Context: John Dewey (1859–1952) modified James' pragmatism to form a theory known as instrumentalism. The role of sense experience in Dewey's theory is crucial, in that he saw experience as unified totality of things through which everything else is interrelated. Dewey's basic thought, in accordance with empiricism was that reality is determined by past experience. Therefore, humans adapt their past experiences of things to perform experiments upon and test the pragmatic values of such experience. The value of such experience is measured experientially and scientifically, and the results of such tests generate ideas that serve as instruments for future experimentation, in physical sciences as in ethics. Thus, ideas in Dewey's system retain their empiricist flavour in that they are only known a posteriori.

Question: Who came up with 'instrumentalism'?
Answer: John Dewey

Question: What did Dewey think about reality?
Answer: reality is determined by past experience

Question: When was Dewey born?
Answer: 1859

Question: When did Dewey die?
Answer: 1952

Question: What was instrumentalism a modification of?
Answer: James' pragmatism

Question: How did James define reality?
Answer: Unanswerable

Question: Why is Dewey's system considered a priori?
Answer: Unanswerable

Question: Who changed Dewey's solution?
Answer: Unanswerable

Question: Why is basic thought crucial to Dewey's theory?
Answer: Unanswerable

Question: Who claimed that humans create experiments based on the perceived future?
Answer: Unanswerable