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Abstract
In this paper, I attempt to demonstrate the structure of Sellars’ critical direct realism in the philosophy of perception. This position is original because it attempts to balance two claims that many have thought to be incompatible: (1) that perceptual knowledge is direct, i.e., not inferential, and (2) that perceptual knowledge is irreducibly conceptual. Even though perceptual episodes are not the result of inferences, they must still stand within the space of reasons if they are to be counted not only as knowledge, but also as thoughts directed at the world. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how Sellars elaborates and defends this position.
Notes
1 I would like to thank Richard J. Bernstein, Alice Crary, and an anonymous referee for comments and suggestions.
2 See McDowell, Citation1998a, Putnam, Citation1999, and Smith, Citation2002.
3 It is important to realize that for Sellars direct realism only has a limited validity. This is because it is a reconstruction of our perceptual capacities as they operate in the manifest image, i.e., the image that constitutes our commonsense experience of the world of perceptible objects existing in space and time. According to Sellars’ scientific realism, however, the objects represented in this image – while pragmatically indispensable – do not actually exist. In this paper we are going to ignore this ontological issue and focus on demonstrating the inner logic of Sellars’ critical direct realism.
4 For this terminology see Smith, Citation2002, Ch. 2.
5 When we say that sensations do not mediate our perception, we mean that they do stand in as intentionally significant proxies through which we perceive. Sensations, as we shall see, do mediate our perception, but ‘this mediation is causal rather than epistemic’ (Sellars, Citation1991: p. 91).
6 For Sellars’ use of this terminology see his essay ‘Phenomenalism’ in Sellars, Citation1991: pp. 87–91.
7 On Sellars’ view, this equivalence of the given with the non‐inferential is made both by ‘coherentists’ and ‘foundationalists’. These positions differ simply on whether the items identified in the equivalence are necessary to ground empirical knowledge.
8 A partisan of the given might contest this characterization insofar as the immediate awareness of the given is taken to be a sub‐doxastic apprehension of a particular, whereas I am couching it in propositional form (awareness that something is the case). But Sellars’ point is that while the partisan of this form of the given claims this awareness to be of a particular, he cannot actually maintain this position if the given is to play a role in the intentional order. To solve this problem, the proponent of the given smuggles epistemic or intentional properties into an item that is claimed to be non‐intentional.
9 ‘Epistemic’ for Sellars is a wide term that pertains not only to items that enjoy a high degree of justification, but also to items that are conceptual or subject to norms.
10 This is from Sellars’ ‘Autobiographical Reflections’, in Castañeda, Citation1975: p. 285.
11 By a mediational theory we mean one that thinks that our perception is epistemically mediated rather than, as Sellars does, causally mediated.
12 As with sense‐data, ‘looks’ are often arrived at through epistemological considerations. We shall examine the epistemological upshot of ‘looks’ in sections 10 and 11.
13 Brandom takes the position that looks reports merely express dispositions. He says: ‘It is a mistake to treat these [looks statements] as reports at all – since they evince a disposition to call something F, but do not do so. They do not even report the presence of the disposition’ (Brandom, Citation1997: p. 139). Later we shall see that Brandom’s position is incorrect.
14 In his Woodbridge Lectures, McDowell highlights the intuitive aspect of perception and so provides a reading of Sellars’ theory of perceptual experience that is closer to its original spirit. Our examination of Sellars’ reading of Kant has been heavily influenced by these lectures. See McDowell, Citation1998b.
15 Some might balk at this characterization insofar as it now seems as if we never experience a sensation itself but only a conceptually infused intuition that responds to a sensation that is understood as a non‐apperceived state of consciousness. I take it, however, that this is in fact Sellars’ position. What we could say is that before this type of responsiveness came on line through acquiring ‘the concepts of the various kinds of sensation … by analogy’ (Sellars, Citation1991: p. 48), we had sensations but did not know that we were having them. In an Aristotelian vein, ‘impressions are prior in the order of being to concepts … whereas the latter are prior in the order of knowing’. Sellars, Citation1975: p. 177.
16 See ‘Concepts as Involving Laws and Inconceivable Without Them’, in Sellars, Citation1980: pp. 95–123.
17 This quotation comes from Sellars, Citation1961–2, specifically Sellars’ letter of 8 December 1961. See also Sellars’ ‘The Structure of Knowledge’, in Castañeda, Citation1975: p. 342.
18 In the epistemological literature there is a lively discussion concerning whether a level ascent is really necessary for knowledge. This discussion is a skirmish in the larger battle between epistemological externalism and internalism. Our purpose is not to enter this battle, but simply to show how the level‐ascent requirement operates in the context of Sellars’ critical direct realism.
19 This comes from Sellars, Citation1961–2, specifically from Sellars’ letter of 11 March 1962. This partially explains what Sellars means when he says that for a claim to have authority it must in some sense be recognized by the person whose report it is. It only needs to be recognized ‘in some sense’ because most of the time it is not so recognized.
20 This answers the query, brought up in section 4, which asks what it is that a looks statement reports if not a ‘minimal objective fact’ or something that can be analysed in terms of sense‐data.