Was Sellars an error theorist? | Synthese
Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Was Sellars an error theorist?

  • Published:
Synthese Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Wilfrid Sellars described the moral syllogism that supports the inference “I ought to do x” from “Everyone ought to do x” as a “syntactical disguise” which embodies a “mistake.” He nevertheless regarded this form of reasoning as constitutive of the moral point of view. Durkheim was the source of much of this reasoning, and this context illuminates Sellars’ unusual philosophical reconstruction of the moral point of view in terms of the collective intentions of an ideal community of rational members for which the syllogism is empirically valid. The reconstruction also sheds light on the question of the status of common sense and normativity in Sellars’ naturalistic metaphysics.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
¥17,985 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price includes VAT (Japan)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Sellars (1952, p. 515).

  2. See Beiser (2009) for one version of this genealogy.

  3. Sellars (1956a, p. 266).

  4. Sellars “Obligation and Motivation,” p. 517.

  5. More recent interpreters of Sellars’ conception of the “manifest and scientific images” tend to argue that normative discourse is both a concept located within the manifest or common sense framework of explanation and that it somehow functions as an ineliminable explanatory device (despite its omission from the scientific picture of the world). For example, see DeVries (2005, chap. 10), O’Shea (2007, chap. 7).

  6. “In other words, ‘I ought to do X’ rests on ‘Everybody doing X’, and ‘Everybody do X’ rests on ‘I ought to do X.”’ ... (Sellars “Obligation and Motivation,” pp. 514–515).

  7. Prichard (1912).

  8. Sellars “Obligation and Motivation,” p. 517.

  9. Sellars “Obligation and Motivation.”

  10. Sellars (1980 [1949]). http://www.ditext.com/sellars/lrb.html.

  11. See Stevenson (1963, pp. 142–143).

  12. Sellars, “Obligation and Motivation,” p. 516. Or here, “the epistemological and metaphysical commitments of ethical intuitionism precluded it from understanding [the?] logical connection between thinking that one ought and being moved to do, thus forcing it to make a mystery of the conduct-guiding role of moral discourse, and a mystery of the uniqueness of prescriptive discourse which it had so happily emphasized” (Sellars, “Imperatives, Intentions, and the Logic of ‘Ought’,” p. 230).

  13. e.g., Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?”

  14. One attempted solution to these paired inadequacies can be found in R. M. Hare’s imperativist account of moral discourse (Hare 1952). Sellars recognized this, and engaged in an extended correspondence with Hare on these issues. For Hare, the general form of a moral claim was an imperative, and the personal form was an instance of the general one. This is the kind of logical relation that Sellars is concerned to deny. The relevant psychological fact for Hare was assent to the relevant imperatives. Sellars’ objection was this: assent lacks the immediate connection to motivation of intuitionism. Notoriously, we can assent to imperatives that we are not motivated to act on. So the relation between assent and action seems to be empirical and contingent, that is to say a fact of psychology or behavioral science.

  15. Sellars, “Obligation and Motivation,” p. 515.

  16. Sellars, “Obligation and Motivation,” p. 515.

  17. Sellars, “Obligation and Motivation,” p. 515.

  18. Sellars, “Obligation and Motivation,” p. 516.

  19. Sellars, “Obligation and Motivation,” pp. 514–515.

  20. Sellars, “Obligation and Motivation,” p. 516.

  21. Sellars, “Obligation and Motivation,” p. 515.

  22. For another example of myth and illusion in Sellars, see Kukla (2000).

  23. Sellars (1992 [1967], p. 189, para 37).

  24. Sellars (1992 [1967], p. 222, para 133).

  25. Sellars (1992 [1967], p. 189, para 37).

  26. This phrase has been obscured in the later discussions of collective intentionality, which in the hands of Tuomela, Gilbert, and Bratman has focused on joint activities which are intentional rather than on collective attitudes (Tuomela 2005; Gilbert 2000 [1997]; Bratman 1999). This has led to the charge, by John Searle, that these accounts of collective intentionality are circular: collective intentions are simply defined in terms of the explanandum, the joint action itself (Searle 1990, p. 405). Sellars’ account is free of this problem, because for him the collective attitude, the “we disapprove,” is detached from the personal attitude in a manner consistent with the account he gives of the disguise: The relationship that is disguised is one between motivational tendencies in which the collective attitude only tends to produce the explanandum action.

  27. Sellars (1963 [1956], p. 203).

  28. Sellars (1992 [1967], p. 222, para 133).

  29. Sellars (1992 [1967], p. 222, para 133).

  30. Sellars, “Obligation and Motivation,” p. 516.

  31. Sellars, “Obligation and Motivation,” p. 513.

  32. This is the point Sellars illustrates with his fragmentary discussion of the sentence “We disapprove of women smoking, but I don’t.” See Sellars, “Imperatives, Intentions, and the Logic of ‘Ought’,” p. 203.

  33. Sellars (1974, p. 422).

  34. Bouglé (1926).

  35. Durkheim and Mauss (1963 [1903]).

  36. Bouglé, The Evolution of Values, p. 29; Sellars’ marginal note.

  37. See Schmaus (2004).

  38. Durkheim (1974, pp. 81–82).

  39. Bouglé, The Evolution of Values, p. 15; underlined by Wilfrid Sellars.

  40. Bouglé, The Evolution of Values, p. 16; underlined by Wilfrid Sellars.

  41. Bouglé, The Evolution of Values, p. 16; underlined by Wilfrid Sellars.

  42. Roy Wood Sellars in Bouglé, The Evolution of Values, xxxii; underlined by Wilfrid Sellars.

  43. Roy Wood Sellars in Bouglé, The Evolution of Values, x.

  44. That W. Sellars is interested in saving rationalism qua transcendentalism is not surprising. See DeVries (2011).

  45. We do address this issue in Olen and Turner (2015).

  46. Sellars emphasizes, and underlines this emphasis by using special typographical devices, that he is not using these terms in their ordinary sense, but in a special “technical sense,” a restricted sense designed to capture the logic of the relevant conceptual relations. Sellars (1992 [1967], p. 188, para 34).

  47. Sellars (1992 [1967], pp. 184–187).

  48. Sellars, “Imperatives, Intentions, and the Logic of ‘Ought’,” p. 204.

  49. Sellars, “Obligation and Motivation,” pp. 514–515.

  50. Sellars, “Obligation and Motivation,” p. 516.

  51. Sellars, “Obligation and Motivation,” p. 516.

  52. Sellars, “Imperatives, Intentions, and the Logic of ‘Ought’,” p. 204.

  53. For a longer exploration of the differing senses of normativity, see Olen (forthcoming).

  54. Sellars, “Obligation and Motivation,” p. 513.

  55. Sellars (1992 [1967], p. 187).

  56. Sellars (1992 [1967], p. 208, para 87).

  57. Sellars (1992 [1967], p. 210, para 93).

  58. Sellars (1992 [1967], p. 210, para 93); emphasis in the original.

  59. Sellars (1992 [1967], p. 210, para 93).

  60. Sellars (1992 [1967], p. 220, para 124); emphasis in the original.

  61. Sellars, “Imperatives, Intentions, and the Logic of ‘Ought’” (1963, p. 210).

  62. Sellars, “Imperatives, Intentions, and the Logic of ‘Ought’” (1963, p. 210).

  63. Sellars, “Imperatives, Intentions, and the Logic of ‘Ought’” (1963, p. 210).

  64. Sellars (1992 [1967], p. 223, para 135).

  65. Sellars (1956b).

  66. DeVries (2005), O’Shea (2007).

  67. Sellars (1992 [1967], p. 146, para 90).

  68. James O’Shea, Wilfrid Sellars: Naturalism with a Normative Turn, p. 189.

  69. One might wonder whether the category of the “physical” would survive the meshing of common sense and scientific frameworks at the idealized end of inquiry. One might think that physical facts, at least in the recognizable terms we currently find them, may just be one more hangover from our common sense explanations. See Montero (2001).

  70. Sellars seems more than willing to characterize both the manifest and scientific images as errors. By constructing both frameworks as images, Sellars explicitly leaves open the possibility that “an ‘image’ is something imagined, and that which is imagined may well not exist, although the imagining of it does” (Sellars, “Obligation and Motivation,” p. 5).

  71. Sellars, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” pp. 16–17.

  72. Sellars, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” p. 17.

  73. Sellars, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” p. 8.

  74. Sellars, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” p. 40.

  75. Sellars (1980 [1953], p. 194, para 21).

  76. By analogy, such frameworks would function in the same way prior ethical and social frameworks allow us to articulate historically sensitive accounts of values no longer held (e.g., we can make sense of what counted as good reasons to reject atomic theory in the nineteenth century, given specific values and evidential standards then currently held in physics, etc...).

References

  • Beiser, F. (2009). Normativity in neo-Kantianism: It’s rise and fall. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 17, 9–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bouglé, C. (1926). The evolution of values: Studies in sociology with special applications to teaching (H. S. Sellars, Trans.). New York: Henry Holt.

  • Bratman, M. (1999). Faces of intention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • DeVries, W. (2005). Wilfrid Sellars: Philosophy now. Abingdon: Acumen Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • DeVries, W. (2011). Sellars vs. McDowell on the structure of sensory consciousness. Diametros, 27, 47–63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Durkheim, É. (1974). Sociology and philosophy (D. F. Pockock, Trans.). New York: The Free Press.

  • Durkheim, É., & Mauss, M. (1963). Primitive classification (R. Needham, Trans.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1903).

  • Gilbert, M. (2000 [1997]). What is it for us to intend. In Sociality and responsibility (pp. 14–36). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

  • Hare, R. M. (1952). The language of morals. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kukla, R. (2000). Myth, memory, and misrecognition in Sellars’ ‘Empiricism and the philosophy of mind’. Philosophical Studies, 101, 161–211.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Montero, B. (2001). Post-physicalism. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8(2), 61–80.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olen, P. (forthcoming). From formalism to Psychology: Meta-philosophical shifts in Wilfrid Sellars’ early works. HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science.

  • Olen, P., & Turner, S. (2015). Durkheim, Sellars, and the origins of collective intentionality. British Journal for the History of Philosophy. doi:10.1080/09608788.2015.1039483.

  • O’Shea, J. (2007). Wilfrid Sellars: Naturalism with a normative turn. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prichard, H. A. (1912). Does moral philosophy rest on a mistake? Mind, 21, 21–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schmaus, W. (2004). Rethinking Durkheim and his tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Searle, J. (1990). Collective intentions and actions. In P. Cohen, J. Morgan, & M. Pollack (Eds.), Intentions in communication (pp. 401–415). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sellars, W. (1952). Obligation and motivation. In W. Sellars & J. Hospers (Eds.), Readings in ethical theory (pp. 511–517). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sellars, W. (1956a). Imperatives, intentions, and the logic of ‘ought’. Methodos, VIII(32), 227–268.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sellars, W. (1956b). Empiricism and the philosophy of mind. In H. Feigl & M. Scriven (Eds.), Minnesota studies in the philosophy of science (Vol. 1, pp. 253–329). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sellars, W. (1963 [1956]). Imperatives, intentions, and the logic of ‘ought’, Rev. & Enlgd. In H.-N. Castañeda & G. Nakhnikian (Eds.), Morality and the language of conduct (pp. 159–214). Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

  • Sellars, W. (1963 [1960]). Philosophy and the scientific image of man. In Empiricism and the philosophy of mind (pp. 1–40). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

  • Sellars, W. (1974). Meaning as functional classification (A perspective on the relation of syntax to semantics). Synthese, 27, 417–437.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sellars, W. (1980 [1949]). Language, rules and behavior. In J. F. Sicha (Ed.), Pure pragmatics and possible worlds: The early essays of Wilfrid Sellars (pp. 117–134). Reseda: Ridgeview Publishing Company. Accessed October 6, 2014, from http://www.ditext.com/sellars/lrb.html.

  • Sellars, W. (1980 [1953]). A semantical solution of the mind-body problem. In J. F. Sicha (Ed.), Pure pragmatics and possible worlds: The early essays of Wilfrid Sellars (pp. 186–214). Reseda, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company.

  • Sellars, W. (1992 [1967]). Science and metaphysics: Variations on Kantian themes. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company.

  • Stevenson, C. L. (1963). Facts and values: Studies in ethical analysis. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tuomela, R. (2005). We-intentions revisited. Philosophical Studies, 125, 327–369.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Westermark, E. (1932). Ethical relativity. London: Harcourt Brace.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lake Sumter State College, Leesburg, FL, USA

    Peter Olen

  2. University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

    Stephen P. Turner

Authors
  1. Peter Olen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Stephen P. Turner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peter Olen.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Olen, P., Turner, S.P. Was Sellars an error theorist?. Synthese 193, 2053–2075 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0829-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0829-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation