Studies in Wilfrid Sellars' philosophy: Aune, B. Sellars on practical reason.--Castañeda, H.-N. Some reflections on Wilfrid Sellars' theory of intentions.--Donagan, A. Determinism and freedom: Sellars and the reconciliationist thesis.--Robinson, W. S. The legend of the given.--Clark, R. The sensuous content of perception.--Grossmann, R. Perceptual objects, elementary particles, and emergent properties.--Rosenberg, J. F. The elusiveness of categories, the Archimedean dilemma, and the nature of man: a study in Sellarsian metaphysics.--Turnbull, R. G. Things, natures, and properties.--Wells, R. The (...) indispensable word "now."--Van Fraassen, B. C. Theories and counterfactuals.--Harman, G. H. Wilfrid Sellars' Theory of induction.--Sellarsiana: Sellars, W. Autobiographical reflections.--Sellars, W. The structure of knowledge. Lecture I, perception. Lecture II, minds. Lecture III, epistemic principles.--Wilfrid Sellars' Philosophical bibliography. (p. 349-353). (shrink)

Kant never tires of telling us that Nature and the Space and Time which are its forms exist as a system of “representations.” Now a prepresentation is either a representing or a something represented. Does Kant mean that nature is a system of representings? Or that it is a system of representeds? And, in any case, what would the claim amount to? (Sellars W. (1974) Some Remarks on Kant’s Theory of Experience. In: Essays in Philosophy and Its History. Philosophical (...) Studies Series in Philosophy, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2291-0_3). (shrink)

This is a study of "three metaphysical naturalists" who, although minor figures in their own right, nonetheless substantially influenced the direction and cast of American naturalism. The theme that unites them, according to Delaney, is their reaction to the bifurcation of mind and corporeal nature bequeathed to modern philosophy by Descartes and Locke. Morris R. Cohen, as a logician and philosopher of science, saw such a bifurcation as engendering conventionalism and a type of nominalism in science, and he reacted against (...) these with his own "logical realism." Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, working out of the Aristotelian and Spinozistic traditions, saw it as entailing subjectivism and attempted to counteract this by reasserting an "experiential realism." Roy Wood Sellars, himself an evolutionist, viewed the duality of mind and nature as a stimulus for the imaginative projection of idealism and the quietistic escapism of spiritualism, and countered these with a thorough-going "materialistic humanism." Delaney elaborates his thesis with clarity and cogency, using it as a vehicle to reconstruct the metaphysical views of the three men under study. He concludes with a critical comparison of the resulting "naturalistic reintegrations" of the mind-nature bifurcation: Cohen's through a more adequate philosophy of science, Woodbridge's by a realistic theory of experience, and Sellars' by an emergent theory of evolution. Delaney's critique focuses on the fundamental notions of existence, nature, and man, using these to expose essential differences between the "metaphysics" of the New York naturalists and that of Sellars. Woodbridge emerges from Delaney's analysis as the most substantial philosopher of the group. This is not a ponderous tome--it can be read practically at one sitting--but it succeeds in throwing new light on American naturalism in terms of its positive contributions to both the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of mind.--W. A. W. (shrink)

This book is about experiential content: what it is; what kind of account can be given of it. I am concerned with identifying and attacking one main view - I call it the inferentialist proposal. This account is central to the philosophy of mind, epistemology and philosophy of science and perception. I claim, however, that it needs to be recast into something far more subtle and enriched, and I attempt to provide a better alternative in these pages. The inferentialist proposal (...) holds that experiential content is necessarily under¬pinned by sophisticated cognitive influences. My alternative, the continuum theory, holds that these influences are relevant to experience only at certain levels of organisation and that at other levels there are contents which such features do not capture at all. Central to my account is that there are degrees to which cognitive influences affect experiential content; indeed, for the most part, experience is an amalgam of both inferential and non-inferential features. I claim that the inferentialist proposal is fundamentally flawed and deserves replacement, and I argue that my alternative fills the hollow that remains. The book is divided into four sections. In Part I, Chapter 1, I introduce two traditionally rival views of experiential content. In Chapter 2, I develop my continuum alternative. Chapter 3 assesses the relationship between experience and language, while Chapter 4 explores the relationship between beliefs and experience. The overall argument is that it has been a mistake to understand experience simply in inferential or non-inferential terms. In Part II, I examine the structure of mental content. Chapter 5 is concerned with the kinds of experiences which escape the inferentialist analysis. Chapter 6 considers Kant’s metaphysic of experience counterpointed to Lorenz’s reading of his work in the light of evolutionary biology. Chapter 7 treats animal experience in relation to the continuum view I am developing, while Chapter 8 reviews Fodor’s contribution to perceptual psychology. It is argued that the view of experiential content being developed is both consistent with empirical data on informationally local perceptual sub-systems, but also accords well with evolutionary theory and a naturalist interpretation of Kant’s taxonomy. Part III deals with inferentialism in the philosophy of science. In Chapter 9, I assess the theory dependence of observation thesis as it is advanced by Paul Feyerabend. I bring out of his account a subtle confusion concerning the importance of inference in the context of scientific inquiry. Part IV deals with the issue of experience in the philosophy of mind. In Chapter 10, I look at Wilfred Sellars’s attack on sense data theories. Chapter 11 confronts Paul Churchland’s treatment of ‘folk psychology’ while Chapter 12 isolates the issue of experiential qualia and the position of property dualism. I offer a critical review of Thomas Nagel’s work in this chapter and claim that his position can be read in a way which is consistent with the continuum account I am developing. I conclude the book in the usual fashion with a summary of the central claims. (shrink)

This thesis is about experiential content: what it is; what kind of account can be given of it. I am concerned with identifying and attacking one main view - I call it the inferentialist proposal. This account is central to the philosophy of mind, epistemology and philosophy of science and perception. I claim, however, that it needs to be recast into something far more subtle and enriched, and I attempt to provide a better alternative in these pages. The inferentialist proposal (...) holds that experiential content is necessarily under¬pinned by sophisticated cognitive influences. My alternative, the continuum theory, holds that these influences are relevant to experience only at certain levels of organisation and that at other levels there are contents which such features do not capture at all. Central to my account is that there are degrees to which cognitive influences affect experiential content; indeed, for the most part, experience is an amalgam of both inferential and non-inferential features. I claim that the inferentialist proposal is fundamentally flawed and deserves replacement, and I argue that my alternative fills the hollow that remains. The thesis is divided into four sections. In Part I, Chapter 1, I introduce two traditionally rival views of experiential content. In Chapter 2, I develop my continuum alternative. Chapter 3 assesses the relationship between experience and language, while Chapter 4 explores the relationship between beliefs and experience. The overall argument is that it has been a mistake to understand experience simply in inferential or non-inferential terms. In Part II, I examine the structure of mental content. Chapter 5 is concerned with the kinds of experiences which escape the inferentialist analysis. Chapter 6 considers Kant’s metaphysic of experience counterpointed to Lorenz’s reading of his work in the light of evolutionary biology. Chapter 7 treats animal experience in relation to the continuum view I am developing, while Chapter 8 reviews Fodor’s contribution to perceptual psychology. It is argued that the view of experiential content being developed is both consistent with empirical data on informationally local perceptual sub-systems, but also accords well with evolutionary theory and a naturalist interpretation of Kant’s taxonomy. Part III deals with inferentialism in the philosophy of science. In Chapter 9, I assess the theory dependence of observation thesis as it is advanced by Paul Feyerabend. I bring out of his account a subtle confusion concerning the importance of inference in the context of scientific inquiry. Part IV deals with the issue of experience in the philosophy of mind. In Chapter 10, I look at Wilfred Sellars’s attack on sense data theories. Chapter 11 confronts Paul Churchland’s treatment of ‘folk psychology’ while Chapter 12 isolates the issue of experiential qualia and the position of property dualism. I offer a critical review of Thomas Nagel’s work in this chapter and claim that his position can be read in a way which is consistent with the continuum account I am developing. I conclude the thesis in the usual fashion with a summary of the central claims. (shrink)

Prof. R. W. Sellars' article "Three Levels of Materialism," published in the present number of our journal, marks an important stage in the philosophical development of the noted American philosopher. In it he gives something in the nature of a summation of his views on one of the most important problems in the theory of knowledge—that of perception—to which Sellars has devoted many years of work and quite a number of articles.

This dissertation defends an account of linguistic meaning and propositional mental content in terms of linguistic practice. In other words, it clarifies and defends the counterintuitive claim that linguistic communication is prior, rather than posterior, in the order of explanation to the semantic features of thought and talk. The project's point of departure is Robert Brandom's comprehensive recent theory of linguistic practice. Two core theses characterize Brandom's theory. First, meaning and content are to be understood in terms of the norms (...) of inference relating the sentences of a natural language to each other. Second norms of inference are to be explained in terms of certain normative attitudes that speakers take towards each other implicitly in linguistic practice. In the sense of the second explanatory thesis, linguistic practice explains meaning and content qua norms of inference, according to Brandom. ;For the sake of my project I agree with both theses. However, I take issue with Brandom's efforts to substantiate the second, explanatory thesis. The negative parts of my project argue that Brandom's specific account of meaning and content in terms of implicit normative attitudes is in some respects underdeveloped and in other respects problem laden. It therefore needs both elaboration and revision. The positive parts of my project offer an alternative account of meaning and content in terms of implicit non-native attitudes---an account that avoids the shortcomings of Brandom's approach. The heart of this alternative account is the notion of a we-attitude, borrowed from Wilfrid Sellars' theory of moral judgments. I argue that if speakers take such we-attitudes towards the linguistic performances they exchange, they both take certain implicit normative attitudes towards each other and recognize themselves as bound by the corresponding norms. And normative attitudes thus conceived suffice, I argue, to explain norms of inference themselves, hence meaning and content. Central themes of this project are, among other, the objectivity of semantic norms, the possibility to reduce semantic norms to normative attitudes, and the holistic character of meaning. (shrink)

The purpose of this brief introduction is to describe the origin of the papers here presented and to acknowledge the help of some of the many individuals who were involved in the preparation of this volume. Of the eighteen papers, nine stem from the annual fall colloquium of the Depart ment of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario held in London, Ontario from November 10 to November 12, 1967. The colloquium was entitled 'Philosophical Logic'. After some discussion, the editors (...) decided to retain that title for this volume. Von Wright's paper 'On the Logic and Ontology of Norms' is printed here after some revision. A. R. Anderson commented on the paper at the colloquium, but his comments here are based upon the revised version of the von Wright paper. The chairman of the session at which von Wright's paper was read and discussed was T. A. Goudge. Aqvist's paper 'Scattered Topics in Interrogative Logic', and Belnap's comments, 'Aqvist's Cor rections-Accumulating Question-Sequences', are printed as delivered. The chairman of the Aqvist-Belnap session was R. E. Butts. Wilfrid Sellars' paper 'Some Problems about Belief' is printed as delivered at the col loquium, but 'Quantifiers, Beliefs, and Sellars' by Ernest Sosa is a revision of his comments at the colloquium. That session was chaired by G. D. W. Berry. Ackermann's paper 'Some Problems oflnductive Logic', as well as Skyrms' comments, are printed as delivered. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars's essay, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," (1) introduced, although it did not exactly endorse, what many philosophers consider the first defense of functionalism in the philosophy of mind and the original "theory" theory of commonsense psychology.

This article is a response to the proposal, made by Thornton elsewhere in this special issue of PPP, that the "space of reasons" (as defined by the work particularly of Sellars and McDowell) might contain the conceptual resources for naturalizing biological function statements without reducing their ostensibly teleological meanings to the "space of causes". I agree with Thornton, (1) that ordinary reductive naturalism (as in Wakefield's work) is unable to mark the key distinction between a functional system's function(s) and (...) its other properties, and (2) that his proposed non-reductive naturalism (or neo-naturalism) is able to mark this distinction. I disagree with him, though, that neo-naturalism is value-free. The space of reasons certainly contains much that is important for psychopathology (meanings, notably). I argue, though, against Thornton, that neo-naturalism is able to define functions only because the "space of reasons" smuggles into the language of biology an evaluative element of meaning, deeply hidden but still logically operative, in the teleological sense in which biological functions are explanatory. In the final section of the paper, I set Thornton's proposal in a wider historical perspective. (shrink)

The best that has been thought and said in the analytical tradition since 1950 is here enshrined in a monumental testament to an idea. The naked sense of the idea is that the deepest problems encountered by man in understanding himself and his world will yield more readily to rapier-sharp conceptual analysis than to bold, creative, oracular, synoptic Anschauungen [[sic]] which are hard to get a handle on empirically. Although this beguiling idea, this analytical imperative, is itself only heuristic and (...) not substantive, its application has led to the accumulation of a staggeringly rich and brilliant treasury of philosophical illumination. Sixty-eight selections by giants of contemporary thought, from Ayer to Ziff, are deployed here under eight captions: reference and descriptions; analyticity and necessity; truth and meaning; problems of knowledge; the mental and physical; induction, laws, and causation; logic and ontology; and free will. Included are five selections each by Chisholm and Quine; four by Carnap; three each by Feigl, Pap, Sellars, and Strawson; two each by Austin, Bergmann, Cornman, Firth, and Rescher; and one each by 32 others. Some of the most famous philosophical papers of our century are represented here, such as Strawson’s "On Referring," Quine’s "On What There Is," Carnap’s "Meaning and Necessity," and Austin’s "Ifs and Cans." An index of 209 names and a knowledgeably prepared subject index bring this truly regal work to a close. It is a more-than-worthy successor to the uncommonly valuable Readings in Philosophical Analysis, edited by Feigl and Sellars and published in 1949.—W. G. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars has proposed a materialist account of sensation which relies in part on the postulation of special kinds of individuals. This postulational strategy appears to be analogous to the one that introduces such entities as electrons. After setting out Sellars' account, I focus on his application of the postulational strategy. I argue that this application requires the discovery of new effects for familiar properties; that this kind of discovery is disanalogous to what postulation usually does; and that (...) this kind of discovery cannot really be arrived at by postulation. I conclude that Sellars has not provided a successful, materialist account of sensation. (shrink)

Sellars’s views on the Myth of the Given and the ontological status of secondary qualities, one would have thought, are well-known, even if not always well-understood. One would not have expected his Carus Lectures, then, to offer anything radically new and exciting. The ground that they cover is, after all, familiar—from “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, from “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man”, from “The Identity Approach to the Mind-Body Problem”, and from the ensuing debates with Cornman (...) and with Firth. One would not really have anticipated many surprises. But one would have been wrong. (shrink)

Professor sellars has written a paper in which he holds that the statement (1) "karl's mind believes it is raining" is logically equivalent to a statement of the form (2) "karl's body is in state 'p'." in thomas' analysis of these two statements he argues that the plausibility of this position depends upon whether the facts expressed by (1) and (2) possess the same sort of "intentionality" and "aboutness." he offers various formulations of these statements which he argues show (...) that what is expressed in (1) is "intentional" and has "aboutness", But is not just a fact about karl's body. Thus, (1) and (2) do not possess the same sort of "intentionality" or "aboutness." (staff). (shrink)

Roy Wood Sellars (1880–1973) is often reduced to his role as father of Wilfrid Sellars. This is unfair because during the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s, Roy Wood was one of the leading figures of the then prevailing American realist movement. In the present paper, I will focus on one particular facet of R. W. Sellars’ philosophical approach: his continual examination of Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity. I shall primarily reconstruct his discussion of Einstein’s theory, as it (...) can be found in his seminal The Philosophy of Physical Realism (1932). In contrast to authors such as Bertrand Russell or Émile Meyerson, Sellars refused to interpret special relativity in a realist vein. In his view, it should be seen as an “ars mensurandi” and thus being interpreted purely operationally. As with Einstein himself, the concept of simultaneity was his paradigm case in point. However, Sellars opined that besides the physical (mensurational) concepts of time and simultaneity there also exists an ontological understanding of these notions. “Real” time and “absolute” simultaneity are, according to Sellars, the indispensable non-relativistic counterparts to Einstein’s respective relativistic conceptions. They are to be interpreted realistically since they prove, Sellars maintains, to be explanatory regarding events in Einstein-Minkowski’s world. In the course of the paper, I shall compare this view with the one defended by Henri Bergson. Furthermore, Sellars’ later approach from the 1940s and ‘50s will be briefly considered and critically discussed by confronting it with more recent attempts at ontologically ‘grounding’ special relativistic kinematics. (shrink)

Libertarians such as J.R. Lucas have abandoned traditional Christian doctrines because they cannot reconcile them with the freedom of the will. Traditional Christian thinkers such as Augustine have repudiated libertarianism because they cannot reconcile it with the dogmas of the Faith. In Free Will and the Christian Faith, W.S. Anglin demonstrates that free will and traditional Christianity are ineed compatible. He examines, and solves, puzzles about the relationships between free will and omnipotence, omniscience, and God's goodness, using the idea of (...) free will to answer the question of why God allows evil, and presenting arguments that link free will to eternal life and to the nature of revelation. Topics covered include the meaning of life, the soul and Lesbegue measure, and strategies for discerning the voice of God. (shrink)

The general topic of this book is the metaphysics of the subject in Kantian transcendental philosophy. A critical appreciation of Kant's achievements requires that we be able to view Kant's positions as transformations of pre-Kantian philosophy, and that we understand the ways in which contemporary philosophy changes the letter of Kantian thought in order to be true to its spirit in a new philosophical horizon. Descartes is important in two respects. One the one hand, he institutes a philosophical movement which (...) can be said to culminate in Kant; on the other hand, Descartes is one of the major opponents against whom Kant argues in establishing his own position. In either case, the Cartesian cogito is a central concern. Wilfred Sellars restates and transforms Kantian positions in the context of contemporary philosophy after the "linguistic turn", using the Platonic metaphor that thought is similar to discourse. (shrink)

The most recent and by far the best edition of this work is that of H. M. Hine , to which I refer for full bibliographical information. Many passages of the text are most helpfully discussed in the same scholar's Studies in the Text of Seneca's Naturales Quaestiones . ut nubes infici possint, … sol ad hoc apte ponendus est; non enim idem facit undecumque effulsit, et ad hoc opus est radiorum idoneus ictus. Seneca is dealing with rainbows. Hine shares (...) Axelson's suspicion of ictus, but is unhappy both with Axelson's situs and with my tractus, ‘direction’ ; very tentatively he suggests angulus. Much more credible palaeographically and still yielding good sense and a good clausula would be i etus, a noun which is very common in this work of Seneca's. Hostius fuit Quadra obscenitatis in scaenam usque perductae. (shrink)

The most recent and by far the best edition of this work is that of H. M. Hine, to which I refer for full bibliographical information. Many passages of the text are most helpfully discussed in the same scholar's Studies in the Text of Seneca's Naturales Quaestiones. ut nubes infici possint, … sol ad hoc apte ponendus est; non enim idem facit undecumque effulsit, et ad hoc opus est radiorum idoneus ictus. Seneca is dealing with rainbows. Hine shares Axelson's suspicion (...) of ictus, but is unhappy both with Axelson's situs and with my tractus, ‘direction’ ; very tentatively he suggests angulus. Much more credible palaeographically and still yielding good sense and a good clausula would be i etus, a noun which is very common in this work of Seneca's. Hostius fuit Quadra obscenitatis in scaenam usque perductae. (shrink)

In CQ 45 , 547–50, S. J. Harrison and M. Winterbottom propose a series of emendations to the text of the recently discovered passage of Donatus which contains his commentary on Aen. 6.1–157. I offer some further emendations.

In CQ 45, 547–50, S. J. Harrison and M. Winterbottom propose a series of emendations to the text of the recently discovered passage of Donatus which contains his commentary on Aen. 6.1–157. I offer some further emendations.

The pseudo-Ciceronian Epistula ad Octavianum enjoys the unmerited distinction of being preserved not only in most of the manuscripts which contain the Ad Atticum letters but also in some of those which contain the second half of the Ad Familiares letters; the former tradition is usually designated Ω, the latter I shall designate X. It was on the Ω tradition that the earliest printed texts were based. In the sixteenth century Cratander and Turnebus introduced a number of readings from the (...) X tradition; some of these were incorporated in the vulgate, but the printed editions from that of Lambinus to that of Purser still continued to be based mainly on Ω. In 1913, in an article in Eranos, xiii. 136–46, Sjögren set himself to prove that the value of Ω had been overrated in the establishment of the text, and that greater importance should be attached to X than to Ω; and in accordance with this view, in his 1914 Teubner text, Sjögren follows X, as against Ω, about twice as often3 as Purser does. This view of Sjögren's, I believe, will not stand examination, and to disprove it is the purpose of the present article. (shrink)

‘Ist die zweite Stelle des Satzes bereits durch ein anderes Enklitikon besetzt, so tritt enim auch in klassischer Prosa oft an die 3. und 4. Stelle zurück’ . How often, and in what circumstances, does enim in Cicero occupy any place but the second? The answer to this question is sometimes relevant to the establishment of the text. And the answer is: there are many instances which fall into categories A and B below; in all other categories, C-G below, there (...) are comparatively few. (shrink)

‘Ist die zweite Stelle des Satzes bereits durch ein anderes Enklitikon besetzt, so tritt enim auch in klassischer Prosa oft an die 3. und 4. Stelle zurück’. How often, and in what circumstances, does enim in Cicero occupy any place but the second? The answer to this question is sometimes relevant to the establishment of the text. And the answer is: there are many instances which fall into categories A and B below; in all other categories, C-G below, there are (...) comparatively few. (shrink)

Agr. 2.53. ‘Te volo curare ut mihi Sinopae praesto sis auxiliumque adducas, dum eos agros quos tuo labore cepisti ego mea lege vendam.’ an Pompeium non adhibebit? in eius provincia vendet manubias imperatoris?