Pragmatism, Praxis, and Naturalism: The Importance for Music Education of Intentionality and Consummatory Experience in Musical Praxes

The overlapping of pragmatic philosophy and the Aristotelian concept of praxis is explored with application to music and music education. John Dewey's philosophy of Art as Experience is contrasted with tacit aesthetic assumptions about music that music teachers often hold as a result of the aesthetic meme inherited from their university music studies. Praxis is then accounted for in terms of the conditions of consummatory experience shared with Dewey's pragmatism. The "ends-in-view" importance of consummatory experience to both pragmatism and praxis are examined in terms of the intentionality (individual and collective) analyzed by John Searle and further qualified by the pragmatic realism of Hilary Putnam. These philosophical implications are explored with conclusions for music education.