Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind

Introduction

Sellars gave the text as three lectures at the University of London in March 1956 and published it that year in the first volume of Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science; a book edition with an introduction by Richard Rorty and a study guide by Robert Brandom followed in 1997. Its sixteen sections attack the idea of a foundation of knowledge given without concepts. A famous example is John, a tie salesman who must learn to say that a tie only looks green under electric light. To call something knowledge is to place it in “the logical space of reasons”. The text ends with the “myth of Jones”, a story of how talk of inner thoughts could arise as a theory.

Connections

Builds on

• Critique of Pure Reason1781 · Immanuel Kant

Criticizes

• Language, Truth and Logic1936 · A. J. Ayer

Taken up in

• Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature1979 · Richard Rorty