In John Dewey’s logical theory, qualities or qualitative relations account for the capacity to distinguish and associate the objects of reflective thought; they are antecedent to reflective analysis and necessary for coherent processes of inquiry. In Dewey’s writings that are specifically “metaphysical” in orientation, he is much more vague about the function of qualities, but does call them “generic traits of existence.” As such, they appear to be central to his mature ontological theory. In order to more fully understand the metaphysical import of qualitative relations, I first examine the details of Dewey’s logical theory, and then generalize those details in accordance with Dewey’s larger theory of nature. The end result is a novel interpretation of Dewey’s metaphysics.

在约翰·杜威的逻辑理论中，质量或质性关系是区分和关联反思性思想对象的能力。它们是反思性分析的先决条件，是进行连贯的查询过程所必需的。在杜威的专门针对“形而上学”的著作中，他对质量的功能更为模糊，但确实将其称为“存在的普遍特征”。因此，它们似乎是他成熟的本体论理论的核心。为了更充分地理解质性关系的形而上学意义，我首先研究了杜威逻辑理论的细节，然后根据杜威更大的自然理论对这些细节进行了概括。最终结果是对杜威的形而上学的新颖解释。