Sellars’ attack on the “Myth of The Given” strikes at the very heart of the foundationalist project of empiricism, while yet attempting to preserve the sound epistemological and ontological intuitions on which it draws. To achieve this, the fatal predicaments bound up with the concept of the given first must be identified and defused. The result is a cautious redefinition of both the given as a non-epistemological concept and the relation between observation and theory, direct knowledge and inferential knowledge.

In this article, I investigate the possibility of reconciling a radically disenchanted scientific naturalism in ontology with the unconditional and non-instrumental character of the moral point of view. My point of departure will be Sellars’s philosophy, which attempts to satisfy both those, seemingly unreconcilable, demands at once. I shall argue that there is a tension between those two demands that finds expression both at the theoretical and practical level, and which is not adequately resolved from a strictly Sellarsian perspective. I (...) will then develop a neo-Sellarsian framework, close to the spirit—if not the letter—of Sellars’s philosophy, which, as I will suggest, can live up to this task. This solution depends (1) on insisting on both the semantic irreducibility and explanatory reducibility of moral normativity to non-normative facts, while simultaneously acknowledging that those two dimensions mutually presuppose and support on another, and (2) on recognizing that the instrumental facets of theoretical-scientific rationality need not imply a coercive attitude toward nature, ourselves, and others. (shrink)

Critical attention to Wilfrid Sellars’s “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man” (PSIM) has focused on the dubious Peircean optimism about scientific convergence that underwrites Sellars’s talk of “the” scientific image. Sellars’s ultimate Peircean ontology has led Willem deVries, for instance, to accuse him of being a naturalistic “monistic visionary.” But this complaint of monism misplays the status of the ideal end of science in Sellars’s thinking. I propose a novel reading of PSIM, foregrounding its opening methodological reflections. On this (...) reading, the central point of the paper is to accuse figures like Wittgenstein and Strawson, whom I call “analytical quietists,” of taking the unity of intellectual endeavor as somehow given. Such unity as is forthcoming is, Sellars tells us, a task. I conclude by noting that a structurally similar accusation of too easily presumed unity emerges at the end of the paper, against a familiar sort of anti-relativistic moral theorizing. Thus, Sellars’s conception of the task of philosophy is, at least potentially, a point of surprising ethico-political significance as well. (shrink)

In his new book, Brandom offers a new argument against the viability of Sellars’ scientific naturalism. Brandom attempts to show that if the Sellarsian it scientia mensura principle is understood as implying that manifest-image objects exist only if they are identical to scientific-image objects, it is undermined by the ‘Kant–Sellars’ thesis about identity which implies that manifest-image objects cannot be identical to scientific-image objects. This conclusion can be evaded by construing the relation between manifest and scientific objects as weaker than (...) that of identity, namely as a relation between manifest-image functional roles and scientific-image realizers. But Brandom again argues that even this weaker construal of the scientia mensura thesis is in conflict with another Sellarsian argument, this time against phenomenalism. It will be argued that this is not so. I will, moreover, suggest that the ‘function-realizer’ construal of the manifest-scientific image distinction is indeed tenable—especially if the process of determining the scientific-image realizers of functional roles specified in manifest-image is understood as the culmination of a self-correcting dynamic and diachronic process of conceptual change. Finally, I will argue that while Brandom is right to point out that Sellars’ adherence to the scientia mensura principle is based on a ‘unity-of-science’ view, he is wrong to think that his argument for the contrary conclusion is successful, because Brandom’s argument does not automatically tell against a weaker ‘unity-of-science’ view according to which incommensurability of explanatory levels in science is a pragmatically indispensable yet in principle dispensable feature of empirical inquiry. (shrink)

Recent proponents of the ‘theory theory’ of mind often trace its roots back to Wilfrid Sellars’ famous ‘myth of Jones’ in his 1956 article, ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’. Sellars developed an account of the intersubjective basis of our knowledge of the inner mental states of both self and others, an account which included the claim that such knowledge is in some sense theoretical knowledge. This paper examines the nature of this claim in Sellars’ original account and its relationship (...) to more recent debates concerning ‘theory of mind’, in particular the theory theory. A close look reveals that Sellars’ original view embodied several distinctions that would enable more recent theory theorists to accommodate certain phenomenological objections that have been raised against that outlook. At the heart of the philosophical issue is an overlooked complexity involved in Sellars’ account of the ‘theory/observation’ distinction, involving a conception of the distinction that is both independently plausible and a key to the issue in dispute. (shrink)

This paper defends scientific realism, the doctrine that we should interpret theories as being just as ontologically committing as beliefs at the observational level. I examine the character of observation to show that the difference in interpretation suggested by anti-realists is unwarranted. Second, I discuss Wilfrid Sellars'' approach to the issue. Finally, I provide a detailed study of recent work by Bas van Fraassen. While van Fraassen''s work is the focus of the paper, the conclusions are far broader: That a (...) wide family of anti-realist views (of which van Fraassen''s is only one) is problematic and unmotivated and hence to be rejected. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Lange’s argument in support of Sellars’ scientific realism, which, if successful, surprisingly, undermines Sellars’ scientia mensura principle and justifies the anti-Sellarsian view to the effect that certain domains of discourse which use irreducibly normative descriptions and explanations are explanatorily autonomous. It will be argued that Lange’s argument against the layer-cake view is not strictly speaking Sellarsian, since Lange interprets Sellars’ argument in an overly abstract or formal manner. Moreover, I will suggest that, (...) within a properly Sellarsian context, Lange’s argument against the layer-cake picture can actually be used for quite un- Langean purposes, namely in order to show that folk- psychological descriptions and explanations are not if fact autonomous. However, Lange could insist that his reconstruction of Sellars’ argument is substantially correct and he does have the resources to do so. I will propose that the substantial issue between Lange and Sellars turns on their different views on the function of ceteris-paribus clauses, and ultimately, on issues about the unity of science. Finally, it will be suggested that the Sellarsian framework for tackling these issues constitutes a viable alternative to Lange’s picture of theoretical explanation, while at the same time incorporating be the sound insights of the latter. (shrink)

This thesis offers a naturalist revision of Alain Badiou’s philosophy. This goal is pursued through an encounter of Badiou’s mathematical ontology and theory of truth with contemporary trends in philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science. I take issue with Badiou’s inability to elucidate the link between the empirical and the ontological, and his residual reliance on a Heideggerian project of fundamental ontology, which undermines his own immanentist principles. I will argue for both a bottom-up naturalisation of Badiou’s philosophical approach (...) to mathematics and a top-down naturalisation. Articulating my particular understanding of what realism and naturalism should commit us to, I propose a creative fusion of Badiou’s attention to metamathematical results with a structural-informational metaphysics, proposing a ‘matherialism’ uniting the more daring speculative insights of the former with the naturalist and empiricist commitments motivating the latter. (shrink)

La critique sellarsienne du «mythe du donné» touche en son cœur le projet empiriste fondationnaliste, dont elle entend néanmoins sauvegarder les intuitions épistémologiques et ontologiques saines. Pour ce faire, les difficultés dirimantes soulevées par l’usage de la notion de donné doivent être d’abord clairement identifiées, puis désamorcées. Ceci aboutit à la fois à une redéfinition précautionneuse du donné comme un concept non épistémologique, et à une révision de la conception traditionnelle du rapport entre observation et théorie, connaissance directe et connaissance (...) inférentielle. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.Le mythe fondateur de l’empirisme : le donné épistémologiqueVolume 51, Issue 3AUDE BANDINI DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000789Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. Le mythe fondateur de l’empirisme : le donné épistémologiqueVolume 51, Issue 3AUDE BANDINI DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000789Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. Le mythe fondateur de l’empirisme : le donné épistémologiqueVolume 51, Issue 3AUDE BANDINI DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000789Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)