Roy Wood Sellars

Direct, Referential Realism

Only there occur certain lags in scholarship which need to be remedied. One of these is the lack of appreciation of the efforts of the American critical realists to attain a direct, referential realism which would avoid the difficulties confronting an intuitional type of naive realism and the well-recognized dilemma of Lockean representative perceptionism. In the latter case, the puzzle is, of course, that, if we perceive subjective ideas, how can we know that they give us cognitive access to external things.

The Emergence of Naturalism

It has been suggested by a witty writer that every system of philosophy ought to account for its own appearance. This seems to me an excellent suggestion. Following it out, I have asked myself how I would account for the appearance of naturalism. There are clearly two ways of approach to this interesting problem, the historical and the analytic. The first asks questions like the following: Under what conditions has naturalism emerged? Has it ever appeared only to disappear again? Is naturalism growing in strength today ? To what factors does it seem to owe its growth? The analytic way of approach concerns itself with the fundamental ideas underlying naturalism, its contrast with supernaturalism, and its relation to the world as known. Any systematic study of the appearance of naturalism would involve both these ways of approach. What I can offer, however, is only of the nature of a sketch in which both points of view will be implicated. The struggle between naturalism and supernaturalism seems to me the most thrilling of the deeper movements of the human mind. To glance at it from its vague beginning to its sharper formulation in our own day, to note the opposed principles involved-all this is in the highest degree fascinating. Both naturalism and supernaturalism have taken many shapes. On the whole, naturalism has been blunter and less

Physical Realism and Relativity: Unfinished Business

It is to be understood that the philosopher is not the one to query the procedures and the working hypotheses of the physicist. These arise from grappling with technical problems which have arisen historically in his science; and the philosopher seldom has the technical competence to get the concrete feel of the situation and to realize, to the full, the meaning of what is being proposed. On the other hand, the philosopher need not be too modest so long as his intentions are good and his own puzzles are real. He is then only asking questions, hoping that points will be cleared up. Any primary shift in assumptions and concepts in physics is bound to have repercussions on philosophical issues. And, sometimes, both philosophers and scientists draw analogies and emphasize points which need analysis. The temporary association of the principle of uncertainty with free-will is an instance in point. And it even seems to me at present that the tendency of American astronomers to associate the expanding universe with creation in an almost theological way is another instance. But let us turn to relativity. I was bothered by the supposed shortening of the rod. The Fitzgerald effect was, presumably, rejected; but enough ambiguity was left to enable my pragmatic and idealistic friends to challenge my own feeling that the imputed shortening was tied in with the schematism which correlated C with V. In short, that it was epistemological rather than ontological. I never had any desire to defend Newtonian Space and Time, which seemed to me superfluous unknowables.