E-Journal of Philosophy of Education:
International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 7, 2022

The Dynamics between Quality, Subject, and Meaning in
Dewey’s Naturalism: Rebuilding Agency as Medium
Meguru INOUEThe University of Tokyo
Abstract
After the linguistic turn led by R. Rorty, recent pragmatism has assumed a dichotomy between social
language and experience, and has neglected the latter, which is now taken to be ineffable, private, andqualitative. However, as various researchers and thinkers have suggested, the possibility ofreconstructing social norms seems to exist in what has not yet been named. Therefore, this paper aims
to elucidate the dynamic interactions between quality and meaning in J. Dewey’s naturalistic
philosophy. To start this inquiry, it is necessary to remove the stigma of such qualitative immediacy.
The qualitative is supposed to work as an eternal foundation or a “given” for knowledge, so this turns
into an epistemological problem. However, if experience is understood in terms of its temporal andtransitive character, the problem is dissolved, because we can then properly treat experience as a field
in which knowledge develops. The concept of meaning in Dewey’s theory shows us mainly two facts:
1) meaning connects the qualitative actuality and its potentiality, and changes immediacy itself, and2) meaning works as a method or rule to enable collaborative behavior and support the system ofsocial customs and normative standards. In addition, the theory of qualitative thought shows that
qualitative situations direct and control the thinking that reorganizes meanings or statements. The
discussion above indicates the interactive linkage of language (meaning) and experience (quality).
This paper claims that Dewey’s naturalism defines a human subject as an agency that rebuilds thepreexisting objective order. Moreover, because the agency is located in the intermediate status between
the qualitatively formless mode and publicly new objects, such a subject is termed a medium.
Keywords: John Dewey, naturalism, quality, meaning, subject

Correspondence:
Meguru INOUE, The University of Tokyo. Email: inoue-meguru@g.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp

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Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between experience andlanguage—or, following the terminology used in this paper, between quality andmeaning—in John Dewey’s (1859-1952) empirical naturalism. In other words, the aim
is to draw out the logic inherent in Dewey’s naturalistic philosophy of weaving words
and speaking in contact with sensitively given and ineffable experiential reality, and the
dynamics of such activities that operate through the world, the individual, and society.
In setting this objective, the following background is involved: (i) the question of
the boundary between experience and language is closely related to the way theindividual and society are connected and to the question of the subject; (ii) nevertheless,in the context of pragmatism, especially in the post-linguistic turn led by Rorty, there are
difficulties in questioning the boundary between experience and language. I will further
elaborate on these points.
(i) Why can the boundary between experience and language be a pedagogical issue?
First, it stems from the fact that language plays a central role in the introduction(socialization) of the individual into the community. In a few recent issues of Studies in
the Philosophy of Education, the connection between language action, society, andeducation has been discussed with reference to the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein and
Judith Butler (e.g., Miyadera, Okuno). Through language use, individuals internalize therules of the community and are included as participatory members. However, since thissocialization through language use is at the same time a subordination of the individual
to the existing system (cf. Foucault), this argument is connected to the issue of the subject.
For example, Okuno sees the possibility of “resistance” to the situation in which thesubject is constructed as the subordinate through social institutions. The possibility arises
from the “instability of language itself,” which fixes “I” in the same existence (Okuno
95). What this “instability” implies is the predominance of inherent existence overlanguage and meaning. This leads to the second point of contention. As language
functions as the law of the community, its renewal requires the role of experience beyond
language. In addition to Okuno’s point above, the discussion of Jacques Rancière by
Kawakami, for example, shares the direction of this hypothesis. Kawakami states that
linguistic activity as the “translation” between consensus and silence is an important
occasion for “Le partage du sensible” (the distribution of the sensible) that opens thedimension of “politics” in Rancière’s theory of education. These suggest a perspectivethat questions the possibility of subjectification, as distinguished from subordination, inthe movement for the creation of a new language. The importance of such an inquiry
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becomes even more pronounced in the contemporary context of what Bernard Stiegler
calls “misère symbolique” (symbolic poverty). This is an age in which the “decline ofindividuation” is becoming more common, and the individual is losing their subjective
opportunity because they can no longer participate in the production of the symbols thatmake them unique. In close proximity to these problem areas, Toraiwa’s research can becited as an application of Dewey’s philosophy. Toraiwa sees in “the ineffable” in Dewey’s
reflective thought the possibility of re-creating a new self that does not fall into the mere
reproduction of existing dominant discourses or one’s own discourses.
Taking its cue from this discussion, this paper focuses on the concept of quality in
Dewey’s philosophy as the equivalent of “the ineffable.” Quality is the direct experienceof things and situations enjoyed sensuously as “feeling,” which is “irreducible, infinitely
plural, undefinable and indescribable” (EN 74). At the same time, meaning refers to thisquality. The boundary between the non-cognitive, aesthetic, sensory, and bodily
experience of the pre-meaning realm and the language-based, cognitive experience of
meaning and the dynamics of its crossing is the decisive moment in which what is sensed
in a “private” and singular way in the individual passes onto the social and the public. To
question this aspect of the logic of Dewey’s naturalism is to question the core ofnaturalism’s intrinsic logic. Dewey’s Experience and Nature (1925), in which hedeveloped his empirical naturalism, focuses on quality as one of the key concepts. In theoverall picture encompassing the discussion, there is a cyclical progression from primaryexperience, which occurs in a state of subject-object inseparability, and secondary
experience, which is intelligently compartmentalized.1 Of course, there are many studies
in Japan and abroad that discuss naturalistic thought in relation to both experience andquality (e.g., Kaga, Alexander, Boisvert, Sleeper). However, the relationship between
quality-subject-meaning, which is encompassed in the logic of Dewey’s naturalism andwill be discussed in details in this paper, has not necessarily been elucidated.
(ii) When we approach Dewey’s philosophy from the above mentioned perspective,
we are forced to confront the problems presented by today’s currents of pragmatism.
Richard Rorty is especially significant in this case. While Rorty placed himself in the
pragmatist genealogy, as the leader of the linguistic turn, he adhered to the dichotomy
between experience and language, seeking to dissociate the concept of experience fromphilosophical discussion.
This paper, therefore, first presents a way to resolve the dichotomy between
experience and language and to rescue the status of qualitative experience (Section 1).
1

On this point, see, for example, Nishimoto and Tanaka.

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Then, while confirming the various characteristics of the concept of meaning in Dewey’s
naturalism, it examines the intersection of the two terms presented in the concept (Section2). The intersection of the two brings up the following point as the aspect of the subject
in Dewey’s naturalism is examined (Section 3). In other words, what Dewey calledsubject is the function of a medium that responds to the qualitative orientation that comeshistorically beyond the personal framework of “I” and throws it back into the publicworld through a reorganization of the semantic order.

1. Experience and Language after the Linguistic Turn
1.1. Elimination of the Concept of Experience: A Foundational Given?
In contemporary pragmatism, the influence of Rorty, who led the linguistic turn,remains significant despite its numerous detractors. Its influence remains, for example, inthe form of the “experience-language dichotomy” that Richard Bernstein has critically
noted (Bernstein 128-29). The implications of this dichotomy are straightforwardly
expressed by Rorty when he states that “Dewey should have dropped theterm‘experience’. . .” (Rorty 297). In other words, it is an assertion that the concept ofexperience, which should have occupied a central position in the philosophy of Jamesand Dewey, and which constitutes the source of pragmatism, should now be replaced bylanguage as a social practice, and linguistic and prelinguistic activities should be viewed
as fundamentally discontinuous.
This dichotomy is supported by the idea that direct, qualitative experience can play
an abject foundational role in an epistemological context. From an anti-representationalist,
anti-essentialist, and anti-foundationalist standpoint, Rorty repels epistemologicalassumptions that recognize ultimate and universal foundations of knowledge, such as
empirical directness and natural properties common to all human activity (Yaginuma
154-57). In his essay “Dewey’s Metaphysics,” Rorty criticizes the metaphysical aspectof Dewey’s naturalism, finding in it the residue of transcendental idealism. He asks,“Have we solved the problem of the relation between the empirical self and the material
world only to wind up once again with a transcendental ego constituting both?” (83).
There is, at the same time, a condemnation of the ambiguity of the concept of experience,
which is unnecessarily brought out as an all-powerful and mystical solution. As
Koopman states, when experience is an epistemological given, it heads toward thedeadlock of foundationalism, as the endorsement of the given principle implies rampant
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foundationalism (696).
However, Dewey’s prelinguistic experience is not posited as the measure of truth ofcognitive experience, as Rorty’s critique implies. Qualitative directness is had, not known.
That is, directness does not become a cognitive experience without it being named,
linguistically distinguished, and “objectified” (EN 198).
Therefore, as Richard Shusterman states, we can be sure that “in insisting that only
language constitutes qualities as objects of knowledge, Dewey has already taken the
linguistic turn which requires that the realm of cognitive justification be entirely
linguistic.” Nevertheless, Shusterman asserts that there are still aspects of Dewey’s
metaphysics that move toward an a priori metaphysics, pregnant with foundationalism,
which is still justified by transcendentalist arguments. This is because, in Dewey’s
argument, the quality of experience ensures the coherence of all argumentative thoughtand determines its validity by grounding and orienting thought in every situation(Shusterman 163,165 = 250, 254). Drawing on Dewey’s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry(1938) and the article “Qualitative Thought” (1930), Shusterman analyzes the following
five logical functions that direct experience serves for thought: (1) to bring together thecontextual situation on which thought depends and forms a discrete whole; (2) to control
the objects and things that thought recognizes, selects, and uses within the situation; (3)to provide a sense of adequacy, sufficiency, and validity of contextual judgment; (4) toprovide unity and direction to inquiry, allowing it to be maintained and carried out as aprocedure; and (5) to enable the intellectual association of thought objects (Shusterman
162-65 = 251-54). These, he says, invite a subtle grounding in the way that prelinguistic
qualitative experience provides guideposts and criteria for all thinking.
By accepting this criticism, can direct experience in Dewey’s philosophy still bepositioned as a kind of a given that introduces transcendentalist arguments and cannot
escape the approach to foundationalism? Hence, should Dewey’s line of reasoning, thatis, the quality of experience that gives a certain orientation to thought, be dismissed as abad singularity in his own philosophy, which is consistently anti-foundationalist?
1.2. Defending Immediate Experience: From its Historicity
The above issues cast doubt on the very thematic setting of this paper— theinteraction of experience and language—if not directly questioned from anepistemological context. However, as Bernstein states, reducing the scope of inquiry fromexperience to language not only fails to take into account the extrinsic and resistive
constraints that experience imposes on us, but also significantly narrows the broad field
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of human experience (historical, religious, moral, political, and aesthetic experience) thatphilosophy is to address (Bernstein 152 = 229). Thus, it is necessary to defend thequalitative directness of experience without falling into foundationalism. This paper,
therefore, responds to this issue by supporting Colin Koopman’s argument. That is, given
the historicity and temporality of the concept of experience that Dewey’s naturalism
embraces, this direct experience is not valid for a given, which provides an invariant
epistemological foundation.
In Koopman’s view, the philosophies of James and Dewey could not be sufficiently
anti-foundationalism in their statements because they had no theoretical tools after the
linguistic turn. Similarly, defenders of the concept of experience in the present day, who
support them, are not always sufficiently alert to the danger that their arguments run
toward Givinism (Koopman 696-702). Hence, though the significance of paying heed toneopragmatist voices arises, the approach of the linguistic turn has its limitations as well.
This is because it is difficult to respond to the critique of whether the consensus ofsociolinguistic practice it presupposes as the sole limitation of inquiry can provide a morerobust standard than relativism without falling into foundationalistic
representationalism—as, for example, John McDowell has theoretically called for the
existence of an object outside of judgment and beyond current practice. In addition, thecriticism that Rorty’s verbalism unfairly shuts out nonverbal experience is also invalid.
Rorty merely states that there is a sociolinguistic domain of experience involved in thelegitimization of knowledge and a domain of experience unrelated to it; but he does notstate that the latter does not exist (Koopman 706-08).
However, Barry Allen criticizes that this argument of Rorty is silent about the factthat not only actual knowledge but also knowledge concepts are founded on thecontribution of equally diverse skills and performances/techniques and that they cannot
be reduced to linguistic, propositional, or doxa entities. Noting this, Koopman says that
we need to find ways to reclaim the concept of supra-linguistic experience without
reverting to its givenness as an epistemological foundation, and that “such a third version
of pragmatism is made viable by focusing on the thoroughly temporal quality ofexperience” (709). The idea has its origins in the philosophies of James and Dewey, as
illustrated by James’ use of the metaphor of experience as a stream in motion to depict its
transitive character.
This position, which emphasizes the historicity of experience, is named“transitionalist pragmatism.” It states that truth is grasped as something that is situatedand established within experience. In other words, knowledge is neither grounded in theultimate, nor is it a mere consequence that we agree upon, but is redescribed as a relation
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between prior and future experience. By positing experience as “a temporal field within
which knowledge develops” (710), the concept of experience, like language, allows roomfor historical contingency. This position also considers language as a form of experienceand de-privatizes it in an epistemological context. The fact that foundationalism andlinguisticism have taken truth to be a property of sentences, propositions, and beliefs,
amounts to an unjustified limitation of the domain of philosophy to such linguistic truths.
By understanding language as a form of experience, the various non-linguistic
phenomena included in experience can be encompassed within philosophical discussion
as necessary tools for the success of human practice (Koopman 713-18).
By emphasizing the transitive character of experience, as described above, thefunction of prelinguistic experience has been presented in a way that is not a universal
given. This perspective on the historicity of direct experience is—although not elaborated
in Koopman’s argument—also in keeping with Dewey’s naturalism, which defines
quality of experience as the dynamic consequence of history in transition and persistence
by regarding quality as both the singular and pluralistic ends of natural events (Inoue).
These arguments resolve the problem of the “experience-language dichotomy” byencompassing language as a form of experience and defining the two as nonconfrontational.

2. The Intersection of Quality and Meaning in Dewey’s Naturalism
Through the previous section, we have secured a space in which we can argue theintersection of prelinguistic and “private” experience (i.e., quality)—though we will
reserve some of this “privateness” for the end of this paper)—and social language without
being accused of foundationalism. However, the relationship between the two, as
outlined by Koopman in his introduction to the perspective of temporality, is limited inits content to a response to an epistemological context. If there is a back-and-forth
relationship between the ineffable experience and the speaking experience, and if theprivate and the public interact in this back-and-forth, how does Dewey’s naturalism
depict this relationship? In what follows, instead of the concept of language itself, I will
first focus on Dewey’s description of meaning, which is the premise of linguistic activity(meaning makes linguistic activity possible), and explore the aspect of the linkage
between the two.
In this section, relying on Experience and Nature, we will first confirm the point thatmeaning is posited as: (i) a transformation of direct reality through the insertion of
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possibilities; (ii) generated from and functioning as a rule for cooperative action. Then,(iii) from Dewey’s theory of qualitative thought, we may conclude that the generationand development of thought is executed in a correspondence with the silent quality that
constitutes the situation. These establish that direct experience arises with a historical andsocial dimension (i.e., secondary experience) to it and pre-segmental qualities gain apathway into the social dimension as they are embodied and represented into meaning
through thought and communication.
2.1. Meaning as a Node of Reality-Potentiality: From Meaning to Quality
In Dewey’s naturalism, meaning, which corresponds to secondary experience,transforms primary experience itself, which is bodily sensed as qualitative directness.
This is because things and situations that are qualitatively present in the here-and-now
are connected to the dimension of their potentiality through the intervention of meaning.
For specific consideration, let us reconstruct the example Dewey presents in linewith this argument (EN 140-44). Consider a phase in which person A wants a flower at
hand that is a short distance away. Person A then points out the flower to Person B. In
response to A’s action of pointing to the flower, B reacts by understanding that the action
is not A’s behavior per se, but that it means something specific. B will then act toward thefuture situation to be achieved, which is either to give the flower to A or to reject the
proposal. At this point, a leap toward an absent consequence has occurred in the situation.
According to Dewey, meaning is firstly a property of movement, sound, behavior,etc. It is a sign that arises as an intent, which cannot be completed privately (the action ofpointing to a flower first has meaning (EN 142)). However, “secondarily the thing
pointed out by A to B gains meaning” (EN 142; emphasis Dewey), and meaning
simultaneously becomes a property of the indicated object when it attains the phase ofcompletion as possibility. In other words, the indicated flower, by being given meaning,
is experienced beyond its own directness as something that can be carried in the future
and as containing such potentiality.
This situation, in which things are experienced beyond themselves, can also be
expressed as follows:
If we consider the form or scheme of the situation in which meaning andunderstanding occur, we find an involved simultaneous presence and crossreference of immediacy and efficiency, overt actuality and potentiality, theconsummatory and the instrumental. (EN 143; emphasis Dewey)
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Some qualitative immediacy, when it has meaning, will appear in a figure of reference, ameans-object relationship, with other consequences tied to it.
What a physical event immediately is, and what it can do or its relationship are
distinct and incommensurable. But when an event has meaning, its potential
consequences become its integral and funded feature. (EN 143; emphasis Dewey)
This statement suggests that primary experience contains within itself the secondary
experience that mediates it.
The same is confirmed in the following explanation that this coexistence of meaningand quality gives things a “double life.”
Events when once they are named lead an independent and double life. In addition
to their original existence, they are subject to ideal experimentation: their meanings
may be infinitely combined and re-arranged in imagination, and the outcome of thisinner experimentation—which is thought—may issue forth in interaction with
crude or raw events. Meanings having been deflected from the rapid and roaring
stream of events into a calm and traversable canal, rejoin the main stream, and color,temper and compose its course. (EN 132)
Here “events” is used synonymously with the qualitative directness of a being that has ahistory unique to itself. Such quality is likened to a rushing torrent that continues to passaway because of its recurrent characteristics, while meaning is depicted as emerging fromthe torrent of qualities, interconnected with it by being placed in the field of nontemporality and transforming it by returning to qualitative experience again. The domainof meaning experience, characterized as intellectual, constitutes and conditions affective
and holistic qualitative experience.
2.2 Meaning as the Rule of Cooperative Action
The preceding discussion speaks to the ideas of Niklas Luhmann, who defined
meaning as a form of processing of experience, where one possibility is selected from thehorizon of possibilities. On the other hand, Dewey’s second argument for meaning
approximates the narrative of the late Wittgenstein, who viewed meaning in terms of use
and described it in terms of phases of action rather than representations of nature. Hence,
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Dewey presents language and meaning as methods and rules for establishing cooperative
action.
To verify this point, we will again use the specific example of pointing to a flower
mentioned earlier. When B reacts in this sense to A’s movement of pointing at a distantflower, this reaction is based on the perspective of functioning in A’s experience, awayfrom B’s own self-centeredness. Dewey sees the essence of communication, signs, andmeaning in the commonality of something at several different centers of action, such as
A and B.
To understand is to anticipate together, it is to make a cross-reference which, when
acted upon, brings about a partaking in a common, inclusive, undertaking. (EN 141)
The heart of language is not “expression” of something antecedent, much lessexpression of antecedent thought. It is communication; the establishment ofcooperation in an activity in which there are partners, and in which the activity ofeach is modified and regulated by partnership. (EN 141)
This explains the universality of meaning. The fact that meaning is a method ofcooperative action is due to the generality or the capability of being diverted of themethod itself, regardless of the individual concrete thing or situation to which themeaning is applied each time. “Meanings are rules for using and interpreting things;
interpretation being always an imputation of potentiality for some consequence” (EN147). “It [Meaning] is universal also as a means of generalization” (EN 147). Thus,
meaning is rapidly and autonomously applied to new cases as well as for launching acommunity of action.
At the same time, meaning is a social register of relationships between things,
regarded as an established pattern with objectivity.
. . . essence [as an ulterior and permanent meaning] is the rule, comprehensive andpersisting, the standardized habit, of social interaction . . . (EN 149)
Transitive natural events can only be intentionally utilized through the fixation of “someeasily recoverable and recurrent act,” such as “gestures and spoken sounds” (EN 146-47),
and it is here that the ritualization and institutionalization of things through meaning isestablished. Meaning thus supports institutions, communal practices, and morecomprehensively, cultural networks. The regular character and objectivity of meanings
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are fundamentally involved in the constitution of social conventions and norms. This fact
forms the premise for the individuality of the mind as deviance and deviation to be
declared subjective in the reorganization of the meaning order, which will be discussed
later.
2.3. Implications of Qualitative Thought Theory: From Quality to Meaning
At the same time in which meaning in the social phase transforms the qualitative
directness of experience as it manifests itself in the individual, the quality that permeatesthe situation is reverted in the direction of the creation and reorganization of meaning.
What Dewey calls qualitative thought is the description of a situation in which a totalityof qualities in an undifferentiated state that is beyond language, evokes, develops, andgoverns the thought that accompanies speech. Again, these qualitative orientations ofthought are not immutable but the result of historical consequences inherent in each
moment of transition. This nature of thought represents the second brackish-water region
where quality and meaning intersect in this paper.
Dewey, for example, layers quality onto what has been called the subconscious,
working behind the thoughts. It is the feeling of a myriad of cognitively unnoticed organic
actions—such as a sense of rightness or wrongness—that numerously influence thought
and action (EN 227). At the same time, this pre-reflective quality, closely related to what
has been conventionally named intuition, guides reflection, reasoning, and rational designprior to them (QT 249). What derives thought especially is the quality that permeates thewhole situation that is vaguely held as problematic before being segmented into terms
and relations.
The sense of something problematic, perplexing, or to be resolved reveals thepresence of something that permeates all elements and considerations. Thought isthe operation by which it is transformed into a proper and consistent nominalism.
(QT 249)
The qualities that are directly experienced before they are segmented into words ina narrative are not meaningful in themselves.
[H]owever, it is recognized that predication—any proposition having subjectpredicate form—marks an attempt to make a qualitative whole which is directly andnon-reflectively experienced into an object of thought for the sake of its own
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development, the case stands otherwise. (QT 253)
Dewey states that in this statement, the copula is as an active verb that contains the
anticipation of a dynamic change and is understood in terms of its own consequence. In
other words, what “that thing is sweet” means is “‘that thing’ will sweeten some otherobject” (QT 253; emphasis Dewey) and implicates consideration and attention to theimminent consequences of what it can do. The term also imposes a boundary on a qualitythat has, within itself, a dynamic transition, movement, and direction. In the preceding
predication, the changing event is intellectually symbolized and transformed into an
object of thought by the definition of its boundaries as “that thing” or “sweet” (QT 25255). These reconfigurations of logic by Dewey are directed toward the recombination andcreation of objects and new relations through the demarcation of their boundaries withthe existence of dynamic qualities as a background for language.

3. Subject as Medium
So far, we have examined aspects of the linkage between quality and meaning
encompassed by Dewey’s naturalism. In light of the interest of this paper, we can say thatthe linkage is a cyclical movement that generates new quality by forming meanings andopening to others by figuring, expressing, and sharing experiences in response to thehyper-linguistically produced experiences. More importantly, if this movement isconnected to Dewey’s discussion below, it is the very condition for the existence of
subjectivity.
Let us present the points in this section up front. The subject, in Dewey’s sense, isthe individuality of the mind, which has been discovered and utilized since the modern
era as an originator and innovator reorganizing the existing order of meaning. The subject,as the one that renews, has an intermediate character and is a preliminary step before
taking the form of a segmented meaning that can be publicly manifested. In the context
of Dewey’s argument, the paper positions the subject as a “medium” that connects thequalitative reality, which historically and uniquely arrives at the individual and directs
each person’s thinking, with the field of meaning, which opens up to social
communication.
3.1. Subject as the Agent of Renewal

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To begin with, it should be confirmed that Dewey, in Experience and Nature, refers
to the subject as the moment of creation and renewal of order. The recombination is an
event triggered by individuality, especially individuality of the mind. In what follows, I
would like to extract this line of reasoning from Dewey, which has been buried under the
convoluted arguments peculiar to Experience and Nature.2
In Dewey’s naturalism, the personal individuality of human beings is considered to
be both fundamental and continuous with the individuality of natural things in general.
Such individuality is recognized not only in organic life, such as animals and plants, butalso in the dimension of simpler natural events, such as physical and chemical
phenomena. It is exemplified by the fact that atoms and molecules show and try tomaintain their own specific preferences and centrality in their reactions and sensitivities.
Personality, selfhood, subjectivity are eventual functions that emerge withcomplexly organized interactions, organic and social. Personal individuality has its
basis and conditions in simpler events. (EN 162)
This individuality of things, including the personal and spiritual, when viewed inrelation to the total order in which it is contained, implies a state of difference, deviation,and exception. There was a historical shift between antiquity and modernity regarding
how to grasp and locate individuality as a difference from wholeness, and in these twocontrasting shifts, Dewey sees the discovery of the subject.
In ancient Greece, individuality was positioned as a mere exception outside of
the universal and systematic system, species, and familial kind of things. It was a failure
to realize an objective aspect, a defect that was merely a source of ignorance, timidity,
and error. This conceptual position given to individuality is permeated with the social
experience of the time: “[s]uch a marked difference in the estimate of the status ofindividuality is proof of difference in the empirical content of ancient and modern culture”(EN 163). In primitive cultures, the individual had no more status than a part of the whole,and thus it was important to absorb the customs and traditions possessed by the group asa whole. Then, established patterns, standards, and methods were considered theobjective nature of things to be accepted without question, and individuals’ potentialities
were viewed as dangerous deviations. In eliminating deviations and maintaining tradition,
2

Some of the discussion of the subject dealt with in Section 3 has already been organized by Hiroo Kaga as anaturalistic theory of syukansei (i.e., subjectivity, also see Note 4) (Kaga 347-50). This paper, on the other hand, takes
the position that the renewal of order that the subject takes on is also a theory of syutai, as it requires the practical actof communication as a necessary condition for such renewal.
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M. INOUE“[c]ustom is Nomos, lord and king of all, of emotions, beliefs, opinions, thoughts as well
as deeds” (EN 164). Thus, individuality was grasped as a fixed part of a completed andestablished static system of order.
However, the individuality of mind as an exception to the established order can work
constructively toward the inception and invention of new things. Even at a time wheninnovation was seen as a threat to the collective, human beings were not entirely subject
to the demands of convention.
Even in cultures most committed to reproduction, there is always occurring somecreative production, through specific variations, that is, through individuals. Thus,
while negatively individuality means something to be subdued, positively it denotes
the source of change in institutions and customs. (EN 165)
Thus, Dewey raises the following proposition: “Empirically, it [subjective mind] is anagency of novel reconstruction of a pre-existing order” (EN 168).
It is noteworthy here that the concept of subjectivity thus formulated is founded ona critique of both ancient and modern views. In other words, there is a sublation of thetwo views: the ancient Greek view of individuality as a deviation from the universal order,
and the post-modern view of the individual as an isolated and independent center of desire
and thought.
After making a sharp distinction between “individuals with minds” and “individual
minds” as fundamentally different, Dewey criticizes the concept of self and subject
assumed since the modern era as an unburdened fiction of social and historical traditions.
The mind, which is theoretically imparted to the modern subject, is such that it is directly
and genuinely observable from a privileged position, isolated from historical andtraditional burdens.
But the whole history of science, art and morals proves that the mind that appears inindividuals is not as such individual mind [that is responsible for the renewal of
tradition]. The former [i.e., individuals with mind] is in itself a system of belief,
recognitions, and ignorances, of acceptances and rejections, of expectancies andappraisals of meanings which have been instituted under the influence of custom
and tradition. (EN 170; emphasis Dewey)
The mind in the “individual with mind” is solely a system of meaning-ordering that isshared historically and communally and is enforceable in both perception and practice.
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3.2. Subject as Medium
This subject, which is responsible for renewal, departs from the restraints of thehistorically given order, which is an aspect missing from the modern subject. It adds
something new to the existing order, which is an aspect of individuality that was ignoredin ancient Greek thought, and is considered to have an intermediate character.
The point in placing emphasis upon the role of individual desire and thought insocial life has in part been indicated. It shows the genuinely intermediate position ofsubjective mind: it proves it to be a mode of natural existence in which objects
undergo directed reconstitution. (EN 171)
Since the “objects” to be reorganized is the event that is endowed with meaning in thescheme of Dewey’s naturalism,3 what is occurring here is a recombination of public
meanings.
The thoughts and desires held by this individual are subjective and a medium oftransforming the old object and bringing it into a new public and objective object. The recreation of the object involves imagination, which is not “mere reverie” but “terminatesin a modification of the objective order, in the institution of a new object” (EN 170-71).
This imagination “involves a dissolution of old objects and a forming of new ones in a
medium which, since it is beyond the old object and not yet in a new one, can properly
be termed subjective” (EN 171). These statements clearly indicate that subject is anintermediate medium in the process of construction that is being transformed into a new
object that is accepted in the public world.4
3

This is confirmed in statements such as “[e]vents turn into objects, things with a meaning” (EN 132). Thus,
Dewey’s locating the object as an event doubled by meaning and the subject as the agent of a renewal of the meaningorder indicates that the subject-object symmetry in Dewey’s naturalism hinges on meaning. That is, subject andobject correspond to the one that imparts meaning and the one that is imparted meaning.
4

The discussion so far and Dewey’s writing in the text suggest that this subject concept crosses the boundary of“syukan/syutai” that is distinguished in the Japanese translation of the word “subject.” In light of this duplexity, I
have literally used the term “subject” rather than syukan or syutai in the original paper. This different Japanesetranslation of the two generally corresponds to a difference in their epistemological (i.e., shukan) and practical (i.e.,syutai) contextual emphasis—this distinction refers to Paul Standish’s explanation, which depends on Naoki Sakai’s
discussion (Standish 31-32). However, as Dewey’s instrumentalist theory of inquiry is a good example, the two aregrasped as continuous, as his position rejects the dualism of epistemology and practice. This is logicallydemonstrated in the theoretical construct that subject is viewed from the function of modifying the objectively
accepted order of meaning, and that the meaning being modified is at once cognitive and practical (cf. Section 2“Meaning as a Node of Reality-Potentiality,” “Meaning as the Rule of Cooperative Action”).
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Now, the subject as a medium presents a fluidity that straddles language (i.e.,
meaning) and non-verbals and continues to transform in an indefinite manner.
There is a peculiar intrinsic privacy and incommunicability attending the
preparatory intermediate stage. When an old essence or meaning is in process of
dissolution and a new one has not taken shape even as a hypothetical scheme, theintervening existence is too fluid and formless for publication, even to one’s self. Itsvery existence is ceaseless transformation. . . This process of flux and ineffability is
intrinsic to any thought which is subjective and private. (EN 171)
Thus, Dewey portrays the sensing and thinking being as one who is representing a new
object that can be shared in the public world. It is the process of adding and redrawing
boundaries in response to an ineffable qualitative reality, as qualitative thought theory
suggests.
However, the experience, which plays the role of an occasion for order restructuring
by evoking thoughts and words, is not possessed privately and exclusively by anindividual who is enclosed and isolated as the so-called “subjective,” as distinguishedfrom Dewey’s use of the word. “It is absurd to call a recognition or a conception
subjective or mental because it takes place through a physically or socially numericallydistinct existence” (EN 171). Rather, qualitative sensation, which seems “private,” is an
event open within “objective” nature that arrives impersonally with an a posteriori
appropriated self as its locus.
. . . [I]t is not exact nor relevant [to the intent of Dewey’s statement] to say “Iexperience” or “I think.” “It” experiences or is experienced, “it” thinks or is thought,
is a juster phrase. Experience, a serial course of affairs with their own characteristic
properties and relationships, occurs, happens, and is what it is. Among and withinthese occurrences, not outside of them nor underlying them, are those events which
are denominated selves. (EN 179)
In this way, experience, by its very nature, is not localized as someone else’s, butarises historically as an event between the places involved. However, when it is virtuallyand fictionally attributed to an independent self, the subject stands a posteriori as a newly
added social event. Therefore, the implication of making “I” rather than “it” the locus ofthoughts, beliefs, and desires is the recognition and acceptance of the responsibility thatis established there, and the identification of the self as the independent and external
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origin of beliefs and feelings (EN 179-80).
The argument that what brings about a reorganization of meaning in a medium isthe quality that precedes the self and arises as a historical consequence has allowed thesubject as medium to be shifted even further, going a little beyond Dewey’s statement.
To reiterate, the subject was situated at the intersection of quality and meaning. The
subject, guided by what comes historically in an impersonal way, takes on the utteranceof that thought from the starting point of “I” and returns it to public society as a newmeaning. This subject’s way of being can be understood as a mediumship that listens towhat can now be called the “voice of nature” and translates it into human language.

Conclusion
This paper has explored Dewey’s naturalistic philosophy to depict the movement
between the pre/supra-linguistic experience (i.e., quality) and language (i.e., meaning),
which has been ignored in the face of the “experience-language dichotomy” that has been
rampant in the thought context of pragmatism since the linguistic turn. In Section 1, wesecured for this purpose the status of the directness of qualitative experience. The focus
on the historicity and temporality of experience repels the epistemological problem ofpossibility as its foundational givenness. In Section 2, the character of the concept of
meaning in Dewey’s naturalism was examined to see how experience and language
interact. Intellectually segmented and socially shared meanings expand and transform
direct experience by inserting a dimension of possibility, and conversely, quality, whichis always already historicized and acculturated, drives and guides thought, directing thereconstruction of new meanings and discourses. In Section 3, we have confirmed that
Dewey’s views subject as an agent of renewal of the meaning order that sustains
conventions and norms. The subject, guided by a voice that arrives impersonally as ahistorical consequence of natural events, has an aspect of being a medium that gives
meaning anew and returns that voice to a social dimension.
Finally, I would like to conclude by pointing toward two implications of this
discussion. The first is the distance between Rorty and Dewey. Rorty’s abandonment of
the concept of experience may be related to the distinction between the public and private
spheres, which is another gap between Rorty and Dewey, and to his liberal ironist
arguments that are possible under this distinction; but I did not go that far in my analysis.
On the other hand, in relation to that point, the following discussion by Ken McClelland
suggests an interesting fact. McClelland points out that when Rorty speaks of “metaphors”
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and “the invention of new idioms,” he is effectively sheltering a place for the noncognitive and nonverbal via linguistic devices, which is a qualitative starting point for recreating the web of beliefs, desires, and practices that bind us. This point indicates that,considering the previous discussion, Dewey and Rorty, despite their presuppositional gap,
are on the same track in that they are both open to the re-creation of society in the wakeof their qualitative starting point.
The second is a response to Gert Biesta’s criticism of Dewey. Biesta states that theunderstanding that Dewey’s presentation of action, communication, and learning adopts,
at its root, a hermeneutic worldview that continually brings the world back to an internal
understanding on “my” part (Biesta 46 = 73). He says that it remains at the limit of a selfcontained or, in Emmanuel Levinas’ terminology, “egological” worldview that closes
itself off to external voices by the world and the “other.” However, this criticism is onesided when we reconsider Dewey’s naturalistic philosophy as a premise to support sucha theory of education. The subject as medium in Dewey’s naturalism is the very logic ofworld-centered activity that accepts and responds to what comes as an event.

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