David Hildebrand "Could Experience be More than a Method? Dewey’s Practical Starting Point" If you wish to find out what subjective, objective, physical, mental, cosmic, psychic, cause, substance, purpose, activity, evil, being, quality—any philosophic term, in short-means, go to experience and see what the thing is experienced as. --"The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism" (1910, MW3) 69 Now empirical method is the only method which can do justice to this inclusive integrity of "experience." It alone takes this integrated unity as the starting point for philosophic thought. -- Experience and Nature (LW1:19) In "The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism" John Dewey's offered a brief admonition to philosophers seeking terminological clarity: "go to experience." Despite its apparent directness, his advice provokes painfully simple questions: Go how? Go where? At this point, it is safe to assume most pragmatists understand how to "go to experience" for Dewey’s explanations of instrumental inquiry, knowledge, and warrant are among the clearest in his corpus. Indeed, his strong counsel that philosophers avoid starting from unannounced theoretical assumptions are now just common sense for anyone possessing even minimal scientific literacy. Thus, as method, Dewey’s empirical (or experiential) starting point is fairly straightforward. So much of philosophical inquiry has set out with implicit and predetermined ends (Truth, Reality) that it has become normal for many of them to suit their means in advance, as well. A great variety of theoretical assumptions have served as bridges to the general ends, and whether they were entities, relations, functions, or logical principles all resulted in philosophies which functioned with a "top down" rather than "bottom up" approach to the subject matter under investigation. Moral philosophies, to NOTES 69 Standard references to John Dewey's work are to the critical (print) edition, The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953, edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969-1991), published in three series as The Early Works (EW), The Middle Works (MW) and The Later Works (LW). "LW5:270," for example, refers to The Later Works, volume 5, page 270. Appeared in: Roberto Frega, Roberto Brigati, editors Pragmatist Epistemologies, Lexington, Lanham, 2011.