Peter Olen (Auth.) - Wilfrid Sellars and The Foundations of Normativity-Palgrave Macmillan UK (2016)

Wilfrid Sellars and
the Foundations of
Normativity
Peter Olen
Wilfrid Sellars and the Foundations of
Normativity
Peter Olen
Wilfrid Sellars and

the Foundations of
Normativity
Peter Olen
Lake-Sumter State College
Leesburg, Florida, USA
ISBN 978-1-137-52716-5 ISBN 978-1-137-52717-2 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52717-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016951218
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Acknowledgements
I’m extremely appreciative of those who saw promise in the early stages of
this project, and I’ve been very lucky to receive comments, criticisms, and
support over the past three years from Carl Sachs, Willem deVries, Stephen
Turner, Rebecca Kukla, Mark Lance, Jim O’Shea, Fabio Gironi, Ken
Westphal, Dave Beisecker, Elizabeth Victor, Steve Levine, Aude Bandini,
Boris Brandhoff, Brendan George, Jeffrey Sicha, and Richard Manning.
Additionally, thanks to Lance Luger at the University of Pittsburgh and
David McCartney at the University of Iowa for allowing me to use their
archives.
v
Contents
1 Introduction: Wilfrid Sellars and the Foundations

of Normativity 1
2 Wilfrid Sellars’ Early Historical Context 11
3 Pure Pragmatics 37
4 The Reception History of Pure Pragmatics 69
5 Beyond Formalism 99
6 Two Conceptions of Normativity 129
7 Conclusion 155
Appendix: Letters and Unpublished Manuscripts 167
vii
viii Contents
Bibliography 227
Index 235
1
Introduction: Wilfrid Sellars
and the Foundations of Normativity
Wilfrid Sellars was not only one of the last systematic philosophers of the
twentieth century but continues to be relevant in light of his impact on
the development of analytic philosophy in America and abroad. Sellars
developed influential arguments for the rejection of the given in epis-
temology, a unique account of non-conceptual content, a commitment
to scientific realism, and a functionalist approach to meaning—all of
which have received substantial attention in the past 30 years. Moreover,
Sellars’ conception of normativity—a conception that posits normative
accounts of language, action, and agency as entailing a sui generis dimen-
sion of language, one seemingly ‘over and above’ naturalistic descriptions
of agency—has been especially influential, motivating currently popu-
lar inferentialist and conceptualist accounts of everything from language
and material inference to meaning and consciousness (Brandom 1994;
McDowell 1994).
While Sellars’ work from the mid-1950s forward has been the sub-
ject of critical collections (Castañeda 1975; Delaney 1977; deVries 2009;
O’Shea 2015) and interpretive books (deVries 2005; O’Shea 2007);
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

P. Olen, Wilfrid Sellars and the Foundations of Normativity,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52717-2_1
2 Wilfrid Sellars and the Foundations of Normativity
his earliest publications (ranging from 1947 to the mid-1950s) have

received substantially less attention. The practical exclusion of Sellars’
earliest papers has two important consequences: (1) Sellars’ philosophy
is depicted as an internally consistent and singular position and (2) the
historical context surrounding Sellars’ early work is largely ignored. Thus,
Sellars’ later philosophy is not depicted as developing out of his earlier
thought, a depiction that would be responsive to the contextual shaping
of his peers and intellectual inheritance, but as a holistic position not
marked by frequent substantive changes.
The point of this book is to offer a historical account of Sellars’ early
thought that both situates his attempt to formalize pragmatics among his
peers and historically grounds his conception of language and linguistic
rules as it developed from his earliest, under-analyzed publications to his
most cited works in the 1950s and 1960s. By starting from a historical
perspective, I argue that three main conclusions challenge the currently
favored, ahistorical vision of Sellars’ philosophy:
1. Sellars’ early attempt to formalize pragmatics failed, in part, because of

his inheritance of what I call the “Iowa misreading” of Carnap. Pure
pragmatics fails to succeed on its own terms because of inherited con-
fusions found within Gustav Bergmann’s and Everett Hall’s misread-
ing of Carnap. This, in part, explains Sellars’ abandonment of the
project, its poor reception, and his later rejection of a formalist defini-
tion of philosophy.
2. Sellars’ well-known later conception of linguistic rules constitutes a
development in his overall thinking about language—a development
made possible only after Sellars abandoned his earlier formalist
meta-philosophy.
3. Only after the changes to his meta-philosophy and early conception of
language are critically analyzed and historically situated can we clearly
assess the early and later roots of Sellars’ conception of normativity.
Because of changes in his meta-philosophy and his later reliance on
psychological and sociological explanations of agency and language,
Sellars’ later conception of normativity suffers from numerous con-
ceptual problems, despite his abandonment of a problematic
meta-philosophy.
1 Introduction 3
Standing as distinct historical and philosophical statements, all three

claims are interwoven once Sellars is understood from a historical perspec-
tive. Although pure accounts of syntax and semantics were common in
the 1940s, Sellars’ pure conception of pragmatics appears as a novel proj-
ect—one attempting to formalize models of linguistic behavior without
using behavioral or psychological facts (defining features of pragmatics
in the 1930s and 1940s). As even Sellars himself recognized, a formalist
definition of philosophy would need to be abandoned if a distinctly phil-
osophical conception of language, one that explicitly incorporates psy-
chological and sociological facts concerning linguistic behavior, was to
include normative considerations. Sellars’ reliance on such facts, though
not exhausting his conception of normativity, is largely responsible for
the tension between normative and naturalistic commitments in Sellars’
philosophy.
The tension between normativity and naturalism can be framed in
numerous ways (e.g., as a conflict between rationalism and empiricism,
intuitionism and emotivism, anti-realism and realism), but one of the
main issues concerns what is required of explanations between differ-
ing, sometimes conflicting, conceptual frameworks. Throughout Sellars’
work, one finds a consistent attempt to “mesh” the normatively laden
concepts and terms of the ‘manifest image’ framework1 with the descrip-
tive and postulated categories and entities found in the sciences. In
Sellars’ earliest publications, this concern manifests itself as the project
of properly demarcating factual from non-factual discourse in order to
characterize how a formal analysis of language could ‘properly’ situate
the formal, and therefore philosophical, dimension of concepts along-
side empirical concepts. This project is framed as offering requirements
for characterizing what Sellars calls ‘empirically meaningful languages’,
although such requirements are construed as non-factual concepts that
do not interact with descriptive or factual characterizations of historical
languages. Thus, Sellars’ early project is beset by one form of this tension:
1
“Roughly, the manifest image corresponds to the world as conceived by P. F. Strawson—roughly it
is the world as we know it to be in ordinary experience, supplemented by such inductive procedures
as remains within the framework” (Sellars 1966, p. 145).
giving an account of language that is stridently non-factual, but provid-

ing necessary concepts for any explanation of language.
This tension is also seen once psychological and sociological facts are
available for philosophical explanation of agency and linguistic prac-
tices—explanations, by definition, unavailable from a formalist point
of view. What makes Sellars’ later philosophy possible is the abandon-
ment of his early formalist meta-philosophy. These considerations, I shall
argue, are readily apparent when one traces the historical development
of Sellars’ conception of normativity. Without these changes to his early
meta-philosophy, Sellars’ later meshing of manifest and scientific concep-
tual frameworks could not have developed into the interlocking system
of theoretical and practical reasoning for which he is presently known.
In addition to offering a developmental and historically grounded
account of Sellars’ early publications, I also explore the philosophical
value of pure pragmatics. While some of Sellars’ early ideas, have been
touched on recently (e.g., Brandom 2015), most of Sellars’ early publica-
tions are simply absent from the literature. Even though Sellars himself
frequently cited some of his early publications, the papers that fall under
‘pure pragmatics’ make infrequent contributions2 to his overall philoso-
phy. Nonetheless, the views and formulations of ideas contained within
pure pragmatics cannot simply be dismissed without examination; just
because Sellars, and even most of Sellars’ contemporaries, did not com-
ment on how all of his arguments ‘fit together’ does not mean our default
position should be to see them as inherently problematic. Despite their
ignored status, the arguments and ideas in pure pragmatics should be
explored and historically situated before it is assumed they are irrelevant
for the rest of Sellars’ philosophy.
Chapter 2 sets the historical context within which Sellars’ initial pub-
lications developed. I characterize the then-dominant understandings
of semantics and pragmatics as addressed by Rudolf Carnap, Charles
Morris, and others. Once these notions are established, I set the stage for
Chap. 3 by tracing the reception history of Carnap’s shift into semantics
2
By “infrequent contributions” I mean that while Sellars sometimes references some of his earlier
publications in footnotes, he rarely, if ever, explores a given concept through the formulations
found in his earliest publications.
1 Introduction 5
as it is found in the works of philosophers at the University of Iowa

(where Sellars began his philosophical career). Specifically, I argue it is
not primarily Carnap’s conception of semantics and pragmatics should
be read as the impetus for Sellars’ formal treatment of pragmatics but,
instead, a combination of the reception history of Carnap’s semantics and
then-dominant conceptions of semantics and pragmatics. Bergmann’s
and Hall’s interpretation of Carnap, and the juxtaposition their differ-
ing interpretations represent, helps explain why Sellars saw a need for
the formal articulation of pragmatics—an anomalous project for the
time period—and why such a project relies on a misreading of Carnap’s
philosophy.
Carnap’s philosophy, especially the meta-philosophy found in his
Logical Syntax of Language, plays a monumental role in shaping Sellars’ ini-
tial attempts to formulate concise philosophical and meta-philosophical
positions. Formalism plays a demarcational and legitimizing role for defi-
nitions of philosophy; Carnap’s syntactical phase saw the adoption of a
restrictive understanding of what kind of claims or subject matter ‘legiti-
mately’ counts as philosophical. It is the idea that non-factual philosophi-
cal concepts are legitimate insofar as they count as logical or syntactical
characterizations or explanations of language that anchors formalist defi-
nitions of philosophy (Carnap 1937, pp. 279–80). As I discuss in Chap.
2, Sellars mimics (though does not identically reproduce) this kind of
meta-philosophy, arguing the difference between philosophical and non-
philosophical concepts (and, therefore, what counts as the ‘legitimate’
subject matter of philosophy) turns on their specifically formal nature.
Problematically, Sellars fails to clarify exactly how all philosophical con-
cepts are formal and why philosophical concepts (once formally charac-
terized) should be seen as necessary for adequate accounts of language.
Sellars’ attention to meta-philosophy, as well as his privileging of an
ostensibly formal conception of philosophy, is explicit throughout his
earliest publications. Although I discuss this in Chaps 2 and 3, the role of
meta-philosophy in Sellars’ work should be quickly clarified. Counting
as a preoccupation for most of his career, Sellars’ very first publication
starts by both loosely defining the nature of philosophical concepts and
bemoaning the then-current state of confusion over the ‘proper’ subject
matter of philosophy.3 Developing a meta-philosophy that clearly defines

the philosophical dimension of concepts generates two specific benefits:
it allows philosophy to carve its own non-factual dimension of concep-
tual analysis (one that cannot be overtaken by the increasing reach of the
sciences) and, subsequently, it determines the ‘proper’ subject matter of
philosophical claims. The latter claim is particularly important, as what
counts as justifying or supporting a philosophical concept (as both spe-
cifically philosophical and required to characterize ‘first-order’ problems)
presupposes some stance on the relevant kinds of justifications. In other
words, in order to demarcate the ‘properly’ philosophical from the non-
philosophical dimension of concepts (and thereby secure a theoretical
role for philosophy), Sellars must determine what kinds of claims count
as specifically philosophical. By defining philosophy as a wholly formal
pursuit, Sellars is—by definition—ruling out factual considerations as rel-
evant for philosophical concepts.
This understanding of ‘legitimate philosophical concepts’ clashes with
the then-accepted understanding of semantics and pragmatics. While the
early Carnap had no interest in addressing meaning or meaningfulness
as a legitimate philosophical category (or, more so, accounted for philo-
sophical conceptions of meaning in terms of syntax) during the syntax
phase of his philosophy, Sellars gives a formalist rendering of tradition-
ally semantic and pragmatic concepts in order to mark them as specifi-
cally philosophical notions.4 The intellectual progression in the 1930s
and 1940s saw the role of philosophy shrink in determining semantic
and pragmatic concepts. In particular, pragmatics was conceived of as
a branch of study generally limited to descriptions of linguistic usage
or practices—that is, factual accounts of actual occurrences of language
(e.g., anthropological studies of communities and their linguistic hab-
its and practices). Although pragmatics was the original source for all
investigations of language, semantics and syntax could (arguably) be
3
See Sellars 1947a/2005, pp. 4–7 and Sellars 1947b/2005, pp. 28–30.
4
Keeping in mind the historical placement of Sellars’ philosophy is especially important here.
Contemporary conceptions of semantics and pragmatics differ substantially from the notions
found in Carnap’s or Sellars’ philosophy. Current definitions of pragmatics (as focusing on the
context of use, or the relationship between a speaker’s understanding of a term and its communica-
tive intention) do not track Carnap’s or Sellars’ concerns.
1 Introduction 7
abstracted away from empirical investigation in order to reconstruct these

subjects in purely logical or structural terms. Because of its connection to
empirical investigations of actual languages and practices, pragmatics was
generally, though not exclusively, seen as resistant to formalization. Thus,
the employment of a formalist meta-philosophy in developing a non-
factual conception of pragmatics is seemingly a conceptual confusion.
Sellars’ early conception of pragmatics, while obscure, is similar to then-
accepted conceptions of pragmatics, yet attempts to offer a specifically
formal account of pragmatic concepts. Pure pragmatics, struggles to pro-
vide the logical conditions for the possibility of linguistic usage, which is
generally what Sellars understood as the necessary formal conditions for
the application of a language—or, as he puts it in various passages, the
logical conditions for a language to be “‘about’ a world in which it is used”
(Sellars 1947a/2005, p. 10).
In Chap. 3, I explain and evaluate key concepts (e.g., the ‘co-ex’ predi-
cate, conformation rules) of pure pragmatics and locate them within the
historical narrative developed in Chap. 2. I argue Sellars’ early conception
of pure pragmatics represents a ‘solution’ to the dilemma constructed
by Bergmann’s and Hall’s interpretation of Carnap. Yet, Sellars’ solu-
tion falls short of answering pressing questions about the relationship
between pragmatics, a formal analysis of language, and the requirements
for an adequate characterization of language. This, in part, is because
pure pragmatics is attempting to construct a formal analysis of language
as a solution for what is seemingly a factual problem: how is it possible
for languages to represent, in some sense, objects or properties in the
world? Because of his inherited misreading of Carnap, Sellars’ attempts to
address seemingly troubling issues surrounding then-contemporary treat-
ments of semantics and pragmatics—issues that cease to be a problem
once pure pragmatics is understood from within its historical context—
fail on his own terms.
In Chap. 4, I trace the reception history of pure pragmatics. I argue
Sellars’ early project underwent substantial changes because of technical,
conceptual, and receptive problems. Specifically, technical errors (espe-
cially in regard to terminological confusions) leave pure pragmatics largely
incoherent, a fact recognized by Sellars’ peers, which partially explains its
poor reception. In addition, pure pragmatics—because of the arbitrary
nature of formally constructed systems—fails to capture the sense of

necessity supposedly found in the inclusion of material rules of inference
(one of Sellars’ main goals when characterizing empirically meaningful
languages). When combined with the inability to formulate normative
standards within a formal treatment of language, these problems forced
Sellars to abandon pure pragmatics, including the meta-philosophy that
structures his formal reconstruction of pragmatics.
Chapter 5 addresses Sellars’ later meta-philosophy and its impact
on his conception of language and normativity. Specifically, I argue
that once Sellars abandons his formalist conception of philosophy, he
adopts a meta-philosophy that incorporates behavioral facts as part of
any distinctly philosophical explanation. While admitting the importance
of psychological, specifically behavioristic, explanations, Sellars argues
that accounting for uniquely human, norm-governed behavior requires
an additional, philosophical dimension of characterization or explana-
tion. Sellars’ new reliance on a distinction between behavioral and philo-
sophical explanations fails to successfully demarcate philosophical from
descriptive accounts of linguistic practices. The main problem is found in
Sellars’ discussion of philosophical explanations of linguistic behavior that
somehow mesh with psychological accounts of behavior and learning.
If one adopts a wholly psychological explanation of linguistic behavior,
concerns of meshing philosophical and broadly empirical explanations
do not arise in a naturalistic depiction of action and agency. Although
seemingly in tension with his early anti-psychologistic treatment of lan-
guage, I argue Sellars’ later meta-philosophy avoids contradicting his ear-
lier opposition to psychologism or factualism. In addition, I explore how
changes in Sellars’ meta-philosophy necessitated a change in his overall
conception of language and rules, as well as how this change impacted
some of his early concepts that survive the meta-philosophical transition.
In Chap. 6, I articulate and defend a distinction between what I call
internal and external conceptions of normativity. By an ‘internal concep-
tion of normativity,’ I mean: (1) although linguistic rules can be discussed
in terms of ‘correctness’ or ‘incorrectness’, there is no ‘normative force’
behind such rules; and (2) standards of correctness associated with lin-
guistic rules do not necessitate a sui generis dimension of explanation.
The ‘external conception of normativity’ is embodied in Sellars’ later
1 Introduction 9
claim that in “characterizing an episode or state as that of knowing, we are

not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing
it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and able to justify what one
says” (Sellars 1956/2000, p. 248). The main idea behind placing know-
ing in the logical space of reasons is that such practices (and the concepts
and rules that constitute such practices) presuppose the employment
of normative terms with “surplus meaning over and above” descriptive
terms (Sellars 1953/2005, p. 230). I argue that the external conception of
normativity requires the explanatory resources of sociological or behav-
ioral facts, resources available to Sellars only after abandoning his earlier
attempt to formalize pragmatics.
I conclude by summarizing the consequences of my account for Sellars’
overall philosophy and briefly exploring a few of the issues that cannot be
fully addressed in the book. As to the unaddressed issues, I sketch various
problems surrounding Sellars’ early nominalism, how a more contextual
and in-depth account of formal and material adequacy requirements—
one that traces the conversations over adequacy conditions that begins in
the 1930s and progress into Carnap’s later conception of explication5—
could help more fully explain how pure conceptions of language might
be helpful for clarifying natural language concepts, or where Sellars’ early
project went wrong in terms of material adequacy (a topic explored when
discussing descriptive meta-languages in Chap. 3).
The appendix contains previously unpublished correspondence
between Sellars, Gustav Bergmann, Everett Hall, Herbert Feigl, C. I.
Lewis, and other philosophers, as well as two unpublished paper drafts
from Sellars’ early period. I have not included all of the correspondence
that exists at Iowa and Pittsburgh (or elsewhere) concerning Sellars’
work, only the pieces most relevant for the focus of this book. The cor-
respondence and unpublished articles hopefully serve the dual purpose
of offering evidence for some of the claims I make throughout the book
and motivating additional historical research behind the development
of semantics and pragmatics in their American philosophical context.
Although full sets of correspondence are frequently missing, I believe the
5
See Dutilh Novaes and Reck (forthcoming) for an account of this issue as it appears in Carnap’s
work.
selections of letters are important because they show sustained critical

engagement surrounding Sellars’ early work, shed light on alternate for-
mulations of his views, and provide glimpses at the development of his
philosophy.
While the outline for my historical exploration of Sellars’ early work
were initially formulated elsewhere, this work represents a substantial
extension, revision, and reworking of these ideas.6 My initial arguments
surrounding Sellars’ early philosophy focused on the pragmatic nature of
his writings and the role of linguistic rules in his philosophy. Although
consistent with those arguments and my initial historical framework, I
now think the philosophical and historical issues run substantially deeper
in Sellars’ early philosophy. Supporting my initial conjecture that an
analysis of how the problem of meshing philosophical and descriptive
explanations of language and behavior constitutes an overarching prob-
lem for his work in general, I now hope to have justified this claim.
6
See Olen 2015 and Olen 2016.
2
Wilfrid Sellars’ Early Historical Context
1 Introduction
At the heart of pure pragmatics is a concern over the relationship between
philosophy and the sciences—specifically philosophy’s contribution to
the then-developing study of semantics and pragmatics—and what is
needed to define a uniquely philosophical account of “epistemological
concepts” (a broad category encompassing concepts such as meaning-
fulness, verification, and truth). The overall goal of Sellars’ early pub-
lications is to develop a formal (in a sense to be determined) account
of language, one that distinguishes philosophical from psychological or
factual concepts (i.e., accounts of language or concepts that rely on some
descriptive fact, psychological or otherwise, to characterize the concept
in question). As Sellars puts it, “it is only if there is a pragmatics that is
not an empirical science of sign-behavior, a pragmatics which is a branch
of the formal theory of language, that the term is rescued for philosophy”
(Sellars 1947a/2005, p. 7). Thus, Sellars’ early philosophical treatment
of language and epistemological concepts will turn on the idea that “the
defining characteristic of philosophical concepts is that they are formal

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52717-2_2
concepts relating to the formation and transformation rules of symbolic

structures called languages” (Sellars 1947a/2005, p. 4).
Two ideas are crucial for discerning the historical background of
Sellars’ early work: the idea of philosophy as a formal pursuit and its
anti-psychologistic orientation. What makes a given investigation for-
mal, though, is not clear in Sellars’ writings. Although there is historical
precedent for defining ‘formal’ as ‘syntactical’, and ‘pure’ as simply devoid
of empirical content (Carnap 1937, 1942; Morris 1938), early twentieth-
century conceptions of formalization were usually limited to syntacti-
cal treatments of language. Carnap, for example, frequently equated
‘formal’ with ‘syntactical’, despite his recognition that the term ‘formal’
was also used to mean ‘logical’, ‘general’, or ‘abstracted from meaning’
(Carnap 1942, p. 232). Sellars does not follow these conventions, alter-
nating between various, sometimes inconsistent, definitions of “formal”
(including ‘analytic’, ‘logical’, ‘non-factual’, ‘structural’, ‘philosophical’,
‘epistemological’, ‘meta-linguistic’, and ‘meta-meta-linguistic’).1 Some of
these uses are strikingly inconsistent, as surely a concept could be meta-
linguistic without being structural, analytic without being meta-meta-
linguistic, and meta-linguistic without being non-factual.
How to define the ‘formal’ dimension of concepts is a particularly
pressing issue in Sellars’ philosophy because it does the lion’s share of
demarcation between philosophical and broadly empirical treatments of
concepts. The distinction between formal and non-formal treatments of
language must be clear enough to mark the difference between mean-
ing as a concept in empirical psychology, for example, and meaning as a
concept belonging to the logical study of semantics (Sellars 1947a/2005,
p. 5). Because of the terminological confusion discussed above, Sellars’
assertion that philosophy is pure formalism fails to clarify exactly what
sets philosophical concepts apart from descriptive or empirical concepts.
This is not to argue that Sellars’ entire project is incoherent, but the lack
of a stable meta-philosophy is problematic because Sellars relies on it to
demarcate the philosophical from non-philosophical dimension of con-
cepts. The commonality between Sellars’ uses of ‘formal’ is the charac-
ter of being ‘non-factual’, but simply declaring philosophy a non-factual
1
For example, see: Sellars 1947a/2005, pp. 6, 20; 1948a/2005, p. 55.
account of concepts leaves crucial questions unanswered: Why should

the non-factual dimension of linguistic analysis be understood as explan-
atorily necessary? How can the factual and non-factual dimensions of
concepts be integrated? What makes the non-factual dimension of con-
cepts specifically philosophical? While pure pragmatics’ status as a non-
factual investigation of language situates it squarely against psychological
and factual accounts, it does nothing to show us exactly how philosophy
avoids psychologism or factualism, or why either position is problematic.
If philosophy is a non-factual investigation, then psychologism is eas-
ily banished, perhaps even by definition, from ‘properly’ philosophical
accounts of language. As Sellars notes, analytic philosophers have largely
rejected psychologism (stretching from the roots of analytic philosophy
in Edmund Husserl and Gottleb Frege to Carnap’s formalist work in the
1930s), where most conceptions of psychologism concern the error of con-
fusing the study of psychology with the study of logic. Carnap’s definition
of psychologism, as the mistake of thinking “that logic is a science con-
cerning thinking, that is, either concerning the actual operation of think-
ing or the rules according to which thinking should proceed”, exhibits the
mainstay of analytic philosophers’ concerns with psychologism (Carnap
1935, p. 34). Yet Sellars draws a finer distinction between two senses of
psychologism: a narrow sense, one that follows the rejection of psycholo-
gism present in traditional analytic philosophy, and a broad sense, which
Sellars’ argues could still be found in analytic philosophy. While the nar-
row sense conforms to Carnap’s and others’ concerns with the conflation
of logic and psychology, the broad sense, which Sellars sometimes calls
“epistemologism”, is when “epistemological content appears in the guise
of psychological acts and objects” (Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 52). This is to
confuse ‘properly’ epistemological concepts with psychological or factual
treatments, and to place philosophy in the same category as the descriptive
sciences. Such placement is problematic because it functions as a kind of
“fictitious psychology” that attempts to operate on the same explanatory
level as empirical research (Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 52).
While analytic philosophers have attacked psychologism in the nar-
row sense, Sellars contends they have failed to address psychologism in
the broad sense. This failure has led to semantic and pragmatic concepts
“finding expression along empirical-psychological lines” and, conse-
quently, to the “psychologistic infection” of epistemological concepts

(Sellars 1947b/2005, p. 28). Instead of formally characterizing meaning
or verification, analytic philosophers have confused meaning or verifica-
tion for factual, psychological representational concepts (i.e., concepts
that ‘stand for’ or ‘designate’ some factual aspect of the world). This is
to understand, for example, “‘A’ means B” as stipulating an empirical
relationship between a language user’s experience or mental state and
some extra-linguistic object or property. Sellars’ concern is not just that
psychologistic or factualist treatments of philosophical concepts are con-
fused, but that what should be understood as ‘properly’ philosophical
notions have been abandoned to the sciences. Reason for such concern
can be seen, for example, in Charles Morris’ later suggestion that ‘ana-
lytic’ and ‘contradictory’ should be defined based on “the biologically
grounded terms of semiotic”, thus “the whole of symbolic logic would be
brought within a ‘behavioral’ semiotic” (Morris 1948, p. 130). This con-
fusion is the failure to properly demarcate philosophical treatments of
linguistic and epistemological concepts from scientific, broadly empiri-
cal and descriptive, treatments. Although analytic philosophy in general,
and logical positivism in particular, were able to avoid these problems
during the syntactical phase of logical positivism (largely because formal
qua syntactical analysis of philosophical concepts is restricted—by defi-
nition—to the non-factual mode of speech), this success failed to carry
over during the semantic phase of logical positivism.
Concerns over pragmatics and the place of philosophy among the sci-
ences were not unique to Sellars. The transition from the nineteenth- to
twentieth-century American philosophy occurred alongside a height-
ened concern over philosophy’s place in the intellectual landscape, an
anxiety that increased with the blurring of intellectual boundaries, disci-
plines breaking off from ‘natural philosophy’, and the increasing amount
of prestige afforded solely to the sciences (Wilson 1990; Jewett 2012).
Despite these prevalent historical factors, Sellars’ insistence on a non-psy-
chologistic and non-factualist conception of philosophy, one that offers
a meta-linguistic account of epistemological or philosophical concepts,
was motivated by more local concerns. Though one could try to account
for Sellars’ meta-philosophical commitments by relating them to logical
positivism (as largely found in Carnap’s work), this would fail to explain
Sellars’ broader conception of psychologism, his varying uses of ‘formal-

ization’, and the motivation behind arguing for the necessity of pure prag-
matics. Sellars’ early intellectual development at the University of Iowa, as
well as his continuing correspondence with philosophers largely situated
in Iowa and Minnesota, is constitutive of what he saw as philosophically
pressing problems and, thus, plays a formative role in the development
of pure pragmatics. In order to make sense of Sellars’ unique conception
of a formalist meta-philosophy, ground his broader anti-psychologistic
convictions, and articulate the problems and attempted solutions in pure
pragmatics, one must look to this historical context.
2 Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics

Language studies prior to contemporary linguistics are largely scattered
between philosophical and psychological accounts of language (Nerlich
and Clarke 1996; Levelt 2013). Even though there are specifically philo-
sophical accounts of linguistic behavior, practices, and usage prior to the
twentieth century, most contemporary American accounts of pragmatics
can be traced back to the late nineteenth- and twentieth-century discus-
sions of language and behavior. Given the scattered status of pragmatics as
a distinct topic until relatively recently, commonly accepted definitions of
what makes concepts or inquiry specifically ‘pragmatic’ are difficult, if not
impossible, to find.2 Nonetheless, what commonly demarcates pragmatics
from syntax or semantics is the inclusion of reference to an agent or speaker
(an element normally absent in syntactical and semantical accounts of
language).3 Morris’ 1938 Foundations of the Theory of Signs serves as one of
the most common early sources for the distinction between syntax, seman-
tics, and pragmatics. While ‘syntax’ is defined as the logical or grammati-
2
Two common sources of frustration for defining pragmatics concern the running together of
‘pragmatism’ as a distinct philosophical movement and ‘pragmatics’ as a dimension of linguistic
analysis (an understandable confusion given the close association between Charles Sanders Peirce
and semiotics, as well as Morris’ numerous references to pragmatism—despite being clear about the
distinction between ‘pragmatism’ and ‘pragmatics’—in his definition of pragmatics), and the nebu-
lous borders between semantics and pragmatics. See Nerlich and Clarke 1996, especially pp. 4–9.
3
I am not claiming that reference to a speaker is always found in definitions of pragmatics, but that
it is one common factor in definitions of pragmatics.
cal structure of language, and semantics as the relationship between signs

and their designata or referents, pragmatics is defined as the relationship
between “signs and their interpreters” (Morris 1938, p. 30). One also finds
Carnap drawing similar distinctions, defining pragmatics as when explicit
reference is made to a speaker or user of language (Carnap 1942, p. 9).
Morris applies a corresponding distinction between ‘pure’ and ‘descrip-
tive’ studies of language to syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. ‘Descriptive’
studies concern the application of linguistic investigation to concrete
instances of language, while ‘pure’ studies solely concern the formaliza-
tion of language (Morris 1938, p. 9). Carnap offers a similar distinction
where descriptive studies of language concern the factual description of
language or practices (falling within the domain of the empirical sci-
ences), while pure studies of language concern explicitly defined rules
and their analytic consequences (Carnap 1942, pp. 11–12). One relevant
and substantial difference between Morris and Carnap (as well as Sellars)
is the meaning of ‘formalization’ in pure accounts of language. While
Morris conflates ‘formal’ with ‘pure’ in his discussion of the relationship
between pure and descriptive studies of language, Carnap separates for-
mal from pure accounts of language. For Carnap, formal accounts of lan-
guage just are syntactical treatments of language that are only concerned
with the “form of expressions” (Carnap 1942, p. 10). Pure accounts of
language, instead, concern the arbitrarily stipulated construction of a
system of rules that constitute a calculus (when concerned with syntax)
or semantical system (when concerned with semantics), and constructed
languages that are not tied to some historical or empirical account of lin-
guistic practices (Carnap 1942, pp. 11–12). The difference is that all for-
mal accounts of language are pure but not all pure accounts are formal.
Interpreted languages, for example, can be constructed in pure semantics
(as they only concern explicitly stated definitions and their inferential
consequences), but such pure conceptions of language are not tradition-
ally construed as a formal analysis of semantical systems.4 This is not to
say that all other aspects of Morris’ distinction were universally accepted.5
4
Carnap does recognize three different senses of ‘formal’ that are commonly employed in linguistic
analysis. See Carnap 1942, p. 232.
5
Morris’ later terminology was problematic enough to inspire voluminous objections to his defini-
tions throughout Morris 1946. See Morris 1948 for a summary and defense of his later endorse-
ment of behaviorism and semiotics.
Carnap, for one, thought that the very notion of ‘pure’ pragmatics was
a contradiction in terms, only drawing a distinction between pure and
descriptive syntax and semantics. Pragmatics, insofar as philosophy takes
pragmatic considerations into account, concerns physiological, psycho-
logical, ethnological, or sociological studies of linguistic practices—in
short, empirical studies and descriptions of language, language users, and
behavior (Carnap 1942, p. 10).6
The most proximate influence on Sellars’ conception of language can
be found at the University of Iowa. Sellars began his teaching career at
Iowa in 1938, an experience he describes as a “unique episode” in his own
intellectual development:
Herbert Feigl moved to Minnesota in 1941, and Gustav Bergmann, who

had come to the University as a Research Associate with Kurt Lewin, joined
the Department to teach advanced logic and philosophy of science. During
his first semester, he gave an excellent seminar in logical theory, based on
Carnap’s Logical Syntax of Language. It was attended by the entire
Department, which, by now, included Everett Hall, who had joined us as
chairman on the retirement of Herbert Martin. Bergmann became a close
collaborator with Kenneth Spence, and I began to take behaviorism seri-
ously. The idea that something like S-R-reinforcement learning theory
could provide a bridge between white rat behavior and characteristically
human behavior was a tempting one, but I could see no way of cashing it
out in the philosophy of mind. In particular, I could not see how to relate
it to the intentionality which I continued to think of as the essential trait
of the mental. Bergmann at this time took a fairly orthodox positivistic
position with strong overtones of Carnap and Schlick. He and I argued the
whole range of “pseudo-problems.” The occasion of most of these discus-
sions was an informal seminar in current philosophical literature which
met at Hall’s house every week and which everybody religiously attended.
The Department was still minute and highly involuted. Ideas of amazing
diversity were defended and attacked with passion and intensity. It was not
easy to find common ground, yet “for the sake of discussion” we stretched
6
It is not until the 1960s that Carnap acknowledges the need for a formal dimension of pragmatics.
See the introduction to Carnap 1963. There were also substantial differences between Carnap’s and
Morris’ definitions of ‘material’ and formal’. See Carnap 1936, p. 428.
our imaginations. It was, I believe, a unique episode—certainly as far as my

own experience is concerned. We soon had some first-rate graduate stu-
dents. Among the earliest and best was Thomas Storer, whose death at an
early age was a genuine loss to philosophy. (Sellars 1975)
The philosophy department at Iowa7 was one of the most influential

forces behind Sellars’ early intellectual development, so much so that
I argue Sellars’ earliest publications cannot be accurately understood apart
from their placement among debates that occur at Iowa in the mid-1940s.
Even though Sellars moved to the University of Minnesota in 1946, his
earliest papers reflect the influence of Bergmann’s and Hall’s work to such
a degree that upon reading Sellars’ first publication, Bergmann claimed
that only himself and a few of his students (Thomas Storer and May
Brodbeck) would even be able to understand it (Bergmann 1947b), while
Hall observed that “although differing greatly in how you do it, you are
trying to do exactly what Gustav has done” (Hall 1947b).
Sellars’ concern over psychologism creeping into semantics and prag-
matics is readily apparent when considering the Iowa School’s diverging
conceptions of pragmatics. Bergmann and Hinshaw offer the earliest
glimpses confirming Sellars’ fear that pragmatics would be abandoned to
the sciences. Although explicitly distancing themselves (at times) from
Morris’ or Carnap’s definitions of pragmatics, most philosophers at Iowa
were willing to acknowledge the need for both a pure and descriptive
account of pragmatics. The problem, especially from Sellars’ perspec-
tive, is that pragmatics, whether pure or descriptive, was understood as
an obligation of the sciences and not philosophy. One finds Bergmann
claiming, for example, that a fully developed and formalized pragmatics
was highly desirable, but it was the job of the scientist and not the phi-
losopher (Bergmann 1944, p. 256), while Hinshaw claims formalizing
7
The “Iowa School” refers to Gustav Bergmann, May Brodbeck, Everett Hall, Virgil Hinshaw Jr.,
and Thomas Storer. Although no official school affiliation was ever published, there is some evi-
dence in print (see the first footnote in Storer 1951) and Bergmann’s archives (which contains
correspondence between Bergmann, Brodbeck, Storer, Feigl, and Sellars over intellectual debts to
the “Iowa School”) to suggest there was a concerted, though failed, effort to make the “Iowa
School” its own movement (apart from Hall who left for the University of North Carolina in the
early 1950s, and Hinshaw Jr. who, though only spending one year at Iowa, acknowledged signifi-
cant intellectual debts to Bergmann).
pragmatics is “to a considerable extent the program of a behavioristic

or objective psychology yet to be undertaken” (Hinshaw 1944, p. 87).
Storer argues a “completed” behavioristic understanding of pragmatics,
while crucial for the development of psychology, would be largely irrel-
evant for philosophy (Storer 1948, p. 316). Hall, closer to Carnap and
Morris, explicitly identified pragmatics with psychology (Hall 1947a,
p. 123).
Although Bergmann made later arguments (Bergmann 1947a) in sup-
port of a specifically philosophical conception of pragmatics, he did not
provide an account of how his conception would differ from empiri-
cal accounts of linguistic practices (despite his claims to the contrary).
Although indebted to Bergmann’s understanding of pragmatics (among
other issues), Sellars exhibits confusion, much like one finds in Hall’s
later writings (Hall 1947a), over Bergmann’s conception of ‘philosophical
pragmatics’:
Last summer, after writing a virulent attack on your conception of a prag-

matic meta-language (the paper is still sitting on Moore’s desk) in which I
showed to my own satisfaction that it was nothing but axiomatized behav-
ioristics, I returned to the task of revising my Realism and the New Way of
Words. In the process of doing so, it occurred to me that the predicates
‘verified’ and ‘confirmed’ point to a metalinguistic structure from which
semantics must be regarded as a bleeding slice. That such a type of meta-
language must not be confused with empirical psychology (behavioristic or
otherwise) was a primary conviction which is undoubtedly due to my
rationalistic background. Thus, though I choose to call such meta-linguistic
structures ‘pragmatic’ I draw a fundamental distinction between my ‘Pure
Pragmatics’ and what I (perhaps mistakenly) regarded as your tidied ver-
sion of pragmatics a la Morris, Carnap, et al. When I told Hall of my
conclusion, and tried to convince him that ‘verified’ and ‘confirmed’
belonged in a non-psychologistic meta-language, he was not moved. For
reasons which I gather that you will appreciate, I was disturbed at his arti-
cle in Φ Sci. (Sellars 1947c)
Sellars’ point is not only that Bergmann, Hall, and others at Iowa held
largely empirical or descriptive conceptions of pragmatics but also that
they were willing to abandon pragmatics to the sciences. Even though
Bergmann’s later discussion of pragmatics makes room for a meta-lin-

guistic account of linguistic practices, it does not separate itself from the
empirical or descriptive accounts found in Morris and Carnap. While
Bergmann uses pragmatic meta-languages to describe the scientists’ prac-
tice of observing a subjects’ linguistic habits, he does not depict such
a meta-language as formal nor does he offer any reason to think such
accounts exhibit anything specifically philosophical (Bergmann 1947a).
That is, Bergmann’s later conception of pragmatic meta-languages as the
reconstruction of a scientist’s observation language picks out nothing spe-
cifically philosophical, formal, or pure (Bergmann 1947a, pp. 272–3).
Sellars’ insistence on characterizing epistemological predicates from
within pragmatics is directly inherited from the Iowa School. Both
Bergmann and Hinshaw connected problematic understandings of
‘truth’, ‘meaning’, and ‘verification’ with then-dominant conceptions of
semantics and pragmatics. Arguments over the correct account of truth,
for example, are depicted as resting on problematic conceptions of prag-
matic issues:
The point is that strictly speaking the semantical notion of truth never
occurs in any empirically applied language. Whenever we assert a factual
statement to be true, instead of simply asserting the statement we implic-
itly or explicitly make use of a pragmatic metalanguage and the appropriate
predicates in it are ‘verified,’ ‘verifiable,’ ‘confirmed,’ and ‘confirmable’
rather than ‘true’. (Hinshaw 1944, p. 87)
If something more was needed, something specifically non-factual, in

order to ‘properly’ (i.e., philosophically) characterize meaning, truth,
and verification, it was because of an insufficient incorporation of the
empirical and philosophical dimensions of linguistic analysis. Accounts
of verification and confirmation were taken to support Carnap’s under-
standing of pragmatic (including ‘pragmatic metalanguage’), which
depicted pragmatics as a wholly factualist treatment of such concepts that
required reference to agents in order to offer a full account of epistemo-
logical notions. Pragmatics, as it then stood, could not be the foundation
of an exclusively philosophical project because pragmatic concepts and
terminology are inherently “descriptive verbs” (Bergmann 1944, p. 255;

Hinshaw 1944, p. 90). To characterize verification or confirmation from
a pragmatic standpoint just is to offer a psychological characterization of
each concept.
Three years after Bergmann’s and Hinshaw’s initial claims about prag-
matics, Sellars echoes the same basic problem while using the same lan-
guage found in Hinshaw’s article:
I shall argue that ‘false’, ‘true’, and ‘designates’ still receive factualistic treat-
ment at the hands of analytic philosophers, in spite of a metalinguistic
treatment of these terms obviously incompatible with a factualistic analysis
because these terms gear in with ‘verifiable,’ ‘confirmable,’ ‘verified,’ ‘con-
firmed,’ and ‘meaningful,’ and a formal, or metalinguistic, analysis of these
latter terms does not yet exist. Unrestrained factualism with respect to the
latter has tarred the former with the same brush. (Sellars 1947a/2005,
pp. 5–6)
Here, one finds Sellars essentially indicting Hinshaw’s and Bergmann’s8

understanding of the relationship between semantics and pragmatics—
a relationship he understood as “infected” with psychologism because,
in part, ‘true’, ‘false’, and ‘designates’ were seemingly left to factualist
treatments. If a pragmatic meta-language is either a reconstruction of a
scientist’s observation language (in Bergmann’s case), one ultimately fac-
tual or amenable to formalization from within the sciences, or descriptive
(as in Hinshaw’s case), then both conceptions of pragmatics fall under
Sellars’ broad sense of psychologism and, thus, help explain one of Sellars’
motivations for constructing pure pragmatics.9 Both accounts contain a
8
Although Bergmann does not formulate this issue with the clarity found in Hinshaw 1944, he
does discuss it briefly at the end of Bergmann 1944. A footnote in Hinshaw 1944 cites Bergmann
1944 as evidence for the relationship between the two views: “Much of what follows has been sug-
gested by the formulations of this article and in private discussions by its author.”
9
From Sellars letter to Bergmann (Sellars 1947c): “there is no doubt but that you have had much
influence on my thinking, since I returned from the Navy. As I have often told you I regard you as
one of the most important of contemporary philosophers, particularly so since you are one of that
rare group—a positivist who has not been spoiled for genuine philosophy. The influence you have
exerted has been via two articles and two alone, Pos. Met. Of Consc. And PSSP, for these are the
only two I studied while working out my argument, and I studied them only when working out my
conception of pragmatic meta-languages while simultaneously conceding

meta-linguistic analysis to either psychologism or factualism. These con-
ceptions of pragmatic meta-languages embody the exact target of Sellars’
objections toward then-contemporary accounts of semantics and prag-
matics. Even if Sellars inherited his understanding of pragmatics from
the Iowa School, he diverged on the idea that a descriptive conception
of pragmatic meta-languages could adequately support a philosophical
treatment of concepts.
Why think the conception of pragmatics found at Iowa is Sellars’
target? A straightforwardly psychologistic understanding of pragmat-
ics, such as the one found in Morris’ later behavioristic writings (Morris
1946), would not by itself encapsulate his concerns over psychologism
and, thus, would not generate the need for a specifically formal treatment
of pragmatics, one that saves epistemological and semantic concepts for
philosophy. The traditional depiction of psychologism (as found in Frege
or Carnap) as the confusion of psychology for logic does not account for
Sellars’ distinction between two senses of psychologism or his larger con-
cern that pragmatics and epistemological concepts were being abandoned
to the sciences.10 Yet if one places Sellars among philosophers who both
identify pragmatics with psychology and argue that even formalized prag-
matics belongs within psychology, then Sellars’ broader concerns have a
tangible target.
One could argue that Sellars’ initial identification of the shift from
the syntax to semantics phase of logical positivism as problematic picks
out Carnap as the target of his objections. Given the liberalization of
criticism of your pragmatics in my article on consciousness. As you say, the problem is one for the
historian. I am myself not up to the job, beyond this general account. Perhaps when we get together,
we can put our finger on the details where we see eye to eye. THAT OUR GENERAL AIMS ARE
THE SAME THERE IS NO DOUBT, particularly since your note rejecting (though I don’t quite
understand how) psychologism in your pragmatics.”
10
One finds Robert Brandom, for example, claiming that Sellars’ early conception of psychologism
was inherited from Gottleb Frege. While Frege’s concerns over psychologism could play a role in
Sellars’ understanding of the term (though there seems to be no textual evidence for this), identify-
ing his concerns with Frege’s ignores the historical context developed above, depicts Sellars’ use of
‘psychologism’ too narrowly, and downplays or simply ignores other possible sources of influence
(including Edmund Husserl’s critique of psychologism, something that Sellars encountered while
studying with Marvin Farber at Buffalo). See Brandom 2015 (p. 90) for an example of this or Carus
2004 for another identification of the incompatibility between Frege’s and Sellars’ conceptions of
psychologism.
philosophy’s scope to include rules of designation and rules of truth, as

well as concerns over possible metaphysical or logical issues that come
with their inclusion (e.g., commitment to a naïve form of the correspon-
dence theory of truth), pure semantics could be read as a problematic
change for logical positivism. Instead of following through with the for-
malist project of Carnap’s Logical Syntax of Language (hereafter Syntax),
Sellars saw aspects of Carnap’s liberalization of philosophy as resulting
in a capitulation to the broader form of psychologism. Especially in
a philosophy department such as Iowa where (as Sellars notes in his
autobiographical statement) Bergmann’s dominant influence favored
Carnap’s Syntax era writings, the broadening of semiotic to include pure
semantics was understood as an inherently problematic change for logi-
cal positivism. Although I am reluctant to dismiss this view, it immedi-
ately gives rise to the question of exactly how Carnap was interpreted by
Sellars, and why such an interpretation would necessitate a pure form
of pragmatics. Given the depiction of Sellars’ early career as inextricably
tied to philosophers at Iowa, there is a straightforward answer to these
questions.
3 Semantics, Pragmatics, and Designation

While conceptions of pragmatics are one historical force structuring
Sellars’ early work, the interpretation of Carnap’s conception of pure
semantics by philosophers at Iowa created a series of problems that, at least
from Sellars’ perspective, necessitated the construction of pure pragmatics
to ‘properly’ characterize epistemological concepts. Carnap’s shift from a
syntactical characterization of philosophy to one that includes (rather
than eliminates) semantics was a decisive moment for both Sellars and
the Iowa School. Within Carnap’s Syntax project, issues of meaning were
either eliminated as philosophically insignificant, relegated to descriptive
or empirical accounts of semantics, or assimilated to a syntactical analysis
of the set of logical consequences for a given statement. What this change
entailed, in part, was the introduction of rules of designation and rules
of truth to exhibit the semantic dimension of constructed languages. As
opposed to the narrowness found in the Syntax—where the only philo-
sophically meaningful expressions are those characterized in syntactical

form—pure semantics broadened then-contemporary approaches to
philosophy by including meaning and designation in logical analyses of
language.
Rules of designation are introduced by Carnap to explicitly define the
designation of individual constants, predicates, and sentences, each of
which are taken to stand for an object, property, relation, or proposition
(Carnap 1942, p. 52). Rules of designation are not factual definitions
of terms, but arbitrarily defined expressions not constrained by factual
considerations (Carnap 1942, p. 25). Thus, definitions in pure semantics
do not express factual relationships between expressions and their refer-
ents. This makes such definitions arbitrary—the designata or referents
of such terms only depend on our decision to define a predicate, for
example, by assigning a specific property to them through rules of desig-
nation. Insofar as factual considerations play a role in pure conceptions
of language, they are largely confined to motivational roles. Expressed in
the meta-language, rules of designation concern the relationship between
expressions in the object language and their extra-linguistic referents. The
rule of designation “‘a’ designates Alberta”, for example, shows that the
individual constant ‘a’ in the object language designates or stands for the
city of Alberta.
The Iowa School11 misread Carnap’s project in a distinct way, one
mainly found in Bergmann’s and Hall’s 1944 interpretations of Carnap’s
Introduction to Semantics. Both philosophers published separate articles
(Bergmann 1944; Hall 1944) where they explored the consequences of
Carnap’s shift into semantics and offered their own characterizations
of designation and pure semantics. Pure semantics is depicted as stuck
in what Hall calls the “lingua-centric predicament”: rules of designa-
tion, understood as meta-linguistic and formally articulated rules, do
not reference extra-linguistic objects. Precisely because of their meta-lin-
guistic and formal nature, pure semantics and rules of designation only
concern the relationship between names of expressions in the meta-
11
Even though this misreading of Carnap is directly located in Bergmann 1944 and Hall 1944, it
can be found in other philosophers at Iowa. See Storer 1948 and Bergmann 1949 for another
emphasis on the formal dimension of pure semantics.
language and expressions themselves in the object language (Hall 1944,

p. 25; Bergmann 1944, p. 240). Thus, rules of designation, such as
“‘a’ designates Alberta”, were interpreted by Bergmann and Hall as stipu-
lating a relationship between meta-linguistic and object-level expressions.
Bergmann’s and Hall’s reasoning here, while inaccurate, is fairly clear:
meta-linguistic claims cannot reference extra-linguistic objects or proper-
ties because they are, by definition, two levels “above” extra-linguistic ref-
erents. Formal investigations, by their very nature of being formal, cannot
stipulate an expression’s extra-linguistic referent without including facts
about the world, but the inclusion of facts would violate the formal nature
of pure semantics.
Consequently, the conception of designation found in pure seman-
tics does not resemble anything like a conventional understanding of
the term. It is the formal nature of pure semantics, according to both
Bergmann and Hall, which is responsible for the impossibility of stipulat-
ing a pure reconstruction of the relationship between language and world.
As Bergmann succinctly formulated the issue: “I know of no better way
to epitomize this situation than to insist that pure semantics does not deal
with the extra-linguistic referents, the designata, in the extrasymbolic sense
in which one usually understands these two terms” (Bergmann 1944,
p. 248). If one were committed to a Syntax era reading12 of Introduction to
Semantics, this claim would make sense: formal accounts of language can-
not reference meanings or designata in any extra-linguistic sense. If pure
semantics just is a formal (that is, one imagines, syntactical or structural)
reconstruction of semantical concepts, there is no reason to think such
a project could include anything extra-linguistic. If Bergmann and Hall
are right, then rules of designation are cut off from the world as a direct
consequence of the formal nature of pure semantics. Rules of designa-
tion only stipulate a relationship between expressions and the names of
their referents (not the referents themselves). If so, Hall’s claim that “pure
12
Bergmann’s and Hall’s misreading of pure semantics as equivalent to a formal treatment of lan-
guage is particularly odd because Carnap is careful to explicitly define his terminology. Although
banishing meaning from philosophy in the Syntax, Carnap’s inclusion of rules of designation and
rules of truth does not alter his understanding of the concept of ‘formal’ or ‘formalization’. In
Introduction to Semantics Carnap is clear that “anything represented in a formal way belongs to
syntax” (Carnap 1942, p. 10).
semantics is not a branch of semiotics, not a part of a linguistic study (or

construction, if you please); it is an arbitrary game whose rules happen to
produce a pattern similar to that of a semantics interpreting ‘designates’
in accordance with common usage” would ring true (Hall 1947a, 1947b,
pp. 130–1). Given that rules of designation were meant to help fulfill the
“old search for a logic of meaning” by offering an account of designation
that resembled a conventional understanding of the relationship between
expressions and their referents,13 the arbitrary nature of pure semantics
would be problematic (Carnap 1942, p. 249).
Bergmann and Hall offer differing diagnoses of the lingua-centric pre-
dicament, with Hall rejecting pure semantics because of it and Bergmann
endorsing it. Hall argues the relationship between expressions and their
extra-linguistic referents cannot be determined from a formal standpoint.
Insofar as ‘formal’ semantics contains depictions of meaning or designa-
tion (and even epistemological concepts), it must reflect a correlation
between expressions and the extra-linguistic facts they assert or express.
This is to see, according to Hall, linguistic analysis as only “represent-
ing” the kind of relationship between language and world that some-
how transcends language (Hall 1947a, p. 127; Hall 1952). Although
Hall struggles to explain exactly how semantical rules can be reflected in
philosophical accounts of meaning or use (oscillating between introduc-
ing a technical device—“empirical ties”—to account for the connection
between expressions and their extra-linguistic referents, or claiming the
relationship between expressions and facts literally transcends linguistics
formulation), he is clearly opposed to what he construes as Carnap’s for-
mal conception of semantics.
Bergmann understood pure semantics as a minor extension of Carnap’s
project in the Syntax, one that does not reference extra-linguistic objects
because of its formal character. Rules of designation do not stipulate a
factual relationship between language and the world, but offer a logical
or formal reconstruction of the relationship between differing levels of
language (Bergmann 1944, p. 240). That is, pure or formal treatments
13
This is not to say that rules of designation would need to reflect the kind of meaning found in
actual usage. As Carnap points out, only descriptive semantics concerns the actual meaning of
terms. Instead, rules of designation express the explicitly assigned referent of an expression.
of meaning depict the inter-relation between object language, meta-

language, and meta-meta-language in order to characterize semantics
from a strictly formal standpoint (Bergmann 1944, p. 247). The stress on
a ‘formal’ understanding of semantics is important, as Bergmann inter-
preted Introduction to Semantics as a syntactical characterization of rules
of designation and rules of truth.14 While such treatments may resemble
descriptive semantics, they do not correspond to facts about meaning or
use. Even though he accounts for the addition of semantical concepts to
logical investigations of language, Bergmann essentially reduces Carnap’s
shift into semantics to a syntactical characterization of additional, though
non-extensive, concepts within syntax.15
The Iowa Reading of pure semantics is unified under two main claims:
(1) pure semantics is a formal analysis of ‘designates’ or ‘means’ and, (2)
because of its formal nature, pure semantics cannot depict designation as
a connection between expressions and their extra-linguistic referents,
which means pure or formal accounts of designation—at least Carnap’s
conception of pure semantics—fail to adequately reconstruct meaning
or designation. That Bergmann’s and Hall’s interpretation of Carnap is
a misreading is not particularly surprising, as Carnap addressed exactly
these points in response to Bergmann’s and Hall’s interpretations of pure
semantics. Although it is clear in Introduction to Semantics that pure
semantics does reference extra-linguistic designata, Carnap emphatically
re-states this point:
I have especially emphasized its distinction from syntax (Morris’ “syntac-

tics”); while the latter discipline deals only with relations among expres-
sions in a language and thus with an entirely intra-linguistic subject-matter,
it belongs to the essential characteristics of semantics that it refers not only to
language but also to extra-linguistic matter. The book does not only state and
emphasize this characteristic in abstract terms, but also illustrates it by a
great number of examples of semantical rules. (Carnap 1945, p. 148)
14
It is telling that neither Bergmann nor Hall discusses Carnap’s initial move (Foundations of Logic
and Mathematics) toward incorporating semantics into his philosophy.
15
Bergmann’s reading of Carnap can be difficult to follow (as Carnap himself noted) because of his
inconsistent and incoherent adoption of Carnap’s terminology. For example, Bergmann claims that
“calculus” and “semantical system” are essentially synonymous, despite there being radical differ-
ences between the two kinds of languages.
Rules of designation are explicitly constructed to reflect the relation-

ship between expressions and their extra-linguistic referents. Carnap also
denies that pure semantics is a formal study of language, remarking that “I
should prefer to say that pure semantics is the study of object languages,
not of metalanguages, and further, that it is not a formal study but a
study of interpretation” (Carnap 1945, p. 154).16 Given that the very
definition of formal studies of language in Carnap’s Syntax period was
“without any reference to meaning”, it is difficult to see how Bergmann
and Hall could misconstrue Carnap’s semantical investigations as formal
in any sense (Carnap 1935, p. 46).
Thus, if rules of designation do not depict the role of extra-linguistic
objects or properties in stipulating the referents of expressions, then Hall
would be right that pure semantics is stuck in the lingua-centric predica-
ment and, consequently, semantical systems only coincidentally resemble
languages in any genuine sense (i.e., in resembling anything like histori-
cal or natural languages). Yet, if the only solution to this problem is (as
Hall will later claim) to incorporate facts into the pure study of semanti-
cal system, then the very distinction between descriptive and pure studies
of language threatens to crumble. Even though pure studies of language
may be motivated by factual considerations (i.e., that we want a given
semantical system to contain references to specific objects or specific
definitions), they cannot incorporate facts (in the sense that definitions
would somehow be responsive to, or correspond with, facts) and remain
pure studies of language.
Another way to interpret Bergmann’s and Hall’s misreading is by
arguing that they are simply talking past Carnap. This would be to read
Bergmann’s formal analysis as correctly non-referential to the world,
depicting meaning as a meta-linguistic notion that only concerns the
role of expressions in an object language. Bergmann makes this claim in
numerous places, arguing that linguistic analysis and designation never
16
In addition to his emphasis on the ‘formal’ nature of pure semantics, Bergmann should be read
as ‘stuck’ to a Syntax era understanding of Carnap is his use of ‘interpretation’ (as Bergmann 1944).
While Bergmann seems to correctly interpret Carnap’s understanding of interpretation in the
Syntax (where interpreting one language is simply a matter of correlating it with another and, thus,
questions of interpretation can remain within syntax), he fails to notice the terminological shift
that occurs in Introduction to Semantics. See Carnap 1942, p. 249.
leave the “universe of symbols” (Bergmann 1944, p. 244). This would

mean all meta-linguistic analysis of semantics should be read as a formal
or structural account of concepts, one that—by definition—cannot ref-
erence extra-linguistic objects. Hall, on the other hand, would be read
as arguing that only a factual relationship between expressions and their
extra-linguistic referents could adequately characterize rules of designa-
tion. Once one abandons the idea that pure semantics is not able to
reference extra-linguistic referents, it stands to reason that rules of desig-
nation must employ facts in order to determine the meaning of expres-
sions. In both cases the issues behind the “lingua-centric predicament”
either disappears (as found in Hall’s solution of introducing empirical
ties into formal languages)17 or are embraced as the proper understand-
ing of semantics.
The problem is that both Bergmann and Hall construct these argu-
ments as interpretations of Introduction to Semantics (Bergmann 1944,
p. 238; Hall 1944, pp. 25–6). While it is still plausible that all three phi-
losophers are talking past each other, it is difficult to deny Bergmann’s
and Hall’s confusion rests on a misreading of Carnap’s work. Hall’s
initial exploration of pure semantics, for example, starts by asking the
question “How is a word or sentence about extra-linguistic matter of
fact related to the matter of fact it is about?” (Hall 1944, p. 25). This
badly misconstrues Carnap’s project: pure semantics is not concerned
with constructing a factual relationship between a language and extra-
linguistic objects. Even though Hall is concerned with the more gen-
eral question of how language and matter of fact are related, he takes
it that pure semantics counts as an answer to this question. Given that
pure semantics does not concern matters of fact, rules of designation
explicitly concern extra-linguistic referents, and pure semantics is not
equivalent to a formal treatment of language, Carnap can easily reject
Bergmann’s and Hall’s misreading.
In terms of Sellars’ arguments in support of a pure account of prag-
matics, the issue is not whether Bergmann and Hall correctly inter-
preted pure semantics, but how their interpretation drove Sellars’
17
Hall’s solution is discussed at length in Chap. 3.
understanding of the relevant philosophical issues and tensions. For

Bergmann’s and Hall’s misreading to motivate or structure what Sellars
saw as philosophically pressing problems early in his career (i.e., solv-
ing the lingua-centric predicament without giving in to either naïve
realism or Bergmann’s kind of formalism), what matters is that Sellars
understood their reading of Carnap to be correct. While Sellars’ inter-
pretation of Carnap and pure semantics changes throughout his career
(as I detail in Chaps. 4 and 6), this initial misunderstanding of designa-
tion—especially as seen through Bergmann’s and Hall’s dispute with
Carnap—plays a constitutive role in showing why philosophy needs a
pure account of pragmatics.
The lingua-centric predicament ceases to be a problem once Carnap
is correctly interpreted. Since pure semantics already incorporates extra-
linguistic referents in rules of designation by explicitly defining the
referents of expressions,18 pure semantics does not articulate a formal
account of meaning. While pure semantics is not a descriptive, factual
account of semantical concepts, it cannot count as ‘formal’ in the sense
found in Bergmann’s and Hall’s reading of Carnap. Thus, Bergmann’s
and Hall’s interpretation of Introduction to Semantics finds problems
where they simply do not exist by failing to properly interpret Carnap’s
shift from a syntactical, formalist meta-philosophy to a broader concep-
tion of semiotic. This is not to claim that Carnap’s conception of pure
semantics is unproblematic. As Hall stresses, there is still a fundamental
issue concerning the relationship between expressions about matters of
fact and matters of fact themselves (Hall 1944, p. 25). Looking ahead,
such a concern cannot be Sellars’ concern: meaning or designation as
factual categories do not factor into pure pragmatics. Sellars’ solution, as
discussed in Chap. 3, will turn on attempting to satisfy both Bergmann’s
formalism and Hall’s insistence on there being some direct connection
between language and world by offering a non-factual rendering of pure
pragmatics.
18
Reference to the extra-linguistic referents of expressions in pure semantics does not entail the
actual referents of expressions are included in pure semantics, for such an inclusion would turn on
factual considerations (i.e., what, in fact, linguistic communities consider the standard referent for
a given term).
4 Sellars’ Inherited Problem

How does a broadly empirical conception of pragmatics lead to Hall’s
lingua-centric predicament? Insofar as we are worried about offering a
specifically philosophical account of meaning and epistemological predi-
cates, pragmatics is understood as a wholly empirical discipline, and pure
semantics is the starting point for linguistic analysis, then the only place
for a philosophical account of meaning to reside would be in the formal
dimension of linguistic analysis. Yet this formal dimension, as conceived
by Bergmann and Hall, cannot reference the extra-linguistic designata
that connect language and world (a seeming requirement for any theory
of meaning) and is also conceived as a largely scientific, as opposed to
philosophical, project.
If we place Sellars in his historical context, a number of issues become
explicit. First, why he thought a pure conception of pragmatics was
needed becomes clear once psychologism is interpreted in a broader fash-
ion than traditionally conceived, an interpretation that treats psycholo-
gism as threatening to abandon philosophical concepts to the sciences.
This abandonment, combined with Bergmann’s and Hall’s misreading of
Carnap, robs philosophy of its explanatory relevance for semantic and
epistemological concepts. Sellars’ concern is that this loss would even-
tually rob philosophy of its explanatory necessity because of the para-
sitic relationship between semantic terms (e.g., ‘meaningful’, ‘true’) and
epistemological concepts (e.g., ‘verified’, ‘confirmed’). As Sellars notes, a
pragmatic and meta-linguistic analysis is available for such terms (e.g.,
Hinshaw’s discussion of pragmatic meta-languages), but they have largely
been conceptualized as descriptive, factual accounts of language or lin-
guistic practices.19
By adopting a descriptive pragmatic meta-language, one is giving aid
and comfort to the psychologistic or factualist understanding of philoso-
phy in general, and pragmatics in particular. Philosophy has found itself
set upon by three distinct problems: (1) the wholesale abandonment of
19
Given Morris’ introduction of pure pragmatics, it is surprising that Sellars never discusses it. I
assume this is because Morris’ second major work (published in 1946) abandons any pretense of
developing the pure dimension of linguistic studies (including pragmatics). See Morris 1946 (espe-
cially pp. 218–220).
pragmatics to the sciences that leads to, (2) conceptions of meaning,

verification, confirmation, and other traditionally philosophical concepts
are treated as either empirical (and therefore not philosophical) or for-
mal (and therefore devoid of any connection to the world), and (3) the
dependence on ontologically suspect abstract entities as an explanatory
necessity for empirical accounts of meaning. As Sellars puts it:
It has until recently been a characteristics assumption of philosophers of

both nominalistic and, in the medieval sense, realistic persuasions, that
meaning in epistemological contexts is a psychological fact involving self,
sign, and designatum … It has become the fashion to accuse nominalism of
this type of psychologism, The charge is a sound one if correctly inter-
preted. If, however, the charge is taken to mean that these philosophers
limit what can be meant to psychological facts, then a consequence of
nominalistic psychologism is confused with the psychologistic blunder
itself. For the essence of the latter consists not in any assertion as to what
can be meant, but in taking meaning to be a psychological fact. To be guilty
of it is to suppose that the term ‘means’ in such sentences as ‘“A’ means B”
stands for a psychological fact involving the symbol ‘A’ and the item B …
Psychologism underlies both Platonism and Humean nominalism, not to
mention the conceptualistic attempt to compromise. (Sellars 1948a/2005,
pp. 51–2)
While (1) and (2) follow directly from the Iowa School’s conception
of pragmatics and interpretation of pure semantics, (3) is a problem
inherited from Roy Wood Sellars, Wilfrid Sellars’ father, and Critical
Realism.20 Sellars’ third concern is clear: insofar as we mistakenly con-
strue ‘meaning’ or ‘designation’ as expressing a psychological fact, then
accounting for their generality will require ontologically suspect abstract
entities (much like Plato’s forms) that resist naturalization, cannot be
found within a scientific conception of the world (although the habits
and dispositions associated with meaning could be located within a psy-
chological framework), and cause substantial ontological problems for
any stripe of realism.
20
For an account of this philosophical inheritance, especially on issues of empiricism and rational-
ism, see my “The Realist Challenge to Conceptual Pragmatism”.
This leaves Sellars in a position to solve all three problems and simul-
taneously offer a clear demarcation between philosophical and scientific
(i.e., empirical) analysis, in two direct ways: (1) by constructing a notion
of meaning that is not itself an empirical or descriptive concept, and (2)
incorporating the notion of a language user, material constraints, and
pragmatics in ways that avoid the oscillation between Bergmann’s syn-
tactical reading of logical positivism—a reading that leaves semantics
severed from the world—and Hall’s factualist rendering of meaning,
which commits us to either a naïve form of realism (i.e., factualism) or
an untenable Platonism (where ‘meaning’ becomes an abstract entity
that, in turn, must somehow be re-connected with the world or linguis-
tic practices).
Pure pragmatics functions as a proposed solution to these problems by
offering an explicitly non-factualistic account of meaning or designation:
Its primary employment is in connection with expressions as norms, and

consequently cannot concern a direct relation of language expressions to
objects of acquaintance (even essences). It is only symbol-events which
could enter into such a psychological transaction. If this is the case, it is
hard to see what kind of factual relation ‘designates’ could be. The New
Nominalism takes ‘means’ or ‘designates’ to be a purely formal term, that is
to say, a term which as little stands for a feature of the world as ‘implies’ or
‘and’. It has nothing to do with psychological acts, intuitions, or, indeed,
with experience of any kind. (Sellars 1948a/2005, pp. 52–3)
Understanding ‘designates’ as a “purely formal term”, one that has noth-

ing to do with facts surrounding meaning, allows Sellars to avoid the
kind of psychologism he thinks is indicative of then-dominant descriptive
treatments of pragmatics, while simultaneously offering a clear demarca-
tion for philosophical accounts of meaning (i.e., as those that represent
the formal, logical, or non-factual dimension of concepts). As I will argue
in Chap. 3, it is Bergmann’s and Hall’s lingua-centric predicament that
forces Sellars to insist on the necessity of two concepts in pure pragmat-
ics, his ‘co-ex’ predicate and the addition of conformation rules, in order
to reunite language and world.
Why think that ‘means’ or ‘designates’ does not stand for a feature of
the world? Insofar as we are trying to avoid a factualist account of mean-
ing, and insofar as the only viable philosophical alternative is a wholly
formal treatment of meaning, then an escape into the formal dimension
of linguistic analysis would seem to be the only solution. Although Sellars
is willing to draw a distinction between formal and descriptive accounts
of meaning (where the latter treats meaning as “a descriptive term of
empirical psychology relating to habits of response to and manipula-
tion of linguistic symbols”), it is only the former category that counts
as philosophical (Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 66).21 Even if it is unclear as to
what Sellars means by ‘formal’, the idea would be that only a logical (in
the broadest possible sense), non-factual account of designation manages
to stave off psychologism and rescue genuinely philosophical concepts
from being treated as if they were solely descriptive concepts. Despite
understanding ‘means’ or ‘designates’ as non-factual concepts, Sellars
does hold a role for both a language user’s experience and representa-
tions of the relationship between expressions and extra-linguistic objects.
The main issue, as discussed in the next chapter, is how to incorporate
these kinds of concepts—traditionally pragmatic concepts that are usu-
ally given an empirical or descriptive characterization—without falling
into psychologism.
As I’ve argued elsewhere,22 the Iowa reading of pure semantics is, at
best, an egregious misreading of Carnap’s shift into semantics. Yet it is
a misreading that structures Sellars’ earliest publications and, thus, is
integral for understanding Sellars’ development from his early to later
periods. It is the transition from a pure conception of pragmatics to a
conception of philosophy that accepts a behavioristically grounded
explanatory framework, where one finds Sellars’ conception of the foun-
dations of normativity. Exploring the early formulation of the problems
that motivated Sellars’ pure account of pragmatics allows us to see what,
exactly, would need to be changed in his later work in order to accom-
21
A recurring theme in his early publications, Sellars never offers arguments as to why philosophy
must be defined as a formal investigation or why factualism undermines the very definition of
philosophy. I explore this issue in Chap. 3.
22
See Olen 2015. For another interpretation of this misreading, see Carus 2004.
modate his sui generis conception of normativity, how such changes

inextricably affected his later philosophy, and whether any of his early
concepts can survive the meta-philosophical shift from formalism to a
meta-philosophy that grounds itself on psychological and sociological
facts and explanations.
3
Pure Pragmatics
1 Introduction
Once pure pragmatics is treated as developing out of the problems found
within Sellars’ historical context, three main questions arise: (1) how does
Sellars solve the inherited problems surrounding designation and prag-
matics1 while avoiding psychologism or factualism, (2) how should the
concepts of pure pragmatics (e.g., the “co-ex” predicate, rules of confor-
mation, the idea of an “empirically meaningful language”) be understood
in light of Sellars’ historical context, and (3) what meta-philosophical
commitments are presupposed by pure pragmatics? Sellars’ challenge is
to develop a non-factual account of language that is responsive to the
dilemma present in Bergmann’s and Hall’s reading of pure semantics:
pure pragmatics, if it is to offer a distinctly philosophical account of
1
One concern might be that pure pragmatics is not distinctly pragmatic, given it contains no dis-
cussion of linguistic usage (at least as ordinarily conceived), practices, or behavior in relation to
formal analysis. Sellars initially waivers on this issue, claiming that it might be better to extend the
term ‘semantics’ or narrow ‘pragmatics’ in order to account for pure pragmatics (Sellars 1947a/2005,
pp. 6–7). Sellars’ insistence on including agential experience and his use of “tokening” and “tokens”
to pick out linguistic occurrences squarely places his early project among other pragmatic issues.

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52717-2_3
language and epistemological predicates, must characterize how linguis-

tic expressions are related to their extra-linguistic referents without enlist-
ing facts about the world or our mental states. The latter question is
pressing because Sellars relies on a clear distinction between formal and
descriptive concepts to play crucial explanatory and demarcational roles
in pure pragmatics. Without a clear conception of the formal dimension
of philosophy, pure pragmatics fails to get off the conceptual ground.
Because of his philosophical inheritance from Iowa, Sellars’ conception
of pure pragmatics turns on characterizing the role of epistemological
predicates (mainly ‘designates’, ‘meaningful’, ‘verification’, and ‘confir-
mation’) in what he calls “empirically meaningful languages”. By empiri-
cally meaningful languages, Sellars is signaling the pragmatic nature of
his investigation by situating the language subject for reconstruction as
one that is “‘about’ a world in which it is used” (Sellars 1947a/2005,
p. 10).2 Setting empirically meaningful languages as the target of pure
pragmatics comes with two distinct consequences: (1) concepts unique to
pure pragmatics (e.g., conformation rules, the co-ex predicate, a distinc-
tion between verified and confirmed sentences) show up as requirements
for an adequate formal characterization of language (concepts tradition-
ally construed as arbitrary inclusions for constructed languages) and (2)
reference to extra-linguistic objects function as a constitutive element
of the very conception of a language under investigation. While pure
syntax, semantics, or pragmatics need not incorporate facts, a pragmatic
account that characterizes empirically meaningful languages as used must
be responsive to broadly descriptive and pragmatic concerns. As Sellars
puts it, pure pragmatics should be understood as offering “a formal
reconstruction of language as empirical fact” (Sellars 1947b/2005, p. 36).
Being responsive to descriptive and pragmatic concerns means that when
characterizing epistemological concepts, pure pragmatics must include
the aspects of language that are requirements for use (and, more so, must
be responsive to these requirements in order to count as a language).
2
Differing from Carnap’s or Morris’ conceptions of language, the idea of a formal system character-
izing a language “‘about’ a world in which it is used” is not without precedent. For example, see
Storer 1947, p. 53.
This is not to say that either result is unproblematic; both fail to show,
or so I will argue, that ‘formalized’ pragmatic concepts are necessary
aspects of language, and that ‘designation’ or ‘meaningfulness’ require a
formal, pragmatic treatment in order to avoid factualism (assuming that
factualism should be avoided).3 Such aspects fail largely because Sellars
is attempting to solve problems—insofar as one accepts the problematic
formulations handed down by the Iowa School—that are not problems
within pure studies of language: much of the demands of pure pragmatics
arise only if one accepts the semantic dilemma raised by Bergmann’s and
Hall’s reading of Carnap. Once this misreading is kept in mind, Sellars’
account of designation (and the meta-philosophy that requires such a
formal account) should be seen as both a misinterpretation and concep-
tually problematic. The key concepts of pure pragmatics fail to justify the
claim that their inclusion in formal investigations of language is necessary
for an adequate logical reconstruction of language. Although these con-
clusions are, I believe, established in this chapter, the full scope of issues
and problems surrounding pure pragmatics are only fully characterized
by the end of Chap. 4.
I have not offered my own account of what constitutes an adequate
characterization of language, but the burden of proof here should be
found within Sellars’ own project. At the very least, a pragmatic treat-
ment of language would need to be responsive to conditions of use in
order to count as adequate, which would seemingly need to incorpo-
rate references to facts about our linguistic practices. How Sellars’ pure
account of pragmatics manages to enlist such facts (especially when he
claims formal and factual concepts do not interact) without violating his
own formalist strictures is a major, perhaps insurmountable, problem for
his early project.
3
I say “assuming” because Sellars does not offer explicit reasons as to why factualism can only ren-
der a problematic conception of meaning. Sellars’ usual contention is that factualism leads to a
problematic form of Platonism, but he does not provide arguments for his claims that the then-
contemporary accounts of meaning were ‘‘infected’’ with factualism or that factualism cannot lead
to an adequate account of meaning.
2 Designation and Pragmatics

Sellars’ adoption of the Iowa reading repeats the misunderstanding of
semantics and pragmatics found in Bergmann’s and Hall’s philosophy by
juxtaposing a factualist or psychologistic conception of designation and
a wholly formal or pure conception of designation. Since it plays a key
role in pure pragmatics, designation must be characterized from a purely
formal standpoint, but must also overcome Hall’s lingua-centric predica-
ment by including references to objects or properties in the world (or,
more so, empirically meaningful languages must contain the structural
relationship between object-level expressions and their extra-linguistic
referents) without giving in to either naïve realism or factualism. This
is to avoid characterizing ‘designates’ or ‘means’ as mirroring “the world
by a complete and systematic one-to-one correspondence” between
expressions and referents (Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 48). Sellars presents the
concepts of pure pragmatics as requirements for any object language to
contain pragmatic concepts and, thus, to count as empirically meaning-
ful: the co-ex predicate, the notion of an experiential tie, a distinction
between verified and confirmed sentences, the notion of a world and a
world story, and the supplementation of traditional conceptions of for-
mation and transformation rules by so-called “conformation rules’’.
The co-ex predicate is introduced as a requirement for any object lan-
guage containing pragmatic (or possibly semantic)4 concepts. ‘Co-ex’ is
defined as an “irreflexive, symmetrical, and transitive two-place predi-
cate’’ that is modeled on the ‘‘common sense expression ‘is-present-to-
consciousness-along-with’’’ or ‘‘co-experienced with’’ (Sellars 1947a/2005,
p. 10). When used, the co-ex predicate correlates or groups tokens of
linguistic expressions (on the left-hand side of the predicate) with the
experience of extra-linguistic referents of the tokened linguistic expres-
sions (on the right-hand side).5 Thus, ‘‘c co-ex c1’’ formally represents
an instance of the word ‘‘Chicago’’ (as represented by ‘c’) occurring in a
4
In his letter to C. I. Lewis (see the appendix in this book), Sellars claims pure pragmatics functions
as an enriched form of pure semantics, but also claims that designates must be considered in terms
of pragmatic meta-languages and material restrictions on the formation of expressions.
5
Whether ‘‘experiencing the designata of a tokened expressions’’ is done through sense data or
something like direct experience of the referent is left obscure in Sellars’ early writing. For example,
see Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 54.
language user’s experience along with the experience of what that expres-
sion is about (the city Chicago) as represented by ‘c1’ on the right-hand
side of the expression.
How does a formal re-construction of a psychological concept avoid
psychologism in either of Sellars’ senses? Given that the concept would
owe its content and structure to psychology, one objection might be that
the formal dimension of such concepts is always derivative of the factual
concept and, thus, is ultimately factual. Although Sellars claims requir-
ing the co-ex predicate in any object language that employs pragmatic
concepts does not entail any specific psychology or psychological con-
cepts, it is difficult to see how such a notion can be understood without
referencing some aspect of psychology (i.e., the very notion of a lan-
guage user’s experience invokes the psychological or common sense con-
cept of ‘experience’, despite Sellars’ claims to the contrary). The answer
is found in the fact that the co-ex predicate is only modeled on psy-
chological notions of a language user’s experience. The necessary inclu-
sion of specific psychological or common sense concepts would surely
contradict Sellars’ opposition to his broad sense of psychologism, yet a
formal device that represents an expression being verified in our experi-
ence can be theoretically and ontologically neutral when it comes to how
such a notion would be fleshed out (i.e., whether behavioral, cognitive,
or physiological psychology will end up providing the correct model).
The co-ex predicate partially solves Hall’s lingua-centric predicament
by providing one link between expressions and their extra-linguistic ref-
erents without conceding ground to factualism. One way expressions are
connected with their extra-linguistic referents is that they are verified in
experience (as discussed below) by being co-experienced with tokens of
their linguistic formulations. Ostensibly, this helps construct a specifi-
cally pragmatic account of meaning by formulating designates or means
in terms of tokens of expressions that occur within a language user’s expe-
rience. Any account of meaning would need to include language users in
order to adequately characterize meaning or designation and, thus, would
need to be pragmatically6 grounded. Since pure pragmatics reconstructs
6
The ‘‘co-ex’’ predicate, functioning as a requirement for an adequate characterization of empiri-
cally meaningful language, helps explain why Sellars thinks meaning, a traditionally semantic
the formal or syntactical characterization of pragmatic concepts, what is

required is a formal characterization of the co-ex predicate that, in part,
includes the idea that some expressions are classified as ‘‘confronting’’
their designata in experience (Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 56).
Requiring the co-ex predicate for any formal reconstruction of an
empirically meaningful language, while guaranteeing a way to represent
instances of expressions and their referents in experience, would not itself
connect first-person experience with extra-linguistic objects or properties.
The problem inherited from Bergmann and Hall is the problem of bridg-
ing the gap between formal treatments of language and the factual ref-
erents of expressions. Sellars’ insistence on a formal connection between
expressions and their referents is found (in its earliest formulation)7 in
his use of ‘‘experiential ties’’ when discussing tokens of linguistic expres-
sions (Sellars 1947a/2005, p. 10). Here, Sellars uses a pragmatic form
of Hall’s empirical ties to bridge the gap between language and world.
For Hall, such formal devices connect expressions and their referents
by formalizing (in some unspecified sense) factual relationship between
expressions and their referents. Hall claims, for example, by formally
depicting ‘‘denotatives: demonstrative pronouns (‘this’, ‘that’), relative
adverbs (‘here’, ‘now’), also symbols often not called linguistic, such as
gestures (pointing), etc.’’ a formal language could be connected with the
matters of fact that serve as the extra-linguistic designata of expressions
(Hall 1944, pp. 35–6). This is to claim that while meaning is ultimately
a factual issue, formal languages can represent factual relationships inso-
far as they can mimic actual practices of connecting expressions to their
referents (e.g., through ostension).8
The inclusion of empirical ties ostensibly solves the lingua-centric
predicament by formally accounting for the factual connection between
object language expressions, a meta-linguistic conception of meaning,
notion, is a pragmatic concept. If Sellars is correct about the necessary aspects of pure pragmatics,
then one requirement for an adequate account of meaning would be reference to a speaker or an
agent. This observation, of course, does not justify Sellars’ assertion.
7
Sellars replaces talk of experiential ties with talk of ‘‘experiential confrontation’’ in his later
articles.
8
Although this is Hall’s position in 1944, he abandons the concept of empirical ties. See Hall 1952,
pp. 230–1.
and extra-linguistic referents, but how are Hall’s empirical ties related to
Sellars’ experiential ties? Both notions offer a formalized account of mean-
ing that connects the syntactical characterization of expressions with their
extra-linguistic referents, though Sellars’ insistence on the pragmatic and
pure dimension of the concept sets him apart from Hall. One obvious
difference is the agential nature of experiential ties, as opposed to Hall’s
semantic conception of empirical ties. Hall’s conception of meaning—if
only one aspect of meaning—as connecting the formal and the factual
dimensions of linguistic analysis blurs Sellars’ demarcational line between
pure and descriptive accounts of language. By formally re-constructing
the idea that any empirically meaningful language must (a) be applied
in or through some user’s experience, and (b) must have a representa-
tional component, Sellars can syntactically characterize the relationship
between expressions and their referents without invoking matters of fact
(i.e., experiential ties stipulate that empirically meaningful languages must
represent that some expressions are classified as ‘‘confronting’’ their desig-
nata, but they need not—in fact, cannot—reference actual extra-linguistic
referents). From Sellars’ perspective, empirical ties are guilty of factualism
because they assume that designation should ultimately be a treated as
a factual concept.9 A formal characterization of empirical ties is a mere
abstraction from the factual relationship between expressions and their
referents. If the tie between expressions and their referents depends on
ostension or demonstrative terms, then they would also require behavioral
facts to ground any conception of designation or meaning. It is these facts
that would constitute the ‘proper’ meaning relation.
While empirical ties connect formal expressions with their factual
referents, experiential ties fulfill a different role. Sellars argues that any
pragmatic depiction of an empirically meaningful language must contain
what he calls ‘a world’ (i.e., a set of designata stipulated by both explicit
definitions and material constraints on the formation of expressions) and
a ‘world-story’ (referents and their logical relations). A similar move can be
found in Bergmann’s discussion of pure semantics when he claims that the
universe of discourse for formally constructed languages always remain
9
Somewhat obscured in Hall 1944, this comes out most forcefully in Hall’s account of verification.
See Hall 1947a.
‘‘within the universe of symbols’’ (Bergmann 1944, p. 240). Bergmann’s

idea is that when expressions do designate, they connect expressions with
the names of extra-linguistic referents. Insofar as pure pragmatics exists,
it cannot reference facts about languages and linguistic practices (to do
so would be to violate the very definition of a formal or pure study of
language), but must embrace Hall’s lingua-centric predicament. The dif-
ference between Bergmann and Sellars on this point concerns whether
formal reconstructions of languages need be, or even could be, character-
ized as about (in some sense) the world. While Bergmann denies formally
specified languages are ‘about’ anything (Bergmann 1945, p. 209), Sellars
requires languages to not only be about a world, but also materially con-
strained. Since pure pragmatics offers a formal account of designation, this
sense of ‘about’ is found in the idea that
any collection of expressions which is formulated in accordance with the

requirements which define a story is ‘‘about a world,’’ for this is merely
another way of saying that designation sentences are part of the mechanism
of constructing a story. Furthermore, pragmatic predicates are decidable
with respect to the sentences of any story, and on purely formal grounds.
Thus, epistemological predicates, even ‘verified’ and ‘confirmed,’ have no intrin-
sic tie with any single world, with ‘‘THE’’ world. They are purely formal predi-
cates, and do not discriminate among formal systems (stories) provided that all
the systems alike conform to rules which make these predicates applicable. This
principle of indifference could be discarded only if something analogous to
the ontological argument could be formulated in pure pragmatics. (Sellars
1947a/2005, pp. 22–3)
While pure pragmatics accounts for the designata of expressions, and

experiential ties may represent the connection between expressions and
their referents in experience, pragmatic reconstructions of empirically
meaningful languages do not connect language to the world. To do so
would be to confuse a formal (i.e., meta-linguistic and non-factual) depic-
tion of concepts with a behavioral or factual framework of explanation.
Pure pragmatics avoids any sense of ontological commitment, as all pure
reconstructions of language should, by stipulating that formal languages
must contain references to the designata of expressions, but this does not
require formal languages to exhibit the factual relation between expres-

sions and their extra-linguistic referents. Instead, pure pragmatics exhibits
that such relationships must exist within any formal reconstruction of an
empirically meaningful language, but not the actual relationships them-
selves (i.e., not the sociological fact that most utterances of ‘Chicago’ refer
to the city, or the psychological fact that my utterance of ‘Chicago’ last
Tuesday referred to the city).
Even though the requirements for applying pragmatic concepts to object
languages are mentioned, there are no arguments for why pragmatic con-
cepts (e.g., the ‘‘co-ex’’ predicate, conformation rules) are required in order
to adequately characterize the representational dimension of language.
The distinction between verified and confirmed sentences, for example,
serves as an additional requirement for pure pragmatics. Sellars draws a
distinction between verified sentences (i.e., sentence that have ‘‘experien-
tial confrontation’’ with their extra-linguistic referents) and confirmed sen-
tences (i.e., sentences that do not have experiential confrontation with their
extra-linguistic referents) as a reconstruction of the fact that empirically
meaningful languages exhibit a kind of unity over and above an arbitrary
combination of sentences (Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 57). But pointing out
that such concepts are requirements re-introduces factual issues in deter-
mining what counts as an adequate characterization of language. How else
could a formal reconstruction of the requirements for an adequate account
of empirically meaningful languages be determined except by looking at
the factual conditions for the application of a language in practice? Doesn’t
a formal reconstruction of descriptive facts simply presuppose the kind of
facts supposedly banished by Sellars’ flight into formalism?
This problem, one recognized by Carnap,10 does not occur in tradi-
tionally conceived pure studies of language because factual consider-
ations play little role in guiding the construction of formally specified
languages. Why is this different when it comes to pure pragmatics? Isn’t
Sellars strident in his opposition to including factual considerations in
philosophical concepts? The underlying issue is the language targeted for
reconstruction in pure pragmatics. While pure syntax or pure semantics
are generally unrestrained constructions of language based on explicit
10
See Carnap 1942, pp. 9–10; 1947, p. 225.
definitions and their analytic consequences (constructions only guided

by the voluntary decision to include one definition instead of another),
factual considerations—at most—play a motivational role in definitional
choices. Although Sellars claims to avoid factual treatments of language,
it is difficult (if not impossible) to see how a pragmatic treatment of
language must contain numerous concepts without assuming some facts
about natural languages or descriptive explorations of linguistic practices.
Since pure pragmatics is a reconstruction of empirically meaningful lan-
guages, it is difficult to see how Sellars can rule out factual considerations,
or depict others as requirements, without appealing to facts about the
language in question.
This reasoning might tempt one to claim that formal reconstructions
of empirically meaningful languages presuppose a kind of naïve realism
about the relationship between formal and natural languages (a charge also
leveled against Carnap).11 Even if we avoid naïve realism when discussing
designation (in terms of assuming a one-to-one correspondence between
expression and extra-linguistic referents), it may appear in Sellars’ con-
ception of the relationship between formal and factual languages. Verified
sentences ‘meeting’ or ‘confronting’ their designata, for example, surely
sounds like an instance of directly comparing language and world. If the
correctness or usefulness of formal models12 is found in a direct com-
parison with factual languages, then either numerous facts about natural
languages are being presupposed in pure pragmatics, or naïve realism has
crept back into our philosophical understanding of language by assum-
ing formal and factual conceptions of language are amenable to direct
comparison. Sellars arguably avoids both of these problems through his
re-appropriation13 of a ‘world’ and a ‘world-story’. Instead of referencing
the actual world, the linguistic structures constructed in pure pragmatics
represent the fact that expressions must designate a set of entities that
constitute the ‘world’ of any language user who uses the language in ques-
11
See Reisch 2005 (especially chapter 10).
12
For an account of various conceptual and historical depictions of formal languages, see Dutilh
Novaes 2012.
13
Sellars’ translated Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s 1935 article ‘‘Die Wissenshaftliche Weltperspektive’’
(Sellars and Feigl 1949). Ajdukiewicz’s article contains the notion of a ‘world’ and a ‘world perspec-
tive’, both of which play the same role as Sellars’ use of ‘world’ and ‘world story’.
tion. Thus, what is being represented in pure pragmatics is only the struc-
tural depiction of what is required14 for a language to count as empirically
meaningful. In order to stave off factualism, Sellars’ reconstruction of the
logical conditions for empirically meaningful languages must show the
concepts required by pure pragmatics without invoking facts about lan-
guage or linguistic practices. The concern here is fairly straightforward:
while naïve realism might be avoided in pragmatic accounts of designa-
tion, pure pragmatics fails to avoid a form of naïve realism that assumes a
straightforward connection between formal and factual languages. What
is needed to secure the concepts of pure pragmatics as requirements for
pure characterizations of language creates a dilemma by either rejecting
naive realism by severing the relationship between formal and factual
languages, or reintroducing it in our understanding of the relationship
between formal and factual languages.
These concepts only partly explain how a formal account of designa-
tion could be responsive to the demands of characterizing empirically
meaningful languages. Even if he avoids the extremes of naïve realism and
overly syntactical accounts of meaning, it is not clear if Sellars’ non-factual
account of epistemological predicates manages to avoid the lingua-centric
predicament. While the ‘co-ex’ predicate, along with Sellars’ conception
of a world story, might capture one pragmatic aspect of ‘‘language as
used’’, it lacks anything like external constraint—the metaphorical ‘‘push
and pull’’ of the world that separates ‘mere’ calculi from genuine lan-
guages. Although the idea of expressions ‘standing for’ or ‘designating’
extra-linguistic objects or properties is a fundamental assumption of
applied languages (at least those classified as empirically meaningful), it
is a conception of the connection between such expressions, their refer-
ents, and other expressions as necessary (in a sense opposed to arbitrary)
that is needed to adequately characterize languages ‘‘about a world in
which they are used’’. Formal characterizations of empirically meaning-
ful languages will need to incorporate a priori restrictions on a language
that constitute formal and material constraints on the combination of
14
Sellars’ language of ‘requirement’ and ‘a priori requirements’ have understandably led some to
claim that his primary concern is to offer broadly transcendental conditions for the possibility of
an empirically meaningful language. Such an interpretation, though tempting, is out of step with
Sellars’ historical context. I discuss this suggestion at length in Chap. 4.
sentences. These constraints are embodied in Sellars’ attempt to walk a

careful line between (in the more traditional terms sometimes used by
Sellars) rationalist’s demands to include a priori constraints on concep-
tions of language and the empiricist’s uneasiness with the very idea of the
a priori (Sellars 1947b/2005, pp. 32–3).
3 Extra-Logical Rules
Since a pragmatic account of designation only references extra-linguistic
objects in experience, insofar as experiential confrontation can be for-
mally represented (either through experiential ties or ‘verified’ sentences
that ‘confront’ their designata in a world), Sellars needs a way to repre-
sent not only the extra-linguistic entities or properties that serve as the
designata of expressions, but a way to represent the kind of unity and
limitations found in empirically meaningful languages. While a ‘proper’
conception of designation avoids factualism by offering a meta-linguistic
analysis of a language user’s experience of expressions in relation to the
formal role it plays as types of expressions, Sellars’ account of designa-
tion is only part of the story. The fact that pure pragmatics characterizes
empirically meaningful languages, as opposed to uninterpreted calculi (as
in pure syntax) or semantical systems (as in pure semantics), necessitates
the inclusion of extra-logical linguistic rules in addition to the standard
rules of formation and transformation. As Sellars remarks, the formal
conception of designation is ‘‘bound up’’ with not just formation and
transformation rules, but the necessary inclusion of so-called conforma-
tion rules as well (Sellars 1947b/2005, pp. 34–5).
While Sellars characterizes extra-logical rules in various ways through-
out his early publications15 (Sellars 1947a/2005, pp. 11–12; 1947b/2005,
15
Even though the ‘‘language of norms’’ appears in pure pragmatics, it plays a ‘‘tentative’’ role when
compared with Sellars’ later articles (Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 61). Sellars’ earliest discussion of nor-
mativity compares a rationalistic conception of norms (mimicking, according to Sellars, Kant’s
conception of practical reason) with a behavioristic conception of rewards and punishments (Sellars
1949a/2005, p. 124). Such language—let alone a reliance on something like behavioral explana-
tion—does not (and, more importantly, cannot) appear within pure pragmatics. A central and
problematic issue, the various conceptions of normativity operative throughout Sellars’ philosophy,
is the focus of Chap. 6.
pp. 32–5; 1948a/2005, pp. 60–1), their clearest formulation is as syn-

tactically characterized material restrictions16 on the combination of
expressions.17 While formation rules create stipulations for the creation
of expressions, and transformation rules concern permissible and imper-
missible inferences from one expression to another, conformation rules
restrict the possible combinations of expressions with other expressions.
Conformation rules call for ‘‘skeletal relational predicates’’ that represent
the relationship between, and permissible or impermissible order of, indi-
vidual constants in a language, as well as restrict the possible combination
of non-relational predicates and individual constants in a formal language
(Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 60). Such restrictions limit both the order in which
individual constants could appear and the possible combinations of predi-
cates with individual constants. Conformation rules function as supple-
mentations of formation and transformation rules by providing not just
formal but also material restrictions on the combination of expressions.
Despite their status as material restrictions on the possible combi-
nations of expressions, Sellars only offers a syntactical characteriza-
tion of extra-logical rules in his early publications. That the content of
such rules concerns matters of fact is mentioned, and ‘‘material rules
of inference’’ is interpreted as a successor concept to conformation
rules (Sicha 1980/2005, p. xxviii; Sellars 1953a), but, because of the
‘pure’ nature of pure pragmatics, the material content of conformation
rules is never explored in Sellars’ early publication. When discussing
‘‘skeletal relational predicates’’, Sellars claims that
these skeletal relations are, to use Hume’s phrase, ‘‘relations of matter of

fact’’ in the world to which the language applies. Putting the matter crudely,
and with the aid of Hume’s terminology, we can say that ‘‘relations of
ideas’’ can only be ‘defined’ by reference to ‘‘relations of matter of fact’’.
(Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 60)
16
The idea of supplementary rules that function as restrictions on possible combinations of expres-
sions for formally characterized languages was present in various works during Sellars’ time at Iowa.
See Storer 1948 for one example and Olen 2016 for further discussion of this point.
17
I will largely use the term ‘expressions’ to stand for ‘predicates’, ‘individual constants’, or ‘sen-
tences’. Sellars is largely consistent when talking about conformation rules as constraining combi-
nations of predicates and individual constants. Nonetheless, he occasionally talks about such
restrictions on the combination of sentences as well (see Sellars 1947a/2005, pp. 11–12;
1947b/2005, p. 32; 1948a/2005, p. 57).
The phrase ‘‘relations of matters of fact’’ is instructive. While Sellars claims

that conformation rules are essentially the syntactical characterization of a
coherence theory of meaning, it is the compatibilities and incompatibilities
ultimately based on matters of fact that function as the constraints in ques-
tion. If pure pragmatics provides the structural characterization of confor-
mation rules, the material conditions of a given language determine which
specific combinations of individual constants and predicates are acceptable
or forbidden. Questions concerning the specific material content of such
restrictions are factual questions and, thus, fall outside pure studies of lan-
guage. By offering a formal (that is, syntactical) characterization of confor-
mation rules, Sellars is ideally able to represent that empirically meaningful
languages must be responsive to material constraints without referencing
what would ultimately be facts about language.
While traditional formation rules restrict the formation of expres-
sions on formal grounds (e.g., the expression ‘‘A ~ B’’ is a meaningless
expression in some language, L, because negation is explicitly defined
as a unary connective), conformation rules restrict the combination of
individual constants with non-relational predicates (e.g., the individual
constant ‘apple’ cannot be simultaneously combined with both non-rela-
tional predicates ‘colored’ and ‘clear’) and relational predicates (e.g., ‘a’
cannot be combined with both ‘before’ and ‘after’ relational predicates
and another individual constant ‘b’) with individual constants. Material
restrictions are missing from traditional conceptions of formation rules,
in part, because the definition and construction of such rules is taken
as largely arbitrary, the combination of individual constants and predi-
cates is an utterly free exercise (aside from the explicitly defined rules of
the language). Thus, any individual constant and any predicate could be
combined from a purely syntactical or purely semantical standpoint.
If our concern is to construct a formal language that is responsive to
material constraints, then it cannot be the case that any individual con-
stant can be combined with any predicate. I cannot, for example, com-
bine ‘apple’ with ‘colored’ and ‘clear’ when it comes to the application of
a language.18 While the combination of the individual constant ‘apple’
18
In some sense I can simultaneously combine ‘apple’ with both ‘colored’ and ‘clear’ (i.e., nothing
is literally stopping me from creating entire books that exhibit such a combination). Nonetheless,
and the predicates ‘colored’ and ‘clear’ is logically permissible, it is mate-

rially impermissible. Insofar as matters of fact dictate the possible com-
binations of expressions, ‘apple’ just isn’t the kind of expression that is
combined with ‘colored’ and ‘clear’ in empirically meaningful languages
(i.e., it would be difficult to imagine a situation where such a combina-
tion could be used). If we include arbitrary combinations of expressions
in pure pragmatics, then we run the risk of constructing a language that is
inapplicable or incoherent in practice (or, more so, that fails to resemble
actual restrictions on empirically meaningful languages). Given the lan-
guage targeted for logical characterization is an empirically meaningful
one, the arbitrary nature of logically permissible combinations of expres-
sions cannot adequately characterize the linguistic rules of an empirically
meaningful language.
One factor that sets pure pragmatics apart from other pure treatments
of language is that extra-logical rules of inference are characterized as
necessary aspects for an adequate characterization of empirically mean-
ingful languages. Cited as the historical antecedent for Sellars’ discussion
of conformation rules (Brandom 2015; Carus 2004; Sellars 1953/2005),
Carnap’s brief discussion of material rules of inference (or ‘‘P-rules” in
Carnap’s terminology) in his Logical Syntax of Language differs in impor-
tant ways from Sellars’ depiction of material restrictions on a language.
Specifically, classifying extra-logical rules of inference as optional rules for
any formal language creates a substantial gulf between Carnap and Sellars
(Carnap 1937, p. 180). All that is required to construct uninterpreted
calculi, for example, are the typical formation and transformation rules
(where an interpreted language—semantical system—would also include
rules of designation and rules of truth) of a calculus. So why think that
extra-logical rules of inferences are necessary concepts for a formal or
pure reconstruction of pragmatics?
if I’m exhibiting something like a coherent and consistent—in short, rational—use of language, I
cannot simply disregard deeply embedded connections between terms. ‘‘Cannot’’ in this context is
simply pointing out practical or social (though not formal) barriers to such practices (i.e., I will not
be understood, I might be reprimanded for spouting nonsense). Such practical or social norms
might govern linguistic practices, but are not available to pure conceptions of language. What is
needed is a psychological notion of collective intentions (that would allow us to employ such
phrases as ‘‘We permit these kinds of expressions’’ or ‘‘We forbid these kinds of expressions’’), the
exact kind of explanatory resource Sellars relies on in his later philosophy.
By restricting the combination of expressions on material grounds,

Sellars is trying to capture two important points about designation that are
missing from pure accounts of syntax and semantics: First, that the formal
concept of designation, insofar as it concerns the role meaning or designa-
tion plays in empirically meaningful languages, must be constrained by
certain material factors concerning the application of a language. Second,
languages must exhibit a conceptual or rational (as described by Hall in
correspondence with Sellars) unity over and above an arbitrarily assembled
selection of sentences. Insofar as any formal reconstruction resembles an
applied language, these are not optional properties; what it is for a language
to be empirically meaningful is for it to be responsive to material restric-
tions. Without requiring both logical and material restrictions, a pure
reconstruction of language fails (from Sellars’ perspective) to meet the min-
imum requirement to be ‘‘about a world in which it is used’’. Likewise, the
fact that verified and confirmed sentences exhibit a unity over and above
arbitrary collections of sentences explains why the designata of expressions
in an empirically meaningful language constitute not just a world but a
world-story. The unity or rational connection between expressions mimics
the fact that natural languages—in order to even count as languages—are
not a random assortment of noises and sounds. What distinguishes sheer
noise from speech, for example, is the connectedness, so to speak, of expres-
sions. Following Sellars’ reasoning, this would clearly be a pragmatic obser-
vation about language in use.
Sellars’ insistence on the necessity of non-factual characterizations of
language does raise a problem: how can the necessary inclusion of mate-
rial requirements be a non-factual concept? Where our linguistic analysis
concerns the pragmatic dimension of language, why not classify material
restrictions as a factual, instead of formal, discovery belonging to descrip-
tive studies of language? Even if material restrictions function as a neces-
sary precondition for verified and confirmed sentences, such a concept
is not distinctly non-factual nor does its status as a presupposition of
representations somehow indicate its formal nature. Even though mate-
rial restrictions on a language are amenable to syntactical characterization
(such as in Carnap’s case), this fact need not entail that syntactical char-
acterization is their only adequate representation. At first glance, what
would be needed are factual restrictions, though such constraints would
violate Sellars’ commitment to formalism.
Even if we accept that extra-logical rules of inference are neces-

sary components of empirically meaningful languages, this does not
entail that pragmatic meta-languages must be formally characterized.
Hinshaw’s 194419 discussion of P-rules, much like Sellars’ work during
1947–49, depicts extra-logical rules of inference and pragmatic meta-
languages as necessary components for characterizing what he calls an
‘‘empirically applied language’’ (Hinshaw 1944, p. 87). Even though the
extra-logical rules of empirically applied languages are characterized in
a pragmatic meta-language, such rules are found in a descriptive prag-
matic meta-language. An understanding of material rules as factual (i.e.,
as describing restrictions on the possible combination of sentences in an
empirically meaningful language) could solve the issue surrounding the
necessity of their inclusion; the various restrictions on the combinatorial
properties of expressions in a language could be ‘read off’ of languages or
linguistic practices (remaining staunchly pragmatic) and not stipulated
as a formal requirement for such practices. Descriptive pragmatic meta-
languages could only depict extra-logical rules of inference or restrictions
on the combinations of expressions as contingent on the existence of such
restrictions in linguistic communities and practices, thus eliminating
the requirement of synthetic a priori aspects of language. Such restric-
tions could even be cast as ‘necessary’ insofar as every language investi-
gated exhibits such restrictions (a seemingly uncontroversial empirical
hypothesis similar to Carnap’s conception of general syntax). The differ-
ence between this and Sellars’ conception of extra-logical rules of infer-
ence is that the problematic attempt to conjoin ‘formal’ and ‘necessary’ is
avoided (albeit in a way that brings us closer to practicing something like
descriptive linguistics).
If the inclusion of such rules is simply voluntary for any constructed
language, then they do not reflect anything specific about empirically
meaningful languages (i.e., the fact that in representing the world, expres-
sions can be materially incompatible with other expressions, even if they
are formally compatible). This observation, in turn, gives rise to the ques-
tion of exactly what constitutes materially incompatible combinations of
19
Although Hinshaw was only at Iowa for a year, his early publications and discussions with
Bergmann were hugely influential. In addition, Hinshaw’s thesis from Iowa is one of only two
theses/dissertations Sellars kept throughout his career from the 1940s. The other is Thomas Storer’s
dissertation.
sentences. One imagines material incompatibility depends on pragmatic

aspects of explanation that cannot be included in formal accounts of
language (e.g., what kinds of combinations are acceptable in a linguis-
tic community, whether such rules are presented and enforced as neces-
sary). Looking to practices would allow an identification of acceptable
or unacceptable combinations of expressions in an explicitly pragmatic
vein, a move akin to locating the connection between language and world
in a psychological or sociological object language (Sellars 1947a/2005,
p. 10). Descriptions of the language of linguistic practices would need
to be characterized meta-linguistically, yet these are issues amenable to
descriptive analysis—issues that are determined by looking at the relevant
behavioral science—and Sellars gives us little reason to think otherwise.20
Despite the fact that a non-factualist account of pragmatics is asserted,
Sellars provides almost no argument as to why descriptive pragmatics
requires a formal supplementation.
There is at least one argument in Sellars’ early writings to support the
necessary inclusion of conformation rules. By stipulating that such rules
function as necessary components of pragmatics (instead of semantics),
Sellars is arguing the formation and transformation rules that constitute
semantical systems cannot adequately characterize languages subject to
application or use (Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 56). Why? Because formation
rules offer no restrictions on the combination of sentences, individual
constants, or predicates of a language that turn on its representational
or empirically meaningful nature. While traditional conceptions of for-
mation and transformation rules restrict combinations of expressions
on logical grounds (e.g., that binary connectives can only combine two
expressions, that negation is a unary operation), our concern is with a lan-
guage that is responsive to conditions for the applicability of a language.
While the selection of formation and transformation rules is largely arbi-
trary (i.e., our choice of rules depends on the motivation behind con-
structing a given formal system), the kinds of restrictions provided by
material considerations are necessary (i.e., combinatorial restrictions and
requirements on a language are not simply a matter of free choice, but
20
Whether the normativity of linguistic rules must be terraced back to behavioral science facts is
explored in Chaps. 5 and 6.
require expressing the actual combinatorial constraints on a language,

despite not counting, for Sellars, as factual considerations).
Because pure pragmatics characterizes empirically meaningful lan-
guages, it needs to justify why the concepts provided by Sellars’ meta-
linguistic analysis are required for an adequate characterization of
language. This is a strong dividing point between Sellars’ characterization
of formalist studies of language and, for example, Carnap’s understand-
ing of pure semantics. Given the stress Sellars places on the demarcation
between scientific and philosophical claims, or between factual and non-
factual dimensions of explanation, pure pragmatics must provide not
only a distinctly philosophical characterization of language, but charac-
terizations of language that are not arbitrary; concepts of pure pragmatics
must be necessary for the characterization of any empirically meaningful
language. Otherwise, pure pragmatics is on no surer footing than any
other arbitrarily constructed study of syntax or semantics. Echoing Hall’s
earlier criticism of pure semantics, this would leave pure pragmatics as an
occasionally helpful tool for conceptual explication, but little else.
There are at least two responses to this line of reasoning. One could
claim, much like Hinshaw’s descriptive pragmatic meta-language, that
the so-called requirements of an empirically meaningful language could
be ‘read off’ of linguistic practices. This is to admit that there are practi-
cal or social restrictions on the combination of predicates and individ-
ual constants in an empirically meaningful language, yet this fact alone
does not necessitate a formal or non-factual meta-language. Instead of
comparing expressions against their extra-linguistic referents, descrip-
tive pragmatic meta-languages could employ the language of linguistic
practices or patterns at the object language level. Such languages are
meta-linguistic in that they are about other languages (and not about
objects or properties in the world), but they are descriptive instead of
pure. Suggestively, understanding linguistic behavior as the right subject
of rules might anticipate Sellars’ later claim that a rule, if it is a genu-
ine rule, ‘‘lives in behavior’’ (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 134). Descriptions
of linguistic practices would be located in historical or anthropological
studies of language, which places Hinshaw’s and others’ conception of
pragmatic meta-languages closer to Carnap’s sense of pragmatics.
Descriptive pragmatic meta-languages would locate material restrictions

in the linguistic practices of individual communities, but this falls short
of finding the kind of necessary restrictions on combinations of expres-
sions for all empirically meaningful languages—the exact kind of necessity
sought by Sellars. This would make restrictions on the combinations of
expressions relative to the language or practices of individual communi-
ties. Within such communities, one might find restrictions on combinato-
rial properties as necessary for that community, but there is nothing about
permissible or impermissible combinations of expressions that require facts
about one linguistic community to hold true for all others. Simply because
one linguistic community denies certain combinations of predicates and
individual constants clearly does not entail that all linguistic communi-
ties must do so. Descriptive pragmatic meta-languages could express con-
straints on combinatorial practices within a linguistic community (or for
all languages, if such factual restraints exist), but would fail to secure neces-
sary restrictions on the combinatorial properties for all language users.
Second, one might also object to Sellars’ conception of conformation
rules as inherently material restrictions on a language. Sellars’ later argu-
ment will turn on the idea that some of our ‘good’ inferential practices—
those accepted as materially, though not formally, valid—outstrip formal
notions of validity. Yet this argument is not available from within pure
pragmatics; restricting philosophical analysis to the formal mode elimi-
nates the option of invoking ‘collective intentionality’ or ‘group consensus’
in order to ground materially acceptable or impermissible inferential prac-
tices. The ‘‘skeletal relational predicates’’ that dictate which predicates and
individual constants can be combined may include combinations that, in
some vague sense, represent the material practices taken to be valid. Yet
this builds an excessive amount of presuppositions into a supposedly for-
mal model of language, especially one that turns on its non-factual status.
One runs the risk of either offering too myopic a logical characteriza-
tion of language—an option that would fail to adequately account for all
aspects of empirically meaningful languages—or too general an account
to pick out necessary conditions for a logical construction to count as an
adequate reconstruction of empirically meaningful languages.
One also might be concerned that the material nature of conforma-
tion rules would necessitate the inclusions of facts in pure pragmatics,
thus undermining the very point of pure conceptions of language. Even
if Sellars only offers a syntactical characterization of conformation rules,

it stands to reason that their necessary inclusion is only found when com-
paring formally reconstructed languages with linguistic facts (a problem
introduced in Sect. 2). This problem is made explicit when comparing
conformation rules with Carnap’s conception of meaning postulates.
Meaning postulates are used to explicate notions of analyticity (in terms
of truth by meaning) whose truth is determined by the compatibility or
incompatibility of descriptive terms (Carnap 1947, pp. 222–23). While
Sellars claims conformation rules fulfill essentially the same role as mean-
ing postulates (Sellars 1953a), this claim misses a substantial difference
between the two concepts. Specifically, the fact that meaning postulates,
located in a semantic meta-language, are determined by a matter of
decision is what makes them contingent in any syntactical or semanti-
cal system. Conformation rules, however, cannot be contingent—their
inclusion in pragmatic accounts of empirically meaningful languages is
presented as a necessary aspect of pure pragmatics.
Carnap’s claim that ‘‘it cannot be the task of the logician to prescribe
to those who construct systems what postulates they ought to take’’
(Carnap 1947, p. 225) is a testament to the non-factual character of
logical construction, one that is inconsistent with establishing a pure,
meta-linguistic theory that supposedly exhibits the required facets of all
empirically meaningful languages (Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 53). While
both meaning postulates and conformation rules do not require reference
to extra-linguistic facts in order to establish their truth conditions, pure
pragmatics would require extra-linguistic facts in order to establish why,
exactly, conformation rules are required for an adequate characteriza-
tion of empirically meaningful languages. Without comparing21 formal
reconstructions of the requirements of empirically meaningful languages
with empirically meaningful languages themselves, how else could we
determine the adequacy of any formal treatment qua reconstruction? If
this is right, then the introduction of extra-linguistic facts in this sense22
21
What, exactly, is being compared is another issue. If we are committed to avoiding naive realism,
then a straightforward comparison between a formal reconstruction of language and languages
themselves (as if languages come in discreet packages, easily identifiable and delimited) cannot
work. This issue is discussed at length in Sect. 5.
22
In later publications (Sellars 1963) Sellars does draw a distinction between a broad and narrow
sense of ‘empirical’. How this distinction might be used to defend the non-factual character of
philosophical concepts is explored in Chap. 4.
conflates the differing explanatory jobs of the formal and the factual (or,
more directly, the philosophical and the scientific).
The heart of the matter is this: if pure pragmatics only syntactically
characterizes material restrictions on empirically meaningful languages,
restrictions that function on the same level as formation and transforma-
tion rules, then pure pragmatics is as arbitrary as any other formally con-
structed analysis. Not necessarily problematic from a logical standpoint,
the task of reconstructing empirically meaningful languages—one that is
defined by the non-factual nature of its concepts—would need to offer
necessary conclusions about the structural features of all empirically mean-
ingful languages. Otherwise, the non-factual concepts of pure pragmatics
depict nothing about essential features of empirically meaningful languages
(offering, at best, contingent claims about requirements for a language to
be empirically meaningful). Instead, they would be closer to the rational-
ist’s fictitious psychology bemoaned by Sellars himself. Even if a descrip-
tive pragmatic meta-language could adequately account for extra-logical
rules of inferences, and we can pry loose the idea of conformation rules
from the notion that such rules must be specifically formal requirements
for characterizing empirically meaningful languages, this leaves us with
another problem. In order to account for the general character of factualist
semantics, how do we ground the relationship between facts and meaning-
ful statements without generating a host of Platonic entities, where factual
claims count as one instance of some general type of expression (a type that
would run roughshod over our commitment to factualism)? Even if pure
pragmatics fails to convince when it comes to the necessity of a formal, as
opposed to factual, pragmatic meta-language, this does not mean that a
descriptive pragmatic meta-language is not problematic.
4 Designation Re-visited
With all of the conceptual pieces in place, we can see exactly how pure
pragmatics was structured by the problems inherited from the Iowa
school. Designation is construed as a formal predicate that assigns non-
factual roles to linguistic expressions. Such expressions are logically tied
to the world because of the requirements stipulated in a reconstruction
of empirically meaningful languages. Such languages are partially consti-

tuted by what Sellars calls verified and confirmed sentences; while both
types of sentences can have representational content, it is only verified
sentences that meet the facts they assert. How do such expressions meet
their referents? By being tokened in, or co-experienced with, a language
user’s experiences of said expressions and their designata. Linguistic
tokens, and how such tokens relate to types of expressions, connect lan-
guage and world by directly confronting the designata of expressions
within a pragmatically structured conception of experience. The creation
of such expressions are constrained by the fact that empirically meaning-
ful languages are not arbitrary combinations of expressions, but exhibit
a unity of constraint and cohesiveness between expressions that partially
constitutes the difference between random noises and genuine languages.
Conformation rules restrict possible combinations of expressions in ways
that represent material constraints on the application of linguistic expres-
sions. Although pure pragmatics characterizes the relationship between
expressions and their referents, it only does so in relation to a ‘world’ and
‘world-story’ presupposed by an empirically meaningful language. While
Sellars’ formal reconstruction of empirically meaningful languages does
represent the fact that meaningful statements must depict some relation
with their referents, it does so in terms of formal characterizations of a
world (as opposed to the factual characterization of an expression and its
referent).
Thus, we have a pragmatic solution to what was originally under-
stood as a semantic problem: how is it that we can depict the relationship
between expressions and their extra-linguistic referents while avoiding
psychologism, factualism, and a resulting Platonism, all of which mis-
takenly locate traditionally philosophical concepts within a scientific
(i.e., descriptive or empirical) explanatory framework? Pure pragmatics
avoids both the excessively syntactical account of designation found in
Bergmann’s work, as well as Hall’s claim that meaning—if it is to be a
pragmatic concept—must be based on factual relationships and descrip-
tive studies of language. By characterizing designation as a formal, that
is non-factual, concept, Sellars avoids the kind of straightforward factu-
alism that is indicative not just of Hall’s conception of meaning, but is
also found in the analytic tradition’s understanding of meaning. Sellars
manages to incorporate such insights by articulating the non-factual role

experience plays in grounding linguistic terms.
One could argue that Sellars, possibly like Bergmann and Hall,23 was
simply talking past the mainstay of then-contemporary analytic philoso-
phy. Characterizing empirically meaningful languages in place of cal-
culi or semantical systems, for example, could be understood less as a
misinterpretation of then-dominant characterizations of meaning and
pragmatics, and more as the beginning of a new, individualistic philo-
sophical project. This fits with the idea that Sellars was working through
a different conceptual project than the one found in Carnap or Morris;
Sellars is interested in constructing formal concepts for, or out of, nat-
ural languages, while Carnap and other logical empiricists are merely
concerned with tracing the inferential consequences of explicitly defined
logical concepts. Pure syntax and pure semantics do not concern the
application of logical concepts to natural languages (or even what the
natural language correlates of logical concepts would look like), but pure
pragmatics is primarily concerned with concepts that are required for
the use of a language. Even though formally characterizing the logical
notions employed in natural languages is an in principle possibility, such
a project was considered by most of Sellars’ contemporaries as ‘‘of an
entirely different nature’’ than what is found in pure studies of language
(Carnap 1947, p. 223). The issue would, then, be one of philosophers,
concerned with substantially different problems.
This reading only works if we ignore Sellars’ intellectual inheritance
and his overriding concern with correcting then-contemporary views. As
Sellars’ correspondence with Bergmann, Hall, Storer, and others indi-
cates, he was immersed in the kind of conceptual project handed down
by Bergmann and Hall. This inheritance need not entail agreement;
Sellars was clearly trying to correct what he saw as problematic aspects
of both philosophers’ works. As discussed in Chap. 4, Sellars’ early pub-
lications were received by his contemporaries as responding to the issues
and problems gripping Bergmann, Hall, and other philosophers at Iowa.
When discussing the then-recent publication of ‘‘Epistemology and the
New Way of Words’’, for example, Hall indicates not only that Sellars
23
See Olen 2015 for an account of Bergmann’s and Hall’s dispute with Carnap over designation.
was grasping toward a similar solution as Bergmann, but also that pure
pragmatics could not accurately depict ‘‘the relation of language to non-
linguistic referents’’ (Hall undated). Given Sellars’ explicit demarcation
between the formal and the factual, and his stress on the pure character
of philosophical reflection, why would Hall read Sellars as concerned
with the relationship between formally characterized expressions and
non-linguistic referents without a shared set of historically situated philo-
sophical problems? There is no mention of connecting formal expressions
with non-linguistic referents in Sellars’ early publications, but the fact
that Sellars was attempting to solve this problem was readily apparent to
both Bergmann and Hall, and also to others at Iowa.
Pure pragmatics is predicated on the idea that then-contemporary
conceptions of pure semantics were infected with psychologism. But, as
should be clear from the discussion in Chap. 2, Carnap’s conception of
pure semantics suffers from no such problem. The relationship depicted
between expressions and their extra-linguistic referents in pure semantics
is a non-factual (i.e., a ‘‘decision’’ in Carnap’s terminology) depiction of
explicitly defined rules of designation. Asserting “‘c’ designates Chicago”
involves no reference to facts or extra-linguistic referents as they occur in
factual or psychological depictions of meaning. That ‘c’ designations Chicago
within a particular logically specified language is simply an arbitrary deci-
sion made to meet our constructional needs. The arbitrary nature of for-
mal definitions matters because Sellars’ insistence on the requirements of
pure pragmatics rings false due to the lack of necessity attached to con-
cepts and definitions within pure investigations of language. If Carnap
is misread in the precise fashion found in Bergmann’s and Hall’s texts,
then (a) pure semantics is presented as a study of meaning wholly cut off
from the world, (b) pragmatics only incorporates experience and men-
tal predicates into the theoretical picture insofar as they are terms and
concepts dictated by descriptive or empirical science, and (c) philosophi-
cal conceptions of meaning and epistemological predicates have failed to
be identified as the non-factual dimension of traditionally philosophical
accounts of language. Pure pragmatics functions as a solution for this
exact dilemma by (a) offering a supplemented conception of semantics
that re-connects language and world through pragmatics, (b) avoiding a
descriptive or empirical conception of ‘experience’ or mental predicates
insofar as semantics or pragmatics employs either term, and (c) stressing

the necessity of a pure theory of concepts.
Sellars’ inheritance of problems surrounding Bergmann and Hall need
not entail that pure pragmatics is essentially incoherent, though the strong
misreading of Carnap seems to indicate that—at the very least—the tech-
nical foundation of Sellars’ project was in serious jeopardy from the start.
Having shown how pure pragmatics is structured by then-contemporary
theories, I will take up issues surrounding the reception of Sellars’ early
publications in Chap. 4.
5 Meta-philosophical Implication
Sellars consistently describes the formal aspect of concepts as the defining
feature of philosophy. This amounts to Sellars’ strong claim that a success-
ful supplementation of pure semantics must develop an adequate frame-
work for formulating ‘‘all genuinely philosophical questions’’ and must
clarify ‘‘the very distinction between philosophical and empirical concepts’’
(Sellars 1947b/2005, p. 28). Put this way, the meta-philosophical commit-
ment to defining philosophy as the non-factual, meta-linguistic, structural,
or logical articulation of concepts is both a demanding and justificatory
feature of pure pragmatics—one that sharply distinguishes philosophi-
cal from non-philosophical concepts. This is exactly why understanding
Sellars’ conception of ‘formal’ plays such a crucial role in the success or fail-
ure of his project. This, combined with concerns over how formal concepts
function as requirements for an adequate characterization of empirically
meaningful languages, is the largest problem facing any account of Sellars’
philosophy that wishes to see his early and later work as largely consistent.
The distinction between formal and factual studies of language is
depicted as definitively unassailable:
One of the central theses of this paper concerns the terms ‘language’ and
‘meta-language.’ We have insisted that two irreducibly different usages of
the term ‘language’ must be distinguished, namely the factual and the for-
mal, or, more suggestively, the descriptive and the constitutive. In the factual-
descriptive usage, a language is a set of socio-psychological-historical facts.
In this context, the concepts in terms of which we describe a language are
factual concepts, such as goal-behavior, substitute stimuli, etc…together with

a strong dose of statistics. The ‘meta-language’ in terms of which we describe
a language thus understood is a ‘meta-language’ in a purely factual sense;
from the formal standpoint it is no more a meta-language than is language
about non-linguistic socio-psychological-historical states of affairs. As long as
we are dealing with languages in the factual sense, we are not making use of the
concepts of the formal theory of language, even when we talk about sentences,
meaning, and having the same meaning as. In such a context, the latter con-
cepts are purely factual. (Sellars 1947a/2005, p. 21; emphasis added)
The rigid boundary between formal and factual concepts initially makes
sense given Sellars’ motivation to demarcate philosophical from scientific
or descriptive accounts of language. If formal concepts are non-factual,
and philosophy does not deal in factual statements, then any factual con-
cept would be, strictly speaking, outside of philosophy’s scope. Many of
the claims and concepts in pure pragmatics rely on their status as formal
concepts to justify their inclusion in accounts of language—without a
clear demarcation between formal and factual concepts, Sellars’ project
fails to cohere with his own distinction. Although this seemingly clear
distinction is somewhat blurred by Sellars’ claim that pure pragmatics
functions as a formal reconstruction of empirical languages (making the
entire enterprise hinge on a correlation between formal and factual char-
acterizations of language, one that—by definition—cannot occur within
a philosophical context), it is at least clear that formal and factual treat-
ments of concepts are intended to play two completely separate roles.
As long as we take this to mean that formal and factual concepts never
interact, pure pragmatics is an essentially useless reconstruction of lan-
guage. Sellars rejects the idea that formal languages should be compared
against natural languages, as formal and factual concepts play different
linguistic roles. To think that the philosophical job of a formal recon-
struction of language is to compare formal and factual concepts is to
re-introduce naïve realism and factualism into a non-factual account of
language, both of which confuse the task of philosophy for that of the
descriptive sciences.24 As discussed in Sect. 3, the distinction between
24
Sellars is, again, clear that philosophy qua pure studies of language does not deal with facts:
‘‘Philosophy is pure formalism; pure theory of language’’ (Sellars 1947a/2005, p. 25).
formal and factual domains leaves pure pragmatics, especially in terms of

understanding the formal articulation of concepts as requirements for the
characterization of empirically meaningful languages, as a largely arbi-
trary reconstruction of language. This broadly circular problem is fairly
straightforward: insofar as pure pragmatics offers requirements for depict-
ing empirically meaningful languages, something must guarantee that
the concepts and characterizations generated by pure pragmatics are nec-
essary for the characterization or explanation of empirically meaningful
language. So far as there are arguments for this position in Sellars’ work,
they rely on the formal nature of philosophical concepts to guarantee
the necessity of their inclusion. As we have seen, there is little reason to
think that a concept’s formal status guarantees its inclusion in an account
of language. Without somehow comparing a formal reconstruction of
empirically meaningful languages with languages or linguistic practices
themselves (i.e., by incorporating facts about language), it is difficult to
see how or why philosophical treatments of concepts are requirements for
characterizing empirically meaningful languages.
One interpretation of Sellars’ understanding of ‘formal’ (Sicha
1980/2005; Brandom 2015) that could tie together his early and later
works, as well as provide a stable basis for his claims of necessity, is
to understand it as a broadly Kantian commitment to transcendental
requirements of empirically meaningful languages. This interprets ‘for-
mal’ as a stand-in for ‘transcendental’ and ignores the historical context
in which Sellars’ early arguments developed. Is there any textual evidence
in support of this reading? Brandom, for example, cites Sellars’ mention-
ing of Kant and his desire to understand the term “‘syntax’ in a broader
sense than is current” as evidence of internal consistency between Sellars’
early and later meta-philosophy (Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 60). In other
instances, Sellars talks about the formal, pragmatic features of a language
as being those ‘‘formal features common to all languages’’, but this is a
far cry from transcendental conditions for the possibility of a language
(Sellars 1947a/2005, p. 17). Sellars does characterize conformation rules
as instances of synthetic a priori knowledge, but this thought is presented
alongside a critique of Kant’s psychologism (Sellars 1947a/2005, p. 8).
While some of the Kantian language, as well as explicit references to
Kant, are in the pure pragmatics essays, it is difficult to make the case that
‘formal’ means something approximating ‘transcendental’. What weighs

most against reading too strong of a Kantian influence into Sellars’ early
writings is his historical context. Although somewhat out-of-step in the
American lineage of analytic philosophy, transcendental arguments in the
1940s would have been seen as particularly problematic to articulate in
terms of then-contemporary accounts of syntax, semantics, and pragmat-
ics.25 While Sellars did admit26 his early abuse and misuse of philosophical
terms such as ‘formal’, this is a far cry from the claim that he meant ‘tran-
scendental’ instead of ‘structural’ or ‘logical’. While Bergmann, Carnap,
and Hall may have disagreed over the application of the term ‘formal’,
their differing uses never come close to meaning ‘transcendental’.
Given that pure pragmatics was presented as a correction and supple-
mentation (as opposed to a replacement) of pure syntax and pure seman-
tics, in order to buy the transcendental reading of pure pragmatics, one
must think Sellars understood Bergmann, Carnap, and Hall as offering
something like transcendental accounts of syntax and semantics. This
would be a rather large jump—one not supported by anything in Sellars’
correspondence with then-contemporary philosophers—and would ren-
der his initial complaints about pure semantics somewhat mysterious. If
our concern is about psychologism or factualism infecting pure studies of
language, what might be required is a non-factual development of con-
cepts, but this does not entail that it is also transcendental.27 None of this
is to say that Sellars’ commitment to a broadly Kantian meta-philosophy,
where the goal of philosophical analysis is establishing the necessary con-
ditions for the possibility of concepts, is not lurking in the background of
pure pragmatics, but that reading a strong Kantian meta-philosophy into
Sellars’ early linguistic analysis fails to cohere with the historical and tex-
tual evidence. Such a reading misses the fact that Sellars consciously con-
structed pure pragmatics in the course of ‘‘familiarizing myself (to some
25
This is not to say that analytic philosophers, even in their American context, paid little attention
to Kant’s transcendental method. See Westphal 2010 for an exploration of this point.
26
See Sellars 1950b/2005, p. 175.
27
One persistent concern is that reading ‘formal’ as ‘transcendental’ is basically sneaking necessity
in the backdoor. By insisting that philosophical (i.e., formal or transcendental) treatments of con-
cepts just are endowed with necessity is to—without argument or justification—conflate ‘philo-
sophical’ with ‘necessary’.
extent refamiliarizing myself ) with the techniques of modern linguistic

analysis’’ (Sellars undated). This interpretative strategy, one still popular
among contemporary readers of Sellars, will be revisited in Chap. 4.
The second issue is the missing sense of necessity—what Sellars some-
times discusses as the synthetic a priori aspect of language—located in
conformation rules. For empirically meaningful languages, the fact that
such rules ‘‘determine the necessary elements in the structure of the
world in which it is used’’ is found in the interdependence of concepts
being both formal and thus, in Sellars’ understanding, necessary (Sellars
1948a/2005, p. 77). By making conformation rules formal requirements
for any characterization of empirically meaningful languages and insist-
ing that such rules—because of their formal nature—are constitutive of
empirically meaningful languages smacks of broadly circular reasoning.
Conformation rules count as necessary just because they are formal, and
are formal just because they are necessary (otherwise they would be fac-
tual and, thus, contingent). If Sellars could show that every account of
inference, for example, would be incomplete without considering both
logical and extra-logical rules of inference, then there would be a con-
vincing case for the necessity of their inclusion in pure pragmatics. Yet,
no such argument is contained in (or theoretically available to) Sellars’
early works. At best, we find the implicit assumption that in order to apply
formally characterized concepts of languages, one must include extra-
logical rules. These kinds of explanations would need to include refer-
ences to facts—references that are denied entry into the philosophical
dimension of explanation. This problem can be avoided if the inclusion
of conformation rules is arbitrary (ala Carnap), but Sellars’ entire proj-
ect depicts pragmatic concepts as necessary for characterizing empirically
meaningful languages.
While Sellars does abandon an explicitly formalist meta-philosophy
(as discussed in Chaps 4 and 5), this abandonment does not entail the
abandonment of all concepts found in pure pragmatics (e.g., conforma-
tion rules, the concepts of a world and world-story). Even though Sellars
retains a commitment to something like a non-factual definition of phi-
losophy, a meta-philosophy that sharply demarcates factual from non-
factual concepts is left by the wayside. This generates two main questions:
(1) can concepts from pure pragmatics—concepts that were defined by
their meta-philosophical orientation—be used once such an orientation

is changed, and (2) how can factual and non-factual accounts of lan-
guage be ‘‘meshed’’ (to use Sellars’ terminology) once the demarcation
between formal and descriptive accounts of language is weakened? Both
problems can be traced back to Sellars’ underlying idea that a successful
philosophical account of concepts (in our case languages, linguistic rules,
and linguistic practices) will exhibit ‘‘rationalistic residue’’ while remain-
ing respectable to the naturalistically and empirically inclined (Sellars
undated—b).
4
The Reception History
of Pure Pragmatics
1 Introduction
Despite the rapid appearance of publications in the late 1940s, Sellars’
strident insistence on a formalist meta-philosophy and a ‘pure’ concep-
tion of philosophical concepts quietly disappeared from his articles by
1949–1950. Not only did his explicit pronouncements that “philosophy
is pure formalism” disappear but also Sellars’ reliance on a strict demarca-
tion between formal and factual concepts was no longer used to pick out
the necessary features of specifically philosophical concepts. Beginning1
with “Language, Rules and Behavior” in 1949, Sellars’ exploration of lin-
guistic rules and rule-regulated behavior presupposes psychological facts
and explanations that would have been relegated to the factual, non-
1
The timeline for Sellars’ publications is, of course, not this clean cut. Parts of what become
“Language, Rules, and Behavior” are present in Sellars’ unpublished “Psychologism” paper (see
Appendix), which was being written as early as 1946–1947, and some of the language present in
pure pragmatics lingers throughout Sellars’ publications (though not found in the same form as his
early publications). As I argue below, Sellars toyed with a formalist formulation of his views into
the early 1950s (and some of these formalist concepts re-appear without formalist garb in his later
works), yet the disappearance of this meta-philosophical commitment, combined with the inclu-
sion of explanatory features contradictory to it, create a potentially devastating problem.

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52717-2_4
philosophical dimension of concepts within pure pragmatics. Given

that Sellars previously asserted a strident distinction between what does
and does not count as philosophy (with the psychological dimension of
concepts and explanations clearly falling on the non-philosophical side),
the change is particularly jarring. Because his formalist meta-philosophy
plays such a crucial and prominent role in his early publications, its dis-
appearance in subsequent articles gives rise to a host of questions sur-
rounding the reception history of pure pragmatics. Whether Sellars’ early
publications were poorly received because of technical errors or inconsis-
tent terminology, or because his arguments were misunderstood makes a
substantial difference when situating pure pragmatics among the rest of
his philosophy.
Though his behavioristic position (as discussed in Chap. 5) represents
a change to his formalist meta-philosophy, Sellars was slow to appreciate
this fact. While most of the language surrounding pure pragmatics is
absent in his mature work, Sellars continued to re-work the terminol-
ogy and concepts of pure pragmatics in various unpublished incarna-
tions until around 1950.2 While I have previously suggested3 that after
pure pragmatics Sellars’ arguments in support of a sui generis concep-
tion of language require a change to his meta-philosophy, I now think
this change is too complicated to be explained by one or two issues.
Specifically, I do not think arguing that Sellars’ abandonment of pure
pragmatics was caused by his awareness of technical and terminological
errors is inconsistent with the claim that pure pragmatics was straining
against then-contemporary conceptual and terminological boundaries.
In other words, the idea that Sellars’ abandonment of pure pragmatics
was partially due to inherently flawed terminology and misinterpreted
problems is consistent with the idea that some aspects of pure pragmat-
ics function as the early roots of his mature philosophy. The possibility
that both explanations help articulate the relationship between Sellars’
early and later works does not entail the concepts and meta-philosophy
2
You can find Sellars final attempt at fleshing out pure pragmatics in his unpublished 1950 confer-
ence paper “Outline of a Philosophy of Language”, which will appear in an upcoming collection of
Sellars’ writings edited by Jim O’Shea (entitled “Fraught with Ought” through Harvard University
Press).
3
See Olen 2016.
throughout Sellars’ works are internally consistent. There are, as I will

argue throughout the remainder of the book, good reasons to think
Sellars’ early and later meta-philosophy are incompatible: In order to
develop the sui generis conception of normativity for which he is pres-
ently known, Sellars needed to abandon the formalism that anchors pure
pragmatics.
There have been few attempts to reconcile Sellars’ early philosophy
with what might be considered his mature views. In the cases where pure
pragmatics is even addressed, most interpreters rely on what I will call
an ‘internalist reading’ of Sellars’ work. By ‘internalist reading’ I mean
that interpreters draw no substantive distinction between Sellars’ early
and later publications and, therefore, see no relevant philosophical dif-
ference between Sellars’ early and later works. Because of their holistic
standpoint, internalist readings implicitly endorse the idea that Sellars’
philosophy is internally consistent, and that what changes exist (e.g.,
moving from talk about conformation rules to talk about material rules
of inference) are superficial changes in formulation or terminology (but
not content), or are otherwise not philosophically substantive enough to
warrant discussion.4
These issues raise conceptual and historical questions about the recep-
tion history of pure pragmatics and how differences between Sellars’ early
and later work impact the coherence of his overall philosophy: How
did Sellars’ contemporaries initially understand pure pragmatics? How
did the reception of pure pragmatics effect its development? Because of
changes to his meta-philosophy, should Sellars’ philosophy be depicted
as internally consistent? Can concepts developed within pure pragmatics
be supported when separated from their initial classification as formal
requirements? While Sellars did not address any of these issues and ques-
tions directly, there are indications (such as in his correspondence with
Thomas Storer and Rulon Wells) that he was aware of the problems that
eventually led to his abandonment of a formalist meta-philosophy.
4
Internalist readings are generally found in depictions of Sellars’ work that gives primacy to the
‘systematic’ character of his thought over discontinuities and changes to his arguments or claims.
The most prominent example of this might be found in the brief division of Sellars’ career into
early, middle, and late periods in Rosenberg 2007.
2 Reception in Context
The published reception history of pure pragmatics is relatively slim in
relation to Sellars’ other works. Pure pragmatics generated little pub-
lic commentary in then-contemporary, as well as current, philosophy.
Overall, most reactions were largely negative, bordering on hostile. May
Brodbeck, for one, surmised that the only reason Sellars’ articles were
even published was due to the inclusion of formal devices and obfuscat-
ing language, commenting that she was “amazed” they were accepted for
publication (Brodbeck 1949a). Indicative of the general confusion sur-
rounding pure pragmatics, Bergmann offers the most biting statement:
Having read your paper,5 I feel like Fabrice del Dongo, the hero of the
Chartreuse who, as you know, was never quite certain whether he had
taken part in the battle of Waterloo. All he can say is that he spent a day
riding horses, losing one, finding another, that he jumped a ditch, saw the
smoke line of artillery fire, caught a glimpse of a little man in a tri-cornered
hat galloping past. But how can he tell that this was the battle of Waterloo?
In fact, he isn’t even sure that he got the German on whom he fired in the
bushes in the dark. Similarly, what have I read? (Bergmann 1949)
Critiques of pure pragmatics can be boiled down to two main issues:

terminological and technical confusions over how to understand various
concepts and their role in pure accounts of language (e.g., ‘formal’, ‘rule’,
‘pragmatics’), and the more substantive issue of how a formalist meta-
philosophy generates concepts that function as requirements for adequate
characterizations of language (largely because of their formal status).
The technical and terminological confusions in pure pragmatics are
fairly explicit. As I argued in Chap. 2, Sellars’ understanding and use of
‘formal’ is not only out of step with then-contemporary uses but also
internally inconsistent.6 This concern over terminological inconsistencies
5
Sellars 1949b/2005.
6
Sellars’ use of ‘formal’ is not the only terminological inconsistency present in pure pragmatics, but
is the most explicit one. In Chap. 3 I pointed out an inconsistency in Sellars’ discussion of confor-
mation rules, and Storer has cited numerous problems in Sellars’ use of quotations, variables,
names, ‘token’, and his use of ‘meta-language’ in relation to ‘formal’ and ‘descriptive’. See Storer
1948a (also contained in the appendix).
is repeated throughout Sellars’ early correspondence (Hall 1947b; Storer

1948a), and Sellars himself acknowledged his early use of ‘formal’ was
“confused and misleading” (Sellars 1950b/2005, p. 175). This admis-
sion, when combined with the examples provided in Chap. 2, supports
the idea that Sellars’ earlier use was inconsistent and that he eventually
became aware of the problem. His attempt to re-define ‘formal’ as “the
phenomenology of linguistic functions” does little to settle the issue in
his early papers. Here, Sellars tell us that ‘formal’ denotes “the systematic
exhibition of the rules of a language by the use of that same language for
this purpose” (Sellars 1950b/2005, p. 175). The idea is that formal con-
cepts are formal because they can make explicit the relationship between
meta-language and object language concepts by playing a dual role in
both languages. Yet this does not clarify Sellars’ inconsistent uses of the
term in past publications nor does it show why such concepts are neces-
sary for an adequate characterization of language. In short, a conception
of formal analysis where object language concepts and terms are used at
the meta-linguistic level does not necessitate any of the conclusions raised
by pure pragmatics.7 At best, this re-definition might help clarify confu-
sion over how seemingly representational languages do not consist only
of terms that solely play representational roles, but this point is already
explicit in the meta-linguistic nature of pure pragmatics.
Re-defining ‘formal’ to mean “the phenomenological of linguistic
functions” does not explain the terminological inconsistencies in pure
pragmatics and, more problematically, cannot account for the defining
concepts of pure pragmatics. How would defining ‘formal’ as relating
to meta-linguistic explanation help clarify the explicative or explana-
tory role such concepts play in linguistic analysis? Although this point
is also found in one of Sellars’ unpublished re-workings of pure prag-
matics (Sellars 1950a), no additional light is shed on this matter. Even
if ‘formal’ is simply taken to mean ‘meta-linguistic’, we have already
seen the meta-linguistic nature of philosophical analysis does not nec-
essarily distinguish it from descriptive studies of language. The coex
7
Although initially found in Sellars 1948c/2005, this idea is re-worked as the claim that terms in
object language discourse are shadowed, so to speak, by a level of language containing rules for the
correct or incorrect use of such terms. See Sellars 1954/1963, pp. 330–1.
predicate’s status as a formal concept, for example, is what supposedly

distinguishes it from the psychological concept of something being
“present-to-consciousness-along-with” and, thus, keeps psychologism
at bay (Sellars 1947a/2005, p. 10). Without justifying why such con-
cepts must be separated from psychological notions and explaining how
exactly such notions function as formal concepts, the defining concepts
of pure pragmatics fail to do one of their main jobs—picking out the
specifically philosophical dimension of linguistic analysis. Because for-
mal concepts play a defining role in pure pragmatics, Sellars’ failure
to pin down a specific meaning for the term threatens to overturn his
entire project.
Sellars was aware of the technical and terminological confusions pres-
ent in pure pragmatics and there are various admissions to this effect
in his correspondence with Bergmann, C.I. Lewis, and others (Sellars
1947c, 1948a/2005, undated; Storer 1948a). In discussing the accep-
tance of his “The Logic of Complex Particulars” for publication, Sellars
told Bergmann that “I am beginning to get cold feet, particularly about
some of the technical devices I have used. I have made enough blunders
in the past three years to realize that a danger exists of making a fool of
myself in the one place where to do this is fatal” (Sellars 1948e). When
discussing the publication of his “Epistemology and the New Way of
Words”, Sellars admits to C.I. Lewis that “some parts of it are quite
confused, and it contains some downright mistakes” (Sellars undated).
Instead of attempting to correct these problems, Sellars abandoned the
technical devices and terminology that distinguishes pure pragmatics
from non-formal discussions of language. This change does not mean
abandoning logical issues or logical characterizations of language per se
(as almost all of Sellars’ philosophy uses logical notation or terminol-
ogy), but it does signal a substantial shift in the role of logic in Sellars’
philosophy.
The second issue behind Sellars’ change in meta-philosophy concerns
the necessary inclusion of pragmatic concepts. The supposed require-
ments generated by pure pragmatics are discussed in Ernest Nagel’s brief
1948 review of Sellars’ early essays. Following Bergmann, Storer, and
others, Nagel expresses confusion over Sellars’ terminological choices to
the point of claiming that he was unsure if he was able to follow some
of Sellars’ arguments. Nagel’s review makes explicit the tension between
Sellars’ dual commitment to the formal characterization of language and
the supposed necessity of pragmatic concepts:
It is also puzzling how, if the predicate “coex” is specified only with respect
to some of its formal properties, either it or the definitions based on it are
any more relevant for clarifying the issues of epistemology than is any other
arbitrarily constructed abstract calculus. On the other hand, if a meaning
is associated with “coex” which does make its use clearly relevant for han-
dling philosophic problems, it is by no means obvious that psychological
and other factual considerations can be swept aside. Moreover, in the
absence of explicit reasons for the assumption that the verified sentences
must entail the remaining true statements of a language, both the assump-
tion and the problem to which it gives rise in Dr. Sellars’8 hands appear as
entirely arbitrary and gratuitous. (Nagel 1948, p. 223)
The arbitrary nature of formally constructed languages is inconsistent

with Sellars’ demand that pragmatic concepts are necessary for phil-
osophical characterizations of language. As Nagel points out, Sellars
does not provide arguments in support of his claim that psychological
or factual considerations are irrelevant for philosophical discussions of
language. It is exactly the psychological and factual considerations sur-
rounding linguistic practices that seem relevant in determining prag-
matic accounts of meaning. Without reference to factual considerations
about what actually occurs in experience, how else could a specifically
pragmatic account of language exhibit the necessary features of lan-
guage or linguistic behavior?
This issue also appears in Sellars’ correspondence with Hall, though
it largely concerns sneaking in what Hall saw as an overabundance
of rationalism into a supposedly realistic interpretation of language.
Depicting language as necessarily containing extra-logical rules of infer-
ence, as well as a kind of rational order that is arguably not captured
8
Nagel mistakenly identifies Wilfrid Sellars as “Dr. Sellars”, even though Sellars never finished his
doctorate.
in descriptions of language and linguistic behavior, makes it difficult to

see how Sellars endorses a kind of realism or naturalism. In Hall’s own
words,
As to your rationalism—I like it no better when brought in by the back

door of conformation rules than by the front door of synthetic a priori
truths. Of course, you can construct world stories with conformation
rules of this sort, but that doesn’t lend favor to the idea that some facts
lend credence (apart from assured empirical laws) to other facts. You
would say—in a certain world story, where I (I fear) would say in the
world! (Hall undated)
Insofar as conformation rules function as non-factual, supposedly nec-

essary constraints of language, Hall argues that Sellars projects a ratio-
nal connection into languages that is not found in factual or historical
languages. It is when insisting that pragmatic accounts must include
the distinction between verified and confirmed sentences (or, more so,
that such accounts must exhibit a rational connection between kinds of
expressions) that Sellars introduces an ostensibly problematic form of
rationalism (what Hall calls a “Neo-Hegelian coherence theory of mean-
ing” of the “McTaggert form”) inconsistent with realism. From Hall’s
standpoint, this is to “sneak in” rationalism through conformation rules
and the notion of a world story, as both concepts presuppose the need
for a law-like, logical, or a priori connection between different kinds of
expressions. This rationalistic connection goes beyond empirical regu-
larities and is assumed to be necessary for any account of language. That
this connection is found in all languages9 is assumed as obvious—the
need to formally explicate the necessary connection between verified
and confirmed sentences is understood by Sellars as a hallmark of logical
characterizations of empirically meaningful language.
9
Reading pure pragmatics as exhibiting this kind of reasoning might lend support to the claim that
Sellars is doing something like what he will later call “transcendental linguistics”. As discussed
below, this interpretation—although tempting in light of Sellars’ later publications—cannot be
rendered coherent. Given that Sellars locates pure pragmatics among pure syntax and pure seman-
tics, such a reading would entail that he not only misread then-contemporary accounts of language
but also had such a radically different project as to wholly misunderstand almost all then-current
works in logic and semiotic.
A defender of Sellars could split this issue into two different questions:
(1) Do all languages exhibit necessary connections between expressions?
and (2) Must all languages (in order to count as languages) exhibit this
kind of connection? The first question is a straightforwardly factual one
that requires a descriptive, perhaps non-philosophical answer. Insofar as
languages exhibit a rational connection between verified and confirmed
sentences (or if all language users employ concepts and expressions as if
there exists a rational connection between expressions), then it can be
inferred that all languages do, in fact, have those structures. The second
question, one ostensibly addressed by pure pragmatics, relies on a priori
characterizations of language (though not one that would count as formal
in any recognizable sense to Sellars’ contemporaries) to stipulate that all
languages must contain such a connection. A defender of Sellars would
point out the second question—one that asks for something like the nec-
essary conditions for the possibility of language—cannot be answered
by descriptive inquiry. Instead, such questions demand a philosophical,
non-factual answer. In the context of Sellars’ early publications, I do not
think this strategy works. As discussed in Nagel’s review, there is no initial
reason to assume that the second question has much force apart from
factual considerations of linguistic practices. If languages exhibit such a
connection, we might think there is something philosophically valuable
in characterizing them as such.
Without these factual considerations, it is not clear why the sec-
ond question is pressing or relevant to either factual or philosophical
accounts of language. Why should we think there is even an intel-
ligible answer to the seemingly transcendental question if such con-
nections could not be found in empirical descriptions of languages? To
think so is to claim that one does not, or cannot, start with descriptive
accounts of language, which assumes that one must always begin with
a priori theorizing. The argument in support of Sellars’ position might,
and sometimes does,10 go like this: The very notion of a language relies
10
Brandom’s discussion of the “Modal Kant-Sellars Thesis” takes it as obvious that one victory
found in Sellars’ philosophy is the idea that descriptive concepts must presuppose concepts and
categories that are themselves not descriptive. While support for this claim can be found in Sellars’
later work, it is not at all clear that such a developed thesis is present in pure pragmatics (at least
not in a form closely resembling Brandom’s Modal Kant-Sellars Thesis).
on non-descriptive categories and concepts and thus, the identification

of a language as a language is not an empirical question but an a priori
issue about what resources are needed for something to play the role of
a language. Thus, the formal analysis of language just is the exhibition
of object language concepts at the meta-linguistic level, and the job of
philosophy is to identify the general and necessary linguistic structures
in order to identify what actually counts as a language. One might
think the “phenomenology of linguistic functions” starts with phe-
nomenal facts of linguistic experience in order to discern the require-
ments of a language (a strategy similar to J.L. Austin’s description11
of transcendental arguments). Yet this argument assumes that first-
personal, psychological facts—even in a minimal sense of facts—must
be used in order to characterize languages, a move explicitly denied
within pure pragmatics. For what else could inform the pragmatic,
agential considerations that are (at best) implicit in Sellars’ pragmatic
concepts except for facts of behavior or psychology?
As seen in Hall’s response to Sellars’ “Neo-Hegelian” theory of mean-
ing, those committed to the idea that the rational connection between
expressions is a factual one (if there even is a necessary connection
between expressions) do not need to find the second question pressing.
Whether this connection exists between expressions in a given language
is a factual question, one that can only be answered by going outside of
philosophy (assuming that philosophy does not concern facts). The larger
issue might be that it is not clear why demands for the non-descriptive
requirements of a language take explanatory priority over and above
descriptive questions. What makes it so, at least from Sellars’ stand-
point, turns on his meta-philosophical commitment to a formal analysis
of pragmatic concepts, but this brings us directly back to the termino-
logical and technical confusions in Sellars’ publications. Without a clear
sense of what demarcates factual from non-factual concepts, as well as
what makes such concepts necessary for the adequate characterization
of language, it is difficult to justify the priority of the second question
over the straightforwardly factual one. We might ask whether a language
could be constructed without this connection and, thus, see whether the
11
See Austin 1939.
constructed language adequately resembles our pre-theoretic notion of a

language. But, again, it seems this project would initially need to refer-
ence facts about language or linguistic practices. This would address the
“must” question without simply assuming such structures are required
for depicting languages. While Sellars’ later publications might contain
the resources to address this question (an issue addressed below), they are
not available within pure pragmatics. What is required is a meta-philos-
ophy that can offer a more complex and nuanced demarcation between
the non-factual and factual dimensions of linguistic analysis, one that can
somehow allow for the incorporation of factual considerations without
giving away philosophy’s non-factual status.
This is not to say all of the responses to pure pragmatics were nega-
tive. Herbert Feigl, Virgil Hinshaw Jr., Roy Wood Sellars, and (to some
degree) Hall were all generally laudatory toward Sellars’ early publica-
tions, though only Feigl used pure pragmatics to support his own posi-
tions (Feigl 1950). Favorable reactions toward pure pragmatics consisted
less of adopting the concepts or conclusions of pure pragmatics, and more
of a slight recognition toward Sellars’ publications. Feigl, who accepted
Sellars’ solution to the lingua-centric predicament, went so far as to claim
that it was “only when we impose the requirements of pure pragmatics do
we attain the desired scope of genuinely designating terms” (Feigl 1950,
p. 50). Yet Feigl’s admiration for pure pragmatics did not cause him to
substantially explore any of the concepts in Sellars’ early publications nor
did he pursue any aspect of pure pragmatics apart from this one example.
In general, positive discussion of pure pragmatics was either limited to
personal correspondence (e.g., in Roy Wood Sellars’ and Hall’s cases) or
amounted to brief endorsements of the project. Hinshaw Jr.’s review,
for example, describes Sellars’ earliest publication as the “beginnings
of a substantial contribution” to an understanding of pure pragmatics
(while simultaneously citing Bergmann as the forerunner in this area),
yet he offers no substantive exploration of a single claim in Sellars’ work
(Hinshaw 1948b, p. 57). Granted, Hinshaw’s review is only intended as
a short summary, but the brevity of the review is indicative of the general
positive attitude toward Sellars’ earliest publications.
What conclusions can we draw from this relatively small reception
history? It is clear that critical challenges to pure pragmatics center on
the arbitrary nature of pragmatic concepts, despite the fact they are intro-
duced by Sellars as requirements for a formal account of pragmatics. These
challenges arise, in part, because of Sellars’ formalist meta-philosophy,
one that is internally inconsistent. This, if correct, is a deeply troubling
issue for Sellars’ conception of pure pragmatics. Since the primacy of
pure pragmatics was initially based on the idea that pure syntax and pure
semantics (in what was their then-current form) required supplementa-
tion in order to adequately characterize epistemological predicates, pure
pragmatics must exhibit some sense of necessity in order to supplement
the other pure studies of language. Given the narrative above, it is rea-
sonable to assume that Sellars was both aware of these problems and that
they were partially responsible for the change of direction in his early
philosophy.
Even though Sellars’ public endorsement of a formalist meta-
philosophy disappears by 1949, one could argue that the pure pragmat-
ics papers only address issues within the formal dimension of linguistic
analysis. This would interpret Sellars’ later introduction of a behavioristic
framework as a different dimension of philosophy and not a change in his
meta-philosophy. Pure pragmatics, then, largely ceases to be discussed
in Sellars’ publications simply because it concerns a different explana-
tory framework, not because he abandoned a formalist standpoint. This
reading only works if Sellars’ claims that the formal dimension of prag-
matics is defining for philosophy itself are completely ignored. Formal
analysis is not presented as a dimension of linguistic analysis, but as the
only genuinely philosophical contribution that avoids factualism and
psychologism: “Philosophy is pure formalism; pure theory of language.
The recommendation of formalism for their utility is not philosophy”
… “there are no factual statements which become philosophical in the
study” (Sellars 1947a/2005, p. 25). Consequently, while empirical or
psychological studies of language count as linguistic analysis, they simply
do not count as philosophy.
That such changes were meta-philosophical is not just an interpreta-
tive theory to employ when looking back to Sellars’ early publications.
Rulon Wells, for one, noticed the tension and problems associated with
these changes:
It’s time for you to stop fiddling for a bit while you switch your tail into a
bigger snail shell. The six-fold scheme (pure-empirical-pragmatics-
semantics-syntactics) doesn’t fit you anymore, and the pinch must be pain-
ful. When you talk about norms, and rule-governed behavior, are you
talking empirical (hence, for you, behavioral) psychology? Plainly not. All
right, are you talking philosophy? If so, what has happened to the equation
‘philosophy equals epistemology equals pure pragmatics?’ (Wells 1951a)
As Wells notes, the contrast between norms, rule-governed behavior, and

a formalist meta-philosophy creates a fundamental tension in Sellars’ phi-
losophy: if his meta-philosophy has switched to using behavioral psychol-
ogy as the basis for philosophical reflection, then the resulting analysis
can hardly be considered formal or pure. If the resultant analysis is nei-
ther empirical or factual, pure or formal, then Sellars is in danger of con-
structing something like the fictitious rationalist psychology embodied in
his narrow sense of psychologism.
What is arguably most philosophically significant about Sellars’ aban-
donment of the meta-philosophy and terminology of pure pragmatics
is what could not be formulated within his early publications. Sellars’
criticism of the formal conception of linguistic rules—as embodied in
Carnap’s work—is not found in pure pragmatics and, more tellingly,
could not even be formulated within Sellars’ early project. Conformation
rules, for example, are syntactically characterized and offered as neces-
sary supplementations (though not replacements) of the formation and
transformation rules found in pure syntax and pure semantics. Sellars’
later conception of linguistic rules, one that assumes a ‘proper’ rule must
always contain some reference to action, incorporates behavior and prac-
tices into the very definition of rules themselves. For a rule to ‘properly’
play the role of a rule requires some reference to behavioral constraints,
patterns, or permissions to act (what Sellars sometimes talks about as
the necessary inclusion of “may or may not” language)—references that,
because of their broadly prescriptive nature, could not be included within
pure pragmatics (Sellars 1953/2005, pp. 230–1).
Sellars’ later conception of linguistic rules challenges the very defi-
nition of a rule, yet it requires more expansive explanatory resources
than can be incorporated into pure pragmatics. A formalist meta-
philosophy could not incorporate a conception of linguistic rules

that relies on an irreducible conception of normative terms for their
very definition. As discussed in Chap. 3, Carnap was clear that for-
mal and pure treatments of language do not concern what ought or
ought not to be the case. Instead, rules in pure accounts of language
are simply explicit definitions, a conception of rules that does not
require an account of “surplus meaning” to account for their validity
(Sellars 1953/2005, p. 230). Concepts that require the performance
of an action under the guidance of rules to be adequately character-
ized would also require an explanatory framework that goes beyond
non-factual or meta-linguistic analysis. As Sellars correctly notes,
because of the general and arbitrary nature of formal sciences, the
very concept of a mistake cannot be formulated within pure prag-
matics (Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 77). If the very idea of a mistake can-
not be formulated within Sellars’ conception of philosophy, then
normative terms could not play a constitutive role in the very rules
and concepts that constitute such investigations. As Sellars will later
argue (as discussed in Chaps. 5 and 6), such normative terms—terms
then described as a requirement for adequate characterizations of
rules—cannot be accounted for in descriptive terms alone.
Was Sellars aware of this problem? There is archival and textual evi-
dence that Sellars was aware of the technical and terminological problems
with his early project, but perhaps not of the meta-philosophical implica-
tions fleshed out above. Given that some of his contemporaries (Wells
1951a) pointed out the tension between his earlier meta-philosophy
and the behavioristic framework introduced in “Language, Rules and
Behavior”, it stands to reason that Sellars was at least marginally aware of
these problems. That being said, there is no direct evidence that Sellars’
abandonment of pure pragmatics was motivated by a desire to re-formulate
his early meta-philosophy in order to accommodate some of his later con-
cepts (such as the logical irreducibility of normative discourse). It seems
reasonable to assume that he might have abandoned pure pragmatics due
to a combination of philosophical issues (e.g., terminological and tech-
nical problems, meta-philosophical constraint, the fact that substantive
positions were restrained by the logical scaffolding of his earliest project)
and social factors (e.g., the shifting tide of philosophical terminology,

a widening exposure to differing arguments and styles through his role
as editor of Philosophical Studies or various anthologies, and continued
exposure to various strands of behaviorism) and, thus, it is impossible to
completely determine exactly why pure pragmatics was abandoned. These
ruminations, far from being trivial additions to the traditional conception
of linguistic rules, constitute the heart of Sellars’ mature philosophy. The
conception of language and linguistic rules that presuppose a sui generis
conception of normative terms launches, in part, the well-known tension
between Sellars’ conceptions of the manifest and scientific images. These
issues are explored more fully in Chap. 6.
3 Contemporary Explanations
Similar to the reaction of his colleagues, most contemporary philoso-
phers and historians of philosophy12 have largely ignored Sellars’ early
publications. When they have been incorporated into a holistic depic-
tion of his work, pure pragmatics (and its associated meta-philosophical
implications) is generally treated as internally consistent with Sellars’ later
positions. Internalist readings can differ on exactly how this works, but I
want to address what I see as the two currently favored options: a read-
ing of pure pragmatics as containing something like the conception of
‘transcendental linguistics’ found in Sellars’ later writings, and an ahis-
torical reading that mobilizes Sellars’ later distinctions and arguments
in order to salvage or use his early concepts. While the first reading is
fairly systematic in terms of incorporating pure pragmatics into Sellars’
overall philosophy via Kantian influences and terminology, the second
interpretation is a more piecemeal affair. Specifically, the second option
12
It is an oddity that Sellars has received such little treatment in the history of analytic philosophy.
Despite a veritable sea of work on Quine’s arguments against the analytic/synthetic distinction, for
example, Sellars’ own treatment of synthetic a priori claims has been largely ignored (most recently
addressed in Sachs 2014 and Westphal forthcoming). Especially in his role as editor and founder of
Philosophical Studies, as well as co-editor of two influential anthologies (Sellars and Feigl 1949;
Sellars and Hospers 1952), it is surprising that such a small amount of work acknowledges his role
in shaping contemporary American analytic philosophy.
intermingles concepts and quotes from Sellars’ early and later publica-
tions without any distinction between time periods. Assuming the his-
torical framework thus far developed is correct, it stands to reason that
the second option simply cannot work, though this is not the only option
for salvaging the second strategy. One might also look to Sellars’ later
writings in an attempt to clarify or correct problems with his conception
of pure pragmatics. Both options treat Sellars’ philosophy as internally
consistent and holistically developed (i.e., if there are stages in Sellars’
philosophical development, they are inconsequential for an understand-
ing of his overall philosophy).
Brandom has recently offered something like the first internalist strat-
egy when connecting Sellars’ early “pragmatic naturalism”, as well as his
early opposition to descriptivism and psychologism, to what Brandom
calls “The Modal Kant-Sellars Thesis” (hereafter MKST). The MKST
concerns a “pragmatic dependence”—one Brandom finds in both Kant
and Sellars—between modal and semantic vocabulary such that hav-
ing the practices or abilities to use semantic vocabulary presupposes the
practices or abilities to use modal vocabulary (Brandom 2015, p. 26).
Part of this connection seems right; there are good reasons to think that
the non-factualist, anti-psychologistic dimension of Sellars’ meta-phi-
losophy is one thread that runs throughout his work, and the basic claim
of the MKST is readily apparent in some of Sellars’ writings.13 Because
of its meta-linguistic nature, the MKST could connect Sellars’ early and
later works if it can be shown to exist throughout. My concern is with
the claim that Sellars’ emphasis on the formal nature of philosophy is
continuous with, if not identical to, his later transcendental theoriz-
ing (Sicha 1980/2005; Brandom 2015), which would need to interpret
Sellars’ use of ‘formal’ in his early writings as standing for ‘transcen-
dental’. Brandom claims, for example, that Sellars’ suggestion that he
is “using the term ‘syntax’ in a broader sense than is current” (Sellars
1948a/2005, p. 60) is evidence that even the early Sellars is primar-
ily concerned with offering a meta-linguistic, transcendental analysis
that makes “explicit necessary features of the framework of descrip-
tion” (Brandom 2015, pp. 87–8). Additionally, Sellars’ claim that pure
13
See especially Sellars 1957.
pragmatics offers “the pure, a priori, in short non-empirical, theory of

empirically meaningful languages” certainly makes it look as if pure
pragmatics fulfills the same theoretical role as transcendental accounts
of language (Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 53).
This view is perhaps most strongly supported by Sellars’ later discus-
sion of so-called transcendental linguistics, which is equated with the
idea of “the functioning of language as a cognitive instrument” in a way
that morphs epistemology into a concern with the role languages in gen-
eral fulfill (Sellars 1967/1992, p. 646). In the context of exploring Kant’s
philosophy, Sellars claims that
Transcendental linguistics differs from empirical linguistics in two ways:

(1) it is concerned with language as conforming to epistemic norms which
are themselves formulated in the language; (2) it is general in the sense in
which what Carnap describes as “general syntax” is general; i.e., it 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. (Sellars
1967/1992, p. 646)
The similarity to Sellars’ early claims is striking. The idea that transcen-
dental linguistics explicates concepts of a given language through the
same language being explored is close to Sellars’ re-defining of ‘formal’ as
the ‘phenomenology of linguistic functions’, and Sellars cites one of his
early publications (Sellars 1948a/2005) when explaining the role of tran-
scendental linguistics. Although Sellars stops short of claiming that his
entire meta-philosophy has become, or always was, this kind of Kantian
project,14 these passages support the first kind of internalist reading by
connecting his earlier, a priori theory of empirically meaningful lan-
guages to his later, explicitly Kantian positions.
14
Whether Sellars’ post-pure pragmatics should be read as offering transcendental arguments or
conditions of language is explored in Chap. 5.
Why is this a problematic reading of Sellars’ meta-philosophy? Leaving

aside his use of the term ‘naturalism’,15 there is one central objection to
Brandom’s depiction of pure pragmatics: His understanding of the use of
descriptive expressions as dependent upon practices or abilities that under-
lie our use of modal vocabulary. Brandom discusses the use of modal and
semantic vocabularies in terms of practices or abilities (Brandom 2015,
pp. 26, 49, 154–5), where “practices or abilities” are behavioristic ter-
minology not found in pure pragmatics. This connection is not prob-
lematic because practices or abilities cannot in principle be characterized
from a logical standpoint, but because the early Sellars very clearly thinks
such concepts belong to psychology or sociology. Given the implications
for behavior (linguistic or otherwise) when discussing practices or abili-
ties, classifying the use of modal or semantic vocabulary as an inherently
pragmatic issue makes sense, but it is not clear how this conception of
pragmatics could count as pure or formal in Sellars’ sense. Practices and
abilities are behavioral, physical, or psychological concepts (or would at
least be empirical in a sense opposed to Sellars’ conception of the formal)
that simply cannot be articulated from within pure pragmatics. Sellars’
later work (even as early as 1949) incorporates behavioral accounts of lan-
guage and linguistic practices and, thus, could incorporate the notion of
practices or abilities that underlie our use of modal and semantic vocabu-
lary. Even more to the point, Sellars himself does not employ behavioristic
language until after his pure pragmatics essays; these explanatory resources
are only available once Sellars jettisons his formalist meta-philosophy.
To be clear, I do not take this to be an argument against Brandom’s
MKST (as there is certainly textual evidence16 in support of this thesis),
but as an argument against a seamless connection between Sellars’ early
15
A non-factual naturalism seems somewhat difficult to square with Brandom’s claim that pure
pragmatics is concerned with the use of language. At best, what’s happening here is that different
inconsistent sets of historically situated definitions of ‘pragmatics’, ‘naturalism’, and ‘pure’ are sim-
ply being glossed over in an effort to connect pure pragmatics with Sellars’ so-called scientia men-
sura (i.e., the idea that in terms of describing and explaining the world, science is the measure of all
things).
16
That being said, I am not sure why Brandom would want to articulate a conception of practices
or abilities along ‘pure’ lines (assuming one could). Since we’re characterizing the use of sets of
expressions in terms of agential capacities to use such expressions, a behavioral or psychological
framework seems perfectly suited for such a project (surely capacities to speak in specific ways fit
nicely into behavioral or psychological frameworks that account for linguistic practices).
and later publications. The problem, as exemplified in the above issue,

is just that reading Sellars later, seemingly non-problematic understand-
ing of Kantian categories back into his early publications is implausi-
ble in light of the historical antecedents that structure pure pragmatics.
Nonetheless, this does raise an issue about how we talk about the use of
a language. Namely, why should pragmatics be thought of as formal or
pure? Simply because some expressions are not descriptive expressions
does not entail that the language used to characterize their use must be
non-descriptive. Even if non-descriptive terms “as little stands for a fea-
ture of the world as ‘implies’ or ‘and’”, this does not mean that a meta-
linguistic characterization of their use could not constitute descriptions
of object languages as used (Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 53). To do so is to
mistakenly assume that just because certain expressions do not designate
or refer that this somehow entails their occurrence in languages or linguis-
tic practices must be disconnected from factual concepts that do desig-
nate or refer. By accounting for the role of non-descriptive terms in an
object language (or the associated linguistic practices), one could offer a
meta-linguistic characterization that manages to both be about languages
in a broad sense, yet also captures the relationship between non-descrip-
tive expressions and their use.
Sellars does implicitly address this point when discussing the distinc-
tion between formal and factual conceptions of language and meta-
language, but his assumption that formal and factual concepts do not
interact blocks us from determining exactly how discussions of use could
be non-factual, yet somehow tethered to linguistic usage. Sellars does
not deny that descriptive meta-languages can characterize the use of
expressions in sociological or historical depictions of language, but “as
long as we are dealing with languages in the factual sense, we are not
making use of the concepts of the formal theory of language” (Sellars
1947a/2005, p. 22). Because philosophy can only comment on con-
cepts in a non-factual key, any philosophical conception of language or
meta-language must only concern non-factual claims that are distinct
from historical, psychological, or sociological conceptions of language.
This distinction is partially what constitutes pure pragmatics as a pure,
a priori, “non-empirical” theory of empirically meaningful languages
(Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 53), but this brings us back to one of the main
questions from this chapter: why do we need a pure, a priori, non-

empirical theory of empirically meaningful languages? What we need,
instead, is a pragmatic account of language that does not conflate the
false idea that all expressions are descriptive expressions with the idea
that non-factual accounts of language are necessary to account for the
role of non-descriptive expressions in empirically meaningful languages.
A more charitable reading might claim that moving from Sellars’
earliest publications to the full-blown Kantian claims (according to
Brandom) found in his mature work all constitute steps in Sellars’
philosophical development. The important issue, then, is not whether
all steps are consistent, but whether the final depiction of his settled
views is correct. This reading allows for a nuanced view of Sellars’ philo-
sophical development, one that would be mindful of changing concepts
and problems in his publications, but would not simply posit them as
disjointed pieces. Instead, they can be seen as steps toward17 Sellars’
mature view. As discussed below, the notion of a formal investigation,
for example, could then be tracked as a developing commitment, one
that started in response to Bergmann’s and Hall’s misreading of Carnap,
was re-defined along broadly Kantian lines, disappeared, and was even-
tually re-purposed toward the end of Sellars’ career. This kind of devel-
opment account, whether it would agree with my own interpretation or
not, is a far cry from internalist readings of Sellars’ philosophy.
Another response might be to point out Sellars 1948 publication,
“Concepts and Involving Laws and Inconceivable without Them” (here-
after CIL), as evidence in favor of connecting Sellars’ early and later
work. While CIL was developed during the same period as pure prag-
matics, and Sellars connects some of his points in CIL with his earlier
17
Toward here does not imply some kind of teleology when talking about Sellars’ philosophical
development. Much as with any historical account, accounts of personal and philosophical devel-
opment are not working toward some final and unified end. It is just as possible that Sellars’ “final”
account of philosophy suffers from internal inconsistencies, successor concepts that fail to over-
come past problems, and successor concepts that hold—at best—a tenuous connection to past
notions. Even the phrase “philosophical development” can carry too much metaphysical baggage.
I am resistant to the idea that there is any one position held by a philosopher that is somehow
independent of historical framing and nuances. When discussing “philosophical development” I
simply mean to depict a factual account of how a philosopher’s views changed over time, not how
such views ought to have (or inevitably) changed.
publications (Sellars 1948c/2005, pp. 91, 113), I do not think this chal-
lenges my interpretation. Even though he discussion of worlds, laws of
nature, and modality is offered from the perspective of what he calls
“formal linguistics” (Sellars 1948c/2005, p. 91), the meta-philosophy
at the forefront of pure pragmatics has largely retreated to the back-
ground (if it is operative at all) in CIL. In Sellars’ earlier papers, the
formal or pure nature of pragmatics is consistently employed to justify
specific philosophical claims, whereas the formal point of view is merely
mentioned toward the beginning of CIL. Insofar as Sellars is suspend-
ing specific ontological or factual commitments about given statements
(arguing that, although meaning depends on “what is the case”, “what is
the case” itself depends on the logical relation between possible mean-
ings in a given language). When discussing laws of nature in CIL, Sellars
thinks he is employing the formal aspect of linguistics, but this by itself
is a significantly deflated sense of ‘formal’ (Sellars 1948c/2005, p. 114).
In CIL, the meta-philosophy is not used to justify the meta-linguistic
nature of laws of nature, but to pick out that fact that such an account is
being presented as non-factual (a point consistent with a developmental
account of Sellars’ philosophy).
One way to approach the second strategy of reconciling Sellars’ early
and late publications is to ask: Could Sellars’ project be saved? What I
am asking is not “could we adopt pure pragmatics as a contemporary
project?” Such a question is unhelpful because it is out of step with con-
temporary approaches to semantics and pragmatics, and also runs rough-
shod over the historical nuances that frame Sellars’ early publications.
Instead, I am asking whether resources within Sellars’ own philosophy
could salvage pure pragmatics. This strategy would take an ahistorical
stance, one where the order and placement of Sellars’ philosophical and
meta-philosophical commitments are assumed as compatible throughout
his career. Given the objections outlined in Sect. 2, any salvageable form
of pure pragmatics would need to address the two main objections out-
lined above: the technical problems in Sellars’ formulation of pure prag-
matics and the seemingly arbitrary nature of its core concepts. While the
former question is perhaps easier to answer from a charitable perspective
(i.e., we assume Sellars’ various, inconsistent uses of ‘formal’ are compat-
ible, ignore deviant or contradictory uses of terminology, and cast the
project as a broadly transcendental account of the necessary conditions

for the possibility of a language counting as empirically meaningful), the
latter is particularly pressing. Without justifying his claim that at least
some pragmatic concepts are required for an adequate characterization of
language, Sellars’ early project fails to get off the ground.
Given the negative reception history surrounding the seemingly arbi-
trary nature of pure pragmatics, the relationship between formal and
natural languages would ostensibly be an easy place to look for a solu-
tion. The hopeful solution is that factual accounts of language could
somehow work with formal analysis in order to pick out the necessary
requirements mentioned in pure pragmatics (something like a recipro-
cal relationship between formal devices and assumptions or intuitions
about natural languages). But notice that even assumptions about natu-
ral languages would need to eventually reference factual considerations
in order to explain why, exactly, such assumptions are responsive to
empirical concerns. Determining the exact relationship between formal
and non-formal characterizations of language is an issue for formal-
ist treatments of language in general, but is especially pronounced in
Sellars’ early work. After pure pragmatics, Sellars offers a more nuanced
conception of ‘empirical’ when looking at what it means to classify a
given study as descriptive:
A statement is empirical in the broad sense if it is properly supported by

reasons of an empirical, and, ultimately, of an observational character. A
statement is empirical in the narrow sense, if it is empirical in the broad
sense and, apart from logical terms in a suitably narrow sense, contains no
concepts which could not, in principle, be constructed out of descriptive
primitives. (Sellars 1963, pp. 449–50)
The idea here is that the very distinction between descriptive and pure
studies of language could be problematized if all that was meant by
‘descriptive’ is something like “any statements that could eventually be
supported by reasons of an empirical nature”. The idea that a statement
counts as ‘empirical’ simply if it is—in some sense—“properly sup-
ported” by observational evidence classifies almost anything as broadly
empirical. Pure semantics, for example, might be seen as eventually sup-
ported by empirical or observational evidence, once a pure construction

of designation is fleshed out and, in some sense, compared against some
historically given language. This could provide the kind of constraints
and requirements presupposed in pure pragmatics by connecting facts
about an actual language with a logical reconstruction of pragmatics. This
would not contradict Sellars’ concern over factualism because it is neatly
encapsulated by the narrow sense of ‘empirical’ described above. In order
to maintain a robust role for philosophical accounts of concepts in prag-
matic investigations of language, the idea that there exists a dimension
of language that is (1) amenable to logical reconstruction and (2) not
exhausted by descriptive discourse is one way of securing that kind of
conceptual space.
There are at least two challenges for this distinction to overcome before
being incorporated into pure pragmatics: First, the distinction between
both senses of empirical would be, one imagines, a factual distinction
(i.e., what is or is not wholly resolvable by descriptive analysis or ulti-
mately supported by empirical reasons are seemingly factual questions
about languages and linguistic behavior, or at least not questions com-
pletely answerable for a formal standpoint) and, thus, it is not available
within pure pragmatics. Identifying various concepts as empirical in
Sellars’ broad sense is not simply a question of explicit definitions and
their analytic consequences; whether concepts are resolvable solely in
descriptive terms is a question that—at the very least—must partially
rely on factual considerations to determine an answer. Sellars’ early insis-
tence on a sharp distinction between factual and non-factual concepts
leaves no room for this kind of nuance; even if pure pragmatics provides
a non-factual account of pragmatic concepts, this does not entail that a
factual account is out of the question or that such a non-factual account
is needed to fully explain empirically meaningful languages. While the
distinction between two senses of ‘empirical’ may help to create a more
nuanced conception of descriptive semantics or descriptive pragmatics, it
is not available to the early Sellars.
Second, even if the more nuanced conception of ‘empirical’ could be
read back into pure pragmatics, why think this entails that all pragmatic
concepts are not in principle exhausted by descriptive primitives? Simply
because the co-ex predicate, for example, is formally characterized in
pure pragmatics does not mean that it was somehow missing explanatory
resources in its role as the psychological notion of being ‘co-experienced
along with’. Why not see pure pragmatic concepts as abstractions from
their factual counterparts; while not factual in their own right, these
abstractions would be parasitic on factual concepts and, thus, could be
exhaustively accounted for with descriptive terms. If we see formal devices
as mere tools for refining concepts, then their application to what was orig-
inally factual notions is not particularly telling as to the very nature of the
concepts themselves (i.e., the formal dimension of explanation would not
represent some necessary aspect of a given concept, but just our manipu-
lation or refinement of it). This would use the non-factual, pure account
of pragmatics as a kind of instrument or model without also committing
ourselves to their necessity.
The point where Sellars shifts his criticism of pure semantics away from
one revolving around designation as a formal term, to one concerning the
relationship between pure and descriptive semantics (or between a “four-
fold” distinction concerning many kinds of descriptive and pure studies
of language), is also the precise location where his reading of Carnap is
corrected.18 Here, Sellars claims that the conception of designation found
in pure semantics is one between expressions and non-linguistic entities
(Sellars 1963, p. 462), but this claim is only made once Sellars moves away
from the Iowa reading of pure semantics and, consequently, pure pragmat-
ics. This can be seen most readily in the fact that Sellars’ criticism of
pure semantics in 1954 does not depict Carnap as guilty of factualism or
psychologism, nor does it find the straightforward connection between
expressions and non-linguistic entities in semantical statements prob-
lematic (calling the connection between expressions and non-linguistic
entities “relatively innocuous”). Instead, the central issue is the relation-
ship between pure and descriptive semantics, and how such a relationship
frames a philosophically relevant conception of meaning.19
18
The fact that Sellars’ publications tend to overlap, at least concerning when they were written,
makes it somewhat difficult to tell exactly when his reading of Carnap was corrected. When Sellars
sent Carnap his ostensibly final draft of “Empiricism and Abstract Entities”, one can also find him
repeating what looks like the Iowa misreading of pure semantics. See Sellars 1953/1963, p. 313.
19
This is not to say that all vestiges of the Iowa reading disappeared. Sellars claims, for example, that
Carnap has failed to think there is any other relationship between descriptive and pure accounts of
This is a fairly drastic interpretative shift, though not a particularly

surprising one—if anything, the change confirms the link between the
misreading of Carnap found at Iowa and Sellars’ formalist meta-philos-
ophy. When Sellars was committed to the kind of formalism found in
his earliest publications, Hall’s lingua-centric predicament served as a
legitimate dilemma for linguistic analysis in general, and pure semantics
in particular. Most of “Empiricism and Abstract Entities” was written
during 195420 (though not published until 1963), significantly after his
pure pragmatics publications and distant from his writing being situ-
ated (both personally and professionally) between Bergmann and Hall.
This is not to claim that Sellars’ new interpretation of pure semantics
is unproblematic. As explored in Chap. 6, Sellars’ later interpretation
of pure semantics—while avoiding the Iowa misreading—conflates the
arbitrary nature of pure semantics with the “actual usage” of semanti-
cal expressions (Sellars 1963, p. 461). Although prominent in Sellars
1963, this transition in critical focus is found in a number of Sellars’
early articles in the 1950s (Sellars 1953/1963, 1953/2005). On Sellars’
later interpretation of Carnap, conflating concepts (e.g., extra-logical
rules of inference) of artificial and natural languages leads Carnap to
the seemingly absurd conclusion that both conceptions of language do
not require material rules of inference (Sellars 1953/2005, p. 224).
The pressing conclusion in regards to pure pragmatics is that thinking
of the requirements for an adequate characterization of artificial and nat-
ural languages as roughly the same requirements only becomes an option
once Sellars’ formal standpoint is passed over. Instead of focusing on the
formal nature of language, Sellars’ criticism now turns on Carnap’s inat-
tention to descriptive semantics:
The emphasis of Carnap’s studies in semantics is on the formal manipula-

tion of semantical words as defined expressions in pure semantical systems.
language aside from that of interpretation (Sellars 1963, p. 462), but this terminology was amended
in Introduction to Semantics. Sellars’ assertion and terminology here is still the same Syntax era fram-
ing used by both Bergmann and Hall.
20
This early date can be found in Sellars’ draft of “Empiricism and Abstract Entities” that was sent
to Carnap. Correspondence surrounding Carnap’s Library of Living Philosophers Volume (which
contains the initial publication of Sellars 1963) can be found in the Rudolf Carnap Papers, 1905–
1970, ASP.1974.01, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh.
He deals in much too cavalier a fashion with semantical words as they

function in the assertions of descriptive semantics, that is to say, with
semantical words functioning as such. The latter, however, is the essential
concern of a philosophical semantics. For it, the primary value of formally
elaborated semantical systems lies in their contribution to the analysis of
semantical concepts in actual usage. (Sellars 1963, p. 462)
This new interpretation of the relationship between formal and natural

languages—a reading once again framed by Sellars’ reading of Carnap’s
Introduction to Semantics—is important because it makes two different
moves that were unavailable in pure pragmatics: it focuses on the rela-
tionship between formal and descriptive studies of language and connects
formal systems with actual usage. As to the first point, Sellars’ focus on
connecting formal and descriptive studies of language, as has been noted
numerous times throughout this book, could not occur in pure pragmat-
ics. Formal and factual concepts are not only presented as distinct, but
Sellars is committed to the idea that if factual concepts are used, for-
mal concepts are not in play. If the issue now becomes exactly how such
concepts interact, something in Sellars’ non-factualist interpretation of
philosophy must change. This is not to say that philosophy has suddenly
become a descriptive science, but that it is concerned with how factual
and formal concepts interact (a concern, at least partially factual, that was
not be permitted in pure pragmatics).
The problem with linking formal systems to actual usage is that it is
not clear Carnap holds any such commitment or that the assertions of
descriptive semantics could play a non-factual role. Granted, Carnap talks
about the possibility of semantical systems being constructed in “close con-
nection” with historical languages, but this does not constitute a require-
ment of semantics—one can just as easily construct a semantical system
that is “freely invented” (Carnap 1942, pp. 11–12). Sellars is arguing that
pure semantics is only philosophically relevant when used to explicate
semantical concepts in actual use, yet how could such a project function
without factual content? How semantical concepts are, in fact, used in
a given language is a factual question—one arguably belonging to the
descriptive sciences. Whether descriptive semantics is philosophically rel-
evant (i.e., whether facts about meaning are relevant for philosophical
semantics) is doubtful if Sellars held onto his formalist commitment. As
discussed in Chaps. 5 and 6, factual considerations will be considered
philosophically relevant under Sellars’ later meta-philosophy, but this is
only true once pure pragmatics is abandoned.
4 Conclusion
If both strategies for supporting an internalist reading fail to connect Sellars’
early and later work, the better historical account is one that embraces the
discontinuities of his arguments and positions over internal consistency.
Labeling these approaches ‘ahistorical’, though, is slightly misleading since
most holistic depictions of Sellars’ thought compare his positions to those
of his contemporaries (most frequently Carnap, Roderick Chisholm,
C.I. Lewis, and W.V.O. Quine). At the very least, some attempt is made to
historically ground Sellars’ philosophy, if only in terms of then-contempo-
rary rival arguments and theories. A better way to think about these kinds
of histories might be to see them as idealist or romantic:
To be romantic is to be impatient, ready impulsively to sum things up,

inspired by total impressions. So the idealistic historian takes a vast canvas,
and is ready to paint everything; but as he paints he appropriates and trans-
forms everything into an ingredient of his picture; and his Gorgon eye kills
whatever it looks up. Not because he selects or composes, which is a gain to
the mind; but because he attributes to his abstract design a creative magic,
as if he had uncovered the very nerve of events. (Santayana 1968, p. 136)
In an effort to paint an overall synthesized picture of Sellars’ thought,

idealist histories use broad strokes. Problematically, this leads to over-
simplifying issues of consistency and connectedness throughout Sellars’
body of work. Instead of understanding his views as developing out of
false starts, idealist histories offer a big-picture view that simply ignores
inconsistencies in an effort to offer holistic depictions of Sellars’ (or any
philosophers’) work. When thinking of pure pragmatics’ place among
Sellars’ other publications, this means that inconsistent usages of ‘formal’,

for example, are ignored in favor of a Kantian reading, one congenial
to Sellars’ later work. Misinterpretations, especially when integral to the
formulation of an argument or problem, are largely ignored in order to
get to the root of a problem. It does not matter, an idealist historian
might say, whether Sellars’ reading of Carnap is correct, but what the
eventual consequence of this reading is for Sellars’ overall position on a
given issue. But it does matter, not just in terms of historical correctness
but—as I have shown in Chaps. 2 and 3—for understanding whether an
inherited problem is actually a problem; whether a proposed solution is
even needed.
Without endorsing an idealist history, discontinuities in Sellars’ works
must21 be recognized and factored into any account of his overall phi-
losophy where relevant. This means taking Sellars’ early formalist meta-
philosophy seriously when it impinges on relevant concepts, not reading
his later commitment to behaviorism or Kantian theses back into his early
publications, and seeing that Sellars’ inherited theoretical frameworks
and problems are not innocuous background factors for understanding
his work, but crucial components for an accurate history. This means
realizing that the transition between Sellars’ formalism and his behavior-
istically oriented philosophy of language is a jarring one. Instead of seeing
Sellars’ philosophy as internally consistent, we must see the transition
from his early to later works as partially conceptually disjointed. This
does not mean there is no connection between some of the concepts in
Sellars’ early and later works, but that the best way of reconciling incon-
sistencies between some of Sellars’ early and later claims is to set them
within a developmental account that acknowledges large incompatibilities
between differing stages of Sellars’ philosophy. The challenge is determin-
21
We should draw a distinction between offering historical accounts of Sellars’ thought and work-
ing through some of the ideas attributed to Sellars. If our concern is to accurately represent Sellars’
thought, then the historical record matters. If we are only concerned with pursuing specific ideas
attributed to Sellars, but nothing in their content or form need be traced back to Sellars’ specific
formulation (e.g., arguments against giveness, non-conceptual content), then I am less inclined to
insist on the necessity of a historically grounded account. Despite this, most philosophers writing
about Sellars do, in fact, claim to accurately represent Sellars’ philosophy as his own. Otherwise, the
connection to Sellars would be largely ceremonial.
ing whether some of the concepts and commitments of pure pragmatics

can survive the meta-philosophical shift from a formalist foundation to
one that incorporates psychological explanations and facts into philoso-
phy—new factors seemingly incompatible with the early Sellars.
5
Beyond Formalism
1 Introduction
In order to articulate a conception of language and linguistic rules as
normatively laden, where ‘normatively laden’ signals treating norma-
tive concepts and terms as sui generis, Sellars required a liberalization
of his meta-philosophy to include behavioral, psychological, or socio-
logical considerations. From the standpoint of his early formalism, the
rigid distinction between factual and non-factual concepts bars behav-
ioral considerations from playing a philosophical role. Pure pragmatics
could mention the notion of events “satisfying” norms of language (Sellars
1948a/2005, p. 52), but its staunch non-factualism stops it from utilizing
the behavioral language of stimulus and response that marks Sellars’ later
publications. In order to offer his later conception of language, Sellars
must redefine his meta-philosophy in a way that allows for these consid-
erations without also abandoning a non-factual conception of philoso-
phy (and thereby giving into the kind of psychologism he was initially
trying to avoid). This means abandoning both the rigid meta-philosophy
behind pure pragmatics and the benefits and implications that follow

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52717-2_5
from it (e.g., that formal and factual conceptions of language do not

interact). These considerations, when combined with the conceptual and
receptive problems discussed in Chap. 4, necessitate the abandonment of
pure pragmatics.1
The adoption of a new meta-philosophy, though, did not cause Sellars
to abandon all of his previous positions—Sellars’ opposition to factual-
ism and psychologism, his insistence on the inclusion of conformation
rules, and the meta-linguistic nature of philosophical analysis all remain
intact. The most relevant question to ask, then, might not be “Does
Sellars’ change in meta-philosophy cause him to abandon his earlier
philosophical positions?”, but “How does Sellars’ later meta-philosophy
change the justification (or lack thereof ) for his first-order positions?”.
Since the meta-philosophy that determines what kind of content justifies
first-order claims changed from a narrowly defined notion of philosophy
to one that makes room for behavioral and psychological concepts, it is
not clear the concepts and arguments found in pure pragmatics are sup-
ported by Sellars’ later meta-philosophy.
Yet making room for behavioral or sociological concepts is not simply a
matter of broadening the general scope of philosophy, but includes incor-
porating concepts that were previously denied philosophical relevance.
Especially as it concerns the inclusions of specifically psychological con-
siderations, one might think Sellars has abandoned his earlier opposition
to both the broad and narrow forms of psychologism, if not the entire
project of developing a non-factual account of philosophy. This is not the
case. Sellars’ later meta-philosophy (leading up to Sellars 1962/1963),
one that tries to balance between opposing commitments from natu-
ralistic and rationalistic traditions, incorporates psychological or factual
1
This is not to say Sellars’ early papers are completely disconnected from his later work. Numerous
ideas that take center stage in his later work (e.g., the primacy of material rules of inference, a non-
factualist role for philosophical analysis, a rationalistic rejection of giveness, the notion of a ‘world
story’) appear in nascent form in his early publications. “Outlines of a Philosophy of Language” is
a fascinating proof of numerous developing themes in Sellars’ thought formulated in the language
of his earlier publications. This Tractaus-style documentation of Sellars’ pure pragmatics project
was developed in 1950 for a Rockefeller conference on semantics, but was never published in
Sellars’ lifetime. The fact that it remained unpublished is, I believe, evidence for Sellars’ lack of
confidence in resurrecting the project.
concepts into philosophy while establishing a gap for philosophical char-

acterizations of language and linguistic rules.
2 After Pure Pragmatics

When staking out a developmental path from Sellars’ early philosophy to
“Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” in 1956, one can loosely clus-
ter his articles into two different groups: Sellars’ initial attempts to define
a behavioristic, yet rationalistically infused, conception of philosophical
concepts (Sellars 1949a/2005, 1950b/2005, 1951/1952), and his slightly
later (though occasionally overlapping), more nuanced take on some of the
same themes (Sellars 1953/1963, 1953/2005, 1953a/2005, 1954/1963).2
Changes to Sellars’ meta-philosophy arguably culminate in his 1960
Pittsburgh lectures on the history and philosophy of science, “Philosophy
and the Scientific Image of Man” (Sellars 1962/1963), where he carves
a unique role for philosophy as a synoptic project that ideally “enriches”
the scientific image of the world by “joining” our refined, common sense
conceptions to it (Sellars 1962/1963, p. 40). Although there are no thor-
ough statements of Sellars’ meta-philosophy until the 1960s (and even
then, as Willem deVries has noted,3 Sellars is not arguing for one specific
philosophical method), there are common meta-philosophical themes
running through his early, post-pure pragmatics meta-philosophy: a need
to balance competing philosophical demands, generally formulated as a
middle road between two philosophical extremes (e.g., rationalism and
empiricism, naturalism and non-naturalism), a close (yet undefined)
relationship to empirical or psychological concepts (while simultane-
ously avoiding psychologism), and the incorporation and explication of
experiential or ‘common sense’ concepts into philosophy. These themes
constitute a conception of philosophy that offers concepts as not only
part of our experience of the world, but as legitimate notions that are not
mere placeholders for ideal scientific explanations. Despite the scientific
2
Jim O’Shea has discussed a similar clustering of Sellars’ articles from the early 1950s. See O’Shea
2007, pp. 61–2.
3
DeVries 2005, p. 13.
description of the world receiving ontological priority (as Sellars will later
describe it), so-called manifest concepts are not overwhelmed by the sci-
ences (Sellars 1962/1963, pp. 8–9).
The understanding of philosophy as combining aspects of tradition-
ally opposed views is found in various forms throughout Sellars’ phi-
losophy (e.g., as between rationalism and empiricism, rationalism and
descriptivism, intuitionism and emotivism, ethical naturalism and ethical
non-naturalism).4 The common theme throughout is that philosophy’s
contribution to the intellectual landscape is Janus-faced—philosophy
contributes to inquiry by offering conceptual refinements that balance
between a priori accounts of the conceptual structure that constitutes our
experience and thought without superseding the empirical and ontologi-
cal dimension of scientific theories and explanation.5 This is a ‘balance’
in the sense that the philosophical dimension of concepts must both ‘fit’
with empirical concepts (though the ‘fitting’ itself is a combination of
factual and non-factual issues)6 and be responsive to our practical interac-
tions with the world.7 As opposed to the rigid distinction between formal
and factual concepts in pure pragmatics, Sellars’ later meta-philosophy
permits a more complicated picture of the interaction between fac-
tual and non-factual concepts (initially expressed at the end of Sellars
1948f/2005, pp. 113–14). This is not to say this dialectical treatment of
intellectual traditions is absent in pure pragmatics. Within those early
publications, Sellars does try to combine traditionally opposed views
(e.g., by constructing a road between Platonism and nominalism, empiri-
cism and rationalism). The difference, as shown below, is that Sellars’
later work incorporates the empirical dimension of concepts in ways not
permitted under his early meta-philosophy.
4
Determining how all of these distinctions ‘fit together’, of course, comes with its own set of prob-
lems and qualifications.
5
See deVries 2013 for a critical discussion of philosophers who each concentrate on one aspect (the
conceptual or the causal) of Sellars’ thought.
6
The notion of a constitutive, yet relative, a priori can be found in C. I. Lewis’ notion of the prag-
matic a priori (one Sellars found congenial, despite Lewis’ seeming commitment to phenomenal-
ism). See Lewis 1923, Friedman 2001, or Sellars’ brief discussion of Lewis in Sellars 1952/1963,
pp. 293–4; and Sellars 1953/2005, p. 237.
7
In the same vein, Sellars will later claim philosophy incorporates, in a suitably complicated sense,
both knowing-how and knowing-that. See Sellars 1962/1963, pp. 1–3.
In the opening paragraphs of “Language, Rules and Behavior”, for

example, philosophical contributions to the understanding of language
are defined by reconciling the seeming gulf between rationalism and
descriptivism. While descriptivism claims that all “meaningful con-
cepts and problems belong to the empirical or descriptive sciences”,
rationalism is the view that a priori or non-empirical concepts and
problems are legitimate, despite not being concepts of the descrip-
tive sciences (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 117). Although seemingly dia-
metrically opposed positions, Sellars claims the task of philosophy is
to map a ‘true’ middle road between both positions, one that accepts
the legitimacy of non-empirical concepts without acquiescing to a
descriptivist’s demands for the lone dominance of the sciences. The
idea is to construct an account of language and linguistic that cap-
tures the rationalist’s account of the a priori, non-factual nature of lin-
guistic rules as ‘seen’ in rational behavior (thus making non-empirical
concepts legitimate concepts that must be included in any ‘complete’
picture of language), while simultaneously recognizing the need for
such concepts to fit with descriptive accounts of behavior. Thus, Sellars
aims to develop a conception of linguistic rules where we find the
a priori nature of rules embedded in actions and thought, without
accepting the non-empirical, seemingly non-natural consequences of
non-factual rules being forced “into the non-linguistic world” (Sellars
1949a/2005, p. 130). The goal is to end with a combination of “empir-
ical psychology” and a philosophical reconstruction of common sense
notions that will exhibit a “structural kinship” with rationalism, yet
remain empirically or naturalistically grounded (Sellars 1949a/2005,
p. 124). The ideal result is a naturalistic philosophy that incorporates
rationalistic concepts without generating non-natural facts in need of
naturalization (what Jim O’Shea has described as “naturalism with a
normative turn”).
This kind of reasoning is also found in Sellars’ early conception of
moral obligation.8 Here, Sellars characterizes the relationship between
obligation and motivation from both directions: “If the main conten-
8
Sellars’ methodological approach to combining naturalism and non-naturalism in ethics did influ-
ence some of his colleagues. See Brodbeck 1951.
tion of this paper is sound, we can run with the ‘naturalists’ (the psychol-
ogy of feeling obligated can be developed in purely descriptive terms),
while hunting with the ‘intuitionists’ (in a perfectly legitimate sense, the
concept of obligation is ultimate and irreducible)” (Sellars 1951/1952,
pp. 516–17). Philosophical conceptions of obligation should combine
the rationalistic ‘grammar’ or ‘structure’ of moral reasoning (or reason-
ing in general) with an empiricist or causally responsive account of
motivation, a combination that anticipates Sellars’ later classification of
normative discourse (as well as semantical and modal discourse) as caus-
ally reducible, yet logically irreducible. Philosophical characterizations
of meaning, as another example, require both the ‘logical grammar’ of
normative expressions and the causally constrained dispositions to cor-
rectly respond in specific circumstances, without assimilating the for-
mer to the latter (Sellars 1954/1963, p. 350). While descriptivism and
behaviorism can adequately characterize the causal, broadly descriptive
aspects of language learning (i.e., that learning a concept, in part, means
being able to respond to linguistic and non-linguistic stimuli in the ‘right
ways’ under different circumstances), the a priori, rationalist grammar of
language (i.e., the relation between expressions and other expressions) is
also needed to characterize the ‘correct’ use of language. Concepts must
be both casually responsive (and, therefore, partially characterizable in
causal or descriptive terms), yet interrelated in ways that admit of their
own kind of relations and explanation—conceptual frameworks must
contain their own ‘internal’ logic and structures while also being respon-
sive to, or being persuaded by, the world (Sellars 1952/1963, p. 293).
The fact certain kinds of discourse (e.g., normative discourse) do not
primarily concern the relationship between language and non-linguistic
events or objects is, for Sellars, what partially justifies the need for a
non-factual, specifically philosophical treatment of concepts. Sellars’ rea-
soning, while somewhat obscured in the relevant texts, is fairly straight-
forward: If the concept of obligation, for example, is to be more than a
“pseudo-concept” (i.e., if we are operating under more than a empiricist
or descriptivist conception of philosophy), yet is not exhaustively char-
acterizable or definable in terms of fact-stating or descriptive discourse,
then there must be a non-factual role for such concepts to play, such roles
must be understood as legitimate roles (where “legitimate” means “not
simply reducible to descriptive concepts”) and, thus, they require a non-

factual analysis in order to ‘properly’ characterize their constitutive role in
language (Sellars 1954/1963, p. 351).
This provides a possible link between the non-factual role of pure prag-
matics and Sellars’ later insistence on the a priori nature of philosophical
analysis, but it does not mean pure pragmatics is consistent with Sellars’
later meta-philosophy. There are two substantial differences blocking this
kind of internalist reading. First, the justification for the non-factual nature
of philosophy differs in Sellars’ early and later periods. In Sellars’ later
work (as articulated above), the issue is that normative discourse needs
its own kind of characterization or explanation because it means some-
thing different than descriptive discourse (i.e., normative terms are not
wholly definable in descriptive terms). Consequently, the role normative
discourse plays in both language and philosophical characterizations of
language is fundamentally different from descriptive discourse. Although
pure pragmatics offers a non-factual characterization of language, there is
nothing in Sellars’ early papers to indicate that the definability of kinds of
expressions requires a non-factual account of language. It is, from Sellars’
early standpoint, the formal (i.e., non-factual) nature of philosophy that
demands a non-factual characterization of concepts, and not the non-fac-
tual nature of language itself.9
This is a minute, but important, difference. Think of it this way:
Sellars’ later philosophy starts from the fact that language exhibits a
certain kind of expression, discourse, or structure and builds up from
there to analyze or explore the necessary internal structures of languages
or conceptual frameworks. This not to say Sellars is offering a kind of
empirical linguistics, but that what ultimately helps explain or justify the
need for certain normative or meta-linguistic concepts in our accounts
of language relies on examples of natural language or linguistic practic-
es.10 Pure pragmatics, however, claims that languages must exhibit cer-
tain structures in order to be classified as languages, and then separates
9
Additionally, part of the issue here is that Sellars is operating under substantially differing concep-
tions of norms and normativity. I address the differences between Sellars’ early and later concep-
tions of normativity in Chap. 6.
10
deVries’ description of Sellars’ approach to language as a “bifocal view” is quite fitting for Sellars’
approach to language after abandoning his early formalism. See deVries 2005, pp. 23–27.
factual from non-factual concepts in a way that bars their interaction.

While Sellars’ later philosophy has recourse to ‘common sense’ or expe-
riential facts about language and linguistic behavior to justify the need
for non-factual discourse, pure pragmatics does not—cannot—access
these kinds of facts. The issue is that how first-order claims are justified
in relation to Sellars’ early and later meta-philosophies is substantially
different from one another and that, because of this difference, the struc-
ture of what counts as justifying philosophical claims is not synonymous
throughout Sellars’ career.
Even if we grant that the early Sellars tried to articulate some of the ideas
found in his later work, the philosophical machinery, so to speak, is simply
missing from pure pragmatics. Any argument for such a position is wholly
absent in pure pragmatics, and it is not clear such a position is formulable
from a formalist standpoint.11 Sellars could, of course, be read as offering
the non-factual dimension of philosophy throughout pure pragmatics, and
I have highlighted this feature of Sellars’ early publications in Chap. 3. Yet,
the justification for why we should (or must) understand certain kinds of
discourse as non-factual and, thus, why we need a non-factual character-
ization of language cannot be found in Sellars’ early publications. While
claims about the necessary internal structure of languages exist in pure
pragmatics (as embodied in conformation rules), there are no arguments—
as I’ve discussed in Chaps. 3 and 4—as to why empirical or descriptive
accounts of language need such depictions or, more so, why such depic-
tions must be non-factual. Even thinking of pure pragmatics as simply a
model of language cannot work here: Because of the supposedly definitive
nature of pure pragmatics, there is no room for alternate, non-formal (yet
still philosophical) models of language. Pure pragmatics can admit to dif-
fering formulations of language (i.e., different sets of conformation rules,
designata), but it cannot admit a differing kind of philosophical analysis.
Instead of constructing formal concepts, Sellars’ philosophy immedi-
ately following pure pragmatics starts from what he describes as a “fact
of experience” or cues taken from “common sense” (Sellars 1949a/2005,
11
To be clear, I am not saying the early roots of these ideas are not present in pure pragmatics, but
that Sellars could not articulate his later positions until after abandoning the meta-philosophy
behind pure pragmatics.
pp. 123–4). Assuming it can be shown that certain concepts must be

included in characterizations of language in a way that requires concepts
differing from empirical approaches to linguistics, one might be able
to find the sense of ‘necessary’ or ‘required’ in the kinds of phenom-
ena exhibited in linguistic experience or practices. This is similar, though
importantly different, to one method found in pure pragmatics—Sellars’
modeling of the co-ex predicate on psychological concepts. After pure
pragmatics, philosophy does not construct formal concepts modeled
on psychological notions, but deals directly with experiential concepts.
Neither “fact of experience” nor “cues from common sense” seem par-
ticularly enlightening, but they do provide clues as to how Sellars under-
stands philosophy’s place among the sciences. Sellars mentions ‘facts of
experience’ when drawing a distinction between what he calls “tied” and
“free” behavior (i.e., between behavior that is conditioned due to envi-
ronmental stimuli and those that are not) in order to show, in part, that
such a distinction is needed to account for differences in our behavior
(Sellars 1949a/2005, pp. 122–3). Our experience is used to justify the
need for this distinction, and it is introduced as a necessary aspect of
behavior in order to make the world intelligible from our perspective;
it is the need for this framework to be incorporated into accounts of
behavior—that we make the world intelligible through a system of ‘rules’
(broadly construed)—that serves as one example of Sellars’ middle path
between rationalism and descriptivism (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 122).
Sellars also characterizes language and behavior from the standpoint of
a “philosophically oriented behavioristic psychology” or the “psychology
of language” (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 117; 1954/1963, p. 321), a perspec-
tive that incorporates references to action, agency, and behavior from a
broadly psychological standpoint. In fact, much of his work after pure
pragmatics is marked by the conviction that the descriptive sciences can,
at least in principle, account for many aspects of human behavior:
But if what we have been saying belongs to psychology, then, once again,
we must ask, “How does it concern us, who are philosophers and not psy-
chologists?” What would be the relevance of an adequate empirical psy-
chology of rule-regulated symbol activity to the task of the philosopher? …
I want now to point out that if there is any truth in what we have said, then
much of what (among philosophers) passes for tough-minded psychology

is an over-simplified extension to the higher processes of the dog-fingersnap-
sit-up-sugar schema of tied responses to environmental stimuli. Not that I
should deny for one moment that animal learning theory provides the key
to all psychological phenomena. On the contrary I am convinced that this
is the case. And not that I should deny that the laws of animal learning (if
we had them) would explain even the mathematician’s behavior in develop-
ing alternative postulate sets for n-dimensional geometries. I am even pre-
pared to endorse this promissory note. (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 123)
This is a fairly dramatic departure from the idea of philosophy as pure

formalism (an idea fundamentally hostile toward a philosophically ori-
ented psychology), one clearly incompatible with Sellars’ early meta-
philosophy, and it surely looks contradictory when compared against
his early opposition to psychologism. The same article that finds Sellars
extolling the virtues of rationalism, as well as warnings against aggres-
sive descriptivism, also finds Sellars claiming that the then-contemporary
confusion over rules is due to general ignorance of the “psychology of
the higher processes”, which is a confusing remark for someone looking
to avoid psychologism (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 122). The concern here is
that Sellars’ use of behavioral facts as exhibited in discussions of ‘rational
behavior’ or ‘facts of experience’ not only tips a ‘properly’ philosophical
account of languages toward psychology (and, thus, robs philosophy of
its subject matter), but must include facts in what is explicitly a non-
factual project.
That Sellars wishes to avoid psychologism in all its forms is not in
dispute. Even though his more nuanced discussion of psychologism is
limited to his early publications, Sellars’ conception of descriptivism
represents the same general concerns. The pressing question concerns
whether it is possible for him to do so given his incorporation of facts of
experience and a psychological basis for philosophical accounts of lan-
guage (as discussed in Sect. 3). From within pure pragmatics, avoiding
psychologism in any form was fairly assured because a completely struc-
tural reconstruction of empirically meaningful languages—one that
does not use factual concepts—cannot be guilty of psychologism in the
narrow (of confusing psychology for philosophy) or broad sense (one
that depicts philosophers as crafting fictionalized psychological entities).

Sellars’ more general concern, that specifically philosophical concepts
were abandoned to the sciences, is also not an issue if philosophical
concepts are specifically defined as formal notions—there would be
little reason to think the formal dimension of inquiry belonged to the
descriptive sciences.
After pure pragmatics, Sellars’ incorporation of these behavioral con-
cepts need not commit him to a factual or psychologistic account of
language, despite his claims that philosophy contributes to the psychol-
ogy of language. While philosophical accounts of language are built
upon a descriptive, behavioral science basis, this explanatory strategy
need not use factual concepts, only mention them. By insisting on the
incorporation of rationalistic strands of philosophy, Sellars carves a spe-
cific path for the philosophical dimension of concepts without giving
in to descriptivism. While courting a relationship with descriptive or
empirical concepts that’s much closer to a factual account of behavior,
Sellars has not violated his earlier position opposition to psychologism
or factualism. The ‘narrow’ sense of psychologism, one traditionally
found in analytic philosophy, is easily avoided when not claiming that
logic is the dominant form of philosophy, while Sellars’ broad sense
of psychologism is a non-starter. Even incorporating psychological
notions into conceptions of language would not contradict Sellars’
early restriction against confusing epistemological with psychological
terms—Sellars’ later work on language does not rely on epistemologi-
cal notions in the way found in his early publications. Insisting that
empirical or descriptive concepts do not function as the sole arbitrators
of legitimate concepts makes room for philosophy to play a role distinct
from the sciences, thus avoiding psychologism in both the broad and
narrow sense, without relying on the problematic conception of formal
languages found in pure pragmatics.
One problem with this argument is that philosophy seems to offer
accounts of concepts not—strictly speaking—found in the descriptive
sciences. The distinction between tied and free behavior, for example,
only arises once such experiential concepts are recognized as legitimate.
We only assume these concepts are illegitimate if we start from some-
thing like a descriptivist bias. Yet, if we start from the idea that such
experiential concepts are not simply placeholders for scientific concepts,
and that they are concepts missing from the descriptive sciences, then
we have the beginnings of an argument in support of Sellars’ balance
between rationalism and descriptivism—the beginnings of a justifica-
tion for why, exactly, the descriptive sciences need philosophical supple-
mentation. But I don’t think this works (both in general and for Sellars).
Although mute on this topic in his early papers, Sellars eventually claims
that philosophy has no “special” subject matter (Sellars 1962/1963, p. 2).
Claiming that philosophy offers concepts (or dimensions of concepts)
not found in the sciences makes it seem as if philosophy is discovering
something, perhaps a new kind of what Sellars needs (as discussed in
Sect. 3) is an account of why, exactly, a philosophical characterization of
language is needed without running the risk of introducing something
like non-natural facts.
Another way of interpreting Sellars’ meta-philosophy after pure
pragmatics is to focus on the now-explicit Kantian dimension. As dis-
cussed in Chap. 4, one internalist strategy for reading Sellars connects
his early works with his later, explicitly Kantian project by reading this
influence back into his earliest publications. Even if reading a Kantian
meta-philosophy into pure pragmatics fails to make historical and tex-
tual sense, it could be that, following Sellars’ abandonment of his early
formalism, a transcendental approach to language solved the problems
plaguing pure pragmatics. There are indications that Sellars’ adoption of
a behavioristic approach to linguistic analysis is motivated by generally
Kantian considerations. For example, Sellars initially describes the con-
cept of rule-regulated behavior in behavioristic and Kantian terms:
The historically minded reader will observe that the concept of rule-
regulated behavior developed in this paper is, in a certain sense, the transla-
tion into behavioristic terms of the Kantian concept of Practical Reason.
Kant’s contention that the pure consciousness of moral law can be a factor
in bringing about conduct in conformity with law, becomes the above con-
ception of rule-regulated behavior. However, for Kant’s conception of
Practical Reason as, so to speak, an intruder in the natural order, we substi-
tute the view that the causal efficacy of the embodied core-generalizations
of rules is ultimately grounded on the Law of Effect, that is to say, the role
of rewards and punishments in shaping behavior. (Sellars 1949a/2005,
p. 124)
This neatly encapsulates Sellars’ debts to both behaviorism and Kant. That
being said, there is nothing particularly ‘transcendental’ about Sellars’
arguments here. Offering a behavioristic rendering of Kantian practi-
cal reasoning seems to concede the kind of rationalism Sellars initially
discusses, but only does so in relation to a particularly empiricist (or,
perhaps, descriptivist) final point. How rules are “ultimately grounded”
on behavioristic concepts should, again, give pause as to the success
in defending the need for a philosophical account of language. Sellars
distancing himself from practical reason’s status as an “intruder” in the
natural world is telling, not because he follows descriptivism in denying
straightforwardly non-natural concepts but because it supports philoso-
phy’s non-factual status.
The blending of rationalist and empiricist respectabilities, as embod-
ied in Sellars’ behaviorist interpretation of Kant, is the earliest example
of what Jim O’Shea has called Sellars’ “norm/nature meta-principle”
(O’Shea 2007, p. 50). Leading into the early 1950s, Sellars formulates
this point when talking about normative discourse. Here, the idea is that
normative and modal discourse (as well as non-factual discourse in gen-
eral) should be classified as causally reducible, yet logically irreducible. By
“logically irreducible”, Sellars means that normative terms, for example,
are not exhaustively definable in descriptive terms (i.e., psychological or
behavioral discourse), yet at the same time they are casually reducible
(i.e., they belong to a network of causal patterns of response and instiga-
tion immersed in the world). The Kantian influence on this is, I think,
obvious, but I am not particularly interested in following this line of
thought here. As I mentioned in Chaps. 3 and 4, I am not opposed to
the idea that Sellars’ philosophy developed into a substantially Kantian
project—it is the more recent claims that Sellars’ philosophy was always
such a project that are historically and contextually problematic.
Exploring the Kantian roots of Sellars’ meta-philosophy matters
because such a position constrains the kinds of claims that can justify the
inclusion of non-factual accounts of linguistic behavior. While the need

for transcendental arguments could be more convincing because they are
arguments for a specific position, the assertion of transcendental condi-
tions function as just that—as assertion. The stipulation of transcenden-
tal conditions for empirically meaningful languages, while avoiding the
problems with Sellars’ early meta-philosophy, are not self-justifying. In
other words, even if we can clearly generate necessary conditions for the
possibility of an empirically meaningful language, this does not mean we
need such conditions in order to characterize or explain such languages.
This issue—why, exactly, do descriptive accounts of language need spe-
cifically philosophical supplementation—comes to a head once Sellars
moves beyond pure pragmatics. From Sellars’ early standpoint, there is
a fairly clearly, though unsuccessful, strategy for dealing with this issue:
a concept’s formal status partially12 secures its non-factual role in sup-
plementing descriptive accounts of language (though, as I have argued
throughout, the fact a concept could fulfill a non-factual, formal role does
not guarantee its status as required for adequate characterizations of lan-
guage). Even if we just assume descriptive accounts of language need
philosophical supplementation, we still need an argument as to exactly
where philosophy must ‘cut in’ on psychological or sociological explana-
tions of language and behavior (i.e., we need to identify some aspect
of psychological or sociological explanation that, in principle, cannot
explain certain aspects of language). This problem is addressed in Sect. 3
below.
This change in meta-philosophy does not mean Sellars’ early use of
formal languages disappears, but there is, indeed must be, a substantial
change in the role formal languages play in Sellars’ philosophy. Instead
of seeing formal languages as defining for philosophy, Sellars describes
formal languages as “tools”:
Have we not therefore reached a point at which the horsehair couch is a

more appropriate instrument of philosophical clarification than the neat
12
Ostensibly, the presence of a concept in an empirically meaningful language (in the description of
said language) would also secure the need for its corresponding formal treatment, though Sellars
does not make this claim and it is not clear if every aspect of empirically meaningful languages plays
(or could play) a formal role.
dichotomies and tidy rule-books of the professional logicians? I do not

think so. Not, however, because I frown on philosophical therapeutics (on
the contrary!), but because it seems to me that the success achieved in
recent decades by putting ordinary language on the couch were made pos-
sible by the brilliant use of tools developed in Principia Mathematica; and
I believe that recent logical theory has developed new tools which has not
yet been put to adequate use in the exploration of philosophical perplexi-
ties. (Sellars 1953/1963, p. 301)
Describing formal languages as providing “tools” for philosophical refine-

ment is a drastically different perspective than what is found in pure prag-
matics. This kind of language is not initially found after Sellars’ break
with pure pragmatics (as formal languages are not discussed in Sellars
1949a/2005), but there are numerous references to formal languages as
‘tools’ for the refinement of natural language concepts throughout subse-
quent publications (Sellars 1953/2005, 1953a/2005). This places Sellars’
later understanding of formal languages as somewhere closer to Carnap’s
idea of explication, where point of formalization is to refine concepts and
claims into more precise formulations (Carnap 1950).
Conceiving of formal languages as tools for refining and explicating
natural language concepts solves numerous problems with Sellars’ early
use of formal logic (especially his contention that a concept’s formal status
secures its place as a requirement for adequate characterizations of lan-
guage), but it does not necessarily tell us how, exactly, we should under-
stand the relationship between formal and natural languages. If we logical
concepts are simply tools for the refinement of natural language concepts,
there ceases to be a substantive issue over how the formal and non-formal
dimensions of language mesh. Gone are concerns over any correspon-
dence between formal and non-formal concepts—why would there need
be any such correspondence if logical concepts are used simply to make
more explicit, the syntactical properties of linguistic expressions?13
13
This does not mean Sellars has clarified the relationship between formal and natural languages.
The somewhat naïve picture of formal languages sampling or modeling parts of natural language
(in the course of refining a given concept) is also beset with problems. See Dutilh Novaes 2012,
pp. 97–100.
In a sense that sounds paradoxical, the role of formal languages, as

well as the associated concepts and rules found in pure pragmatics, man-
ages to both expand and contract in Sellars’ post-pure pragmatics phase.
The role of certain concepts (e.g., extra-logical rules) are expanded to
be necessary not only for pragmatic accounts of language but also for
any adequate account of language (Sellars 1953/1963, p. 316). Yet, the
role of formal languages shrinks considerably. Instead of being a defin-
ing aspect of philosophy, formal languages are employed by Sellars as
tools for refining or sharpening our ordinary language concepts. How,
exactly, these change impact his understanding of the very conception
of a rule itself, as well as extra-logical rules of inference, is taken up in
Chap. 6.
3 The Behavioral Science Foundations

of Normativity
While Sellars’ move away from a formalist definition of philosophy is
marked by an emphasis on a behavioral science basis for understanding
agency, language, and action, there is no clear source from the behavioral
science literature for these beliefs. Although he cites Gilbert Ryle as a
philosophical expositor of behaviorism, Sellars does not identify the psy-
chological sources for his conception of behaviorism. Sellars does remark
that his move to Iowa was part of the reason he began to “take behavior-
ism seriously”, but he only mentions the presence of Kurt Lewin, as well
as Bergmann’s collaboration with Kenneth Spence, as motivating factors
(Sellars 1975). Sellars’ understanding and endorsement of behaviorism
developed throughout his career: while initially offering a seemingly flat-
footed endorsement of a classic form of behavioral science, Sellars refines
his conception of psychology through various publications, eventually
adding argumentative support for his claim that normative terms con-
stitute ‘logically irreducible’ aspects of our explanations of specifically
human behavior.14
14
Another way of looking at Sellars’ developmental picture is to see him as a kind of experimental
writer. Whether due to the pressures of the profession or his own idiosyncratic practices, Sellars
When exploring conceptions of linguistic rules, Sellars depicts the

behavioral sciences, specifically a flatfooted stimulus-response model of
animal learning, as the basis upon which a theory of rational human
activity is grounded (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 122). This is not to define
or equate human behavior with the principles and claims that explain
animal behavior, but to describe “higher level” human behavior as resting
on the same basis:
Clearly the type of activity which is rule-regulated is of a higher level than

that which is produced by simple animal learning procedures. One way of
bringing this out is to say that most if not all animal behavior is tied to the
environment in a way in which much characteristically human behavior is
not. Certainly, we learn habits of response to our environment in a way
which is essentially identical with that in which the dog learns to sit up
when I snap my fingers. And certainly these learned habits of response—
though modifiable by rule-regulated symbol activity—remain the basic tie
between all the complex rule-regulated symbol behavior which is the human
mind in action, and the environment in which the individual lives and acts.
Yet above the foundation of man’s learned responses to environmental stim-
uli—let us call this his tied behavior—there towers a superstructure of more
or less developed systems of rule-regulated symbol activity which constitutes
man’s intellectual vision. (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 122)
Of central importance in Sellars’ discussion of behaviorism is his dis-

tinction between ‘tied’ and ‘free’ behavior (initially explained in Sect. 2),
which mimics the Kantian distinction between behavior that conforms
to a rule and behavior that occurs because of a rule. This is to see human
conduct, linguistic or otherwise, as governed not by habits, but by rules
(Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 123). While the behavioral science explanation
of animal behavior is sufficient for characterizing responses directly tied
to environmental or external stimuli, what’s needed to characterize so-
called free behavior is something more than the basis provided by the
may have published pieces faster than he could refine his own positions (leaving a trail of increas-
ingly nuanced and reworked passes on the same topics). This could account for the systematic
character of Sellars’ work in the 1950s, but it overlooks relevant aspects of his historical context
(e.g., his time at Minnesota and the influx of behaviorism). This suggestion can also be found,
albeit in a more extreme form, in Margolis 2012, p. 25.
behavioral sciences. Sellars’ interest in characterizing not just human

behavior, but specifically rational behavior is telling. The issue is not that
our habitual responses to environmental stimuli may differ from those of
other animals (and, thus, the resources for explaining such behavior may
differ), but the normative classification of responses as rational or irratio-
nal, good or bad, and right or wrong is ostensibly a constitutive element
of our lives and, thus, must factor into explanations of human behavior.
What it is to exhibit specifically human behavior (and to have our actions
occur because of rules, instead of simply conforming to rules) is for our
behavior to be partially constituted by, or held up against, standards of
correctness, acceptability, or constraint. It is this “special” kind of nor-
mative terminology, once joined with generalizations, that constitutes
the rules of our rule-regulated system of behavior (Sellars 1949a/2005,
p. 123).
The distinction between tied and free behavior is important not only
because it distinguishes between mere dispositional responses to exter-
nal stimuli and those motivated by reasons, but also because it makes
available a rational connection between behavior, concepts, and the
world that does not rely on a naïve relationship between rules and extra-
linguistic events or objects. While languages and concepts need causal
roles in order to be applied or used, Sellars wants to avoid a direct con-
nection between behavioral rules and the world. To insist on a coordi-
nating connection between semantical or pragmatic rules, for example,
and extra-linguistic events or objects would reintroduce the kind of naïve
realism that launched Sellars’ (as well as Bergmann’s) initial flight into
formalism. What is needed is a conception of behavioral uniformities
that are understood as responding to, or being led by, rules, and not
solely extra-linguistic events or objects (Sellars 1952/1963, p. 292). The
uniformities that, so to speak, function as constraints on behavior are the
kinds of connections between rules and actions that constitute norm-
governed behavior.
Behaviorism’s role is to provide the descriptive basis for explanations
of behavior that are tied to external stimuli. Sellars’ guiding idea is that
while accounting for specifically human behavior requires more than
stimulus-response habits conditioned by external stimuli, our “intellec-
tual vision” of the world presupposes this base level of habitual response.
But the issue is more than this—our characterizations of human behavior
as “rule-regulated” must “mesh” with the base behavioral science descrip-
tion of habitual responses to the environment. What is left obscure in
Sellars’ earliest brush with behaviorism (an issue that will haunt his phi-
losophy throughout) is whether a fully developed behaviorist psychology
could, even if only in principle, exhaustively describe human behavior.
Sellars generally denies this claim, and explicitly does so as his concep-
tion of behaviorism develops throughout the 1950s on the basis of the
‘logical irreducibility’ of mental, normative, and other non-extensional
vocabulary. Yet, Sellars’ initial incorporation of behaviorism also contains
what appears to be a troubling capitulation to a reductive form of behav-
iorism. At one point Sellars concedes (more so, endorses) the reductionist
point when claiming that “animal learning theory provides the key to all
psychological phenomena” and that the rules of animal learning theories,
if we had a complete set of them, would explain even the most complex
human behavior (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 123). If this promissory note is
correct, and Sellars is willing to endorse it, then it is difficult to see why
philosophical accounts of behavior are needed.
I initially characterized Sellars’ earliest use of behaviorism as “flat-
footed” and there seems to be little room to explain away his early con-
cession that psychology itself (i.e., through theories of animal learning)
can explain even the most complex human behavior. One possibility is
that Sellars relies on “facts of experience” to preserve some need for expla-
nations ‘over and above’ such an extreme form of behaviorism. Despite
behaviorism’s in-principle ability to explain complex human behavior in
the same way as we explain animal behavior (i.e., as habitual response to
external stimuli), Sellars argues we must come to grips with distinctions
and concept (e.g., the distinction between tied and free behavior) that
are facts of our experience (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 123), but this cannot
secure the need for philosophical accounts of language. Simply because
a concept or distinction exists in our experience no more entails the need
for philosophical explanation than the fact that seeing ghosts is ‘in’ our
experience and, thus, requires an explanation (i.e., religious or spiritual)
that differs from the natural sciences. It is a perfectly legitimate strategy
to explain away such experiences by or through psychological descrip-

tions of experience, descriptions that surely do not require philosophical
supplementation. The fact that such phenomena might warrant further
articulation of physiological, behavioral, or sociological concepts, or it
might require psychology to go beyond current explanations does not
justify the need for a different kind of characterization. Insofar as psy-
chological accounts of behavior must be supplemented by philosophy,
then the burden of proof (or, at least, a clear articulation of the problem)
belongs to the philosopher.15
Especially if we think of “Language, Rules and Behavior” as Sellars’
first article without his early formalism, it make sense that the justifica-
tion and argument for the necessity of philosophical characterizations of
rules in a new meta-philosophical framework might be initially lacking.
Throughout the 1950s, Sellars continues to offer more nuanced takes
on kinds of behaviorism. Instead of depicting behaviorism as a singu-
lar psychological theory, Sellars’ publications after “Language, Rules
and Behavior” use a distinction between philosophical and scientific (or
psychological) behaviorism, one similar to his later distinction between
methodological and philosophical behaviorism (Sellars 1953a/2005,
1956/2000).16 Sellars’ more nuanced approach to behaviorism does not
contradict most of his initial statements from 1949, but he does dis-
charge my earlier concern that his 1949 work contains a reductive form
of behaviorism.
The initial development in Sellars’ conception of a behaviorism after
1949 is a distinction between what he calls philosophical behaviorism
and scientific (or psychological) behaviorism. Instead of offering a flat-
footed characterization of behaviorism, Sellars now draws a distinction
15
Sellars 1949a/2005 is especially interesting in this regard because it is full of rhetorical questions
about the relationship between psychology and philosophy. Sellars asks, for example “What would
be the relevance of an adequate empirical psychology of rule-regulated symbol activity to the task
of the philosopher?” without ever offering an answer (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 123). For my pur-
poses, the opposite form of this question is most pressing: What would be the relevance of a philo-
sophical conception of linguistic rules to the psychologist?
16
There is complicated history behind distinctions between methodological and philosophical
behaviorism. Although there are various sources for this kind of distinction in the history of psy-
chology, the most influential sources for Sellars might be found in Bergmann’s (most explicitly in
Bergmann 1956) and Grace de Laguna’s discussions of similar distinctions (de Laguna 1927,
pp. 125–8).
between philosophical behaviorism, the kind of behaviorism that claims

all mentalistic terms can be replaced or eliminated (at least in principle)
by extensional descriptive terms (Sellars 1953a/2005, p. 193), and sci-
entific or psychological behaviorism, the restricted view that there are
merely truth-functional or material equivalences (as opposed to necessary
connections) between behavioral and mental terms (Sellars 1953a/2005,
p. 196). This distinction allows Sellars to explicitly reject the more reduc-
tive forms of behaviorism in favor of sui generis explanations of various
kinds of discourse (e.g., mental, normative, semantic, modal) while not
denying the powerful explanatory role played by the behavioral sciences.
This development, and the ensuing discussion, is primarily important
because it introduces arguments for many of the claims and positions
embedded in “Language, Rules and Behavior”. Specifically, it is Sellars’
argument that normative discourse—especially as it concerns rules—can-
not be reduced to purely extensional terms (in what would be a purely
descriptive behavioral language) that provides partial justification for the
claim that philosophy contributes a unique and necessary supplementa-
tion of descriptive accounts of linguistic behavior.
The transition from talking about concepts and explanations to talk-
ing about terms is important (a move Sellars explicitly makes—Sellars
1953a/2005, p. 190). Instead of trying to show the behavioral sciences
cannot account for the concept of norms (which, ideally, they could
in terms of constrained or encouraged behavior, the feeling of obliga-
tion, suppressed dispositions to respond, etc.), Sellars’ argument is now
based on the idea of descriptive terms not being able to account for
non-descriptive terms. Normative terms, for example, seemingly cannot
be accounted for by a conjunction or disjunction of descriptive terms
(e.g., the meaning of “Norma ought to go to the store” is not captured
by even an infinite disjunction of all the places Norma is not going). This
provides Sellars with a stronger position to argue in support of a specific
role for philosophical accounts to play: normative terms must be seen as
logically irreducible because their linguistic role cannot be accounted for
by descriptive terms.
Nonetheless, the pressing challenge for those interested in defending a
Sellarsian account of normativity is not Sellars’ initially flatfooted accep-
tance of behaviorism, but why we need explanatory resources over and
above those found in behavioral psychology. The problem is that once

we combine the idea that behavioral psychology (in its historical context)
could work as a complete characterization of animal behavior with our
own place in evolutionary history, it is plausible that if behavioral psy-
chology can explain what constitutes the basis of our behavior (by Sellars’
own reasoning), then it should (at least in principle) be able to explain
human behavior as well. This issue should be split between two questions:
(1) how do we demarcate where adequate psychological explanations of
behavior ‘end’ and, thus, require supplementation to adequately describe
a kind of behavior? and (2) why do normative and modal discourse con-
stitute sui generis dimensions or kinds of explanation, ones that cannot be
reduced to behavioral descriptions? Although Sellars’ account of linguis-
tic practices is based on a kind of classic behavioral science description
of stimulus/response mechanisms,17 and even though Sellars claims such
mechanisms could (in principle) explain all human behavior, he insists
that at a certain point, philosophical analysis or explanation is required
to adequately characterize specifically human language or behavior. The
second question, while closely related to Sellars’ account of language (as
discussed above), is distinct from concerns over where psychological and
philosophical explanations recede from each other. Sellars’ arguments as
to why—even in principle—normative discourse cannot be accounted
for in the same terms as an ideally complete behavioral science is dis-
cussed in Chap. 6.
This is not the same problem Sellars will later address with his “myth of
Jones” (Sellars 1956/2000).18 There, the issue is that behavioristic mod-
els (the kind of philosophical or verbal behaviorism found in Ryle’s The
Concept of Mind) of language and action that fully analyze or define men-
talistic vocabulary or concepts (such as introspection) solely in terms of
physical or bodily behavior fail to explain all of the relevant phenomena.19
17
It should be noted that Sellars 1949a/2005 is Sellars’ earliest formulation of a behavioristic
semantics. Sellars’ later work (especially Sellars 1974, 1979/1996) will interpret “patterns of behav-
ior” in a substantially broader sense. See Sellars 1979/1996, pp. 72–3.
18
There are potentially problematic issues between Sellars’ behaviorism and his semantics, espe-
cially as it is found in his later work. An under-discussed article on this issue is Marras 1977, and
the relevant unpublished correspondence between Marras and Sellars can be found at http://www.
ditext.com/sellars/csm.html.
19
For a discussion of this aspect of Sellars’ behaviorism, see O’Shea 2007, pp. 93–7.
My primary concern is not whether behavioristic accounts of language

and behavior need any kind of supplementation (as I am not endorsing
an outdated behaviorism), but why such supplementation must be philo-
sophical in general, or rationalistic (in Sellars’ case) in particular. When
usually discussed, questions surrounding Sellars’ adoption of behaviorism
focus on the former issue, taking for granted the fact that whatever sup-
plementation may aid psychological theories of language and behavior
will come from a perspective outside of the sciences.
If Sellars is willing to accept psychological explanations for all of the
other varieties of behavior (i.e., the “lower levels” upon which higher-
level rational behavior is grounded, what Sellars calls “tied behavior”
and “tied symbol behavior”), then why is something more than psychol-
ogy required to explain the game of giving and asking for reasons? This
problem, one recognized by Rulon Wells in 1952, drives at the heart of
Sellars’ project. Sellars, at least in principle, admits that even such high-
level behavior as argumentation and reason-giving could be accounted
for by a sophisticated form of behavioral science (saying that “If what I
have just said appears to be rhetoric and not philosophy, I can only plead
that it ought to be psychology”), but he draws a distinction20 between the
study of rules as a mode human behavior and linguistic rules themselves
(Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 123). While the former might, in fact, fall within
the scope of the sciences, the latter ostensibly demands21 philosophical
explanation.
One defense of Sellars’ position might be to invoke his distinction
between (broadly) meta-linguistic concepts and concepts of the natural
20
Sellars initially frames this as a confusion between understanding “mathematical inquiry as a
mode of human behavior” and understanding “the concepts and problems of mathematics belong
to naturalistic psychology” (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 118). The issue reappears in terms of rules at the
very end of Sellars 1949a/2005, pp. 133–4.
21
The need to see the human perspective (insofar as it is found in our concepts) as ineliminable or
irreducible is too tempting even for some scientific realists. Perhaps talk of the logical irreducibility
of normative discourse, as well as the need for philosophical explanation of uniquely human
agency, is the last vestige of religious thinking or “special creation”—as Sellars might say (Sellars
1962/1963, p. 6). If we admit (along with at least one point in Sellars’ reasoning) the behavioral
sciences can account for all aspects of animal behavior and learning, and could—in principle—
even explain the proofs of the mathematician (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 123), then why is there sud-
denly a line where psychological explanation becomes inadequate and we need this irreducible,
‘different’ kind of explanation to account for our place, though nothing else’s, in the natural order?
sciences. While the natural sciences give us an ontologically grounded

conception of the world (in the sense that the concepts of the sciences
represent our best descriptions and explanations of what exists), philoso-
phy provides meta-linguistic accounts of our various conceptual struc-
tures. Thus, even if psychology provides an excellent explanatory account
of the various mechanisms (behavior, biological, chemical, or otherwise)
involved in our linguistic capacities and behavior, it fails to capture the
conceptual structure of how we, specifically human agents, move about
and respond to the world. What is missing from the flatfooted behaviorist
account of language and linguistic behavior is the fact, for example, that
our behavior is not only explainable under linguistic rules, but that such
rules can function as reasons for our actions—they are, as Sellars phrases
it, always internal to rational action (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 122). This
defense might help explain Sellars’ explicit shift from talking about con-
cepts to talking about terms—as I noted above, it is substantially easier
to defend the claim that normative linguistic roles cannot be accounted
for by descriptive terms, as opposed to normative concepts (i.e., it seems
as if we could offer a descriptive account of the concept of obligation).
Yet this seems to be a major meta-philosophical issue for Sellars—one
that he crucially must solve—if he is presenting the necessary founda-
tions (more so, the necessarily philosophical foundations) for the char-
acterization or explanation of linguistic practices and agency. There
has to be some explanatory resource that is missing from behavioristic
accounts that can only be characterized from a philosophical, perhaps
meta-linguistic, standpoint. Despite the change in meta-philosophy, the
threatening question behind Sellars’ insistence on the need for a uniquely
philosophical account of rational behavior is still “why is such an account
necessary?” Worrying about the available explanatory resources in a
meta-philosophy could be seen as an early form of the ‘explanatory gap’
problem between philosophy and the behavioral or social sciences. As
Stephen Turner frames the ‘normativist’ position,
they explain the realities (of the state, in this case) in terms of a deeper real-
ity hidden within (for example, in the form of an intrinsic nature). This
hidden reality is systematically distinct from and different than the empiri-
cal reality—in this case, the reality of actual law and the actions done by
actual states. The intrinsic features provide normative standards, which are
systematically discrepant from what actually occurs. But this double game
is also what gives the disenchanters their opening. They can deny that there
is anything intrinsically there, or necessarily there. This is the core of the
issue of normativity: normativity is the name for the non-natural, non-
empirical stuff that is claimed to be necessarily, intrinsically there, and to in
some sense account for the actual. (Turner 2010, p. 5)
Sellars’ shift from talking about concepts to talking about terms cannot
completely sidestep the explanatory issue. While Sellars’ early philoso-
phy suffered from explaining how a specifically formal reconstruction of
pragmatics could produce non-arbitrary characterizations of language, his
conception of philosophy immediately after pure pragmatics attempts to
reconstruct the necessary aspects for characterizing or explaining uniquely
rational behavior. Linguistic rules are taken to be, in some undetermined
sense, psychological (yet needing philosophical articulation), but in a
sense that is not empirically confirmable—at least not in the straightfor-
ward sense that linguistic rules can be observed in practices.
Turner’s description of the explanatory gap problem isn’t a perfect fit
for Sellars, as his discussion of linguistic rules and normative force do
not really place normative claims “intrinsically there” so much as they
are taken to be facts of our experience and language. One way out of
this dilemma, as mentioned earlier, is to deny that there is gap between
behavioral explanations and phenomena, but that the explanations them-
selves are simply insufficient to fully address our behavior or language.
An easy example of this defense, one taken up in Chap. 6, is the idea
that sentences containing normative terms are not reducible to purely
extensional sentences. “Lisa goes to the store” and “Lisa ought to go to
the store”, for example, do not mean the same thing and are not resolv-
able under the same truth-conditions (i.e., there is all the difference in
the world between it being true that Lisa went to the store and it being
truth that Lisa ought to go to the store). The problem is found in assum-
ing that the same kind of explanations that cover the first sentence can
cover the second—this is to ignore the different roles played by norma-
tive vocabulary, roles that cannot simply be boiled down to descriptive
terms because they are, ceteris paribus, not just descriptions. Given that
descriptive terms and the sciences do just that—describe—they are not in

a position to offer exhaustive accounts of normative terms because such
discourse (e.g., rightness, obligation, validity) concerns more than mere
dispositions to respond to environmental stimuli.
We might think philosophical accounts of language—especially
accounts of linguistic rules—do not really explain anything in the sense
that psychological theories explain behavior. It could be argued that phi-
losophy characterizes linguistic phenomena (or, perhaps, provides some-
thing like the transcendental conditions for the occurrence of a language),
but it does not explain phenomena. One way to depict this reasoning,
partially in response to the explanatory gap problem, is fairly straight-
forward: the sciences are responsible for describing and explaining phe-
nomena in general. Thus, philosophical accounts of language do not play
the same role as scientific descriptions or explanations and, accordingly,
need not be ‘required’ in any sense I’ve assumed throughout this book.
In one sense this is true; in order for there to be a specifically philosophi-
cal account of language—one that offers something somehow outside
the sciences’ purview—there must be a distinct role for philosophical
characterizations of language to play. This kind of reasoning helps explain
why the explanatory gap problem is so appealing from a philosophical
perspective—in order for there to be a need for philosophical accounts of
language, there must be something missing from scientific descriptions or
explanations. Yet this does not help us understand exactly what the role is
or why it is necessary for an adequate characterization of language. Sellars’
early philosophy, for example, was able to carve out a specific (i.e., formal
or non-factual) role for philosophical analysis, but failed to provide an
argument as to why such an analysis generated explanatory requirements.
After pure pragmatics the problem threatens from the opposite direction:
philosophical analysis of linguistic rules, for example, may provide a nec-
essary explanatory dimension for a certain concept (and, thus, appear to
fill the explanatory gap), but there is nothing to set it apart from linguis-
tic or scientific explanations. Locating the philosophy of language as part
of empirical linguistics may not raise some contemporary hackles, but it
is clearly not an option for Sellars.
4 Conclusion
As indicated at the start of this chapter, I do not think the developmen-
tal history of Sellars’ (or, perhaps, anyone’s) philosophy is linear. That
some of the positions and commitments found in pure pragmatics persist
throughout Sellars’ career, as well as overlap with substantial changes to
his meta-philosophy, is not a problem for developmental accounts of his
philosophy. Despite differences and commonalities, a continuous con-
cern over meta-philosophical issues, especially in terms of the relation-
ship between philosophy and the sciences, marks all eras of Sellars’ work.
This can be seen in his 1948–49 review of Ernest Cassirer’s Language and
Myth, where Sellars asks
Does not the conception of philosophy as a study of “symbolic forms” bring

with it an obligation to distinguish between the philosophical and the non-
philosophical study of symbolism? If no fundamental distinction can be
drawn (other than, perhaps, in degree of generality), does epistemology
become an inductive science? Does Kant’s Copernican Revolution become
a set of propositions in the inductive linguistics of sense-perception? If, on
the other hand, a sharp distinction can be drawn, what light is thrown on
the philosophical study of symbolism by historical investigations? Again,
granting that myth, art, language, and science (why not also morality?) or
some similar set can be regarded from the stand-point of the inductive study
of symbolisms (psychology, sociology, history) as distinguishable but mutu-
ally interacting dimensions of symbol-using; may it not be necessary to con-
ceive of philosophy as a non-inductive study which has no place for any
other meaning of “meaning” than designates? or for any other symbolic
forms than those analyzed in pure semantics and perhaps (as I have sug-
gested in this journal) pure pragmatics. (Sellars 1948g, p. 328)
The meta-philosophical nature of these comments not only reflects

Sellars’ persistent concern with the relationship between philosophy and
the sciences, but also shows (in the last sentence) his previous conception
of philosophy at work. Of course, it is not enough to have shown that
Sellars’ meta-philosophy changed; what is needed are substantial philo-
sophical consequences because of that change.
The strongest challenge remaining between Sellars’ early and later

period—due to his different meta-philosophies—might be the persistent
concern that his characterization of language and linguistic rules is simply
arbitrary. We might have good reason to argue, consistent with Nagel’s
objection from the 1940s, that either his defining concepts (within pure
pragmatics or as found in their later formulations) are not necessary to
account for language and our linguistic practices, that they are simply
one set of characteristics among a fairly large selection, or they are ulti-
mately reducible to the concepts or theories of the sciences. The middle
claim may not be problematic—as pointed out in Sect. 2, Sellars is happy
to embrace a pragmatic or relativized notion of conceptual structures
that change depending on which one “the world persuades us to adopt”
(Sellars 1952/1963, p. 292). Yet, I do not think this would fully address
the challenge of showing why a specifically philosophical conception of
rules is required in order to adequately characterize language and linguis-
tic behavior. What needs to be shown is not that a set of rules, for exam-
ple, is necessary within a world (to borrow Sellars’ early terminology),
but that a philosophical explanation of language is an overall requirement
for an adequate characterization of language.
Another way to look at this issue is to ask: is the idea that a ratio-
nalist dimension of philosophy (i.e., what Sellars sometimes talks about
as rationalistic logic or grammar) must be included to account for spe-
cifically human linguistic capacities justified (or, at least, recommended)
by Sellars’ “Hegelian conviction” that a ‘proper’ philosophical account
of concepts should incorporate the truths of traditionally opposed posi-
tions (deVries 2005, pp. 18–19)? Does combining the various aspects of
seemingly incompatible ideas or theories give a closer approximation to
the truth? These are broad questions, ones that cannot fully be addressed
here (though I have already touched on what such explanatory require-
ments might look like from within Sellars’ philosophy), though there is
an important sense that a developmental account of Sellars’ philosophy
must face these issues. Even if we can show that Sellars’ “Hegelian com-
mitment” is correct (‘correct’ in the sense of being a pragmatically useful
way of doing philosophy—a good model for how we ought to approach
reconciling differing conceptions of the world), none of this addresses the
more troubling question of why such a dialectic is required to account for
our concepts. The descriptivist’s challenge is clear: while we may have pre-
viously needed philosophical theories to account for various phenomena,
or our experience of such phenomena, the sciences have since eclipsed
the limited reaches of such theories. Even though there is a proposal for
enriching the descriptivist’s eliminative project with philosophically char-
acterized and refined images, we need to show why such images are neces-
sary. The idea of enriching the scientific picture of the world with “the
language of community and individual intentions” in order to make such
depictions “no longer an alien appendage to the world in which we do our
living” is tempting, but one imagines a stronger argument for the neces-
sity of such enrichment (beyond our own sense of alienation and a need
for practical or theoretical comfort) is needed (Sellars 1962/1963, p. 40).
I am not claiming these arguments are absent from Sellars’ mature
work, though the relevant text (Sellars 1962/1963) is fairly opaque on the
matter. As I mentioned above (and will explore in Chap. 6), one source
for justifying these claims could be that normativity itself is ‘logically irre-
ducible’ and, thus, constitutes an aspect of our conceptual structure that
is not only amenable to non-factual characterization but, in fact, requires
it. This is partially what Sellars is getting at when he talks of enriching the
scientific image with the principle and standards that make discourse and
rationality itself possible, but this argument requires a transition away
from some of Sellars’ earliest positions, while generating new challenges
in light of that transition (Sellars 1962/1963, p. 40).
6
Two Conceptions of Normativity
1 Introduction
When sending the original draft of “Empiricism and Abstract Entities”
to Rudolf Carnap in 1954, Wilfrid Sellars remarked that “most of what I
have done (I won’t say accomplished) in philosophy, has been built on the
foundations you laid in what, to my way of thinking, remains your most
exciting book, Logical Syntax of Language” (Sellars 1954). This claim is
both familiar yet shocking. Sellars’ admiration for Carnap’s Logical Syntax
of Language is familiar in the sense that his earliest publications diag-
nosed the ills of analytic philosophy as a direct result of moving away
from the syntax phase of logical empiricism. Pure pragmatics was pre-
sented as a formalist rendering of philosophy, one arguably consistent
with Carnap’s meta-philosophical project in the Syntax and was explicitly
framed as a corrective to theoretical ground lost in the broadening of
Carnap’s Syntax project to include pure semantics (Sellars 1947a/2005,
p. 5). Nonetheless, Sellars’ admiration for Carnap’s earlier project comes
on the heels of his rejection and strident criticism of Carnap’s conception

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52717-2_6
of inference and linguistic rules, a rejection that comes packaged with

Sellars’ abandonment of a formalist meta-philosophy.
As I remarked in Chap. 4, one way to draw a distinction between Sellars’
early and later philosophy is to focus on what could not be said within
the confines of pure pragmatics. While his formalist meta-philosophy is
never clearly established, Sellars’ reliance on the formal or pure nature
of pragmatics to demarcate factual from non-factual concepts is a defin-
ing feature of his early meta-philosophy. As we saw in Chap. 5, Sellars’
abandonment of this early meta-philosophy does not mean his later work
offers a factual account of philosophy but, instead, must find a way to
mesh factual and non-factual accounts of language and rationally guided
behavior. These are two drastically different meta-philosophies that entail
differing treatments and restrictions on what counts as the specifically
philosophical dimension of concepts. The most prominent example of
this is found in the differing conceptions of language and linguistic rules
operative in Sellars’ early and later philosophy. While Sellars’ early con-
ception of a linguistic rule conforms to the conception of a rule found in
Carnap’s and other analytic philosophers’ works in the 1930s and 1940s,
Sellars’ later articulation of the norm-governed, behavioral conception of
linguistic rules marks a drastic departure from his early meta-philosophy.
Such rules, because of their behavioral nature, could not be formulated
within a formalist meta-philosophy. It is only after Sellars abandons his
early formalist position that he can develop the normative, sui generis
conception of language and linguistic rules.
Additionally, the change in meta-philosophy described in Chap. 5
supports Sellars’ shifting conception of language. Instead of a formal
reconstruction of empirically meaningful languages, Sellars now employs
‘ordinary usage’ and natural languages as concepts within philosophy
(concepts previously relegated to descriptive studies of language). This
is not to claim Sellars’ early analysis was wholly detached from assump-
tions about natural language (as natural languages would count as one
instance of an empirically meaningful language), but that his later phi-
losophy uses and relies on conceptions of actual and ordinary usage that
were, because of his initial meta-philosophy, unavailable in his early
works.
2 On the Very Conception of a Rule

The notion of a rule in pure syntax and pure semantics offers an influ-
ential example of rules in pure studies of language, and it is specifically
Carnap’s conception of a rule that serves as Sellars’ main target of criti-
cism. When drawing a distinction between descriptive and pure studies
of language, Carnap is explicit that the rules constituting pure studies of
language are non-factual definitions:
We may setup a system of semantical rules, whether in close connection

with a historically given language or freely invented; we call this a semanti-
cal system. The construction and analysis of semantical systems is called
pure semantics. The rules of a semantical system S constitute, as we shall
see, nothing else than a definition of certain semantical concepts with
respect to S, e.g. ‘designation in S’ or ‘true in S’. Pure semantics consists of
definitions of this kind and their consequences; therefore, in contradistinc-
tion to descriptive semantics, it is entirely analytic and without factual
content. (Carnap 1942, pp. 11–12)
Rules in this sense, simply comprise explicit definitions and their ana-
lytic consequences. If our concern is a formally and materially adequate
characterization of pure languages and, thus, the linguistic rules that
constitute such languages, the requirements for something to be a rule,
as found in pure semantics, are fairly minimal. As long as a semantical
concept, for example, is explicitly defined in correspondence with the
other restrictions present in a language (e.g., a given concept is not being
defined in toto, but is defined relative to some language, that it does not
violate additional restrictions found in the formation and transformation
rules of the language), then definitions and their analytic consequences
function as rules. The rule ‘a’ designates Aardvark”, for example, defines
“a” for a given language, L, by offering an explicit, meta-linguistic char-
acterization of the relationship between an object language expression
(on the left-hand side of expression) and the extra-linguistic designata
of the expression (on the right-hand side of the expression). This, when
combined with the set of analytic consequences that follows from this
definition, is all that is meant when Carnap refers to rules in pure studies
of language.
While the appearance of linguistic rules in descriptive studies of syntax

and semantics may require reference to behavior or behavioral constraints
(and, possibly, normative terms such as ‘ought’ or ‘ought not’), there are
no such requirements for rules in pure conceptions of language. One
of Carnap’s clearest statements on this issue is found in his response to
Sellars’ later criticism of descriptive and pure semantics. Carnap not only
reinforces the definitional nature of rules in pure studies of language but
also points out how this conception of a rule is at odds with Sellars’ own:
Sellars’ belief that my descriptive syntax and descriptive semantics con-

tained prescriptive conceptual components is perhaps due to the fact that I
used the word ‘rule’ both in syntax and in semantics. Perhaps he under-
stood this term in its everyday sense, i.e., as referring to prescriptive rules,
prescriptions, prohibitions, or permissions. However, I use the word ‘rule’
in this field only in order to conform to the customary usage in logic … It
seems to me that in the development of modern logic it has become even
more evident that logic, and likewise syntactical and semantical analysis of
language, are purely theoretical; the use of the terms like ‘rules’, ‘permitted
operations’, and ‘prohibited operations’ is here, just as in algebra, merely a
psychologically useful way of speaking which should not be understood
literally. (Carnap 1963, pp. 923–4)
Although this theme will be taken up again in Sect. 3, there is a substantial

difference between rules that use normative terminology as “psychologi-
cally useful” ways of speaking about concepts and rules that take nor-
mative vocabulary as constitutive of a rule. The rules found in Carnap’s
descriptive and pure conceptions of language follow the former practice,
meaning that normative terms, insofar as they even appear in descrip-
tive or pure studies of language, does not require a characterization or
explanation over and above explicit definitions. Rules, especially in pure
studies of language, need not include normative concepts or terminology.
What differentiates this conception of linguistic rules form Sellars’
later insistence that rules must contain, in addition to their descriptive
content, normative concepts or terms? Carnap’s description of rules as
conforming to “the customary usage in logic” exhibits what can be called
an ‘internal conception of normativity’. This conception of normativity
is defined by two distinct claims: (1) while rules still employ normative
terminology (e.g., ‘correct’, ‘incorrect’, ‘ought’, ‘ought not’), ‘normative

force’ is only found relative to the voluntary adoption of a given language
and, (2) the language used to characterize or explain linguistic rules does
not require irreducible, sui generis terminology in order to explain their
constitutive role in language. While linguistic rules may exhibit norma-
tive force, it is a force solely bound and determined within a given formal
system. Insofar as we adopt one set of rules over another, we are bound
to follow the standards of correctness dictated by those rules so long as we
continue to adopt the same rules. Nothing outside of our continued use of
a given language requires us to acknowledge the normative force of such
rules. Consequently, the explanatory resources required to account for
the internal conception of normativity need not venture outside of the
adopted language. Why, for example, should we classify “AvBvC” as vio-
lating the standard formation rules of sentential logic? Because “AvBvC”
violates the binary nature of disjunction as explicitly defined by the rules
in traditional sentential logic. Must we classify “AvBvC” as an ill-formed
or incorrect expression? Only if we voluntarily adopt formations rules
that define disjunction as a binary connective.
If rules themselves1 lack normative force, why would we need explana-
tory resources outside of a descriptive language in order to account
for them? Insofar as we choose to adopt one set of linguistic rules over
another, the factor differentiating the optional choice of rules over those
we are, in some sense, forced to adopt is the omission of normative lan-
guage, behavioral constraints, and pragmatic or factual considerations.
This is, in part, what Carnap means when he talks about the non-factual
and arbitrary nature of pure studies of language, though whether I adopt
one set of inference rules over another could rely on motivational and
practical considerations that influence my choice of rules. While rules in
pure studies of language do constrain our choices, they are optional con-
straints based solely on our choice of rules. Insofar as I adopt the norms
1
I am not claiming that considerations outside of the rules found in pure syntax or pure semantics
do not exhibit normative force, but that the rules themselves (hence rules internal to some lan-
guage) do not possess normative force. That disjunction is generally considered a binary connec-
tive, for example, might be a norm that demands recognition in certain contexts (e.g., a logic
course), but the demand for recognition in these cases comes not from the rules themselves but
some external factor (e.g., a professor).
and rules of a given semantical system, I am bound to follow the explicit

definitions created or found in formation and transformation rules so
long as my expressions and inferences occur in that specific semantical
system. Employing a different set of formation or transformation rules
is not wrong, but simply an expression of that fact that I am following
a different set of rules. Outside of debates over the formal and mate-
rial adequacy of definitions, which we need not follow,2 the correctness
or incorrectness of rules is a non-starter, something akin to a category
mistake. As Carnap frames the issue, “In choosing rules we are entirely
free. Sometimes we may be guided in our choice by the consideration of
a given language, that is, by pragmatical facts. But this concerns only the
motivation of our choice and has no bearing upon the correctness of the
results of our analysis of the rules” (Carnap 1942, p. 13).
Is the traditional conception of a rule, along with the internal concep-
tion of normativity, found in pure pragmatics? Sellars’ objections to the
traditional conception of a rule are mainly found in his 1950s publica-
tions (Sellars 1953/1963, 1953/2005, 1954/1963), though one can find
the roots of these objections in his 1949 article “Language, Rules and
Behavior”. What is telling is that Sellars’ later objections—because of
the vastly different conception of a rule in use—cannot be formulated
within pure pragmatics. This does not mean, as was shown in Chap.
5, that Sellars’ later conception of a rule is a factual one, but that the
behavioral explanatory resources required for talking about patterned–
governed behavior are not available from within pure pragmatics. In
order to present a rival conception of rules, one that avails itself of the
resources found within the discussions of norm-governed behavior, col-
lective intentionality, and community ascent,3 Sellars must abandon the
formalism of his earliest publications.
Since pure pragmatics is framed as a corrective to pure semantics,
one might think Sellars’ conception of a rule would also diverge from
2
Material adequacy can be difficult to parse in terms of pure studies of language. While Tarski and,
to some degree, Carnap might argue that a given concept is adequate if and only if it conforms to
common usage, some (e.g., Hempel) would claim that concepts are materially adequate just in case
they convey our intended meaning.
3
The relationship between Sellars’ conception of normativity and collective intentionality has been
addressed at length in Olen and Turner 2015.
Carnap’s views, but there are numerous instances where Sellars places the
rules of pure pragmatics (e.g., conformation rules) alongside traditionally
conceived formation and transformation rules, claiming that any account
of language requires not only extra-logical rules of inference but also the
“familiar rules” of formation and transformation (Sellars 1949a/2005,
p. 131). While the behavioral roots of Sellars’ later objections to the tradi-
tional conception of a rule are present in these early accounts—especially
in such claims that “a rule, properly speaking, isn’t a rule unless it lives in
behavior” (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 134)—Sellars does not fully reject the
traditional conception of a rule until “Inference and Meaning” in 1953.
Sellars’ discussion of the differing requirements for characterizing seman-
tical systems and empirically meaningful languages as turning on the nec-
essary inclusion of conformation rules even serves as an example of his
acceptance of the traditional conception of a rule. Here, Sellars claims
that within pure semantics semantical rules could adequately define a
given object language, but this characterization would not count as ade-
quate within pure pragmatics (Sellars 1947a/2005, pp. 9–10). Given that
the languages constructed in pure semantics and pure pragmatics are con-
stituted by such rules, if Sellars’ later objections to Carnap’s conception
of a rule were present in his early publications, they would be explicit.
The dividing issue is not whether the very notion of a rule differs, but
whether we wish to construct a language that exhibits extra-logical con-
straints. While the rules required to distinguish semantic from pragmatic
accounts of language differ, the notion of a rule itself is not in question.
Does this mean such rules are somehow not normative? One concern
might be that I am claiming pure pragmatics (or pure studies of language
in general) exhibit no normative force and, thus, do not concern whether
certain actions are correct or incorrect. In some sense this is true—fol-
lowing Carnap, I am arguing that pure conceptions of language, and the
rules that constitute such languages, are not concerned with standards of
correctness in the way found in a behaviorally articulated conception of
rules. In instances where normative terminology is used, there is no reason
to understand it literally—conformation rules, for example, should only
be read as constraining the possible combinations of expressions insofar
as we choose to adopt a certain set of conformation rules. Because there is a
large, if not infinite, number of possible conformation rules, and because
we are not forced to recognize all such rules as true or false, correct or
incorrect, pure studies of language only generate normative force insofar
as we voluntarily choose to adopt a given set of rules. Adopting a differ-
ing, perhaps contradictory, set of conformation rules is not wrong, but
simply a different choice.
Additionally, since conformation rules are presented alongside the
“familiar rules” of pure syntax and pure semantics, it stands to reason
Sellars did not initially see an issue with the conception of a rule opera-
tive in Carnap’s philosophy (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 131). The change
brought about by supplementing pure semantics with pure pragmatics
is not a change in the very conception of a rule, but the requirement of
additional pragmatic concepts in order to adequately characterize empiri-
cally meaningful languages. The kind of arguments one finds against this
understanding of rules, while a major cornerstone of Sellars’ later works,
do not appear in pure pragmatics. It is only after Sellars abandons his
early formalism that normative terms demand an irreducible, sui generis
level of explanation in order to characterize linguistic rules.
3 Sellars’ Later Conception of a Rule

Beginning in 1949, Sellars’ conception of a rule underwent substantial
changes. Gone are the formal restrictions on what constitutes philosophi-
cal concepts and, as discussed in Chap. 5, Sellars now avails himself of
behavioral science concepts. These additional explanatory resources allow
Sellars to depart from the traditional conception of a rule discussed in
Sect. 2. In its place, Sellars develops a conception of linguistic rules from
a vaguely behavioristic standpoint—“Language, Rules and Behavior”
contains Sellars’ earliest non-formal characterization of linguistic rules:
A rule, existing in its proper element, has the logical form of a generaliza-
tion. Yet a rule is not merely a generalization which is formulated in the
language of intra-organic process. Such a generalization would find its
overt expression in a declarative sentence. A rule, on the other hand, finds
its expression either in what are classified as non-declarative grammatical
forms, or else in declarative sentences with certain special terms such as
“correct,” “proper,” “right,” etc., serving to distinguish them from general-

izations. What do these special features in the formulation of rules indi-
cate? They give expression to the fact that a rule is an embodied
generalization, which to speak loosely but suggestively, tends to make itself
true. Better, it tends to inhibit the occurrence of such events as would fal-
sify it—if it weren’t already false, that is, for the generalizations which lie at
the core of rules are rarely if ever true, and unless they could (logical or
physical possibility) be false, they could scarcely function as rules. (Sellars
1949a/2005, p. 123)
This description of rules is markedly different from what is found in pure

pragmatics. While rules might appear in the form of generalizations, it
is the inclusion of normative vocabulary that separates them from mere
generalizations.4 More so, it is the fact that normative concepts function,
in part, to constrain or inhibit behavior (or “events” in Sellars’ above ter-
minology) that would make the core statement of rules false. Rules, now,
do not simply function as definitions but require reference “to a doing or
action” in order to count as rules (Sellars 1953a/2005, pp. 230–1). This
is, explicitly, a conception of rules that relies on constraining or permit-
ting behavior in order to function as a rule—fundamentally, behavioral
control is built into the very definition of a rule. Given Sellars’ meta-
philosophy after pure pragmatics, employing the language of behavioral
and social concepts here causes no friction between philosophical and
descriptive accounts of language, though these concepts (or, more so,
stipulating that such concepts or terms are integral for rules to exhibit
behavioral control) are not available under Sellars’ early formalism.
The explicit difference between Sellars’ early and later conception of
a rule can be seen in his commitment to the necessary presence of nor-
mative terms and references to action in the definitions of rules. Even
though rules in Sellars’ early publications do not make explicit reference
to action, they could be re-written to accord with the conception of rules
4
What linguistic rules ‘require’, as well as the correct conception of a rule, is the subject of what
only can be described as a vast sea of literature. For a summary and critical interpretation of just
some of the more recent literature surrounding meaning, rules, and rule following, see Kusch 2006.
It is also difficult to determine exactly when Sellars read the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, but
there is an obvious connection between Wittgenstein’s influence in the US and Sellars’ focus on
rules that I cannot explore here.
found in Sellars’ later philosophy. Conformation rules in pure pragmat-

ics, for example, could be re-worded to address not only permissible or
impermissible combinations of individual constants and predicates but
also an agent’s symbol manipulating behavior (i.e., that one cannot or
should not be allowed to create expressions by combining specific indi-
vidual constants and predicates). “Combining”, in this case, would not
just reference the combination of individual constants and predicates,
but (at least implicitly) the act or behavior of combining expressions or
parts of expressions. Thus, one could argue there is more of a continuity
between Sellars’ early and later writings on rules than I am allowing for
at the onset. Yet this interpretation fails to acknowledge the role played
by Sellars’ meta-philosophy in pure pragmatics; recommendations for
behavior and the inclusion of behavioral prescriptions (or the incorpora-
tion of behavioral or social concepts) cannot count as philosophically
relevant in pure pragmatics. Sellars simply does not depict his early con-
ception of rules this way—his criticisms of pure semantics, for example,
concerns the absence of conformation rules (among other issues), but not
the very conception of a rule.
The external conception of normativity—what I claim is found in Sellars’
later conception of linguistic rules—is embodied in the idea that the proper
characterization of rules requires the enlisting of normative terms with “sur-
plus meaning over and above” descriptive terms (which generates an irre-
ducible, sui generis conception of normative vocabulary) and these rules
use—but are not exhausted by—behavioral and social science concepts
(Sellars 1953/2005, p. 230). Without the inclusion of normative terms, tra-
ditional accounts of linguistic rules cannot capture the normative force of
such rules and, according to Sellars, do not function as genuine rules (Sellars
1953/2005, p. 230). To be a genuine rule is to be responsive to external con-
straints, yet “internal” to action in a way that causes or motivates behavior.
As Sellars puts it, “it could not be true of a word that ‘it means ought’ unless
this word had motivating force in the language to which it belongs” (Sellars
1954/1963, p. 350). This is an explicit example of what I called the Janus-
faced character of philosophical concepts in Chap. 5.
Sellars’ strongest argument for the sui generis nature of normative dis-
course is that normative terms are not reducible to, though they inher-
ently involve, behavioral or descriptive terms because—while possibly
conveying the same kind of information—normative and descriptive
terms simply do not mean the same thing. The irreducibility of normative
and modal vocabulary is a fundamental commitment for Sellars: “The
task of the philosopher cannot be to show how, in principle, what is
said by normative discourse could be said without normative discourse,
for the simple reason that this cannot be done” (Sellars 1953a/2005,
p. 214). Even if a fully developed, ideally complete behavioral science
could “formulate laws of man and nature adequate to predict and con-
trol” phenomena such as human linguistic behavior, it could not capture
the fact certain expressions or behavior mean specific things to specific
agents or communities (Sellars 1953a/2005, p. 214). While “Sara ought
to pay her debts” might convey the behavioral or descriptive information
that, ceteris paribus, Sara will pay her debts (or, more so, she will exhibit
dispositions and behaviors we call “paying her debts”), such statements
do not mean the same thing as saying “Sara ought to pay her debts”.
Instead of reducing or eliminating our common sense talk of statements
or behavior meaning certain things, Sellars argues philosophers must
“exhibit” the connection between such talk and the scientific framework
of explanation—a claim that anticipates Sellars’ mature meta-philosophy
of the 1960s (Sellars 1953a/2005, p. 214).
Crucially, the idea that normative (as well as modal and semantic)
terms cannot be fully characterized in straightforwardly truth-functional
sentences is Sellars’ ultimate justification for characterizing normative
terms as sui generis. The internal sense of normativity is exhibited in what
Sellars’ calls a “PM language” (in reference to Russell’s and Whitehead’s
Principia Mathematica), where it is assumed natural language can be
logically reconstructed solely on the basis of logical expressions (consist-
ing of truth-functional connectives), primitive descriptive predicates, for-
mation and transformation rules, and expressions only constructed out of
these elements (Sellars 1953a/2005, pp. 190–1).5 Insofar as such languages
exhibit any sense of normativity, it is the voluntary, flat sense found in
traditional conceptions of rules qua definitions. One might think modal
5
It is not clear if the reconstruction of empirically meaningful languages in pure pragmatics counts
as a “PM language” in the above sense. Given that Sellars is consistently skeptical about the ability
to adequately reconstruct natural language in “PMese”, we might think his early project avoids this
kind of formal reconstruction. Sellars does argue, though, that pragmatic predicates are “formally
decidable” (even concepts such as “factually true”) based on the world-story of a language (Sellars
1947b/2005, p. 39). This claim is offered as a promissory note, but never clarified in Sellars’ early
publications.
and normative terms could be reconstructed in PM languages with truth-

functional connectives, but this fails to capture the non-extensional role
played by terms such as ‘necessary’, ‘possible’, ‘ought’, and ‘ought not’. As
mentioned previously, while descriptive terms can adequately character-
ize the obtaining or doing of specific actions (the causal reducibility of
such terms), they fail to capture the meaning of modal and normative
terms.
While the idea of broadening non-representational terms beyond
logical discourse is present in Sellars’ earliest essays (Sellars 1948a/2005,
p. 53), this consideration is not initially extended to normative and
modal terms. Sellars’ claim that formal terms do not stand for features
of the world is a fairly conventional feature of formal or pure stud-
ies of language, but classifying ‘designates’ or ‘means’ as formal terms
is what distinguishes Sellars’ early works from most6 of his contempo-
raries (Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 53). As explained in Chap. 2, the move to
insist on the non-representational nature of designation was in response
to conceptions of designation infected with psychologism or factualism
(e.g., Hall’s stipulations that rules of designation are ultimately factual
relations between language and world). Even though Sellars repeats this
concern when addressing the rationalist’s tendency to project “the rules
of his language into the non-linguistic world”, these claims occur both
after abandoning the meta-philosophy behind pure pragmatics and does
not directly concern the analysis of normative terms (Sellars 1949a/2005,
p. 130). Despite the roots of this idea present in pure pragmatics, Sellars’
conviction that normative terms require non-descriptive characterization
has less to do with these early points surrounding formal terms, and more
to do with the idea that normative terms cannot be captured by descrip-
tive terms alone.
Although not exhausted by descriptive accounts of behavior, the exter-
nal conception of normativity relies on a behavioristic framework of
explanation because Sellars only makes sense of the need for a philosophi-
cal conception of rules, as well as the role normative terms play, against
6
Bergmann interprets pure semantics as a formal investigation of language and, thus, rules of des-
ignation do not ‘stand for’ or ‘mean’ features of the world. Sellars’ early insistence on the formal
nature of designation follows Bergmann in this respect.
the backdrop of behavioristic theories of learning. By using a behavioral,

as opposed to formal, framework, Sellars employs various concepts and
distinctions (e.g., the distinction between conforming to a rule and being
guided by a rule) that are unavailable from a formal standpoint. The
combination of behavioral and social concepts with the logically irreduc-
ible, non-extensional character of normative terms is crucial for under-
standing Sellars’ discussion of normative discourse (as well other kinds
of discourse) as causally reducible, yet logically irreducible. Notice, there
are substantial differences between the operative form of normativity that
employs “causally reducible, yet logically irreducible” terms and what
is found in the internal conception of normativity. Following Sellars’
example of extensional terms, rules that exhibit the internal conception
of normativity could—at least in principle—be characterized by solely
descriptive terms.
What makes the external conception of normativity ‘external’ is the
specifically social source of normative force implicit in rules that constrain
or permit certain kinds of behavior. While the traditional conception of
a rule exhibits something akin to voluntary normative force (i.e., only
insofar as I voluntarily choose to adopt and follow a set of rules, I must
recognize them as rules), Sellars’ later conception of a rule demands rec-
ognition from members of a community whether they choose to adopt a
rule or not. Rules of etiquette are a straightforward example of behavior-
constraining rules that exhibit the external conception of normativity. In
most Western communities, it is taken as an implicit norm that I wear a
shirt when I teach college courses. If I suddenly tear my shirt to shreds
in the middle of class—much like a wrestler in the midst of a power-
ful comeback—we would clearly say I violated a rule of etiquette in my
professional community. If I were visiting a vastly different community,
one with extremely different professional norms, and was not a member
of that community (and, therefore, was not fully aware or constrained
by their norms), I may be able to violate a norm without realizing it.
Crucially, though, my awareness of a norm is not necessarily a condition
for being subject to it, much like I can be aware of the rules of a game
without playing the game. But this is the kind of norm or rule that, so
long as I count as a member of a community7 that ascribes to such rules,

I am forced to recognize even in my violation and rejection of the rule.
I may have shredded my shirt in order to protest this rule, but even in
transgressing the rule I am forced to recognize it.8
Such rules have normative force external to an individual agent’s adop-
tion of those rules—whether I choose to adopt such rules has nothing to
do with their apparent force and relevance to my behavior. What consti-
tutes such rules, and what forces me to be responsive to them, is partially
my membership in a particular linguistic community. Sellars was well
aware of this point, and his understanding of what is required for the
kind of normativity associated with linguistic rules, as well as the agents
whose behavior is rationally structured by them, includes references to a
categorical structure of reasoning that necessarily includes a notion of the
community and collective intentions.9 What matters, in terms of norms
forcibly applying to my behavior or reasoning in ways that is—in some
sense—out of my control, is that I exhibit a particular kind of reason-
ing or behavior, that in reasoning I am reasoning as one of “us” (Sellars
1956/1963, p. 204).
It is not just Sellars’ incorporation of behavioral concepts into phi-
losophy that opens the door for this conception of normativity but, as
should be apparent from Sellars’ emphasis on the importance of com-
munal membership, it is the social articulation of rules that is required
to fill-in arguments for how norms can exhibit normative force “over
and above” descriptive accounts of language. This sense of ‘normative
force’ is not found in the traditional conception of a rule; if I choose to
adopt a deviant set of formation rules, there is nothing forcing me to
recognize all other formation rules as somehow authoritative in order to
transgress those ‘norms’. Granted, there are extra-logical considerations
that might constrain my choice of rules (i.e., my desire to have my logic
7
For Sellars, the importance of collective intentions and the role of community membership can-
not be overstated. Without community membership and the ability to reason as “one of us”, there
would be no external constraint and no sense of normative force attached to rules. For examples of
this, see Sellars 1956/1963, pp. 204–205 and Sellars 1967/1992 (especially Chap. 7). For a critical
perspective on Sellars’ reliance on collective intentions, see Turner 2010 (especially Chap. 5).
8
This point is made in Kukla and Lance 2014 and initially explored in Olen 2016.
9
This comes out most forcefully in Sellars 1956, but can been seen as early as Sellars 1951/1952.
conform to norms or standards of logic texts, issues of formal or mate-

rial adequacy, a methodological commitment to simplicity, professional
pressure to conform to standard usage), but these factors having nothing
to do with the very conception of a rule.10 Rules as explicit definitions
hold no normative force—especially as found in pure studies of lan-
guage—precisely because of their arbitrary and voluntary nature. The
later notion of a rule, as Sellars observes, is brought to life by its role in
a linguistic community—groups of individuals who codify and enforce
the rules and norms that constitute the very fabric of a language.
The external conception of normativity provides an answer for one of
the pressing problems haunting both pure pragmatics and Sellars’ early
behavioral conception of linguistic rules: what makes specifically philo-
sophical concepts necessary to account for our norm-governed behav-
ior? By arguing that certain kinds of terms are logically irreducible to
descriptive discourse, Sellars provides an argument as to how specifically
philosophical treatments of concepts differ—even in principle11—from
descriptive treatments of concepts. If one of the primary tasks of philoso-
phy concerns issues about, as well as between, kinds of discourse, then
we can also find support for the idea that philosophical inquiry, properly
speaking, is by its nature meta-linguistic. In addition to characterizing
kinds of discourse, one specifically philosophical task will be to flesh out
the roles played by normative terms and to “exhibit the complex rela-
tionships which exist between normative and other modes of discourse”
(Sellars 1953a/2005, p. 214).
Accounting for the different linguistic roles played by terms does not
solve the problem of meshing different kinds of explanations into one,
naturalistically sound picture, but it does open various possibilities for
reconciling12 talk of normativity as sui generis with the behavioral basis
that partially grounds its use. Sellars’ move to talk of terms, as opposed
10
Carnap talks about this as confusing rules with “metastatements” about rules. See Carnap 1963,
p. 923.
11
Sellars does admit that—in principle—we could eliminate talk of normative discourse but only
by sacrificing ‘talk’ itself (Sellars 1953a/2005, p. 214). O’Shea makes this point as well—see O’Shea
2007, p. 189.
12
In terms of reconciling naturalism (in some sense), the meta-linguistic nature of philosophy, and
the sui generis nature of normativity, see Price 2011 and Brandom 2015 (which does an excellent
job of connecting Price’s discussion of subject and object naturalism with Sellars).
to concepts, is instructive. While philosophy may have a specific role to

play when it comes to characterizing language, Sellars’ discussion of rules
cannot only be an issue of linguistic roles. The explanatory gap problem,
discussed in Chap. 5, must still be addressed; an answer to the question
why, exactly, accounts of behavior need philosophical supplementation
does not directly fall out of Sellars’ arguments about language. This is not
to say these wider-reaching arguments don’t exist, as Sellars’ pretensions
to a truly synoptic vision of persons is a dominant motivation in his later
works (the roots of which can be found in Sellars 1954/1963), but that
such arguments only make sense once Sellars bridges the gap between
accounts of terms, concepts, and behavior, the latter of which culminates
in his conception of practical reason.
4 Criticisms and Differences

Although pure pragmatics is framed as a corrective to pure semantics,
the notion of formation and transformation rules used in pure studies
of language were not initially seen as problematic. As Sellars developed
his conception of normativity in the 1950s, conformation rules were
coupled with a substantially stronger criticism of Carnap’s philosophy. I
began this chapter by noting that Sellars’ admiration for Carnap’s Logical
Syntax of Language is puzzling—not because pure pragmatics is neces-
sarily inconsistent with Carnap’s Syntax project, but because Sellars’
publications in the 1950s largely reject the conception of language and
rules found in Carnap’s Syntax. In the course of developing his external
conception of normativity, Sellars criticizes Carnap on two points: (1)
if the concepts and rules of formal languages are all possible candidates
for use (like natural languages), then Carnap is committed to a problem-
atic conception of language, which depicts the inclusion of extra-logical
rules of inference as unnecessary (Sellars 1953/2005, p. 224), and (2)
if rules do not contain explicit reference to actions or employ norma-
tive terms, they fail to function as genuine rules. The latter issue has
largely been addressed in Sect. 3, and partly in Chap. 5, so I will focus
on the initial criticism of Carnap, mainly because it criticism of Carnap,
mainly because it represents a substantial divergence between Carnap and
Sellars: the latter endorses the view that logical concepts are embedded in
natural languages or ordinary use. My argument (broadly) is that changes
to Sellars’ criticisms of Carnap follow his change in meta-philosophy, and
that by conflating differences between artificial and natural languages—
especially when ignoring the differences between conceptions of norma-
tivity—the relationship between Sellars’ change in meta-philosophy and
his later conception of normativity can be made explicit.
Although conformation rules are found in Sellars’ philosophy since its
inception, whether such rules are required in order to adequately char-
acterize languages changes over time. Initially, Sellars claims that pure
semantics can “define” a language that “involves” the kind of rational
unity or regularity found in conformation rules without depicting such
rules as necessary (Sellars 1947a/2005, p. 9). The concepts developed
in pure pragmatics act as supplementations to pure semantics precisely
because the addition of conformation rules, while necessary from a prag-
matic standpoint, are optional in pure semantics. Once Sellars aban-
dons his formalist meta-philosophy, the inclusion of conformation rules
changes from a supplementation of pure semantics to a necessary con-
cept for characterizing language, one that serves as a critical point against
Carnap (Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 131; 1952/1963, p. 292). That pure
semantics classifies conformation rules as optional becomes, at least from
Sellars’ perspective, one of the main problems with Carnap’s conception
of semantics.
This change itself may largely be due to Sellars’ later emphasis on the
application or use of artificial languages (as opposed to simply outlining
the conditions for the application or use of language). When empiri-
cally meaningful languages are the target for reconstruction in pure prag-
matics, Sellars spends little (if no) time explaining the purpose of these
reconstructed language. Even if we take it that Sellars’ early project is
to offer a wholly a priori, non-factual treatment of language in order
to save philosophy from being overtaken by the sciences, it is not clear
what would ultimately be accomplished by a formal reconstruction of
language that seemingly does not interact with natural languages. Ideally,
pure pragmatics clarifies concepts initially found in natural language
(i.e., the concepts and constructions found in pure pragmatics would
clarify the criteria for the application or use of languages, though such
a clarification—arguably—would not prove why we need such criteria),

but Sellars’ rigid distinction between formal and factual concepts seems
to block this option. While pure pragmatics may characterize empiri-
cally meaningful languages and, thus, have at least one eye on something
approaching ordinary or actual usage, Sellars is not—and, more so, can-
not—arguing that pure pragmatics clarifies factual concepts.
Sellars’ later criticism of Carnap conflates the artificial languages found
in pure syntax and pure semantics (which simply characterize certain log-
ical concepts for parts of language) with languages as used. When discuss-
ing the role of conformation rules (or P-rules in Carnap’s terminology) in
pure studies of language, Sellars argues that
Carnap, in the above passage, is not discussing the syntax of natural lan-
guages, but rather the construction by logicians of artificial languages. Yet
he is clearly conceiving of these artificial languages as candidates for adop-
tion by language users. And presumably, an artificially constructed calculus
with an appropriate syntactical structure becomes a natural language by
virtue of (1) the adoption of its syntactical rules by a language speaking
community; (2) the association of certain of its descriptive terms with sen-
sory cues. Thus, in saying that “whether in the construction of a language
S, we formulate only L-rules, or include also P-rules, is a question of expe-
dience,” Carnap is implying that natural languages need have no P-rules,
and that the presence or absence of P-rules in a natural language is a matter
of some form of (presumably unconscious) social selection, determined by
convenience. (Sellars 1953/2005, p. 224)
This badly misconstrues a number of issues and changes in Carnap’s

discussion of extra-logical rules of inference. Although it is correct that
Carnap is not discussing rules of natural language in the Syntax, Sellars
thinks there are no substantial differences between the concepts of for-
mal and natural languages. Sellars is convinced Carnap classifies extra-
logical rules of inference as dispensable, makes their authority derivative
of logical rules of inference, and thinks Carnap treats their inclusion as
completely voluntary. The voluntary inclusion of extra-logical rules of
inference is problematic, according to Sellars, because there is no rigid
distinction between the concepts of artificial languages and the con-
cepts and rules of natural languages (a substantial revision to his original

commitment, as discussed below). Thus, the languages developed in the
Syntax could be adopted for use (assuming the pragmatic caveats men-
tioned above), but this leads to a paradoxical conclusion that one could
use a language that is not responsive to factual constraints or materially
valid inferences.
While it is true that Carnap (at least in the Syntax) classifies the inclu-
sion of P-rules as merely a question of convention or expediency (Carnap
1937, p. 180), and this position follows Carnap in terms of his introduc-
tion of meaning postulates (Carnap 1947, p. 225), the issue has less to
do with what is required to adequately reconstruct a materially respon-
sive language, and more to do with the fact that Carnap’s conception of
the relationship between pure and factual languages is simply different
from Sellars’ approach. Yet this is specifically where Sellars misrepresents
Carnap’s views. In discussing the relationship between pure semantics
and pragmatics, Carnap describes the relationship as thus:
I do not think that a semantical concept, in order to be fruitful, must nec-

essarily possess a prior pragmatical counterpart. It is theoretically possible
to demonstrate its fruitfulness through its application in the further devel-
opment of language systems. But this is a slow process. If for a given
semantical concept there is already a familiar, though somewhat vague,
corresponding pragmatical concept and if we are able to clarify the latter by
describing an operational procedure for its application, then this may
indeed be a simpler way for refuting the objections and furnish a practical
justification at once for both concepts. (Carnap 1955, p. 35)
The difference here is that while Sellars and Carnap agree that artificial
languages can be used to illuminate or clarify natural language concepts,
this does not mean, at least for Carnap, that we should think of forma-
tion and transformation rules as ‘in’ natural languages. Such rules may, to
more or less of a degree, resemble concepts in natural language, but they
need not. This difference is exactly why Carnap can construct languages
developed in pure syntax, for example, that need not be applicable or
responsive to natural languages or ordinary usage.
The problem is that Sellars conflates two different senses of ‘language’—

calculi or semantical systems on the one hand (the languages investigated
in pure studies of language), and natural language on the other.13 As dis-
cussed in Chap. 4, Carnap is quite explicit that the explication of logical
concepts in natural languages is fraught with substantially different diffi-
culties and complications. The implication of Sellars’ criticism here is not
only that formal languages could be adopted for use (as akin to natural
languages) but also that familiar rules of formation and transformation
are not just an approximation of natural language concepts, but “rules
of these types are embedded in natural languages themselves without any
help from the logician” (Sellars 1953/1963, p. 301—emphasis added).
Some14 have claimed that while Sellars is concerned, in some sense, with
actual usage, he is not literally providing the rules or rule sets for a specific
language. This is true in a sense—Sellars is not providing the formation
and transformation rules for English, for example, but he does think the
linguistic rules developed through philosophical characterization are the
rules ‘found’ in natural language. The clause “without any help from the
logician” in the quote above is instructive: Sellars seems to be straddling
the fence between understanding theoretical approaches to language as
merely elucidating natural language concepts, and those very same the-
oretical constructions being the actual concepts found in the ordinary
usage of natural language.
This means that after pure pragmatics the language under investiga-
tion changes to something approaching natural language.15 Instead of
formally characterizing languages as empirically meaningful, Sellars is
13
One might think this is a case of philosophers talking past each other (much like some aspects of
the Iowa misreading of Carnap). Unfortunately, I do not think (again, much like in the case of the
Iowa misreading) this works as an attempt to reconcile Carnap’s and Sellars’ disagreement, mainly
because Sellars specifically makes this an issue over the “carelessness” exhibited in Carnap’s discus-
sion of rules (Sellars 1953/2005, p. 229).
14
deVries 2005, p. 21.
15
Despite Sellars’ caveats to the messy nature of so-called ordinary usage, it is difficult to see how
the final justification of linguistic rules embedded in natural languages would be anything else but
facts about language and linguistic practices. What would, one imagines, ultimately justify the
philosophical characterization of formation and transformation rules would be their presence in
natural languages, which would vindicate (in part) Hall’s initial contention that, at bottom, rules
of language concern factual relationships.
now concerned with the actual language of ordinary usage when talk-
ing about concepts and linguistic rules. As Sellars acknowledges, this
sense of ‘language’ is fairly “vague, fluctuating, and ambiguous”, but it
does represent a change in what seemed to be a set of straightforward,
albeit implicit, assumptions about what counted as a language (Sellars
1953/1963, p. 301). This is a substantial difference not because pure
pragmatics held zero interest in natural language—empirically mean-
ingful languages are characterized as the kinds of languages “about a
world in which they are used”—but because of the kinds of justification
and claims such a target language makes available (Sellars 1948a/2005,
p. 67). As discussed in Chap. 5, Sellars can now start from facts16 and
concepts of natural language, and use such facts to justify the adequacy
of philosophical concepts.
The changes in Sellars’ understanding of the relationship between
formal and natural languages parallel changes in his meta-philosophy.17
We might think that much of what appears in Sellars’ later writing
could—at least in principle—be formulated within pure pragmatics,
but this simply assumes there are no contradictory claims hindering
Sellars’ concepts from occurring during any period in his philosophical
development. Sellars’ shift from talking about the formal reconstruc-
tion of empirically meaningful languages, to talking about formation
and transformation rules as embedded in natural languages, is another
substantial change that could only occur after pure pragmatics. By
placing formation and transformation rules in natural language, Sellars
broadens the references that can be used in order to justify philosophi-
cal claims. While pure pragmatics avoids comparing formal and factual
languages, such comparisons are perfectly philosophically respectable
after pure pragmatics—Sellars argues that natural languages can be
16
This is not to say that Sellars offers statistical or descriptive facts about linguistic usage, but that
he can use examples from language learning, ordinary usage, and commonly known linguistic
behavior as not only concepts for philosophical analysis but as justifications for how adequate his
philosophical notions are in relation to ordinary usage.
17
My assumption is that meta-philosophical claims function as regulative ideals—insofar as we
(explicitly or implicitly) claim philosophy must follow specific methods, rules, or commitments,
there is an outstanding issue of consistency between meta-philosophical claims and first-order argu-
ments. This does not mean meta-philosophical claims cannot play other pragmatic, or even rhetori-
cal, roles.
“illuminated” by “confronting” them with formal languages (Sellars

1953/1963, p. 302). Even though Sellars briefly discusses the possibil-
ity of comparing natural languages with what he calls ‘language sche-
mas’ in pure pragmatics, this is eventually ruled out in favor of the idea
that one is always simply inter-relating or confronting one constructed
language with another (Sellars 1947a/2005, pp. 18–20). This kind of
theoretical move allows the comparison of formal concepts to be justi-
fied against what is ostensibly their descriptive counterparts in natural
language (e.g., “our formal concept of designation fails to agree with
ordinary usage”). I do not mean the later Sellars endorses a somewhat
naïve relationship between formal and factual languages, but that by
embedding what were previously depicted as formal concepts in natu-
ral language, Sellars has recourse to ‘ordinary or actual usage’ in ways
unavailable under his early meta-philosophy.
But maybe none of this is the point of Sellars’ criticism of Carnap in
1953. Perhaps he is arguing that reconstructed languages, in order to
count as languages, should be adoptable for use. Otherwise, the concepts
and rules found in pure studies of language (following Hall’s reasoning)
would just be meaningless symbol manipulation. Another way to get at
this issue is to ask: why couldn’t the empirically meaningful languages
depicted in pure pragmatics be candidates for use? As was noted in Chap.
3, Sellars—at least in his earliest publication—depicted formal analy-
sis as reconstructing empirically meaningful languages, which entails
describing the conditions for the application of a language. Why this is
a problem for pure pragmatics is found in the idea of formal languages
as derivative from natural languages. Insofar as Sellars could grant that
the empirically meaningful languages constructed or depicted by pure
pragmatics were tantamount to languages as used, then what allows them
to count as ‘languages’ in any legitimate sense (or makes them the kinds
of languages that could, all things considered, be used) must be found
in comparison with factual, historical languages. Yet, this makes the cat-
egory of ‘language’ itself a factual one (or, least, would concede to the
descriptive domain the authority of demarcating languages from non-
languages). Thus, any authority found in the formally characterized lan-
guages of pure pragmatics would only be derivative of the concepts and
requirements found in factual accounts of language. This surely could not
work for the early Sellars—given that pure pragmatics was meant to be a
strictly non-factual account of language, its authority could not be based
on descriptive accounts of language.
Because he runs together differences between artificial and natural lan-
guages, Sellars ignores, or simply does not see, any difference between
conceptions of normativity. Given the difference between internal and
external conceptions of normativity articulated above, it stands to reason
that rules in formal languages (in Carnap’s stripped-down sense of ‘rules’)
would not exhibit the same kind of normative force as rules in natural
language and, thus, would not require the same kind of characterizations
or explanatory resources. One could concede a more general point, that
something like formation and transformation rules can be found in natu-
ral languages, but this is simply not Sellars’ claim. Nonetheless, one could
charitably interpret Sellars as conceding that, while it is useful to treat
natural languages as ‘containing’ formation and transformation rules, we
need not understand this claim literally. The logical concepts of calculi
and semantical systems are mere approximations of similar notions found
in natural languages.
Another response to the distinction between internal and external
conceptions of normativity is to argue that there is a difference in kind
between rules that apply to linguistic behavior and the formalized defini-
tions that function as rules in logic or mathematics. This is to argue that
differences between Sellars’ early and later conception of a rule is due not
to a difference in the very conception of a rule itself, but the explanatory
framework constituted by such rules. The rules in pure pragmatics, for
example, do not exhibit the external conception of normativity because
a non-factual account of pragmatics does not characterize or explain
rule-regulated behavior (despite being classified as pragmatics). Yet the
material rules of inference found in Sellars’ later work are specifically
behavioral because, according to Sellars, reference to actions is built into
the very definition of a rule. Thus, the supposed discrepancy between
Sellars’ early and later conceptions of a rule is no discrepancy at all—
formal and behavioral rules are just two different kinds of rules used to
characterize or explain two different kinds of phenomena.
If we agree with the above line of reasoning, then Sellars’ early and
later philosophy—because of their different explanatory frameworks—
employ different kinds of rules (formal in the case of pure pragmatics,

behavioral in his later works) and, thus, are not the product of different
approaches to philosophy, but are simply characterizing different aspects
of concepts. Yet this cannot work as a reading of Sellars’ philosophy.
The two most compelling arguments against this interpretation are that
Sellars’ early formalism is—as we have seen numerous times—presented
as a defining trait for all philosophical concepts, and that Sellars’ later
reading of Carnap runs together the distinction between behavioral and
formal rules. Because Sellars’ later interpretation of Carnap collapses this
distinction, one cannot both make the interpretive claim that Sellars is
discussing different kinds of rules in different explanatory frameworks,
and also argue that concepts constitutive of both kinds of language
are essentially the same. While Carnap drew a somewhat hazy barrier
between the concepts of formal and natural languages (in most cases),
Sellars now claims the logical reconstruction of such concepts coincides
with concepts operative in natural language. This reading protests against
the idea that the linguistic rules found in descriptive and pure studies of
language would be different kinds of rules. Although descriptive or pure
studies of languages might call for different formulations of rules, this
difference couldn’t be a difference in kind. Since Sellars insists formal
languages are intended for use in the same sense as natural languages, it
stands to reason the differing languages could not employ fundamentally
different kinds of rules. Otherwise, there would be no reason to think
that the concepts and rules of natural language would be illuminated by
the simplified concepts and rules employed in pure studies of language.
5 Conclusion
What I have hopefully shown in this chapter is that Sellars’ philosophy
contains different conceptions of rules that, consequently, exhibit differ-
ing conceptions of normativity. Both internal and external conceptions
of normativity are beset by their own sets of advantages and problems;
Sellars’ later conception of normativity, far richer than his early formalist
account of rules, offers a substantially wider range of explanatory options
for our language and norm-governed behavior. But this conception of
normativity is not available to the early Sellars. If we take the role and
implications of Sellars’ early formalism seriously (i.e., if, instead of treat-
ing Sellars’ philosophy as a singular, unchanging entity, we treat his early
meta-philosophy as arising out of specific problems and positions dis-
cussed in Chap. 2), then his early meta-philosophy had to change before
he could construct a conception of language and rules that exhibit the
external conception of normativity. The point is not to argue for one
specific conception of normativity over the other, but to reinforce the fact
that changes in Sellars’ meta-philosophy had wide-ranging implications
for his understanding of various concepts. Because Sellars gave his meta-
philosophy such a robust role in determining the kinds of concepts and
justifications that are permissible in both his earlier and later philosophy,
seeing that changes in his conception of a rule coincide with changes
in his meta-philosophy is not particularly shocking. Nonetheless, the
role of Sellars’ early meta-philosophy, and the fact that its abandonment
changes the possible conceptual landscape, is an aspect of Sellars’ philoso-
phy that has simply not been discussed (outside of talking about how his
later meta-philosophical commitments structure his overall approach to
philosophy).
7
Conclusion
1 Introduction
Historical projects generally terminate at seemingly arbitrary points, as
even with the death of a figure or the directional change of intellectual
winds, their impact and reach do not simply disappear. There are certainly
more historical dimensions to Sellars’ early thought than I have been able
to cover here, especially if we extend his early period to include anything
written before the publication of his most influential article, “Empiricism
and the Philosophy of Mind”, in 1956.1 Sellars’ pretensions to a wide-
ranging systematic philosophy, an approach that tries to “understand
how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the
broadest possible sense of the term”, is partially what makes constructing
1
Even this periodization, one similar to what Jay Rosenberg offers in Rosenberg 2007, is fairly
problematic. Not only are there substantial changes to Sellars’ philosophy prior to the publication
of “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, but many of the ideas found in Sellars’ 1956 article
can be found in some of his earlier essays (e.g., Sellars 1954/1963; Sellars 1955). “Physical Realism,”
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 15, 13-32. “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”
seems to be an easy dividing point because of its influential status and because it represents a more
complete statement of these earlier positions. While both of these points are, I believe, true, a
periodization based on these points alone ignores the differences and nuances when moving from
Sellars’ earlier publications to “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”.

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52717-2_7
a developmental account of his philosophy difficult (Sellars 1962/1963,

p. 1). The value of doing so is found in how it impacts our interpretation
of Sellars’ philosophy and the ramifications for contemporary philosoph-
ical issues. If my arguments up to now have been sound, there are three
main results that follow from the earlier parts of this book:
1. The changes to Sellars’ meta-philosophy constitute substantial revi-

sions to the formulation and justification of his first-order positions.
Sellars’ conceptions of language and linguistic rules, for example, go
through substantial changes because of his abandonment of a formal-
ist meta-philosophy.
2. Sellars’ historical context plays an influential role in directing his phi-
losophy in ways that have been largely ignored. Placing Sellars’ work
among his contemporaries makes both a historical and philosophical
difference.
3. Pure pragmatics constitutes a break in Sellars’ philosophy, one that
should force us to re-examine the way we think of his philosophy as
‘holistic’. Because of this, a developmental conception of Sellars’ phi-
losophy is relevant for understanding both the formulation and justi-
fication of his positions.
Moving from a formalist definition of philosophy to Sellars’ later meta-

philosophy (one more closely aligned with psychology) makes a sub-
stantial difference as to what kind of explanatory resources count as
philosophical, as well as how the explanation of certain phenomena
generates different sets (and different justifications) of requirements for
what it is to offer a specifically philosophical characterization of language.
I take it this latter point remains pressing, as whether a philosophical
account of language is needed is still a live issue. I do not mean to imply
that some of the other issues here have become irrelevant (though one
does not frequently see attempts to revive Carnap’s Syntax project), but
that the relationship between linguistics, psychology, and the philosophy
of language has not been settled. As discussed in Chap. 5, the notion of
philosophical accounts filling the ‘explanatory gap’ between behavioral
science descriptions of language and the phenomena itself is not without
its own problems, but they only become pressing problems for Sellars
7 Conclusion 157
once he abandons the meta-philosophy behind pure pragmatics. As I said

in Chaps. 3 and 4, this is not to say that all concepts and claims of pure
pragmatics were abandoned along with Sellars’ early meta-philosophy.
Attention must be paid to how the justification of these claims changed;
what might justify classifying certain concepts as necessary in a formal
analysis of language differs substantially from a framework that incorpo-
rates social and psychological explanatory resources.
As a consequence of stressing the differences between Sellars’ early and
later projects, I’ve argued for the recognition of differing conceptions
of normativity. Sellars’ early conception of language and linguistic rules,
one that embraces the conception of a rule found in logic and math-
ematics, exhibits what I’ve called an internal conception of normativity.
Compared to the conception of normativity found in Sellars’ later work,
this is a relatively ‘flat’ notion, one divorced from actual usage, explicit
connections with action, and does not require the explanatory resources
of the behavioral or social sciences.2 Such rules, as found in Carnap’s
pure studies of language, consist of definitions and their analytic conse-
quences, and what normative force is exhibited by these rules is internal
to some specific, voluntarily adopted language. The second conception
of normativity (what I’ve called the external conception of normativ-
ity) is only available once the explanatory resources of the behavioral
or social sciences come into play because the very conception of a rule
found in Sellars’ late philosophy presupposes behavioral and social sci-
ence concepts (e.g., stimulus–response, notions of community, and col-
lective intentions). This fact, in and of itself, does not create a problem
for Sellars’ conception of a rule so much as it leads to the aforementioned
problem of “meshing’’ psychological and philosophical accounts of lan-
guage while simultaneously explaining why psychological accounts need
philosophical supplementation.
Most of these issues fall directly out of contextualizing Sellars’ early
papers and examining how the historical placement of pure pragmatics
changes our interpretation of his overall project. Though some of these
2
This is not the same thing as claiming that logic is non-normative; my main contention is that the
normative standards found in the internal conception of normativity are arbitrary and, thus, only
binding from within a voluntarily adopted language. For a differing account of the normativity of
logic, especially in terms of Carnap’s work, see Steinberger (forthcoming).
issues, such as concerns over adequacy requirements for characterizing

empirically meaningful languages, could be raised regardless of histori-
cal placement (i.e., this issue was recognized, though under-discussed,
by Nagel in the 1940s), I have argued Sellars’ inherited problems played
a large role in how he initially saw the philosophical landscape—one
that not only constrained what he saw as pressing philosophical prob-
lems, but also served as an influential factor in his move away from
formalism.
2 Further Problems
There are numerous issues surrounding pure pragmatics I have not
addressed. Sellars’ early nominalism, his overtures to issues in the phi-
losophy of mind, the early roots of his functional role semantics, and
his conception of a world-story (a concept that re-appears throughout
Sellars’ career) are all present in Sellars’ early and later works, and deserve
longer treatment than I can afford. My primary concern has been to
construct a streamlined historical narrative that places Sellars’ early phi-
losophy among some of his contemporaries, while exploring the philo-
sophical and meta-philosophical implications of pure pragmatics. My
focus on Sellars’ early conception of language is primarily a matter of
choice and does not mean some of the issues missing from my account
are somehow less relevant to an overall depiction of his philosophy. The
linguistic turn, or Sellars’ “new way of words”, is not only impactful for
how Sellars saw philosophy but also influenced how he understood the
relationship between expressions and the world (a concern that domi-
nates Sellars’ philosophy throughout his career). Given that part of the
motivation behind this project was to show how a developmental reading
of Sellars might threaten a holistic depiction of his philosophy, language
as an omnipresent concept in Sellars’ work serves as a useful focal point.
Some of the omitted concepts, especially Sellars’ brief discussions of
nominalism, could benefit from historical treatment. Sellars’ form of
nominalism, one that does not simply reject the existence of universals
but tries to incorporate the insights of both Platonism and nominalism, is
a hallmark of even Sellars’ earliest publications (e.g., Sellars 1948a/2005,
7 Conclusion 159
pp. 51–2). Pure pragmatics contains the shell, so to speak, of Sellars’ view
that languages function as if 3 they contain a rationalistic conception of
universals (so-called real connections). Defending a form of nominalism,4
Sellars’ goal is to show how we can talk about universals in the formal
framework of explanation while avoiding a problematic ontological com-
mitment traditionally associated with the introduction of universals. The
connections between, for example, concepts and extra-linguistic refer-
ents serve as one instance where Sellars argues we can preserve the twin
insights of both Platonism and nominalism (Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 66).
Here, the idea is that language functions “as though” it contains a con-
nection between every universal claim and its designata, even though it
does not (Sellars 1947b/2005, p. 30; 1948a/2005, p. 48). In order to
avoid falling back into either an ontologically suspect Platonism (that
generates entities contradictory to an empirically respectable naturalism)
or a minimalist empiricism (that denies ostensibly necessary aspects of
empirically meaningful languages), Sellars argues that both insights are
needed—philosophical accounts of language must exhibit the fact that
languages appear as if they are ontologically committed to universals
without thereby offering an analysis of universals that holds to the same
problematic commitment.
This form of nominalism is partially borne out in Sellars’ later develop-
ment of functional role semantics. What is needed to avoid Platonism,
yet still maintain a logical role for platonic linguistic entities, is a robust
conception of linguistic practices—not as types per se, but as concrete
instances of behavior. That is, to avoid turning functional roles into
abstract entities themselves, Sellars’ later theory of meaning must be read
as classifying instances of behavior and not abstract roles. Nonetheless,
3
One could claim there is a fictionalist strand in Sellars’ thinking about what appears in languages,
as opposed to what is found in an analysis of languages. The reasoning is straightforward: While
languages contain universals that appear as if they contain a word–world relation, the only thing
actually required to adequately characterize languages is the appearance of such a relation. Thus,
‘real connections’ are needed in appearance alone. Stephen Turner and I explore this idea in terms
of Sellars’ conception of moral reasoning in Olen and Turner 2015a, but other perspectives can be
found in Armour-Garb and Woodbridge 2015, and Kraut 2010.
4
Sellars’ early framing of the correct form of nominalism (as avoiding both logical nominalism and
ontological realism about universals) can be traced back to his father’s formulation in Sellars 1932
(Sellars 1948a/2005, p. 66).
thinking of meaning in terms of behavioral fact is clearly not available

to the early Sellars; meaning as a category of behavior cannot appear in a
formal re-construction of pragmatics. The connection between Sellars’
early nominalism and his later functional role semantics is one that is
largely unexplored, but it could benefit from not only further explora-
tion, but also contextualization in terms of both his father’s work and
then-contemporary arguments over universals and particulars among his
contemporaries.5
A more thorough history of formal and material adequacy require-
ments for characterizations of language would be useful for both under-
standing the place of Sellars’ discussion of material rules of inference, as
well as the interface between so-called traditional American philosophers
coming to grips with the influx of technical philosophy that arrived with
logical positivism. Recent work in the history of analytic philosophy has
started to address the place of material adequacy in formal treatments of
language, most notably where it concerns the works of Carnap or Tarski,
but none of it has been applied to either Sellars’ early work or his later
conception of material rules of inference. This history could also be useful
in coming to grips with tensions between ‘traditional’ American philoso-
phers adapting to the influx of logical positivism and analytic philosophy
in North America.6 Understanding differing conceptions of formal and
material adequacy, especially when looking at how traditional American
philosophers attempted to ‘catch up’ with the logical sophistication of
the immigrating logical positivists (as well as the different vocabularies
employed by each community), might allow for a historically rich and
useful explanation as to how both traditions were, in some instances,
talking past each other.7 This issue is, of course, not one directly found in
pure pragmatics, but Sellars’ earliest publications do contain some of the
5
Another early source for this might be Bergmann 1947c (an article written in response to Roy
Wood Sellars).
6
How, exactly, we should understand this transitional period in American philosophy is still a fairly
contentious issue. For two examples that differ from the so-called received view, see Richardson
2003 and Misak 2013.
7
Numerous philosophers could be placed between ‘traditional’ American philosophy and logical
positivism, but one example is C.J. Ducasse’s reading of Carnap in Ducasse 1941. Ducasse is trying
to come to grips with a more traditional, synoptic approach to the sciences in relation to the for-
malism found in Carnap’s Syntax.
7 Conclusion 161
issues found in clashes between realists, pragmatists, and logical positiv-

ists in the early twentieth century.
In addition, Sellars’ relationship to behavioral and Gestalt psycholo-
gists could be an extremely beneficial historical and philosophical issue to
address.8 One of the problems here is that Sellars might be responding to,
or influenced by, philosophical conceptions of behaviorism (as opposed
to behaviorism as it is found in psychology). As mentioned in Chap. 5,
Sellars was clearly aware of some psychological work in the 1940s and 50s
(if not some of the earlier behaviorist work of Edward Tolman and others
closely associated with American realist movements in the early twentieth
century), but how this historical connection might change interpreta-
tions of Sellars’ philosophy has yet to be explored.
What has not been accomplished in this book is a complete periodiza-
tion of Sellars’ work. This would be, I believe, a massive endeavor that
should not be deemed necessary for understanding his philosophy. Where
this matters is when we are trying to locate the historical Sellars, not
simply when we want to entertain or incorporate ideas in any of Sellars’
texts. Granted, there is a persistent danger of misreading Sellars if we
ignore the fact that his arguments and claims are historically situated and
contextually sensitive. If it were not for the reading of Carnap present
in Bergmann’s and Hall’s 1940s publications, for example, Sellars might
not have misinterpreted Carnap’s conception of pure semantics in such a
specific way, which in turn led to pure pragmatics. Additionally, there are
numerous intellectual threads that have not been followed here: Sellars’
relationship to emotivism and intuitionism (especially H.A Pritchard’s
philosophy), Cook Wilson’s and C.G. Collingwood’s influence on Sellars’
conception of inference and meta-philosophy (respectively), Sellars’
philosophical inheritance of critical realism,9 the complex relationship
between Sellars, C.I. Lewis, and Quine, and a myriad of other issues.
Some of these issues, such as Sellars’ place among pragmatist accounts of
the a priori, are ripe for historical treatments, especially since the history
8
Here I have in mind something similar to the work that has been done on the relationship between
logical positivism and behaviorism. See Smith 1986.
9
I offer the beginnings of this account in Olen 2015a, and there is growing interest in the work of
Roy Wood Sellars. For example, see Hatfield 2015.
of analytic philosophy (broadly construed) has started to develop such a

wealth of literature.
Apart from issues explicitly concerning Sellars’ philosophy, there is a
rich history behind philosophers and philosophy in the Midwest that
has gone largely unexplored. I’ve mentioned this point previously, but
it is worth emphasizing again. Midwestern institutions, especially the
University of Iowa and the University of Minnesota, have been largely
ignored in the history of philosophy and American intellectual history.
The geographical remoteness from influential eastern institutions of
higher learning constitutes a symbolic and real distance that not only
helped create differing identities for those institutions but also played
a formative role for the intellectuals housed away from the center of
early twentieth-century intellectual movements.10 Part of the reason
Bergmann’s and Hall’s idiosyncratic reading of Carnap, for example,
was both influential and left initially unchecked could be largely due
to the distance from other scholarly groups. The mutual influence of
Bergmann and Hall on each other (as well as their graduate students and
colleagues) creates somewhat of a sealed loop. Despite their philosophi-
cal differences, both philosophers participated in substantial engagement
with one another at Iowa, so much so their reading of Carnap (one that,
as best we can surmise, arose during Bergmann’s seminar on Carnap’s
Syntax, a seminar attended by the entire philosophy department, includ-
ing Hall and Sellars)11 is guilty of the exact same idiosyncratic errors.
Such mutual influence can, of course, arise in other contexts, but one
imagines the influence is heightened given such physical and intellectual
closeness.
I am not suggesting Midwest institutions were so remote as to be
isolated from all intellectual life. This is obviously not the case, but I
do think they were far enough away to constitute their own influential
microcosms. While scholars at Iowa, Minnesota, and other Midwestern
10
Even the drive to be away from Midwestern institutions plays an influential role on where schol-
ars published, who they collaborated with, and their rate of publication, all of which impacted the
content of their work. Throughout Bergmann’s and Hall’s correspondence, for example, one finds
a persistent, almost desperate drive to get away from Iowa that committed both men to a faster
publishing schedule than they might have otherwise.
11
See Sellars’ discussion of his time at Iowa in Sellars 1975.
7 Conclusion 163
institutions actively published, spoke at conferences, and corresponded

with scholars throughout the world, their influence in shaping a future
generation of philosophers was particularly concentrated because of their
distance from other communities. This can also be seen in the persis-
tent influence of Bergmann’s and Hall’s reading of Carnap on colleagues
and students at Iowa. This misinterpretation is influential and preva-
lent in a small group of scholars because of the smaller department size
and remoteness from other institutions. Idiosyncratic readings could, of
course, develop in any context, but it is more likely in intellectually dis-
tant communities. Yet this is just one case; the connection between such
departments and the scholars who shaped much of our contemporary
context deserves substantially more exploration, both in its philosophical
and historical contexts.
3 Historical and Thematic Explanation

I want to end on a note about the kind of arguments found in this book.
What I have hopefully built is a historical account of Sellars’ philosophi-
cal development, one that embraces the discontinuities in his thought
in order to create an accurate rendering of the historical and conceptual
issues driving his early publications. This is straightforwardly opposed
to ahistorical readings of Sellars (or any other philosopher) that either
ignore his historical context or incorporate different arguments and
claims from different periods of his philosophy without considering the
contextual issues surrounding such claims. As I’ve stressed throughout,
the differences and nuances found in historical renderings matter, not
just as a myopic part of the record, but in terms of coming to grips with
the positions and formulations of problems found in our contemporary
landscape. Does this mean every philosophical claim must be histori-
cally anchored and contextualized before we even think of delving into
contemporary issues? Surely not. This would be to endorse an overly
conservative approach to philosophy; we would strip all generality from
philosophical claims in order to preserve historical accuracy.
In order to avoid this kind of narrow historicism we should draw a
distinction between historical and thematic accounts of philosophy.
Historical accounts are primarily, if not exclusively, concerned with

factual accuracy, while thematic accounts express an argument or idea
through, so to speak, various historical (yet factually disconnected) lenses.
Take, for example, an account of the social roles linguistic expressions
play in a given community. We might think there are interesting, per-
haps philosophically relevant, connections between Alexander Bryant
Johnson’s obscure nineteenth-century text Treatise on Language, or the
Relation which Words bear to Things and contemporary Wittgensteinian
accounts of language, linguistic roles, and communities. While there is
a tenuous historical connection12 in this case, there is no clear path that
shows a direct influence between Johnson’s early nineteenth-century writ-
ings and contemporary pragmatist understandings of language. By sug-
gesting there is “no clear path”, I am claiming there simply is not enough
evidence behind claims of Johnson’s influence to make a difference—
Johnson’s text plays no role in shaping ideas, formulating problems to
solve, or offering argumentative support to contemporary versions of the
same idea. Even if Johnson’s text did support similar ideas or positions
in a different historical period, this thematic connection does not mean
there are historical connections to be found.
Where Johnson’s text could make a difference is in thematic accounts.
There could be commonalities between Johnson’s conception of the
expressive role played by language and similar claims in the pragmatist
tradition. Such similarities could be worth pursuing relative to their
role in offering stronger or unique arguments in support of a common
theme. But what such accounts do not rely on (or offer) is a histori-
cally accurate rendering of the connection between Johnson’s text and
contemporary accounts of language in order to justify the assertion that
seemingly disparate texts or ideas are connected. What ostensibly justifies
claims within thematic accounts is simply a developing picture of shared
themes between arguments or ideas. Contrary to this, historical accounts
12
Johnson’s book is referenced in Sellars 1947b/2005, p. 35. From correspondence with Feigl, it is
clear that Johnson’s book was read by Feigl and Sellars because its editor, David Rynin, was an early
expository of logical positivism in North America. Despite being ahead of its time, Feigl claimed
Johnson’s book did not contain anything not already found in Carnap or Wittgenstein.
7 Conclusion 165
demand actual, factually grounded connections13 between past influences

and present concerns. At the forefront of historical accounts are questions
about what actually happened, who read which texts, and whether any of
these connections make a difference to our contemporary understanding
of a given issue.
This is not to imply that thematic re-constructions of Sellars’ philos-
ophy are necessarily wrong. I think, by and large, the main guides to
Sellars’ philosophy are quite right on most issues and, more so, I do not
think much of what I have written here challenges most aspects of those
explanations. To be clear, accounts of Sellars’ entire philosophy may make
the mistake of ignoring or downplaying discontinuities and changes in
favor of depicting the Sellars, but I would not classify these holistic depic-
tions as ‘thematic’ in the sense articulated above. The difference between
historical and thematic accounts of Sellars’ philosophy is generally split
along differing goals, as opposed to rival accounts of the same figure. The
issue is less that historical and thematic accounts are trying to cover the
same ground, and more that both accounts have their own roles to fulfill.
As I argued previously,14 insofar as thematic accounts remain thematic
(i.e., as long as they do not confuse the thematic similarity of positions
and views with real, historical connections between figures), there is no
reason to think historical and thematic explanations are necessarily in
tension. Yet, the relationship between historical and thematic accounts
should largely be seen as asymmetrical; while historical explanations can
(and should) influence the kind of acceptable thematic claims, thematic
claims should have no influence on historical claims.
This also does not mean every possible aspect of history is relevant for
making explicit the factors behind philosophers or their ideas. The fact
that I am sitting in New Zealand while typing this sentence may or may
not be interesting, but it is not a philosophically relevant piece of historical
information. Is the fact that Sellars’ “first serious reading of philosophy”
came from the Marxist tradition philosophically relevant (Sellars 1975)?
Perhaps, but the obvious answer is that such considerations only make a
13
There are, of course, a myriad of ways to construe ‘factual connection’. I am not advocating for a
specific understanding of how facts play a justifying role in historical accounts so much as I am
pleading for the recognition of the difference between historical and thematic accounts.
14
See the introduction and conclusion of Olen 2015a, as well as parts of Chap. 4.
difference, quite frankly, when they can be shown to make a difference.

Sellars’ early reading of Marx is only philosophically relevant if we can
show how such texts actually influenced, changed, or structure Sellars’
ideas. Otherwise, such a connection could be thematic—we might find
something interesting when comparing Marx’s idea of base and super-
structure, for example, with Sellars’ discussion of the superstructure of
rational behavior that rests on a base of animal learning, but this only
really tells us something about the ideas of base and superstructure, not
those of Sellars.15 There should be a measured balance between insisting
on historically accurate renderings of intellectual figures and ideas, and
the overly conservative claim that no thematic account, if divorced from
its historical context, can be useful. Accounts of Sellars’ work can have
the best of both worlds, assuming we keep in mind the place of differ-
ences and commonalities between historical and thematic accounts of
philosophy.
15
This language is found, quite briefly, in Sellars 1949a/2005, p. 122.
Appendix: Letters and Unpublished
Manuscripts1
Psychologism (undated)2
One3 of the most widespread sources of philosophical error is the con-
fusion of philosophical questions with related questions belonging to
empirical science. In some cases the relation between the questions which
underlies the confusion is of a completely accidental kind, a matter of
verbal similarity. The questions merely “look” the same. On occasion,
however, the relation is of an extremely intimate kind which can be ana-
1
I’ve done little to edit these drafts and letters. In passages where indecipherable expressions are
found, I’ve replaced them with “——” to indicate the missing text. This seems preferable to work-
ing my own interpretation into primary sources. Where crucial letters are missing, I’ve used under-
scores to represent the missing letters. Where repetition exists (e.g., in discussing textual passages),
I’ve occasionally omitted non-crucial information.
2
Reproduced with permission from the University of Pittsburgh. Wilfrid S. Sellars Papers,
1899–1990, ASP.1991.01, Archives of Scientific Philosophy, Special Collections Department,
University of Pittsburgh.
3
This is a fragmentary essay that was written sometime in 1947–1948, considering that pieces of it
show up in Sellars 1949a/2005. The initial three pages are typescript, then they abruptly stop and
turn into handwritten, fragmentary notes until the typescript resumes (where indicated). The docu-
ment is reproduced here because it plays an important role in understanding the transition between
Sellars’ early and later works. Many thanks to Boris Brandhoff for pointing out the original MS.

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52717-2
168 Appendix: Letters and Unpublished Manuscripts
lyzed only by employing all the resources of a theory of philosophy. This

is the case with certain confusions which, in one form or another, have
dominated the history of epistemology.
One might be tempted to say that the philosophical and non-
philosophical questions which are most likely to be confused are those
which deal with different aspects of the same subject-matter. Thus, it has
been said that psychology deals with thought as occurrent fact, whereas
logic and epistemology deal with thought as true or false, valid or invalid,
confirmed or disconfirmed. This formulation is not so much mistaken as
dangerous. It suggests that the “aspects” of thought with which logic and
epistemology are concerned differ from those with which psychology is
concerned as, say, the chemical properties of bodies differ from the physi-
cal. It suggests that truth, validity, confirmation, and their opposites are
characteristics belonging to thoughts as shapes belong to tables. Why,
then, should the psychologist neglect them? Or, if convenience indicates
a division of labor, must not these characteristics in any case be studied
by inductive methods? This train of thought leads to a conception of
epistemology as an empirical science of reflective thinking, a psychology
of problem solving, and an anthropology of scientific activity.
On the other hand, if one combines the notion that truth, validity, and
so on are “aspects” or characteristics of thought, with the conviction that
the study of validity, at least, and perhaps also the study of truth and con-
firmation, is an a priori science, one is led to a conception of epistemol-
ogy as an a priori science of some characteristics of thought which rubs
shoulders with an a posteriori science of other aspects of thought. Since
it is difficult to see how any aspects or characteristics of events can be the
subject-matter of a science all the “laws” of which are analytic statements,
it would seem that if epistemology is to be an a priori science of certain
characteristics of thought, it must include synthetic a priori statements.
This train of thought thus culminates in the conception of epistemology
as the synthetic a priori part of psychology.
Must we choose between epistemology as an empirical half of psychol-
ogy and epistemology as a priori half of psychology? If this choice were
forced upon us, if we could find no other alternative, surely the former is
the one we ought to take. After all, does not an empirical science of prob-
lem solving exist? Is there not an anthropology of scientific activity? An
inductive science of inquiry? Has not the recognition of linguistic hab-

its, of symbolizing activities of the organism, undercut classical puzzles
about mind? Are not logical, mathematical, epistemological expressions
linguistic facts which can be empirically studied? What is the “meaning”
of any expression but the manner in which it is used? How is this to
be found out if not by the psychological-sociological-historical study of
language habits? What are “pure” logic, “pure” semantics, mathematics
but “abstracted” and “idealized” skeletons which live only in the flesh
of the theory of inquiry? We are all familiar with this party line. Are we
convinced?
Perhaps we ought to be convinced. Before we succumb, however, let us
pay a moment’s attention to the metaphors with which we concluded our
pragmatistic peroration. Surely we must admit that the linguistic behav-
ior of logicians, mathematicians, semanticists, epistemologists, as well as
the common-sense use of logical, mathematical, semantical, and episte-
mological terms can be the object of empirical study. But what are we to
make of the statement that mathematics, “formal” logic, “pure” semantics,
and so on are “abstracted” and “idealized” skeletons of the fruit of such
study. Are we being told that these sciences are the abstract and idealized
portions of the psychology of inquiry? Are they the same sort of thing as
psychological-sociological-historical linguistics, only more rarified? Are
their statements a posteriori? Inductive? Or are they, perhaps, a priori?
But we have already noted that it is difficult to see how any characteris-
tics of events can be the subject-matter of a science all the statements of
which are analytic. It appears that the pragmatist must either deny that
logic, mathematics, and so on are a priori or else they are the abstract and
idealized part of the empirical science of symbolic behavior.4
We have now come to the most difficult and tantalizing portion of
our argument. Here the guiding lines of the philosophical tradition have
practically vanished, and the lack of an adequate psychology of the higher
processes makes itself keenly felt. A sharp terminology is non-existent,
and reliance must be placed in the suggestive power of metaphor.
4
The original typescript stops here. After some incomplete handwritten notes, the typescript begins
again in the next paragraph.
The fundamental metaphor which will dominate the following dis-

cussion is that of the wearing of clothes. Just as there are “work-a-day”
clothes and Sunday clothes, so there are work-a-day linguistic habits
and Sunday linguistic habits (just as in the activities of life one wears
either ones working suit or ones Sunday suit but not both simultaneously
[though one can, of course, wear neither—the birthday suit] so it is with
the use of language habits). But let me explain. Man is a language using
animal. His linguistic habits enable him to achieve an adjustment to his
environment which, in sensitivity and adequacy, infinitely transcends the
learned responses of the lower animals. Yet we are no longer as startled
as philosophers once were to hear it said that these linguistic habits and
these learned responses are “cut from the same cloth”. It is a familiar (but
by no means universally accepted) position to say that human languages
are nothing but extremely complicated modes of adjustment to the world
in which we live. Now I am in fundamental sympathy with the philo-
sophical outlook of those who make such statements, and if I find it mis-
leading, it will not be because I believe that the rationalistic paraphernalia
of apprehended universals and propositions, or (on the conceptualistic
alternative) intentional contents, must be introduced in an account of
significant language. For that this menagerie is sheer confusion. I am
as convinced as the most hardheaded behaviorist. That the language
behavior by which we are enabled to get set for the situations with which
the world will confront us exhibits a family resemblance to the learned
behavior of white rats in a maze is, I believe, a first approximation to the
truth. But does the rejection of rationalistic pseudo-psychologies commit
us to the thesis that all language behavior is of this kind?
To say that whereas in so far as animals can be said to think, their
thoughts are tied to the achievement of goal satisfying adjustments to
their environment, man, in contrast, is capable of enjoying “free thought”,
thought, that is, which is not thus tied down to the achievement of goals
thus concretely understood—to say this is certainly to utter the com-
monplace. Yet this statement contains a fundamental insight which has
not yet found a place in such psychological theory as (unlike that which
is characteristic of the pragmatists) is uncontaminated by rationalistic
residues. It is this contrast between “tied” and “free” thought (that is to
say, language behavior) which I have in mind in speaking of work-a-day
and Sunday habits of linguistic activity. How is it to be understood? This

question leads into uncharted lands, and it is only sensible that we ask
what known territories lie this side of the boundary before setting off on
our quest. Is it not, after all, the domain conquered by psychology which
is our base of operations and to which the terrain we discover will be
annexed? But in which suit of clothes do we act as psychologists? How
are we to dress for the quest? Perhaps we shall learn something about the
contrast between “free” and “tied” thought by asking whether the investi-
gation of this contrast belongs to “free” or “tied” thought!
How can the conclusion be avoided that the investigation of linguis-
tic activity and, in particular, the distinction between “free” and “tied”
linguistic activity (thought) is itself a mode of “tied” linguistic activity?
Is not the study of language an empirical science? And are we not com-
mitted to the view that empirical science in general is a—to be sure com-
plex—behavioral adjustment to the world in which we live? Is not such
scientific inquiry as truly (though more subtly) controlled by the scien-
tist’s environment as is the behavior of a rat in a maze?
Now it is indeed true that the activities of the empirical scientist are
not only impinged on by his environment—which is true of all activ-
ity—but themselves seek to come to terms with it—which is characteris-
tic of “tied” activity. Yet it would be a mistake to infer that therefore the
activities of the empirical scientist must be conceived of as “tied” through
and through—as are the efforts of the rat. “Free” linguistic activity is not
only peculiar to man, it is so characteristic of his behavior that it perme-
ates even his “tied” activities and gives them a nature and scope not to be
encountered in the activities of animals lower in the evolutionary scale.
How are we to understand this blending of freedom and control in the
empirical sciences? The following oversimplified analysis may prove sug-
gestive. Let us suppose a scientist to have a certain structure S of auditory/
linguistic habits so bound up with his behavior and his sense faculties as
to constitute his ability to “recognize” physical situations and objects. Let
us suppose that in addition to S this scientist has the ability to develop
“games” each of which can be described as a set of habits of deciding
with respect to any visual mark or spatial and/or temporal sequence of
visual marks whether or not it belongs to a privileged group of marks and
arrangements of marks. Let us call such behavior “mark manipulation
in accordance with rules”, and let us further suppose that the rules with
which the behavior in each of these “games” accords/consists of what we
should be willing to call the formation rules, transformation rules, and
conformation rules (P-axiomatics; “implicit definitions” of non-logical
terms) of a language. Now the next step in our argument rests on the
recognition that two marks belong to the same “kind” of mark, as far as
a game is concerned, if behavior, in accordance with what we would call
the rules of the game, does not discriminate between them. Thus, let us
suppose that after constructing many such sets of habits of visual mark
manipulation in accordance with rules, the scientist develops a willing-
ness to treat auditory events as belonging to the kinds of marks participat-
ing in his games. Consider, in particular, the auditory events which are
symbols in system S. These are already embedded in habits and, indeed,
linguistic habits at that. When the scientist attempts to fit these auditory
events into his games, there will be a clash of habit with habit, except in
the case of a subset of the games, where the auditory events with their
habits will fit snugly into the habits of the game. The “tied” habits of the
structure S of auditory linguistic habits dovetail with one of more of the
sets of “free” habits in the play activity of the scientist.
Now let us examine this “dovetailing” in a little more detail. In the
first place, both the games and the structure S are incomplete, though
in different ways. Thus, to put it as simply as possible, a set of language
habits which enables us to predict the occurrence of the items we rec-
ognize, that is to say, which enables us to be “set” for the items we shall
recognize. On the other hand, the rules of each game will pick out certain
pairs of arrangements of marks (“pairs of contradictory sentences”) as
“pieces” or “situations” in the game, but will not give one rather than the
other member of such pairs a privileged position. Now where the audi-
tory symbols of S with associated habits uninhibited can be taken into
a game, that game becomes tied. And if the broader context of habit into
which the habits of S are plunged combined with the decisions between
contradictory sentences characteristic of S behavior lead to satisfactory
“sets” (predictions), then it is clear that the blending of “tied” and “free”
language activity has led to a more adequate adjustment of the scientist
with his environment than he possess with S alone. We might say that by
“coordinating” one freely constructed “postulate system” with his “lan-

guage” he has “discovered” (certain) “laws of his world”.
If we were asked, “What is the system of linguistic habits S about?” we
should have little difficulty in replying, “System S is about certain kinds
of perceptual situations”. If we were then asked, “What do you mean by
saying that system S is about perceptual situations?” we should reply, “We
mean that these habits, embedded as they are in the sense faculties and
appetitive life of the scientist, enable complex adjustments to the envi-
ronment impinging on his sense organs which he would not otherwise be
able to make”. In other words, we should claim that the aboutness char-
acteristic of system S can be analyzed in terms of behavioral adjustment
to the environment. Now it is clear that such aboutness characterizes a
“freely elaborated set of mark-manipulation habits” only where such hab-
its gear in as described above with a system S which itself has such about-
ness. It is in this sense that an “arbitrarily constructed postulate system”
gains aboutness through being interpreted.
But there is something else to be noted; another sense of “about” to be
tickled out of our discussion. It will be remembered that we characterized
the mark-manipulation play of our scientist as activity in accordance with
rules. But this is not enough. The nature of “free linguistic play” cannot
be understood without conceiving it as activity governed by rules: and
rules are about the activity they govern in quite a different sense from
that in which system S is about the perceptual environment. Now it is
characteristic of activity which is not only in accordance with, but also
governed by, rules that the words appearing in the rule are not only so
correlated with the marks and the manipulations belonging to the game
that they would be said to be the names of these marks and activities
(thus, we may suppose that as such they belong to system S) but also that
instead of serving merely to indicate that marks and activity do occur
together, the recognition of a mark as of a certain kind serves to initiate
the activity named by the rule. It is in this that the “freedom” of activity
governed by rules consists, for rule statements serve to initiate the activ-
ity which would make the rule statements true statements if they were
merely declarative statements to the effect that such and such are marks
are treated in such and such ways. It is in this fact that is to be found the
free aboutness involved in rules being about rules-governed behavior, as

opposed to the tied aboutness analyzed above.
Consider now the following situation. An organism manifests a
System S1 of symbol-behavior which is in accordance with rules but
not governed by rules. This same organism then begins to develop a
linguistic play behavior governed by rules. It becomes apparent to us
that System S1, though not itself governed by rules, could be brought
to dovetail with a segment of one of the rule-governed games. Might
we not find it appropriate to say that the rules were not only about the
game which they “set up”, but also about System S1 (and any other
system which could similarly be assimilated into the game in such a
way as to be a partial interpretation of it)? This extension of the sense in
which rules are about activities from the narrow sense in which they are
about only those activities of which they are the rules in the strict sense,
to a broader sense in which they are about activities which, though not
actually rule-governed activities, could so be absorbed by a game with
those rules as to become so, is one that is commonly made—though
without a clear understanding of what is being done—and a failure to
distinguish between the narrow and the extended us has led to much
confusion in talking about linguistic rules.
So far we have been concerned to contrast “free” with “tied” language
habits, as well as activity merely in accordance with rules with activity
governed by rules. Our discussion, however, has made it clear that the
process of interpretation can make a system which originally was merely
“tied” into a “free-and-tied” by gearing the tied system of habits in with a
system of habits governed by rules. The domain of habits governed by rule
is the domain of initiative, of alternatives, of the free play of the “symbolic
imagination”. Now such linguistic behavior as that belong to system S
and S1 were conceived by us to be merely in accordance with rules before
the process of interpretation whereby they became rule-governed. The
question now arises as to whether there is any type of linguistic behav-
ior which is characteristically rule-governed, and scarcely to be found in
a merely “in accordance with rule” state? The linguistic habits we have
been considering up to now are “object-language” habits—thought the
question arises as to the status of the language in which the rules of rule-
governed linguistic activity belong. What of the linguistic structures that

have been called semantic meta-languages?
We have pointed out that it is characteristically of tied linguistic sys-
tems that they contain sets of properly formed sentences—for example,
“A is red”, “A is green”, and so on—such that the “rules” of the system
allow for a privileged status to be given to one of the members of each set,
although the rules themselves do not provide the basis for these decisions.
In other words, the rules allow for a choice between “A is red” and “A is
green” and so on, but the choice itself rests on non-linguistic factors, the
fact that the organism sees red or sees green, and so on. And, clearly, in
order for a language to be of value in adjusting the user of the language to
his world, then language must be such that his rules permit, and, indeed,
require, extra-linguistic factors to have a hand in determining the status
of expressions in the language. Otherwise, there would either be no rules
for the assertion of sentences other than tautologies or these rules would
be “free” rules depending no way on what was the case. The language
would be such that fact could not get a grip on it. It would not, contrary
to the hypothesis, be a tied language.
The preceding paragraph leads to the concept of linguistic structures
which combine a certain resemblance to tied language with freedom in
just the respect in which the latter are tied. In order to develop this con-
ception, let me first ask you to consider an organism which not only uses
language to adjust itself to its environment but also has language habits
relating to its use of language, so that, to put it crudely, it cannot only talk
about the environment but also about its use of language in relation to
the environment; specifically, it can decide whether or not a given piece
of language behavior led to an expected adjustment. Now the important
thing to note is that just as linguistic behavior is a part of the factual
world, so the use of language about linguistic events and their outcomes,
which we are considering as a tied use of language. The organism is, we
should say, making use of pragmatic categories in its evaluation of its own
language behavior. Just as an organism can adjust to causal patterns in
the non-linguistic environment, so it can adjust to the causal patterns in
the use of language by itself or by other organisms. It is the tied evalua-
tion of language events as “fruitful” or “unfruitful” which the pragmatist
confuses with the use of the semantic term “true”, but of this more in a
moment.
In the previous paragraph we considered an organism which exhibited
tied language behavior with respect to its own tied language behavior in
relation to its environment (such an organism might well exhibit such
behavior with respect to the tied language behavior of other organisms,
though it seems clear that it couldn’t do the latter without being able
to respond to its own language behavior). In the case of such an organ-
ism, the rules governing its linguistic behavior would not only enable
it to assert certain sentences about the environment in the presence of
certain environmental situations. They would also enable it to assert cer-
tain sentences about the relations of its utterances to the environment.
The important thing to note is that our previous analysis of “aboutness”
applies without change to this organism’s utterances about the relations
of its utterances to its non-linguistic environment.
Let us now ask concerning the characteristics a system of free language
habits of an organism must have in order to resemble a tied language
system in all respects save that the “decision” with respect to “factual
sentences” is entirely intra-linguistic. Clearly although the language must
contain “sets of mutually incompatible factual statements” (in order to
resemble tied language systems), the very rules of the language itself must
specify which sentence of each such set is the one that holds. Two things
are particularly to be noticed: (1) The language would be completely free,
and being free would lack the aboutness characteristic of tied language.
(2) The privileged status, which in tied languages comes to certain factual
sentences by virtue of habits connecting them with perceptual situations,
and consists in their “being asserted” must consist in the fact that the
rules of the language single out these sentences in an untied or “intra-
linguistic” manner. In connection with the second point it should be
noticed that whereas with respect to these free languages, the aboutness
whereby a language becomes tied has disappeared, this is not true of the
aboutness of linguistic rules to the linguistic behavior it governs. Thus,
in studying the behavior of an organism employing such a free linguistic
system, we can distinguish between the expressions of the system and the
names of these expressions in the rules which govern its manipulations
of the system.
Letter from Herbert Feigl to Wilfrid Sellars

(July 5th, 1946)5
Dear Wilfrid,
Excessive busy-men and summer heat prevented me from replying
sooner—and still prevent me from giving you an elaborate response to
the latest edition of your paper on Realism. Let me say right away that it
makes for exciting reading and that all the way through I feel you have
your finger on the very nerve of the issue. Even in this greatly expanded
version there are many parts that remain somewhat difficult to evaluate—
because of the high degree of condensation—you’re right, this deserves to
be written up as a book! Your conception of a pragmatic meta-language
seems sound and novel, but would have to be much more fully elaborated
even in order to serve the purposes of your argument. Also, I am still not
entirely convinced by your arguments for the irreducibility of the physi-
cal languages to the language of data.
Furthermore, you disappointed me in not fulfilling your (semanti-
cal) promise to demonstrate the synonymy of behavioristic and neuro-
physiological predicates—leaving the mind-body problem where it was
semantically, already 60 years ago: as the empirical question of parallelism
versus interactionism—Finally, people of the subj-idealistic convictions,
say, of Stace6—might say that your realism—a ‘linguistic’ realism—is
not a realism at all (perhaps your venerable father might make the same
complaint from the opposite side) in that you merely make plausible
the usefulness of a language that contains individual terms ------ within
direct experience. But that is something Stace not only admits but even
emphasizes himself. So, maybe C. I. Lewis is right after all, that there
is no real difference between a sufficiently critical realism and a (ditto)
idealism. Lastly, if you think you’ve contributed to the clarification of
the problem of induction—I would beg to differ [ultimately, the precise
5
6
W. T. Stace (1886–1967).
character of Jones’ omniscience had better be stated more fully and care-
fully delimited!].
After these skeptical remarks I would like to add that I think you’ve got
one problem licked: namely, meaningfulness through the hook-up of the
‘map’ with the token-identification I, here, & now (Bravo!).
I don’t presume to give you (cheap & biased) advice. But if you feel
that the turmoil of your ideas is going to continue yet for a spell, why
don’t you postpone publication for a few more months. I’ll be delighted
to serve as your guinea pig in our discussions in autumn (to which I look
foremost with keen delight!). Sorry, that ------ work with summer ses-
sions, heat and humidity, and preparations for California (we’ll leave in
2 ½ weeks!) prevent me now from giving you a more detailed and more
useful reaction to your paper.
Every best wish to you and May,
Herbert
Letter from Wilfrid Sellars to Gustav

Bergmann (August 14th, 1947)7
Dear Gustav,
I feel like a more normal human being now that the general lines of
my argument are out. On the other hand, I have a tremendous urge to
trace every reader of Philosophy of Science8 and assure them that I am as
aware as they are of its vagueness, involvedness, confusions, and general
shortcomings; indeed, far more aware than they can ever be. The paper
was written last October and November, and is literally a record of my
attempts to sweat out the implications of the non-factual character of
philosophical assertions, while avoiding the Wittgensteinian notion that
there are no philosophical propositions.
7
University of Pittsburgh. The initial copy of this letter was accessed from the Gustav Bergmann
collection housed at the University of Iowa archives.
8
Sellars 1947a/2005.
I believe that I have much improved the argument since then. An

intermediate stage is represented by the Iowa City paper,9 which I have
revised for publication this fall in the Journal of Philosophy. I am sending
you a copy of the MS under separate cover.
Last summer, after writing a virulent attack on your conception of a
pragmatic meta-language (the paper is still sitting on Moore’s desk) in
which I showed to my own satisfaction that it was nothing but axioma-
tized behavioristics, I returned to the task of revising my Realism and the
New Way of Words. In the process of doing so, it occurred to me that the
predicates ‘verified’ and ‘confirmed’ point to a metalinguistic structure
from which semantics must be regarded as a bleeding slice. That such a
type of meta-language must not be confused with empirical psychology
(behavioristic or otherwise) was a primary conviction which is undoubt-
edly due to my rationalistic background. Thus, though I chose to call
such metalinguistic structures “pragmatics”, I drew a fundamental dis-
tinction between my “Pure Pragmatics” and what I (perhaps mistakenly)
regarded as your tided version of pragmatics a la Morris, Carnap et al.
When I told Hall10 of my conclusions, and tried to convince him that
‘verified’ and ‘confirmed’ belonged in a non-psychologistic meta-language,
he was not moved. For reasons which I gather that you will appreciate, I
was disturbed at his article in Φ Sci.11
Gustav,—there is no doubt but that you have had much influence on
my thinking, since I returned from the Navy. As I have often told you I
regard you as one of the most important of contemporary philosophers,
particularly so since you are one of that rare group—a positivist who has
not been spoiled for genuine philosophy. The influence you have exerted
has been via two articles and two alone, Pos. Met. Of Consc.12 And PSSP,13
for these are the only two I studied while working out my argument, and
I studied them only when working out my criticism of your pragmatics in
my article on consciousness. As you say, the problem is one for the histo-
9
Sellars 1947b/2005.
10
Everett Hall (1901–1960).
11
Hall 1947.
12
Bergmann 1945.
13
Bergmann 1944.
rian. I am myself not up to the job, beyond this general account. Perhaps
when we get together, we can put our finger on the details where we see
eye to eye. THAT OUR GENERAL AIMS ARE THE SAME THERE IS
NO DOUBT, particularly since your note rejecting (though I don’t quite
understand how) psychologism in your pragmatics.
I should like very much to get together with you and talk philosophy,
and to work out a way of joining forces against those philosophers who
are still riding in the old merry-go-round. I shall be in Canada until the
7th or so of September. After that I may be free, and it might be possible
for us to get together.
We are looking forward to May’s appearance. Is she located? Mary and
I should be glad to be of assistance. Mary, at least, will be here after the
8th or so of September.
Mary joins me in sending greetings to you and Leola,
wie immer,
Wilfrid

Bergmann (August 26th, 1947)14
Dear Gustav,
This note is in the nature of an addendum to my letter of the 14th.
I have become quite ingrown philosophically these past two years. On
the whole it has been a good thing. I have forced myself to come to grips
with what I think about epistemological issues, instead of contenting
myself with the critique of the efforts of others—and how easy that is!
But now that I have come up with the best I can do at the moment, I feel
a parching thirst for discussion. I feel the need for a Socrates to test my
production and determine whether or not it is a wind-egg.
I spent three days with Carnap last June. I found it very helpful—
but his fundamental naïve realism is catching up with him. He will find
14
University of Pittsburgh. The initial copy of this letter was accessed from the Gustav Bergmann
collection housed at the University of Iowa archives.
himself with strange bedfellows unless he re-examines his conception of

semantic propositions.
There are three reasons why I look to you: (1) the obvious influence
you have had on my thinking; (2) the fact (which you correctly point
out) that no one else will understand what I am trying to do; (3) the fact
that we have been able to communicate in the past.
I am most anxious to know if you find the J. Phil. MS I sent you of
any value in clearing up the confusion of the Phil. Sci. paper? Do you
find in the least degree plausible my attempt to explain how ‘(factually)
true’ and other epistemological predicates can (and must) be in principle
decidable on purely formal grounds? Of how a sentence assigning an
epistemological predicate logically presupposes a complete world-story?
Does the assertion that the distinction between “perfect” and “imperfect”
empirically meaningful is a factual and not an epistemological distinction
(cf the concept of a mathematical mistake) clarify how this can be?
I don’t at the moment have a typescript of the Realism15 paper, in which
some of the points are made in more elaborate detail, but when I get back
to Minneapolis I will arrange to get back a copy and send it to you.
This note sounds extremely self-centered. That is merely because it
concerns a few concrete steps in what I should to think of as a renewal of
intellectual ties.
Best wishes to you and Leola,
Wilfrid
Letter from Everett Hall to Wilfrid Sellars

(September 15th, 1947)16
Dear Wilfrid,
Thanks for the reprint of your “Pure Pragmatics and Epistemology”.
I see you were very much in earnest in saying that you now believe that
philosophy is nothing but formal language theory. I fear that you have
15
Sellars 1948a/2005.
16
University of Pittsburgh. Additional permission secured from Richard Hall.
utterly discarded the cause (realism)! Although differing greatly in how

you do it, you are trying to do exactly what Gustav has done. I still insist
on a non-formal feature of all philosophical inquiry. I confess I haven’t
followed your thought very carefully in your article, but I do think I
would take basic issue with you in at least one place. You seem to say
that metalinguistic predicates, the language in which they occur, must be
formal in some sense opposed to factual, perhaps in the sense that such
predicates can be introduced and ------ such ------ determined wholly
by definition and linguistic rules, without reference to extra-linguistic
fact. This I would deny. Surely that they are metalinguistic does not war-
rant saying they are non-factual. Indeed, it seems intuitively clear that
some metalinguistic predicate would have to be undefined and gain its
meaning through some relation to non-linguistic fact. For a predicate is
metalinguistic only if it refers to an object which is a language feature or
element, and it refers to it as such. But nothing is linguistic can as it refers
or is a feature of that which refers (or if the language is uninterpreted
is capable, by being interpreted, of referring). And this must be carried
down to the last step—language at its lowest level. Now its reference sup-
poses there is some sort of non-linguistic world. Therefore, reference to it
as linguistic includes reference to a non-linguistic world. This, of course,
is just another way of reaffirming my convictions: (1) all metalinguistic
predicates are basically semantical and (2) semantics must start from an
undefined predicate (e.g., ‘designates’) attributable to zero-level expres-
sions. These, to my mind, are essential to the maintenance of realism “in
the new way of words”.
I do think your article shows that if one gives up realism in favor of
linguistic formalism, one is landed not in Berkeleyian idealism but in
absolute idealism. I think it also to be commended for showing that the
coherence theory is a theory not only of truth, but also of verification,
that is its ‘coherence’ (in your terminology, ‘rules of conformation’) is
neither logical consistency nor a merely contingent set of P-laws, but
something peculiarly in between, and, that its plausible outcome is not
absolutism but relativism, that is, both ‘true’ and ‘verified’ are relative to
some “story”. I think this is admirable because it shows (to my naively
realistic mind) the ------ of the coherence theory.
There are two or three more technical points I might mention on which
I may be wrong simply through misunderstanding:p. 188: Shouldn’t your
1st statement in small print include ‘true’ before ‘sentences q’? Otherwise
‘q’ could designate ‘r coex p’ and yet ‘r coex p’ is false. I realize that later
you say every sentence in your sort of formal pragmatics must be true
simply being allowed in it, but you haven’t said that yet.
p. 188: By making the empirical tie not a tie between linguistic expres-
sions and facts, but simply between linguistic expressions (tokens and
types), haven’t you got a meaning of ‘verifiable’ (and later of ‘verified’)
utterly out of harmony with common usage? In the second sentence in
small print substitute ‘Jones’ imagining-faiv-ainjulys – are-dansing-on-
thiss-pin’ for ‘Jones’ imagining Jonz-iz-ceeing-redd’ and ‘Five angeles are
dancing on this pin’ for ‘Jones is seeing red’.
P. 190: I don’t see how you have excluded the possibility of both ‘p’ and
‘~p’ being verified in S for every S.
I am looking forward to “Realism in the New Way of Words”. I realize
you changed it a great deal since I saw it, but I had the impressions that
there you really did ------ a realist!
Have you had times to look through my manuscript, “The forms of
sentences and the dimensions of reality?” I’m going to need it about the
middle of this term in connection with a seminar on theory of knowledge.
Give my best regards to Mary, May, and Herbert.
Rather respectfully, Everett.

(Undated)17
Dear Wilfrid,
I think that your new way of stating your “New Way”—I mean the
Journal of Philosophy18 form—brings out much more clearly what you
17
18
Sellars 1947b/2005.
are trying to do, though ever yet the technical details are not too sharp in
my mind (this last is just a biographical statement).
What essentially bothers me is this: Supposing you have a confirmed
world-story, including a set of verified sentences. This would differ from
a non-confirmed world-story only in its formal structure. Thus, the dif-
ference is a difference in the style of the story and therefore cannot, in
any significant sense, reflect the difference we have in mind when in ordi-
nary language we distinguish a confirmed story from sheer fiction or a
wild guess. You say “p” is verified in S if S includes “q” and “r”, and “q”
designates “r coex p” and r is a token of p. But if you are here using p
(and p is, I take it, an empirical sentences), then you have left purely
formal linguistics. If p, however, is a mere form, a blank that you specify
can only be filled in a certain way, then ‘verified’ here has no significant
resemblance to the ‘verified’ of science and everyday language. Something
similar could be said for coex and token. Unless a token is a particular
fact, if it is solely a member of a class of the sort indicated on page 654,
it can’t do the job required.
In short, I still don’t see how you can have adequately reflected in lan-
guage the relation of language to non-linguistic referents. I grant that if
you can, it is best put in the form of analytic truths; and I agree that there
is no reason to suppose only one language with one such set of analytic
truths can be formulated, and that there are as many worlds as there are
languages that do this.
As to your rationalism—I like it no better when brought in by the
back door of conformation rules than by the front door of synthetic a
priori truths. Of course, you can construct world stories with conforma-
tion rules of this sort, but that doesn’t lend favor to the idea that some
facts lend credence (apart from assured empirical laws) to other facts.
You would say—in a certain world story, where I (I fear) would say in
the world!
But I like your honesty—you frankly accept the basic relativisms of
your position. Gustav, who like you attempts for a purely formal episte-
mology, isn’t fully away of this. He avoids it by having his eye on the real
world while constructing his purely formal semantics and pragmatics.
Best wishes,
Everett

(December 15th, 1948)19
Dear Wilfrid,
Many thanks for the reprint of your “Concepts as Involving Laws”. It
is filled with those subtle distinctions for which you ought to be famous.
But, to be brutally frank, whether you ever do become famous for them
will depend, in my judgment, on whether you can improve your style in
stating them. Just as Gustav’s oracular and cryptic pronouncements fail
to produce the clarification he intends save to the few who have spent
long hours with him threshing things out, so your over elaboration and
your attempt to put your distinctions in “the formal mode of speech”
must (this is my fear) deter any but the most patient from following
through. The crucial things come out at the joints and can be said in
principle without much specification of the enabling mechanisms.
Probably after this bit of fatherly advice you will not be surprised to
discover that I was unable to follow through and really get the joints in
the structure of your thought. Be that as it may, there were two main
areas of interest to me in your paper. One was necessary connections, the
other the differentiation of universals. My thoughts on the former are
particularly naïve, and I shall not take long in exposing them. I realize
that your necessary connections involve your denial of acquaintance with
universals, and so on, but for the moment let us try to keep these two
areas distinct.
I take it for you a necessary connection (to be found in the invariances
of the laws of nature) is relative to the structure of what you call a family
of (possible) histories. A necessary connection in this sense differs from a
logical necessity only in that the latter holds for (is relative to) the struc-
ture of the family of all families of (possible) histories. This means that
ontologically laws of nature and of logic have the same status, though
not the same range (the latter includes as variables what the former has as
constants). The question is, what is that status? Following your example,
19
let me put it as a dilemma; Either the structure is “out there” in the world,
in which case the necessity is lost, or it is merely linguistic, in which case
the necessity is of no ontological significance.
First, let us suppose the families of possible histories and their
structures are out there. The structure of any such family is, I take
it, a tissue of necessary connections. Why? Because the universals go
together with particulars in unexceptional patterns for every possible
particular in every possibly history. Now it is clear that it is not the
‘every’ that does the trick here. It is its combination with ‘possible’.
But now we must remember that the possible (particulars and histo-
ries) in this family is out there in the world. This means it is in some
sense a fact, a fact that might have been other. That family might have
been just absent from the total realm of being. If not, if each fam-
ily must be there and constituted just as it is, then the necessity lies
not in and relative to the individual family but in The One Concrete
Family of All Families, and so on—but this, on your account, is logi-
cal necessity. This, however, is not what I wish to stress, but rather
that possibilities that are out there are, from the standpoint of neces-
sary connection, no better than actualities. They furnish no ground
for the meaningfulness of contrary to fact conditionals. Suppose I say,
if x had been U1, it would also have been U2. Let this be relative to H1,
and let it be false that in H1 x actually is both U1 and U2. The contrary
to fact conditional here does not mean (if we are to use it to express
necessary connection) that in H2 is both U1 and U2. And if this is so,
it does not help to generalize for all histories in that family. Contrary
to fact conditionals (to express the element of necessity) must be irre-
ducibly conditional, never categorical. ‘If such and such had been so’
does not refer to something else that (whether as actuality or possibil-
ity) just is so—is really there; it can never properly be translated, ‘thus
and so is the case’—even for possibilities.
If you say, granted, just that family, then its structure of possibilities is
necessary; I say, this makes sense, but the necessity is not then out there in
the world. ‘If you have that family, then you must have such co-presences
of universals’ is irreducibly conditional, but is so because linguistic. There
is no such ‘if … then’ out there, even in a world of possibilities. Out
there, there is just the family with its co-presences, and so on.
To put it crudely, if necessity is out there in the world, it cannot be a

mere unexceptional regularity of entities (even if these be dubbed ‘pos-
sibilities’): it must be some force or power requiring this regularity, pro-
hibiting exceptions to it. Otherwise, necessary propositions could be
reduced to categorical. I told you I would be naïve!
Now for the differentiation of universals. It seems to me that your
problem of differentiation of universals (just as the medieval problem
of the principle of differentiation of particulars) is a pseudo-problem, a
problem that cannot be solved since any solution would require a funda-
mental confusion of categories. You fall into the “fallacy of proprietary
reduction” (if I may follow the bad example of Whitehead in calling a
tendency of thought with which I disagree a fallacy). I find two forms
of this—with each of which I disagree. First, there is the treatment of
identity (or its negation, namely difference) as a property. You, I am sure,
condemn the crude confusion of an identity ‘is’ with a predicative ‘is’. It
seems to me, however, that your search for a principle of differentiation
is a subtle form of the same confusion. You ask (p. 297), “In virtue of
what are two universals different?” Clearly you are asking for a property.
Now since difference is just non-identity you are trying to find a property
that shall be the non-identity. Having started on this false quest, you are
entangled in new forms of the fallacy of proprietary reduction. You speak
of the property of having exemplifications, and so on (p. 298), but having
an exemplification is no property. You say “a universal is by its very nature
the sort of entity that is exemplified by particulars”. Correct, but then this
is property stated only as an identity-sentence. It gives us no property of
universals. That you are really making exemplification of a property itself
a property seems particularly clear on p. 299, where relations between
universals (i.e., two-place properties of universals) are reduced to sets of
exemplifications of universals. That you are not aware of this is probably
due to the ambiguity of the phrase ‘the distinctive property of ’. One
may use this to refer to a property that is easily recognized and always
exemplified. But this is not what you want. You want a property that
shall differentiate a universal that shall constitute its non-identity with
other universals. This you find in the totality of its (possible) exemplifica-
tions. But, if I am right, you not only would not have come out with this
startling answer—you would have not asked the question it supposedly
answers—had you stuck vigorously to the distinction between any prop-

erty exemplified by anything and (1) and the thing itself and also (2) the
exemplification.
Now you may react to all this by saying, Everett is just denying the
principle of identity of indiscernibles. But this isn’t the case. One can
accept that principle as a deep empirical law without the confusion I
think you commit. Let it be formulated (for particulars) as follows:
(x)(y) [(Φ) (Φx ≡ Φy) ⊃ x = y]
If this is not a logical law but only factually true, then one need not
confuse ‘x’ with a predicate (a relation—as you do in the parallel case of
the difference of universals), so that the above comes to have the form:
(x)(y) [(Φ) (Φx ≡ Φy) ⊃ R(x, y)]
Where ‘R(x, y)’ replaces ‘x = y’.
I hope this extended (yet quite naïve) criticism does not leave the
wrong impression. I am keenly aware that you are grappling with the real
philosophical problems, and that they are immensely difficult (as Moore
would say). Here’s to continued energy to you.
With best wishes,
Everett W. Hall
Letter from Everett Hall to Wilfrid Sellars (July

28th, 1952)20
Dear Wilfrid,
After sweating over final forms of two PhD theses and one Master’s,
and, with somewhat less labor, dashing off a couple of book reviews (a
copy of one of which I enclose on the supposition that it may be of some
interest to you), I have finally managed to have a couple of hours to
devote to your MS, “Particulars”.21 This is obviously inadequate, espe-
cially in view of my general sluggishness of comprehension, but I’m not
20
21
The draft MS of “Particulars” discussed by Hall can be found online in the Wilfrid S. Sellars
papers: http://digital.library.pitt.edu/u/ulsmanuscripts/pdf/31735062220557.pdf
sure when I can get back to wrestling with it again, so I give you my first
reactions for whatever they may be worth.
The paper displays the usual Sellarsian attempt to make fine distinc-
tions on matters of fundamental philosophic importance, which I think,
is the only valid way of going about our job. Moreover, the forbidding
symbolic devices are cut down appreciably making it more readable than
some of your early papers. Frankly, however, I feel that section III pre-
supposes an acquaintance with “Concepts as Involving Laws” without
which it is hardly intelligible, and I wonder whether, realistically, you
can operate successfully this way (in a book you can build as you go;
unfortunately it is quite unwise to suppose that the readers of our philo-
sophic journals, with few exceptions, will look up other articles in order
to follow the thread of the argument in a given one). Moreover, III seems
to me to be making quite a different point from I and II. Would you
consider pulling it out and making a longer, more self-contained piece?
I and II do not seem to suffer so obviously in this regard. My reactions
are directed to their substance.
Your argument against bare particulars and in favor of simple exempli-
fication (i.e., of exemplification of only one universal each) on the part of
“basic particulars” seems, at first glance at least, to involve your sort of use
of the concept, “instancing”. I wonder what would happen if you were
to eliminate it (or more strictly, the word). ‘Instancing a universal’ might
mean any of at least three things: (1) being a more determinate form of
the universal, (2) being an exemplification of the universal, and (3) exem-
plifying the universal. That which is properly said to be an instance of the
universal then would, respectively, be (1) a more determinate universal
falling under it, (2) a fact which is a particular’s exemplification of it, and
(3) a particular which, as a matter of fact, does exemplify it.
Personally, I rather favor (2), though I have no serious objection to
(1), and I definitely feel that (3)—which I take it is your choice—has
rather paradoxical consequences judged by ordinary usage. But I think
that argument at this level really is only verbal (i.e., a matter of usage),
and so come immediately to what bothers me.
If ‘instance’ and its derivatives are used in sense (3), then clearly
throughout your argument you should be able to substitute for such
expressions as ‘instancing Φ’ or ‘an instance of Φ’ the phrases ‘exempli-
fying Φ’ and ‘a particular that exemplifies Φ,’ and so on. But if this is
done I have the strong suspicion that the argument losses its cogency.
For example, if this is done on pp. 9–10, I find no argument (but only
an assertion) that a (simple) particular may not exemplify two universals.
For example, the last two sentences of paragraph two on page 10 would
read: “A basic particular that exemplifies greem is not a bare particular
standing in a relation to Greemness, it is a grum [i.e., a member of the
class of things of which exemplifies greem]. A basic particular that exem-
plifies greem is not a bare particular standing in a relation to Kleemness,
it is a klum. Surely however intimately related a grum and klum [i.e.,
anything that exemplifies greem and anything that exemplifies kleem]
may be, they cannot be identical!”
I’m sure you did not mean the term ‘basic particular’ as you define it to
carry the argument here, for that would beg the question. But what then
is the argument? Surely a grum can be identical with a klum, if a grum
is simply any particular that exemplifies greem and a klum is any par-
ticular that exemplifies kleem, so far as you have shown. “Oh, but”, you
might say, “not as instances of Greemness and Kleemness”. Why not? If
to be an instance were interpreted as (2) above this would be cogent, but
not if interpreted as (3). That is, being an exemplification of greem can-
not be identical with being an exemplification of kleem, but this would
be exactly what you say an instance is not. Yet I fear any ambiguity of
‘instance’ (as between [2] and [3]) subtly does the trick for you here. If
you ask, what is it that is complex when is both greem and kleem? The
answer could well be—not the particular but the exemplification, the
fact.
I think if you were to do the same thing (i.e., eliminate ‘instance,’
etc. by substituting ‘particular that exemplifies’, etc.) on page 7 the argu-
ment would similarly lose its cogency; at least to me it turns into mere
assertion. For example, the penultimate sentence of the first paragraph
would read: “We can, indeed, say that the fact that a is Φ consists of a
‘this-factor’ and a ‘such-factor,’ but the ‘this-factor,’ instead of being a bare
particular, is nothing more nor less than a particular that exemplifies Φ.”
To put the matter bluntly and in general: it seems to me that ‘instance’
carries the burden of the argument which turns on a subtle equivocation
whereby ‘instance’ ostensibly is used (in sense [3]) simply to mean a par-
ticular (which as a matter of fact exemplifies the universal instanced and

thus can be picked out by this fact), but surreptitiously involves (even
paradoxically where you are most laboriously intent on distinguishing
particular and fact) usage (2), so that the exemplification of Φ becomes
necessary not merely to the instances of Φ but to the instance of Φ.
This takes me back from your second to your first method of arguing.
You apparently hold not only that bare particulars could not be known
and that there are none, but that the very concept of a bare particular is
somehow self-contradictory. Now I just can’t make out your argument
for the latter. It seems there is a subtle equivocation again, such that at
one time ‘bare particular’ means (a) a particular that does not exemplify
a universal, at another, (b) a particular that does not internally, in its
nature, require an exemplification of a universal. If kept strictly in sense
(a), I can see no contradiction in it. Of course it would be contradictory
to say in this usage that “Universals are exemplified by bare particulars”
for this would be “Universals are exemplified by particulars that do not
exemplify universals”. But the concept of a bare particular would involve
no contradiction, nor would that of a world in which there are such enti-
ties, nor even indeed that of a knowledge of such entities: granted we
couldn’t know them by description (i.e., as the particulars that exemplify
such and such universals; it is still conceivable that ------- individually
named).
Now of course no actual philosopher has ever wanted to populate his
world with bare particulars in sense (a). But many have accepted them
in sense (b) and there is no absurdity in this unless one slips back into
usage (a). For example (again reacting to your footnote 1), there is no
contradiction in holding that universals are exemplified by bare partic-
ulars in the sense of particulars that bear no internal reference to this
exemplification in their natures. That you involve yourself in some such
equivocation seems clear in that, though the contradiction involved in
footnote 1 only arises by your using bare particular in sense (a), your
own constructive position is based on a denial of bare particulars not in
sense (a), but in sense (b). This is clear from your second and third sen-
tences on page 6: “Furthermore, it is not to be as a mere matter of fact
that this is so, as though these particulars could … etc.”. Of course these
sentences involve, in the exposition of your view, more than the denial
that “basic particulars” are bare particulars in sense (b), but they include
this. It seems to me highly significant that (consonant with eliminating
the contradiction mentioned in footnote 1 turning on interpretation (a))
you do not even suggest the possibility of a view holding that there are
bare particulars in sense (b), holding, that is, that every particular does as
a matter of fact exemplify some universal but that, at least for some, there
is no internal necessity in its nature that it do so.
Now I would not personally care to argue for bare particulars
even in sense (b). I am inclined to accept a sort of objective neces-
sity in the world, although only at the “categorical level”. But
this itself operates only within a categorical framework I accept. I
wouldn’t feel I had any of my own argument for this framework.
Now what really bothers me is that your whole argument against
bare particulars is just the impression ------- of being final, definitive,
knock-them-out-and-carry-them-away.
Well, I have said more and said it more vehemently than I should in
the light of the very cursory reading I have given your paper, but possibly
my remarks may serve to indicate one kind of reaction your article may
elicit.
We’ll be going on to Chapel Hill on or slightly before September 1.
Regards,
Everett
Letter from Gustav Bergmann to Wilfrid

Sellars (May 22nd, 1948)22
Dear Wilfrid,
As you will see from the enclosure, I sent your MS to Churchman
two days ago. I enclose (confidentially) my letter to him because it will
show you the limits of my influence and will do that more directly and
convincingly than I could otherwise. Item 1 will tell you that I am just
22
Reproduced with permission the University of Iowa. Gustav Bergmann Papers, The University
of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa.
losing a battle to keep out something very bad (I was appealed to from
the outside, otherwise I would never have known what was going on).
Also, I know how Churchman feels about papers like yours (or mine, for
that matter). Whatever strength I have in proportion to his insight into
how desperately he needs respectable associates. But, after all this has
been said and understood, I do not think that he will in your case dare
to challenge me.
In case you care to have my private opinion of your paper23:
I do think that it is rather well written, but I also believe that its
length is quite extraordinary in proportion to what it succeeds to say. Its
length, though, has something to do with its being well written, since
you dwell so lovingly, like a once pious pilgrim, before the shrines of your
former worship. Or shall I say, perhaps, that you remind me a little of an
American veteran who with his wife, the former Miss Empiricism, revisits
France and points nostalgically at all the houses where he once whored
so lustily. Being a whore-chaser (amateur historian) myself, I don’t mind
it. But how about the general (and less learned) reader? Anyway, trève de
niaiseries!
1. All you say, as far as I can understand you, is (a) that, in a sense, unde-
fined universals “are what they are”—and this is of course not a psy-
chologism, you avoid this sort of mistake—because of the axioms
which “define them implicitly” (a notoriously gauche and misleading
expression), and that (b) these axioms do, as a matter of fact, not con-
tain individual constants (particulars). Spatial and temporal relations
(or their “root”) are to be found among the axioms, so their spatial
treatment is rather confusing.
2. Designate the conjunct of these axioms with ‘A’ and any deductive
consequence of them, whether or not this consequence has the form
of a material implication, ‘B, then ‘A horseshoe B’ is a tautology. What
else do you say? New marks on paper (as we must all learn from Mr.
Burks’ sad experience) do not add anything.
23
Although Bergmann doesn’t mention the specific paper, given the date and topic it is probably
Sellars 1949b/2005.
3. Is there anything new in all this? It certainly can be found in my

papers but also in those of many other “positivists” and, as you cor-
rectly point out, even in Bradley, at least after a manner of speaking.
On the other hand, I do sympathize with your attempt to say some-
thing further, without falling into psychologism, about the fact that,
in a sense, the universals are what they are by virtue of their implicit
definition. I personally have been inclined for some time (see Undef.
Descr. Pred.), and am still inclined to believe that nothing of the
sort can be said. Perhaps this is wrong; yet I am unfortunately cer-
tain that, whether or not something can be said, you have not in this
paper said it.
We shall spend August with my old friend Hans ------ in Maine. You
are very welcome to come down and stay with us any time during sum-
mer school.

Bergmann (December 28th, 1948)24
Dear Gustav,
I have finally been hit by the lightening—to which I have exposed
myself often enough. The Editor of Mind has graciously accepted a
paper25 which I wrote last summer on a rather unrewarding topic in logi-
cal theory. Now that Ryle has taken it, I am beginning to get cold feet,
particularly about some of the technical devices I have used. I have made
enough blunders in the past three years to realize that a danger exists of
making a fool of myself in the one place where to do this is fatal. The fact
that the article was accepted is, unfortunately, no guarantee that this will
not happen (vide Baylis).
24
25
Sellars 1949b/2005.
I have shown the paper to Herbert and to May, but the former is not
a sufficiently reliable guide on the technical points at issue, while the lat-
ter is too kindly disposed to criticize with sufficient bluntness. In short,
I need someone who can and will call a spade a spade. Would you be
willing to glance at it to see if I have committed any howlers? I am still
reasonably confident about the main thread of the argument. It is the
technical details, to repeat, which are causing me some worry. I should,
of course, acknowledge any changes made as a result of your comments.
There is little news to report from Minneapolis. Mary and I are still
living in an apartment, and wish more and more each day that we had a
house of our own. With the best will in the world, other people make too
much noise. From the east I hear that Pap and some others, with Nagel’s
blessing, are starting (or hoping to start) a new journal along the lines of
analysis. It pays to be in Metropolis.
As ever,
Wilfrid
Letter from Gustav Bergmann to Wilfrid

Sellars (January 6th, 1949)26
Dear Wilfrid,
Having read your paper,27 I feel like Fabrice del Dongo, the hero of
the Chartreuse28 who, as you know, was never quite certain whether he
had taken part in the battle of Waterloo. All he can say is that he spent
a day riding horses, losing one, finding another, that he jumped a ditch,
saw the smoke line of artillery fire, and caught a glimpse of a little man
in a tri-cornered hat galloping past. But how can he tell that this was the
battle of Waterloo? In fact, he isn’t even sure that he got the German on
whom he fired in the bushes in the dark.
26
27
Sellars 1949b/2005.
28
La Chartreuse de Parme by Marie-Henri Beyle (written under the pen name Stendhal).
Similarly, what have I read?

To say a few words about what you most likely want me to comment
on:
1. I assume that you propose to use for your “reconstruction” (and this
is, of course, a matter quite independent of the latter’s merit) a calcu-
lus essentially like that of PM, thus, having subject-predicate form,
distinguishing types (I hate to think of what the fellow will be respon-
sible for who will make you read Quine and teach you circumvent,
after a fashion, types) and, apparently, extensional.
2. If this is so, then the status of your “complex particulars” is, quite
unambiguously, that of predicates (O). In other words, a complex
particular is the class of all the true that “occur” in it. Your informal
expression of x = I (x …, y …) becomes then F(x) & Sp(y), where I
choose ‘Sp’ from “spectrum”, as the ((O)) predicate characteristic of
complex particulars g (you realize, I am talking formalism, not
metaphysics). I(y, x) becomes then I(y, g) which is, by definition
F(y) & Sp (g).
3. Of the four cases of predication in preanalytic English the first two
become then I. F(x) and II. (∃y) ⊃ [(g v y) & (F(y) & Sp(g))] III and
IV, in the way you write them, are clearly not formally
intelligible.29
4. To pluck another drop from the bucket your talking of “illegitimate”
forms is certainly not the right formal way of talking of whatever you
wish to talk about.
Again, there are so many things I could talk about, some of them such
that I am very sure they are wrong, puzzling as they may sound. On the
other hand, plus a change, plus c'est la même chose. Fabrice misled him-
self into an archbishopric and adultery. What will become of me?
As ever
29
Bergmann goes on to suggest reformulations of Sellars’ third and fourth form of F(x) in terms of
contextual definitions, but his specific examples are illegible.
Letter from Wilfrid Sellars to Clarence Irving

Lewis (undated)30
Dear31 Professor Lewis,
I was delighted to receive your note with its query, as I had been plan-
ning for some time to write to you should a plausible occasion arise, and
the topic you raise occupies a strategic position in epistemology.
In the last three years I have been working my way toward a position
which, I believe solves the “epistemological problem” by correctly locat-
ing it. The articles I have so far published are hardly more than records of
stages in the development of my thinking on the subject. Although the
PPR paper was the first to be accepted, Farber was kind enough to let me
make some drastic revisions in the later part of the argument, so that in
point of fact it represents the latest published version of my conception
of epistemology, and I am still reasonably happy with it. The Philosophy
of Science paper, then, is actually the first published version. I was not
only groping for an adequate account of verification and meaningful-
ness as epistemological concepts, I was also in the process of familiariz-
ing myself (to some extent refamiliarizing myself ) with the techniques of
modern linguistic analysis, with the result that some parts of it are quite
confused, and it contains some downright mistakes. But, then, I think
it also contains some inkling of the truth. By the time I read the paper
“Epistemology and the New Way of Words” at Iowa City (published in
the Journal of Philosophy in November 1947), things began to straighten
themselves out.
I mention these autobiographical facts only to make clear that I have
not yet said in print quite what I want to say. As usual, when one is work-
ing something out, one’s formulations are often far more complicated
than is afterward’s seen to be necessary. I shall try here to explain my
conception of empiricism as briefly and concisely as possible.
30
31
Although undated, the references within the letter places this as written around October 1948.
1. I am dying in the last ditch for the assertion that the epistemological
concept of the given, of what I have called verificata, is not a descrip-
tive concept. A catalog of a world would have no heading “verificata”;
in its epistemological use, the term “given” is not an empirical cate-
gory. The contrast between the given and the not-given cannot be
formulated in the object language of science or common sense. It
belongs to the (in my sense) pragmatic metalanguage. The contrast
between the given and the not-given must not be confused with that
between the psychological and the physical. The latter are, indeed,
descriptive concepts.
2. If I may use a touch of metaphor, I can characterize the relation of
Pure Pragmatics to Pure Semantics and Pure Syntax as follows: In
Pure Syntax we conceive of all possible structures which are such
that we should call them languages as opposed to structures which
we should not call languages. Although the meta-language in
which the rules of a language are formulated is written down by
means of marks, and although we might be inclined to say that the
sentence “‘red (a)’ is a sentence” is a sentence of a merely syntactical
system, tells us something about the class of marks reddpare-
nayeparen, this is not the case, formal cognizance of such items as
classes of marks can be taken only with the resources of semantics.
To give formal expression to the desired meaning, we need some-
thing like, “members of the class r are tokens of the expression ‘red
(a)’, and ‘red (a)’ is a sentence”. What I am driving at is that pure
syntax cannot specify the language systems with which it deals as
being empirical classes of marks. Whenever we are thinking for-
mally of languages as systems of empirical classes, we have tacitly
moved into the domain of Pure Semantics. In Pure Semantics, we
conceive of all possible structures which have that duality we can
call a-language-with-its-world. In Pure Semantics, we conceive of
all possible worlds as the correlates of all possible languages, and
we clarify the concepts of32 meaning, truth, and law of nature. Once
we realize that a syntactical characterization of a language we do
32
In the original letter everything up to “of ” is struck through in this sentence.
not make use of concepts of empirical classes, we realize that a

syntax cannot differentiate the expressions of a language by refer-
ence to their designs, but only in terms of differences in the role
played in the language by these symbols. This is a most important
consideration, for it makes it clear that what Carnap spoke of as
the “P-laws” of a language containing descriptive signs are essential
to the formal characterization of that language. A language contain-
ing non-logical signs is not completely characterized from the for-
mal standpoint unless its predicates are distinguished from one
another in terms of “P-laws”, or what I have come to call conforma-
tion rules. But I have said enough to indicate my general line of
thought on these matters.
3. This type of consideration turns out to provide a complete clarifica-
tion of the concept of a law of nature. No more than in the case of
Syntax are semantic systems able to characterize the descriptive
predicates of a language in terms of a descriptive pattern or factual
characteristics. A semantic system, however, by introduction the
concepts of type and token-class, together with the appropriate
rules, can specify classes if states of affairs in the world of a language
to be token-classes of the expressions of that language. Once again, the
marks we use in writing down the semantic system must be not
confused with states of affairs in the world talked about by the
semantic system; it is only the latter which can be said to be tokens
of the language defined by the semantic system. I have put all of
this very tersely in “Epistemology and the New Way of Words”,
pp. 653ff. The upshot is that the predicates of the language which,
together with its world, is the subject-matter of a semantic system,
must be distinguished by conformation rules (P-laws) and the pro-
cess of so doing is the process of specifying the laws of the world
(indeed, the family of worlds) which is the semantic correlate of
the language.
4. At the level of Pure Semantics, then, we are dealing with structures
which we speak of as languages-cum-worlds, and, indeed of
languages-cum-worlds where the worlds contain tokens of the lan-
guages which are their correlates. More accurately, Pure Semantics
is the pure theory of semantic systems which talk about such struc-
tures. One more step, and we have the concept of Pure Pragmatics.
If Pure Semantics offers a formal reconstruction of what we mean
by a language’s being about a world, and in so doing clarifies our
concepts of meaning and truth, not to say natural law, Pure
Pragmatics is an enriched Pure Semantics which enables us to clar-
ify in addition the concepts of the given and of empirical meaning-
fulness. Pure Pragmatics offers a formal reconstruction of the
concept of a language which is not only tokened in its world, but is
also applied. For this purpose, Pure Pragmatics makes use of the
concept of what I have called the coex relation. A Pragmatic system
is a Semantic system which deals as before with a language-cum-
world, but which furthermore selects a factual relationship, transi-
tive and symmetrical, belonging to the world of the system as its
coex relation, conceives of tokens in a primary sense as occurring
only in the domain of this relation, and defined a verified sentence
of the language as one a token of which stands in the coex relation
to the designatum of the sentence.
5. Notice that since languages which involve descriptive predicates must
have a “P-structure”, the atomic sentences of a language are not “exter-
nally related”. Thus, a well-chosen proper part of the set of atomic
sentences formulable in a language will be such that every other atomic
sentence is either P-incompatible with the set, or the contradictory of
that sentence is P-incompatible with the set. The language can be said
to be P-determined by a proper part of the language. I call such a
proper part a fix.
6. It will be noticed that nothing I have said up till now has anything to
do with THE world, but only with the worlds of languages. Every lan-
guage as characterized in a Semantic or Pragmatic system is correlated
with a world which is the world of that language, and a certain set of
the sentences of the language are true of that world. ‘True’ always
means true of the world of the language to which the sentence belongs
that is being characterized as true.
7. Consider, now, a Pragmatic System which specifies a language-cum-
world such that the language includes at least one fix consisting of veri-
fied sentences. We can say that the experiences (domain of coex) which
occur in the world of the language P-determine the language as a
whole, even though only a proper part of the atomic sentences of the
language are verified sentences. We can define an empirically mean-
ingful language as a language which is P-determined by a set of veri-
fied sentences. The true but not verified sentences of the language can
be called confirmed sentences.
8. It is by considering such “abstract systems”, such languages-cum-
worlds that the epistemologist clarifies the “epistemological” predi-
cates ‘true’, ‘false’, ‘entails’, ‘P-entails’, ‘means’, ‘verified’, ‘meaningful’,
‘given’, and so on which we make sure of in our evaluation of language
activity.
9. Once one realizes that the contrast between the given and the not
given does not coincide with the contrast between the psychologi-
cal and the physical, even though in the Pragmatic Systems sketched
by sophisticated scientists, a psychological relation is selected as the
coex relation—compare the scope of the coex relation implicit in
the pragmatics of common sense—the temptation (doomed in any
case to failure) to define the physical in terms of the psychological
disappears; and once one realizes that a language can be “fixed” by
experience without all its atomic sentences being either verified or
falsified, the temptation to regard all meaningful atomic sentences
of a language as about actual or possible experience disappears. In
any case, the concept of possibility employed in such attempts rests
on a mistake. The world of a language is a world of “actual” states
of affairs. Possibility rests on actuality, on what is the case in the
world of the language, or in the family of worlds which share the
same laws (languages come in families determined by a set of con-
formation rules). But I have analyzed this notion at great length in
a paper which will appear in this month’s33 Philosophy of Science.34
33
Sellars 1948c/2005.
34
The original letter in Sellars’ archives contains a final handwritten page that is indecipherable. It
appears to be of a personal, instead of philosophical, nature.
Letter from Thomas Storer to Wilfrid Sellars

(January 14th, 1948)35
Dear Wilfrid,
Ever since you sent me the reprint of “Pure Pragmatics and
Epistemology”, I have been reading, and re-reading it at intervals. I have
finally had the time to give it the careful consideration it demands and
am thus writing you the fruits of my labor. I may say at the beginning
that I am pleading for enlightenment. There are many parts that I just
can’t understand, and while it may be naiveté, I have the feeling that if
I can’t understand it, who the heck can, since we speak, essentially, the
same lingo, and have picked up much of this from the same source.
I think you will agree with me that the pivotal point of this paper is
the definition of: “Is a token of ” and “coex”. The information about these
two defined terms is primarily on pages 186–188; and my intention is to
confine my confusion to the material in this interval. If you can set me
straight on these points, perhaps my other questions will resolve them-
selves, or, at least, I will surely be in a position to formulate them more
accurately. Therefore, I wish to consider these two definitions in more or
less detail.
I think, by the way, that my major confusion consists in your informal
use of quotes. The terminology of quotes is not yet general enough, nor
sufficiently stabilized that one can assume everyone else uses them in the
way he does. I make the assumption (after considering practically every
other possibility, by the way) that you use the letters
p, q, r, …
to stand for sentences. I presume that these are what might be called
metalinguistic sentential variables, although your statement (p. 189) that
the “calculi we are discussing do not contain variables” threw some doubt
in my mind on this point. My present opinion is that your meta-language
does contain variables, whereas your object-language does not contain
variables. Furthermore, it seems to me most likely that you are using
quoted expressions to stand for metalinguistic expressions that possess
35
the syntactical characteristics of names (or of name variables, as the case

may be). By saying that such quoted expressions possess the syntactical
characteristics of names, I mean to say that they can serve a substitution
instances for the variable x in expressions of the type F(x) where F is a
predicate of the first level.
In addition, before I begin my discussion, I am curious how you use
the term “metalinguistic predicates”. Since you are discussing meta-
languages of the semantical type, it is probable that you mean to include
descriptive and formal predicates both. Do you call both of these types
“metalinguistic predicates”? Or merely the class of “formal predicates of
the meta-language”? I am interpreting what you have said to be such
that only there “formal predicates of the meta-language” are called meta-
linguistic predicates, although it really makes slight difference for these
particular arguments. I am curious, also, as to what you would say about
sentences that combined descriptive names with formal predicates, and
formal names with descriptive predicates … or is there any such thing as
a “formal name”?
Turning now to the main part of this letter, I begin a consideration of
the word “token”. Concerning this word, you have the following to say:
1. The designatum of one expression is the token of another.

2. From: p is a token of ‘q’: we may conclude: p designates q.
3. If ‘p’ designates p and p is a token of ‘q’, then all the metalinguistic
predicates that apply to ‘q’ apply to p.
I believe these three statements from page 186 embody a large part of
my difficulty. I will try to make this difficulty clear to you. The word “des-
ignation”, as I understand you to be using it, is a binary predicate of the
meta-language that connects a name with a sentence. Thus we may say:
Des (x, p) [where x is a name variable, p is a sentential variable] is a prop-

erly formed sentence form, or correct use of the predicate ‘Des’.
To make this statement as to the nature of ‘Des’, we assume our meta-

language to contain names and sentences; and in terms of these two types
of elements, we define a two term predicate, the first member of which is
a name, the second member a sentence. Whether or not you do actually

intend to use the word “designates” in this way, as it seems to me you do,
all usages of which I am aware demand that the first element (in the case
of Des (x, p) the ‘x’) be a name. And in the most common instances of
“designation”, where it is used and discussed philosophically, the second
element (in the above case, the ‘p’) is a sentence.
As regards the use of quotes: If I understand you correctly, you are
using quotes in such a way that any expression of the type:
‘……………’
is to be considered as a name in the meta-language … probably a for-
mal name. The expression that occurs in the place of the dots is to be
taken as an iconic element of the name that shows, more or less, what
instances of:
‘……………’ des ……………
will be considered as true. There is no difficulty, I believe, about this
procedure. However, it seems clear,
‘……………’
as a name, is syntactically quite different from
……………
when this element is not likewise a name.
Now then: from your statement I have called 3, and from your state-
ment I have called 2, it does seem to follow that you are doing two things
that I cannot formally comprehend.
1. You permit the expression “p des q” to have meaning when the symbol
on the left hand side of the predicate ‘des’ is not a name variable, or a
name, but a sentence variable. In this sense, you make of ‘des’ a state-
ment connective, rather than a predicate (This is also in connection
with ‘coex’).
2. You state that all predicates that apply to ‘q’ (a name or name variable,
this is) may be applied also to p, which is a sentence or sentential
variable.
By 1: Since the term “designates”, as formally introduced into seman-

tics is intended to function with some such meaning as “names”, I do
not see what possible sense there is to saying that anything except a
“name” actually does “name”. Furthermore, if you do choose to use this
predicate in this fashion, it would seem as if you are obliged to show
what formal characteristics it possesses, since you can no longer borrow
on the Tarski development. The use of “designation” that I understand
is such that ‘It is raining’ is an expression of the meta-language hav-
ing the syntactical characteristics of a name … and by some sort of an
iconic rule, we may determine that the sentence “‘It is raining’ des (It is
raining)” is a true sentence. But what does it mean to say “it is raining
des it is raining”?
By 2: First-level predicates, whether metalinguistic or otherwise, are
such that they involve names in properly formed sentences involving
these predicates. Thus, if “Pr (xyz …)” is to be the shape of a first level
predicate, then at least one of the variables, ‘x’ or ‘y’, or ‘z’ or so on …
will have to be a “name variable”. If we conceive of these variables as all
sentential variables, then we no longer have a predicate, but a statement
connective. As far as I can see, 2 violates the above “formation rule” rela-
tive to what is an instance of a predicate. Furthermore, it would permit
one to say:
I. “Mary” is the nth word on this page.

II. Mary is my wife.
And since both I and II are true, and the ‘is’, in both cases, is the ‘is’ of
identity, might conclude validly that:
III. My wife is the nth word on this page.
Unless, of course, you intend to deny a normal logical structure to

your meta-language, and, in this case, you will have to specify these
restrictions on your logic. I do not see how you can maintain that, just
because “‘Jones sees red’ is a sentence of three words” is a true sentence,
that therefore “Jones sees red is a sentence of three words” is a true, or
even meaningful, sentence. It seems clear to me that this type of think-
ing can only run afoul of the paradoxes of the “heterological” type the
minute it becomes sufficiently formal to make any developments at all.
Your italicized example (p. 186), by the way, did not clarify things for
me as I will try to show. However, since you said (in the last sentence)
that this example is only a rough formulation, I shall not hold you to this.
About your example, this is what I understand:
Φ = {x1, x2, x3, x4, …….} (The x’s, I understand refer to physical phe-
nomena of a certain type)
p = x1 ∈ Φ
q = it is raining
‘p’ des p = ‘p’ des (x1 ∈ Φ)
‘q’ des q = ‘q’ des (it is raining)
And then, as I read it, you are saying:
‘p’ des p and p is a token of ‘q’
says, roughly, that:
x1 is a token of (it is raining)
What I cannot understand is this: in the third line just preceding this
one you write:
A: p is a token of ‘q’
B: x1 is a token of (it is raining)
What sort of predicate is “is a token of ” such that both of the follow-
ing can be meaningful?
A1: (sentence) is a token of (name)
B1: (name) is a token of (sentence)
The foregoing will indicate some of my difficulties in understanding
how the predicate “is a token of ” is intended to function. I will not press
this issue further, but turn to points connected with the predicate “coex”
(you discuss, by the way, the irreflexive, symmetrical, and transitive char-
acter of “coex” on page 187. I have registered my misunderstanding of
this before. If you wish it to possess all three characteristics, it seems to
me that you cannot say it is irreflexive, but that both [x coex x] and ~ [x
coex x] are meaningless. Thus you exclude the expression [x coex x] on
the grounds that it is meaningless, rather than that it is false. This leads to
the peculiarity, however, that your logic is capable of proving meaningless
expressions).
As regards the predicate “coex”, you state that it is a two place binary
predicate, but, if I interpret your symbols aright, on page 188, the first
italicized paragraph, you are using it, not as a predicate, but as a state-
ment connective. This relates to a similar situation noted with respect to
your usage of “des”.
Carrying on, however, let us look temporarily at the second italicized
paragraph (again, I do not know how much this “crude aid to under-
standing” is to be taken at face value. I only discuss what strikes me about
it). Let me indicate the elements involved in this paragraph:
1. ‘Jones is seeing red’

2. Jones’ imaging Jonz-iz-ceeing-redd
My first question is: However naively one may wish to look at the
notion “token”, in what sense can 2 be said to be a “token” of 1? I can see
why one might wish to call the expression “Jonz-iz-ceeing-redd” a token,
but I cannot see why one would pick the expression 2.
The second point in this discussion is as follows: In this first italicized
paragraph on this page (188) you have used ‘p’ as the name, I presume,
of the sense “p” that occurs in “r coex p”. However, in your example, you
do not maintain this usage. In the example, for ‘p’ you have chosen to
use the name ‘Jones is seeing red’ whereas for p you have chosen to use
the phrase “Jones’ seeing red”. This sounds to me like a very illicit use
of the semantical dimension of language to introduce the “world” into
your calculus. It looks, somehow, as if you have violated your statement
that “all the expressions in a semantic sentence belong to the semantic
meta-language”.
To indicate my confusion further here: you refer, in this first itali-
cized paragraph, to the system C that contains a sentence ‘q’ and a
sentence ‘r’. I presume you are using quotes around the q and the r to
indicate that these are really names, of which you then state that they
are sentences … in other words, I am imagining you to say “‘r’ is a
sentence”. However, if this is the usage, why do you need to mention
that there is a sentence, ‘r’, at all, since the only thing you use in the
paragraph is the actual sentence r?
This consideration leaves me to believe that you do, perhaps, mean to

assert that the calculus contains a sentence, r, and this assertion, I take it,
is to be made merely by asserting r and not by saying “‘r’ is a sentence”.
But, again, and in reinforcement of my point of the earlier paragraph; if
you intend to use ‘r’ to say that sentence r is in C and, hence, to assert r,
in what sense can “Jones’ imaging Jonz-iz-ceeing-redd” be called a sen-
tence … since you use the possessive of the word “Jones” to indicate that
you are talking about some attribute or other.
Well, Wilfrid, I hope you will not think me unduly critical. I honestly
can say I don’t understand, and it distresses me. If anything you can write
me will help to clear up my difficulties, I shall look on it as a great kind-
ness if you will do so.
Sincerely,
Tom
Letter from Thomas Storer to Gustav

Bergmann (January 19th, 1947)36
Dear Gustav,
You are apparently right that I sent your letter to Wilfrid, and vice
versa. Why I don’t rightly know and shan’t try to analyze. At any rate,
I don’t find the letter I wrote you here in my office, and if you didn’t
get it, WSS must have. I have repressed anything very derogatory that I
may have said to you about him in it. I’m curious about what you might
mean: “giving away anything”? As I recall, it was just a very brief note to
let you know that I appreciated your criticisms on my article, and that I
was revising the concluding section entirely. I read it Friday night at our
meeting, and it was fairly well received. They didn’t understand too much
on the whole, but they seemed to appreciate the flavor of it. I do remem-
ber one nasty crack about M. Black: to the effect that I wondered if
you agreed with me that Black’s article was asinine. But nothing directed
specifically toward WSS. I recall suppressing a remark concerning the
36
Reproduced with permission the University of Iowa. Gustav Bergmann Papers. The University
phrase: we both speak the same lingo and have picked much of it up from
the same source.37
WSS has already answered my letter with a rather longish one in which
he acknowledges the defects and suggests a way of bettering the formula-
tion. He reveals, merely, that he doesn’t understand the formalism at all.
He is still using designation completely loosely and ambiguously, to say
the least. And so on, all the way through. I just can’t see what he is driv-
ing at, if anything, and what I do see, seems all wrong. Furthermore, he
apparently missed the point of many of my criticisms. I shall probably
revise my statement of them in view of this last letter. His last paragraph
is very conciliatory:
What keeps me sticking out my neck is the fact that most formalists have
little if any grasp of epistemological issues, combined with my conviction
that epistemological issues are non-factual. Perhaps if epistemologists who
are naïve in their formalism confront formalists who are naïve in their
epistemologies, the total picture will begin to stand out. Of course, the best
would be to turn the business over to well-trained formalists who have a
genuine feel for epistemology. That’s where you come in.
Very pleasant, and I agree with him 100%. Why, then, doesn’t he try
to learn something about logic, or else forget to write this type of thing.
Letter from Rulon Wells to Wilfrid Sellars (June

15th, 1951)38
Dear Fred,
Michelangelo painted only murals, but Rembrandt is admired as much
for his etchings as for his canvases. Multum in parvo shall be my motto; in
37
Storer repeats this comment in various letters with Bergmann and May Brodbeck. There was an
ongoing dispute, one that eventually spilled over into editorial issues at the journal Philosophical
Studies (edited by Feigl and Sellars), concerning Sellars’ reluctance to acknowledge Bergmann’s influ-
ence (the “Iowa School” in Storer’s words) on his own publications. There are numerous letters in the
University of Iowa archives between Bergmann, Brodbeck, Feigl, Sellars, and Storer over this issue.
38
Reproduced with permission from the University of Utah. Wells’ letter is housed in the Wilfrid
S. Sellars Papers, 1899–1990, ASP.1991.01, Archives of Scientific Philosophy, Special Collections
Department, University of Pittsburgh.
half an hour I shall not try to delineate a worldview. But I selected with
care a topic that can be a microcosm; will you join me? If we deal with (1)
‘Whatever is colored is extended’, (2) ‘Whatever is (homogeneously) red
is not blue’ and perhaps with (3) ‘Red is more like orange than like yel-
low’ and (4) ‘Whatever is red is colored’, we should have an ample clutch
of eggs to brood on, from which much greater things can hatch.
I am delighted that you sent me your two MSs; it is always a pleasure
to be on the inside and read things before they are published, and in this
case the privilege was particularly welcome.
Fred, it’s time for you to stop fiddling for a bit while you switch your tail
into a bigger snail shell. The sixfold scheme (pure-empirical-pragmatics-
semantics-syntactics) doesn’t fit you anymore, and the pinch must be
painful. When you talk about norms, and rule-governed behavior, are
you talking empirical (hence, for you, behavioral) psychology? Plainly
not. All right, are you talking philosophy? If so, what has happened to
the equation ‘philosophy equals epistemology equals pure pragmatics’?
Moreover, you ascribe rules even to syntactics. I suppose this ‘non-
formal element in logic’ is what Lewis Carroll showed us in “What the
tortoise said to Achilles”. But again, what status has rules and norms?
If we admit norms—and recognition or respecting of norms—(non-
reducible to facts), why not universals and awareness of universals? But if
awareness of universals, then something must have been wrong with the
argument alleging confusion, on the part of Platonism, between logical
realism and ontological nominalism.
I see clearly that “Inference, obligation and necessity”39 expands the
hints of “Language, rules and behavior” 294b. But the latter brilliant
paper did not succeed, for at least one reader, in explicating the crucial
notion (301c) of ‘meshing’, which was to relate rule-regulated behavior
to mere tied behavior. I must sorrowfully confess that I do not see (1)
why you reject the emotive account generically (Stevenson’s particular
version may of course have shortcomings), nor (2) that your own solu-
tion is basically so very different.
A point of lesser importance. In “Inference” 35b, you excoriate the
view that “‘red’ designates red”, and so on are rules. But they are some-
39
This is an early draft of “Inference and Meaning” in 1953. See Sellars 1953/2005.
thing; what are they? Are they not the semantical mirrorings or counter-
parts of rules? If semantics is an abstraction from pragmatics, are these
not what one obtains from genuine, pragmatical rules by the operation of
abstraction? One would welcome a fresh account of the relation between
pragmatics and semantics, since you thus appear to reject the usual (and
your former) account of it as an abstraction.
Before I break off my remarks on “Inference” may I offer an exposi-
tory suggestion? The point that you begin making on 21b is arresting and
worth making; as I read the initial 20 pages, however, I had the feeling
that, especially insofar as they expound Carnap, they could be drastically
condensed. Also, your exposition of Carnap does not reckon with one
very important fact. The choice is not between two languages (or better,
systems) identical except that one contains P-rules whereas the other does
not; it is between one that contains P-rules and one that, instead, contains
corresponding P-true axioms. The phenomenon under consideration is
the (limited) interchangeability between axioms (or theorems in general)
and rules. To be borne in mind here is the Deduction Theorem, accord-
ing to which (crudely)
2/2
is an L-valid and P-valid inference if and only if S1 ⊃ S2 is a L-true and
P-true theorem.
1. “Particulars”40 11–2: “Once the confusion between particulars and

facts is completely avoided, the notion that a basic particular can be
an instance of two qualia not only loses all plausibility, but is seen to
be absurd … However, intimately related a grum and a klum may
be, they cannot be identical”! I quote this nuclear passage to admit
that—after reading “On the logic of complex particulars”, and all
your other papers for that matter, I completely fail to see it. But I
truly do not know whether I am obtuse or you are obscure. Let me
say just this: Why describe instancing as in lines 9–12 of p. 11 (not
counting footnote)? Why not go back to p. 10 and answer the ques-
tion “Is it possible for a, without internal complexity, to be both … a
40
Wells is referring to the second MS sent by Sellars. This became “Particulars” in 1952. See Sellars
1952/1963.
grum and a klum” affirmatively? This would undercut your whole

argument.
2. 14a: “It is a synthetic necessary truth that the instances of greem are
points in a continuum”. Is this not contrary to your own leading
idea? For (a) the instances of greem are simple particulars, (b) all
non-relational properties of simple particulars are qualia, (c) is a
point in a continuum is a non-relational property of a simply particu-
lar (if it is considered relational, the entire argument would have to
be adapted along the lines provided for in page 7 fn 4), (d) it is a
different quale of greem things, (e) it is a different quale from greem
itself, and yet (f ) every simple particular, hence every greem thing, is
at most one quale.
3. 21a. In short, ‘X1 is a kleem’ is necessarily false, but is not a contradic-
tion. More generally (since contradictions are not the only logically
false statements), it is necessarily false but not logically false. So, if
you admit negation at this level, its denial is necessarily true but not
logically true. Now do you propose to draw the line between logical
or formal truths and other necessary truths? Or, for that matter,
between necessary truths and contingent truths (L-truths and
P-truths)? Quine has been pressing this question, and I think it is a
fair one. I know how I would answer it, but I don’t know how you
would. No doubt you would hold (cf. 22, fn 18) that the logical
truths hold not only of every possible state of a world, but of every
possible world. But this is not the same as saying that the logical
truths are those which hold of every possible world; the latter formula-
tion misleadingly claims to be a criterion, as though one investigated
all possible worlds and then arose from his chair with the tidings that
such and such are truths that hold in all of them. Do you not agree
with Nagel (Feigl-Sellars 195d) that, on the contrary, conforming to
the laws of logic is a condition and a criterion for being a possible
world?
I agree that some version or other of the distinction between possible

state of a world and possible world is legitimate and important, and in
fact shall use a version of that distinction in what I write on the synthetic
a priori. My first draft of what I write will be sent to you in a few days;
meanwhile, for my own general clarification, I would gratefully welcome

your reply to criticisms and questions above. As for the final form of our
respective papers, as they will be read at the symposium,41 I earnestly
hope that I can sell you on the idea of organizing them around a few
specific, apt examples. Do see if you can’t formulate your points in a
simple five-point platform. It will cost you titanic effort, but watching
the amazement of your friends will be ample rewards.
Yours,
Rulon
Letter from Rulon Wells to Wilfrid Sellars

(August 5th, 1951)42
Dear Fred,
On studying your paper a second time, I see many points that escaped
me in the first reading. Likely many of the questions that I pose are
ones that later on I could answer for myself. In this letter I will confine
myself to “Inference, obligation, and necessity”; perhaps subsequently I
will write you about “Particulars”. Maybe my drift will be the clearer for
being written down just as the ideas occur to me, instead of being reorga-
nized into more compact and systematic form.
First let me restate my fairly minor point about Carnap’s P-rules, since
you asked me to. You find two ways in which C. sanctions the intro-
duction of P-rules (a) as transformation rules, and (b) as parts of the
definition of ‘primitive sentence in L’; (a) is more rulish, provided that
its normative, permissive force be acknowledged; (b) is more like a state-
ment of a law of nature. But what I had in mind is a third way, which
is still more like a law of nature, namely to introduce laws of nature
not as rules at all but simply as axioms (primitive sentences). The dif-
ference between (b) and the way I have in mind is the difference, in
41
Both papers were read at the “Is There a Priori Knowledge of Synthetic Statements?” symposium
at the 48th Annual American Philosophical Association Eastern meeting, December 1951.
42
Quine’s Mathematical Logic, between metatheorems and theorems. The

Deduction Theorem assures us that theorems (including primitive sen-
tences) expressing a formal implication (and it is convenient to assume,
or pretend, that all laws of nature can be cast into this form) authorize
transformation rules of variety (a).
The only reason why this is important here is that it makes Carnap’s
procedure seem much more reasonable. P-rules can be eliminated in
favor of axioms. But when you ask whether subjunctive conditionals can
be gotten by L-rules alone, this depends on what ‘alone’ means. They can
be gotten without the use of any other rules than L-rules, but of course
only by applying these to sundry L-indeterminate premises. You make it
seem as though C. is committed to deducing subjunctive conditionals
from L-determinate premises by the use of none but L-rules.
Now it is true that the logic of The Logical Syntax of Language does not
accommodate subjunctive conditionals, as C. would freely admit. You
argue (whether correctly I need not discuss here) that these can be accom-
modated by adding certain P-rules; and, with a typical philosopher’s leap,
you argue simultaneously that this is the only way in which the accom-
modation can be effected. But surely there is at least one alternative (see
Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, and p. 113 of my review of same),
namely to introduce variables whose range of values includes possible
individuals as well as actual individuals, and an if-then of real connection
as well as the merely logical if-then’s. The basic question is extensional-
ism. Recalling your thoughtful treatment of potentiality in “Aristotelian
philosophies of mind”, I am surprised that you made no use of the con-
cept in the present paper.
Now, I see that you make another use of the notion of material rules.
This is to return to the thought of “Concepts as involving laws and incon-
ceivable without them”. This thought is a good one. But you want to
argue from it to the conclusion that a language is determined not only
by its rules but also by its axioms (You don’t put it that way, because
instead of laws of nature as axioms you are thinking of laws of nature as
rules). What I fail to see is that there is any arguable matter; I cannot see
anything more at issue than the terminological question, what conditions
determine a family of languages and what conditions determine a unique
language?
Now on to something more fundamental. I greatly admire your discus-

sion of obligation and the clever way in which you relate logical necessity
and causal necessity to it. So in coming to grips with you on this topic
I feel that the way to do it is to ask about some of your basic principles.
Perhaps the relation of logic-plus-epistemology to psychology is as
good a place to start as any.
In the first place, I am captivated by your report that “the psycholo-
gist does not need to postulate the existence of an ultimate kind of men-
tal act known traditionally as ‘seeing necessary connections’”, because
in my simplicity I had thought (1) that no responsible and thought-
ful recent psychologist made such a claim, (2) that for those who did
make it, it was a claim and a hope, not a fait accompli, and (3) that no
evidence had been presented to show that it was a likelihood, or even
possible in principle. I may add that I would not trust the testimony of
any psychologist on such a matter without careful philosophical scru-
tiny, because of their incorrigible tendency to introduce older things
under new names. I know this is one of your basic assumptions; that
is why I think my challenge is worth mentioning. You have built on it
explicitly in at least four of your papers, maybe in all of them; but I do
not recall your documentation anywhere. Yet it is very far from being
commonplace.
In the second place, I see that you still operate with two basic and
mutually irreducible language or grammars. You used to call them the
formal and the factual (or empirical); now (p. 29, both) they are ought-
language and is-language. I am struck by the passage from form to
obligation, which as I see it is not so much a generalization as simply a
shift in base. The present paper goes far toward exhibiting the rationale
of the shift, but it leaves me with some puzzles. One of these I raised
in my previous letter, when I asked what has happened to the equation
Philosophy equals epistemology equals pure pragmatics (You took me
up on the first equation, asking “Did I ever say that philosophy equals
pure pragmatics?” On reperusing your papers, I see that I was misled
by a phrase here and there and that I jumped to a conclusion, aided by
a false assumption that you were closer to the logical positivists than
you actually are. Now I would be interested in knowing what, for you,
philosophy does comprise besides epistemology or pure pragmatics). Do
you want now to say that pure pragmatics has as its province, or as
part of its province, the language of obligation? If so, two very diverse
question press in upon me. (1) In RNWW you consigned egocentrics
to pure pragmatics. Do they still belong there? If they do, what sort of
a unity has a field that treats both of obligation and of egocentrics? (2)
If the study of obligation is a formal, pure-pragmatic study, how can
assertion of the form ‘You ought to do so and so’ rationally be expected
to influence conduct? The sharp separation of formal from factual dis-
course gave some easy triumphs for a long time, but now the chickens
come home to roost. If I understand you, you would have to hold that
is-language can only say things like ‘According to person X, person Y
ought to do so-and-so’ (descriptive ethics, sittenlehre) but nothing like
‘Person Y ought to do so-and-so’. ‘Person Y ought to do so-and-so’
is either an a priori assertion, or an admixture of a priori and factual
assertions, but in either case no reason is given why it should have the
emotive force that you would want it to have.
(Here I might as well turn aside into a parenthesis on emotive force.
Certain statements in “Language, rules and behavior”, as well as 21,
23a, and 24b of the present paper, lead me to ask: In what theory of
meaning do you embed your notion of emotive force? It seems substan-
tially Stevenson’s theory to me. When I said this before, you replied
“How high is up?” A fair reply, but made still fairer by your going on to
say that you differ from Steve by rejecting the Lockean principle. Now
this rejection crops out in your conception of application of a language,
also in your schlagworth of logical realism and ontological nominal-
ism. Since I do not intend at this juncture to state me criticisms of the
particular way in which you reject the Lockean principle, I will hold
my peace. Incidentally, the Lockean principle might very well come
in for some discussions in our symposium: the distinction sometimes
proposed between a priori concepts and a priori cognitions).
Let me worry about rules and pure pragmatics a bit more. In 22b1-2
you say that “a rule is always a rule for doing something”. The refer-
ence here to biological and indeed human activity could not escape the
most casual reader; now this reference is bound to make trouble for pure
pragmatics, which knows not human beings nor even is committed to a
temporal world of acts and active beings.
Now for a general remark about your fundamental antithesis. The

ought-is contrast (nee formal-empirical) gains support in the minds of
various present-day philosophers from being virtually identified with
two others: first, the contrast between pure and applied which was first
developed in geometry and then generalized; second, the subtly differ-
ent contrast between calculus and interpreted semantical system. The
blend of these three contrasts was exploited for the purpose of avoid-
ing psychologism (and I am interested to observe that this is one tenet
and technique of logical positivism which current British philosophy
of ‘ordinary language’ is retaining and extending). But it seems to me
that it would be a much sounder account to describe the formal not as
irreducible to the factual, but as an abstraction from or schematization
of it. After all, the ‘Lockean principle’ is only a crude version of a much
more sophisticated theory of concept-formation, that theory or rather
family of theories known as Aristotelian-scholastic. And it further
seems to me that this topic is one in which ‘the’ Aristotelian-scholastic
theory is more thoughtful than ‘the’ modern theory, and closer to the
right track. The issue I am raising here is far more fundamental than
any that you and I are likely to debate about the synthetic a priori, and
I wonder if we ought not to shift our emphasis to it as much as we can.
I don’t think we’re under any very binding obligation to stick to the set
topic of the synthetic a priori, especially not if we have something more
basic to offer.
In my previous letter I asked about meshing. The present paper, 30b-6,
has a remark which I take to pertain to this notion: “Obligations are, at
least in part, motivational tendencies”. But isn’t there a paralogism here?
The word “obligation” cannot mean the same in this context, according
to your theory, as in a context having the grammar of ought-language; it
must mean ‘sense of obligation, belief (whether right or wrong is immate-
rial for psychology) in obligation’. Otherwise you would have Leibniz’s
reasons which incline with necessitating, these being in their turn a gen-
eralization and relaxation of Plato’s principle that he who truly knows
what is right will do what is right.
In conclusion, I will offer a few thoughts about your last page (39)
on the synthetic a priori. As for Lewis’ terminology, I entirely agree with
your point and in fact have thought it worthwhile to devote a good part
of my paper to disentangling the two different senses of ‘analytic’. I agree
also with your concluding sentence, that “much of the current nibbling at
the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions is motivated
by … a desire to recognize the … synthetic a priori … while avoiding
the contumely which the language traditionally appropriate to such a
proposition would provoke”. Now would you agree (I am not asking
you to do it as a log-rolling favor) that your own solution is to change
the language (1) by depsychologizing it (there are no acts of cognizing
synthetic a priori truths, any more than of cognizing analytic truths), and
(2) by consigning the synthetic a priori propositions to formal discourse,
or ought-language? If so, would it not be fair to make this further remark
about your position: you agree with earlier Wittgenstein and the logical
positivists that a priori truths say nothing, do not limit the possibilities or
possible experience; you differ from them in not professing to reduce all a
priori truths to analytic truths in the narrow sense, that is, logical truths,
and a fortiori in not reducing them to tautologies in the sense of truth-
functions; also you differ from them in not proposing to characterize a
priori truths as conventions, or disguised linguistic rules, nor the results
of conventions or linguistic rules.
If what I have said in the preceding paragraph is well taken, then I
suggest that we might want to wrestle with each other in the symposium
over the sense in which a priori truths do not limit the possibilities (pos-
sible experience). And I have decided to expand that part of my paper in
which I deal with that question, if to do so will harmonize the changes
of topic and emphasis that I will make after I receive your first draft of
your contribution to the symposium. Incidentally, I also want to cut out
entirely the orientation to empiricism, which now strikes me as tritely
and distastefully programmatic, and instead to make a firmer connection
with the topics of possibility and intelligibility.
As I compose this wandering letter, I feel anew how poor a substitute
correspondence is for tete-a-tete discussion. We moved so much faster and
farther in our short chats at Monterey.
Yours,
Rulan
Letter from Rulon Wells to Wilfrid Sellars

(August 29th, 1951)43
Dear Wilfrid,
I have followed your suggestion and jotted marginal comments on
your manuscript (which herewith).
As I see the big issue shaping up in our correspondence and in my
thoughts on your work, it concerns the philosophy of mind. Notice how
many different fibers in this unwieldy bolus have woven their way in
and out of our discussion. (a) Your attack on ‘relational psychology’, (b)
‘meshing’, (c) ‘concept empiricism’ (‘the Lockean principle’), (d) epis-
temology as logic masquerading as psychology, and (e) the common
sense—see below.
May I make myself obnoxious by pressing an inquiry about rational
psychology? In ION, also early in LRB, you report the finding of mod-
ern psychology that it is unnecessary to posit a kind of mental act called
the seeing of necessary connections, but (in correspondence) explain
that by psychologists you do not necessarily mean people in psychology
departments. Perhaps you allude to that eminent psychologist, Ludwig
Wittgenstein, with his breathtaking argument (Tr. 5.541 and 5.5421)
which “shows that there is no such thing as a soul”? And I judge from LRB
290-2 that even more you have John Dewey in mind. But do you think
that Dewey has any grasp of the technical problems involved? Discussion
with Frederic Fitch of our department leads me to suspect that any lan-
guage in which the psychologist could describe not only the token classes
of the mathematician or logician but also their meanings would have to
be as rich as the language of the mathematician or logician itself. If true,
this breaks down the formal-factual language dichotomy, and the atten-
dant compatibility of logical realism and ontological nominalism.
In “A(ristotelian) P(hilosophies of ) M(ind)” you give a good discus-
sion of the Aristotelian theory of levels, that theory which is so dear to
43
your associates in this volume.44 And you discuss the relations between
high and lower levels. Now what is your ‘meshing’ but just such a rela-
tion? I do not mean to say that your theory is the Aristotelian theory,
but only to signalize the close affinity. But insofar as you recognize dif-
ferent—discretely different—levels of mind, you are not a pragmatist,
are you (This question is not rhetorical; I am not too familiar with prag-
matism, especially not with Dewey’s brand)? To put it in another (and
perhaps more plexus-punching) way, what is your highest level, the level
of rule-governed behavior, but one of the levels that a rational psychology
would require?
Conflict in animals causes vacillation; the rat that wants the cheese
but has to cross an electrified grid to get it darts back and forth. Conflict
in Wilfrid Sellars leads to the same behavior; he sets up levels which
(somehow) mesh with each other, and then, in the very last paragraph
of his paper (LRB) shies away with the warning (my paraphrase): that
the psychologist has no access to the highest level (or rather, the higher
level, since you only recognize two) of mind, but only to the lower level.
That is, he can only describe rule-governed behavior from without, from
which standpoint it becomes indistinguishable (except in complexity)
from tied behavior.
The psychologist exhibits rule-governed behavior, of course; but, of
course, cannot describe it. If fallibility is the serpent in the behaviorist’s
paradise, (Russell Inquiry 14c), rule-governed behavior is the expulsion.
I wholeheartedly agree with your strictures on concept empiricism
(which I take to be identical with what in a previous letter you have
called ‘the Lockean principle’). What follows is something that should
gladden Morton White’s heart, a dualism broken down. We have extreme
empiricism and extreme rationalism as opposites, and then an indefinite
number of intermediate positions. As I see it, this is what is embarrass-
ing to the logical positivists; every time they are confronted by a vague
continuum, they wallow until they can convert it into a precise discre-
tum. Current discussions of meaningfulness, in which the old clear-cut
distinctions between empiricist and non-empiricist criteria are ruefully
44
Dewey Phil of freedom volume
abandoned, leave no way of drawing the line except ‘proposals’—a situa-

tion which they obviously feel to be unsatisfactory.
It seems to me that the terms ‘rationalism’ and ‘empiricism’ are mis-
leading not because of the vague boundaries between them, but because
they are applied to a number of distinct issues. ‘Rationalism’ is used
to designate (i) insistence on ‘rational psychology’, (ii) rejection of the
Lockean principle, (iii) belief in significant (as opposed to say-nothing)
a priori knowledge, and (iv) the doctrine that the distinction between
necessities and facts is an appearance only, due to our ignorance. It is not
at all clear to me that these are tantamount to each other.
You ask me, in effect, how we know that the class of colors is a natu-
ral class, that is, that yellow is more like red than like sweet or than like
C-sharp; and I gather that you think of Cook Wilson’s answer of ‘intu-
ition’ as an answer that fails to appreciate what you have elsewhere called
the ‘painfully won insights’ of the twentieth century. I am regrettably ill
acquainted with Cook Wilson’s views; but I shouldn’t be at all surprised if
he somewhere refurbished Aristotle’s ‘common sense’, and applied it here
(Just as we know that thunder is sensed shortly after lightening, not by
the sense of sound nor by sight but by the common sense). We could say,
if we liked, that the similarity of yellow and red, or the near-simultaneity
of thunder and lightning, is a datum but not a sense-datum. Perhaps
what we need is a rehabilitated faculty-psychology. In any case, we need
a good philosophy of mind.
My foregoing remarks will show why it seems to me that the big prob-
lem facing us is the philosophy of mind. For my part, I do not feel any-
where near ready to sketch such a theory, but it joins with our set topics
in an obvious way; is not what we are most interested in ‘a priori knowl-
edge’, where ‘knowledge’ means the act, not the result? In other words,
‘knowing the a priori’, or ‘How we know a priori truths’, or something
like that?
With this leading topic in mind, I plan to revise my paper along the
following lines: (1) Drastic condensation of my discussion of analytic—
and I shall accept your advice on terminology—concentrating on my
distinction between two ‘cases’ (pp. 7 ff). Peter Hempel has given me
some valuable criticism here. (2) On Hempel’s advice, to fish rather than
cut bait in my discussion of Quine—if I can manage to do it within my
limits of space. (3) Expand the discussion of rational psychology, or how

we know a priori truths.
Yours,
Rulon
Letter from Wilfrid Sellars to John G. Kemeny

(January 18th, 1953)45
Dear Professor Kemeny,
I have been planning to drop you a line ever since I read your PS
paper.46 Now that I have read your excellent review of Quine’s ‘Two
Dogmas’ the laziness and procrastination which stood in the way of
this project have disappeared, and I am eager to explore the extent to
which we agree (and disagree) in our approaches to the problems you
discuss. That there is (at least initially) a considerable measure of agree-
ment is indicated by the fact that I find almost everything you say in
these two places both sound and to the point. I have said some rather
similar things myself—though just how similar it is difficult to deter-
mine without placing our ideas in their broader philosophical context.
Perhaps the easiest way to do this is to formulate a series of comments
and questions.
1. What you, following Carnap, call ‘meaning postulates’ are essen-

tially what I have been calling ‘conformation rules’. A conformation
rule of L specifies that a certain sentence of L which is (a) a general
sentence—for example, ‘(x) Φx ⊃ Ψx—and (b) is not logically true
and (c) is a primitive sentence of L. More recently, putting the point
in terms of rules of inference rather than primitive sentences, I have
spoken of “material” as opposed to “formal” rules of inference. The
45
46
See Kemeny 1952.
fundamental point is the same, however. In reconstructing the gram-

mar of ordinary usage, we must introduce extra-logical rules (or pos-
tulates) for our primitive descriptive predicates [‘realism and the
New Way of Words; Feigl and Sellars Readings; ‘Language, Rules and
Behavior’ in John Dewey etc. edited by Sidney Hook; ‘Particulars’
PPR Dec. ‘52].
2. This brings me to my first question. Do you think that in reconstruct-
ing ordinary discourse it is necessary to introduce meaning postulates
for only some primitive descriptive predicates? Or would you agree
with me that the conceptual meaning of any descriptive term lies in
the “rules of its use” and that these rules appear as meaning postulates
(in addition to L-rules) in a “rational reconstruction”. I suspect, from
what you say in PS and JSL, that you would take the former alterna-
tive. I think, however, that you have begun the slide down the slippery
slope.
3. I, too, have made some attempt at formulating in a Neo-Leibnitzian
manner the significance of meaning postulates or conformation rules.
Here, however, there are important differences in our results. These
differences can, I believe, be traced to (a) the different answers we give
to the question raised in (2) above; (b) the fact that you approached
the notion of a meaning postulate via Carnap’s studies in inductive
logic. But of this more later.
4. As I have worked things out [RNWW; ‘Concepts as Involving Laws’
Phil. Of Science, 1948; ‘Particulars’ PPR December ‘52] every set of
primitive descriptive predicates—governed by a set of meaning postu-
lates—can be characterized in semantical discourse, as correlated with
a “family” of possible worlds. Each possible world of the family
involves a different set of particulars, and consists of the exemplifica-
tion by these particulars of the qualities and relations designated by
the primitive descriptive predicates in question. No state of affairs
belonging to any of these worlds violates the meaning postulates of
the language system—that is, the sentences laid down as primitive
sentences by the meaning postulates hold true of all the possible
worlds of the family.
Now, I distinguish between a possible world and a state of a possible

world as follows: Each possible world (W1) is the RS of a set of
states of W1. These states are the designata of a set of state descrip-
tions formulated in L1 (which consist of the above primitive
descriptive predicates together with a set of individual constants
designating the particulars of W1). Now, while no possible world
(W1) of the family falsifies a primitive sentence of the language
system L, this does not hold of the states of W1. In other words,
among the states of W1 there are physically impossible states (I am
using “physically” in the sense of “extra-logically”). This provides
meaning (designata) for P-contra-valid sentences. Nevertheless, no
possible world violates either the logical or the extra-logical rules
governing L.
5. Now, the reason why you can be satisfied with a system which pro-
vides no designata for sentences which “violate” your extra-logical
meaning postulates is that you suppose that these are so limited in
scope that their designata “never will be missed”. Notice that on my
account the designatum of a sentence which violates a meaning rule is
a physically impossible state of affairs. The sentence is meaningful, but
false by virtue of its meaning.
6. In the above terms, I would characterize (not ‘define’) a necessary truth
as a truth which holds of all possible worlds. I would distinguish
between L-necessary and P-necessary truths by saying that an
L-necessary truth is either a sentence consisting solely of logical con-
stants together with individual and predicate variables which is true of
all possible worlds, or, if it contains descriptive constants and is a sub-
stitution instance of such a sentence; on the other hand, a P-necessary
truth contains descriptive predicates which occur essentially, and is
satisfied vacuously by all but one family of possible worlds—that one
to which its predicates apply.
7. In short, I wish to use terminology in such a way that I can distinguish
between analytic and synthetic necessary truth. You, on the other
hand, propose to use the term analytic not as a synonym for logically
true, but as a synonym for ‘true by virtue of meaning’. On your use it
would make sense to say that some sentences which are not L-valid are
analytic.
8. Thus, your Neo-Leibnitzian account of analytic truth corresponds
(roughly) to my Neo-Leibnitzian account of necessary truth. This
difference is, to a certain extent, a matter of taste in terminology—
though I think that the use of ‘analytic’ as equivalent to logically
true is the dominant tradition. However, if I am correct in supposing
that the conceptual meaning of descriptive terms is completely con-
stituted by meaning postulates (in addition to L-rules), and that the
meaning postulates of our language are reflected in our use of the
modality “necessary”, and hence that sentences formulating laws of
nature are true ex vi terminorum, then on your terminology I would
have to say that sentences formulating laws of nature are analytic.
Surely this would be an intolerable usage! It would be less paradoxi-
cal to follow my terminology and speak of them as necessary. Of
course, if you are correct in supposing that meaning postulates play
a minor role in language, less harm would be done by your termino-
logical proposal (For a defense of my explication of non-logical
modalities in terms of meaning postulates, see my ‘Inference and
Meaning’ [read at Ann Arbor to the Acolytes, Spring 1951] forth-
coming in Mind April 1953; see also “Is there a Synthetic A Priori?”
read at Bryn Mawr December 1951, forthcoming in Philosophy of
Science April 1953).
9. This brings me to my final point. It picks up a thread from (3) above.
You approached the notion of meaning postulate from the direction
of Carnap’s interpretation of inductive logic. Thus, you are committed
to the idea that the descriptive terms of a language have conceptual
meaning antecedently (why should the Deweyans appropriate this
noble world?) to any commitment of users of the language to certain
sentences as formulating laws of nature. Thus, the idea that a descrip-
tive term has conceptual meaning solely by virtue of meaning postu-
lates which involve this commitment must strike you as a completely
wrongheaded approach. Yet this is my thesis. And, what is more, I
believe that it is compatible with Carnap’s inductive logic, though not
with his interpretation of inductive logic. I have made this point in a

footnote to my paper on ‘Particulars’:
If, as I am claiming, the sentences which formulate what we regards as the

laws of the world in which we live are true ex vi terminorum, then how can
it be rational to abandon such a sentence? What role could observational
evidence play in the “establishing” of sentences which are to be true ex vi
terminorum?
Induction is misconceived if it is regarded as a process of supplementing
observation sentences formulated in a language whose basic conceptual
meanings are plucked from “data” and immune from revision (“Hume’s
Principle”). The rationality of “induction” is rather the rationality of adopt-
ing that framework of material rules of inference (which determine the
meanings of predicates—even observation predicates) and, within this
framework, those sketchy statements of unobserved individual matters of
fact (world pictures) which together give maximum probability to our
observation utterances interpreted as sentences in the system. Only if we do
this, do we adopt that world picture which is most probable on the basis of
our observations (and this is, of course, an analytic proposition).
Well, this has turned out to be a much longer letter than I had
intended, and, on reading it over, I can see that it attempts to say too
much in too little space at that. I any event, here it is, and if you should
find something in it to argue with or query, I should be delighted to hear
from you. Please give my warmest regards to Carnap.
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determinism (pp. 141–174). New York: Random House.
Sellars, W. (1967/1992). Science and metaphysics: Variations on Kantian themes.
Sellars, W. (1974). Meaning as functional classification. Synthese, 27, 417–437.
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ance. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
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Storer, T. (1948). The philosophical relevance of a “behavioristic semiotic”.
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Storer, T. (1948a). January 14th, 1948 letter to Gustav Bergmann. Iowa City:
Turner, S. (2010). Explaining the normative. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Wells, R. (1951a). June 15th, 1951 letter to Wilfrid Sellars. Wilfrid S. Sellars
Wells, R. (1951b). August 29th, 1951 letter to Wilfrid Sellars. Wilfrid S. Sellars
Westphal, K. (2010). The critique of pure reason and analytic philosophy. In
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(pp. 401–430). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Westphal, K. (Forthcoming). Wilfrid Sellars, philosophical semantics, and syn-
thetic necessary truths.
Wilson, D. (1990). Science, community, and the transformation of American phi-
losophy: 1860–1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Index
A Bergmann, Gustav, 2, 5, 7, 9, 17,

Abstract entities, 32, 92n18, 93n20, 18n7, 178–81, 202n35,
129, 159 208–9n37, 192–7, 208n36
Adequacy, 9, 57, 134n2, 143, 149, Brandom, Robert, 1, 4, 51, 64,
158, 160, 170 77n10, 84, 86n15, 88,
American philosophy, 14, 160n7 143n12, 22n10
A priori, 47n14, 48, 53, 64, 66,
76–8, 83n12, 85, 87, 88,
102n6, 103–5, 145, 161, 168, C
169, 184, 212, 213n41, Carnap, Rudolf, 2, 4, 5, 6n4, 7, 9,
216–18, 221, 222, 225 12–14, 16n4, 17n6, 18–20,
Austin, J. L., 78 23, 24n12, 25n12, 26n13,
27n15, 28n16, 29–31, 34,
38n2, 39, 45, 46n11, 51–3,
B 55, 57, 60–2, 65, 66, 81, 82,
Behaviorism, 16n5, 17, 83, 96, 104, 85, 88, 92n18, 93n20, 94–6,
111, 114, 114–15n14, 116, 113, 129–33, 134n2, 135,
117, 118n16, 119, 120n18, 136, 143n10, 144–7, 148n13,
121, 161n8 150–2, 156, 157n2, 160n7,
Methodological, 118n16, 143 161–3, 164n12, 179, 180,

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52717-2
236 Index
199, 211, 213, 214, 222, 223, E

225, 226 Emotivism, 3, 102, 161
Causal, 102, 104, 110, 111, 116, Empirical, 3, 7–9, 11–14, 16, 17,
140, 175, 215 19, 20, 23, 26, 29, 31–4, 38,
Collective intentionality, 56, 42, 43, 53, 57n22, 59, 61–3,
134n3 76–8, 80, 81, 85–7, 90, 91,
Common sense, 40, 41, 101, 103, 101–3, 105–7, 109, 118n15,
106, 107, 139, 169, 198, 201, 122–4, 167–9, 171, 177, 179,
219, 221 183, 184, 188, 198–200, 209,
Concepts, 3–9, 11–15, 20, 22, 23, 210, 215–17
25–7, 29–35, 37–42, 44–7, Epistemology, 1, 60, 74, 75, 81, 85,
51, 55, 57n22, 58–64, 125, 168, 181, 184, 197, 199,
65n27, 66, 67, 69n1, 71–80, 202, 209, 210, 215, 219
82–7, 88n17, 89–94, 96, 97, Experience, 3n1, 14, 17, 18, 33, 34,
99–111, 113, 114, 116, 37n1, 40–4, 48, 59–61, 75,
118–20, 121n21, 122, 123, 78, 92, 101, 102, 106–8, 117,
126, 127, 130–2, 134n2, 118, 123, 127, 177, 193, 201,
136–8, 139n5, 141–8, 218
149n16, 150–3, 157–9, Explanation, 2–5, 8, 10, 35, 44,
185, 189, 197–200, 214, 48n15, 54, 55, 64, 66, 69,
216, 223 70, 73, 83–95, 97, 101, 102,
Conformation rules, 7, 33, 38, 40, 104, 105, 112, 114–20,
45, 48, 49n17, 50, 51, 54, 121n21, 122–4, 126, 132,
56–9, 64, 66, 71, 72n6, 76, 136, 139,
81, 100, 106, 135, 136, 138, 140, 143, 156, 159, 160,
144–6, 172, 184, 199, 200, 163–6
214, 216, 223 Explanatory gap, 122–4, 144, 156
Critical Realism, 32, 161, 177
F
D Facts, 3, 4, 8, 9, 25–9, 32, 33, 35,
Descriptivism, 84, 102–4, 107–11 38, 39, 43–7, 50, 54, 56–9,
Designation, 23–34, 37, 39–48, 51, 61–4, 66, 69, 76, 78, 79, 91,
52, 58–62, 91, 92, 131, 95, 97, 103, 106–8, 110, 117,
140n6, 150, 203–5, 209 123, 134, 148n15, 149n16,
deVries, Willem, 1, 101, 102n5, 165n13, 169, 183, 184, 197,
105n10 126, 148 210, 211, 221
Index 237
Feigl, Herbert, 9, 17, 18n7,46, L

83n12, 164n12, 177–8, Lance, Mark, 142n8
209n37, 212, 222–3, 79 Laws, 76, 88, 89, 108, 139, 168,
Formal, 3, 5–9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 173, 182, 184, 185, 189, 199,
17n6, 20–2, 24n11, 25n12, 201, 212–14, 223, 225, 226
26, 27, 28n16, 29–33, 34n32, Learning, 8, 17, 104, 108, 115, 117,
37n1, 38–50, 50–1n18, 52–6, 121n21, 141, 149n16, 162,
57n21 58–64, 65n27, 66, 67, 166
69, 71, 72n6, 73–5, 77, 78, Lewis, Clarence Irving, 9, 40n4, 74,
80–2, 84–94, 96, 100, 102, 95, 102n6, 161, 177,
105–7, 109, 112n12, 113, 197–202, 210, 217
114, 123, 124, 130, 133, 134, Linguistic role, 63, 119, 122, 143,
136, 139n5, 140, 141, 143–6, 144, 164
148–52, 157, 159, 160, 169, Logic, 13, 14, 17, 22, 26, 27n14, 74,
181–5, 196, 198–200, 203–6, 76n9, 104, 109, 113, 126,
210, 212, 214–17, 218, 222 132, 133n1, 142, 143, 151,
Formalization, 7, 12, 15, 16, 21, 157n2, 168, 169, 185, 205,
25n12, 113 206, 209–12, 214, 215, 219,
223, 225, 226
Logical, 5, 7, 9, 12, 14, 15, 17,
H 22–4, 26, 27, 33, 34, 39, 43,
Historical explanation, 165 47–58, 60, 62, 65, 66, 74–6,
82, 86, 89–91, 93, 104, 113,
114, 117, 121n21, 129,
I 135–7, 139, 140, 142, 144–6,
Inference, 1, 8, 49, 51, 53, 58, 66, 148, 151, 152, 159–61,
71, 75, 93, 100n1, 114, 130, 164n12, 169, 172, 182, 185,
133–5, 144, 146, 147, 151, 186, 188, 194, 199, 205, 210,
160, 161, 210, 211, 213, 222, 212, 214–20, 223–5
225, 226
Intuitionism, 3, 102, 161
M
Manifest image, 3n1
K Material rules of inference, 8, 49, 51,
Kant, Immanuel, 64, 65n25, 77n10, 71, 93, 100n1, 151, 160, 226
84, 85, 110, 111, 125 Meaning, 1, 6, 9, 12, 14, 16, 20, 23,
Kukla, Rebecca, 142n8 24, 25n12, 26–34, 39n3,
238 Index
41–3, 47, 50, 52, 57, 59–61, 148n15, 171, 173, 180, 185,
63, 65, 74–6, 78, 82, 89, 92, 187, 191, 192, 198, 199,
95, 104, 119, 125, 132, 203, 213, 214, 225
134n2, 135, 137n4, 138–40, Necessity, 8, 15, 31–3, 52, 53, 56,
147, 159, 160, 169, 182, 183, 58, 61, 62, 64, 65n27, 66, 75,
198, 200, 204, 205, 210, 216, 80, 92, 96n21, 118, 127,
222–5 185–7, 192, 210, 213–15
Meaning postulates, 57, 147, 204, Nominalism, 9, 32, 33, 102,
222, 223, 225 158–60, 210, 216, 219
Meta-language, 9, 19–22, 24, 27, 31, Non-factual, 3–6, 12–14, 20, 30, 33,
40n4, 53, 55–8, 62, 63, 72n6, 34, 37, 44, 47, 52, 54–63,
73, 87, 175, 177, 179, 198, 65–7, 76–9, 82, 84, 86n15,
202–5, 207 87–9, 91, 92, 94, 99, 100,
Meta-philosophy, 2, 4–8, 12, 15, 30, 102–6, 111, 112, 124, 127,
35, 39, 64–6, 69–71, 74, 130, 131, 133, 145, 151, 178,
79–82, 84–6, 89, 93, 95, 96, 182, 209
99–102, 105, 106n11, Normativity, 1–10, 34, 35, 48n15,
110–12, 122, 125, 130, 71, 105n9, 114–25, 127,
137–40, 145, 149, 150, 153, 129–53, 157n2
156, 157, 161
Modal Kant-Sellars Thesis, 77n10,
84 O
Morris, Charles, 4, 12, 14, 15n2, Object language, 24, 25, 27, 28,
16n5, 17n6, 18–20, 22, 27, 40–2, 45, 54, 55, 73n7, 78,
31n19, 38n2, 179 87, 131, 135, 174, 198, 202
Myth of Jones, 120 Obligation, 18, 103, 104, 119, 122,
124, 125, 210, 213, 215–17
O’Shea, James, 1, 70n2, 101n2, 103,
N 111, 143n11
Nagel, Ernest, 74, 75, 77, 126, 158, Ought, 57, 70n2, 82, 88n17, 119,
195, 212 121, 123, 126, 132, 133,
Naturalism, 3, 76, 84, 86n15, 138–40, 168, 169, 185,
101–3, 143n12, 159 215–18
Nature, 5, 8, 10, 24–8, 38, 43, 49,
51, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, 61,
64, 66, 73, 75, 80–2, 84, 89, P
90, 92, 93, 100, 103, 105, Platonism, 32, 33, 39n3, 59, 102,
106, 111, 122, 125, 130, 158, 159, 210
132, 133, 138–40, 143, Practical reasoning, 4, 111
Index 239
Practices, 4, 6–9, 15–17, 19, 20, 31, R

33, 37n1, 39, 42, 44, 46, 47, Rationalism, 3, 75, 76, 101–3,
50–1n18, 53–6, 64, 67, 75, 107, 108, 110, 111, 184,
77, 79, 81, 84, 86n16, 87, 220, 221
105, 107, 114–15n16 120, Realism, 1, 3, 19, 30, 32, 33, 40, 46,
122, 123, 126, 148n15, 159 47, 57n21, 63, 76, 116,
Pragmatics, 2–9, 11, 13–31n19, 155n1,159n4 161, 177,
32–4, 37–67, 69–97, 99, 179–181–3, 210, 216, 219,
100n1, 101–14, 123–6, 129, 222, 223
130, 134–8, 139n5, 140, Reception history, 4, 5, 7, 69–97
143–52, 156–61, 179, 181, Rules, 2, 7–10, 12, 13, 16, 23, 24,
183, 184, 198, 200–2, 211, 25n12, 26–30, 33, 37, 38,
215, 216 40, 44, 45, 48–59, 61, 64,
Pragmatism, 15n2, 220 66, 67, 69n1,71, 73n7, 72n6,
Pritchard, H. A., 161 73, 75, 76, 81–3, 93, 99,
Psychologism, 8, 13, 15, 18, 21, 100n1, 101, 103, 106–8,
22n10, 23, 31–4, 37, 41, 59, 111, 114–17, 118n15, 119,
61, 64, 65, 69n1, 74, 80, 81, 121–4, 126, 130–2, 133n1,
84, 92, 99–101, 108, 109, 140, 134–6, 137n4, 138–41,
180, 193, 194, 217 142n7, 143–7, 148n15,
Psychology, 12, 13, 19, 22, 34, 41, 149n17, 150–3, 156, 157,
58, 78, 81, 86, 103, 104, 160, 172–6, 182, 184, 198,
107–9, 114, 117, 118n15, 199, 201, 210, 211, 213,
120–2, 125, 156, 161, 168, 214, 216, 218, 222–6
169, 171, 179, 210, 215, 217, Ryle, Gilbert, 114, 194
219–22
Pure, 2–4, 7–9, 11–13, 15–21, 23,
24n11, 25n12, 26–9, 30n18, S
31–3, 34, 37–97, 99, 100n1, Sachs, Carl, 83n12
101–14, 123–6, 129–32, Scientific image, 83, 101, 127
133n1, 134n2, 135–8, 139n5, Sellars, Roy Wood, 32, 79, 160n5,
140, 143–52, 156–61, 169, 161n9
179, 181, 198–200, 202, 210, Semantics, 3–5, 6n4, 7, 9, 11, 12,
215–17 15–34, 37n1, 38, 40n4, 43,
45, 48, 52, 54, 55, 58, 60–2,
65, 76n9, 80, 81, 89–91,
Q 92n18, 92–3n19, 94, 95,
Quine, W. V. O., 83n12, 95, 161, 100n1, 120n18, 125, 129,
196, 212–14, 221, 222 131, 132, 133n1, 134–6, 138,
240 Index
140n6, 144–7, 158–61, 169, T

179, 182, 184, 198–200, 205, Thematic explanation, 163–6
211 Transcendental, 47n14, 64, 65n27,
Sui generis, 1, 8, 35, 70, 71, 83, 99, 76–8, 83–5, 90, 110–12, 124
119, 120, 130, 133, 136, 138, Turner, Stephen, 122, 123, 142n7,
139, 143n12 159n3
Syntax, 3, 5, 6, 15–23, 25–7, 28n16, Type/token distinction, 183
38, 45, 48, 51–3, 55, 60, 64,
65, 76n9, 80, 81, 84, 85,
92–3n19, 129, 131, 132, U
133n1, 136, 144, 146, 147, Universals, 158, 159n3, 160, 170,
156, 160n7, 162, 198, 199, 185–8, 190, 191, 193, 194,
214 210

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Wilfrid Sellars and

Wilfrid Sellars and

ISBN 978-1-137-52716-5 ISBN 978-1-137-52717-2 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016951218

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

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Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

1 Introduction: Wilfrid Sellars and the Foundations

2 Wilfrid Sellars’ Early Historical Context 11

4 The Reception History of Pure Pragmatics 69

6 Two Conceptions of Normativity 129

Appendix: Letters and Unpublished Manuscripts 167

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

his earliest publications (ranging from 1947 to the mid-1950s) have

1. Sellars’ early attempt to formalize pragmatics failed, in part, because of

Standing as distinct historical and philosophical statements, all three

giving an account of language that is stridently non-factual, but provid-

as it is found in the works of philosophers at the University of Iowa

matter of philosophy.3 Developing a meta-philosophy that clearly defines

abstracted away from empirical investigation in order to reconstruct these

nature of formally constructed systems—fails to capture the sense of

claim that in “characterizing an episode or state as that of knowing, we are

selections of letters are important because they show sustained critical

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 11

concepts relating to the formation and transformation rules of symbolic

account of concepts leaves crucial questions unanswered: Why should

quently, to the “psychologistic infection” of epistemological concepts

Sellars’ broader conception of psychologism, his varying uses of ‘formal-

2 Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics

cal structure of language, and semantics as the relationship between signs

Herbert Feigl moved to Minnesota in 1941, and Gustav Bergmann, who

our imaginations. It was, I believe, a unique episode—certainly as far as my

The philosophy department at Iowa7 was one of the most influential

pragmatics is “to a considerable extent the program of a behavioristic

Last summer, after writing a virulent attack on your conception of a prag-

Bergmann’s later discussion of pragmatics makes room for a meta-lin-

If something more was needed, something specifically non-factual, in

terminology are inherently “descriptive verbs” (Bergmann 1944, p. 255;

Here, one finds Sellars essentially indicting Hinshaw’s and Bergmann’s8

conception of pragmatic meta-languages while simultaneously conceding

philosophy’s scope to include rules of designation and rules of truth, as

3 Semantics, Pragmatics, and Designation

sophically meaningful expressions are those characterized in syntactical

language and expressions themselves in the object language (Hall 1944,

semantics is not a branch of semiotics, not a part of a linguistic study (or

of meaning depict the inter-relation between object language, meta-

I have especially emphasized its distinction from syntax (Morris’ “syntac-

Rules of designation are explicitly constructed to reflect the relation-

leave the “universe of symbols” (Bergmann 1944, p. 244). This would

understanding of the relevant philosophical issues and tensions. For

4 Sellars’ Inherited Problem

pragmatics to the sciences that leads to, (2) conceptions of meaning,

It has until recently been a characteristics assumption of philosophers of

Its primary employment is in connection with expressions as norms, and

Understanding ‘designates’ as a “purely formal term”, one that has noth-

modate his sui generis conception of normativity, how such changes

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 37

language and epistemological predicates, must characterize how linguis-

2 Designation and Pragmatics

the formal or syntactical characterization of pragmatic concepts, what is

‘‘within the universe of symbols’’ (Bergmann 1944, p. 240). Bergmann’s

any collection of expressions which is formulated in accordance with the