Seeing Duhem's bon sens through Dewey's logic. Judgment as the central function of knowing

In the early 20th century, Pierre Duhem and John Dewey independently addressed the logical difficulties in testing hypotheses. Duhem pointed out that experimental testing requires assumptions and theories in addition to the hypothesis to be tested, which is known as the holistic nature of confirmation. A negative result in experimental testing may be due to the hypothesis or additional assumptions. Duhem ascertained that in these negative cases, hypotheses are chosen by bon sens, a concept lately considered ambiguous. Duhem stressed that "pure logic" does not contribute to such a choice. On several occasions, Duhem refers to bon sens in terms of judgments of practice; however, he did not clearly analyze the logical characteristics of judgments of practice. For Dewey, hypothesis testing requires judgments of practice, even when they are theoretical hypotheses. Unlike "pure logic," for which practical judgments are distinct from theoretical judgments, Dewey developed a) a non-dichotomous conception of judgments of practice that integrates theoretical, evaluative, and practical aspects, and b) placed judgments of practice at the center of his theory of inquiry. In this text, we show that some key questions that Duhem leaves unclear about bon sens find satisfactory answers in Dewey's logic of inquiry. We will show that Duhem's bon sens is a practical judgment applied in research processes.