The chapter analyzes Max Black’s critical engagement with Dewey’s philosophy in his 1962 paper “Dewey’s Philosophy of Language.” The chapter first situates Black within the history of analytic philosophy and then goes on to explicate his critical analysis of Dewey’s thinking about language. Here, it points out how Black, despite being sympathetic to Dewey’s overall stress on the importance of social use, thinks that Dewey’s theory of language not only succumbs to the dogma of substantive meaning but also ignores a number of non-negligible differences, and the chapter explains how this leads Black to conclude that Dewey approached language as a metaphysician rather than a genuine empiricist. The second part of the chapter points out that Black has a solid grasp of the basic features of Dewey’s thinking about language but also argues that he is wrong to claim that Dewey subscribed to a dogma of substantive meaning or approached language as an unempirical metaphysician. It also explains how a big part of Black’s criticism is based on a dogma of substitutability which he dogmatically uses to criticize Dewey’s way of thinking for violating the logic of grammar, even though Dewey explicitly rejects such a criterion. The chapter ends by suggesting that Dewey and Black share a concern for a genuine fact-sensitive form of empiricism, and that this indicates a potential for future dialogue about exactly what it means to be empirical and how such an empiricism relates to purposeful action.