–19–
Dewey argued that what we know as objects are the product of previously resolved inquiries. He
wrote:
The name objects will be reserved for subject-matter so far as it has been produced and
ordered in settled form by means of inquiry: proleptically, objects are the objectives of
inquiry. The apparent ambiguity of using "objects" for this purpose (since the word is
regularly applied to things that are observed or thought of) is only apparent. For things exist
as objects for us only as they have been previously determined as outcomes of inquiries. (p.
122).
Dewey, of course, used the term inquiry in a technical sense, meaning "the controlled or directed
transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in its constituent
distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole"
(p. 108). The situations of ambiguous reference described by Wittgenstein and Quine are
indeterminate in the sense that Dewey describes here. Inquiry is required, therefore, on the part
of the interlocutors to resolve the reference. In this way, all acts of ostensive reference
necessitate inquiry.
7
Dewey described the process in the chapter of Logic entitled "The
Construction of Judgment" in this way:
The nub of any existensial identification or characterization of a thing as such-and-such lies
in the ground it offers for giving the object a description in terms of what is not then and
there observed. Apart from an inclusive situation which determines in correspondence with
each other the material that constitutes the observed singular this and the kind of
characterizing predicate applicable to it, predication is totally arbitrary or ungrounded.
7
It should be noted, however, that the notion of inquiry as developed by Dewey was extremely broad. It
was by no means limited to the disambiguation of ostensive reference. Inquiry, for Dewey, was the basis
for all intelligent action and the foundation of his system of logic (Burke, 1994).
Convention