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The Possibility of an Empiricist Naturalism: Dewey and Santayana John Dewey and George Santayana were the outstanding defenders of philosophical naturalism during the first half of the 20th century. Yet neither recognized the other's philosophy as a genuine naturalism.1 Tie most severe accusation leveled at the other was the harboring of Cartesian assumptions, infecting naturalism with psychological subjectivity. Dewey distrusted Santayana's realms of spirit and essence, and Santayana deplored Dewey's perspectival empiricism. Yet each philosopher regarded his own naturalism as the best way to completely exorcize Cartesian ghosts. Their philosophies compete still for the future of naturalism (and also challenge the reductive materialism dominant after their deaths), but whose philosophy should prevail? Examining their views on experience and nature is a good place to start. Their contentious debates should not prevent us from seeking common ground, since there may be more agreement than either was able to appreciate. For both Dewey and Santayana, along with Charles Peirce and William James, the primary issues that philosophy must confront revolve around the issues crucial to viability of naturalism and of empiricism. They both deliberately took a contrary stand against Cartesian rationalism and dualism, starting their rebellion by adopting three anti-Cartesian principles. Dewey and Santayana agreed with empiricism's epistemological principle that knowledge arises solely from human experience. Furthermore, they agreed with realism's metaphysical principle that there is an external reality whose existence is not dependent on mind. They also agreed with naturalism's biological principle that the study of human intelligence must start from the fact that human beings are organisms growing and surviving in a natural environment. But after these mutual agreements, discord erupts quickly. Three philosophical inquiries, legacies from Descartes, are discussed in this essay. First, can perceptual experience directly apprehend its external object? Second, could experience be in any sense natural? Third, are meanings in the natural world? Dewey defended affirmative answers to all three questions, and understood (or misunderstood) Santayana to be denying all three questions. If Santayana must indeed take the opposed stand on these three questions, their naturalisms cannot be fully reconciled. The first inquiry tests direct realism. Dewey, like James, rejected consciousness as an ontologicai reality, arguing that objects in perception are not subjectively internal mental entities. The only naturalistic alternative, Dewey held, is the position that external physical objects are directly and immediately had in experience. There is a price to be paid for this kind of empiricism to avoid phenomenalism and positivism, and Dewey paid it willingly. This empiricism must adopt the view that perspectival and relational qualities (like displayed color or apparent shape) are just as naturally real as intrinsic and non-relational qualities. It is notoriously easy to demonstrate how perception must fail to apprehend an external object (and thus apprehend indirectly through representations) if we premise that the object's "real** properties are fixed and Independent of context. However, that premise could not be the conclusion of empirical observation, but only adopted a priori; so Dewey concluded that an empiricist naturalism must be contextual and perspectival. Santayana took notice of 1 This essay is a substantially revised version of a paper delivered at the 2002 Santayana Society meeting in Philadelphia. I am grateful to the meeting organizers and participants, and especially to Larry Hickman and Herman Saatkamp, Jr. for their encouragement and suggestions.
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Transcript | The Possibility of an Empiricist Naturalism: Dewey and Santayana John Dewey and George Santayana were the outstanding defenders of philosophical naturalism during the first half of the 20th century. Yet neither recognized the other's philosophy as a genuine naturalism.1 Tie most severe accusation leveled at the other was the harboring of Cartesian assumptions, infecting naturalism with psychological subjectivity. Dewey distrusted Santayana's realms of spirit and essence, and Santayana deplored Dewey's perspectival empiricism. Yet each philosopher regarded his own naturalism as the best way to completely exorcize Cartesian ghosts. Their philosophies compete still for the future of naturalism (and also challenge the reductive materialism dominant after their deaths), but whose philosophy should prevail? Examining their views on experience and nature is a good place to start. Their contentious debates should not prevent us from seeking common ground, since there may be more agreement than either was able to appreciate. For both Dewey and Santayana, along with Charles Peirce and William James, the primary issues that philosophy must confront revolve around the issues crucial to viability of naturalism and of empiricism. They both deliberately took a contrary stand against Cartesian rationalism and dualism, starting their rebellion by adopting three anti-Cartesian principles. Dewey and Santayana agreed with empiricism's epistemological principle that knowledge arises solely from human experience. Furthermore, they agreed with realism's metaphysical principle that there is an external reality whose existence is not dependent on mind. They also agreed with naturalism's biological principle that the study of human intelligence must start from the fact that human beings are organisms growing and surviving in a natural environment. But after these mutual agreements, discord erupts quickly. Three philosophical inquiries, legacies from Descartes, are discussed in this essay. First, can perceptual experience directly apprehend its external object? Second, could experience be in any sense natural? Third, are meanings in the natural world? Dewey defended affirmative answers to all three questions, and understood (or misunderstood) Santayana to be denying all three questions. If Santayana must indeed take the opposed stand on these three questions, their naturalisms cannot be fully reconciled. The first inquiry tests direct realism. Dewey, like James, rejected consciousness as an ontologicai reality, arguing that objects in perception are not subjectively internal mental entities. The only naturalistic alternative, Dewey held, is the position that external physical objects are directly and immediately had in experience. There is a price to be paid for this kind of empiricism to avoid phenomenalism and positivism, and Dewey paid it willingly. This empiricism must adopt the view that perspectival and relational qualities (like displayed color or apparent shape) are just as naturally real as intrinsic and non-relational qualities. It is notoriously easy to demonstrate how perception must fail to apprehend an external object (and thus apprehend indirectly through representations) if we premise that the object's "real** properties are fixed and Independent of context. However, that premise could not be the conclusion of empirical observation, but only adopted a priori; so Dewey concluded that an empiricist naturalism must be contextual and perspectival. Santayana took notice of 1 This essay is a substantially revised version of a paper delivered at the 2002 Santayana Society meeting in Philadelphia. I am grateful to the meeting organizers and participants, and especially to Larry Hickman and Herman Saatkamp, Jr. for their encouragement and suggestions. |
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