dewey provides a summary and precis of his experimental logic, taking specifically pains to contrast his approach with the emerging analytic logic of Russell and Frege.

Chapters 3-6 take aim at the idealistic logic dominant in his time by providing a close reading and critique of the German logician Hermann Lotze.

Chapters 7-8 argue for the distinction between acquaintance with an external reality and knowledge of that reality.

Rather than disembodied and abstract, Dewey describes a logic arising out of the concrete interactions of organisms embedded within a natural environment. Dewey's logic of experience is essential to an understanding of his various projects, from education, to art, politics, pragmatism, and science.

(Summary by P. J. Taylor) (11 hr 26 min)

Chapters

Prefatory Note 1:49 Read by P. J. Taylor
I. Introduction (§ I - IV) 50:18 Read by P. J. Taylor
I. Introduction (§ V-VII) 58:50 Read by P. J. Taylor
II. The Relationship of Thought and Its Subject Matter 36:39 Read by P. J. Taylor
III. The Antecedents and Stimuli of Thinking 47:26 Read by P. J. Taylor
IV. Data and Meaning 26:17 Read by P. J. Taylor
V. The Objects of Thought 35:05 Read by P. J. Taylor
VI. Some Stages of Logical Thought 54:10 Read by P. J. Taylor
VII. The Logical Character of Ideas 12:04 Read by P. J. Taylor
VIII. The Control of Ideas by Facts 33:44 Read by franklinvios
IX. Naive Realism Vs. Presentative Realism 22:35 Read by franklinvios
X. Epistemological Realism: The Alleged Ubiquity of the Knowledge Relation 29:20 Read by realisticspeakers
XI. The Existence of the World as a Logical Problem 30:10 Read by franklinvios
XII. What Pragmatism Means by Practical 43:34 Read by Matthew Muñoz
XIII. An Added Note as to the 'Practical' 9:04 Read by Kathleen Moore
XIV. The Logic of Judgements of Practice - Their Nature 27:20 Read by Kathleen Moore
XIV. The Logic of Judgements of Practice - Judgments of Value I and II 43:22 Read by Jennifer Henry
XIV. The Logic of Judgements of Practice - Judgments of Value III, IV, V 36:45 Read by Jennifer Henry
XIV. The Logic of Judgements of Practice - Sense Perception as Knowledge 35:23 Read by ToddHW
XIV. The Logic of Judgements of Practice - Science as a Practical Art 41:09 Read by realisticspeakers
XIV. The Logic of Judgements of Practice - Theory and Practice 11:25 Read by franklinvios