Philosophy Danielle Macbeth

Danielle Macbeth (Haverford College) 10/6/16

“Sellars on the Rationality of Empirical Inquiry”
 

Abstract:

Given that the aim of inquiry is to discover what is so as contrasted with, for example, what merely seems to be so or what one would like to be so, inquiry, whether or not empirical, is rational just in case it answers to what is. But what is it to answer to what is? In particular, what is it to answer to what is in the case of empirical inquiry? In Mind and World McDowell suggests that what it is for empirical inquiry to answer to what is is for it to answer to the tribunal of experience. For McDowell, the rationality of empirical inquiry lies in the fact that experience serves as a tribunal to which empirical inquiry answers. In “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” Sellars has a different idea insofar as he holds that “empirical knowledge . . . is rational, not because it has a foundation but because it is a self-correcting enterprise which can put any claim in jeopardy, though not all at once” (EPM § 38). For Sellars, empirical inquiry is rational, answerable to what is not because it answers to the tribunal of experience but because it is self-correcting. My aim is to develop and defend this intriguing Sellarsian idea.