The Origins of Norms: Sellarsian Perspectives (original) (raw)

Wilfrid Sellars is one of the most important analytic philosophers in the second half of the 20th century. His work influenced thinkers as diverse as Daniel Dennett, Ruth G. Millikan, John McDowell, Robert Brandom, and Richard Rorty. The paper analyses one of his lasting contributions in metaphilosophy: Sellars introduces two fundamental perspectives on «man-in-the-world»: The «manifest image» of man in the world is built around the notion of persons as its basic entities. The «scientific image» of «man-in-the-world» regards humans exclusively as organisms or biological systems. Whereas Sellars is hopeful to resolve the conflict between these two images in a «synoptic vision» of both of them, the paper defends the thesis that this philosophical project is either superfluous or overreaching. First, the clash of both images is reformulated as a conflict about the origin of norms guiding their construction. This shows that both images lack the resources to address reflectively their own normative foundation. With regard to the manifest image, Sellars explicitly acknowledges its shortcomings. He hopes to save its normative language by integrating it into the scientific image, thereby acknowledging the ultimate authority of science in deciding ontological questions: science tells us what there is. The paper argues that the introduction of normative language into the scientific image does not alleviate its deficits: if it can be shown within the scientific image why its epistemic authority is compulsory, a philosophical argument for the preponderance of the scientific image of man is superfluous. Nature will take care of itself. If we need philosophical arguments for the preponderance of the scientific image, these arguments must inevitably be formulated in the language of the manifest image, because on Sellars’s own terms, philosophy is inextricably intertwined with the conceptual resources of a world view that regards humans primarily as persons: philosophers cannot negate or ignore the fact that they argue with persons as persons. A philosopher is always «one of us».