Abstract

The controversies in philosophy surrounding postmodernism involve questions about the nature of knowledge. However, epistemological issues cannot be disentangled from questions about the nature of reality, since the core difficulty is whether knowledge discloses reality. This controversy could be resolved by a competent theory of reality, hence, there is a need for a viable metaphysical method. John Dewey's approach to the problem of knowledge involves an effort to justify knowledge on nonfoundationalist grounds, thus suggesting a way in which the current controversy might be overcome. ;There are two current readings of Dewey. First, there is a tendency to interpret Dewey as a skeptic regarding metaphysics and epistemology and to envision him as a sort of relativist. The other reading of Dewey glosses over his critique of traditional metaphysics and places him within the very tradition he rejected. I propose a third way of interpreting Dewey, which shows that the critical and the constructive tendencies of his philosophy are profoundly intertwined, as he searches for a naturalized theory of knowledge that could warrant generalizations about the nature of reality. ;Dewey's concept of experience as the encompassing arena within which inquiry is undertaken enables him to build a theory of knowledge that does not appeal to the apriorist foundations of traditional epistemologies. Rather, he explores the nature of the postulates that empower inquiry without appealing to foundationalism. These regulative yet defeasible postulates provide a doctrine of naturalism that warrants generic claims about the subjectmatters of inquiries such as the natural sciences. Dewey argues that, if the generalizations of science may be warranted, then inquiry may also warrant general claims about the nature of existence, which constitutes the background of experience. ;If Dewey's notion of a "naturalistic metaphysics," is defensible, then metaphysical inquiry must surrender its pretensions to absolute knowledge of reality in favor of a mitigated status comparable to that of "ordinary" inquiries. This reduction of the scope and power traditionally accorded to metaphysics results from the fact that, in order to achieve warrant, any theory must respect the regulative conditions and limitations which come to light when one attempts to understand the nature of knowledge