experience serves as a basic category in shusterman's pragmatism, both in terms of methodology (the pragmatist should always work from experience ) as well as ontology or epistemology (experience "is a transactional nexus of interacting energies connecting the embodied self and its environing world") but contrary to john dewey, shusterman does not engage in constructing a general metaphysical conception. he has, however, made significant comments on dewey's insights and defends dewey's idea of immediate, nondiscursive experience against the criticism put forward by richard rorty.