Notes on BBK:
For Sellars, there are two quite different ways in which the human mind (or central
nervous system, as it appears in the scientific image) manages to represent the world
around us. The first is in sensation. Sensations (or sensory states) represent the world in
much the same way that pictures represent the things they are of—in normal perceptual
circumstances, the sensory states we enter are correlated with certain properties of
external objects. These sensory states also resemble and differ in ways that mimic the
pattern of resemblances and differences between these properties of objects. As a result,
they “encode” information about the world around us, in the simple sense that they
reliably (though not perfectly) correlate with/correspond to those features. The second is
in thought. Thoughts, for Sellars, are modeled on overt language. So they are governed
by norms (what one should think) that parallel the norms governing language use.
(Sensations are not subject to such norms.) They represent the world in a way parallel to
the way language represents the world—a much richer structure of representation than
that provided by sensations, that allows for judgments, logical connectives, and even the
recognition of logical implication relations between concepts and judgments. They are
still said, by Sellars, to “picture” and correspond to the world (in the case of molecular,
descriptive statements). But this picturing is extended to another level by their being
governed by norms; it’s at this normative level that intellectual/cognitive representation
of the world occurs (and it’s at this level that we can first speak of truth, too).
1. The issue in BBK is just how thoughts & language are connected to the things
they represent or are about. Thomists, and Sellars, hold that there is an
isomorphism (shared structure) of the “knower with the known”, both at the
sensuous level (i.e. our sensory states, our sensations, show a kind of
isomorphism with the things we sense) and at the intellectual level (here it’s our
judgments, primarily, that correspond or are isomorphic in some way to the things
they are about).
2. Sellars contrasts this position with the views of some philosophers, who have
focused directly on the relation between states of mind and the things they are
about without imputing a structure or properties of those states of mind somehow
paralleling/ isomorphic to the structure & properties of the things they are about.
3. This group includes Descartes, who postulated “natures” as the direct object of
our ideas. Our ideas, for Descartes, are about a particular nature by virtue of
instantiating that nature “objectively” i.e. as an object of thought. The same
nature can also be realized “formally” as part of the furniture of the world, and so
our idea can be of a real thing in the world simply by virtue of realizing
objectively the same nature as the thing realizes formally. It also includes what
Sellars calls “contemporary British and American realism”, which also inserts a
kind of mediation between thought and the world, according to which thoughts
are directly of “propositions” or “states of affairs”, and some of these propositions
exist (are true), while others merely “subsist”. Both groups think of meaning as
constituted by the posited relation between thought and natures or propositions,
not by a complex inner structure of thoughts & their role in observation and
behaviour. For Sellars, though, it’s this complex structure that matters.
4. The view Sellars defends, then, is “to hold that acts of the intellect differ
intrinsically qua (as) acts in a way which systematically corresponds to what they
are about, i.e. their subject-matter.” (43) Nb. “Acts” here is a term of art. It
refers not to actions but to actualities. Roughly, we can think of acts of the
intellect as occurent (i.e. presently instantiated) states or features of the intellect.
5. Since Sellars thinks of thoughts on the model of language, we have to distinguish
different kinds of thoughts (acts of the intellect) along linguistic lines: some
thoughts are assertion-like (beliefs); some are singular-term like (ideas); some are
question like (wonderings), etc. But he also wants to distinguish thoughts as acts
(actualities, presently thought) from thoughts as mere potentials (grasped,
understood, concepts that are “in our mental vocabulary”). This corresponds to
the Thomist distinction between the intellect in first act (merely having the
potential to apply a certain concept) and intellect in second act (actually applying
the concept in some thought).
6. An aside: Sellars holds that at birth the intellect is in first act with respect to no
concepts whatsoever, but he rejects the traditional (empiricist/abstractionist)
account of concept acquisition (based on abstraction from experience).
7. The analogy between mental words and language is essential for Sellars’ account,
but not for the Thomist account, which makes more of a meal of the “special”
status of thoughts.
8. Three questions: What is a mental word? How do we come by them? (We need a
developmental account of our acquisition of the ability to think…) How are they
related to the “real order”?
9. The account of the Thomist view that follows (44) sounds pretty Cartesian: The
mental word triangular is “the nature or form triangular as informing the possible
intellect…A piece of wax becomes triangular through being informed by the
nature triangular…the possible intellect becomes triangular [when it is
representing some triangular thing] in the immaterial mode.
10. But (as I read it) the difference here is that while, for Descartes, thoughts are
indistinguishable formally, and distinguished only by their contents, i.e. by what
they are of, for the Thomists thoughts are distinguishable formally: being
(immaterially) triangular is a real, formal property of thoughts, that is, the
property of being immaterially triangular is conceived as a real property of
thoughts that characterizes some thoughts (the thought of a white, triangular
object) and that is analogous, in terms of its features & relations to other thought
contents (compatibility with being immaterially red or blue, incompatibility with
being immaterially square or pentagonal, including immaterially having three
sides and interior angles summing to 180o), with the property of being materially
triangular and its features and relations to other properties of things.
11. Sellars turns next to the issue of acquisition & whether abstractive accounts,
which trace concept acquisition to sensory input & our ability to recognize/
generalize features represented to us sensorily, really work. The Thomists identify
the mental word •triangular• with the sensory word •triangular •, and then suppose
that our ability to think (immaterially) triangular thoughts is grounded in having
had, at some previous time, the sensory word •triangular• as a sense-content (a
“sensitive word”. Sellars is going to object here: for him the mental word
•triangular• is analogous to the English word “triangular,” while the sensitive
“word” •triangular• is analogous to the shape of (say) a yield sign. (In the first
case, the analogy is at the level of the roles these “words” play in their respective
languages; in the second, the analogy is at the level of the properties of our
sensory states and the features of the things that normally produce such sensory
states.)
12. What distinguishes the vocabulary of sense and the vocabulary of the intellect?
See 45.
13. Abstraction, as a picture of how we come by (some of) our concepts requires that
the sensory vocabulary and the intellectual vocabulary really overlap. Sellars
rejects this: “…sense is a cognitive faculty only in the sense that it makes
knowledge possible and is an essential element in knowledge, and that of itself it
knows nothing. It is a necessary condition of the intentional order, but does not of
itself belong to this order” (46)
14. Why do others confuse these? The quick move from sensing to judging is almost
invisible, the role of senses in knowledge, but (most important) the “pseudointentionality” of sensations.
15. Here Sellars remarks first on the surface-language parallels between how we
describe sensations (…of a white, triangular thing) and thoughts (…of a white,
triangular thing). Second, the whiteness and triangularity of sensations is clearly
not the same as the whiteness and triangularity of a (real) white triangle, any more
than is the whiteness and triangularity of a thought. Finally, it’s clear that there is
a role for “whiteness” and “triangularity” of some kind in our characterizations of
sensory states. So it’s tempting, given two related projects (developing a theory
of sense, and developing a theory of thought) in which we need a new kind of
property somehow analogous to these properties of physical objects, to simply
identify them.
16. But Sellars proposes an alternative, more limited account of the sense of “white”
and “triangular” that applies to sensations. In this account, a sensation “of a white
triangular thing” is a sensation which is: 1. Of a kind normally brought about by
such things. 2. Of a kind that differs systematically from states normally brought
about by objects of other colours and shapes. 3. Can be brought about by objects
of other colours and shapes—a point which gets its real application in
understanding how our senses sometimes mislead us. (47)
17. This sense of “white” and “triangular” is obviously not the ordinary one applying
to physical objects. But it’s obviously related to that one, in a way that plays an
important role in our understanding of our own perceptual psychology. And
Sellars also regards these senses of “white” and “triangular” as developing out of
the ordinary senses by a process of analogy. (Here the point made earlier, that for
Sellars—unlike Descartes—direct self-knowledge can be essentially formulated
in analogical terms. Our “reflexive knowledge” of our own mental acts, on this
view, employs concepts that are not somehow privately “given” to us, but instead
are “analogical extensions of concepts pertaining to the public or intersubjective
world of things and persons. “So much the worse for Descartes”…)
18. The key to the analogy here is that the family of resemblances and differences
between these analogically derived properties of sensations correspond to the
family of resemblances and differences of properties of perceptible objects. So
the place of “white” as a character of sensations, in the family of characters of
sensations that we pick out with other colour words as well as shape words,
matches up with, i.e. is isomorphic with, the place of “white” as a character of
objects, in the corresponding family of characters of objects.
19. At this point Sellars remarks that the abstractive account of concept formation is
no longer tempting at all: sensations don’t provide concepts for the intellect at all,
on this account. They are merely a family of states of the human sensory system
with a regular relation (in ordinary perceptual conditions) to the sensible
properties of objects in the environment. As such, they are needed to explain
perceptual knowledge, but they don’t embody knowledge at all, even in a limited,
non-propositional “this white triangular thing” sort of way.
20. Now we turn to the intellect and the words of its vocabulary—including logical
words, like ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’, etc. These logical words are used to build molecular
sentences out of atomic sentences; the result, when we apply them to sentences
about the world, is more sentences about the world. By contrast, logical words
like implies, according to Sellars, turn (when we use them) sentences about the
world into sentences about the “logical order.” This is, broadly, the system of
inference relations that (normatively) govern reasoning within a given language.
21. This leads to a further critique of abstractive accounts of concept formation: if a
concept like “white” is in the sensory vocabulary, and whiteness implies notredness, then it seems logical words like “not” are also there in the sensory
vocabulary. Similarly for implication—we cannot grasp a concept unless we
grasp its role in the inferences that link it to other concepts. We can’t escape the
link between predicate concepts, like “white”, and predication itself, i.e. the
assertion, of something, that it is white. So the attempt, on the part of Thomists,
to limit the vocabulary of sense while preserving its identity with the
corresponding words in the vocabulary of the intellect is untenable.
22. Finally, in the closing remarks of this first section, Sellars presents a kind of holist
position on concept possession. The key here is language training—while actual
perceptual judgements are essential to fully grasp a concept of a sensible property
of objects, and so sensory exposure to white things is part of what it takes to
acquire the concept “white”, this is only part of the process required—the rest of
the process is a matter of learning the language of colour (and shape, too,
ultimately).