3. "Sellars as Metaphysician: Norms and Nature, Appearance and Reality" Brandom's 2023 Seminar #3

Meeting 3: Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind I. Epistemology: The Myth of the Given and 'Looks'-talk. (September 14, 2023).
“Sellars as Metaphysician: Norms and Nature, Appearance and Reality” Robert Brandom’s 2023 University of Pittsburgh Philosophy of Language Ph.D. seminar.
Full course materials including readings freely available at sites.pitt.edu... or under “Courses” from sites.pitt.edu...
Video of further meetings uploaded as they occur.

[@eclecticism1019]

"We now recognize that instead of coming to have a concept of something because we have noticed that sort of thing, to have the ability to notice a sort of thing is already to have the concept of that sort of thing, and cannot account for it”

[@BillyMcBride]

It's a great class. I am learning so much. A question that lingers in my head is: what about the thought that "you see what you are"? I am speaking about also Walt Whitman's "There was a Child Went Forth," where Whitman ponders over the "doubts of the daytime, and the doubts of the nighttime...whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?" And, then I think about Rorty's suggestion that we all of us give up the appearance/reality distinction. Did Rorty get that idea from Sellars, from EPM?

[@BillyMcBride]

Also, my favorite concept I am learning about from your lecture is "witholding."

[@findbridge1790]

Sellars needed to read Husserl.

[@kvaka009]

I thought the same. I wonder what Sellars knew about phenomenology. The ing/ed distinction seems to map on nicely to the noesis/noema one in Ideas.

[@findbridge1790]

@@kvaka009 yes, exactly, it seems to be the same idea.

[@kvaka009]

​@findbridge1790 I also wonder if the dependence of 'looks' on 'is' runs counter to husserl's phenomenology. After all, though to say that 'X is red' is not a claim about an inner episode for Husserl, neither is it a claim about an X outside or beyond phenomena. But that seems to be what Sellars is saying. For husserl the reality/appearance distinction is bracketed. Not sure how to reconcile this, though I don't think husserl would disagree with what Sellars is arguing here.

[@findbridge1790]

@@kvaka009 I don't really know Sellars beyond RB's various lectures and maybe those of one or two others. but it seems like he moves between some kind of Neo-kantian project and things that border on phenomenology, which then is inhibited by his Kantian hang over [re sense data, etc]. re Husserl's epistemology -- there's an interesting book published in 1989 by Martinus Nijhoff, [sp] the Dutch phenomenology publisher. it's called "Totalization as the Key to Husserl's Early Philosophy" [it's available at Internet Archive] I thought it presented an interesting way of understanding the alternative to the two poles that you mention: neither a claim about an inner episode nor one about an X outside phenomena. re Sellars' Kantian tendencies, it makes me realize how normative that orientation was in American philosophy prior to the complete analytical takeover, one can think of a number of names.

[@kvaka009]

@@findbridge1790 thanks for the citation and the interesting points. In my EPM book from a grad class, I found a note that says that Sellars was familiar with Husserl. This wouldn't surprise me since Frege and husserl had a long debate and correspondence. It's something to undertake.

[@_ARCATEC_]

51:00

[@_ARCATEC_]

2:13:50

[@_ARCATEC_]

Participatory:
Empirical Knowledge (Finite Faith) In Knowing.
Intuitive Knowledge (Eternal Trust) In Knowing We Know.
Essential Knowledge (Infinite Belief) In Knowing We Know. We Know.

[@eclecticism1019]

Talk about the myth of the given