Essays in Experimental Logic

This book is a collection of essays that contains 14 of Dewey's most profound papers on a wide range of topics including knowledge, reality, and epistemology. These essays are based on the theory that knowledge implies a judgment resulting from a study. The presence of this «inquiry stage» implies an intermediate and mediating phase between the external world and knowledge, which is influenced by other factors. These essays build on this foundation by looking at the relationship between thought and its subject matter, the antecedents and stimuli of thought, data, and meanings, the objects of thought, the control of ideas by facts, and other related topics. Three essays describe different types of philosophical realism. The first examines Bertrand Russell's principle about «our knowledge of the external world as a field for scientific method»; the other two discuss pragmatism, distinguishing Dewey's position from that of James and Peirce. These essays present their author's most straightforward explanation of his philosophy. The «Stage of Logical Thought» section examines the role of the scientific method in philosophy, and the final essay gives a compelling theory of the logic of values.