From the Preface to: The Metaphysics of Epistemology: Lectures by Wilfrid Sellars
Wilfrid Sellars gave these lectures during the fall of 1975 for a class in metaphysics and epistemology: an extremely creative period during which he was developing the lines of thought which appear in the “Matchette Foundation Lectures”, the “Carus Lectures”, “Some Reflections on Perceptual Consciousness”, “Towards a Theory of Predication,” “The Adverbial Theory of the Objects of Sensation,” “Sensa or Sensings: Reflections on the Ontology of Perception”, and “Givenness and Explanatory Coherence.” The lecture notes have been supplemented by Sellars' own notes when it appeared that an obvious correction was in order. Since I attended Sellars' lectures both as a student and, subsequently, as a proctor and tutor, I can say that Sellars was consistently lukewarm about the prospect of seeing them published in their present form. Whenever we discussed this possibility, he insisted that I add his later theory of predication: presumably so that one could follow the development of his thought. I would, therefore, caution anyone against taking the formulations of the claims made within to be reflections of his considered views. Curiously enough, the extemporaneous character of the lectures turns out to be a virtue. Sellars' written works are notorious for a concision bordering on obscurity. By contrast, his lectures were clear, somewhat repetitive, full of a certain wry humor, and frequently punctuated by cartoons and anecdotes...Considerable effort has been taken to preserve the pictures drawn during discussion. Without them, the lectures would be qualitatively different. As Sellars once remarked, “The traditional way of looking at things was in terms of a picture and I mean ‘picture’ literally because, as Wittgenstein correctly emphasizes, philosophers of different persuasions are hypnotized by different pictures. Literally pictures, little diagrams that they draw in the margins of their manuscripts which may not even get into the heart of the text. But, you can read a philosopher’s work, and pretty soon you can illustrate it. I have always been very candid: you can illustrate what I say because I provide the illustrations.” [from the Preface, Ridgeview: 1989]
From the Preface to Jeff Sicha's Pure Pragmatics and Possible Worlds: the Early Essays of Wilfrid Sellars
Jeff Sicha's Pure Pragmatics and Possible Worlds: the Early Essays of Wilfrid Sellars is recommended reading for all philosophers. The years following the publication of the first edition have seen a resurgence of interest in Sellars' early work. All analytic philosophers should carry a copy to remind themselves to get away from the idea that there is something outside of human beings that imposes its normative structure upon beliefs and actions. Philosophers more comfortable with Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas and Derrida should also own a copy to develop a much-needed insight into the most systematic philosopher of the 20th century who didn't share the anti-historicism of his analytic philosophical brethren.
Pragmatism has been revitalized and Sellars' work from the forties and fifties on Pragmatism is more germane than ever. Just as Jeff Sicha's commentary on Sellars' work in Kantian aesthetics from the seventies and eighties anticipates new directions in philosophy of mind (Kant ' s Transcendental Metaphysics ), his desire "to give us an idea of what's going on" in the works presented in this volume will surprise the contemporary reader with their timeliness. Sicha's introduction and individual outlines provide a roadmap that allows the contemporary reader to see how Sellars' early views form a matrix from which emerges the current discussion of the social nature of intentionality and conception. Pure Pragmatics and Possible Worlds and Kant ' s Transcendental Metaphysics are an indispensable source for any work on the multidimensionality of Sellars' pragmatics. Sicha illustrates the dimension of the role of action (entitlements, obligation "ought-to-dos") as well as the critical dimension (responsibilities -- "ought-to-bes") in constituting the nature of an empirically meaningful language. For Sellars, the semantical lives and the syntactical lives of linguistic entities within an empirically meaningful language are to be explicated in terms of what is required for language users to picture the world. Pure Pragmatics and Possible Worlds provides Sellars' first recipe for a naturalistic metaphysics that includes causal necessity, synthetic a priori knowledge and intentionality without abandoning classical problems. A philosophical naturalism that is both social and inferentialist yet will embrace a normative functionalism that in the final analysis exists as a world story in an experienced aesthetic. Pedro Amaral
