Why Transitionalists can learn from experience

This paper examines the Transitionalist pragmatist rejection of classical pragmatist views on "experience". Transitionalists argue that the classical pragmatists were either explicitly foundationalist or were too close to foundationalism for comfort. I argue that this critique misses its mark, drawing specifically on a Deweyan account of judgment. I further argue, however, that there is a significant issue that transitionalists do correctly identify. I follow up on this issue by looking at Dewey's gesturing, at the end of Experience and Nature, to a "theory of criticism". I argue that the transitionalist critique allows Deweyans to draw out and build on the meta-philosophical commitments implicit in Dewey's turn toward Criticism.