Abstract

Western philosophy. The crucial point of these discussions was the connection between conceptual and non-conceptual elements of our relation to the world. The core of this problem can be also formulated as the question of connection between semantic and syntactical rules of our epistemic relation to the world. Could we know anything about some state of affairs by us-ing only syntactical rules, which relate logical terms to one another, or we also need semantic rules, which connect the formal syntax of our epistemic relation to the world with extra-conceptual characteristics of each state of affairs? Wilfrid Sellars’ approach to this problem is a critical reaction to the traditional theories of rules. The main point of his criticism of the traditional theories of rules, whose origins Sellars attributed to Kant’s conception of rules, could be summed up as follows: the difference between syntactical and semantic rules of our epistemic relation to world is founded on the Myth of the Given. In his Inference and Meaning Sellars elaborated a theory of material rules of inference which tries to neutralize the traditional approach to the problem. I am of the opinion – and it is my major claim in this paper – that Sellars’ argument in IM sug-gests a way of avoiding the Myth. I argue that Sellars’ argument consists in three basic steps: irreducibility as well as operative normativity of the material rules of inference and linguisticality of descriptive terms.