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177150

Remarks on Wilfrid Sellars' paper on perceptual consciousness

J. N. Mohanty

pp. 186-198

Abstract

When called upon to comment upon Professor Wilfrid Sellars' contribution to the symposium on "Consciousness," I could not but accept the invitation, for I knew that a paper by Wilfrid Sellars must offer what any commentator would want—substantial and provocative philosophical thought; the temptation to respond to that sort of challenge was too strong to resist. On reading his paper, I was comforted that like me he did not see an unbridgeable gulf between phenomenological analysis and conceptual analysis; amazed by the skill with which he has practised phenomenological reduction by gradually "thinning out perceptual commitments"; and intrigued by some of the theses that he seems to me to be defending. In these remarks, I will first turn to three such theses. With two of them, I find myself in substantial agreement, so I will spend some time in elaborating them in the way I would like them to be understood. With the third I disagree, I will briefly say why. That I pick out these three theses is partly due to the fact that they have struck me as being singularly important and also as being basic both to his methodology and substantive position.

Publication details

Published in:

Bruzina Ronald, Wilshire Bruce (1978) Crosscurrents in phenomenology. Den Haag, Nijhoff.

Pages: 186-198

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-9698-4_10

Full citation:

Mohanty Jithendra Nath (1978) „Remarks on Wilfrid Sellars' paper on perceptual consciousness“, In: R. Bruzina & B. Wilshire (eds.), Crosscurrents in phenomenology, Den Haag, Nijhoff, 186–198.