"Just What is the Relation between the Manifest and the Scientific Images? A critical notice of R. B. Brandom, From Empiricism to Expressivism: Brandom Reads Sellars"
Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1870-2935
Abstract
Robert B. Brandom’s From Empiricism to Expressivism ranges widely over fundamental issues in metaphysics, with occasional forays into epistemology as well. The centerpiece is what Brandom calls ‘the Kant-Sellars thesis about modality’ (and a related thesis about normativity). This is ‘[t]he claim that in being able to use ordinary empirical descriptive vocabulary, one already knows how to do everything that one needs to know how to do, in principle, to use alethic modal vocabulary – in particular subjunctive conditionals’ (p. 26). (For the equivalent thesis about norms, simply substitute ‘normative’ for ‘alethic modal’ and drop the mention of subjunctives.) Despite claiming descent from Sellars, Brandom defends here a version of modal realism and tries hard to limit Sellarsian nominalism, all in the service of elaborating Brandom’s own version of pragmatism. The range of issues Brandom addresses defies adequate consideration in a critical notice, so I confine myself here to a single issue: What is the relation between the Manifest and Scientific Images? Brandom is very critical of Sellars’ treatment, but I do not think Brandom’s criticisms carry the day.
Department
Philosophy
Publication Date
2-2016
Publication Title
International Journal of Philosophical Studies
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Recommended Citation
"Just What is the Relation between the Manifest and the Scientific Images? A critical notice of R. B. Brandom, From Empiricism to Expressivism: Brandom Reads Sellars" International Journal of Philosophical Studies 24 (Feb. 2016): 112-128.