Wilfrid Sellars 1912 – 1989
Wilfrid Sellars (1912 – 1989) was an American philosopher of the Contemporary era, associated with Analytic Philosophy.
Wilfrid Sellars was an American philosopher and one of the most influential analytic thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century. His seminal essay Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind dismantled what he called the Myth of the Given, the supposition that knowledge can be founded on a stratum of pre-conceptual experience, and argued that knowing is essentially a matter of placing a state in the logical space of reasons. He developed an ambitious naturalist metaphysics that distinguishes the manifest and scientific images of the world. He held chairs at Yale and Pittsburgh.
Key facts
- Nationality
- American
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Analytic Philosophy
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Wilfrid Sellars:
“In characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons.”
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Attributed to Wilfrid Sellars:
“The Myth of the Given is the idea that there is a stratum of empirical knowledge that owes nothing to other beliefs.”
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Attributed to Wilfrid Sellars:
“Science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not.”
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Attributed to Wilfrid Sellars:
“Philosophy in an important sense has no special subject-matter; if philosophers do specialize, it is in seeing things together.”
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Attributed to Wilfrid Sellars:
“The aim of philosophy is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.”
Wilfrid Sellars by topic
Frequently asked about Wilfrid Sellars
- When did Wilfrid Sellars live?
- Wilfrid Sellars was born in 1912 and died in 1989.
- Where was Wilfrid Sellars from?
- Wilfrid Sellars was an American philosopher of the Contemporary era.
- What philosophical movements is Wilfrid Sellars associated with?
- Wilfrid Sellars was associated with Analytic Philosophy.
- What was Wilfrid Sellars known for?
- Wilfrid Sellars was an American philosopher and one of the most influential analytic thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century.
- How many quotes are attributed to Wilfrid Sellars?
- There are 5 attributed quotations from Wilfrid Sellars in the 1001Philosophers collection, organized by topic.