The Origins of Norms: Sellarsian Perspectives (original) (raw)
In: E. G. Dragalina-Chernaja, V. V. Dolgorukov, Sledovanie pravilu: rassuzhdenie, razum, racional'nost', SPb.: Aletejja, 2014, 267-277
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».
Sign up to get access to over 50M papers
Related papers
Normativity, Lifeworld, and Science in Sellars’ Synoptic Vision
Palgrave Macmillan, 2023
One of the most important predicaments of contemporary philosophy as a result of the disenchantment of nature in late modernity is accounting for the place of persons, construed as loci of normative authority and responsibility, within a scientifically, naturalistically described world, bereft of values and norms. Sellars takes both the framework of persons and science seriously and thinks that this implies the need not just for reconciling the manifest and scientific images but for fusing them into one stereoscopic vision of reality and our place in it. One of the main aims of this book is to address the issue of the form which a non-alienated experience of ourselves-in-the-world would take in the Sellarsian cryptic stereoscopic fusion of the manifest and the scientific image. Through an extended discussion of Sellars’ relevance for contemporary continental philosophy and phenomenology, in which his views on perception, the commonsense ‘lifeworld’, science, normativity, personhood, morality and process metaphysics are presented and extended, I attempt to sketch a novel view about what a stereoscopic fusion of the manifest and the scientific image would amount to at the level of our lifeworld experience.
Sellars's two images as a philosophers tool
Metaphilosophy, 2018
The distinction between the manifest and the scientific image of man-in-the-world is widely seen as crucial to Wilfrid Sellars's philosophical work. The present essay agrees with this view. I contend, however, that precisely because the distinction is important, we should not hurry to a quick and superficial understanding of it. I identify several oversimplifications that can be found in the literature on the topic and argue that they are at least partly rooted in too rigid a view of the role that the two-image-distinction plays in Sellars's philosophy. I show that this rigid approach is quite common in the secondary literature, either explicitly or by implication. Afterwards, I present a more cautious, flexible approach to the problem of the two images and explain why it is fruitful on the basis of textual evidence, along with the overall advantages of interpreting Sellars's thought as a whole. Keywords manifest image models scientific image Wilfrid Sellars
On the Proper Construal of the Manifest-Scientific Image Distinction: Brandom Contra Sellars
Synthese , 2018
In his new book (2015), Brandom offers a new argument against the viability of Sellars’ scientific naturalism. Brandom attempts to show that if the Sellarsian it scientia mensura principle is understood as implying that manifest-image objects exist only if they are identical to scientific-image objects, it is undermined by the ‘Kant–Sellars’ thesis about identity which implies that manifest-image objects cannot be identical to scientific-image objects. This conclusion can be evaded by construing the relation between manifest and scientific objects as weaker than that of identity, namely as a relation between manifest-image functional roles and scientific image realizers. But Brandom again argues that even this weaker construal of the scientia mensura thesis is in conflict with another Sellarsian argument, this time against phenomenalism. It will be argued that this is not so. I will, moreover, suggest that the ‘function-realizer’ construal of the manifest-scientific image distinction is indeed tenable—especially if the process of determining the scientific-image realizers of functional roles specified in manifest-image is understood as the culmination of a self correcting dynamic and diachronic process of conceptual change. Finally, I will argue that while Brandom is right to point out that Sellars’ adherence to the scientia mensura principle is based on a ‘unity-of-science’ view, he is wrong to think that his argument for the contrary conclusion (the ‘disunity-of-science’ view) is successful, because Brandom’s argument does not automatically tell against a weaker ‘unity-of-science’ view according to which incommensurability of explanatory levels in science is a pragmatically indispensable yet in principle dispensable feature of empirical inquiry.
O'Shea J (2007) _Wilfrid Sellars: Naturalism with a Normative Turn_ (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press).
This pdf includes the Introduction, Chapter One, and Conclusion (Ch. 7), plus Notes and Sellars Bibliography. -CONTENTS of the volume: Introduction 1 1 The Philosophical Quest and the Clash of the Images 10 The quest for a stereoscopic fusion of the manifest and scientifi c 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 Scientifi c Realism and the Scientifi c Image 23 Empiricist approaches to the interpretation of scientifi c theories 24 Sellars’ critique of empiricism and his defense of scientifi c realism 32 The ontological primacy of the scientifi c 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 Sellars’ 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 Sellars’ 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 scientifi c image 158 The ontology of sensory consciousness and absolute processes 163 7 A Synoptic Vision: Sellars’ Naturalism with a Normative Turn 176 The structure of Sellars’ 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
Sellars's Two Images of the World
Journal of Philosophy, 1990
A distinction of fundamental importance to Wilfrid Sellars's philosophy is the one he drew between the manifest and the scientific images of persons in the world.' This distinction has puzzled many of his readers, especially those who believe that the task of philosophy is to ascertain the ...
Humana Mente: A Journal of Philosophical Studies (Special Issue: Between Two Images. The Manifest and the Scientific Understanding of Man, 50 Years On), 2012
In this article I consider how the very different but equally Sellars-inspired views of Robert Brandom and Ruth Millikan serve to highlight both the deep difficulties and the prospects for a solution to what is arguably the most central problem raised by Sellars's attempted stereoscopic fusion of the manifest' and scientific images: namely, the question of the nature and place of norm-governed conceptual thinking within the natural world. I distinguish two stereoscopic tasks: (1) the possibility of integrating a naturalistic theory of animal representation within an irreducibly normative inferentialist account of conceptual content; and (2) the possibility of providing a naturalistic explanation of the normative space of reasons and conceptual thinking as such. Millikan embraces and Brandom resists the naturalistic representationalist hypotheses involved in (1); while Brandom embraces and Millikan resists the conception of pragmatically irreducible normativity involved in (2). The grounds of resistance in each case are arguably suspect.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.