Wilfrid Sellars’s ethical theory was rich and deeply innovative. On Sellars’s view, moral judgments express a special kind of shared intention. Thus, we should see Sellars as an early advocate of an expressivism of plans and intentions, and an early theorist of collective intentionality. He supplemented this theory with a sophisticated logic of intentions, a robust theory of the categorical validity of normative expressions, a subtle way of reconciling the cognitive and motivating aspects of moral judgment, and much more— all (...) within a strict nominalism that preserves Sellars’s commitment to naturalism. The Ethics of Wilfrid Sellars offers the first systematic treatment of this sadly neglected aspect of Sellars’s work and demonstrates that his ethical theory— just like his more widely discussed epistemology— has much to contribute to current debates. (shrink)

The attempt to draw a clear distinction between Philosophy and the empirical sciences can almost be taken as the defining trait of the analytic movement in contemporary philosophical thought. The empirical science that has most frequently threatened to swallow up questions of particular interest to philosophers since the time of Descartes has been psychology. Characteristic, then, of analytic philosophy has been the rejection of what it terms psychologism, that is to say, the mistake of identifying philosophical categories with those of (...) psychology, whether introspective or behavioristic. It is clear that to launch an attack on psychologism, thus conceived, presupposes that one has a list of philosophical categories which one is able to identify as such; and this in turn presupposes an ability to sketch, at least in a general way, a distinctly philosophical account of these concepts, although a systematic account along non-psychologistic lines may be a distant and ill-defined goal. The analytic movement in philosophy has gradually moved towards the conclusion that the defining characteristic of philosophical concepts is that they are formal concepts relating to the formation and transformation rules of symbol structures called languages. Philosophy, in other words, tends to be conceived of as the formal theory of languages. From this standpoint, consequently, psychologism is conceived of as the psychological treatment of concepts which are properly understood as formal devices defining a mode of linguistic structure. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars described the moral syllogism that supports the inference “I ought to do x” from “Everyone ought to do x” as a “syntactical disguise” which embodies a “mistake.” He nevertheless regarded this form of reasoning as constitutive of the moral point of view. Durkheim was the source of much of this reasoning, and this context illuminates Sellars’ unusual philosophical reconstruction of the moral point of view in terms of the collective intentions of an ideal community of rational members for (...) which the syllogism is empirically valid. The reconstruction also sheds light on the question of the status of common sense and normativity in Sellars’ naturalistic metaphysics. (shrink)

Although commonly cited as one of the philosophers responsible for the resurgence of interest in pragmatism, Wilfrid Sellars was also the son of Roy Wood Sellars, one of the most dedicated critical realists of the early 20th century. Given his father’s realism and his own ‘scientific realism,’ one might assume that the history of realism – and, despite contemporary interest, not pragmatism – would best serve as the historical background for Wilfrid Sellars’ philosophy. I argue that Wilfrid Sellars, far from (...) being the adherent to classical pragmatism assumed by some, holds more in common with critical realism - specifically, a realism that was framed in opposition to pragmatism – than one finds amongst the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, or John Dewey. I support this claim by examining Wilfrid Sellars’ adoption of his father’s criticisms of C.I. Lewis, and offer various arguments and historical considerations against thematic accounts that insist on a strong connection between Wilfrid Sellars and pragmatism. (shrink)

I explore a strand of reception history that follows Rudolf Carnap’s shift from a purely syntactical analysis of constructed languages to his conception of pure semantics. My exploration focuses on Gustav Bergmann’s and Everett Hall’s interpretation of pure semantics, their understanding of what constitutes a ’formal’ investigation of language, and their arguments concerning the relationship between expressions and their extra-linguistic referents. I argue that Bergmann and Hall strongly misread Carnap’s semantic project and, subsequently, their misunderstanding is passed down through colleagues (...) and students. (shrink)

that wilfrid sellars was a more subtle and sophisticated philosopher than his father, Roy Wood Sellars, is, I believe, a rather uncontroversial assessment, one which, with fatherly pride, Roy1 would most probably have endorsed. Even considering the radical shift in philosophical methods and attitude which took place in the United States in the decades of Wilfrid's philosophically formative years, Wilfrid's unrelenting philosophical acumen and imagination, his unflinching resolve to doggedly pursue a problem on a variety of fronts at once (arguably (...) the cause of his... (shrink)