{1} "I might point out that the solution of the "mind-body problem" offered in this paper ["A Semantic Solution to the Mind-Body Problem"] is thoroughly in the tradition of Physical Realism." Wilfrid Sellars, "Physical Realism," in Philosophical Perspectives (Springfield, Illinois: Charles Thomas, Publishers, 1967), 195.
How natural, then, and, in a sense, how true to say that Critical Realism, Evolutionary Naturalism, and all that they imply, are part of my paternal inheritance. Ibid., 185.I count myself a Scientific Realist. Idem, Naturalism and Ontology (Reseda, California: Ridgeview Publishing Company, 1980), 2.
[On Nov. 23, 1991, in a conversation with Prof. J. Mohanty, I was told that Sellars expressed his philosophical ambition to integrate the views of his father with those of Marvin Farber, a student of Edmund Husserl and the founder of the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. This is compatible with the fact that Sellars uses 'phenomenology' synonymously with giving an 'analysis' of the Manifest Image. The only reference to Farber in Sellars' writings occurs in his "Autobiographical Reflections," in Action, Knowledge and Reality, ed. Hector-Neri Castañeda (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1975):
Marvin Farber [at Buffalo] led me through my first careful reading of the Critique of Pure Reason and introduced me to Husserl. His combination of utter respect for the structure of Husserl's thought with the equally firm conviction that this structure could be given a naturalistic interpretation was undoubtedly a key influence on my own subsequent philosophical strategy. 283. (AC 1996)]
{2} It is also called Inspectional Realism, Naive Realism, Naif Realism, and New Realism.
{3} For a convincing argument that Locke did not hold a copy theory of representational perception, see J. L. Mackie, Problems from Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), especially ch. 2.
{4} James Cornman, Materialism and Sensations (New Haven Yale University Press, 1971), 7.
{5} Mortimer Adler, The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes (New York: World Publishing Company, 1971), 216.
{8} See W. Sellars, "Fatalism and Determinism," in Freedom and Determinism, ed. Keith Lehrer (New York: Random House, 1966). For a criticism, see Robert J. Richards, "Sellars' Kantian Perspective on the Compatibility of Freedom and Determinism," Southern Journal of Philosophy 11 (1973): 228-236.
{9} Sellars, "Physical Realism," 6.
{10} However, I allow for the interpretation of the words 'God', 'soul', and 'spirit' in senses which would make them compatible with Materialism. 'God,' for example, if defined as 'the asymptotic categorial system' (if one is possible) would be compatible with Materialism. Also Samuel Alexander's definition of 'deity' as the stage of evolution after humanity is compatible with Materialism. See his Space, Time, and Deity (London: Macmillan, 1920; New York: Dover, 1966). However, such approaches involve extra-ordinary definitions, which to my knowledge few philosophers give. A notable case is that of Baruch Spinoza who identified God with the universe. But, as could be expected, such (non-teleological) pantheism was quickly branded by his contemporaries as a Materialism.
{11} The idea of primacy is captured by the current use of the term 'supervenience.' If A is supervenient on B, then for any x which has the same properties as B, x will have the same properties as A. Using the concept of supervenience, Materialism is the view which claims that psychological phenomena are supervenient on physical phenomena. This is to say that any two physical objects with the same physical properties will have the same psychological (mental) properties. It appears that currently many philosophers are willing to define Materialism in terms of supervenience -- a practice which stems from D. Davidson's essay "Mental Events," in Experience and Theory, ed. L. Foster and J. W. Swanson (London: Duckworth, 1970). For example, Jaegwon Kim puts it this way: "Acceptance or rejection of the supervenience of the mental on the physical leads to the most basic division between theories of the mind-body relation: theories that accept psychophysical supervenience are fundamentally materialist, and those that reject it are fundamentally anti-materialist." "Concepts of Supervenience," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45 (1984), 156. Terence Horgan follows suit: "An increasing number of philosophers maintain nowadays that the metaphysical doctrine of Materialism is best formulated as a thesis of general supervenience." "Supervenient Qualia," The Philosophical Review 96 (1987), 491.
{12} Wilfrid Sellars, "The Double-Knowledge Approach to the Mind-Body Problem," The New Scholasticism 45 (1971), 272.
{13} An epiphenomenon, a term coined by Thomas H. Huxley, is an event which is itself caused but which does not have the power to cause any other event. The belief in epiphenomena is ascribed to Hobbes, Huxley, and sometimes to Lenin.
{14} U.T. Place, "Is Consciousness a Brain Process?" in The Mind-Brain Identity Theory, ed. C. V. Borst (London: Macmillan Press, 1970): 42-51.
{16} A nomological dangler, I take it, is an event for which there is no lawlike description; while a nomological violator is an event which violates a law. The latter charge is made by James Cornman in "Nonreductive Identity Thesis about Mind and Body," in Reason and Responsibility, 5th ed., edited by Joel Feinberg (Belmont. Cal.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1981). His specific charge is that nonreduced mental events would violate either the principle of the conservation of mass-energy or the principle of the conservation of linear-momentum.
{17} J.J.C. Smart, "Materialism," in The Mind/Brain Identity Theory: 159-160.
{18} Wilfrid Sellars, Naturalism and Ontology (Reseda, California: Ridgeview Publishing Company, 1980), 2.
{19} Roy Wood Sellars, Critical Realism: A Study of the Nature and Conditions of Knowledge (Chicago: Rand-McNally Co., 1916), preface.
{20} Cornman, James. "Sellars, Scientific Realism and Sensa," Review of Metaphysics 23 (1969-1970), 421.
{21} Wilfrid Sellars, "Seeing, Sense Impressions, and Sensa: A Reply to Cornman," The Review of Metaphysics 24 (1970-1971), 402.
{23} Herbert Feigl, The "Mental" and the "Physical" (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967).
{24} Wilfrid Sellars and Paul Meehl, "The Concept of Emergence," in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol.1, ed. Herbert Feigl and Michael Scriven (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956), 252.
{25} Wilfrid Sellars, "Foundations for a Metaphysics of Pure Process: The Carus Lectures," The Monist 64 (1981), 89.
{26} Thomas Hobbes' writing actually lends itself to two interpretations. In some passages he writes that sensations are identical to motions of parts of the body -- this would make him a Reductive Materialist; but in other pasages he writes that sensations are caused by motions of parts of the body -- this would make him an Epiphenomenalist.
{30} Wilfrid Sellars, "Is Scientific Realism Tenable?" Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2 (1976), #27.
{31} Wilfrid Sellars, "Counterfactuals, Dispositions, and the Causal Modalities," in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, eds. Herbert Feigl, Michael Scriven, and Grover Maxwell (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1958), #50.
{32} Wilfrid Sellars, "Discussion [of Sellars' 'Raw Materials, Subjects, and Substrata']," in The Concept of Matter in Greek and Medieval Philosophy, ed. Ernan McMullin, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963), 276.
{33} Mario Bunge, Causality and Modern Science, 3rd ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 1979), 24.
{35} Wilfrid Sellars, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," in Science, Perception, and Reality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd. 1963), 173.
{36} Both transcriptions are meant to be ways of translating sentences which contain theoretical terms to sentences which do not. A Craig transcription applies to axiomatized (formalized) languages in which there is an effective procedure for making a distinction between two sets of non-logical terms. If these conditions hold, then Craig has shown that it is possible to substitute one set for the other; specifically to substitute observational terms for theoretical ones. A Ramsey transcription assumes that we have a quantified set of statements containing theoretical and observational predicates. The transcription is accomplished by substituting for theoretical predicates (second-order) variables. This conjunction of statements is then quantified by prefixing to this compound statement an existential quantifier for each "theoretical" variable.
{37} Bas van Fraassen, "Wilfrid Sellars on Scientific Realism," Dialogue 14 (1975): 606-616; and idem, Scientific Image (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1980). Cf. Wilfrid Sellars, "Is Scientific Realism Tenable?" Cf. also Gary Gutting, "Scientific Realism vs. Constructive Empiricism: A Dialogue," The Monist 65 (1982): 336-349.
{38} Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science (Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, 1979), 152; cf. Wilfrid Sellars, "Scientific Realism or Irenic Instrumentalism: A Critique of Nagel and Feyerabend on Theoretical Explanation," in Philosophical Perspectives.
{39} Wilfrid Sellars, "Seeing, Sense Impressions, and Sensa: A Reply to Cornman," The Review of Metaphysics 24 (1970-1971): 391-447.
{40} Cornman in early writings defended a version of nonreductive materialism: he held that groups of living physical objects acquire psychological properties and that non-living physical objects also acquired such properties as colors. But in his latest writings he adopts, what he calls, "the neutral identity theory" which he identifies with Spinoza's "double aspect theory." On this view it is some neutral entity that may have both physical and psychological properties.
{41} Using current jargon, we could call them "supervenient properties."
{42} Wilfrid Sellars, "Mind, Meaning, and Behavior," Philosophical Studies 3 (1952), 84, #1.2213.
{43} Donald Davidson, "Mental Events," in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).
{45} Edwin Land, "Experiments in Color Vision," Scientific American 5 (1959), 84; idem, "Retinex Theory of Color Vision," Scientific American 12 (1977), 108.
{46} Donaldson, "Mental Events," 213-214.
{49} Jay Rosenberg, "The Place of Color in the Scheme of Things: A Roadmap to Sellars's Carus Lectures." The Monist 65 (1982): 315-335.