Pedro Amaral's Introduction to Sellars' Notre Dame Lectures

73 Pages·2009·0.38 MB·English

by  Pedro V Amaral

Introduction
In tro duc tion to Wilfrid Sellars: No tre Dame Lect ures 1969-1986
“A flower in the crannied wall,” Sellars des cribes these Lec -
tures while plucki ng his phi loso p hy out of the crann ies, roots and
all.1 “One of the ba sic tasks that phil oso p hy has to do is to raise
ques tions,” he re marks, “to open up con cep tual pos si bil i ties…phi-
loso p hers should not reg ard them selves as merely owls of Min erva
who come back in the night aft er the day is done. They should also
be “her alds of the dawn” who cre ate the cat eg o ries in terms of
which sci ence is re ju ve nated.” In this, the No tre Dame Lec tures do
not disa pp oint. As a meas ure of the frui tion of the monu m ent al
changes Sellars env is ions and his hope of a reu nif ic at ion of scie nce
and phil oso p hy, the lec tures stand alone. From the pointed cri-
tiques of Parmenides, Plato, Ar ist otle and Wittgenstein, to the
playf ul scoldi ng of Carnap, Bergm an, Firth, Chis holm and Quine,
Sellars enc oura ges phil oso p hers to take up the chall enge of giving
direction to the future of the cognitive sciences.
Time and the world ord er prov ide a rec urr ing theme for the lec-
tures. Yet they un fold into the nat ure of time its elf, events, facts, ex-
ist ence, conc ept ual change and meani ng—all of which play a
crit i cal role. The No tre Dame Lec tures even il lus trate Sellars’ ex as -
pera t ion with him self bec ause he was slow to reco gn ize the ine luc -
tab le de velo pm ent of his own theo ry of events, facts, and time.
1 See “What Rea lly Exi sts 1969” in the lect ure trans cripts (availa ble onl ine,
key word search ‘Sellars Not re Dame Lect ures’). The lect ure tit les as signed by
the Not re Dame Arc hives at the Hesburgh Lib rary have been ret ained exc ept
where com bi na tion seemed ap pro pri ate.
2 Events
Of ten funny and re lent lessly meta phys i cal, the No tre Dame
Lec tures aim at Sellars’ fa vor ite tar gets: Relationalism and
Givenness.2 But like a mas ter crafts man de ter mined to clean out the
toolshed, he is equally det erm ined not to throw any thing out. If an
idea served but can serve no long er, perh aps it’s time to und ers tand
why it worked as well as it did for so long? So, disa pp ointm ent will
likely greet those looki ng for a new sys tem to rep lace the old sys-
tem: for Sellars, gett ing there is defi n itely the fun. If any thing, what
strikes us as re marka ble about these Lec tures is the dis play of
Sellars’ abili ty to cut right to the heart of an is sue. “Turn him to any
cause of poli cy, The Gordian knot of it he will unl oose,” and once
cut, he is on to an other. At times, the No tre Dame Lec ture’s play ful
com mon sense over shado ws the fact that they prov ide a cross-sec-
tion of Sellars’ views duri ng a time of ene rg etic dev elo pm ent.
Since the lect ures inc lude port ions of publ ished pap ers, they pres -
ent a pricel ess opp or tu nity to see the lect ures with em bell ish ments
by the aut hor. The runn ing com ment ary, supp lem ented by shrewd
ques tions from an his tor i cally pro fi cient and in sight ful au di ence3
prov ides subt le clues to Sellars’ thinki ng on the fut ure of a var ie ty
of core top ics. Alt hough the tapes were at times virt u ally un in tell i -
gib le and, of course, cont ained no dia g rams, the trans cript ion is
rea son ably ac cu rate and ad e quately in dexed for those with
paleographic aspirations. Sellars hab itu a lly made up words—in the
Plat onic sense—har ness ing exi sti ng terms for his own de vice and
this pres ented an add it ional chal lenge. Reg rett ab ly some tapes in
this long ser ies were una vaila ble but perh aps one day they will be
tran scribed. With the no ta ble ex cep tion of con tri bu tions by RWS
(Sellars’ fa ther), McMullin and the anony mous par tici p ants in the
2 Relationalism cont rasts with Inferentialism (see, Rob ert Brandom’s Ar tic u-
lat ing Rea sons). Inferentialism is dif fi cult. Couched in one met a phor or an -
other (which WS play fully chara c teri zes as “zapp ing,” “grasp ing,” “24
Karat”), com mon sense clings to the Ari st ot e lian’s Relationalistic lega cy:
knowi ng is the mind’s be comi ng “like” the obj ect. Phen ome n ol ogy is epis te -
molo gy. This “nat ur al sim il ari ty” def ined intentionality for so long, an alt er-
na tive to which Inferentialistic theo r ies can ap peal has yet to take root.
Sellars, stand ing at the thresh old of Inferentialism, re jects the givenness upon
which the ed i fice of Relationalism stands but wants to re ha bil i tate phe nome n -
ol ogy—not toss it aside. This cre ates a meta physi cal ten sion, seen through out
the lec tures, be tween Sellars’ dot-quote anal y sis and his phe nome n ol ogy.
3 Ernan McMullin and Cornelius Delaney, for ex amp le.
3
Q&A, most of the available tracks are included. The transition from
track to track is included for reference purposes.
It was Sellars’ habit to dev elop his views in the course of ong o -
ing pre sen ta tions to grad u ate stu dents and grad u ate fac ulty and to
give them a deb ut at Not re Dame. My own work with Sellars over -
lapped many of the lect ures that app ear here. Sellars’ run ning com -
ment ary on publ ished pap ers prov ides ins ights that would
othe rw ise have been lost.
Events
Of a cer tainty, there are no events or facts. The evo lu tion of
Sellars’ theo ry of events serves as the keys tone of this int rod uct ion.
It is n’t that time, facts and events prov ided an unu sual chal lenge to
Sellars. It is rather more like Kant, who saw that once all the other
probl ems were solved, the nat ure of time and space flowed from the
sol ut ions. In these lect ures, while he ac knowle dges the evol ut ion of
his views from the writi ng of Em pir i cism and the Phi los o phy of
Mind, the treat ment of events is the only case where he ack nowl -
edges an earlier mis take.
Wilfrid Sellars [here af ter ‘WS’] be gins “Time and the World
Ord er” by rec alli ng his disc ove ry that the ‘probl em of time’ was ri-
valed by only the ‘mind-body probl em’ in the de gree to which it
im med ia tely tang led him in all the maj or conc erns of phil oso p hy.
As we read TWO, our exegetical task bec omes doub ly diff ic ult be -
cause, while he sees the ar gu ment in “Time and the World Or der” as
com menci ng with fam ili ar puz zles about truth and time, from our
pers pec tive, the cont ext has re ceded into the hist ory of phil oso -
phy.4 The ess ay beg ins by add ressi ng C. D. Broad’s att empt to re -
spond to McTaggart’s work on the unr ea li ty of time. And natu r ally,
like any pe riod piece, it beg ins right in the midd le of their story: WS
exa m ines Broad’s res ponse to McTaggart alm ost ad se ri a tim as
these re sponses app ear in port ions of the Ex am i na tion of
4 The ab bre vi a tions for Sellars’ works are stan dard and ap pear in James
O’Shea’s Wilfrid Sellars (Poli ty, 2007), Willem deVries Wilfrid Sellars
(Ithaca, 2005) and any edi tion of Sellars’ works publ ished by Ridgeview
Press.
4
McTaggart’s Philsophy volu mes I and II.5 As a res ult, it makes
TWO a work to be avoided by those witho ut a sense of hist ory.
Some of the dia l ec tic app ears to come “out of the blue” for anyo ne
un fa mil iar with the con tem po rary tex ture of their de bate. Sellars
fre quently char act er ized time in ways that were comm on dur ing
those exc hanges but which oft en leave a cont em por ary aud ie nce
with a sense that they have missed an im port ant ing red ie nt in a rec -
ipe. Since it is not nece ss ary for us to start from scratch, our
progress will not be slowed by a need to reconstruct the analytical
machinery from the earlier period.
As WS adm its, duri ng the course of the Not re Dame Lect ures,
TWO inc orp or ates a mist aken theo ry of events. His re marka ble
apolo gy for the err or ac knowle dges the sign ifi c ance of the mist ake:
a meta phys i cal mis take about the ul ti mate na ture of re al ity. The
far-reachi ng changes that his new theo ry of events bring about
were never carr ied out. Howe ver he does prov ide enough sugg es-
tions on how to proc eed so that we are able to do some of the
renovation ourselves.
It will be nece ss ary to pre sup pose a bas ic fam ili ari ty with the
use of dot-quoti ng (fig ure 1) as a means for tackl ing thorny ont o-
logi c al iss ues. A “dot-quote primer” is prov ided in an app end ix to
the tran script of the No tre Dame Lec tures for those un fa mili ar with
the mac hine ry WS puts in place.6
Hist or ic ally, fa mili ari ty with Carnap, Wittgenstein and a mod -
est app rec ia t ion of the hist ory of phil oso p hy suff ice to bring out the
eff ect of the dot-quotes. With a minimal amount of vio l ence to our
hist ori c al int egr ity, the eff ect can be brought out as foll ows. Speak -
ing from the 1st pers on, phenomenological point of view, we have
conc epts per taini ng to things (1st in ten tions), con cepts per tain ing
to conc epts of things (2nd int ent ions) and so on up the se mant ic lad-
der. ‘Conc epts’ are misn amed bec ause, be ing nothi ng more than
5 Ex am i na tion of McTaggart's Phil oso phy by C. D. Broad, vol ume I and II,
(Ox ford Uni ver sity Press, 1933).
6 Rec ent studi es by James R. O’shea, Wilfrid Sellars: Natu rali sm with a Norm a-
tive Turn (Poli ty, 2007), and Willem A. DeVries, Wilfrid Sellars
(McGill-Queen’s, 2005) give all the es sen tials. In the Space of Rea sons: Se-
lected Ess ays of Wilfrid Sellars (HUP, 2007) by K. Scharp and Rob ert
Brandom pro vide key texts while Brandom’s Tales of the Mighty Dead: His -
tori c al Ess ays in the Metap hysi cs of Intentionality (HUP, 2002) puts them in
con text.
5
va ri et ies of conceiv-ings, there is nothi ng static or atomistic about
them: each is res olved into, as the peri pa tetic scho las tics would say,
a role or “of fice” which con sti tutes what it is to know the very thing
to which the conc ept pert ains. It is knowle dge clas sic ally cons trued
as the mind bec om ing like the obj ect—knowl edge at its best, what
it is like to be a knower. But the fea ture of Sellars’ ac count that
would have the peripatetics hurli ng them selves out of wind ows is
the universal triangularity
the ‘the ‘city’’ type the species the lion
type names quality kind classifier
the ‘city’ triangularity the lion
city city city
tokens instances
Fig ure 1. Here “type,” “qual ity,” “kind” are on par as are the trio “the ‘city’,” “tri -
ang ul arity,” “the lion” and des cendi ng to the world, as are the trio made of the three
citi es, the three tria n gles and the three lions. First, imag ine rep lac ing the sin gle
quotes with dot-quotes, then, “tria ng ul arity” would be treated like “the ‘city’” on
the left but would be play ing the clas si cal conc ept ual role played by the kind term,
‘the lion’ on the right. Hence, “tri ang u larity” is a disg uised “the tri ang ul ar” func-
tion ing like lionkind but we call it a qual ity. Climb ing the se man tic al lad der an other
rung, yields thoughts of the ‘•the•city••’ which merely ref lects the clas si cal dis -
tinct ion bet ween “bei ng tria ng u lar” one step down, and “bei ng tria ng u larity” up a
step. The schol ast ics res erve this third level for “logi c al uni vers als” or “metap hysi -
cal uni ver sals”and treat “con cepts” as dyn amic roles or “off ices” forming the cog ni -
tive econo my.
his ins is tence that the int ere st ing fea tures of thought are be yond the
reach of in tro spec tion, in tu ition, self-con scious ness, self-any thing
re ally. Those items of which we can be imm ed i ately aware are left -
overs from the Pleis toc ene—chunks of colo red stuff—and even
that his cont em por ari es got wrong. Thus, when one thinks about the
sem ant ic funct ioni ng of “thoughts” or “words” and the way their
“off ice” is cons tit uted by the “privi l eges and dut ies” that make up
the of fice (the “web” that makes them what they are), one needs an
ent irely new meta p hor. As we move up the sem ant ics ladd er, int ro-
spect ion is a worth less, empty meta p hor yet it is up the semantic
ladder, into the breach of the “inferential web,” so to speak, where
all the interesting things are happening.
As his meta p hor for “conc epts,” Sellars uses the meta p hor of
Chess and Tess (Texas-chess) but the pieces of any for mal game
will serve; even Batt les hips firi ng Guns in Conway’s Game of Life
works as a healthy in tui tion pump. The idea is to wean one self away
from the Relationalism—re la tional the o ries of mean ing, ref er ence,
6
de no ta tion, stand ing for, ex em pli fy ing etc.—and change to a diet
of in cred i bly com plex se man tic re la tions, that is, the syn tac tic ac-
tiv ity that brings about the se man tic act iv ity. Sellars’ view is easy
to un der stand but dif fi cult to in ter nal ize: in tro spec tion and re flec-
tion, howe ver ment ally chall enged, seems so good and served so
well that it is a shame to see them go. As a point of ref er ence, Fig ure
1 will serve to ill us trate how Sellars’ dot-quotes “rel ate” to ord i -
nary quotes. A rough idea of how they work serves the im med ia te
purp ose be cause WS prov ides a considerable amount of
commentary in the course of the No tre Dame Lectures.
In tro duc ing Events
The best way to int rod uce the story of Sellars’ change of heart
on events, is to rel ate how my own puzz les about the the ory of
events came about. While studyi ng WS’ analy sis of meani ng, a
quest ion dev elo ped that couldn ’t be re solved, the more I thought
about it, the more conf used I got. Duri ng a dis cuss ions, I asked him
the fol low ing ques tion, “the the ory of events pre sented in TWO
com plem ents the dis cuss ion of meani ng that occ urs in, for exa m -
ple, Truth and Cor re spon dence, bec ause in both, events are obj ects
“in the world”—bas ic der iva t ive obj ects in the one and ling uist ic
events in the other—but in your later work, for exa m ple, MCP,7
events are not in the world.
WS’s imm ed i ate re sponse will have to wait be cause un less one
knows the rele v ant backg round it is im poss ib le to get his joki ng re-
ply. In stead, it’s nece ss ary to spell out the conf lict bet ween the later
theo ry of events and the analy sis of meani ng bef ore givi ng WS’s
sol ut ion to the probl em. We can beg in by look ing at the the ory of
meani ng and lin guis tic events. This will all ow us to ab stract away
from the phil oso p hy of time—to which we will re turn af ter fini sh-
ing with the problem regarding events.
The first point is metho do logi c al and conc erns a pref erred strat-
egy that WS uses to great eff ect—due to his sing ul ar ge nius for
striki ng right at the heart of a probl em. WS com ments that
Reichenbach gives us a proc ed ure for goi ng from statem ents about
7 I will use ‘MCP’ for “Metap hysi cs and the Con cept of a Per son” ins tead of the
stan dard, ‘MP’.
7
events to state ments about things: a proc ed ure found in the “Int ro-
duct ion” to Reichenbach’s El e ments of Sym bolic Logic.8 What WS
app ears to mean is Reichenbach’s method of “rat ion al re cons truc -
tion” (foll owi ng Carnap) for regi m enti ng lang uage. We can see the
method of rat ion al re cons truc tion play ing a part when we rea li ze
that WS’s app lic at ion of the not ion of meani ng is not to speech or
thought as curr ently con ceived. Our curr ent conc ept of thought al-
ready con tains the re sources that Sellars is try ing to exp lain so he
rat ion ally re cons tructs our curr ent model of speech and thought
into one that is not in use. In the rec ons tructed vers ion, thought is
cons trued as the level of overt, meani ngf ul ling uist ic exp res sion
which is mere event and not act ion (i.e., not und erw rit ten by inn er
thought epi s odes). The rat ion al re cons truc tion puts aside our cur-
rent exp lan at ion of speech in terms of thought. Acc ordi ng to
Sellars, the rec ons tructed vers ion does not pre supp oses the conc ept
of thought. Thus, the rec ons tructed app lic at ion of the conc epts of
meani ng are not to the not ion of speech as curr ently con ceived.
The ra tion al re cons truc tion is mot iv ated by a “myth” that all ows us
to see the plaus ib ili ty of an “evol ut iona ry” scen ario in which it was
rea sona ble to adopt our curr ent model of thought.9 The subsequent
reconstruction of our model of speech occurs at the end of his myth
about conceptual development.
Armed with ap pro pri ate warn ings about meth od ol ogy and his
prop osal to use overly sim plif ied mode ls, it is app are nt that in the
late 50’s, Sellars thought of events as obj ects in the world in a nar-
row sense that in cludes Soc ra tes, Caesar, and Cassio but not tri an-
gu larity—which is in the world in a broad sense.10
Names, he notes, con note cri te ria and name the ob jects which
sat isfy these cri te ria. We have dis tin guished bet ween two rad i cally
dif fere nt kinds of ob ject which we may il lus trate, res pect ively, by
Socr at es and by Roundn ess. Roughly the dist inct ion is bet ween
8 TWO, 542. The ac tual ap pli ca tion of Reichenbach’s method oc curs in sec tion
48, where Reichenbach de scribes what he thinks of as a means for reg i ment ing
con ver sa tional lan guage.
9 Lec ture notes from one of WS’s lec tures on the “myth,” the Myth of Jones fol -
lows this in tro duc tion.
10 See the lec ture “Lan guage and Mean ing 1969” for his use of mod els.
8
those obj ects which are conc epts and those which are not. Non-con -
cept ual obj ects can be further subdivided.
26. Non-con cep tual ob jects can be roughly di vided into ba sic
and de riv a tive. De riv a tive ob jects can be in for mally char ac ter-
ized as those which are re ferred to by noun ex pres sions that can
be elim i nated by con tex tual def i ni tion. In this sense events are
de riv a tive ob jects in the phys i cal-thing frame work. State -
ments about the events in which physi cal things par tic i pate can
be re duced to state ments in which all the non-pred i ca tive ex -
pres sions re fer to physi cal things.’ In the frame work of ki netic
theo ry, as class ic ally pre sented, the bas ic obj ects (granted that
we can speak of the o ret i cal ob jects) would be individual
molecules.11
In terms of the dev elo pi ng treatm ent of abs tract ent it ies from
“Gram mar and Exi st ence: A Pref ace to Ont olo gy” in 1960 through
“Abs tract Ent it ies” in 1963, Sellars pos it ion above can be put by
cont rasti ng two ways of bei ng in the world:
(a) an item is in the world in the nar row sense when it does not
inv olve ling uist ic norms and roles (it is not “dot-quoted”)
(b) an item is in the world in the broad sense which does inv olve
ling uist ic norms and roles (it is “dot-quoted”) from the stand-
12
point of a fell ow part ici p ant.
On this view, Sellars circa 1957, would say
Circ ul ari ty and tria ng u larity are in the world in the broad
sense
but,
Caesar’s cross ing and Cassio’s lovi ng are in the world in the
nar row sense.
Sellars con tin ues:
Ac tu ally, the re la tion be tween an ep i sode ex pres sions and
tensed statem ents which are about things rather than ep i sodes
11 LT (The Lang uage of The or ies), 1961, para graph 26.
12 WS comm ents on the care with which “in the world” should be hand led, TTC
(To wards a Theo ry of the Cat e gor ies), 65. Here the for mal cate g ory, state of af -
fairs, has the mat e rial cat e gory, event sub sumed und er it.
9
[events] is quite sim ple, and has been for mul ated with rea son-
able clar ity by more than one phi loso p her.13
The “phi los o pher” is Reichenbach whose “trans for ma tions”
Sellars finds ill um in ati ng and theref ore, are worth pausi ng to
consider.
Reichenbach
It serves the in ter est of comp lete ness to take a pass ing glance at
Reichenbach’s event analy sis alt hough nothi ng cruc ial hinges on
it. Some of what Reichenbach pres upp oses, WS flatly rej ects but
WS re fers to it any way so it’s worth a look.
The dis tinct ion bet ween events and things, acc ordi ng to
Reichenbach, plays a role in daily life. An ina ug ur at ion, an ass as si-
nat ion, a marr iage are events, not things; lang uage cont ains
event-exp res sions which are oft en de script ions, not proper names.
For example,
the ina ug ur at ion of Kenn edy took place in Washi ngt on,
or
the ass as sin at ion of Kenn edy foll owed the Bay of Pigs inv a-
sion.
The first cont ains a two-term rel at ion bet ween an event and a thing,
the seco nd, a re lat ion bet ween two events. It is oft en pos sib le to
elimi nate event-ex pres sions, as in the first sen tence above, which
can be stated in equiva l ent form
Ken nedy was in au gu rated in Wash ing ton
In the seco nd, Reichenbach thinks that the equiva l ent state ment
must cont ain a time. As a re sult, alt hough the event-exp res sions can
be elim in ated, new event ar gum ents in the symb ols for time, ‘t ’
2
and ‘t ’ can not elimi nated and time points are, events (“classes of
1
si mul ta neous events” as he refers to them):
Ken nedy was as sas si nated at t1 and the Bay of Pigs was in-
vaded at t2.
13 TWO, 542.
10
In deed, time seq uence can be for mul ated only as re la tions be tween
events.
Usi ng the term ‘sit ua t ion’ to re fer to the obj ect corr es pondi ng
to a prop o si tion, by de scrib ing a sit u a tion in a prop o si tion com -
posed of a func tion and arg um ent, the situ a t ion splits into arg u -
ment-ob ject and pred i cate-ob ject (i.e., prope rty or att ribu te). As
seen above, a situ a t ion can be split in two ways.
Thus, a sent ence that is about “things” (‘Kenn edy was ina ug u -
rated’) can be trans formed into a sen tence about events, an E-sen -
tence (‘Kenn edy’s ina ug ur at ion took place’) by means of the
foll owi ng. Supp ose the ‘*’ stands for a meta-ling uist ic funct ion
taki ng thing-sent ences into event predi c ates. So, ‘is the ina ug ur a-
tion of Kenn edy’ is the value of the func tion for the ar gum ent ‘Ken-
nedy is ina ug ur ated.’ The event term ‘the ina ug ur at ion of
Kenn edy’ is a defi n ite de script ion that is symb oli zed usi ng the ‘i ’
and where ‘v’ den otes the event:
i
(i v)[f(Ken nedy is in au gu rated)]*(v )
To sym boli ze ‘the ina ug ur at ion of Kenn edy took place’ we have:
((cid:155)x)(x = (i v)[f(x1)]*(v ))
us ing ‘f(x )’ to stand for the thing-sent ence and the bracke ts to ind i-
1
cate the scope of the as ter isk ‘*’. The pro ced ure is com pletely gen -
eral. Ac cord ing to Reichenbach, ref er ences to events can be
re placed by ref er ences to things (and vice versa): The gen eral trans -
form at ion rule (§48) is
f(x1) ” g(v1)
where ‘v ’ den otes the event, and ‘g’ the event prope rty. The un-
1
usual ‘ ” ’ (not re prod uced here) ind ic ates that the conn ect ive in -
volved might inc lude P-im plic at ions (see §60). The trans form at ion
for ‘f(x )’ and ‘g(v )’ is wholistic in the sense that wholes are equiv -
1 1
al ent to each other witho ut a dir ect corr es pond ence between the
parts.
By the equiva l ence, an event and its prope rty can be def ined in
terms of a thing and its prope rty; the exa m ples above ill ust rate the
two ways of split ting a sit u at ion; these he calls, thing-split ting and
event-splitting. Switchi ng to the meta lang uage, we can show that