Abstract

Is epistemology the opium of modern philosophers, numbing fine minds and filling them with world‐denying dreams? The American pragmatist John Dewey (1859–1952) was convinced that it was, and he thought his brand of naturalism was the proper way to treat this pernicious addiction. In this chapter, I shall present Dewey's audacious and influential defense of this thesis. Audacious, because Dewey attacks assumptions about the nature of mind, knowledge, truth, and reality which have long been central to Western philosophy. Influential, because Dewey's bold polemic has served as a major reference point for several leading pragmatists – Sidney Hook (1902–1989), W.V.O. Quine (1908–2000), Richard Rorty (1931–2007), and Philip Kitcher (b. 1947) – whose naturalist predilections are well known.