A Tentative Research On Wilfrid Sellars' Spurning Of The Myth Of The Given

According to the popular point of view, observational statements are self-authenticated and self-justified and the foundation of other empirical knowledge. In order to refute such a view, Sellars attacks the myth of the given included in the theory of sense-data at first. Sellars points out that we could not take it for granted that a simple, pure sensation or impression could directly become an observational statement or an observational proposition. However, the confusion of sensation and observational proposition is one of the most important reasons why the traditional empiricists emphasized the foundational status of the observational propositions. In the meaning of genuine epistemology, an observational proposition refers to some general concepts, and to grasp and acquire general concepts is obviously different from possessing particular sensations and impressions. To master a certain general concept we need mater other related concepts as well, that is to say, our acquisition of one concept could not separate from possessing and cognizing a group of related concepts. However, it is a general word that expresses a general concept. Then how could a general concept and a particular concept be connected together? In other words, why could a general word be applied to refer to some particular object? In Sellars'opinion, such a kind of application is actually a long process of language acquisition, that is, we gradually learn to connect a general word and a particular word which expresses a particular object in a language community. Sellars considers our acquisition of abstract, general concepts, even our grasp of particular concepts as a piece of linguistic affair; that is Sellars'Psychological Nominalism.Next, Sellars′attack on the myth of the given included in the situation of language learning is discussed. In the traditional thought, whenever we imagine a language learner, for example, a baby who learns his mother tongue, we always place him in a logical space which we are familiar with, although this kind of awareness is pre-analytic, and not in an all-around way. That is to say, many philosophers think that one's awareness of logical space is the given. Of course, Sellars argues against this viewpoint. He believes that our awareness of logical space is together with the learning of language. In short, Sellars thinks that the idea of Foundationalism-some non-inferential, authoritative knowledge is the foundation of all the other knowledge-contains the myth of the given and should be rejected. From the above points, we notice that there's something wrong with this kind of simple, self-evident and self-contained knowledge in the myth of the given. Any concept cannot stand on its own feet; it must be in a conceptual whole. The acquisition of language is very important for people to form various propositions and to make judgments, so our acceptance of any proposition or statement is in a logical space. On the one hand, he admits that sense experience plays some sort of foundational role, but he refuses to accept the empirists'viewpoint- sense experience should occupy the highest, the most foundational status. On the other hand, he absorbs Coherentists'viewpoint-observational statements depend on other knowledge; in the mean time, he denies Hegelist Coherentism which is without presuppositions or without foundation. Thus, he argues for the probability of taking a middle road between Foundationalism and Coherentism in epistemology.At last, by means of analyzing the different methods taken by Sellars and Quine when they face the same problem-how to refute Foundationalism, it reveals the rationality and feasibility of the middle road blazed by Sellars. Reductionists think that any proposition could be reduced to the logical construction of observational propositions, while Quine rejects this viewpoint. Quine adopts holism according to which knowledge as a whole faces sensory experience and observational propositions. Different from Quine, Sellars focuses his attention on the problem that if the givenness of sensory experience and observational propositions is tenable. Sellars underlines that observational propositions depend on other propositions and knowledge. That is to say, Sellars goes further down the road of rejecting Foundationlism.