Browning on Inquiry into Inquiry, Part 1

This is the first of two papers addressing Browning’s “Designation, Characterization, and Theory in Dewey’s Logic” (2002) where he distinguishes a series of pretheoretical and theoretical stages for developing a theory of logic. The second of these two papers will recommend a modified version of this scheme of stages of inquiry into inquiry. The present paper recounts Browning’s original version of these stages and the ramifications of not clearly distinguishing them. I respond to Browning’s claim that in Burke 1994 I made two such mistakes of not properly distinguishing theoretical and pretheoretical stages of inquiry into inquiry.