A collection of some of Sellars' lectures and articles from 1951 to 1962.

Introduction: Science and Common Sense Long before the beginnings of modern civilization, men ac- quired vast funds of information about their environment. ...

Over the past thirty years Paul Feyerabend has developed an extremely distinctive and influentical approach to problems in the philosophy of science. The most important and seminal of his published essays are collected here in two volumes, with new introductions to provide an overview and historical perspective on the discussions of each part. Volume 1 presents papers on the interpretation of scientific theories, together with papers applying the views developed to particular problems in philosophy and physics. The essays in volume (...) 2 examine the origin and history of an abstract rationalism, as well as its consequences for the philosophy of science and methods of scientific research. Professor Feyerabend argues with great force and imagination for a comprehensive and opportunistic pluralism. In doing so he draws on extensive knowledge of scientific history and practice, and he is alert always to the wider philosophical, practical and political implications of conflicting views. These two volumes fully display the variety of his ideas, and confirm the originality and significance of his work. (shrink)

I want to address myself, then, to the task of such examination, offering first a brief review of the philosophic career of the doctrine and a critique of a recent revision, and going on to formulate a modified empiricist thesis, and to consider its basic problems and some general approaches to them. In Section I, I shall survey early attempts to state an empirical or verifiability criterion of cognitive significance and to indicate difficulties encountered and philosophic consequences. In Section II, (...) I shall criticize the recent revision in terms of translatability. In Section III, a modified empiricism in terms of inclusion will be outlined and its consequences explored. Section IV will be devoted to a consideration of two outstanding problems faced by such empiricism: the problem of dispositional terms and the problem of theoretical or transcendental terms. (shrink)