ABSTRACT
Let me say, right off the bat, that I don't know what it means today to be a pragmatist. Richard Rorty calls himself a pragmatist, but I am inclined to think that his pragmatism is profoundly different from that of, say, John Dewey. The key words in Dewey's philosophy as I understand it are ‘interaction’ and ‘inquiry’, the key words in Rorty's recent philosophy are ‘conversation’ and ‘solidarity’. Not that Dewey would not approve of conversation and solidarity – both are essential to inquiry – but he would insist that what prompts the inquiry and what must be its ultimate upshot is experience, that is, interactions between a human organism and its environment. I have been puzzled for years why Rorty fails to note the role of experience in Dewey's thinking, the word ‘experience’ occurs in the titles of several of Dewey's most important later books. Nor is this emphasis on experience unique to Dewey; we find it as well in the philosophies of Peirce and of James.
