Was Sellars an Error Theorist?
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-2016
Keywords
Wilfrid Sellars, Normativity, Meta-ethics, Practical reasoning, Explanation, Durkheim
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0829-7
Abstract
Wilfrid Sellars described the moral syllogism that supports the inference “I ought to do x” from “Everyone ought to do x” as a “syntactical disguise” which embodies a “mistake.” He nevertheless regarded this form of reasoning as constitutive of the moral point of view. Durkheim was the source of much of this reasoning, and this context illuminates Sellars’ unusual philosophical reconstruction of the moral point of view in terms of the collective intentions of an ideal community of rational members for which the syllogism is empirically valid. The reconstruction also sheds light on the question of the status of common sense and normativity in Sellars’ naturalistic metaphysics.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Synthese, v. 193, issue 7, p. 2053-2075
Scholar Commons Citation
Olen, Peter and Turner, Stephen, "Was Sellars an Error Theorist?" (2016). Philosophy Faculty Publications. 306.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/phi_facpub/306
