(2004-11-20) Shalizi Was John Dewey A Member Of The Reality Based Community

Cosma Shalizi: Was John Dewey a Member of the Reality-Based Community? I'm happy with the idea of John Dewey as a defender of justice and the American Way, but realism?

Peter Godfrey-Smith, "Dewey on Naturalism, Realism and Science", Philosophy of Science: I believe I am on firm ground in claiming that John Dewey is an unusually misunderstood philosopher.

My problem with reading Dewey has generally been that he writes very vaguely and abstractly about the importance of concrete particulars, leaving me feeling irritated and lost.

One set of natural properties --- relations, correlations, powers of interaction, dependences --- are the focus of scientific strategies of investigation and description. Scientific description of these features of nature is in no sense restricted to the observable.

Scientific work aims to construct theories, models, and investigative practices that bring scientists themselves, and the communities of which they are part, into special kinds of connection with the preexisting networks of dependence relations. (scientific method)

I don't see why it can't get along perfectly amicably with a semantic, correspondence notion of truth, as found in e.g. Alfred Tarski. But then I have never understood the opposition to the correspondence notion of truth.

This makes me want to read The Quest for Certainty... and it's in print, but I'll try the library before risking money on Dewey's prose...