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Sellarsian Materialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

William S. Robinson
William S. Robinson*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy Iowa State University
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Abstract

Wilfrid Sellars has proposed a materialist account of sensation which relies in part on the postulation of special kinds of individuals. This postulational strategy appears to be analogous to the one that introduces such entities as electrons. After setting out Sellars' account, I focus on his application of the postulational strategy. I argue that this application requires the discovery of new effects for familiar properties; that this kind of discovery is disanalogous to what postulation usually does; and that this kind of discovery cannot really be arrived at by postulation. I conclude that Sellars has not provided a successful, materialist account of sensation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 212 - 227
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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References

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