How To Be A Kantian and A Naturalist About Human Knowledge

JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH
VOLUME 36, 2011

I
HOW TO BE A KANTIAN AND A NATURALIST ABOUT
HUMAN KNOWLEDGE: SELLARSS MIDDLE WAY
JAMES R. OSHEA
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
ABSTRACT: The contention in this paper is that central to
Sellarss famous attempt to fuse the manifest image and the
scientifc image of the human being in the world was an at-
tempt to marry a particularly strong form of scientifc naturalism
with various modifed Kantian a priori principles about the unity
of the self and the structure of human knowledge. The modifed
Kantian aspects of Sellarss view have been emphasized by
current left wing Sellarsians, while the scientifc naturalist
aspects have been championed by right wing Sellarsians, the
latter including William Rottschaefers constructive criticisms
of my own reconciling interpretation of Sellars. In this paper I
focus frst on how (1) Sellarss Kantian conception of the neces-
sary a priori unity of the thinking self does not confict with his
ideal scientifc naturalist conception of persons as bundles
or pluralities of scientifcally postulated processes. This then
prepares the way for a more comprehensive discussion of how
(2) Sellarss modifed Kantian account of the substantive a priori
principles that make possible any conceptualized knowledge of
a world does not confict with his simultaneous demand for an
ideal scientifc explanation and evolutionary account of those
same conceptual capacities. Sellarss own attempted via media
synthesiswhat I call his Kantian scientifc naturalism
merits another look from both the left and the right.
I. INTRODUCTION
t is no surprise that Kantians have often been hostile to comprehensive
forms of philosophical naturalism, whether in theoretical or practical philosophy.
328 JAMES R. OSHEA
For it is characteristic of the Kantian to argue that there are substantive conceptual
truths about human cognition and action that can be uncovered by the philosopher
independently of the results of particular empirical observations and of ongoing
natural scientifc inquiry. Suppose we take naturalism, as I shall take it here, to be
the particularly controversial thesis that all truths about the human being and the
world are in principle exhaustively explainable by the methods of ongoing scientifc
inquiry. Admittedly this familiar thesis requires much clarifcation, each step of
which would likely be as controversial as the thesis itself; and furthermore, this
is only one among many ways of understanding naturalism. With naturalism so
understood, however, it is certainly not hard to understand the traditional hostility
between the Kantians, with their supposedly substantive a priori conceptual claims
about the self and any possible knowable world, and the philosophical naturalists
with their patient and ever knowledge-increasing scientifc fallibilism.
In a recent book, Wilfrid Sellars: Naturalism with a Normative Turn (2007), I
have argued that Wilfrid Sellars was both a Kantian and a thoroughgoing scientifc
naturalist in something like the traditionally mutually hostile senses described
above. We might put it in crude terms, in relation to recent philosophical history, as
follows. In my view, Sellars held that, on the one hand, the sort of updated Kantian
and later Wittgensteinian views defended by Peter Strawson, for instanceor in
another tradition, the transcendental phenomenology of Husserlwere right in
spirit and in fact true in central respects. But they were conceived in a way that
rendered them incompatible with the ideally all-comprehensive scientifc natural-
ism that Sellars also sought to defend. On the other hand, the broadly scientifc
naturalist outlooks of positivists such as Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, and Carl
Hempel, and including the sophisticated successor naturalism of W. V. O. Quine,
were also right in spirit and correct in central respects. But on Sellarss view both
positivism and Quinean naturalism ultimately failed to recognize (among other
things) that genuinely Kantian and Wittgensteinian views about human knowledge,
intentionality, and agency are in fact essential to achievingin a subtle roundabout
wayan ideally complete scientifc explanation of the nature of the human being
in the world. In his Autobiographical Refections Sellars interestingly remarks
upon his roundabout way of defending a naturalistic materialism as follows:
Feigl and I shared a common purpose: to formulate a scientifcally oriented,
naturalistic realism which would save the appearances. ... We hit it off
immediately, although the seriousness with which I took such ideas as causal
necessity, synthetic a priori knowledge, intentionality, ethical intuitionism,
the problem of universals, etc., etc., must have jarred his empiricist sensi-
bilities. Even when I made it clear that my aim was to map these structures
into a naturalistic, even a materialistic, metaphysics, he felt, as many have,
that I was going around Robin Hoods barn [i.e., taking an unnecessarily
long route to the same endJOS]. (AR, 289290)
I hope to show that understanding what Sellars retained from his lonely walk
around Robin Hoods barnaccompanied by few if any other scientifc naturalists,
BEING KANTIAN AND NATURALIST ABOUT HUMAN KNOWLEDGE 329
past or presentis crucial to understanding the unique nature of his naturalistic
metaphysics.
In my view, then, Sellarss famous synoptic vision and stereoscopic fusion
of what he called the manifest image of man-in-the-world and the scientifc
image of man-in-the-world (PSIM) was an attempt to happily marry, by means
of some deft and persistent matchmaking, the two ostensibly antagonistic fgures
of the Kantian and the scientifc naturalist.
In a judicious and probing examination, Why Wilfrid Sellars is Right (and
Right-Wing): Thinking with OShea on Sellars, Norms, and Nature, William Rott-
schaefer (2011) makes a strong case for rejecting central aspects of my interpreta-
tion of Sellarss synoptic vision, in particular my understanding of the latter as an
attempt to marry enduring Kantian and later-Wittgensteinian conceptual analyses
(in a sense of conceptual and analytic that is not restricted to narrowly analytic
truths) with an all-comprehensive scientifc-explanatory naturalism. Rottschaefer,
by contrast, ably defends the so-called right-wing interpretation of what Sellars
certainly did embrace, namely, the primacy of the scientifc image (PSIM, 32).
The right-wing interpretation typically understands Sellarss synoptic vision in such
a way that it involves the ultimate scientifc replacement rather than the preservation
of the Kantian and later Wittgensteinian aspects that I emphasize in my reading of
Sellars. Rottschaefer argues in impressive detail that not only is this a more accu-
rate reading of Sellars, it also harmonizes with various currently widely embraced
naturalistic philosophical views that reject Kantian style a priorism in philosophy
in general. Thus, Rottschaefer argues, there is reason to resist OSheas attempt
to turn Sellars transcendentally to the left (33);
1
and on Sellarss account of the
structure of knowledge, in particular, he contends that OSheas reading runs into
massive problems, since ... Sellars rejects Kant, arguing that we can know things
in themselves because of the successes of the project of scientifc knowing that has
as its ideal the completed scientifc image (36).
The Right-Wing of Rottschaefers title refers, of course, to the distinction
frequently informally made by Sellarsians between left wing Sellars-infuenced
philosophers, such as (in different ways) Robert Brandom and John McDowell,
and right wing Sellars-infuenced philosophers such as (in different ways) Ruth
Millikan and Paul Churchland. The left/right distinction, whatever its merits or
demerits, can roughly be understood in terms of the two sides of Sellarss philoso-
phy that I have highlighted above. The left wing emphasizes the Kantian and later
Wittgensteinian (in fact, also Hegelian) aspects of Sellarss views while rejecting
Sellarss alleged scientism and reductionism. The left has no problem with
garden varieties of scientifc realism about theoretical entities such as electrons,
etc. (as opposed, for example, to instrumentalism). But the left frmly rejects
the all-comprehensive scientifc naturalist thesis as I articulated it above and as
expressed in Sellarss notorious scientia mensura claim in Empiricism and the
Philosophy of Mind (1956) that in the dimension of describing and explaining
the world, science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is
330 JAMES R. OSHEA
not that it is not (EPM 42; see also Sellars SSIS, 396397, for Sellarss descrip-
tion of himself as an Extreme scientifc realist even with respect to explaining
the ultimate nature of persons).
The right, by contrast, fully embraces Sellarss all-comprehensive scientifc
naturalism, but as exemplifed by the case of Ruth Millikan, likewise tends to ar-
gue that there is ultimately a crack in Sellarss system due to his treatment of
the nature of linguistic rules and the relation of these to conceptual roles and thus
to intentionality (Millikan 2005, 78). (Note, however, that Rottschaefer himself
does not argue that there is any crack or tension in Sellarss overall system.) In
particular the right wing tends to be suspicious of the Kantian a priori and Witt-
gensteinian conventionalist elements in Sellarss view, if these are simply taken
and left at face value, and are not ultimately fully scientifcally naturalized, as
the right wing argues is frequently the case with Sellarss left-wing admirers. As
Rottschaefer correctly suggests, right-wing Sellarsians such as Millikan and many
other contemporary naturalistic philosophers are engaged in developing philosophi-
cal insights based on evolutionary biology and other domains of scientifc inquiry
in the attempt, inter alia, to naturalistically explain the normative dimensions of
human language, thought, perception, and action, in the context of wider theories
of human and other animal cognition and behavior. Rottschaefer argues that while
Sellars initially articulates those normative dimensions in terms of insights from
Kant and the later Wittgenstein within the manifest image, Sellars himself envi-
sioned and would thus embrace the sorts of right-wing naturalistic theories that
seek ultimately to better explain those normative dimensions in scientifc terms.
All of these left vs. right tangles in the wake of Sellarss philosophy seem to
suggest that it is diffcult if not impossible to bring together the two sides of his
philosophy into one coherent picturewhich after all was Sellarss own central
goal (see PSIM passim). On Rottschaefers sophisticated right-wing view, Sellarss
scientifc naturalism is in the end all that we need to make sense of Sellarss ideal
synoptic vision of the nature of the human-being-in-the-worldand this is a good
thing, Rottschaefer further contends, given the promise of philosophical naturalism
in light of recent developments.
In what follows I take Rottschaefers welcome and insightful criticisms as an
opportunity to continue the defense of my reconciling middle way (some might
say, Polyanna) interpretation, according to which Sellarss actual position is such
that, if successful, it enables us to sustain the central positive claims of both the left
and right wings. This will require further clarifying the nature of Sellarss novel
attempt to bring about the unlikely marriage described above, as well as responding
to some more specifc objections that are helpfully raised by Rottschaefer.
II. SELLARSS SYNOPTIC VISION AND HIS
NORMATIVE FUNCTIONALISM ABOUT THOUGHTS
I begin with one important issue that has wide ramifcations. Here, as in several
other places in his article, I think that Rottschaefer appropriately raises some pivotal
questions concerning the interpretation of Sellarss philosophy. In his section II on
Sellarss Functionalism, Rottschaefer comments as follows on the momentous
character of Sellarss claim concerning the theoretical character of our knowledge
of both our own and other persons inner thought episodes, which in Empiricism
and the Philosophy of Mind Sellars had famously defended in terms of the myth
of genius Jones:
From the point of view of introspection and philosophical refection, the
manifest image of thought, broadly construed, with its propositional attitudes
of belief and desire what has come to be called folk psychologymay
appear to be a given. But if Sellars functional role account of intentionality
is correct that entire framework is a theoretical one replaceable by a more
adequate scientifcally based framework. On the Right-wing account, not
only is Eddingtons ordinary table replaceable by a scientifc table, but so also
is the manifest image thinker seated at that table. As we shall see, OSheas
take on the matter is different. (295296)
I think I am right to have a different take on this matter, for I think that there is a
subtle, and quite common, yet crucial mistake embodied in the central comparison
made in the passage from Rottschaefer above. Roughly put, the faulty comparison
is this: just as (i) the entire manifest image ontology of ordinary, colored physi-
cal objects is ultimately to be replaced by a more adequate scientifcally based
framework in which, to take a notable example, colors in some sense end up in
the perceiver and not in whatever scientifcally conceived processes replace the
manifest table in the ultimate scientifc ontology; in the same way, (ii) with respect
to the manifest image of thought ... with its propositional attitudes of belief and
desire, and including the manifest image thinker, that entire framework is a
theoretical one replaceable by a more adequate scientifcally based framework
(italics added).
The problem with Rottschaefers comparison here, I contend, is that on Sellarss
view (i) is true, but (ii)in the most important sense to be explained belowis
false. And I hold that this is essential to understanding Sellarss attempted synoptic
vision of the nature of persons and their thoughts within an ideal scientifc image
of man-in-the-world. There are crucial respects in which the fate of the manifest
image conception of persons and their thoughts and intentionsand therefore also
the communally shared normative standards and ought-to-be rules that make any
logical space of reasons possible, to use Sellarss famous phrase (EPM VIII,
36)differs from the fate of the manifest image conception of colored physical
objects. The fate of so-called folk psychology is radically different, on Sellarss
view of the matter, from the fate of folk physics.
In particular, there is a primary sense in which, with crucial insights from
perennial philosophers from Kant and Hegel to Wittgenstein and Strawson, and
culminating in Sellarss own normative functionalist or conceptual role account
of meaning and intentionality, we have already achieved an adequate conception
of what it is to be a thought and what it is to be a thinker in general, and we have
332 JAMES R. OSHEA
done so without any reliance on the Myth of the Given. We have it now, in the
philosophically refned manifest image, in a way that is not the case with respect to
our (strictly speaking false) manifest image conception of what it is to be a colored
physical object out there in space. And again, this difference is not due to any
alleged immediate awareness of the ultimate nature of the self and its thoughts as
inner mythical Givens.
For interests sake and to avoid repetition, I will begin by exploring this claim
in relation to some less well-known remarks of Sellarss on the topic. Eventually
this will bring us to Sellarss conception of what it is to be a thinker, and thereby
back to general questions concerning the Kantian dimensions of Sellarss scien-
tifc naturalism.
Compare the passage quoted above from Rottschaefer with the following
comments from Sellars, which are taken from a Question and Answer session fol-
lowing the delivery at the University of Notre Dame in 1969 of what became his
important essay on The Structure of Knowledge (SK). Fortunately the original
audio recordings have recently been transcribed and made available as Wilfrid
Sellars: Notre Dame Lectures 19691986the Bootleg Version (WSNDL). I
do not claim that there is any surprise or smoking gun in these remarks, or that
they contain any claim that is not also clearly made by Sellars in his published
writings. But the remarks do help to illustrate the point I want to emphasize.
(I have added the original audience question, taken from the audio version, to
Amarals transcript.)
Audience question put to Sellars: [Y]ou liken the classical philosophical
postulation of thought episodes, as explanatory of our propensities to speak,
to what some day, perhaps, will be the last word that neurophysiology has
to say on why in fact we really do have these propensities to speak. No mat-
ter how nicely you polish it, it seems as if you make the manifest image a
nice tryyou know, you have to begin with some error, so well use this
oneand that ultimately thats going to be just phased out, you know, its
going to be long gone.
Sellars reply: I assure you that thats false. I think that human beings are
always going to think and know that they think. ... I understand thinking
to be fundamentally a functional notion, governed by correctnesses and
rules and validity; the most that the scientifc image can do here is to give
us some notion, in Aristotles sense, for the material cause of thinking
but the formal cause of thinking is surely a function and this is a function
which exists now and which we think of well now, we understand it well. I
think that what science can add here is trivial. For me, to say that thought is
neurophysiological is like saying English contains noises like and, or,
but, and so on. The actual function of thinking is to be found in the rules
that govern inferences and the rules that govern the conceptual structures of
language. ... We have an adequate notion of what thinking is in its formal
cause, the most the science can do, if I can use this terminology, is to give
us the material cause and as I said that is really quite unexciting as far as Im
concerned and that is why I think that as far as human living and the person
is concerned, the manifest image contains the formal truth and that science
is going to give an account of the material substructure. (WSNDL, 221222)
The views expressed in offhand fashion in these remarks are central to Sellarss
ultimate solution to the problem of integrating theoretical science with the
framework of sophisticated common sense into one comprehensive synoptic vi-
sion (PSIM, 19); and they are especially important for understanding his insis-
tence that, as I see it, the manifest image is not overwhelmed in the synthesis
(PSIM, 9). To explore this further we frst need to see how the case of physical
objects (i.e., (ii) in the comparison above) differs from the case of thoughts and
persons gestured at in these remarks; and then in the next section we shall need
to explain in a bit more detail Sellarss Kantian conception of persons and their
thoughts, which is the formal truth about human beings that Sellars clearly
takes to survive all the way into the ideal, fnal, Peircean scientifc image of
man-in-the-world.
In the same Question and Answer session Sellars takes it to be crucial to clearly
distinguish cases (i) vs. (ii), as discussed above. Specifcally with regard to the
idea that the scientifc image will replace the manifest image, Sellars comments
that the most I have ever said is that in its descriptive aspects the scientifc image
could in principle replace the contentual aspects of the manifest image (and he
here again repeats that we are not going to replace the notion of thinking, all we
are going to do is have a better understanding as to what specifcally it is that is
doing those functions) (WSNDL, 223). It is at this point that he remarks that it
is very important not to suppose that sensation and thought are going to be handled
in the same way (ibid.). The reason for this is that sensation is quite a different
sort of thing and it is, in a way, a contentnot a function, like thoughtthat is
going to remain in the world picture regardless; and it will turn out that the locus
of color and sound ... is not in the physical world, but in ourselves (ibid.). In the
case of color and the other sensible qualities:
It is not just [that the scientifc image is] going to throw a light on it because
I think it literally would involve a replaceability in the material aspects. I
think that putting it in Kantian language ... the world of commonsense solid
colored objects is a phenomenal world in Kants sense of the term; it is an
appearance of scientifc reality. ... Let me emphasize that I have had rela-
tively little to say about values, and standards and norms and obligations ...
because, putting it very crudely, I am talking here about the is of the world
and my whole theory of ethics hasnt been touched on at all. ... When I talk
about the in principle replaceability of the manifest image by the scientifc
image, I do so with respect to the content of the world, its material and not
with respect to those forms which concern the normative, the obligatory,
the correct, the incorrect, the valuable. ... I think Kant is essentially right,
not only in many of the things he said in a theory of knowledge but also in
ethics. (WSNDL, 223224)
334 JAMES R. OSHEA
Following this passage, on which I shall comment below, Sellars proceeds to discuss
animal cognition as opposed to human conceptual cognition (a topic which I shall
also briefy mention), before fnally summing up as follows:
The formal components of the manifest imagethat remains. The formal
features of the manifest imagewhich are the important features, the features
that concern the normative, the evaluative, the matter of personal intention
and so onthese are going to remain in the scientifc image. What is going
to change is the contentual aspect. (WSNDL, 226, slightly re-punctuated)
Having laid out Sellarss remarks, let us now compare the manifest image claim
(i) that Smith sees the pink ice cube over there, with the manifest image claim (ii)
that Smith is thinking that it is raining.
In the terminology he used above, Sellars holds that there is a particularly prob-
lematic material content or contentual aspect involved in (i), an ineliminable
sensory content that Sellars typically describes as the cube of pink, i.e., a certain
volume of perceived color. What happens to the ice is a different story, though an
equally interesting one, because being ice is a causal property rather than a proper
sensible (pink) or common sensible (cube) quality, in the Aristotelian terms Sellars
uses. It is the proper and common sensibles that notoriously raise what Sellars called
the sensorium-body problem, a problem that is closely related to what others call
the problem of qualia. On familiar, if highly complex and controversial grounds
(e.g., concerning hallucinations, etc.), Sellars and his mythical genius Jones argue
that the experienced cube of pink, needs to be relocated, as it were (i.e., its true
location is recognized), by being ontologically reconceived to be a sensory state
of the manifest image person who is Smith, rather than being an intrinsic content-
character of the physical ice cube over there. Sellars then leaves Jones and the mani-
fest image behind and argues that in the ideal scientifc image there will need to be
a further reconception of Smiths state of sensing a-cube-of-pink-ly. In this case
the same sensible content (the volume of pink) is now ontologically reconceived as
a bottom-level and in some sense non-physical (i.e., physical
1
-but-not-physical
2
,
in Sellarss technical terminology) absolute process (a sensing) that is taking
place in whatever Smiths visual cortex turns out to be, causally interacting with
whatever (physical
2
) quarkings, electronings, and other absolute processes will
ultimately be revealed to make up Smiths living body.
2
In relation to claim (i), then, Sellars holds that the core content that is involved
in seeing (or merely vividly seeming to see) a pink ice cubenamely, the sensed
cube of pinkneeds to be preserved throughout a long journey of reconception as
to what ontological kind or category of item (quality of object? state of perceiver?
absolute pure process?) that same contentual cube of pink will ultimately turn
out to be. Hence the special importance of the rejection of the Myth of the Given
in this domain, since the Myth would allege, inter alia, that what kind of thing a
sensory appearance isits ontological nature and location, as it wereis Given
immediately with the conscious sensing of it.
3
Claim (i), then, when viewed in
light of the regulative ideal of the conjectured fnal scientifc image, turns out to be
strictly speaking false (because there really is no pink ice cube of the kind conceived
in the manifest image). In another sense, of course, the manifest image claim (i)
is intelligibly and in some sense approximately true, in that the appearances
embodied in the manifest image conception will turn out to be explained in terms
of the ultimately correct recategorization in the fnal scientifc successor theory. (A
similar process occurs in scientifc theory-replacement in general.)
What about claim (ii), the manifest image claim that Smith is thinking that it
is raining? Roughly put, this claim will be true, on genius Joness initial model, if
Smith is either candidly saying out loud, or has a short term propensity to say out
loud, It is raining, i.e., in a way that accords with the normatively rule-governed
conceptual role (functional role, inferential role) that gives that sentence its meaning
in English. And then on the theory of genius Jones, which starts from that rule-
governed verbal model, claim (ii) will be true if there was something going on in
Smiths soul or brain or heart (or whatever, as far as genius Jones, still within the
manifest image, is concerned) that is playing a functional role relevantly similar to
that played by the utterance-type, It is raining (more strictly, an it is raining),
but this time occurring silently in Mentalese, as Sellars calls it, i.e., in something
like a language of thought.
What does the ongoing scientifc image then add to Joness initial theoretical
enrichment, an enrichment that takes place within the manifest image (i.e., Joness
postulation is of new inner states of the same old manifest image persons)? Scientifc
inquiry adds a series of more detailed, perhaps in some cases revolutionary theories
concerning how the conceptual roles or semantical rule-governed functions that,
on Sellarss view, are defnitive of both inner and outer conceptual thinking, are
in fact realized in whatever will turn out to have been the real material vehicles
of our thoughts all along. We soon forget about hearts and souls, for example, and
concentrate on brains. Then we have ongoing scientifc and philosophical inquiries
into the nature of the representational medium in the brainquestions that were
wisely left wide open by Sellars (as correctly noted by Dennett on Sellars in his
1987 book, The Intentional Stance). Perhaps, for example, the brain does not carry
information in the sort of symbol-processing way that Sellars might have projected
for his Mentalese, but rather in something more like the parallel distributed pro-
cessing way anticipated by connectionists, including eliminativists such as Paul
Churchland (who was Sellarss Ph.D. student). There are certainly complex issues
involved here, but the remarks above (along with his other writings, I believe) sug-
gest that Sellars would not accept the eliminativist conclusions that Churchland
attempts to draw from the projected neurophysiological facts.
Let us suppose, fnally, that the Peircean ideal scientifc image of man-in-the-
world is completed. What might we anticipate to be the conception of conceptual
thinking and intentional action in that fnal vision, on Sellarss view? Whereas with
respect to claim (i) and the manifest image conception of the pink ice cube or the
red apple, to recall the passage from Rottschaefer quoted earlier, it is true that
that entire framework is ... replaceable by a more adequate scientifcally based
336 JAMES R. OSHEA
framework, there is an important sense in which the same is not true with respect
to claim (ii). Whatever very different things people might be thinking about in that
future timei.e., however radically differently conceived the inner and outer objects
of their thoughts might be
4
and whatever they might have discovered to be the
neurophysiological or behavioral-cum-environmental vehicles of their thoughts,
the manifest image account of what it is to be a thinking that p, on Sellarss view,
remains true and is not replaced. Conceptually contentful thoughts are inner and
outer inferential role-players, where the relevant roles (in the case of logic-using
animals) are determined by the socially maintained, rule-governed linguistic norms
that constitute a given logical space of reasons (EPM, 36).
The semantical rules, in Sellarss sense, and hence the contents of thinkable
thoughts, will of course change as new conceptual frameworks replace old ones.
But the ontology of thoughts, in the sense of accounting for what it is to be a
thought and what it is to be a thinker, remains the same account across changing
conceptual frameworks, and will remain the same in the ideal scientifc image of
thinkers-in-the-world. Changes in the conceptual roles that constitute the contents
of thinkable thoughts, however radical such changes might be in the course of
scientifc theory-succession, do not involve the replacement of the conception
of thoughts as normatively rule-governed inferential role-players. The process
of conceptual change in that sense must be clearly distinguished from the sort of
recategorization of the nature of objects that Sellars thinks is involved in scien-
tifc theory-succession, whether the latter concerns the problem of the nature and
location of color in particular, or the ultimate categorial structure of physical
reality in general.
So in relation to the sensible qualities and claim (i), as Sellars remarked above,
we in some sense have a content that is going to remain in the world picture regard-
less (WSNDL, 211), but the ontological categorization of this preserved content
does indeed undergo radical replacement from the manifest image conception to the
ideal scientifc image. In the case of thoughts and claim (ii), however, the opposite
is the case: the realizing contentual aspect or material vehicles of thought are
what undergo radical reconceptualization and replacement. But the correct ontologi-
cal categorization of what it is to be a thought, and of what it is to be a thinker, is
already at hand in the manifest image, and in particular in that image as it continues
to be refned by what Sellars calls the perennial philosophy (PSIM passim). The
crucial insights in this domain, as interpreted by Sellars, were: (1) Kants formal,
broadly logical conception of concepts as rules, together with his corresponding
formal accounts of what it is to be a thinking self in a knowable world; (2) Ryle
and the later Wittgensteins so-called meaning as use conceptions of meaning and
thinking, with the focus on norm-governed linguistic behavior (communal aspects
of which were anticipated by Hegel and Peirce); and building on those insights,
(3) Sellarss normative-functionalist philosophy of mind as described above, as
well as his modifed Kantian conceptions of self and knowledge to be explored in
the sections to follow.
It follows from the above that Rottschaefers thesis that, according to Sellarss
way of integrating the two global images, the claims of the manifest image are
false (7), is problematic with respect to certain defnitive formal features of
persons, their thoughts, and their intentions. I shall say more about this diffcult
issue in the next section. Rottschaefer also has many important things to say about
goal-directed normativity in nature during the course of his discussion of Sellarss
functionalism, and I shall briefy return to some of those issues later.
III. SELLARSS MODIFIED KANTIAN VIEW OF
PERSONS AS LOGICALLY UNITARY THINKERS
In the substantial middle sections III and IV of his article, Rottschaefer rightly
raises some pressing questions concerning the Kantian aspects of my interpreta-
tion of Sellarss views on the structure of empirical knowledge. Here I will begin
by taking up a diffcult question left hanging from the previous section: namely,
what is it to be a human person on Sellarss overall stereoscopic integration of the
manifest and scientifc images of man-in-the-world?
In one sense Sellarss various writings make clear that he wants to defend the
view that the scientifc image will ultimately reveal the real truth about persons to
be as follows (see in particular Sellarss SSIS, i.e., his lengthy Reply to Cornman).
While in the philosophically refned manifest image we conceive a person to be the
single logical subject of its various thoughts and feelings, the ideal scientifc image
will reveal that a person is really a complex system (a plurality, a series, a group)
of whatever logical subjects turn out to be explanatorily basic in that scientifc
image. On Sellarss way of anticipating the latter, a person would be a bundle
of absolute processes (FMPP III.125). It might seem, then, that the conception
of persons in the manifest image is, after all, strictly speaking false, in the way
that the manifest image conception of the colored table is revealed to be strictly
speaking false, though ultimately scientifcally explainable. Obviously this issue
bears directly on my interpretation of the comparison between claims (i) and (ii)
discussed in the previous section.
If the conception of the self within the philosophically refned manifest image
did consist in the positive ontological assertion that a person is a certain (conten-
tual) kind of thing, in particular, that the self is a single (substantial, persisting,
identical) objecti.e., a logical subject in the sense of being a basic subject of
propertiesthen the truth of the ideal scientifc image of the person as a basic plu-
rality of items would entail the falsity of the manifest image conception of persons.
But Sellarss modifed Kantian conception of persons within the manifest image
precisely does not have that consequence. The purpose of Sellarss endorsement
of central aspects of Kants arguments in the Paralogisms section of the Critique
of Pure Reason is precisely to hammer home the point that the idea of a unitary
logical subject occurs in two different senses when one is considering the idea of
a thinker as a unifed subject of its thoughts, as opposed to when one is considering
the nature of the thinker as a kind of object.
338 JAMES R. OSHEA
In the manifest image, Sellars holds, our concept of a person is that of a
system of capacities pertaining to the various modes of thinking (MP, 239), and
such a system necessarily represents itself as a unitary thinking self: the I think
as the single logical subject of its various successive thoughts. (The crucial role
of those particular thoughts that are intentions, in Sellarss account of persons and
normativity, will be mentioned below.) Without attempting to reconstruct Sellarss
detailed analysis of Kants Paralogisms in his striking essay, ...this I or he or
it (the thing) which thinks... (I; cf. MP), it is clear that Sellars endorses Kants
central arguments in the Paralogisms, while rejecting certain wider aspects of
Kants view in which those arguments are embedded. In the end this turns out to
have implications not only for Sellarss synoptic vision of the nature of persons,
but also for his account of the structure of human knowledge.
What Sellars primarily rejects are certain mistaken aspects of, and resulting
limitations imposed by, Kants conception of the material (for Kant, phenomenal)
world in Newtonian Space and Time. In particular, Sellars argues that we must
add to Kants analysis Sellarss own scientifc-theoretical, analogical conception
of space and time as pertaining to ultimately real things in themselves (see SM
chapters one and two). In this way, Sellars also rejects what he characterizes as
Kants agnosticism about the ultimate noumenal reality of persons or thinking
selves. The incorrect aspects of Kants view force him into an empirical dualism
about the empirical self, as opposed to what Sellars takes to be the broadly correct
Strawsonian conception of persons (within the manifest image) as materially em-
bodied subjects possessing intellectual capacities. But what he thinks the correct
aspects of Kants analysis of persons as thinking selves deliberately and coherently
leaves open is the possibility that, while a thinker necessarily represents itself as
a single logical subject of its plurality of thoughts, such a thinker could turn out,
as a thing in itself, to be an ultimate plurality of basic logical subjects (Sellars
cites A363, for example). For Sellars, but not for Kant (given the incorrect aspects
of his view), this plurality can coherently turn out to be a material plurality of
scientifcally basic items. The following passage illustrates what Sellars wants to
endorse from Kant and then put to his own non-Kantian use:
[Kant] is suggesting that the logical identity of the I through Time, which
is an analytic implication of the knowledge of oneself as thinking different
thoughts at different times, is compatible with the idea that these thoughts
are successive states of different ultimate subjects. Compare the materialist
who argues that the thoughts which make up the history of an I are states of
systems of material particles which are constantly losing old and gaining
new constituents.
Thus although I do not represent my successive thoughts as successive
states of a series of different subjects of attributes, and do not need to do
so in order to know my logical identity through the period in which these
thoughts occur, a being with suitable cognitive powers [JOS: God for Kant,
the ideal scientifc image for Sellars] might know me to be such a series.
This insight, however, would not require him to say that my knowledge of
myself as logically identical through the period of time in question is an
illusion, but only that the logical identity of the I as I represent it is not an
adequate conceptualization of the nature of our thinking being. (I, 2728)
To begin with the fnal sentence, Sellars is not saying that an ideally adequate
knowledge of what the self is in itself would reveal that the manifest thinking self,
like the colored manifest table, is a strictly speaking false but approximately true
appearance in the same sense as such manifest physical objects as the colored
table or the pink ice cube discussed earlier. Kants analytic conception of the
knowledge of oneself as thinking different thoughts is what discloses as paralo-
gistic (i.e., a fallacious equivocation) any attempt to regard the logically necessary
unity of any thinking self as requiring or enabling the knowledge of the self as any
kind of object at all. The correct aspects of Kants analysis of the necessary unity
of any thinking self, that is, does not involve the framework conception of a kind of
object that could even be coherently thought of as undergoing scientifc correction
by being categorially reconceived in the ideal scientifc image in the way that the
cube of pink does get categorially relocated (so to speak), thereby revealing
the manifest image conception of pink physical ice cubes to be, strictly speaking,
false.
5
What makes the scientifc image conception of persons more adequate is
that it does reveal the ultimate nature of our thinking being (namely, as an ulti-
mate plurality of items), while the necessary analytic unity of any diachronically
thinking self, which Sellars embraces from Kants analysis, does not even involve
taking a shot at such an object of knowledge.
So, in the ideal scientifc image, will there be (1) any logically unitary thinking
selves who are engaged in the business of fully adequately conceptually represent-
ing the world, and (2) doing so solely in terms of the representation of scientifcally
conceived objects and processes? Yes, there necessarily will be, given: (1) the
necessary conditions that Sellars argues (following Kant and Wittgenstein) must
be satisfed for there to be such a thing as the logically structured conceptual rep-
resentation of a world at all; and (2) Sellarss conceptionabout which, I think,
sophisticated right-wingers such as Rottschaefer are correctof what the ideally
comprehensive scientifc image of man-in-the-world ultimately will represent
to be the fundamental contents or basic objects (or pure processes) in the world
(cf. note 4 above).
The crucial point is that the ideal scientifc-naturalistic representation of all
objects and processes in the world involved in (2) does not confict with (1), i.e.,
with the perennial Kantian conception of the self in relation to any conceptually
knowable world, a conception that I think Sellars clearly adopted and adapted while
subtracting what he takes to be Kants detachable errors. The fact that Kant was
ultimately wrong about the nature and status of the represented objects in the world,
on Sellarss view, does not invalidate central aspects of Kants conception of what
any conceptual representation of a worldeven in ideal scientifc termsrequires.
It is ultimately a non-trivial analytic truth, on Sellarss reading of Kant (and in this
respect, according to Sellarss own view), that any such conceptual representation of
340 JAMES R. OSHEA
a world is possible only for a being that represents itself as having the sort of logi-
cal identity that is embodied in the representation, I think. And that conceptual
representation, which takes place within the manifest image, is the key aspect of
the manifest image that is preserved (not overwhelmed) within the ideal scientifc
image. That is, it is preserved if we can assume that there are any conceptual thinkers
representing a world in that ideal scientifc imagewhich of course, we can, given
that an image, on Sellarss view, is precisely a conceptual framework that represents
the world as being a certain way. Furthermore that conceptual representation, i.e.,
the logically unitary representation I think in relation to a manifold of thoughts,
is on Sellarss view not false but rather true, although it is also not an adequate rep-
resentation of the nature of the self since it remains agnostic about the underlying
noumenal plurality of scientifcally conceived processes that, on Sellarss view,
such thinking selves ultimately really are. These are deep and controversial Kantian
waters, yes. But those are the waters in which Sellars swam, from start to fnish.
At any rate, I hope that the above helps to clarify my understanding of the
passage from Sellars with which I ended my book (and for this opportunity I am
thankful for Rottschaefers criticisms):
The heart of the matter is the fact that the irreducibility of the I within the
framework of frst person discourse ... is compatible with the thesis that
persons can (in principle) be exhaustively described in terms which involve
no reference to such an irreducible subject. For the description will mention
rather than use the framework to which these logical subjects belong. Kant
saw that the transcendental unity of apperception is a form of experience
rather than a disclosure of ultimate reality. If persons are really multiplici-
ties of logical subjects, then unless these multiplicities used the conceptual
framework of persons there would be no persons. But the idea that persons
really are such multiplicities does not require that concepts pertaining to
persons be analysable into concepts pertaining to sets of logical subjects.
Persons may really be bundles, but the concept of a person is not the con-
cept of a bundle. (PH, 101)
IV. SELLARSS MODIFIED KANTIAN VIEW OF
THE NECESSARY STRUCTURE OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
The preceding discussion of Sellarss modifed Kantian conception of the thinking
self is connected with his theory of knowledge in ways that Sellars explored in a
variety of writings throughout his career. Here I will begin by continuing with Sel-
larss article, ...this I or he or it (the thing) which thinks... The correct aspects
of Kants view of the thinking self and the transcendental unity of apperception,
as Sellars explains, begins with an
unrestricted principle in the philosophy of mind, which transcends the dis-
tinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal self, to the effect that
an I thinks of a manifold
is not to be confused with
an I has a manifold of thoughts.
... The ways in which many thinkings constitute one thinking are the forms
of thought, e.g., the categories. The recognition of the radical difference
between categorial forms and matter-of-factual relationships is the pons
asinorum of the Critical Philosophy. (I, 78)
Before continuing the analysis of the correct aspects of Kants view here, let me
briefy digress on an important point. For the fnal sentence in this passage refects
another way in which Sellars criticizes Kants agnosticism about things in
themselves, one that Rottschaefer correctly describes in his section IV, but that he
incorrectly takes to be incompatible with my reading of Sellars and Kant.
Ultimately, in order show how language hooks up with the world, Sellars, on
my readingwhich in this respect is congenial to the right-wingers but not to the
left-wingersthinks that we must provide a naturalistic theory of representation
(or picturing) that explains how all of the Kantian and Wittgensteinian rule-
governed epistemic activity I am describing really succeeds in mapping matter-
of-factual occurrences among things in themselves. John McDowell from the
left, for example, rejects this sort of sideways on attempt to naturalistically
explain (in the sense of naturalism I am using here) how our representations
ultimately succeed in corresponding to and correctly representing objects in the
world. On the importance both philosophically and to Sellars (but not to Kant)
of this sort of comprehensive attempt to naturalistically explain how our mental
representations hook up to the world, I am with Rottschaefer, Millikan, and the
other right-wingers, contrary to what Rottschaefer suggests. (Furthermore, I am
with the right wing in holding that, according to Sellars, even the content and
effcacy of those community-based conceptualized intentions that constitute ratio-
nal normativity itself (i.e., within a logical space of reasons) must be susceptible
to an ultimate scientifc explanation in naturalistic terms. But here, too, Sellarss
account of those we-intentions that generate rational normative principles is
given a Kantian formal twist, as we go around Robin Hoods barn, that is not
eliminated in the fnal synoptic vision of man-in-the-world. I shall comment
upon this point in the fnal section.)
What apparently distinguishes my reading of Sellarss middle way from both
the left-wingers and the right-wingers is that I think the whole point of the subtle
Kantian aspects of Sellarss unifying stereoscopic vision is to argue that Sellarss
bold (and non-Kantian) attempt to comprehensively naturalistically explain the
ultimate nature of our intentional and epistemic activities within the ideal scientifc
image is consistent with the enduring formal truth, as we saw him call it earlier,
of the Kantian and equally Sellarsian conception of thinkers and thoughts (and
rational normativity itself) that I have been trying to articulate here and in the book.
6
To return to the passage from Sellars quoted above, for our present purposes
I will continue to take its central Kantian claim concerning the necessary unity
of the I think in all conceptual thinking both to be true (it is of course not
342 JAMES R. OSHEA
uncontroversial) and to be endorsed by Sellars. Sellars immediately continues that
passage as follows:
In epistemology, which, as concerned with good thinking in its various
modes, is a fortiori concerned with thinking as such, this general principle
becomes the epistemic principle that any true content of thought, e.g., that
Socrates is wise, must, in principle, be an element in a certain kind of larger
context, e.g.,
an I thinks the true thought of a world in which Socrates is wise [italics
added].
Roughly, the form of empirical knowledge is: an I thinking (however sche-
matically) the thought of a temporal system of states of affairs to which any
actual state of affairs belongs.
Thus, in the Transcendental Analytic, the above unrestricted principle
about thinking provides the clue to the form of the phenomenal world. This
world is a presented world, and Space, Time, and the Categories are its
forms. (I, 910)
On my interpretation, Sellars agrees with the Kantian epistemic principle that
any true content of thought must be an element in a certain kind of larger con-
text, which is roughly, an I thinking (however schematically) the thought of a
temporal system of states of affairs to which any actual state of affairs belongs. I
think Sellars, in this respect similar to Strawson, regards this as a truth about the
possibility of any discursive representation of an objective state of affairs. Where
he particularly disagrees with Kant is with respect to complex issues concerning
realism and idealism, in particular with respect to the possibilities for the sort of
world-in-itself that we might come justifably to represent.
The issue is especially complex because Sellars agrees with Kant that the world
as conceived in the manifest image is phenomenal or transcendentally ideal,
but not because of the Kantian epistemic principle described above. Sellars makes
clear in the second chapter of his Science and Metaphysics that he rejects most of
Kants own reasons for being a transcendental idealist, and accepts only a version
of Sellarss own argument from the categorial relocation of colored physical ob-
jects when we move from the manifest image to the scientifc image, as described
earlier (SM, II 5879). This fts nicely the reading I gave above in section II of
Sellarss views on the crucial differences between (i) the ultimate falsity (and for
Sellars, transcendental ideality) of the manifest image claims concerning manifest
pink ice cubes and other colored physical objects, as opposed to (ii) the perennial
formal truth of manifest image claims concerning thinkers and their thoughts.
Sellars thinks Kant was right to treat the manifest image of common sense objects
as phenomenal, but only for Sellarss reasons concerning the ultimate falsity of
the framework-conception of the objects in the manifest image.
Sellars also thinks Kant was right with respect to the necessary holistic and
systematic conceptual requirements on having any true thought about a temporal
state of affairs. But Kant also failed to see how the rule-governed holistic framework
of self-conscious human knowledge can (and must) itself be given a sideways on
scientifc explanation in naturalistic terms, in terms of things in themselves. The
latter, boldly naturalistic explanatory task, which targets the nature of human cogni-
tion and action themselves as objectsa task which the left-wing Sellarsians regard
as misguided, but about the importance of which to Sellars I think Rottschaefer
and I agreewill itself be an instance of the sort of conceptual representation of a
world, by self-conscious human thinkers (i.e., logically unitary subjects of thought),
that Sellars thinks Kant correctly analyzed.
Within Sellarss own view, what modifed form do the holistic Kantian epis-
temic principles take concerning the necessary conditions for the possibility of the
conceptual representation of a world, which I claim Sellars endorsed for conceptual
representings in any image, whether manifest or scientifc, while rejecting certain
of Kants limitations upon them? In his Autobiographical Refections Sellars
remarks as follows on his early encounters with Kant at Oxford:
Kant wasnt attempting to prove that in addition to knowing facts about im-
mediate experience, one also knew facts about physical objects, but rather
that a skeptic who grants knowledge of even the simplest fact about an event
occurring in Time is, in effect, granting knowledge of the existence of nature
as a whole. I was sure he was right. But his own question haunted me. How
is it possible that knowledge has this structure? (AR, 285)
Sellars then comments that it wasnt until much later that I came to see that the
solution of the puzzle lay in correctly locating the conceptual order in the causal
order and correctly interpreting the causality involved (AR, 285286). What the
latter is designed to naturalistically support is the former, Kantian epistemological
formal insight (based on a perennial philosophical analysis) that knowledge neces-
sarily has a certain systematic holistic structure: namely, that granting knowledge
of even the simplest fact ... is, in effect, granting knowledge of the existence of
nature as a whole.
Rottschaefer carefully considers the attempt in my book to bring to the surface
a variety of Sellarss own modifed versions of the Kantian epistemic principles
discussed above in several of his works, in particular with respect to my use of Sel-
larss Some Remarks on Kants Theory of Experience (KTE), More on Givenness
and Explanatory Coherence (MGEC), and the Structure of Knowledge (SK).
Here is a characteristic snippet from SK (see Rottschaefer, 305): We have to be in
this framework [of epistemic meta-principles] to be thinking and perceiving beings
at all; and furthermore,
the exploration of these principles is but part and parcel of the task of
explicating the concept of a rational animal or, in VB [verbal behaviorist]
terms, of a language-using organism whose language is about the world in
which it is used. It is only in the light of this larger task that the problem
of the status of epistemic principles reveals its true meaning. (SK, 4546,
frst italics added)
344 JAMES R. OSHEA
Or as Sellars puts it in the more explicitly Kantian context of KTE, with Kants
views modifed by Sellarss linguistic turn:
Transcendental linguistics . . . is not limited to the epistemic functioning of
historical languages in the actual world. It attempts to delineate the general
features that would be common to the epistemic functioning of any language
in any possible world. As I once put it, epistemology, in the new way of
words, is the theory of what it is to be a language that is about a world in
which it is used. Far from being an accidental excrescence, Kants tran-
scendental psychology is the heart of his system. He, too, seeks the general
features any conceptual system must have in order to generate knowledge
of a world to which it belongs. (KTE, 41)
What Kants formal philosophical analysis correctly revealed, according to Sellars,
is that any conceptual system must, if there are to be any such things as concep-
tualized thoughts of a sensible world of temporally locatable events at all, have a
structure according to which there are warranted meta-principles pertaining to the
correctness of language entry perceptions and material inference principles in
general (see, e.g., KTE, 37; and SM: chapter four, 61, and chapter fve, 30).
7
Where we must go beyond Kants agnosticism about things in themselves, ac-
cording to Sellars, is in relation to the ongoing scientifc naturalist project conceived
as extending to both of the following tasks: (a) Explaining how rule-governed
linguistic behaviour and the (rational and non-rational) animal cognition of objects
in an environment actually works, as for example including a naturalistic theory
of mental and linguistic representation. And ultimately, (b) providing a natural-
istic answer to the question How did we get in to the framework? constituted
by conceptual thinking and hence by epistemic meta-principles in the frst place,
which Sellars says [p]resumably ... has a causal answer consisting in a special
application of evolutionary theory to the emergence of beings capable of conceptu-
ally representing the world of which they have come to be a part (MGEC, 79).
Upon closer examination I still fnd, despite Rottschaefers critical comments
on my reading of the Kantian-formal dimension of Sellarss theory of knowledge,
that each of the articles KTE, SK, and MGEC strongly confrms the reading of Sel-
larss complex relationship to Kant that I have given in this paper and in the book.
I will try to be brief here, although Rottschaefers analysis is admirably detailed.
Many of Rottschaefers criticisms here and throughout his article have to do
with my alleged view that, on Sellarss view, nature as pictured in the scientifc
image is bereft of goal-directed normativity. In fact, however, I hold that Sellars
stressed the importance to present and future science of ideal evolutionary explana-
tory accounts of both kinds of goal-directed animal representational systems, as
Sellars called them in his important late article, Mental Events (MEV, passim):
namely, the rational or Aristotelian logic-using kind of animal representational
system, involving conceptual representation proper (and hence, a logical space
of reasons); and the Humean, non-logic-using yet quasi-propositional kind of
animal cognition of objects. Sellars thought that in the ideal scientifc image there
would be complex evolutionary and behavioural-learning explanations (rather than
conceptual analyses) of both kinds of goal-directed processes in nature. On this I
am at one with Rottschaefer, and I have tried to explain above how I think Sellarss
modifed Kantian conceptual analyses are consistent with the idea of such an ideally
complete naturalistic explanation. It should be pointed out, however, that for Sellars
the goal-directedness of non-logic-using Humean animal representational systems
is cashed out in terms of the wider context of natural selection in a way that does
not require the additional considerations that pertain to persons and logic-using
Aristotelian animal representational systems. Accounting for the overall coher-
ence and justifcatory structure of the latter systems requires not only a complex
causal account of how language and thought evolved by natural selection out of the
former representational systems, but also the independent philosophical account
of the necessary structure of conceptual knowledge that Sellars is providing on the
backs of his colleagues from the perennial philosophical tradition.
So while such evolutionary explanations in the ideal scientifc image would
explain how it is possible that human beings came to possess the sort of conceptual-
linguistic abilities that we do possess, I do not claim that Sellars regarded the
justifcation of his modifed Kantian epistemic principles, which pertain to logi-
cal representational systems, as being provided by those projected ideal scientifc
explanations (see Rottschaefer on the split personality of my Sellars, 302).
Sellarss account of the ultimate justifcation of those fundamental Kantian epistemic
principlesin Sellarss view, principles that concern (as Rottschaefer recounts)
the necessary elements in a conceptual framework which defnes what it is to
be a fnite knower in a world one never made (MGEC, IV, 73; and similarly in
KTE and SK, III)comes from the perennial conceptual analysis side rather than
the complementary ongoing scientifc explanatory side of his subtle stereoscopic
view. Such justifcation is ultimately due to updated versions of what Sellars took
to be right about Kants philosophical analysis of the conceptually necessary
conditions for any conceptual representation of an empirically mind-independent
world. Sellars explicitly endorses such an account when he refers, for example, to
the pure pragmatics or transcendental logic of empirical knowledge as such,
where the former, of course, refers to one way in which he framed his own overall
philosophical framework (TTC, 51). But he carefully disagrees with Kant in all
those key places where he argues that Kant shut off the possibility of Sellarss own
scientifc naturalism about things as they ultimately are in themselves.
Where my view is relatively silent, and where Rottschaefer has helpful further
proposals to recommend in relation to recent philosophical and scientifc theorizing,
is where I think Sellarss view remained prudently quiet, too: namely, in relation to
any details concerning the projected ideal scientifc explanation of how linguistic-
conceptual capacities evolved in the human species in the frst place (see OShea
2007, 85 and n13; and Rottschaefer 2011, 296ff.). I did say quite a lot in the book
about closely related matters concerning which Sellars himself said quite a lot, in
particular about the possibility of an ideal behavioral-functionalist account of what
346 JAMES R. OSHEA
it is to acquire the ability to have conceptualized thoughts and norm-instituting
intentions within and across inherited conceptual frameworks in general. This is an
account according to which both naturalistic and normative elements track one
another in complex relations of interdependence that I briefy encapsulated in what
I called Sellarss norm-nature meta-principle. But Rottschaefer and I agree on the
right-wing view that Sellars envisioned both kinds of overall explanation, referred
to above, within the ideal scientifc image. Rottschaefer rejects my attempt to argue
that the formal epistemological truths about thinkers and their knowledge that Sel-
lars embraced and modifed from the perennial philosophy are consistent within
fact synoptically fused withthat projected ideal scientifc explanation. What I
dont see is why my attempt to interpret Sellarss synoptic vision as preserving both
the substantive neo-Kantian conceptual analyses and the projected ideal scientifc
explanationsboth of them concerning the same rule-governed linguistic-conceptual
phenomena, one from the side of broadly empirically warranted scientifc explana-
tion and the other from the side of perennial philosophical analysisis guilty of
producing a Sellars with a split personality in any sense that involves inconsistency,
as Rottschaefer seems to suggest. I think Sellarss stereoscopic vision is precisely a
delicate simultaneous combination of those two dimensions, the ongoing scientifc-
explanatory and the philosophical-analytic, in one coherent view.
What is the ultimate justifcation for the Kantian epistemic principles that I
have suggested Sellars adapts from Kant in modifed form? In an important sense,
Sellars rejected Kants notion of the synthetic a priori, as Rottschaefer correctly
notes (although Rottschaefer does not register the sense in which Sellars also clearly
sought to preserve a pragmatic and framework-relativized version of something
akin to the synthetic a priori, but this is not my main concern in this paper); and
Sellars also rejected, as Rottschaefer notes, what he calls the this or nothing
justifcation of epistemic principles that he fnds in Chisholm and says is familiar
to the Kantian tradition (SK, III, 43).
Sellarss view is that Kant justifed his synthetic a priori meta-principles by
embedding them within what is ultimately an analysis of the conceptually neces-
sary conditions on any conceptual representation of temporal states-of-affairs in a
world, as explained earlier. Like the good non-traditional, Kantian empiricist that
he is, Sellars does not think that anything other than (broadly) logico-conceptual
and (broadly) empirical warrants are ultimately required for this Kantian analysis, at
bottom. But Kants analysis has a complex and illuminating structure, according to
Sellars, and hence is in its own way explanatory. It is in fact one of the two dimen-
sions of explanatory coherence that is embodied in the complex that is theory T,
to be discussed in the next section in relation to Sellarss MGEC. And contrary to
what Rottschaefer suggests, Sellars thinks that such an analysis does carry weight
against scepticism, despite not engaging in the futile task of attempting to provide
a presuppositionless proof that there exists such a thing as empirical knowledge
(see TTC, VIII, e.g., 53). Here is how Sellars puts these subtle methodological
and interpretive points concerning Kant in KTE (see also TTC, part VIII):
(10) It is obvious to the beginning student that the truths of transcenden-
tal logic cannot themselves be synthetic a priori. If they were, then any
transcendental demonstration that objects of empirical knowledge conform
to synthetic universal principles in the modality of necessity [JOS: which
Sellars himself holds, too] would be question-begging. It must in a tough
sense be an analytic truth that objects of empirical knowledge conform to
logically synthetic universal principles. It must however, also be an illumi-
nating analytic truth, far removed from the trivialities established by the
unpacking of body in to extended substance and brother into male
sibling. [In a footnote here Sellars says that the concluding chapters of the
Critique show that Kant himself understood that transcendental logic
as knowledge about knowledge could consist of analytic knowledge about
synthetic knowledge.]
(11) It is also obvious, on refection, that Kant is not seeking to prove that
there is empirical knowledge, but only to show that the concept is a coher-
ent one and that it is such as to rule out the possibility that there could be
empirical knowledge not implicitly of the form such and such a state of
affairs belongs to a coherent system of states of affairs of which my percep-
tual experiences are a part. By showing this, he undercuts both the skeptic
and the problematic idealist who, after taking as paradigms of empirical
knowledge items that seem to involve no intrinsic commitment to such a
larger context, raise the illegitimate question of how one can justifably move
from these items to the larger context to which we believe them to belong.
What Sellars rejects are unexplicated, primitive, dogmatic appeals to the synthetic
a priori, to self-evidence, or to the this or nothing move.
In the next section I argue that, contrary to Rottschaefers criticism, the mod-
ifed-Kantian aspects of my reading of Sellarss article, More on Givenness and
Explanatory Coherence (MGEC), are strongly confrmed by a closer look at the
argument of that article.
V. MORE ON SELLARS ON
GIVENNESS AND EXPLANATORY COHERENCE
More on Givenness and Explanatory Coherence is one of Sellarss most im-
portant and complex articles in epistemology. Rottschaefer argues in some detail
that my emphasis on the Kantian aspects of Sellarss theory of knowledge is not
supported by this text. In particular, Rottschaefer argues that what Sellars in
MGEC calls theory T is exclusively a scientifc explanatory theory, and not in
any respect a Kantian transcendental justifcation that is warranted in some way
independent of the sorts of warrant that derive from ongoing scientifc theoriz-
ing. I argue, however, that a further examination of MGEC strongly reconfrms
my original interpretation and also explains why as sensitive a reader of Sellars
as Rottschaefer might have been led to misconstrue certain key moves in Sel-
larss argument.
348 JAMES R. OSHEA
In sections III and IV of his article Rottschaefer helpfully highlights the central
features of my account of Sellarss views on the status epistemic principles, rightly
focusing upon what I called Sellarss perceptual reliability principle:
[PR] Ss perceptual judgment [P] that x, over there, is red constitutes a case
of perceptual knowledge if and only if there is a generally reliable
connection between cases of Ss judging that [P] and its being in fact
true that there is a red physical object over there. (Cf. Rottschaefer
2011, 299; and OShea 2007, 126)
[PR] is a meta-judgment, an epistemic principle, concerning the reliability, ce-
teris paribus, of frst-order perceptual judgments such as [P]. In the terminology
of Sellarss MGEC, [P] is an example of a frst-order IPM judgment, i.e., an
ostensible introspection, perception, or memory, and [PR] would be an instance
of Sellarss meta-judgment MJ
5
, i.e., IPM judgments are likely to be true
(MGEC, 83). Sellars uses Roderick Firths Coherence, Certainty, and Epis-
temic Priority as a starting point for raising questions about the inferential or
non-inferential warrant for judgments such as [PR] and [P] (using my terminol-
ogy). In paragraphs 3339, Sellars uses Firth to make essentially the following
points, one of which is particularly important for my diagnosis of Rottschaefers
mistaken reading of MGEC.
Sellars explains Firths distinction between two modes of inferential warrant-
increasing properties (33) that a judgment may possess. Kind-1 inferential
warrant is the sort of straightforward case in which [P] is validly inferable from
certain other statements of a specifed kind (ibid.). Kind-2 inferential warrant is
more indirect: in this case [P] is inferentially warranted if a certain meta-judgment
about [P]for example, [P] is believed by the relevant expertsis itself infer-
entially warranted in the straightforward kind-1 way, for instance by instantial
induction from the past successes of the experts. By contrast, a judgment has a
non-inferential warrant-increasing property if, put negatively, it is not warranted
in either of the two kinds of inferential way; and just what non-inferential warrant
might positively amount to, without appealing (as Firth does) to the Given, is one
of the central questions of Sellarss essay.
The point that is important not to miss, however, is that in sections 34 and
39 (and implicitly invoked again in 6061 and 76) Sellars appeals to Firths
use of coheres with in connection with inferable from to broaden the scope of
inductive inference to include other [i.e., non-instantial] modes of non-deductive
explanatory reasoning (34): as a matter of fact, even if one counts the acquisi-
tion of a theory by a substantial degree of confrmation as a variety of acquiring
inductive support, the distinctions remain reasonably straightforward (39). Sellars
is here broadening the scope of inductive inferential warrant (relevant to both
kind-1 and kind-2 inferential warrant) to include more complex accounts of the
inductive confrmation of scientifc theoriesimplicitly including his own account
of induction in terms of the rationality of theory-replacement in ongoing scientifc
inquiry relative to certain broader ends of explanation. (See Sellarss Induction
as Vindication (IV); or for a simpler version, and one that clearly illustrates the
type of example in 76 discussed below, see the section on Induction at the end
of SRLG.) For example, Sellars is clearly appealing to his own or any similarly
broadened view of induction in the following passage later in the article:
Now in the case of particular theories, for example, the corpuscular theory
of light, one can imagine that one gets into the conceptual framework of the
theory by a process of inductive reasoning. One entertains the framework and
fnds it inductively reasonable to espouse it. One espouses it for the reason
that it is inductively reasonable to do so, and one is being reasonable in so
doing. (MGEC, 76, italics in original)
One cannot read this passage without hearing Sellarss own account of the role
of induction as vindication within ongoing scientifc theoretical explanation.
But Rottschaefer appears to miss this particular point, i.e., that from 36 onwards
Sellars implicitly includes his own explanationist and similarly broad accounts of
the inductive confrmation of scientifc theories within the broadened notion of
inductive inference that he then assumes throughout the rest of the article (while
continuing to use the simpler case of instantial induction in contexts where that is
suffcient to make his point).
Whatever about Sellarss own view of induction, the broadened notion he tells
us he is assuming clearly includes the ongoing empirical confrmation of scien-
tifc theories concerning unobservables, which the corpuscular example in 76
is used to illustrate. Rottschaefer, however, having apparently missed this point,
consequently fnds Sellarss discussion of the inductive support for the corpuscular
theory of unobservables puzzling (see Rottschaefers highly problematic endnote
48). Sellarss intent is clear, however: even if we include among the two kinds
inferential warrant the sorts of non-deductive and non-instantial-inductive modes
of reasoning that are involved in generating empirically well-confrmed scientifc
theories, we will still run into the following circularity problem concerning the
warrant for judgments such as [PR] and [P]. And this is why, as we shall now see
(and as I argued in the book), Sellars in MGEC ultimately breaks the circle by ap-
pealing to a mode of justifcation in terms of explanatory coherence that is not a
species of the sort of empirically confrmed explanatory coherence that is involved
in ongoing scientifc theorizing.
The circularity problem, crudely put, is as follows. Particular perceptual judg-
ments [P] are justifed or reasonable for us (on Sellarss view) only if the perceptual
reliability meta-judgment [PR] is also justifed or reasonable for us. But how is the
meta-judgment or epistemic principle [PR] itself justifed? Surely (the circularity
threat suggests) any such justifcation would ultimately have to appeal to particular
empirical observations of the sort [P], whether in the simple sense of instantial
induction or more broadly in terms of the ongoing inductive empirical confrma-
tion of scientifc theories that (on Sellarss own view of induction as vindication,
for instance) is involved in the comparison and reasoned replacement of scientifc
theories (cf. 5961).
350 JAMES R. OSHEA
Sellarss response to this circularity threat involves a further subtle distinction
between two kinds of explanatory coherence, both of which are aspects of what in
MGEC he calls a more encompassing version of what I have been calling theory
T (74, italics added), and which embodies epistemic principles such as [PR]. Sel-
larss frst anticipation of what (in 61) he calls Theory T occurs in 40, directly
after having included the broader notions of inductive confrmation by theories
within Firths kind-1 and kind-2 inferential warrants:
But suppose that P' [i.e., the inferential warranting principle (38)] is the
property of belonging to a theory of persons as representers of themselves-
in-the-world, which, although it has good explanatory power and is capable
of refnement by inductive procedures, was not (and, indeed, could not have
been) arrived at by inferences guided by inductive canons however broadly
construed. Would P' be an inferential WP [warrant-increasing property] or
an explanatory but not inferential WP? (MGEC, 40)
It turns out (5965) that if such a theory of persons as representers of
themselves-in-the-worldwhich Sellars in 61 calls theory T, and which is sup-
posed to provide the warrant for such epistemic meta-judgments as the reliability
principle [PR]is itself inferentially warranted only by the standard means of
empirical confrmation, including the broadest sense involved in ongoing scientifc
theorizing, then we are still stuck inside the vicious circle. Sellars indicates that
the circle threatens not only narrowly inductively supported claims, but empiri-
cally confrmed claims in the broadened sense (which as we have seen, includes
scientifc-theoretical hypotheses). Thus, of epistemic meta-judgments such as [PR]
(or in Sellarss terminology, meta-judgments MJ
1,3,4
about the reliability of our
IPM judgments), his answer to the following question is negative if it is construed
empirically (in however broad a sense):
(58) . . . Might not these [principles] be both principles which provide
criteria for adjudicating certain empirical knowledge claims and empirical
knowledge claims in their own right? (59) Now if an affrmative response
took the form of a claim that MJ
1
, MJ
3
, and MJ
4
are empirically confrmed
knowledge claimsthus putting them in a box with MJ
2
[i.e., the instantial
induction, Statements which are accepted by the AGS [experts] are likely
to be true], a sensitive nerve would be struck. Would not such a claim
involve a vicious circularity? (60) Since it is obvious that they cannot be
empirical generalizations which owe their epistemic authority to confrma-
tion by instances, one might look for a less direct mode of confrmation by
experience [cf. 3439]. (61) Even if indirectly, however, an appeal must
ultimately be made [that is, if such meta-judgments are to be construed as
empirical claims even in the broader sense] to the fruits of introspection,
perception, and memory. (MGEC, 5861)
Sooner or later, Sellars continues, we would be confronted by such pairs of
statements as (here I will paraphrase by substituting my own abbreviations):
It is reasonable to accept epistemic principle or meta-judgment [PR] because
it is an element in a theory T which coheres with our perceptions [P]. And
[P] is likely to be true because it falls under [PR]. (Cf. MGEC, 61)
In 66 (cf. 58) Sellars consequently makes the crucial claim that in order to
break out of the circle what we need is a way in which it could be independently
reasonable to accept principles such as [PR] in spite of the fact that a ground
for accepting such meta-judgments is the fact that they belong to T, which we
suppose to be an empirically well-confrmed theory. That is, to escape from the
circle we need a warranting ground for the theory T (of persons as represent-
ers of themselves-in-the-world) that is independent of and additional to the sort
of empirically based inferential warrant that theory T may also (now, coherently)
possess, i.e., of the broadly empirical sort paradigmatically exemplifed by ongoing
scientifc theoretical explanation.
In the fnal sections of the article (6689), Sellars accordingly sketches an
account according to which there is a more encompassing version of what I have
been calling theory T (74). Sellars indicates that this more encompassing theory
T is something like theory T (88, 8081, 74) in that, as he concludes in the
fnal sentences of the article:
(88) ... as it exists at any one time, theory T is a complex [i.e., this is the
more encompassing version] which includes MJ
5
[e.g., [PR]] and attempts
to explain why IPM judgments [e.g., [P]] are likely to be true. The latter
enterprise is still unfnished business [i.e., of ongoing empirical scientifc
theorizing].
(89) It is in the former respect that it constitutes the conceptual framework
which spells out the explanatory coherence which is the ultimate criterion
of truth. (MGEC, interpolations and fnal emphasis added)
That is, the complex that is the more encompassing theory T includes two dif-
ferent sources of warrant, only one of which is a matter of the ongoing process of
scientifc explanation:
(84) Now for the linchpin. We must carefully distinguish between having
good reason to accept MJ
5
[PR] and having good reason to accept a proposed
explanation of why IPM judgments [P] are likely to be true.
(85) To explain why IPM judgments [P] are likely to be true does involve in-
ductive support [i.e., including the broader sense] for hypotheses concerning
the mechanisms involved and how they evolved in response to evolutionary
pressures. And this obviously presupposes the reasonableness of accepting
IPM judgments [P]. (MGEC, interpolations added)
So ongoing scientifc explanatory proposals will concern, for example, par-
ticular empirically based theories as to how natural selection generated perceptual
mechanisms that are reliably truth-conducive. This aspect of the more encompass-
ing theory T, i.e., the ongoing scientifc explanatory attempt to provide a causal
answer to the question How did we get into the framework? that is constituted
352 JAMES R. OSHEA
by epistemic meta-principles such as [PR] (78), presupposes the validity of [P]-
judgments in general in the effort to provide observational support for proposed
scientifc-evolutionary theories as to why [P]-judgments are likely to be true.
But since Sellars has just argued that this ordinary scientifc interplay between
hypotheses and observations does not break us out of the vicious circle, [PR]
[P], unless there is also a source of warrant for epistemic principles such as [PR]
that is independent of the ongoing process of empirical confrmatory warrant, the
burden of the entire article rests on the latter, non-empirically generated dimension
of explanatory coherence that Sellars argues is possessed by the more encompass-
ing version of theory T and hence by epistemic reliability principles such as [PR].
So the fnal question is: what is Sellarss account of the latter dimension of non-
empirically based epistemic warrant for such epistemic meta-principles as [PR]?
Here the modifed Kantian dimension of Sellarss theory of knowledge that I have
outlined in the previous sections and in the book breaks us out of the threatening
vicious circle. It does so by providing a substantive philosophical-conceptual analy-
sis of the conceptual framework which defnes, i.e., independently of ongoing
scientifc theorizing, what it is to be a fnite knower in a world one never made
(73, emphasis added). Here philosophy makes a contribution that ongoing scientifc
theorizing does not makeand should we really be surprised that Sellars thinks
that philosophy can play such a role?by analysing the general structure of the
systematically coherent framework of epistemic principles that must be exhibited
by any particular conceptual framework within which ongoing scientifc or any
other epistemic activity is possible in the frst place. Once this is established we can
now coherently hold that to be in this framework is to appreciate the interplay of
the reasonablenesses of inductive hypotheses [in the broadest sense] and of IPM
judgments [P] (MGEC, 75, interpolations added). That is, once we have in this
manner revealed the way in which it could be independently reasonable to accept
epistemic meta-principles such as [PR], then we have philosophically resolved the
appearance of vicious circularity that seemed to threaten the ordinary scientifc
interplay (75) between warranted principles and warranted observations that
is characteristic of all ongoing theoretical explanation (76).
In MGEC Sellars entitles this account of the permanent dimension of explana-
tory coherence that is required for all possible human knowledge, and is explicated
by philosophical analysis rather than by ongoing scientifc explanation, Epistemic
Evaluation as Vindication (68). As we have already seen, in KTE he had char-
acterized essentially the same project as transcendental linguistics and in TTC
as pure pragmatics or transcendental logic. In The Structure of Knowledge
(SK) he characterized it this way:
(45) ... We have to be in this framework [of epistemic principles] to be
thinking and perceiving beings at all. I suspect that it is this plain truth which
is the real underpinning of the [Chisholmian, this or nothing] idea that
the authority of epistemic principles rests on the fact that unless they were
true we could not see that a cat is on the roof.
As we have seen, the task in this context is one of conceptual explication, but in
what Sellars takes to be a richly illuminating and explanatory sense. Sellars takes
the articulation of this analysis to reveal the more complex conceptual-structural
coherence that in fact underlies and explains the various blunt, unexplicated ap-
peals to epistemic principles as self-evident, or synthetic a priori, or this
or nothing.
In MGECs Epistemic Evaluation as Vindication, this conceptual analysis
takes the form of deductively (n.b., 68) analyzing the conceptually necessary
means to achieving a certain end. Sellars explains how in previous articles such
as Induction as Vindication (IV) and Are there Non-deductive Logics (NDL)
he had argued that among the necessary means to achieving the end of being
in a general position, so far as in us lies, to act, that is, to bring about changes in
ourselves and our environment in order to realize specifc purposes or intentions,
is the espousal of certain patterns of reasoning, specifcally those involved in the
establishing of statistical hypotheses, laws, and theories (MGEC, 6869). In
accordance with the reading of MGEC I have just offered, however, Sellars now
points out that those perfectly good justifcations of the scientifc method and its
results simply assumed the probability of observation statements such as [P],
and hence do not solve but rather presuppose a solution to the deeper threat of
epistemic circularity between perceptions [P] and epistemic principles [PR] that
he is addressing in MGEC (7072). The solution to this problem, as we have
seen, requires the independent argument that epistemic principles such as [PR]
are vindicated by a conceptual analysis that shows that they are elements in a
conceptual framework that defnes what it is to be a knower in a world one never
made (73, italics added), and that there is a conceptually necessary connec-
tion between being in the framework of epistemic evaluation and being agents,
conceptual thinkers, and perceptual knowers (80). It is this connection which
constitutes the objective ground for the reasonableness of accepting something like
theory T (80), i.e., theory T in the more encompassing version.
It is important to recognize, as Sellars clearly indicates, that although this
philosophically explicated dimension of necessary explanatory coherence is unlike
the products of ongoing scientifc explanation in that it is not arrived at through
or initially warranted by the processes of empirical induction and the confrmation
of theories understood in Sellarss broadest sense, nonetheless this vindication
account of the structural constitution of any framework epistemic evaluation has
good explanatory power and is capable of refnement by inductive procedures
(40). In particular, as Rottschaefer correctly emphasizes in his section IV (and
as I emphasized in the book), Sellars thinks that an adequate account of what the
conceptually warranted epistemic reliability principles such as [PR] actually require
in order to be able to do their job itself requires that we move beyond Kants ag-
nosticism concerning things in themselves to a more full-blooded philosophical
analysis and ultimately scientifcally elaborated theory of the nature and genesis
of goal-directed behavior in general.
354 JAMES R. OSHEA
Overall, then, and contrary to Rottschaefers contention, I suggest that Sellarss
MGEC strongly supports the reading I offered of his account of the warrant of
epistemic principles, in particular as ultimately resting on a distinction between
(as I had put it):
(A) possible naturalistic (for example, evolutionary) explanations of how we
came to be in the sort of epistemic conceptual framework that is constituted
by such principles as [PR]; and
(B) a kind of non-empirical or transcendental argument ... for the reason-
ableness of accepting epistemic principles such as [PR] insofar as they are
elements in a conceptual framework which defnes what it is to be a fnite
knower in a world one never made. (OShea 2007, 131132; the Sellars
quote is from MGEC 73; cf. Rottschaefer 2011, 299300)
VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS
I take the above to have answered the most important criticisms raised in Rott-
schaefers very rich and wide-ranging article, and my responses to the remaining
criticisms would fall out fairly straightforwardly from what I have already said. In
a wider discussion of particular importance would be an analysis of Sellarss ac-
count of moral and other normative principles, which I think is both an extremely
important topic and one that strongly confrms the overall Kantian-yet-naturalistic
interpretation of Sellarss philosophy that I have offered here and in the book (see
the fnal chapter of Sellarss SM in particular, as well as the second half of his
I; and OShea 2007, chapter seven). Sellarss theory of morality turns out to be
comprehensively naturalistic in at least two senses: (a) the theory of the nature
of individual and community intentions, upon which the Kantian dimensions of
Sellarss account of moral principles ultimately rest, is itself understood by Sellars
in ways that render it susceptible to an ideally adequate behavioral-functionalist
scientifc explanation; and (b) the Kantian-formalist aspects of Sellarss account of
morality are built upon quasi-Humean and utilitarian conceptions of our rational
self-interest and our interest in the common good. But at the very heart of Sel-
larss account of morality (and of normative principles in general) lies a modifed
Kantian conception of a premise that, as he puts it, is logically intersubjective
and constitutes a purpose which can be said to be implied by the very concept
of a community of persons (italics added): namely, the intersubjective intention,
Let any of us persons do that in each circumstance which promotes our common
good (I: 79). To understand the normative activity of human agents as rational
thinkers, even from the perspective of the ideal synoptic vision, one has to go far
enough around Robin Hoods barn (as most evolutionary accounts of morality
currently do not) to embrace the constitutive and formal Kantian aspects of Sel-
larss analysis of normative principles, which are warranted in ways other than
by being (as they also are) the target of ongoing scientifc explanation. So in this
domain, too, in his long walk around Robin Hoods barna circuitous path which
continues to be shunned by most, though not all, contemporary naturalistsSel-
lars once again defended in modifed form certain enduring Kantian philosophical
insights that are not eliminated or replaced when one comes to the fnal synoptic
vision of man-in-the-world.
I would also emphasize the various ways in which the account I have offered
enables me to embrace nearly all of the boldly naturalistic ambitions that Rott-
schaefer champions in the fnal sections of his articleprovided, that is, that these
scientifc explanatory projects are embedded within the sorts of modifed Kantian
philosophical insights that render Sellarss naturalism so very unlike the sorts of
neo-Quinean conceptions of naturalism that Rottschaefer frequently recommends
in his article. (To take just one example, the reader is invited to contrast Sellarss
approach with the recent neo-Quinean defense of naturalism offered by Penelope
Maddy and recommended by Rottschaefer.)
8
In relation to Rottschaefers general
defense of contemporary naturalism and rejection of a priori methods in philosophy
in his fnal section, I could go on to point out that there also exists an increasing
number of defenses of conceptual analysis and of the role of the a priori in phi-
losophy, resulting in a battery of anthologies and journal issues devoted to those
topics in recent years by philosophers many of whom are naturalists. But I will not
pursue that topic here. I have also not explored here Sellarss important distinc-
tions (emphasized in my book) between acts of saying or asserting or intending
on the one hand, and the systematic factual information that is conveyed, implied,
or presupposed by such assertions or intentions on the other. And there is also a
corresponding crucial distinction between, for example, using an ought on the one
hand, as opposed to mentioning an ought as part of an explanation of ought-using
behavior on the otherno matter how ideally comprehensive the latter explanation
might be. Despite these omissions, I take my exploration of the broadly Kantian
issues discussed above to have suffciently addressed Rottschaefers central concerns
about the transcendental role of normativity in my account.
The left-wing Sellarsians have abandoned Sellarss own omnivorous concep-
tion of scientifc naturalism and of the primacy of the scientifc image partly,
I think, because of an understandable failure to see how, as I put it at the outset,
the controversial thesis that all truths about the human being and the world are in
principle exhaustively explainable by the methods of ongoing scientifc inquiry
could be consistent with a non-empirically derived, modifed-Kantian and later
Wittgensteinian dimension of philosophical analysis and human agency. Accessing
that meta-conceptual dimension does not require, as Rottschaefer in places sug-
gests that my interpretation entails, that one import from a transcendental realm
(19) dimensions of normativity that are outside of nature (50). To the contrary,
on Sellarss modifed Kantian view, there are no things and no realm outside of
nature; and there are also no principles that are not themselves open to fully adequate
scientifc explanation within nature. The latter does not entail, however, that such
principles are warranted only by such scientifc explanations as we hope await us
down the road of inquiry.
356 JAMES R. OSHEA
For as we have seen, there are certain grounds of warrant (in the case of knowl-
edge and conceptual thinking) and certain dimensions of normativity itself (in the
case of Sellarss analysis of the source and effcacy of normative principles for
rational beings) that cannot be entirely accounted for in terms of ongoing scientifc
explanation, but that are nonetheless necessary conditions of anything recognizable
as human thought and agency in any image or conceptual framework whatsoever.
What I have attempted to articulate is how Sellars conceived of and sought to justify
these enduring Kantian and later Wittgensteinian elements consistently with his
industrial strength scientifc naturalism. Sellarss naturalism was as ambitious as
they come, but his was also a naturalism that did not fail to grasp and retain certain
complex philosophical insights concerning the very possibility of conceptual think-
ing, empirical knowledge, and rational agencyinsights that required Sellarss
long and rather lonely trek around Robin Hoods barn, but that revealed essential
elements in any philosophically coherent scientifc naturalism.
9
ENDNOTES
1. Page references without further specifcation are to Rottschaefer 2011.
2. As Sellars briefy states the gist of his distinction (the details of which do not concern us
here): Roughly, those features of objects are physical
2
, which are, in principle defnable in
terms of attributes exemplifed in the world before the appearance of sentient organisms, i.e.,
attributes necessary and suffcient to describe and explain the behavior of merely material
things. Physical
1
, features, on the other hand, are any which belong in the causal order
(FMPP: III n15).
3. See Sellarss Carus Lectures, FMPP, for a full discussion of the matters discussed in
this paragraph and the previous one; and see also Jay F. Rosenbergs The Place of Color
in the Scheme of Things: A Roadmap to Sellars Carus Lectures (in Rosenberg 2007); and
OShea (2007), chapters 5 and 6.
4. I entirely agree with Rottschaefers characterization of the theoretical-scientifc contents
of the vocabulary in terms of which persons would form their intentions and conceptualize
their actions and perceptions within the ideal synoptic synthesis, in accordance with the
passage from the end of PSIM (40) on joining the conceptual framework of persons with the
scientifc image. It might not be clear from Rottschaefers critical discussion (316) that I had
also emphasized the same passage (OShea 2007, 187), and precisely in order to emphasize
what I characterized as Sellarss radical thesis that in the ideal synoptic integration we
would construe the actions we intend to do and the circumstances in which we intend to do
them in scientifc terms (re-emphasizing the passage from PSIM, 40). Rottschaefers discus-
sion seems to imply that I do not accept this point, which I do embrace and which strongly
separates my reading from all the left-wing and from many middle ground interpreters of
Sellarss overall view.
5. Again, the sort of relocation that is involved in the case of the sensible qualities
is just one instance of the sort of categorial reconceptualization and replacement that is
involved in scientifc recategorizations of the fundamental nature of objects in general, on
Sellarss view.
6. For my most recent attempt, articulated in terms of Sellarss ubiquitous distinction be-
tween analysis and explanation, see OShea 2010. (This article appears in a journal issue,
by the way, that is a Special Issue devoted to the general topic of Naturalism, Normativity,
and the Space of Reasons.)
7. The relevant material inferences in Sellarss sense will include natural causal laws that
amount to conceptual framework-constituting meaning principles. Such material principles
will in that sense have something akin to a synthetic a priori status within any given framework,
but on Sellarss own pragmatic conception of the a priori, particular conceptual frameworks
as a whole are subject to inductive challenge and abandonment in the scientifc process of
conceptual change. Any such framework, however, qua conceptual framework, must satisfy
the sorts of formal, meta-level epistemic principles analyzed by Kant and given further content
by Sellars. See, for example, Sellarss ITSA and LRB, among many other places.
8. I should note, however, that unfortunately I have only recently happily discovered the
existence of Rottschaefers own book, The Biology and Psychology of Moral Agency (1998).
I anticipate being able to mine a wealth of insights into the nature and origin of moral
agency from this book, as well as further information concerning the conceptual structure
of Rottschaefers own naturalistic approach.
9. For other constructive explorations as to how Sellarss Kantian views relate to his sci-
entifc naturalism, see in particular deVries 2005; Rosenberg 2007 (and further references
to Rosenbergs other books contained therein); and Sicha 2002, a detailed introduction to
Sellarss KTM. Finally, my thanks to William Rottschaefer for his careful examination of my
work, and to Michael DePaul of the Journal of Philosophical Research for the opportunity
to respond.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
WILFRID SELLARS TEXTS (WITH STANDARD ABBREVIATIONS)
AR: 1975. Autobiographical Refections: (February, 1973). In Action, Knowledge, and
Reality: Critical Studies in Honor of Wilfrid Sellars, ed. Hector Neri-Castaeda. India-
napolis IN: Bobbs-Merrill.
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