Kant and Sellars on the unity of apperception
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4454/philinq.v10i1.393Keywords:
personal identity, practical reason, theoretical reason, transcendental deduction, synoptic imageAbstract
That Wilfrid Sellars claims that the framework of persons is not a descriptive framework, but a normative one is about as well known as any claim that he makes. This claim is at the core of the famous demand for a synoptic image that closes, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” makes its appearance at key moments in the grand argument of, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” and is the capstone of Sellars’ engagement with Kant in Science and Metaphysics. Whereas mere things can be subject to ought-to-be rules – e.g. a clock ought to chime on the hour – to be a person, as Sellars understands it, is to be subject to ought-to-do rules – e.g. one ought to wind one’s clocks to chime on the hour. Prima facie, though, there is more to being a person than just being subject to ought-to-do rules. For example, on at least some common ways of using ‘person’ to be a person is to have a unified consciousness, i.e. to be a single subject of a manifold of experience persisting through time. Arguably, that is what Kant takes a person to be. What I hope to show here is that it is what Sellars takes a person to be too. I.e. the exciting twist here is that as Sellars sees it being a single subject of experience persisting through time is being subject to a particular kind of ought-to-do rules, namely, those concepts-qua-inferential-rules that are the means by which we represent the world of causally-related objects existing in space and persisting through time.
References
Descartes, Rene, 1984, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, Eng. transl. by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Hume, David, 1974, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. by L.A. Selby-Bigge, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Hume, David, 2000, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. by D. Fate Norton and M.J. Norton, Oxford University Press, New York.
Kant, Immanuel, 2015, Critique of Practical Reason, Eng. transl. by Mary Gregor, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Kant, Immanuel, 1998, Critique of Pure Reason, Eng. transl. by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Landy, David, 2019, “Sellars’ Argument for an Ontology of Absolute Processes”, in Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 7, 1: 1-25.
Landy, David, 2017, Hume’s Science of Human Nature, Routledge, New York.
Landy, David, 2015, Kant’s Inferentialism, Routledge, New York.
O’Shea, James, 2007, Wilfrid Sellars: Naturalism with a Normative Turn, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Rosenberg, Jay F., 1982, “The Place of Color in the Scheme of Things: A Roadmap to Sellars’ Carus Lectures”, in The Monist, 65: 315-335.
Rosenthal, David, 2015, “Quality Spaces, Relocation, and Grain,” in James O’Shea, ed. Sellars and His Legacy, Oxford University Press, Oxford: 149-185.
Seibt, Johanna, 2015, “How to Naturalize Sensory Consciousness and Intentionality within a Process Monism with Normativity Gradient: A Reading of Sellars”, in James O’Shea, ed. Sellars and His Legacy, Oxford University Press, Oxford: 186‑223.
Seibt, Johanna, 2000, “Pure Processes and Projective Metaphysics”, in Philosophical Studies, 101: 253-289.
Sellars, Wilfrid, 2018, Wilfrid Sellars Notre Dame Lectures 1969-1986, ed. by P.Amaral and D. Landy, Ridgeview Publishing Co., Atascadero.
Sellars, Wilfrid, 2002a, “Metaphysics and the Concept of a Person”, in Jeffrey F. Sicha, ed. Kant’s Transcendental Metaphysics, Ridgeview Publishing, Atascadero: 304-329.
Sellars, Wilfrid, 2002b, “On Accepting First Principles”, in Jeffrey F. Sicha, ed. Kant’s Transcendental Metaphysics, Ridgeview Publishing, Atascadero: 461-571.
Sellars, Wilfrid, 1975, “The Structure of Knowledge”, in Hector-Neri Castañeda, ed. Action Knoweldge and Reality, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis: 295-348.
Sellars, Wilfrid, 1969, “Language as Thought and as Communication”, in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 29, 4: 506-527.
Sellars, Wilfrid, 1967, Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
Sellars, Wilfrid, 1963a, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, in Science, Perception and Reality, Ridgeview Publishing, Atascadero: 119-179.
Sellars, Wilfrid, 1963b, “Some Reflections on Language Games”, in Science, Perception and Reality, Ridgeview Publishing, Atascadero: 300-333.
Sellars, Wilfrid, 1963c, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man”, in Science, Perception and Reality, Ridgeview Publishing, Atascadero: 7-40.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication, with the work five (5) years after publication licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
After five years from first publication, Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
