Wilfrid Sellars (1912–1989), son of the philosopher Roy Wood Sellars, taught at Minnesota, Yale, and finally the University of Pittsburgh. His presence there helped build one of the world’s leading philosophy departments. For a long time his influence ran more absorbed than acknowledged, carried through students and interlocutors, especially Robert Brandom and John McDowell. His essay “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” (1956) is widely regarded as one of the most consequential papers in twentieth-century analytic philosophy.

Major Works

• “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” (1956, in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science; reprinted as a standalone book with introduction by Richard Rorty and study guide by Robert Brandom) — the foundational attack on the Myth of the Given and the Jonesean reconstruction of inner-episode talk
• “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man” (1962) — the manifest image / scientific image distinction
• Science, Perception and Reality (1963) — collected essays
• Science and Metaphysics (1968) — the Kantian-influenced systematic philosophy

Key Positions

The Myth of the Given. The central argument of “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” (EPM) diagnoses a structural error at the foundation of modern epistemology. The Given is the supposed bedrock of empirical knowledge: immediately apprehended inner items (sense-data, sensory impressions, raw feels) that present themselves directly, infallibly, and prior to all conceptualization. Sellars’s attack: nothing can do both of the jobs the Given is supposed to do. It must be (a) pre-conceptual and immediate, otherwise it cannot be genuinely foundational; and (b) reason-giving, otherwise it cannot ground knowledge. Nothing can be both. An item that stands in justifying relations to beliefs must belong to the logical space of reasons, which means it must be conceptually structured. A preconceptual item may causally affect cognition, but it cannot by itself justify a belief; reason-giving requires entry into the logical space of reasons. See The Myth of the Given.

The Jonesean myth. EPM’s positive reconstruction of inner-episode talk. In Sellars’s story, a theoretical genius named Jones proposes to explain the behavior of his fellows by positing inner episodes, “thoughts,” modeled on overt verbal utterances but occurring silently. The community adopts this theoretical vocabulary and eventually learns to apply it reflexively to themselves. Self-reports of inner episodes are not direct readings of pre-given inner items. They are exercises of a theoretical vocabulary learned through its application to others first. Inner-state talk is conceptually downstream from public-discourse talk, not the other way around.

The manifest image and the scientific image. Sellars distinguishes the manifest image, the world as it appears in ordinary experience, common sense, and the humanities, from the scientific image, the world as natural science describes it in terms of particles, fields, and causal processes. Philosophy’s task is to understand how the two images relate. On Sellars’s view the scientific image is ultimately authoritative about what exists, while the manifest image captures real normative and intentional structures not straightforwardly reducible to the scientific image’s terms.

The space of reasons. Sellars’s framework: empirical knowledge is situated in the logical space of reasons, the normative space of justification, inference, and rational responsibility, not merely in the space of causal-natural relations. Perceptual reports are not caused simply in the right way; they are advanced as claims within a practice of giving and asking for reasons.

Inferentialism (in outline). Sellars’s account of conceptual content tends toward inferentialism: what a concept means is constituted by its inferential role — what follows from it, what it follows from, how it relates to other concepts. Brandom later developed this into a full systematic position.

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My View

Sellars stands under more of this book than the prose shows: less explicit than Searle or Tye, more pervasive in methodology. The structural diagnosis of the Myth of the Given, the Jonesean account of inner-episode talk, and the broader anti-foundationalist approach are all Sellarsian in origin.

I deploy Sellars’s anti-Given diagnosis against three specific targets. Sense-datum theory assigns immediately apprehended inner items the task of grounding empirical knowledge, and they cannot do both jobs. Some foundationalist qualia theories cast qualia in the same role, as intrinsic, immediately accessible items that ground knowledge, and Sellars’s diagnosis applies there. A sophisticated mental-paint theorist can instead treat qualia as intrinsic properties of experiential states without making them perceived inner objects or infallible evidence; that stronger view requires Chapter 6’s separate identity argument. The Cartesian inner standpoint, where introspection supposedly delivers self-authenticating reports about inner items, remains the third target.

I also extend the Jonesean myth to inner speech specifically: inner-voice talk is theoretical vocabulary modeled on overt verbal utterance, not a window onto pre-given private contents. The inner voice is public speech gone quiet.

Where the book is more cautious than full Sellarsianism requires: I do not fully embrace inferentialism, whose Brandomian development is more apparatus than the main text needs. And I lean toward causal-historical accounts of reference (Putnam, Burge, Kripke) over functional-role semantics. The book is Sellarsian where Sellars’s structural arguments do work for it; it stops short of the technical positive program. See The Myth of the Given, Inner Speech, and McDowell.

Related Concepts

• The Myth of the Given — the canonical Sellarsian argument; the book’s structural deployment
• Anti-Reification — the methodology Sellars supplies; the Given as paradigm reification mistake
• Inner Speech — the Jonesean reconstruction applied to inner-speech talk specifically
• The Inner Theater — the broader picture Sellars’s diagnosis dismantles
• Indirect Realism and Sense-Data — sense-datum theory as a target of the Myth diagnosis
• Qualia — qualia realism as a target of the Myth diagnosis
• McDowell — the contemporary route the book typically takes into Sellarsian commitments