Wilfrid Sellars: Naturalism with a Normative Turn

Preface ix

Acknowledgements xii

Introduction 1

1 The Philosophical Quest and the Clash of the Images 10

The quest for a stereoscopic fusion of the manifest and scientific images 10

The clash of the images and the status of the sensible qualities 14

Sensing, thinking, and willing: persons as complex physical systems? 17

2 Scientific Realism and the Scientific Image 23

Empiricist approaches to the interpretation of scientific theories 24

Sellars’ critique of empiricism and his defense of scientific realism 32

The ontological primacy of the scientific image 41

3 Meaning and Abstract Entities 48

Approaching thought through language: is meaning a relation? 49

Sellars’ alternative functional role conception of meaning 55

The problem of abstract entities: introducing Sellars’ nominalism 63

Abstract entities: problems and prospects for the metalinguistic account 69

4 Thought, Language, and the Myth of Genius Jones 77

Meaning and pattern-governed linguistic behavior 77

Bedrock uniformity and rule-following normativity in the space of meanings 83

Our Rylean ancestors and genius Jones’s theory of inner thoughts 86

Privileged access and other issues in Sellers’ account of thinking 97

5 Knowledge, Immediate Experience, and the Myth of the Given 106

The idea of the given and the case of sense-datum theories 107

Toward Sellers’ account of perception and appearance 118

Epistemic principles and the holistic structure of our knowledge 125

Genius Jones, Act Two: the intrinsic character of our sensory experiences 136

6 Truth, Picturing, and Ultimate Ontology 143

Truth as semantic assertibility and truth as correspondence 144

Picturing, linguistic representation, and reference 147

Truth, conceptual change, and the ideal scientific image 158

The ontology of sensory consciousness and absolute processes 163

7 A Synoptic Vision: Sellers’ Naturalism with a Normative Turn 176

The structure of Sellers’ normative ‘Copernican revolution’ 176

Intentions, volitions, and the moral point of view 178

Persons in the synoptic vision 185

Notes 191

Bibliography 228

Index 243