Having completed this seminar, participants will have a basic understanding of the transactional view Dewey and Bentley laid out in their book Knowing and the Known. They will be able to take a transactional approach; differentiate transaction from inter-action and self-action; apply the transactional strategy in various situations; and explain a transactional approach to language, communication, specification, inquiry, and economics.

Feedback on essays:
The coordinator will hand back essays and comment briefly on each one. Students should review each other's essays before class and offer any comments or opinions at this point.

Feedback on readings:
Students are invited to comment on the readings.

Class One: Introduction
This class will orient participants to the seminar and each other.

Class Two: Self-Action, Inter-Action, Transaction
This class will clarify the distinction between the self-actional, inter-actional, and transactional points of view. This distinction is central to Knowing and the Known.

Class Three: Seeing Together: The Transactional Strategy
This class will focus in on the central feature of the transactional view: seeing together. We will see how Dewey and Bentley apply the transactional strategy to achieve this seeing together, and we'll apply the transactional strategy to a number of different situations.

Class Four: Language and Communication What is language?
What is communication?
Process of Nounification
Designation, existence, and fact
Words as processes through time
Word clusters
Vague names and accurate names

Class Five: Firming Economic Names
Special Invited Presentation by Professor David B. Miller on a Transactional Approach to the Development of Instinctive Behavior

Class Six: The Transactional Approach to Inquiry
This class will explore the various aspects and phases of a transactional approach to scientific inquiry.

Class Seven: Common Sense and Science
In this class we will critically explore Dewey's transactional perspective on the relation between the concerns of common sense and the concerns of science - we will see Dewey view the two as phases of a larger process including them both.

Class Eight: The Transactional Approach and Economics
This class will explore connections between the transactional approach and economics. The guiding question is "Does the transactional approach have anything to offer economics?"