Sellars and Contemporary Philosophy

Sellars and Contemporary Philosophy Wilfrid Sellars made profound and lasting contributions to nearly every area of philosophy. The aim of this collection is to highlight the continu- ing importance of Sellars’ work to contemporary debates. The contributors include several luminaries in Sellars scholarship, as well as members of the new generation whose work demonstrates the lasting power of Sellars’ ideas. Papers by O’Shea and Koons develop Sellars’ underexplored views concerning ethics, practical reasoning, and free will, with an emphasis on his longstanding engagement with Kant. Sachs, Hicks, and Pereplyotchik relate Sellars’ views of mental phenomena to current topics in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. Fink, deVries, Price, Macbeth, Christias, and Bran- dom grapple with traditional Sellarsian themes, including meaning, truth, existence, and objectivity. Brandhoff provides an original account of the evolution of Sellars’ philosophy of language and his project of “pure pragmatics.” The volume concludes with an author-meets-critics section centered around Robert Brandom’s recent book, From Empiricism to Expressivism: Brandom Reads Sellars , with original commentaries and replies. David Pereplyotchik is assistant professor of philosophy at Kent State Uni- versity. He received his PhD in philosophy, with a concentration in cognitive science, from the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of Psychosyntax: The Nature of Grammar and Its Place in the Mind (2017) and is an active member of the Wilfrid Sellars Society. Deborah R. Barnbaum is professor and chair of philosophy at Kent State University. She received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Mas- sachusetts in 1996. She is the author of The Ethics of Autism (2008) and the co-author of Research Ethics: Text and Readings, with Michael Byron (2001). Routledge Studies in American Philosophy Edited by Willem deVries University of New Hampshire, USA and Henry Jackman York University, Canada 1 Intentionality and the Myths of the Given Between Pragmatism and Phenomenology Carl B. Sachs 2 Richard Rorty, Liberalism and Cosmopolitanism David E. McClean 3 Pragmatic Encounters Richard J. Bernstein 4 Toward a Metaphysics of Culture Joseph Margolis 5 Gewirthian Perspectives on Human Rights Edited by Per Bauhn 6 Toward a Pragmatist Metaethics Diana B. Heney 7 Sellars and Contemporary Philosophy Edited by David Pereplyotchik and Deborah R. Barnbaum Sellars and Contemporary Philosophy Edited by David Pereplyotchik and Deborah R. Barnbaum First published 2017 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Taylor & Francis The right of David Pereplyotchik and Deborah R. Barnbaum to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Pereplyotchik, David, editor. | Barnbaum, Deborah R., 1967– editor. Title: Sellars and contemporary philosophy / edited by David Pereplyotchik and Deborah R. Barnbaum. Description: New York : Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge studies in American philosophy; 7 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016036038 | ISBN 9781138670624 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Sellars, Wilfrid. Classification: LCC B945.S444 S46 2016 | DDC 191—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016036038 ISBN: 978-1-138-67062-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-61754-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents Acknowledgments vii A Note on References ix Introduction 1 DAVID PEREPLYOTCHIK AND DEBORAH R. BARNBAUM PART I Ethics, Moral Reasoning, and Free Will 13 1 Thought, Freedom, and Embodiment in Kant and Sellars 15 JAMES R. O’SHEA 2 Toward a Sellarsian Ethics for the 21st Century 36 JEREMY RANDEL KOONS PART II Philosophy of Language and Mind 53 3 Pure Pragmatics and the Idea of a Metatheoretical Functionalism 55 BORIS BRANDHOFF 4 What Jones Taught the Ryleans: Toward a Sellarsian Metaphysics of Thought 67 MICHAEL R. HICKS 5 Sellars and Psycholinguistics 84 DAVID PEREPLYOTCHIK 6 Sentience and Sapience: The Place of Enactive Cognitive Science in Sellarsian Philosophy of Mind 104 CARL B. SACHS vi Contents PART III Metaphysics and Epistemology 121 7 Wilfrid Sellars Meets Cambridge Pragmatism 123 HUW PRICE 8 An Incoherence in Sellars’ Error Theoretical Account of Color Concepts 141 KEVIN FINK 9 The Causal Articulation of Practical Reality 155 WILLEM A. DEVRIES 10 Natural Truth 172 DANIELLE MACBETH 11 Does Brandom’s “Kant-Sellars Thesis about Modality” Undermine Sellars’ Scientific Naturalism? 183 DIONYSIS CHRISTIAS 12 Categories and Noumena: Two Kantian Axes of Sellars’ Thought 197 ROBERT B. BRANDOM PART IV Author Meets Critics 219 ROBERT B. BRANDOM, WILLEM A. DEVRIES, AND JAMES O’SHEA Contributors 250 Index 254 Acknowledgments We have many people to thank for making this book possible. We owe our greatest appreciation to Willem deVries, who, on March 16, 2014, agreed to come to Kent State University for what at the time was merely the vagu- est idea of a conference on Wilfrid Sellars. One year later, an extraordinary group of scholars assembled for the April 30 through May 2, 2015, Sellars in a New Generation conference. Bill’s contributions were invaluable at every step: agreeing to serve as one of the keynote speakers at the conference; helping to brainstorm the theme of the conference; reviewing and assisting in the selection of papers; participating in the conference with his signature combi- nation of wit, aplomb, and enthusiasm; and finally, offering feedback on the book proposal. Without Bill’s support we would not have been able to put together this volume. Our gratitude is immeasurable and heartfelt. In addition to Bill deVries, we wish to also acknowledge the work of Deborah C. Smith and Gene Pendleton, both of Kent State University, in helping us to choose the papers presented at the conference. They generously gave of their time, and philosophical acumen, to find the excellent papers collected herein. Alexander Haas compiled the index for this volume. We thank him for his outstanding attention to detail. The editorial team at Routledge has been very helpful. In particular, Andrew Weckenmann has been with us through every stage of the process. His counsel made compiling this volume all the more enjoyable. We are also grateful to Harvard University Press for granting permission to reprint portions of the first chapter of Robert B. Brandom’s From Empiricism to Expressivism: Brandom Reads Sellars . Kent State University’s significant financial contributions made this volume possible. James L. Blank, professor and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, generously funded the Sellars in a New Generation conference. The Office of Research and Graduate Studies provided financial support to Alexander Haas. We are also grateful to the entire faculty of the Kent State University Philosophy Department, who participated in the conference. We are privileged to call such a supportive environment, populated by engaged colleagues, our home. viii Acknowledgments We wish to thank each of the contributors for their participation in the conference and in the compilation of this volume. It was our pleasure and honor to work with each of them. One goal in reproducing the Author Meets Critics section was to capture, for readers, the vibrant engagement that resulted from assembling a room full of veteran and emerging Sellars scholars. The audience at the conference—a few of whom are part of the Author Meets Critics discussion—were invaluable partners in this enter- prise. Sellars scholarship is only as good as Sellars scholars themselves—a cadre of intelligent, impassioned, humorous, and charming philosophers. Bringing them together was an honor. Finally, on both a professional and personal level we wish to thank our respective spouses, Aoife Mooney and Gene Pendleton. As mentioned above, Gene Pendleton contributed to the selection of the papers for the conference. Aoife Mooney designed the conference programs and the pro- motional materials. In addition to taking advantage of their copious professional gifts, we are fortunate to have their support in our work. David Pereplyotchik Deborah R. Barnbaum Kent State University A Note on References All references to the works of Wilfrid Sellars in this volume are abbreviated using the standard conventions found at plato.standford.edu/entries/Sellars/ (accessed June 29, 2016). Full citations may be found in the reference sections of each paper. Books EPH: Essays in Philosophy and Its History ISR: In the Space of Reasons: Selected Essays of Wilfrid Sellars KTM: Kant’s Transcendental Metaphysics: Sellars’ Cassirer Lectures Notes and Other Essays SM: Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes NAO: Naturalism and Ontology PPME: Philosophical Perspectives: Metaphysics and Epistemology SPR:

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