Date of Award
2008
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Philosophy
Supervisor
Dr. Ausonio Marras
Second Advisor
Dr. Christopher Viger
Abstract
My thesis is an analysis and application of Wilfrid Sellars’ philosophy of science. Twenty years after his death, his philosophical significance remains only partly understood. This is acutely true in the philosophy of mind, where Sellars’ proposals have directly shaped the contemporary problem space. I will show how the competing views of Paul Churchland, Daniel Dennett, and Jerry Fodor all find their conceptual and historical roots in Sellars’ work. Sellars is the source and watershed for their various conceptions of mind in the world. First, they all share a commitment to scientific realism (SR). The ways that the doctrine of SR impacts the philosophy of mind were first explored by Sellars in his famous Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (1956). In chapter one, I give a detailed account of SR and examine some empiricist alternatives to that view. I argue that Sellars’ view of science and theoretical explanation provides a comprehensive defense of SR’s central commitments. In chapter two, I highlight two important methodological claims inherited from Sellars. The first is that that the mind-body problem is “the problem of formulating a philosophically adequate account of the various mental phenomena within the context of the ontology provided by theoretical science.” (Loux, 1977) The second claim is that our knowledge of mind is theoretical knowledge. This groundbreaking claim stands in stark contrast to the Cartesian legacy which takes our knowledge of mind as immediate and incorrigible. In chapter three, I employ Sellars’ framework to analyze contemporary philosophy of mind. The methodological commitments of Sellars’ SR provide a rich philosophical model for evaluating various theories of mind. This conceptual apparatus casts into sharp relief the extent to which Churchland’s eliminative materialism, Dennett’s inter- pretivism, and Fodor’s intentional realism each betray and embody Sellars’ fundamental proposals.
Recommended Citation
MacBean, Jeremy S., "Sellars, Scientific Realism, and the Philosophy of Mind" (2008). Digitized Theses. 4724.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/digitizedtheses/4724