A Précis of Intentionality in Sellars: A Transcendental Account of Finite Knowledge

Abstract

The key question I pursue in this book can be captured as follows: How can reference to the world be justified in a non-relational conception of intentionality? The overarching context of this project is given by the wide-scope concern to understand what it takes to think ourselves as part of a world we can in fact have knowledge about, while acknowledging that all our con-jectures are fallible. My main contention in taking up the challenges voiced in these questions is that the concept of intentionality is the beating heart of Wilfrid Sellars’ philosophy. How so? The concept of intentionality has not only a rich medieval history, it has also been given a deep treatment in the tradition downstream from Kant, a depth not recognised properly in contemporary analytic philosophy. I set out to demonstrate Sellars’ thinking to belong to this very tradition. His account of intentionality gives life to two intersecting tasks inherent in ‘the attempt to take both man and science seriously’ (Sellars 1968, SM I §1; Sellars 1970, I §87). On my reading, Sellars’ philosophical project comes to light when seen as a transcendental phenomenalism, indebted to a transcendental methodology in which picturing is the linchpin of finite knowledge