Knowledge and being in the epistemology of Wilfrid Sellars

Abstract

Wilfrid Sellars very often expounds his philosophical views in an historical context. In his paper „Being and Being Known” Sellars gives a succinct account of his epistemology while at the same time discussing the Thomistic conception of sensory and intellectual knowledge. His aim in that paper is to provide a plausible interpretation of the doctrine that both the senses and the intellect are informed by the nature of external objects, and thus our cognitive acts are isomorphic with their objects. Sellars claims that there are two dimensions to that isomorphism, and that those separate dimensions are conflated by the Thomists, as well as by other philosophers. That is to say, there is isomorphism in the real or the natural order, and there is isomorphism in the intentional or the logical order. Sellars insists that in sensory cognition isomorphism holds merely in the real order. By contrast, intellectual knowledge is based upon the isomorphism of the intentional order. However, that isomorphism obtains in virtue of specific relations holding in the real order. Thus those two orders are intimately connected. Unfortunately, Sellars does not fully elaborate the nature of the connections between those two orders. I argue that in light of his commitment to ontological naturalism, Sellars should claim that ultimately there is only one isomorphism, namely the isomorphism in the real order. I suggest that his insistence that there are no genuine semantical relations holding between the elements of the intentional and the real supports such an interpretation.