Table Of Content

The Ethics of Wilfrid Sellars Wilfrid Sellars’s ethical theory was rich and deeply innovative. On Sellars’s view, moral judgments express a special kind of shared intention. Thus, we should see Sellars as an early advocate of an expressivism of plans and intentions, and an early theorist of collective intentionality. He supplemented this theory with a sophisticated logic of intentions, a robust theory of the categorical validity of normative expressions, a subtle way of reconciling the cognitive and motivating aspects of moral judgment, and much more —all within a strict nominalism that preserves Sellars’s commitment to naturalism. The Ethics of Wilfrid Sellars offers the first systematic treatment of this sadly neglected aspect of Sellars’s work and demonstrates that his ethical theory —just like his more widely discussed epistemology —has much to contribute to current debates. Jeremy Randel Koons is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. He has published widely in epistemology, metaethics, philosophy of religion, and other areas. His most recent book, The Normative and the Natural (co authored with Michael P. Wolf), appeared in 2016. Routledge Studies in American Philosophy Edited by Willem deVries, University of New Hampshire, USA Henry Jackman, York University, Canada Toward a Pragmatist Metaethics Diana B. Heney Sellars and Contemporary Philosophy Edited by David Pereplyotchik and Deborah R. Barnbaum Pragmatism and Objectivity Essays Sparked by the Work of Nicolas Rescher Edited by Sami Pihlström The Quantum of Explanation Whitehead’s Radical Empiricism Randall E. Auxier and Gary L. Herstein Peirce on Perception and Reasoning From Icons to Logic Edited by Kathleen A. Hull and Richard Kenneth Atkins Peirce’s Speculative Grammar Logic as Semiotics Francesco Bellucci Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Nature of Philosophy Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse Pragmatism and the European Traditions Encounters with Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology Before the Great Divide Edited by Maria Baghramian and Sarin Marchetti Community and Loyalty in American Philosophy Royce, Sellars, and Rorty Steven A. Miller Sellars and the History of Modern Philosophy Edited by Luca Corti and Antonio M. Nunziante The Ethics of Wilfrid Sellars Jeremy Randel Koons For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com /Routledge- Studies- in- American- Philosophy/book- series/RSAP. The Ethics of Wilfrid Sellars Jeremy Randel Koons First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Jeremy Randel Koons The right of Jeremy Randel Koons to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 70874- 7 (hbk) ISBN: 978- 1- 315- 20116- 0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC For Lucy and Abby Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Situating Sellars’s Ethical Theory in the Contemporary Landscape 1 1 Sellars’s Synoptic Vision 12 2 A New Naturalism 34 3 Moral Judgments as Shared Intentions 54 4 What Are Sellarsian We- Intentions? 79 5 Practical Reasoning and the Logic of Intentions 104 6 Material Practical Inference 141 7 Cooperative Rationality and We- Intentions 158 8 Defeasible Rules and the Particularist Challenge 180 9 Rules, Pattern- Governed Behavior, and Collective Attitudes 194 10 Moral Motivation 1 —Against the Humean Account 216 11 Moral Motivation 2 —Sellars’s Kantian Account 234 12 Against Moral Foundationalism 250 13 Categorical Validity and the Necessity of Community 271 14 Sellars’s Mistaken Formalism 309 15 Sellars’s Ethical Naturalism 324 Works Cited 345 Index 355 Acknowledgments In the first place, this book would not exist were it not for Bill deVries. In early 2015 I gave a paper on Sellars’s ethical theory at a conference (“Sellars in a New Generation”) at Kent State University. Bill encouraged me to expand these ideas into a book project— an idea that had not pre- viously occurred to me —and offered substantial encouragement along the way. Writing about Sellars is a particularly daunting task, largely because he is such a systematic philosopher —meaning that one often feels as though one must be conversant with every philosophical subfield to do justice to Sellars’s integrative philosophical vision. As this is impossible for mere mortals such as myself, it was essential during the writing process to get feedback from colleagues who could point out lacunae in my knowledge, literature I needed to address, or (just as often) simple argumentative lapses. I am very grateful to Bill deVries, Stefanie Dach, and Michael P. Wolf for reading a draft of the manuscript and providing very helpful feedback to me. Very intensive feedback was provided during a one- day manuscript workshop sponsored by the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at Georgetown University’s Qatar campus. The manuscript was circulated in advance to a number of scholars, and we met on 5 November 2017 for an all- day session to discuss the work. I received enormously helpful feedback from Bana Bashour, Arudra Burra, Dionysis Christias, Anjana Jacob, Bhaskarjit Neog, Amir Saemi, Lucas Thorpe, Jack Woods, and Bill Wringe —feedback that led to substantial revisions (and a few chapters being overhauled from the ground up). I also presented some of the material from this book to audiences at Bilkent University and Boğaziçi University and am grateful to audiences there for stimulating discussion and for pushing me on several weak spots in my argument. Also, I am grateful to Luz Christopher Seiberth and members of the Sellars reading group he organizes (Bill deVries, Marc Joseph, Jim O’Shea, and Lionel Shapiro) for reading and discussing with me portions of Chapter 13. Bill deVries, Jim O’Shea, Kenneth Westphal, Matthew Chrisman, Robert Sugden, and Jack Woods were also patient