Sellars, Wilfrid

Sellars, Wilfrid
(1912–1989)
The son of the philosopher Roy Wood Sellars (1880–1973), Sellars was educated at Michigan, and after time at Buffalo and Oxford completed his doctorate at Harvard. He taught at Iowa, Minnesota and Yale, but established himself from 1963 at Pittsburgh. His early work represented a blend of analytical philosophy with logical positivism, and together with others he founded the journal Philosophical Studies to act as a platform for this approach, and edited influential works bringing such methods before the American profession (Readings in Philosophical Analysis, 1949, and Readings in Ethical Theory, 1952). Sellars's own work has revolved around the difficulties of combining the scientific image of people and their world, with the manifest image, or natural conception of ourselves as acquainted with intentions, meanings, colours, and other definitive aspects of the human world. His reputation was established by his most influential paper ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’ (1956), which was possibly the central text introducing functionalism in the philosophy of mind (see also use (of words)}} ). In this and many other papers Sellars explored the nature of thought and experience, defending the view of thought as a kind of inner speech, and above all attacking the myth of the given in all its forms. For Sellars all intentional events live in the ‘space of reasons’; that is, even apparently blank experience is a theoretical concept, or a kind of reflection of our thoughts about the world and the authority we allow each other over various kinds of report. It follows that no such experience can play the role demanded by foundationalism in the theory of knowledge. Collections of papers include Science, Perception, and Reality (1963), Philosophical Perspectives (1967), and < (1974).

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  • Sellars, Wilfrid — ▪ American philosopher in full  Wilfrid Stalker Sellars  born May 20, 1912, Ann Arbor, Mich., U.S. died July 2, 1989, Pittsburgh, Pa.       American philosopher best known for his critique of traditional philosophical conceptions of mind and… …   Universalium

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  • Wilfrid Sellars — Full name Wilfrid Sellars Born May 20, 1912 Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA Died July 2, 1989 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA Era 20th century philosophy Region Western Philosophers …   Wikipedia

  • Wilfrid Sellars — Pour les articles homonymes, voir Sellars. Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (20 mai 1912, 2 juillet 1989) est un philosophe américain. Sommaire 1 Parcours 2 Emp …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Wilfrid Sellars — (* 20. Mai 1912 in Michigan; † 2. Juli 1989 in Pittsburgh) war ein amerikanischer Philosoph, der überwiegend in Pittsburgh lehrte. Sellars leistete einflussreiche Beiträge zu nahezu allen Bereichen der theoretischen Philosophie, insbesondere zur… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

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  • Sellars — ist der Familienname von: John Sellars, 15. Präsident der Drury University Luke Sellars (* 1981), kanadischer Eishockeyspieler Peter Sellars (* 1957), amerikanischer Theaterregisseur Roy Wood Sellars (1883–1973), amerikanischer Philosoph Scott… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

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  • Roy Wood Sellars — (1880–September 5, 1973), was an American philosopher of critical realism and religious humanism, and a proponent of emergent evolution. His son was the philosopher Wilfrid Sellars. For much of his career he taught at the University of… …   Wikipedia

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