Reading guide for Tues. 3/28: Sellars, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” pts. X-XIV, §§45-55 (pp. 254-266)
 
 

• Parts X and XI. These parts set up the climax of the paper, framing problems that Sellars will solve in the concluding two parts. As Sellars notes, these parts return to the issues discusses in part IV. The key passage in part IX is Sellars’s statement of the problem of inner episodes in the last paragraph of §45 (p. 256) and, in part IX, it is his revision of the “classical” view of thoughts as stated at the end of the first paragraph of §47 (pp. 257f).

• Part XII. By the end of the paper, Sellars will give his account of thoughts and impressions. He will lead up to it using a device rather like Wittgenstein’s language games—in particular, by seeing what must be added to a language to introduce talk of such things. The language of “our Rylean ancestors” is the starting point. He describes it in §48, considers a first addition to it in §49, and in §50 points to the further additions necessary to complete the project he set for himself in parts X and XI. The adjective “Rylean” alludes to Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976), who attempted in The Concept of Mind (1949) to use resources like those Sellars describes here to give an account of a variety of psychological vocabulary.

• Part XIII. Sellars here begins stating his account of the mental—i.e., his views on the philosophy of mind. This part shows the point behind Sellars’ earlier discussion of theoretical language (in Parts II and IX). Notice that this constitutes a further development of the Rylean language game (see the end of §52).

• Part XIV. By the end of this part, Sellars has used the ideas about the language of theory from part XIII to lay the groundwork for his account of thoughts and impressions. The sort of account he offers of our use of vocabulary for the mental has has sometimes been referred to as the “‘theory’ theory.” Think about what might lie behind this label. (Although Sellars describes his view as “behavioristic,” the term “behaviorism” would now be used more often for the sort of position he describes as “unduly restrictive” at the end of §54, p. 265.)