1989) retains much from the traditional, Cartesian perspective. It
endorses a realm of inner, private episodes of which we may have
direct knowledge. However, Sellars rejects Cartesian substance dualism
and the thesis that mental states are fully knowable simply by
introspection. As an alternative, Sellars conceives of mental states
by analogy with the postulation of microentities of theoretical
physics, where thoughts and sensations are introduced to explain
people's behavior, including their use of language. Although thoughts
and sensations are theoretical posits, direct or immediate knowledge
of one's own thoughts and sensations is possible, as are well-grounded
judgments about others' inner states. Concepts of thoughts are modeled
on concepts of overt linguistic activity, and our knowledge of the
nature of thinking is thus dependent upon the semantic categories and
features appropriate to a public language. In this way, the
traditional Cartesian view is retained to a certain extent, but also
inverted. Thoughts and other inner episodes are genuine, private
episodes, but knowledge of them is not the ground from which public
facts are inferred. Instead, knowledge of thoughts, even our own,
presupposes a language and knowledge of public matters. In fact, this
is part of Sellars famous account of the Myth of the Given. A further
important break from the Cartesian tradition comes in the distinct
accounts Sellars provides for thoughts on the one hand, and sensations
on the other. In this way Sellars is far more Kantian than Cartesian.
Sellars' theory of thinking is a proto-functionalist one, but is
combined with a distinct account of sensation, one which stresses the
intrinsic character of sensory experience. Mental episodes of thoughts
and sensation are held by him to be reconcilable with a broadly
naturalistic metaphysics.
1. The Cartesian Background
Wilfrid Sellars (b.1912 – d.1989) was a systematic philosopher par
excellence. As a consequence, attempts to understand his views on mind
lead towards other areas of philosophy. In particular, Sellars' theory
of mind is intertwined with his views on language, epistemology,
science, and metaphysics. This entry focuses on his account of mind
and draws on these other areas only to the extent needed to shed
light.
In keeping with his belief that philosophy is an ongoing dialogue,
Sellars often develops his views in response to key historical
figures. When it comes to the mind, Sellars finds himself often in
dialogue with Descartes and it is here that we can begin to appreciate
Sellars' multi-faceted position. In particular, we might take Sellars'
point of departure to be Descartes' belief that the mind is better
known than the body. Sellars seeks to preserve the degree of truth it
contains, while jettisoning components and presuppositions he views as
problematic.
According to Descartes, our minds are better known than physical
bodies in that nothing mental is in principle hidden from sight:
knowledge we have of the mental realm is complete, direct, immediate,
and not subject to doubt. While we may doubt whether we are seeing a
tomato, we cannot doubt that we are sensing what seems to be a tomato.
Nor can we doubt that we are thinking that there seems to be a tomato
before us. Our awareness of the thought that there is a tomato before
us is direct and infallible. Importantly for Descartes, all mental
occurrences just are different kinds of thinking; the category of
thinking includes such diverse mental events as sensings, wishings,
imaginings, believings, hopings, willings, etc. and all will receive a
similar treatment. Descartes is thereby said to endorse a
sensory-cognitive continuum, something that Sellars (following Kant)
will reject. Finally, and famously, Descartes held that such thinking
cannot occur in material substance (res extensa), and so requires the
existence of a distinct, independent type of substance, what he calls
res cogitans. Special properties of thinking, such as immunity from
doubt, are due to the special nature of this mental substance.
As we ponder Descartes' views, we may find the claim that the mind is
better known than the body quite plausible: while we can doubt whether
our thoughts are accurate, we don't seem able to doubt that we are
having a certain thought. Further, we seem to know what is going on
"inside" us better than anyone else could. Let us call this ability to
know our own mental occurrences better than anyone else could the
thesis of "First Person Authority." It would be contrary to
commonsense, it seems, to deny this First Person Authority and that
alone gives us one good reason to maintain it. However, there are
potential costs of doing so. First, in placing our thoughts within a
privileged arena in which we know our own better than others do, we
run the risk of generating skepticism about other people's thoughts.
We can begin to worry whether there are grounds for knowing what
someone else is really thinking, and even whether there are other
minds at all besides our own. If the mental is distinct from the
behaviors of the body and knowable directly only by the subject of
experience, can we be sure we are correct in our judgments about other
people's mental states? Can we be sure that there is anything "behind"
the observable behavior of a person's body? Second, many contemporary,
scientifically inclined philosophers find Descartes' reliance on an
independent, mental substance troubling. It is by no means clear how
to accomodate such a substance within a scientific, materialistic
framework. How then are we to make use of Descartes' apparent insights
into the nature of the mind? We can understand Sellars as seeking to
do just that—find a way to capture the intuition behind this First
Person Authority, but in a way that is both scientifically
respectable, and which doesn't raise those skeptical worries. In what
follows, we will see the complex account of mind that Sellars presents
as an attempt to satisfy these various desiderata (and others as
well).
2. Requirements for a Theory of Mind
Let us now explore more thoroughly and precisely the various elements
Sellars believes a viable theory of mind requires. This will put us in
a better position to understand the goals and objectives of the long
story Sellars tells about minds, including what emerges in the famous
"Myth of Jones."
Now while Descartes assimilates all mental occurrences to the category
thinking, it is worth noting that some mental events have a feature
that others don't. Let us consider for starters that class of mental
episodes we call "beliefs." One distinctive feature of beliefs is that
they are about something. Our beliefs have a content, we might say, a
subject matter. In contemporary terms, this is the intentionality of
beliefs. Some of our mental occurrences are about something: they
refer to something beyond themselves. We have beliefs about tables,
about distant stars, about abstract states of affairs, about our own
minds, and so on. In fact we might say, as some have, that the very
mark of the mental is this intentionality. A theory of mind must, it
seems, explain this intentionality. Let us henceforth reserve the term
"thoughts" for that class of mental episodes which, like beliefs, have
this property of intentionality. In that category of thoughts we can
now include beliefs, but also wishes, hopes, judgments, and in
general, anything mental that it makes sense to append with a
that-clause. (For example, we believe that 2+2=4; we hope that it
doesn't rain; we think that summer is too short.) How is such
intentionality possible?
Historically, some have taken this special property of the mental,
intentionality, to be another reason to invoke a non-material
substance into our worldview. Tables and chairs, it seems, can't be
said to be about anything. They don't refer to anything. Nor does it
seem that anything physical could be up to the job in a fundamental,
non-derivative manner, as that just doesn't seem like the right type
of stuff. A philosophy of mind that seeks to be compatible with the
dictates of science about the nature of reality will have to explain
the intentionality of the mental, but again without reliance on
something unscientific. This forms another part of the background of
Sellars' philosophy of mind.
Another feature of the mental that philosophers have focused on,
something that has tempted philosophers to think of the mental realm
as something importantly distinct from the physical realm, is the
nature of conscious experience itself. So far we've focused on what we
can do with our minds, our ability to think. But we are also subjects
of rich experiences. We are conscious beings, and while that sometimes
involves our reasoning, judging, believing, and the like, other times
we simply take in the robust experiences we have. We listen to a
poignant piece of music, we gaze upon a beautiful sunset, we savor a
good drink. When we attend to these experiences, we find they have a
unique, intrinsic character or quality. There is something it is like
to hear a violin, a quality that isn't present when we are just, say,
thinking of how lovely a violin is. A theory of mind, it seems, must
find a way to account for the existence and nature of these
subjective, rich experiences.
Putting this all together, we might summarize as follows: a theory of
mind should explain the existence of a broad class of episodes, ones
we can lump together under the broad heading mental episodes. These
seem to come in two types, what I'll call cognitive and experiential.
Cognitive mental episodes include believings, hopings, wishings, and
so on. A mark of this class is their intentionality. Experiential
mental episodes, on the other hand, include a sensation of warmth, a
feeling of sadness, an experience of a blue patch. They have instead a
qualitative character and dimension in a way that the cognitive
episodes do not. Both cognitive and experiential mental episodes
occupy a special place in our cognitive lives. In addition to the more
obvious ways we care about their existence, many of them can be
objects of immediate knowledge or awareness. Many of our thoughts and
experiences are knowable in a direct, immediate manner, without
reliance on inference, just as Descartes held. Let us call this
immediate knowledge of mental episodes "non-inferential knowledge,"
distinguishing such potential knowledge of mental episodes from the
type of knowledge we have, for instance, about how things are on the
far side of the moon. That is, our knowledge of these inner episodes
often doesn't have to be the product of any reasoning or inference. It
is often just direct and immediate. And as we have seen, such episodes
may also be the objects of First Person Authority. We seem to be in a
position to somehow know our own better than others can. (Descartes
goes even further, claiming that these episodes are incorrigible—our
knowledge of them is so certain that we can't even doubt their
existence. But that is an extra step, one we need not take, even if we
agree with Descartes on other points.)
As we proceed, we will explore Sellars' attempt to explain all these
features. One point is worth highlighting now, however. That we've
divided these mental episodes into two types, cognitive and
experiential, signals an important rejection of Descartes already. As
mentioned, Descartes considers all mental occurrences to be thoughts,
while Sellars, in contrast, believes it essential to distinguish these
episodes. In short, while Descartes speaks of the mind-body problem,
Sellars seeks to solve two mind-body problems; one concerning the
nature of thinking, the other concerning the nature of sensing or
experiencing.
3. The Challenge of Mental Episodes
We've noted that mental episodes are traditionally thought of as best
known by the person who has them: they are private and known directly.
Other people, in contrast it seems, can have at best indirect
knowledge of our own. Why? Because traditionally conceived, such
mental episodes exist within the private, inner realm of one's mind
and are only sometimes the cause of publicly observable behavior. I
might grimace when my foot hurts, thereby giving evidence to others
that I am in pain. But I might also stoically bear the pain. In this
case I would be well aware of the inner episode of pain, but others
may not be at all. This can generate skepticism about the existence of
mental states, and of minds altogether. One radical solution to these
skeptical worries was to simply equate the mental states with the
behavior itself. In this way we need not worry, it was argued, about
knowing someone's mental states, for the mental states just are the
various behaviors and dispositions to behave. On that view, to be in
pain just is to grimace and yelp (and to have the disposition to do
so, which sometimes might not be actualized). Importantly, Sellars
rejects this strategy, known as Behaviorism. In contrast, Sellars
holds that it is possible in principle to maintain the privacy of
mental states, but in a way that doesn't generate the skepticism that
motivates the draconian Behaviorism. Showing how this is possible is
the onus of Sellars' positive account, which we will get to below.
However, the problem of knowing mental states, even our own, is
actually more complicated on Sellars' view than we've seen so far. We
need to now bring in other elements of Sellars' philosophy, ones which
both make knowledge of our own mental episodes more complicated but
which also invite Sellars' distinctive solution. Along the way we'll
discover the extent to which Sellars really is a systematic
philosopher.
The additional complications and complexity arise when we consider
another role mental episodes were traditionally called on to play.
We've stressed Descartes' view that the mind is better known than the
body. By implication, Descartes holds that what we are actually in
primary cognitive contact with is only our own inner states, our
thoughts, feelings, beliefs, sensations, and so on. We have direct,
immediate knowledge of these thoughts, and only of these thoughts. Our
knowledge of the external, physical world, in contrast, is only by
inference. For Descartes, our inferentially based knowledge of the
material world is secured only if there exists a benevolent God who
doesn't allow certain of our thoughts, our clear and distinct ideas,
to be in error. And although subsequent philosophers ceased to follow
this theological grounding of our beliefs in the external, physical
world, many did follow Descartes in holding that it is our private
thoughts and sensations that are the only objects of direct, immediate
knowledge. Our knowledge of the physical world, in contrast, is
derived or inferentially dependent upon our more basic knowledge of
these inner states.
Following Descartes, philosophers often speak of the "structure of
knowledge": highly theoretical knowledge is seen as resting on the
(justified) foundation of more basic knowledge, and that on even more
basic knowledge, and so on. But empirical knowledge is possible only
if there is ultimately a stratum of most basic knowledge, which in
some way involves our making cognitive contact with the world. It is
natural to think that this most basic contact with the world involves
our having sensory experiences. We can know the world, ultimately,
because in some manner the world reveals itself to us through
sensation. Or better yet, the world gives itself to us, in a form we
can understand. If it didn't, it would be hard to understand how we
ever know anything. For Descartes, and for centuries of philosophers
since, the basic knowledge which forms the foundation of knowledge is
just the knowledge of our own inner states, our own thoughts,
feelings, and sensations that we have from being in sensory contact
with the world.
As for these inner states themselves, we both have them and also know
them just by being in sensory contact with the world. In short,
sensing the world was held, from Descartes on, to be sufficient for
the production of inner states which we in turn know about just
because of that sensory contact. For instance, simply sensing a red
patch would be sufficient for knowing that we are sensing a red patch.
We may doubt whether there really is a red patch there (maybe it is
blue and the lighting misleads us), but our knowledge of the sensation
of a red patch itself is immediate, direct, and a result simply of
that sensing. The knowledge that we gain is, again, knowledge of our
own sensations or thoughts.
As plausible as this picture seems, Sellars takes issue with it,
referring to it as the Myth of the Given: that there are such sensory
episodes that by their mere occurrence give us knowledge of
themselves, is a myth to be dispelled, one to be replaced by a better
account of the nature of sensing, thinking, and knowing. Of course,
our aim here isn't to explore Sellars' reasons for thinking such
episodes are mythological, nor to pursue his views on the nature of
knowledge. Instead, we'll address only what Sellars thinks is missing
in this traditional account of knowledge of our inner, private
episodes. Doing so will help explain why, according to Sellars,
knowledge of even our own private episodes is itself much more
complicated than the tradition held. Paradoxically, however, though
knowledge of our own inner states is more complicated, explaining how
it is possible will make our knowledge of other peoples' inner
episodes less complicated, less vulnerable to skepticism than
traditionally thought.
What then is required for knowledge of our own inner, private
episodes, say knowledge that I'm having a sensation of a red triangle,
if it isn't just that I am sensing a red triangle? What else is
required besides the actual sensation? In short, knowledge requires
concepts, and since concepts are linguistic entities, we can say that
knowledge requires a language. To know something as simple as that the
patch is red requires an ability to classify that patch, and Sellars
thinks the only resource for such rich categorization as adult humans
are capable of comes from a public language. Knowledge, and in fact
all awareness, according to Sellars, is a linguistic affair. There is
no such thing, accordingly, as preconceptual awareness or
prelinguistic awareness or knowledge. Sellars calls this the thesis of
"Psychological Nominalism," and it is at the heart of his epistemology
and theory of mind. We don't know the world just by sensing it. We
don't even know our own sensations just by having them. We need a
language for any awareness, including of our own sensations.
Importantly, this also creates a serious problem. Remember that
Sellars is sympathetic to the claim of First Person Authority (even if
it is to be modified or revised in some manner). Sellars does think
that we can know our own thoughts better than others can. But his
Psychological Nominalism threatens this, and threatens our claim to be
able to know our thoughts at all. Consider how we could ever come to
be aware of our thoughts and the like in the first place. Relying on
the mythical Given would have helped, for we would be aware of such
episodes just by having them. But we've rejected that account.
Instead, any awareness, even of our own thoughts, requires the concept
of that of which we are to be aware. So, to be aware of a private,
inner episode requires the concept of a private, mental episode. But
how can I have the concept of something which is in me in a way that
you can't see? I can't get it by noticing my own private sensations
(as we've seen, that presupposes we already have the concept and the
source of the concept is now what is in question!). Nor can I get the
concept of a private episode by noticing yours, for it is private to
you. And of course, you can't notice yours, nor mine either! How do
we, or anyone for that matter, get the concept of something hidden,
inner, and private, in the first place? (Compare this with becoming
aware of something public: I can learn the concept, cow, by, for
starters having you point cows out to me. But that is because we have
common, shared access to that object, which isn't the case for private
episodes).
Sellars has now forced us to confront the difficult question of the
source and nature of the concept of an inner episode. What is the
status of that concept? And how do speakers of a language come to have
it, given that possession of it seems to be a condition for anyone
noticing their own private episodes?
4. Sellars' Positive Account: The Myth of Jones, I
This puzzle, and subsequent resolution, makes for one of the most
famous planks in Sellars' philosophy, spelled out in his landmark
article, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind." The answer,
ironically, comes in the form of a myth; the Myth of the Given is now
replaced by Sellars's own, Myth of Jones. This new myth has two parts:
how we come to have the concept of inner episodes which are thoughts;
and how we come to have the concept of inner episodes which are
sensations. (Recall that Sellars takes issue with Descartes'
monolithic account of the mental). Common to both parts, however, is
the telling of a story in which a group of people begin without a
concept of certain inner, mental episodes, but gradually come to have
both the concept and then direct awareness of the respective episodes.
The myth, that is, takes seriously Sellars' view that all awareness
presupposes a language, and in the end, articulates the relationships
between such concepts as public, private, thought, sensation, and so
on.
Sellars begins the myth by having us imagine a group of beings who can
talk and act just like we do, but who lack any vocabulary of the
inner. They have no concepts or notions of thoughts, sensations,
feelings, wants, desires, though their language is otherwise rich and
complete, even having the resources for (proto)scientific theorizing.
We now introduce the hero of the story, Jones, who himself proposes a
theory. Importantly, like many theories designed to explain, this one
posits the existence of a new class of entities. In this instance,
Jones seeks to explain some of the behavior of his peers, and relying
on an analogy with the method of postulation in physics (from our
perspective), the entities Jones' theory postulates of are, initially,
unobservable. (To anticipate the end of the story, the entities Jones
introduces, first thoughts, then sensations, are not in principle
unobservable. His peers will eventually be able to direct,
non-inferential knowledge of many of them).
What behavior, then, is Jones seeking to explain by the postulation of
something he calls, "thoughts" and "thinking"? Namely that people
sometimes engage in purposive, intelligent behavior when silent.
Sometimes, that is, people engage in what we call, "thinking out
loud," where they speak about the intelligent behavior they are
engaged in. But sometimes the behavior itself is present, with no
accompanying verbal commentary, as it were. (Imagine someone changing
the faucet in their kitchen, with instructions before them, sometimes
reading aloud the instructions, sometimes declaring an intention to do
something next, followed by periods of silence). What exactly, Jones
wonders, is going on when people engage in such intelligent behavior
when they are completely silent?
According to his theory, during all these occasions of intelligent
behavior there is something going on "inside" people, in their heads
if you like, some of which gets verbalized, some of which doesn't. The
way to explain such intelligent behavior is to see it as the
culmination of a silent, inner type of reasoning, an "inner speaking"
going on inside of people. Jones reasons that this intelligent
behavior involves the occurrence of hidden episodes which are similar
to the activity of talking. Jones says, in essence, "Let's call it
'thinking,' and though it is like talking, it is silent, or covert
inner speech. Thinking is what is going on in us, which lies behind
and explains our intelligent behavior and our intelligent talking."
Importantly, the episodes Jones postulates may turn out to be
neuro-physiological events, but Jones' theory is noncommittal on this
point, and doesn't require a specification of their intrinsic nature.
The salient point is that episodes of thinking are modeled on a public
language, and an understanding of these inner episodes will involve
the use of categories that are in the first instance applicable to a
public language.
Returning to this myth, we note that at the culmination of this first
stage, Jones has only postulated the existence of these inner
episodes—"inner" in being under the skin. In the second stage, Jones
teaches his peers to use the theory to explain people's behavior, in
the absence of their "thinking out-loud." Finally, and here is the
crucial transition, Jones teaches people to apply the theory to
themselves.
Having mastered the theory for third-person use, that is, people begin
making inferences about themselves: "I just uttered such and such, so
I must have been thinking such and such, (though I was not aware of
it)." Eventually, by training and reinforcement from the community,
people come to be able to actually report not just that they are
thinking, but also what they are thinking, in a direct,
non-inferential manner. Just as people can be trained to make
immediate, non-inferential judgments about the nature of public
objects, Jones' pupils come to be able to issue non-inferential
reports of their own thoughts, what is going on inside them, in a way
that others aren't. They can report directly about what is happening
in their own minds, though according to Sellars, this has proceeded
entirely within the constraints of Psychological Nominalism. Jones'
peers developed awareness of their own thoughts only after, or at
least concurrently with, mastery of the public concepts (i.e. words)
of "thinking", "believing", "wishing", and so on, that comes with the
learning of Jones' theory itself.
Stepping back from the Myth of Jones, here are some of the significant
points. The thesis of Psychological Nominalism claims that to be aware
of something, x, one must have a concept for x. But there is a flip
side to this. If one has a concept of x, one can be aware of x's. With
the concept of x in hand, that is, you can notice all sorts of things
you didn't notice before you had that concept. For instance, a
physicist looks at a puff of smoke in a cloud chamber and sees an
electron discharged. She comes to have non-inferential knowledge of
something we might not, as she has certain concepts we don't as
laypeople, as well as an ability to apply them directly to her
experience. In other words, perception is concept-laden, and depending
on what concepts you have, you can perceive different things. (Sellars
wasn't the first to articulate this connection, but his development of
it made for a revolutionary understanding of thinking and perception).
As a result, once we acquire the concept of an inner episode (as we
saw for Jones's peers), we can come to experience those episodes
directly, though we were unaware of them before we had the concept.
Non-inferential knowledge of the private is now possible, and so
provides for a first person authority, as we sought. We are simply in
a better position to report on our own thoughts (and sensations) than
others. We can report on our own thoughts, for instance, because we
have the concept of thinking. But others have that concept too—it is a
public concept after all—and as such are in a position to also make
judgments about our thinking. We may be in a better position than
others, but others aren't precluded from knowing our inner states. The
skepticism that gave rise to Behaviorism can be avoided.
Yet while we do have an authority about our own inner states, it
doesn't follow that we are incorrigible about them, as Descartes held.
All things being equal, you are in a better epistemic position to
judge your own states than others are. There are times, however, when
we aren't the best judge of our inner episodes, of what we are
feeling, for instance, as is well documented by psychotherapy. This
weakening of the Cartesian view, however, affords retention of what
Sellars sees as viable and valuable in Descartes' philosophy.
Returning to the Myth of Jones, what he does for thoughts, Jones now
does for sensations: recall Sellars' view that sensations are
importantly different from mental episodes that are thoughts. Though
both are private, sensations differ in that they have an intrinsic,
qualitative element in a way that thoughts and beliefs don't. Further,
sensations aren't intentional: they aren't about anything. Their
postulation will have to be modeled, therefore, on something different
than what was used for thoughts.
5. Sellars' Positive Account: The Myth of Jones, II
Sellars' account of sensations, the final chapter in the Myth of
Jones, is designed to capture another important element in an overall
theory of mind, namely that some of our private, mental episodes are a
result of our sensory encounters with the world. By interacting with
the world we are caused to have sensations, which vary from pain and
pleasure, to sensations of blue triangles and pink ice cubes. As
before, Jones offers a theory to explain public, observable behavior
of his peers. In this case, Jones seeks to explain the fact that a
person might utter "Red triangle there!" in cases both where there is
one and in cases where there is not. Jones seeks to explain both
veridical and non-veridical perceptual experiences, and how it is
possible for people to have experiences that are qualitatively alike
even though one may be an accurate representation and one not.
Jones theorizes that when a subject senses the physical world,
something internal is registered, and this internal state has a
qualitative element to it, one that can be caused by both genuine and
illusory causes, to have the same qualitative element. Sensations, in
other words, are postulated entities too, and are held to be the
internal effects of outer, physical causes. Subjects are effected by
these sensations, leading them to judge that there is, say a red
triangle before them, both when there is one, but also, perhaps, even
if there is only a white one in red light, for instance.
As before, these inner episodes are modeled on something public and
observable—namely things like red triangles—and the inner episodes are
said to be similar to these public objects, to be replicas, if you
like, though of the sort that aren't literally little triangles in
minds. In this way, the public language of color and other qualities
is used to characterize the nature of these episodes, and people learn
to report, non-inferentially, on their own subjective experiences. As
before, because individual reports of what is inner make use of a
public language, the concepts employed in such reports are gained only
once one has mastered that public language.
Considered in total, Jones' theory of mental episodes has allowed
Sellars to maintain our commonsense belief that there is a realm of
experience, the inner, that is private and knowable by the subject of
experience in a way that others can't know it. At the same time, this
has been done without reliance on a mysterious, unexplained power to
access the inner realm, and has also allowed us to avoid the
skepticism traditional accounts were faced with. The resources for
describing and reporting on these episodes are the same resources
available for describing public objects and events, and thus learnable
by all. The Myth is anthropological fiction, of course, but if
successful, it demonstrates the conceptual relations between such
terms "thinking," "language," "private," "public," and so on. And it
allows Sellars to critique the traditional account of the nature of
these.
Importantly, Sellars has inverted the Cartesian order of knowledge
discussed above. We saw that for Descartes, the inner is known first,
and is the starting point for any knowledge of the outer, the physical
world. Sellars has argued, in essence, that our ability to be aware of
the inner in fact requires an antecedent command of the language of
public states of affairs. A subject must be able to speak of red
objects before speaking of red sensations; more generally, a subject
must have command of the public language before being able to report
on her own inner events. Crucially, though, we have given this account
without sacrificing the inner. We can still talk meaningfully about
how things are within us (our thoughts and sensations) and we can
still have the direct, unmediated knowledge Descartes and others spoke
of, but without violating any strictures on the public character of
concepts and knowledge. To summarize all this into something tidy, we
might say that Cartesians hold the inner to be knowable better and
prior to the outer, while Sellars claims just the reverse. We can know
and be aware of the inner only by first understanding and knowing the
outer. Sellars has flipped the Cartesian picture on its head.
6. The Nature of Thinking and Sensing
Much ground has been covered so far. But students of contemporary
analytic philosophy of mind may still find themselves unsatisfied.
Though an account has been given that preserves the inner nature of
mental episodes, while keeping with certain demands on the nature of
knowledge and awareness, one may still find themselves with such
questions as: "What, though, are thoughts? What are sensations?" Much
of contemporary philosophy has been devoted to these questions, and we
have seemingly yet to address them.
We are now, however, in a position to do so. The key lies in the
models that were used by Jones in the postulation of his theoretical
entities: thoughts and sensations. When it came to the postulation of
thoughts, which were posited to explain purposive, intelligent but
silent behavior, Jones used overt speech as the model for these
thoughts. Thinking is like speaking, he claimed, though of course
doesn't involve a hidden wagging tongue. The important point is that
the concepts and categories we use to articulate the nature of
thinking are grounded in the semantic concepts and categories
appropriate to the characterization of the nature of speaking and
writing; in other words, our public language. For it is this public
language that is being used to characterize the nature of thinking
itself. In particular, it is the semantic properties of linguistic
acts that are used to characterize thoughts, not their phonological or
graphic properties. (Compare the historical use of macroscopic objects
such as billiard balls, plum pudding, rubber bands, springs, and so on
as models in the development of the modern conception of the atom.
Some features of each of these objects are used for the analogy, and
some are not. Protons were said to be hard and round, like a billiard
ball, but of course don't come in stripes and solids).
To answer the question "What is thinking?" therefore requires an
answer to the question, "What is language?" since the only
understanding we have of the former is going to be parasitic on our
understanding of the latter. Here Sellars' systematic philosophy makes
its presence felt again, for Sellars does have an account of the
nature of language. Though it warrants an entry on its own, the short
answer is that for Sellars, the meaning of linguistic terms is given
by the functional role those terms play in inferences, in reasoning.
The famous analogy used here is that a word's meaning is akin to a
chess piece, where what makes a particular chess piece the one it is,
say a pawn versus a bishop, is what can be done with it, how it can be
used. Words, in turn, are used to help make inferences, to reason. The
contributing role a word makes to such reasoning gives us its
functional role, and thus its meaning. With this as the model, we can
now say that thinking is done with "inner elements", where the
functional role these elements play in inferences made in thinking
parallels the patterns of use of their public linguistic counterparts.
Since what matters is the functional role played by these elements,
not by what they are made of (as is the case with chess pieces),
Sellars emerges as an early (if not the earliest contemporary)
functionalist in the philosophy of mind. Thinking is understood as the
counterpart to overt linguistic behavior, which for Sellars means the
use of linguistic items in the service of inferences, the meanings of
the items given by the role they play in those inferences.
Early in this entry, the issue of intentionality was raised, where
this feature was taken to be a sign of the mental. Sellars' relation
to that traditional view is complicated, but the essence of his
position can now be stated. In some sense, we are able to talk about
things because we have thoughts about things. But in a deep sense, our
understanding of those thoughts, and of thinking itself, is dependent
upon our ability to understand and use a language. It is unhelpful,
therefore, to seek to explain the intentionality of language by appeal
to the intentionality of thinking, as is traditionally done. For as
we've seen, our understanding of thinking itself requires the use of
categories and concepts, which in their primary use categorize and
explain language itself. In this way, we may say that in the deep
sense we can't think unless we can use a language, though there is
another, causal sense, in which we can't speak unless we can think.
That is, our thoughts may cause us to speak, but saying that sheds
little light on what thinking is, since our understanding of thinking
itself, as seen in the Myth of Jones, requires using language itself
as a model. And according to Sellars, the intentionality of language
is fundamental, and can be explained by talking about just how
language itself works. We need not, in other words, explain how
language can be about the world, or how it can represent, by having to
smuggle in a more basic layer according to which it is the
intentionality of thinking that really does the explanatory work. A
fully developed philosophy of language can articulate the
intentionality of language in its own right.
While we've characterized thoughts and their intentionality in terms
of functional role and inferential patterns of reasoning, Sellars'
account of sensations is importantly different. For while what matters
in thinking is the function or organization of the elements, not what
they are made of, for sensations, it is essential that they have an
intrinsic nature and not merely a structure or organization. In this
way, Sellars' theory of sensations, what he calls sense-impressions,
resembles what are historically known as sense-data, sensory items
that have an intrinsic quality and which can be sensed directly. But
the connection with sense-data ends there, at least as sense-data were
developed by philosophers in the early parts of the twentieth century.
Though Sellars holds sense-impressions to have an intrinsic quality,
he seeks to deny them the status of foundationally known items, as
we've seen, and also to deny their status as particulars or
individuals. Instead, sense-impressions are said to be ways a
perceiver may be. Sometimes known as an "adverbial analysis," Sellars
aims to show that a sentence such as:
1) Jones has a sensation of a red triangle.
is really to be analyzed and understood as
2) Jones senses-red-triangularly.
where the point of this awkward way of speaking is to illustrate that
the only individual or particular that exists is Jones himself.
Sense-impression, or sensations, might be thought of as belonging to
the metaphysical category of states or conditions. Compare a similar
treatment where instead of speaking of a person and an additional
unusual object, one that comes and goes out of existence, we might
understand the sentence
3) Smith grimaced a frown
to really be saying something metaphysically simpler, requiring only
reference to a person and a condition or state they are in:
4) Smith grimaced unhappily.
This element of Sellars' philosophy is likely the most complicated and
controversial, for here Sellars locates his beliefs about the nature
of color (color is a sense-impression, for instance), which in turn
raises Sellars' views about the nature of science and the struggle to
reconcile our commonsense views of the world with a developing
scientific one. Enough has been said so far, however, to bring out the
significance of Sellars distinguishing an account of thinking from an
account of sensing. As we've noted, distinguishing these is a
rejection of Descartes, and an acceptance of a crucial theme in Kant's
philosophy. For reasons of length, the tremendous influence of Kant on
Sellars' philosophy has been downplayed, although much of Sellars'
writing is devoted to working out and defending deep, difficult
Kantian themes. We've also neglected a discussion of the significant
influence Sellars himself has had on contemporary philosophy.
Contemporary writers such John McDowell, Jerry Fodor, Paul Churchland,
and Daniel Dennett have all been influenced in important ways by
Sellars' thinking. That isn't to say they all agree with him. But the
very framework many philosophers work with today has been shaped and
molded by Sellars.
In summation, Sellars has a complex philosophy of mind, one that is
connected in essential places with his views about knowledge,
language, metaphysics, and science. This is not surprising,
considering Sellars' often cited claim about the nature of philosophy
itself:
The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how
things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the
broadest possible sense of the term. Under "things in the broadest
possible sense" I include such radically different items as not only
"cabbages and kings," but numbers and duties, possibilities and finger
snaps, aesthetic experience and death. To achieve success in
Philosophy would be, to use a contemporary turn of phrase, to "know
one's way around" with respect to all these things, not in that
unreflective way in which the centipede of the story knew its way
around before it faced the question, "how do I walk?", but in that
reflective way which means that no intellectual holds are barred.
7. References for Further Reading
a. Primary Texts
* Sellars, Wilfrid. "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," in
Science, Perception and Reality. (Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing Co,
1991).
o This paper is a philosophical classic, and is widely held
to be one of the most important essays of twentieth century
philosophy. It contains Sellars' discussion of both the Myth of the
Given and the Myth of Jones. The essay has been republished in book
form, with a helpful study guide, as:
* Sellars, Wilfrid. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind
(Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1997).
* Sellars, Wilfrid. "Intentionality and the Mental"
(Chisholm-Sellars Correspondence on Intentionality). In Minnesota
Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. II, (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1956). pp 521-539.
o An extended correspondence between Sellars and a defender
of a classic conception of mind, as discussed above, on the nature of
intentionality. A difficult but important piece of philosophy.
* Sellars, Wilfrid. "Mental Events" in Philosophical Studies. vol.
39 (1981), pp.325-45.
* Sellars, Wilfrid. Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian
Themes (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968).
* Sellars, Wilfrid, "The Structure of Knowledge: (1) Perception;
(2) Minds; (3) Epistemic Principles," in Action, Knowledge, and
Reality: Studies in Honor of Wilfrid Sellars. Ed. by H.N. Castaneda.
(New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975).
o The second portion, on minds, gives a clear statement of
Sellars' views and provides a good overview of the connections between
his philosophy of mind and other areas of philosophy. The volume
contains a series of critical essays on Sellars' philosophy as well.
b. Secondary Texts
* deVries, Willem A., and Timm Triplett. Knowledge, Mind, and the
Given: Reading Wilfrid Sellars' "Empiricism and the Philosophy of
Mind". (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 2000). A book length
discussion and commentary of Sellars', "Empiricism and the Philosophy
of Mind".
o Includes the text of the essay as well.
* Delaney, C.F., Michael J. Loux, Gary Gutting, and W. David
Solomon. eds. The Synoptic Vision: Essays on the Philosophy of Wilfrid
Sellars (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977).
o A collection of essays designed to provide overview and
introduction to different areas of Sellars' philosophy.
* deVries, Willem A. Wilfrid Sellars. Philosophy Now Series.
(London: Acumen Publishing and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University
Press: 2005).
* O'Shea, James. Wilfrid Sellars. (London: Routledge Press) Forthcoming.
* Pitt, Joseph C., ed., The Philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars: Queries
and Extensions. (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co, 1978).
o A collection of critical essays, on various areas of Sellars' work.
* Rosenberg, Jay F. "Wilfrid Sellars' Philosophy of Mind" in
Contemporary Philosophy, 4: Philosophy of Mind, ed. by Guttorm
Floistad (1983) pp. 417-39.
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