 Patrick Romanell (1949) held that Croce and Dewey at least share the view that art is about aesthetic experience. However, Dewey’s definition of the subject matter of philosophy of art as aesthetic experience (which treats it as a special type of experience) is inconsistent with his definition of it as the aesthetic phase of experience. Also, when Dewey speaks of aesthetic experience he is not functionalist and is not consistent with his pragmatism. Dewey should have held that just as there is no such thing as religious experience, there is no such thing as aesthetic experience. Dewey (1950) replied that every normally complete experience is aesthetic in its consummatory phase, that the arts and their experience are developments of this primary phase, and that there is nothing inconsistent in this. Where Romanell saw incompatibility Dewey saw continuity of development. Van Meter Ames (1953), however, defended Dewey against critics up to this point in time.