This paper will focus on two elements, viz. experience and inquiry, which are central to John Deweys philosophy and their relation to the movement known as pragmatism. Although each of these concepts has received extensive treatment by other schools of thought, the pragmatists, and particularly Dewey, did much to redefine each in hopes of alleviating the tension between conflicting philosophical viewpoints. An explication of Deweys view on experience is the first step in understanding his application of the pragmatic method towards reconstructing philosophical thinking. Therefore, this paper will explore the meaning that Dewey gave to each and how that meaning is helpful to the overall pragmatist project of reuniting philosophical speculation with practical consequences.

This thesis defends the potential of the ‘realist’ form of narrative for contesting, as well as reproducing, ideology. The common form of ‘realism’ consists of a loose ensemble of conventions. The key components are omniscient, evaluative narration; an empiricist objectivism; the construction of individuals as agents of action and bearers of natural attributes; cause and effect sequencing; conflict leading to resolution; mystery leading to disclosure; and the effacement of these techniques in the interests of illusion. In one critique of realism – ‘post-Althusserian anti-realism’ - these practices constitute ideology both in a general sense - as manipulation - and a specific sense - as transmitters of capitalist presuppositions. A 'social realism' or ‘critical realism’, which attempts to invalidate ideology by the presentation of countervailing data, is said to be undercut by its encoding within this alleged inherently ideological form. This critique of realism is based on an unsustainable, ‘formalist’, reduction of ‘content’ to ‘form’. The role of observation in knowledge production and the significance of inductively generated propositions are replaced by a sophisticated, but ultimately reductive, ‘discursive determinism’. From its conventionalist epistemological premises, post-Althusserian anti-realism ignores the capacity of empiricism to break with preconceptions. By dismissing the convention of accountability to evidence, the critique is forced back onto criteria of internal consistency - a position even more vulnerable to prejudice than empiricism. The thesis then argues that the concomitant view of the subject of narrative realism as a construct of liberal-individualism ignores how realist texts have questioned ideas of autonomy and a fixed human nature. Anti-realist methods have usefully exposed some of the means by which constructions of freedom and self-determination mask the subordination of labour in ‘free’ -market economies. However, this frequently entails undervaluing gains made under a rubric of human rights. The replacement of human subjectivity with discursive or economic determinism tends to expel dialogue, volition and human needs as factors in the ideational and practical repudiation of ideology. A narrow approach to realism is therefore inadequate for determining the relation of realism to ideology. The alternative position defended here is that realism’s relation to capitalism - like that of liberalism and empiricism - is tangential, not homologous. The variability of ‘content’ in realism makes realist techniques - as abstract form - politically neutral (but claimed by anti-realists to be intrinsically authoritarian). Realist conventions which construct a point of view are open options for making judgements that will vary in empirical rigour and opposition to different ideologies. The thesis sets the authoritarian aspects of realism’s attempted manipulation of the reader against the potential in realism for a dialogic plurality of perspectives, the possible defensibility of a point of view, the need for coherence and judgement in political dialogue and action, and the frequency of ‘content’-based reader resistance. The realist form is not an absolute of representation, but nor is it a mere reflex of capitalism. By the same token, the anti-realist concept of the anti-ideological function of ‘anti-realist’ texts imposes a reverse, homogeneous, inherently oppositional role onto politically heterogenous cultural forms. The thesis argues, furthermore, that by rejecting empiricist modes of substantiation and adopting a mechanistic view of ideology, the post-Althusserian critique of realism fails to engage adequately with the theoretical defence of capitalism. The harmony thesis of free enterprise can only be given a pejorative label ‘ideology’ on the basis of comparative and historical considerations of the performance of capitalism. In practice, the natural tendency of the market to cyclical instability with attendant unemployment, impoverishment and the compounding of class-based inequalities has only been mitigated by extensive government intervention. The thesis concludes then with a case study of Dickens’s Hard Times as an example of the above, more effective, approach to capitalist legitimation. Hard Times employs empiricist, semi-‘fictional’, ‘realist’ techniques to demonstrate the ideological nature of theories of free enterprise. The critical edge of this novel is blunted by a liberal-romanticism that is ambivalent about legal-institutional solutions to social problems. Despite this fault, Hard Times shows some of the possibilities offered by the realist form for viable social critique.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Bowling Green State University, 2007. / Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 332 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 215-225). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Rostock, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-203) and index.

Thesis (M.A.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2009. / Directed by Keith Cushman; submitted to the Dept. of English. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed May 13, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-62).

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2005. / Advisor: Dr. Helen Burke, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 19, 2005). Document formatted into pages; contains v, 62 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Frederick M. Kronz. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 14, 2009). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 224-232) and index.

This thesis is an examination of the linguistic approach to modality (also known as 'linguistic conventionalism') - i.e. the view that necessity is to be explained in terms of the linguistic rules that we have adopted. Drawing on an investigation into the history of this approach, I argue against the currently prevalent attitude that it can be dismissed as misguided. The aim, however, is not to argue that the linguistic approach is correct, but, more modestly, to put it back on the table as an interesting and viable research program. The thesis is divided into three parts. In part A, I articulate a conception of the commitments of the approach based on the ideas that influenced it, how it emerged and developed in the work of the logical positivists, and, in particular, the role it was meant to play in "making a consistent empiricism possible". Next, in part B, I defend the core ideas of the approach against various objections. Notably, I consider the objection that truth cannot be "created" by convention, the objection that necessities cannot be explained in terms of contingencies, and the objection that determining what the linguistic conventions are, unlike determining what the modal facts are, is a straightforwardly empirical matter. In part C, finally, I turn to objections which purport to show that there are limits to what can be explained in terms of linguistic convention. Specifically, I consider whether we need to assume a non-conventional distinction between admissible and inadmissible linguistic rules, a non-conventional consequence relation, or a non-conventional starting-point in order to get the linguistic approach off the ground. An overarching question is whether we are forced to take some logic for granted in a way which would undermine the explanatory ambitions of the approach. I argue that some of the prominent objections rely on misunderstandings, that some can be answered head-on, and that some point to genuine challenges and constraints which put pressure on the linguistic approach, but do not warrant a wholesale rejection of the view. Instead, they point to areas where further work is needed.