Abstract

This dissertation is a study of John Dewey's attempt to work out an appropriate relationship between natural and human phenomena. The first chapter explicates Dewey's treatment of the experiential intake which traditional philosophy places at the boundary between the natural and human realms. It argues that the characteristic feature of Dewey's epistemology is a device, called a "context," which involves initially non-conceptual experiential intake with concepts before it enters the web of human cognition. The second chapter continues the analysis of Dewey's treatment of non-conceptual, given experience by examining his account of the formation of concepts out of non-conceptual experiential intake. The main finding is that despite significant advances over traditional epistemologies, Dewey's theory of knowledge is seriously flawed. Chapter three delineates Dewey's strategy for expanding the Newtonian notion of nature so that it is possible to view rational relations as a part of nature. The key features of this expansion are the inclusion in nature of qualities which bind events into "affairs" and of direct responses to meaning after initiation into a cultural community. The dissertation's conclusion suggests that Dewey's treatments of experience and nature facilitate an epistemology in which experiential intakes are concept involving and that had Dewey espoused such an epistemology, he would have advanced further toward his goal of reaching a proper understanding of the relationship between the human and the natural