Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind
Reference: Sellars, W. (1956). Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. In Feigl & Scriven (eds.), The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis (Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. I, pp. 253–329). University of Minnesota Press. Reissued as a standalone book in 1997 with study guide by Brandom. URL (Ditext transcription) · SEP: Sellars
Summary
Sellars’s Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind — often known by the abbreviation EPM — is the founding text of the Pittsburgh school of philosophy (Sellars, Brandom, McDowell) and the source of the move that makes semantics without minds possible. The paper’s central target is the Myth of the Given: the idea that knowledge must rest on a foundation of preconceptual, given sensory contents (sense data, qualia, immediate awareness) which are both non-inferential and epistemically authoritative. Sellars argues that this picture is incoherent: anything that could be epistemically authoritative — anything that could justify a belief — must already be conceptually articulated, and so cannot be preconceptual. There is no epistemic free lunch at the periphery; all knowledge lives inside the space of reasons.
The argument unfolds across sixteen sections. The early sections deconstruct sense-datum theory; the middle sections develop Sellars’s positive account of looking-talk (looks-red is parasitic on is-red, not the other way around); the late sections develop the famous Jonesean myth in which thoughts and inner episodes are introduced as theoretical posits modelled on overt speech, with sensory impressions as further theoretical posits modelled on the perceptible properties of physical objects. The Jonesean myth is Sellars’s positive reconstruction of mentalistic talk: mental states are not pre-given inner objects we somehow inspect, but theoretical entities whose semantic content is fixed by their inferential role — which means mentalistic vocabulary is parasitic on public language, not foundational for it. This single move — “the categories of inner episodes are modelled on the categories of intersubjectively available language” — is the historical hinge on which the inferentialist turn rotates.
For agent communication, EPM is the philosophical warrant for treating the wire as the semantic ground floor and the agent’s mind as a downstream theoretical posit. The standard worry about public-semantics ACLs is that they leave out “what the agent really meant”; Sellars’s answer is that “what the agent really meant” is itself a theoretical extrapolation from public discursive practice, not a pre-given inner episode the public practice approximates. The mentalistic ACL semantics that Sellars’s argument undermines is precisely the FIPA/Cohen–Levesque picture that Singh 1998 sets aside.
Key Ideas
- The Myth of the Given: the foundationalist idea that knowledge rests on preconceptual, immediately-known sensory contents is incoherent. Anything that can justify a belief is already conceptually articulated; epistemic standing lives in the space of reasons.
- Looks-talk is parasitic on is-talk: “X looks red to me” is not a more secure foundation than “X is red”; it is a hedge introduced after we have learned to deploy is-red, used when we want to undertake the commitment to a colour-impression without undertaking the commitment to the colour itself.
- The Jonesean myth: a methodological fiction in which a community with only behavioural language develops mentalistic vocabulary by introducing thoughts (modelled on overt speech) and sensations (modelled on the perceptible properties of physical objects) as theoretical entities. The point: mentalistic talk is a theoretical posit, not a description of pre-given inner data.
- The space of reasons: “In characterizing an episode or a 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 being able to justify what one says.” §36 — the most-quoted line in 20th-century epistemology.
- Psychological nominalism: all awareness of universals, kinds, sorts, and resemblances is linguistic awareness — there is no preconceptual awareness of abstract entities.
- Sapience over sentience: the distinction between concept-using creatures and others is participation in the game of reasons, not the having of qualia.
Connections
Conceptual Contribution
- Claim: Knowledge cannot be grounded in preconceptual given sensory contents; epistemic standing requires conceptual articulation, which is inherently a public, language-involving achievement. Mentalistic vocabulary is a theoretical posit modelled on public discourse, not a description of pre-given inner data.
- Mechanism: A dialectical demolition of sense-datum theory in §§1–7, a developmental account of looks-talk in §§10–20, and the Jonesean myth in §§48–63 in which mentalistic vocabulary is introduced into a behavioural community as a theory whose entities (thoughts, sensations) are modelled on already-public categories (overt speech, perceptible properties).
- Concepts introduced/used: Myth of the Given, Space of Reasons, Psychological Nominalism, Sapience vs Sentience, Looking-Talk, Jonesean Myth, Theoretical Posit, Conceptual Articulation, Semantics-Without-Minds.
- Stance: foundational philosophical paper.
- Relates to: The historical hinge on which the entire inferentialist / Pittsburgh school turns. Brandom and <em>MIE</em> are the systematic development of the positive programme implicit in EPM’s negative demolition. The argument that mentalistic talk is parasitic on public language is the philosophical underwriting of Singh’s move from mentalistic to social-commitment semantics for ACLs, and of CBCL’s decision to ground meaning at the wire format rather than at the agent internals. The complementary moves in the same generation are Quine 1951 (against the analytic-synthetic distinction and for holism) and Wittgenstein 1953 (meaning as use).