Democracy as experimentalism and experimentalism as anti-dogmatism

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to reconstruct Dewey’s conception of experimentalism, mainly through his pedagogical writings, on the one hand; and to show the relevance of this reconstruction to current reassessments of Dewey’s political thought, on the other. The grounds for our perspective have a double character too. Firstly, we reconstruct the links between experimentalism and education on the basis of the first edition of How We Think (1910, MW 6), perhaps one of Dewey’s most noteworthy pedagogical texts. Secondly, we critically address three different reassessments of Dewey’s experimentalism in contemporary political thought, namely: 1) Pappas’s defense of Dewey’s substantive idea of democracy; 2) Forstenzer’s proposal of Deweyan experimentalism as an appropriate methodology for political philosophy; and 3) Anderson’s vindication of Deweyan experimental democracy in the context of social epistemology. It is sustained that in HWT Dewey places experimentalism as a kind of antidote against dogmatism and unreflective ways of reasoning. Thus, he links experimentalism with anti-dogmatism placing a special role in schooling for at least two reasons: 1) it is in the schooling phase that children are still sensitive to the development of certain habits; 2) dogmatism seems inevitable in any society but the educational phase is a key instance to try to avoid it. Neither (1) nor (2) are present in contemporary reassessments of Deweyan experimentalism.

Educación y democracia. Aportes de John Dewey para pensar las escuelas contemporáneas

“…Este tipo de planteos ha sido abordado desde variadas perspectivas filosóficas, entre ellas, el pragmatismo clásico y el neopragmatismo. En el presente trabajo exploraremos algunas líneas de pensamiento del pragmatista John Dewey, cuyos aportes se han mostrado especialmente fructíferos al momento de elucidar los términos del problema en cuestión y de extraer conclusiones relativas al plano educativo (Cosentino y Oliverio, 2011;Picco, 2019;Saharrea, Campeotto y Viale, 2022). Partiremos de la peculiar teoría de la experiencia deweyana para, desde allí, desagregar lo que denominamos una tríada conceptual dada por la intrínseca relación entre su lógica de la investigación, su concepción de la democracia y su filosofía de la educación.…”