[276] Ibid., p. 343.
[277] Ibid., p. 344.
[278] Op. cit., p. 345.
[279] Ibid.
[280] Ibid.
CHAPTER IX CONCLUSIONS
Dewey's interest as a philosopher centres, from first to last, upon knowledge and the knowing process. All that is vital in his ethical, social, and educational theories depends ultimately upon the special interpretation of the function of knowledge which constitutes his chief claim to philosophical distinction. Dewey's logical theory, as has been seen, was the natural and inevitable outcome of his demand for an empirical and 'psychological' description of thought as a 'transformatory' process working actual changes in reality. If in the beginning of his career he found the problem of the nature of knowledge all-important for his own interests, he came in the end to regard it as the problem of problems for all philosophers. There is no mistaking Dewey's conviction that the special interpretation of knowledge which he advocates opens the door to important advances in philosophical speculation, while it ends all discussion of those pseudo-problems which result from a false, epistemological formulation of the function of knowledge.
The history of the development of Dewey's thought, set forth in the preceding chapters, does not pretend to furnish an adequate estimate of his philosophical system. The two questions, of origin and worth, are, after all, distinct. The genetic account of Dewey's theory of knowledge may serve to make its bearings and implications better understood, may reveal its deeper meaning and import, but the final estimate of its value as a philosophical hypothesis depends on other considerations. In this final chapter, it is proposed to deal with the question of the positive value of functionalism as a working hypothesis. This criticism may also serve to gather together the threads of criticism and comment which run through the previous chapters, and reveal the general ground upon which the writer's opposition to Dewey's theory is based.