Customer Reviews (2)

Philosophy as it Ought to Be
If there is a way philosophy should be done, this book shows the way. The two central essays of the volume, "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man", and "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind", aresome of the richestpieces in the entire corpus of 20th centuryphilosophy. In the first, Sellars examines the crucial tension between our"ordinary" understanding of ourselves and the world, the ManifestImage, and a "corresponding" picture in the Scientific Image.According to this way of dividing up our confrontation with the world,Behaviorism turns out to belong largely, if not completely, to the ManifestImage of Man. The real drama takes place when the two images confront oneanother. How he handles this seeming conflict is better left to a primaryreading of the text. The same goes for "Empiricism and the Philosophyof Mind". Neither essay will tolerate a single reading, so be preparedto spend a lot of time with this book.A word on style. Sellars writesmuch as he spoke, with little edited out. The result is a huge net ofconvoluted sentences that insist the reader not waste an ounce ofconcentration on anything else. In the end, there are few philosophicaltexts in this century that will be as gratifying and challenging as theones contained in this volume.

The very best of Sellars
This text is Sellars at his very best. The opening essay, "Philsophy and the Scientific Image of Man" is an excellent synoptic overview and introduction. One will find oneself constantly refering back to this essayas one moves on in the text. "The Language of Theories"brilliantly discusses Sellars' teleology, which is a Peirceian progressiontowards completed science. The centerpiece, of course, is "Empiricismand the Philosophy of Mind." This is the essay that put Sellars on themap. Along with introducing concepts such as psychological nominalism, itis a brilliant and largely flawless attack on logical empiricism. The textconcludes with "Some Reflections on Language Games", aWittgensteinian discussion centered around the notion that one must"live the game." If you only own one book from Sellars (which isno where near enough), make it this one. ... Read more

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The work of the American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars continues to have a significant impact on the contemporary philosophical scene. His writings have influenced major thinkers such as Rorty, McDowell, Brandom and Dennett, and many of Sellars' basic conceptions such as the 'logical space of reasons', the 'myth of the given', and the 'manifest and scientific images' have become standard philosophical terms. Often, however, recent uses of these terms do not reflect the richness or the true sense of Sellars' original ideas. This book gets to the heart of Sellars' philosophy and provides students with the first critical introduction to his life's work. The book is structured around what Sellars himself regarded as the philosopher's overarching task: to achieve a coherent vision of reality that will finally overcome the continuing clashes between the world as common sense takes it to be and the world as science reveals it to be. It provides a clear analysis of Sellars' groundbreaking philosophy of mind, his novel theory of consciousness, his defence of scientific realism, and his comprehensive naturalism with a normative turn. Providing a lively examination of Sellars' work through the central problem of what it means to be a human being in a scientific world, this book will be a valuable resource for all students of philosophy. ... Read more

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The most important work by one of America's greatest twentieth-century philosophers, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind is both the epitome of Wilfrid Sellars' entire philosophical system and a key document in the history of philosophy. First published in essay form in 1956, it helped bring about a sea change in analytic philosophy. It broke the link, which had bound Russell and Ayer to Locke and Hume--the doctrine of "knowledge by acquaintance." Sellars' attack on the Myth of the Given in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind was a decisive move in turning analytic philosophy away from the foundationalist motives of the logical empiricists and raised doubts about the very idea of "epistemology."

With an introduction by Richard Rorty to situate the work within the history of recent philosophy, and with a study guide by Robert Brandom, this publication of Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind makes a difficult but indisputably significant figure in the development of analytic philosophy clear and comprehensible to anyone who would understand that philosophy or its history.

Customer Reviews (5)

a difficult read, not recommendable to every philosophy student
The review is just on Sellars' essay. Rorty as usual hasn't said much about things. So if you know Sellars via Rorty, drop this one and read Derrida instead. Brandom is still quite interesting, but there are many others who want to talk about him.

From the first time I read the essay, I was wondering why Sellars's text is so ambiguous and incomprehensible. He studied mathematics before he came to study philosophy. But unlike Quine, you saw not even a vestige of mathematical elegance in his clumsy writing. His way of reasoning is just way too un-analytical. Soon I came to the conclusion that he knew very little of contemporary logic. Philosophy is a very funny discipline. Sometimes, the difficulty in understanding a philosophical argument points to the difficulty at the heart of the real philosophical problems and sometimes, it results from a confused way of thinking about matters. It takes time for readers to be able to determine from which the difficulty originates. Initially, I thought the difficulty in reading Sellars is a genuine one, but I found later that most of the time it wasn't.

In many cases, as one reviewer below says, he simply mis-reasons and in an awkward way. The way he construes regress argument in memory judgment is one such example.

Other times, he simply confuses himself or omits argument all together. In SS20 for example, after a long discussion on conceptual priority of the "is" over the "looks" , he proposes and defends conceptual holism against adverbial theory; which is a variant of epistemological foundationalism. Adverbialists such as Chisholm characteristically endorse the foundationalist thesis that there are some basic beliefs which justify all other non-basic empirical beliefs. They think perceptual beliefs of the kind "x looks R to me", "x appears R to me" are candidates for such basic beliefs. This thesis, problematic as it may sound too Cartesian, by itself doesn't lead them to commit to conceptual atomism. It only tells us that the belief statements of the form " x looks R" are justificatory prior to belief statement of the form " x is R". The thesis about epistemic justification doesn't tell us anything about the conceptual priority of one term over the other, so defending conceptual holism can be perfectly compatible with the position Sellars argues against. Sellars seems to conflate epistemological question with conceptual question here. There are mistakes of this kind here and there in this essay. In another place, he simply didn't argue well enough. He commits to a semantic thesis that a word's meaning is its functional role to defend his "psychological nominalism". This thesis which is now called "functional semantic theory" is itself a very controversial thesis and you need a book-length argument to just defend the view.( btw, which is what Brandom was trying to do in recent years) But Sellars simply sketched out the basic idea and did no defense on his claim.

Even though Sellars' original presentation is far from clear, the idea of "myth of the given" is quite interesting nontheless. The idea is roughly that any mental items (propositional or non-propositional) that play epistemically justificational role in justifying empirically significant statements couldn't be independently given. It depends for its justification on other propositions. No candidate of the given could serve the role it was meant to serve. So on this construal, not only sense-data can't be given, but judgments such as "it looks red to me" or "I have a pain in my stomach" can't be given as well. So his critique on the myth of the given is clearly broader than any arguments against sense-data theory and probably broader than private language argument. The problem is that it may be too broad. If you endorse Sellars' critique of MOG along with his psychological nominalism which states that any kind of awareness (conscious or unconscious) is linguistic affair, then you need to deny any awareness of pain on the part of creatures who don't use language-like systems like us. Not only that he also had to expel sensations all together from the realm of reasons, hence from objects of awareness. (he prefers to use the term "sense impression" or "direct experience" instead of sensation in this text) and thinks of it as "postulated" instead of "directly experienced". According to this view, then, phenomenal quality such as pain has obviously no place in our realm of reasons because it contains no propositional content, let alone linguistic content, but can we seriously claim that we are not even aware of them because all awareness is propositional in form?

Warning: The text doesn't include the footnotes Sellars added in 1960's. The added footnotes are significant enough for undertanding subsequent debates between Sellars and his critiques (Chisholm, Firth etc). If you want a full text of this essay with added footnotes, get "Science, Perception and Reality" instead.

Brilliant and rewarding
I have come back to this essay by Sellars again and again for over thirty years, and have never failed to impressed and inspired. Sellars can always get me to think at a deeper level than I'm used to. Second only perhaps to Wittgenstein in influence, Sellars is a philosopher's philosopher: understanding him requires a thorough grounding in the history of philosophy, and this essay in particular takes it for granted that you understand 20th century empricism and "sense data" theories pretty well. Even so, the writing style can be both dense and difficult, but reading it aloud can untangle any number of tricky passages. If you're not quite so well versed in history of philosophy, a similar critique can be found in J.L. Austin's "Sense and Sensibilia," which is more accessible but not nearly as profound. In the course of showing the futility of finding incorrigibile foundations for empirical knowledge in sense experience, Sellars simultaneously develops a strictly behavioristic psychology that legitimizes all the goodies, all the mental vocabulary, that folks like Skinner forbade. A tour de force unequalled in 80 years. Bob Brandom's explicatory essay is very helpful, and untwists several tricky knots in the text.

Cave!
I do not understand why it is always said that Sellars' language was sodifficult. I found his philosophical style quite straight-on.Unfortunately, Sellars' main work is punctuated by some passages ofsuperficial and/or incorrect reasoning, at which passages some may assumethat they do not understand Sellars' argumentation - though it "has tobe profound" (because of Sellars' reputation). The most importantissue in this essay is the impossibility of reporting sense impressionswithout using language (with all implications that come along with that),and the repercussions of this circumstance on the philosophy of logicalempiricism in its early stage (though Sellars obviously thinks his ideasimpact on all forms of empiricism, which is not true). Along that line,Sellars has many good points that should be considered in the philosophy ofscience and in common sense reasoning, yet his reputed final dismantling ofthe "myth" of the given never takes place; in Sellars intentions,maybe, but his arguments are a far cry from being a stringent refutation.They are simply too superficial and too colloquial for that. (Cf. Putnam'smodel-theoretic arguments against realism, for a contrast.) What is reallyunfortunate for Sellars' essay is that, in this edition, it is framed byRorty and Brandom. The philosophical humorist Rorty has contributed aforeword in an attempt to assimilate Sellars serious philosophical projectinto his radical-relativist historicizing outlook of philosophy, thuscompletely misleading the unknowing reader. The bright, but misguided,Brandom offers a study guide, which is no study guide, but an attempt todirect the reader at those aspects of Sellars' essay, which Brandom's owninferentialist philosophy is supposed to stem from. Unfortunately, theseaspects are exactly the most questionable. So, while Sellars' essay is aprofitable classic of analytic philosophy, the reader should be warned toread Rorty's foreword and Brandom's study guide cautiously and criticallyand to thoroughly consider, if these really reflect Sellars' essaycorrectly.

deep, difficult, essential
"Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" is an essential epistemological text of the twentieth century. It is difficult: each sentence is difficult. Sellars is said to have shown the existence of a private language by writing in one. The guide by Brandom does not much clarify and simplify the argument of Sellars for two reasons. It is impossible to do this. And Brandom wants to and does contribute significantly to Sellars scholarship. Sellars writes for the professional philosopher. If you plan to be such, or if you want to encounter philosophy at its most profound, you should study the book.

A difficult, controversial work in philosophy
There are two areas to comment on with regards to this printing of "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (EPM).The first is the presentation style and the second is the content.On the presentation:Rorty's introduction is very helpful in preparing one to read the book.The large print will be a welcome relief to anyone who has squinted at the pages of *Science, Perception and Reality* which also includes EPM.However, the omission of the footnotes Sellars added in 1963 is very odd.Also, the endnote markers are not superscripted but merely placed in parentheses which can be confusing since at other times a number in () is not referring to an endnote but rather to a numbered paragraph.Be forewarned that Brandom's study guide is not exegetical as one might hope.It is an interpretation of the work.On the content:This book is definitely not for beginners, and one can become quickly annoyed at Sellars' use of cliches as references to philosophical systems.Also, Sellars will make reference to specific philosophers without actually naming them, making it difficult to figure out just what specific advocation of a view he is rejecting (See for example Section 30).Other times, he will specifically mention who he has in mind, such as in Sections 8-9 when he brings up the name of A.J. Ayer.It should go without saying that the claims Sellars makes are by no means easy to grasp and they are even less easy to accept.A note on my low ranking of this book:I gave it a 4 mostly because of Sellars' difficult writing style, and not because of the shortcomings in presentation mentioned above. ... Read more

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Wilfrid Sellars (1912-1989) was, in the opinion of many, the most important American philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century. He was, Richard Rorty writes, "as original a mind as C. S. Peirce, and it has taken almost as long for the importance of his ideas to be appreciated." This collection, coedited by Sellars's chief interpreter and intellectual heir, should do much to elucidate and clearly establish the significance of this difficult thinker's vision for contemporary philosophy.

The volume presents the most readable of Sellars's essays in a sequence that illuminates what Robert Brandom calls the "inferentialist" conception of meaning at the heart of his work. This conception, laid out in the early essays, is deployed in various epistemological contexts throughout the book so that, upon arriving at the concluding papers on Kant, the reader has been given a tour d'horizon not only of the central topics of philosophy of mind and language, but of much of the history of philosophy as well--and, with this, a sense of what a shifting of analytic philosophy from its Humean into its Kantian stage would entail.

Customer Reviews (2)

A superb introduction to Wilfrid Sellars and philosophy!
Amaral did a superb job of reconstructing Wilfrid Sellars' lectures given in 1975. This is not only a great introduction to Sellars and his dialectical style, it is also a great introduction to philosophy. There are numerous illustrations (which Sellars actually used when teaching), which make the material even more accessible.

Sellars has great insight into the mind, no novices allowed!
I had Dr. Amaral's course in Philosphy of Mind at Fresno State in Spring 1995.We used this as a classroom text and it was fairly heavy reading.I would recommend it highly to anyone with a background in Philosophy who is interested in understanding more about mind/brain arguments.However, no one who is lacking a basic familiarity with such figures as Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant should attempt it.One student remarked that the text "was unreadable by human beings." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The perfect companion to Sellars' essay
If you have struggled, like many of us have, to understand Sellars' essay, this is the book for you.

I worked through Sellars' essay using this book as a companion volume, and it was incredibly helpful.

Why does this single essay deserve a guide? First, because of its importance. In this essay you will find precursors to many modern strands of thought, such as the 'language of thought' hypothesis, coherence theories of justification, and even pragmatic theories of meaning.

Unfortunately, the essay is also very difficult to understand. Sellars assumed working familiarity with the main currents in philosophy as understood by a philosopher in the 1950s. He also assumes familiarity with historical figures such as Kant. Finally, even if you have said familiarity, the essay is dense and sometimes uses rather tortured prose that can be very difficult to understand.

So, if you find yourself stumbling to understand 'Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind', buy this book immediately. You will be very glad you did. It is extremely clearly written, and it removes the requirement that you have a degree in philosophy to understand Sellars' seminal essay.

Sellars and Clarity
This is a good book which would serve well as an introduction to Sellars's dense "EPM."It provides background information on sense-datum theories, a contextual overview, clarification (i.e., shows the arguments) in each section of the text, and offers insightful commentary on each section."EPM" is included at the end of the text.

I highly recommend this book, along with Sellars's other work, and McDowell's Mind and World.

what is this all about?
the commentary writers are offering here is crowded with the details of Sellar's essay and quite at no point supplies a general foothold to make Sellar's work and what's original in it understandable (which I finally can not appreciate how philosophically original it is). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Science and Metaphysics
This work offers a systematic presentation of the views which Professor Sellars has formulated on a wide spectrum of philosophical topics over the past twenty years. The argument of the book has an interesting kinship with Kant's attempt to reconcile the insights of rationalism with empiricism, and it is presented within a framework of a critical exposition of Kant's view on fundamental topics in metaphysics, epistemology and ethical theory.

In the early chapters, Kant's attempt to disentangle the respective roles in experience of sensibility and understanding is sympatheticaly explored. The theory of mental acts which is the heart of the Kantian system is carefully analysized and subsequently given a novel twist which is then developed into a theory of intentionality and the mental. In the fifth chapter, levels of factual discourse are distinguished and shown to presuppose a basic level in which conceptual items as items in rerum nature 'represent' or 'picture' the way things are. The distinctions drawn enable a definition of 'reality' and '(ideal) truth' in terms of adequate representation.

The concluding chapter on objectivity and intersubjectivity in ethics is, in a sense, the keystone of the argument, since the book stresses throughout the normative aspects of the concepts of meaning, existence and truth. The chapter can alsoo be read separately as an interpretation and defence of Kant's ethical theory.
--- from book's dustjacket ... Read more

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This book is an important study in the philosophy of the mind; drawing on the work of philosopher Wilfrid Sellars and the theory of critical realism to develop a novel argument for understanding perception and metaphysics.

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Wilfrid Sellars (1912-89) has been called "the most profound and systematic epistemological thinker of the twentieth century" (Robert Brandom). He was in many respects ahead of his time, and many of his innovations have become widely acknowledged, for example, his attack on the "myth of the given", his functionalist treatment of intentional states, his proposal that psychological concepts are like theoretical concepts, and his suggestion that attributions of knowledge locate the knower "in the logical space of reasons". However, while many philosophers have begun to acknowledge Sellars's inspiration in their work, their interpretation of his thought has not always been the most accurate. His writings are difficult. Individually, his essays are complex and sometimes rely on doctrines and arguments he put forward elsewhere. Each of his articles is deepened and strengthened by seeing it in its systematic context, but he never wrote a unified exposition of his system, which therefore has to be pieced together from numerous disparate sources.Willem deVries addresses these difficulties specifically and provides a careful reading and remarkable overview of Sellars's systematic philosophy that will become the standard point of reference for all philosophers seeking to understand Sellars's hugely significant body of work. ... Read more