EPM: Chs X & XI
Pete Mandik
Chairman, Department of Philosophy
Coordinator, Cognitive Science Laboratory
William Paterson University, New Jersey USA
Ch X: PRIVATE EPISODES:
THE PROBLEM
“Let us now return, after a long absence, to the
problem of how the similarity among the
experiences of seeing that an object over there is
red, its looking to one that an object over there is
red (when in point of fact it is not red) and its
looking to one as though there were a red object
over there (when in fact there is nothing over
there at all) is to be understood. Part of this
similarity, we saw, consists in the fact that they all
involve the idea -- the proposition, if you please -that the object over there is red. But over and
above this there is, of course, the aspect which
many philosophers have attempted to clarify by
the notion of impressions or immediate
experience.” (p. 85)
2
Two possible explanations the
similarity between different
kinds of experience:
Either impressions are (a) posited or
(b) given. (p. 86).
Sellars’ arguments so far have been
primarily an attack on the given, and
the main faults of the given are
summarized on pp. 86-87.
3
Pp 86-87 key points
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
We describe impressions by words like
“red”
Physical objects alone can be literally red
“Red impression” then seems to mean
“impression the sort of which is common
to experiences that nonetheless differ in
such-and such respects”
If that’s what impression talk amounts to,
then it is a code for the thing to be
explained, not an explanation of it.
Since we are not born with knowledge of
physical objects and their properties, it is
puzzling how we could come to know of
impressions at all
4
The failure of The Myth of the
Given leaves us with this
problem:
“…the general problem of understanding
how there can be inner episodes -episodes, that is, which somehow
combine privacy, in that each of us has
privileged access to his own, with
intersubjectivity, in that each of us can, in
principle, know about the other's.” p. 87
5
In subsequent chapters…
Sellars will show how this problem can
be solved by showing that the two
main kinds of mental episodes-thoughts and impressions--are,
instead of being given, actually
theoretical posits.
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Ch XI: THOUGHTS: THE
CLASSICAL VIEW
Recent empiricism (not the Classical
View) says of thoughts:
1.
They are episodes which are verbal
or linguistic in character
2.
Saying that someone has thoughts
is really just code for saying that
they will behave in such-and-such
manner
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Problems with recent
empiricism’s view of
thoughts:
1.
2.
There are more thoughts than can
be accounted for by overt speech
and verbal imagery
We explain intelligent behavior by
reference to thought, therefore
reference to thought cannot simply
be a code for descriptions of
intelligent behavior
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The Classical Tradition…
In opposition, says:
1.
Thoughts are introspectible inner
episodes separate from their
expression in speech, verbal
imagery, and intelligent behavior.
2.
Further, thoughts could not occur
without being known to occur
9
Sellars is cool with 1 but
not 2
That thoughts can only occur when
known to occur is a confusion borne
of, among other things, the mistaken
view that thoughts belong in the
same general category as
sensations.
10
“If we purge the classical tradition of these confusions, it
becomes the idea that to each of us belongs a stream of
episodes, not themselves immediate experiences, to which
we have privileged, but by no means either invariable or
infallible, access. These episodes can occur without being
"expressed" by overt verbal behavior, though verbal
behavior is -- in an important sense -- their natural fruition.
Again, we can "hear ourselves think," but the verbal
imagery which enables us to do this is no more the thinking
itself than is the overt verbal behavior by which it is
expressed and communicated to others. It is a mistake to
suppose that we must be having verbal imagery -- indeed,
any imagery -- when we "know what we are thinking" -- in
short, to suppose that "privileged access" must be
construed on a perceptual or quasi-perceptual model.” p.
90
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THE END
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