Wilfrid Sellars

Some Remarks on Kant’s Theory of Experience

Kant never tires of telling us that Nature and the Space and Time which are its forms exist as a system of “representations.” Now a prepresentation is either a representing or a something represented. Does Kant mean that nature is a system of representings? Or that it is a system of representeds? And, in any case, what would the claim amount to?

Some problems about belief

A number of problems pertaining to the logic of belief can be introduced by considering the following three statement forms: 1. Jones believes that fa Bfa 2. a = b a = b 3. Jones does not believe that fb ~ Bfb.1

Classes as Abstract Entities and the Russell Paradox

The implications of the theory of abstract entities which was developed in the paper with that title1 for some classical problems pertaining to classes are interesting and, I believe, important. To show this I shall take my point of departure from the thesis, advanced in an earlier paper,2 that the form

Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind

x\varepsilon k

Some Reflections on Language Games

construed as the logistical counterpart of x is a k (e.g., x is a man) must not be confused with the same form construed as the logistical counterpart of x is a member of k-kind where “k-kind” is given a technical use as a referring expression which refers to a class, and in which it is equivalent to “the class of ks.”

Science and Metaphysics

It is clear that one who hopes to explain the conceptuality of “inner episodes” in terms of the conceptuality of overt linguistic behavior must have a satisfactory account of the latter that does not covertly make use of the idea of inner conceptual episodes. I have attempted such an explanation. Professor Marras argues that I have not succeeded. This charge can be interpreted in a stronger or weaker sense. According to the stronger my explanation is, in the above sense, circular. According to the weaker, I avoid the circle, if I do avoid it, only because I fail to give an account of the conceptuality of overt linguistic behavior which is satisfactory even by my own standards. And by failing to give a satisfactory account of the conceptuality of overt linguistic behavior. I have failed to establish the fundamentum for an analogical account of the conceptuality of inner episodes.