Wilfrid Sellars Naturalism with a Normative Turn

by O'Shea, James

• ISBN13: 9780745630021
• ISBN10: 0745630022
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-04-23
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

The work of the American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars continues to have a significant impact on the contemporary philosophical scene. His writings have influenced major thinkers such as Rorty, McDowell, Brandom and Dennett, and many of Sellars' basic conceptions such as the 'logical space of reasons', the 'myth of the given', and the 'manifest and scientific images' have become standard philosophical terms. Often, however, recent uses of these terms do not reflect the richness or the true sense of Sellars' original ideas. This book gets to the heart of Sellars' philosophy and provides students with the first critical introduction to his life's work.The book is structured around what Sellars himself regarded as the philosopher's overarching task: to achieve a coherent vision of reality that will finally overcome the continuing clashes between the world as common sense takes it to be and the world as science reveals it to be. It provides a clear analysis of Sellars' groundbreaking philosophy of mind, his novel theory of consciousness, his defence of scientific realism, and his comprehensive naturalism with a normative turn. Providing a lively examination of Sellars' work through the central problem of what it means to be a human being in a scientific world, this book will be a valuable resource for all students of philosophy.

Author Biography

James O'Shea, Lecturer in Philosophy, University College, Dublin

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xii
Introduction	p. 1
The Philosophical Quest and the Clash of the Images	p. 10
The quest for a stereoscopic fusion of the manifest and scientific images	p. 10
The clash of the images and the status of the sensible qualities	p. 14
Sensing, thinking, and willing: persons as complex physical systems?	p. 17
Scientific Realism and the Scientific Image	p. 23
Empiricist approaches to the interpretation of scientific theories	p. 24
Sellars' critique of empiricism and his defense of scientific realism	p. 32
The ontological primacy of the scientific image	p. 41
Meaning and Abstract Entities	p. 48
Approaching thought through language: is meaning a relation?	p. 49
Sellars' alternative functional role conception of meaning	p. 55
The problem of abstract entities: introducing Sellars' nominalism	p. 63
Abstract entities: problems and prospects for the metalinguistic account	p. 69
Thought, Language, and the Myth of Genius Jones	p. 77
Meaning and pattern-governed linguistic behavior	p. 77
Bedrock uniformity and rule-following normativity in the space of meanings	p. 83
Our Rylean ancestors and genius Jones's theory of inner thoughts	p. 86
Privileged access and other issues in Sellars' account of thinking	p. 97
Knowledge, Immediate Experience, and the Myth of the Given	p. 106
The idea of the given and the case of sense-datum theories	p. 107
Toward Sellars' account of perception and appearance	p. 118
Epistemic principles and the holistic structure of our knowledge	p. 125
Genius Jones, Act Two: the intrinsic character of our sensory experiences	p. 136
Truth, Picturing, and Ultimate Ontology	p. 143
Truth as semantic assertibility and truth as correspondence	p. 144
Picturing, linguistic representation, and reference	p. 147
Truth, conceptual change, and the ideal scientific image	p. 158
The ontology of sensory consciousness and absolute processes	p. 163
A Synoptic Vision: Sellars' Naturalism with a Normative Turn	p. 176
The structure of Sellars' normative 'Copernican revolution'	p. 176
Intentions, volitions, and the moral point of view	p. 178
Persons in the synoptic vision	p. 185
Notes	p. 191
Bibliography	p. 228
Index	p. 243
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