Sellars without homogeneity

International Journal of Philosophical Studies 8 (1):47 – 71 (2000)
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Abstract

Central to Wilfrid Sellars ' philosophical system is his belief that science's current ontology is inadequate as it fails to provide for an acceptable account of perceptual experience. Unfortunately, this remains the most puzzling plank in his philosophy. Sellars himself argues for this position via his wellknown example of a pink ice cube and its homogeneous colour. This homogeneity, says Sellars, bars the acceptance of science's present ontology of achromatic particles, and requires the introduction of items which are truly coloured. Only with such a revised and expanded ontology, with all that entails, can science adequately meet its explanatory demands. I aim here to remedy at least some of the confusions and misunderstandings this position has engendered. But I mean to take a different route from Sellars. In short, given the problems with Sellars ' views on homogeneity, I will argue for the Sellarsian conclusion as to the inadequacy of present scientific ontologies, yet without reliance on the puzzling doctrine of homogeneity. I begin then with a detailed examination of Sellars official position, indicate the trouble spots, and begin an alternative route. As I conceive things, however, the position I will sketch is still thoroughly Sellarsian, for it proceeds from premises Sellars himself has endorsed

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Eric M. Rubenstein
Indiana University of Pennsylvania

References found in this work

Empiricism and the philosophy of mind.Wilfrid Sellars - 1956 - Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 1:253-329.
Philosophy and the scientific image of man.Wilfrid S. Sellars - 1963 - In Robert Colodny, Science, Perception, and Reality. Humanities Press/Ridgeview. pp. 35-78.
Perception and its objects.Peter F. Strawson - 1988 - In Jonathan Dancy, Perceptual knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press.

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