Abstract

Back to Roy Wood Sellars: Why His Evolutionary Naturalism Is Still Worthwhile POUWEL SLURINK 1. INTRODUCTION AT THE MOMENT, naturalism is fashionable as never before. Several of the most prominent living philosophers -- e.g., Quine, Churchland, Ruse -- call them- selves naturalists. However, it is not always that clear what really is meant by naturalism, apart from a philosophy in which science plays a large role. This lack of clarity stems in part from the uncertainty about what is meant by "science"--physics, biology, or both of them. But partly it also stems from different interpretations of the impact of scientific models on philosophical reflections. In this article I propose a return to the writings of the "evolutionary naturalist" Roy Wood Sellars . He was the father of Wilfrid Sellars, but I think that the philosophy of Sellars pbre is a better starting-point for "a reading programme" for modern naturalists than the philosophy of Sellarsfi/s, in spite of the claim of the latter that "Critical Realism and Evolutionary Natural- ism.., and all that they imply, are part of my paternal inheritance."' Al- though it may be true that much of the philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars is rooted in the philosophy of his father, we miss the illuminating evolutionary consider- ations characteristic of his father's philosophy in most of his work, and we can see a tendency to expect too much..