Experience, Language, and the Qualitative
Developing Jean-Pierre Cometti’s Legacy
Abstract
In this paper, I provide a sketch of Jean-Pierre Cometti’s original interpretation of John Dewey’s approach to language, emphasizing that it is grounded on a continuistic picture of language as a development of human experience, a naturalistic but non-naturalized conception of experience itself, and a strong focus on the primarily social structure of language and its connection to coordinated action. In the meantime, I suggest that Cometti’s continuistic thesis should explicitly address the issue of the ‘qualitative’ in experience, which is a major theme in both James’ and Dewey’s works. I suggest integrating his view through a broadly bio-cultural approach to the qualitative dimensions of experience, as distinct from the widespread idea that it is subjective, as well as more primitive and intrinsically foreign to language.
Submitted: Feb. 5, 2025 | Accepted: May 22, 2025 | Published Sept. 1, 2025 | Language: en
Keywords John Dewey • Language • Biocultural approach • Pragmatism • Qualitative experience
Copyright © 2025 Roberta Dreon. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/Jolma/2723-9640/2025/01/007