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Triplett Sellarssmisconstrualdefenders 2014
Triplett Sellarssmisconstrualdefenders 2014
Triplett Sellarssmisconstrualdefenders 2014
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access to History of Philosophy Quarterly
SELLAKS'S MISCONSTRUAL
OF THE DEFENDERS OF THE GIVEN
Timm Triplett
I. Introduction
Wilfrid Mind"
Mind"Sellars's
(EPM) has
(EPM)exerted
has 1963
great
exerted
influence
essayongreat
subsequent
"Empiricism
philoso-
influence and on subsequent the Philosophy philoso- of
phy, particularly in regard to its claim that the given is a myth. Many
innovative turns in philosophy - and EPM certainly counts as such -
have influence out of proportion to how thoroughly vetted their theses
and arguments have been. Perhaps this is as it should be. New ideas
deserve a hearing. But sometimes a new idea settles in as accepted
wisdom without its having been subjected to the scrutiny that would
justify its widespread acceptance. I will argue that this was the case
with the claim that "the given" is a myth, that the lack of vetting had
an unfortunate effect on the development of epistemology in the last
half of the twentieth century, and that the way in which Sellars made
his case was at least partly responsible for this. Sellars significantly
misconstrued the early twentieth-century empiricists he was criticiz-
ing. And because these philosophers and their theories were becoming
passé (partly due to EPM itself but also due to broader trends), this
misconstrual was not noted, and the thorough vetting that Sellars's
claims should have had did not take place.
For some time after the publication of EPM, foundationalism, which
relies on the idea of something given in sensory experience that serves
as the foundation for the rest of our empirical knowledge, was widely
declared to be dead. This attitude was significantly influenced by the
perceived results of EPM. While claims of foundationalism's or even epis-
temology's demise are now more commonly seen as overreactions, and
while EPM's specific arguments against the given have been subjected
to more critical scrutiny recently, the historical record needs to be set
straight. In particular, those criticisms directed to EPM's epistemological
claims that have been made have not challenged the accuracy of Sellars's
79
The key argument against the given in Part I of EPM is the claim t
empiricists are committed to an inconsistent triad:
NOTES
11 . Price does not mean that primary recognition is a process occurring only
in infralinguals. "Recognition is not like the ladder which we can kick away
once we have used it to climb with. It is essential not merely to the acquisition
of concepts, but to their possession when acquired" (1953, 35). My interest here,
however, is in Price's account of recognition as a nonconceptual cognitive state
that can and does occur prior to the acquisition of concepts and, hence, prior to
the ability to form beliefs about or know propositions.
12. Writing in 1953, Price notes that it would have been called the given
"in earlier days." Price is acknowledging the unpopularity of the language of
the given by this time - language he himself had used in Perception in 1932.
13. It is "directed upon particular existents" as opposed to facts (Price
1964, 5).
14. Sensing (acquaintance) must be at least an element of primary recog-
nition. But there is evidence that Price uses the phrase "primary recognition"
in Thinking and Experience to refer to the same cognitive state he called "ac-
quaintance" in Perception. Both are described as nonconceptual awareness of
the given (Price 1964 [1932], 3; 1953, 47), both are said to be a kind of knowing
or knowledge of particulars (1964, 49; 1953, 36), and, where primary recogni-
tion is the "fundamental" intellectual process, acquaintance is "ultimate" and
presupposes no prior cognition (1953, 35; 1964, 3.) Also, the term "acquaintance"
is not used at all in Thinking and Experience , suggesting that Price is using
another term in that work to refer to this basic epistemic state.
15. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for this journal for directing my
attention to this passage.
16. The only sense-datum theorist named in EPM Part I is G. E. Moore
(Sellars 1963, 130), in a context not relevant to Thesis A.
17. Sellarsi wording can suggest that the only empiricist stance he is ex-
cluding is one that holds that sensing constitutes noninferential propositional
knowledge. But if Sellars were rejecting only the constitution view, he would not
be responding to the givenist position that sensings are Tio/zpropositional states
that have an epistemic role in justifying propositional knowledge. Also, if the
passage is really to describe, as Sellars intends, the consequences of rejecting
Thesis A, his suggestion that sensings might be a logically necessary condition
for noninferential knowledge has to be understood in a way different from the
logical entailment mentioned in Thesis A. Presumably he has in mind some
general logical constraint, for example, that any subject possessing perceptual
propositional knowledge must be a being capable of having sensations: one
cannot see that the apple is red without having sensations of red. (Of course,
Sellars is not committing himself to any such general claim, only offering it as a
possibility.) In any case, Sellarsi point that sensing would have to be understood
REFERENCES
Clark, Romane. 1974. "Ontology and the Philosophy of Mind in Sellars' Critique
of Russell." In Bertrand Russell's Philosophy , edited by G. Nakhnikian,
101-16. New York: Harper & Row.
Cornman, James. 1972. "Materialism and Some Myths about Some Givens."
The Monist 56: 215-33.
1929.