In this paper, we shall describe and critically evaluate four contemporary theories which attempt to solve the problem of the infinite regress of reasons: BonJour's 'impure' coherentism, BonJour's foundationalism, Haack's 'foundherentism' and Dancy's pure coherentism. These theories are initially put forward as theories about the justification of our empirical beliefs; however, in fact they also attempt to provide a successful response to the question of their own 'metajustification.' Yet, it will be argued that 1) none of the examined theories is successful as a theory of justification of our empirical beliefs, and that 2) they also fall short of being adequate theories of metajustification. It will be further suggested that the failure of these views on justification is not coincidental, but is actually a consequence of deeper and tacitly held problematic epistemological assumptions (namely, the requirements of justificatory generality and epistemic priority), whose acceptance paves the way towards a generalized scepticism about empirical justification.
This article examines Wilfrid Sellars's views on the epistemic status of philosophical propositions. It suggests that according to Sellars philosophical propositions are normative and practically oriented. They do not form a theory for the description of reality; their function is, rather, that of motivating actions which aim at changing reality. The article argues that the role of philosophical propositions can be illuminated if they are understood as a special kind of (proposed) "material" rules of inference, provided that the latter are construed as being firmly entrenched in practice. To this end, a distinction between "theoretical" and "practical" anomalies is drawn to better elucidate-and in some cases criticize and further expand-Sellars's position on the relation between the theoretical and practical dimensions of philosophical activity. In this connection, the Weberian notion of the "disenchantment of the world" is used to throw light on the relation between these two dimensions.
We will begin by offering the main outlines of Sellars' peculiar brand of naturalism. Sellarsian naturalism combines nominalism, that is the denial that abstract entities are ontologically committal, and scientific realism, as formulated in the famous Sellarsian scientia mensura principle: "In the dimension of describing and explaining the world, science is the measure of all things, of what it is that it is, and of what it is not that it is not." 1 The peculiarity of Sellars' naturalism, with its interesting combination of scientific and liberal naturalist elements, can be already discerned: On the one hand, Sellars' naturalism is more radical than Quine's naturalism, since, unlike the latter, it does not countenance the existence of abstract entities, at least in the dimension of describing and explaining the world; on the other hand, we must always bear in mind that the superiority of the scientific image of the world, as described in the Sellarsian scientia mensura principle, is strictly confined in the domains of describing and explaining the world, as opposed for example to the domain of normative appraisal of human behavior.But what exactly is naturalism itself, considered as a general philosophical thesis and Sellarsian naturalism in particular? To answer these questions we need to make a distinction between two senses of philosophical naturalism, namely between ontological and methodological naturalism: Ontological naturalism is often very difficult to define, but for our purposes it can be understood as the view according to which everything exists within nature in the sense that there are no residual dualism between nature (what exists within nature) and another, non-natural level of existence. That is to say, ontological naturalism is opposed to views which make ontological distinctions (i.e., distinctions of levels of existence) between the natural and the supernatural, between nature and experience (in the manner, e.g., of empiricism) or even between the natural and the transcendental level (in the manner of transcendental idealism)-at least to the extent to which this latter distinction is construed as something more than a purely methodological one. 2 As deVries puts this point "naturalism includes the thesis that everything that exists in an element of the spatiotemporal causal nexus. It rejects, therefore, any kind of purported causal or metaphysical dependence on something outside space and time, such as God, souls, forms or other pure intelligibles." 3 In this sense, Sellars is surely an ontological naturalist. But is he also a methodological naturalist? And does ontological naturalism imply methodological naturalism? The answer to both questions is, dinterestingly, no, at least if 1 Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, §41.
The aim of this paper is to properly situate and contrast McDowell's and Sellars' views on intuitional content and relate them to their corresponding views on the myth of the Given. Although McDowell's and Sellars' views on what McDowell calls 'intuitional' content seem at first strikingly similar, at a deeper level they are radically different. It will be suggested that this divergence is intimately related to their different understanding of what the myth of the Given consists in and how it should be best avoided. It will also be argued that certain McDowell-inspired objections against the viability of the Sellarsian concept of the Categorial Given actually misconstrue the place of this notion in Sellars' system. If the myth of the Categorial Given can be considered as a genuine version of the Myth (and McDowell has offered no compelling reasons for thinking otherwise) then McDowell's account of intuitional content does indeed fall prey to it. I shall further argue that a McDowell-inspired objection against Sellars to the effect that his account of proper sensibles compromises the openness of intuitional content to the world ultimately fails, and, finally, I shall suggest that Sellars' views on proper sensibles and intuitional content provide a more promising account of the way our thought and experience can be rationally open to the world itself than McDowell's position.
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