The latest video in the Sophia “Dan & Massimo” series covered a philosopher you likely never heard of, and yet you should. We talked about Wilfrid Sellars (1912-1989), who had a big influence on Dan and who I discovered only relatively recently, to my delight.
Sellars is perhaps most famous for his distinction between what he called the “scientific image” and the “manifest image” of the world, meaning our understanding of how things are from, respectively, the scientific and the commonsense standpoints.
Sellars’ lifelong project was to articulate how we should see the relationship between these two “images” of the world, a project that may well be understood as one of the main ongoing goals of modern philosophy.
Sellars didn’t subordinate either standpoint to the other: that’s because while scientific knowledge is, in fact, more sophisticated than everyday knowledge at describing the world, it tells us relatively little about a lot of things we care about and can’t do without, like values and normativity.
In the end, Sellars said that we need to develop a kind of “stereoscopic” vision, being able to simultaneously hold the scientific and manifest images in front of us, integrating them in a way that makes sense for a human being. It is, of course, a compromise between scientism and irrationalism that I very much appreciate and have made — as readers of this blog know very well –my own major project in recent years.
Footnotes to Plato 
I tend to agree with Dan on a number of issues here (sorry to be disappointing you, Coel!).
DM,
Yes, economics deals with “reasons,” though not really classical economics. But behavioral economics does. But even there, not “reasons” in the sense meant by Dan (and Sellars), since one can do behavioral economics entirely on behaviorist grounds, i.e., without asking about internal mental states.
The scientific image does include some of the social sciences, as Dan notes, but in a limited fashion. A very good example was given to me by a colleague who does social psychology of colonialism. He said that part of what he does is “science” in the sense that the data is third-person, objective, quantitative, etc. But he also said one couldn’t possibility understand colonialism just on those bases. One needs to read first person testimony by people who endured it or imposed it, listening to their reasoning, their experiences, and their recounting of their feelings. That part is irreducibly humanistic, it belongs to the manifest image. But the full approach, combining scientific and manifest images, is an excellent example of Sellars’ “stereoscopic vision.”
Philip,
Sellars influenced Rorty and his (unusual) brand of pragmatism. But as we discuss in the video, he also influenced people like eliminativist Patricia Churchland.
LikeLiked by 3 people
socratic: Yes, it was. Sellars is very much a Kantian.
LikeLike
Sellars is one of those rare sorts who influence people who were diametrically opposed to each other. It shows in part, how easy it is to misinterpret his views, but it also shows how much people want to be able to claim him as their own.
LikeLike
Massimo
“Yes, economics deals with “reasons,” though not really classical economics. But behavioral economics does. But even there, not “reasons” in the sense meant by Dan (and Sellars), since one can do behavioral economics entirely on behaviorist grounds, i.e., without asking about internal mental states.”
This isn’t true. Even within classical economics, there are assumptions, both normative & behavioral, in how individuals & groups of people behave, how economic value is to be defined, and so on. Much of Classical Economics is just deeply flawed (the various strands like neoclassical and Marxist) because it doesn’t take into account what’s scientifically known about human nature, but the assumptions are there.
LikeLike
traditional neoclassical economics, behavioral economics is still an update within the neoclassical school
LikeLike
I don’t think that most of economics belongs to the Scientific Image, saphsin.
LikeLike
Dan, I had not heard of Sellars before either here, or maybe it was Sci Sal before that. After that, I read bits about his work, but nothing about his motivations. (You know, Wiki and SEP articles, mainly, for my reading.) Those, of course, are certainly in the manifest image, which idea I think has at least broad working points that are good. (I of course am not a scientism person either.)
That said, what of those motivations? What led him down this path to develop and postulate this idea, which is I know his main contribution to modern philosophy?
LikeLike
DM,
Glad you and Dan explained to each other how you don’t actually disagree. But his examples of Shakespeare and canvas and paintings are exactly why I think Sellars is right. Yes, of course one can do a quantitative study of word patterns in Shakespeare’s sonnets, just like one can analyze the chemistry of Van Gogh’s paintings. But that way one doesn’t get — at all — why Shakespeare and Van Gogh are so huge in human history and culture. The first approach belongs to the scientific image, the second to the manifest one. And, again, it is both possible and desirable to keep both images in mind, alternating and integrating them depending on one’s purpose.
Philip,
Again, yes, human-based intentions and morals can be studied by cognitive science, but that is simply another example of what I just wrote to DM. If the idea is that cognitive science can give us a good scientific image of human intentions, yes. If the idea is that it can substitute for the manifest image of intentions, no.
Coel,
I second DM’s “meh” on chimpanzees and termites. That’s precisely the sort of reasoning that infuriates Dan. I don’t find it infuriating, but it is a colossal missing of the point.
Saphsin,
No, Sellars’ distinction is not that between science and philosophy, and I didn’t mean to convey that impression, apologies. In fact, Sellars says (and I agree) that it is a major goal of philosophical discourse to mediate between the two images, precisely because philosophical discourse straddles the scientific one and the folk one. Beautiful, no?
Classical economics’ assumptions have, notoriously, nothing to do at all with human behavior. They are made for the sake of mathematical tractability.
Socratic,
While Sellars was indeed a Kantian, I don’t actually see a lot of similarities there, since the scientific image is accessible to humans, obviously. Unlike the noumenal world. Regardless, one doesn’t need to be a Kantian in order to appreciate Sellars — see me, for instance.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Saphsim: But, those ideas about human nature in classical econ are simply assumptions — basically, philosophical assumptions — that never were scientifically tested. To the degree that behavioral econ is more scientific, via Tversky/Kahneman et al, it has shown those assumptions were not only non-scientific, they were wrong. (Just as the assumptions of Stoic philosophy about the degree of human rationality are wrong. Or rationalist Enlightenment philosophers.)
LikeLike
Ah I think I misunderstood Massimo after rereading him. I mean classical economics deals with the same assumptions with behavioral economics but the particular focused studies in behavioral economics zeroes in on the Scientific Image when talking about the assumptions of how humans behave.
LikeLike
Socratic
My comment was posted too late but yeah I can see that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, Massimo, agreed that it doesn’t sound like he’s totally a Kantian in that sense. But, below the surface, how much does his two images mirror Kantian noumenal/phenomenal? 10 percent? 25? 50? 70?
Not asking for exact numbers; as on other things, I think people who read carefully know I use these numerated percentages for “mathematical tractability.”
That said, maybe you and Dan aren’t in 100 percent concord on how much Sellars maps to Kant?
LikeLike
Massimo
“No, Sellars’ distinction is not that between science and philosophy, and I didn’t mean to convey that impression, apologies. In fact, Sellars says (and I agree) that it is a major goal of philosophical discourse to mediate between the two images, precisely because philosophical discourse straddles the scientific one and the folk one. Beautiful, no?”
No I’m not saying that’s what you said, but about how Dan Kaufmann (appeared to be, apologies if not) responded to me in the earlier comments.
LikeLike
Massimo, Dan, here’s what I’m kind of getting at.
There are many ways to bifurcate a major theme (or Leitmotif, if I dip into classical music) of philosophy, if one determines it should be bifurcated. Plato’s Ideas vs the real world is Example No. 1 of Western philosophy, of course.
But, Sellars wasn’t a Platonist. He’s known as a Kantian of some sort, and he obviously accepts that. How much was he influenced by “the Kantian project”?
LikeLike
Socratic,
This may be a place where I disagree with Dan (see, Coel?). Regardless of Sellars’ Kantianism, I’d say the scientific image has nothing at all to do with the noumenal world. If it did, Kant would had noted that, since he was a big admirer of Newton.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great dialogue, and I said as much on the Sophia page.
I find the concepts of the scientific image and the manifest image to be very powerful in dissolving certain problems. If we want to understand human behavior, it is more useful to talk in terms of the beliefs, intentions, motivations and dispositions of the agents engaging in the behavior, than it is to talk about the physical magnitudes that token the behaviour. ‘Free will’ is assumed in the very language we use to talk about other people, even if the particles that make up those people must obey deterministic laws.
Also, amusingly enough, by instrumental standards, in certain situations using the language of the manifest image or folk psychology has greater predictive power than attempting the same thing with scientific language. Right now, I can predict exactly what my brother will buy for dinner: a specific inexpensive brand of frozen meatballs. I know this because I know the following: 1) my brother is thrifty; 2) he doesn’t want to spend a long time cooking his food; 3) he counts calories and protein intake, which is made easier with defined quantities of food; and 4) he just likes the taste of that brand of frozen meatballs. All of these reasons are “facts” about my brother, but not about physical quantities, and they better represent his actual thinking than some contrived scientific explanation, like he’s looking for a local maximum of his get-food-function, with the constraints of money, time, nutritional value and taste preference.
I do have a question, however. I wonder to what extent it is valid to employ the language of the scientific image to questions regarding the manifest image. In some cases it’s obviously invalid; you won’t get far in explaining someone’s taste in music by invoking quantum mechanics. But in other cases, scientific language seems indispensible; Socrates for example employs logic in his dialogues about ethics (which would seem to be a subject of the manifest image), and when politicians debate how a society should be governed they often appeal to objective metrics, such as economic growth, incidence of crime and disease, and so on.
So, is there some guiding principle for when such and such scientific language is appropriate for a problem conceived within the manifest image? I would imagine that there’s a constant negotiation between the scientific and manifest images, but it seems to me to be a difficult thing to adjudicate.
Otherwise, I liked to format of this dialogue, where you discussed a single concept. It would be really great if you could do something similar in the future. I won’t make suggestions; trust you to think of interesting topics for discussion.
LikeLiked by 1 person
No, Massimo, I agree with you. The MI/SI distinction is only Kantian in a kind of spirit, not in specifics or any kind of detail. The relevant analogue seems to be at the level of whether the picture of the world and human life and activity aims at a kind of perspectivelessness or whether it is overtly perspectival, although even this way of characterizing the analogy is not perfect.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hi Dan,
I don’t think this is ignorance, Dan.
I would also say that the chimpanzee has intentions, and I believe I am using the word in the technical philosophical sense. I think chimpanzees have mental representations, and concepts, and so on, even without having language. I understand that you believe this view to be incorrect, but nevertheless I think it is a view that can be held without being ignorant of the literature (which, though Coel and I are — certainly in comparsion to you — not everyone who holds such views is).
I don’t want to turn this into a debate on mental representation or intention or anything. I just want to make the point that when someone says something you disagree with, it is not always only because that person is ignorant. Sometimes a person could be familiar with the literature and still hold the same views.
LikeLike
Dan:
I am curious about your statements on Social Science. Are you saying that no such thing exists and that no such thing can exist? What is the demarcation for something to be a social science? That one or more people are under study?
A few years ago I think, cultural anthropologists decided that they weren’t scientists anymore. Is this something you approve of?
LikeLike
Dan, Massimo, thanks back. Is the label “Kantian” then really that useful? Why did Sellars accept it? I assume that, unlike Camus fighting against being labeled an “existentialist” rather than an “absurdist” (or Stravinsky fighting against being labeled a “neoclassicist”) he accepted the label.
LikeLike
Bjorn: As Sellars explains, it is a mistake to think of the Manifest Image as being in some sense unrigorous, which is why it isn’t strictly speaking a “folk picture.” (By ‘folk psychological’ is meant “intentional” not “folky”.) So it’s no surprise that it makes use of not just deductive but inductive logic.
Sellars demarcates in three basic ways: (1) there is nothing in the Manifest Image that corresponds to the postulating of theoretical entities; (2) the scientific aims to be a picture of the world that presupposes no particular point of view ore representation of it; (3) the Manifest Image includes prominently persons and their points of view, which means that it also includes values.
One thing that Sellars very much warns against is the piecemeal importation of concepts from the scientific image over into the manifest. One can discuss the overall relation of the two images to one another, but once you start trying to construe bits and pieces of the manifest image in terms of the scientific one, nothing but trouble abounds in the form of category mistakes. The effort to import notions of causality from classical mechanics into our accounts of human action are one prominent example of such a mistake.
LikeLiked by 1 person
DM: Coel was clearly using the term in the sense of intending to do something, which is not what it means in that context.
As for the rest, I’ve been teaching since 1993 and am almost 50 years old. I really don’t need lessons about the difference between something being wrong and something’s stemming from ignorance. Coel’s ignorance re: philosophy is well documented over years and years of attempting to communicate with him.
LikeLike
Bunsen: I don’t think that intentional explanations are scientific, and I don’t think reasons — understood a certain way — are causes, in the scientific sense. To the extent that a subject involves these at its core, I do not think it is a science, in that it does not traffic in scientific explanations.
I think that most of the efforts on the part of the so called social sciences to scientize have been a mistake. Sociology is one very notable example that I can think of where it seems obviously to have been a mistake.
LikeLike
I should add that this is something that Massimo and I disagree on. He sees a continuous spectrum from the physical to the biological to the social sciences, whereas I think that beyond the biological we are engaged in a fundamentally different kind of enterprise. We discussed it once on Sophia, but it may be worth exploring more deeply, and next time I might be more aggressive and push back a bit harder. It’s a very difficult subject.
http://meaningoflife.tv/videos/33625
LikeLike
Bjorn,
Glad you liked it. And yes, free will (or, as I prefer to call it, volition) is yet another good example.
Not sure that employing logic in ethical reasoning counts as importing the scientific into the manifest image, but at any rate I don’t defend the position that the two images are entirely independent — for instance because we use some of the same tools (math, logic, empirical evidence) to inform both images.
Notice also, what Dan says: the scientific image isn’t characterized by those tools, but rather by the postulation of invisible entities (like electrons).
LikeLike
“Sellars very much warns against is the piecemeal importation of concepts from the scientific image over into the manifest.”
It seems to me that cognitive scientists though do the opposite: importation of concepts from the manifest image over into the scientific.
LikeLike
Hi Dan,
Yeah, OK, I agree that Coel probably meant it that way (intending to do something), but you could interpret it the other way (intending to do something is also an intention in the philosophical sense) and his point would remain unchanged, I feel.
LikeLike
Dan, Massimo,
It’s interesting (and clarifying) what you say about how the scientific image postulates invisible entities, whereas the manifest image does not. Do you think this connects in any interesting or meaningful way with scientific realism and anti-realism, as they reprevent very different views about the “reality” of those invisible entities?
LikeLike
Hi DM,
Then such “loose” talk is pretty standard in science. The terms “cause” and “explanation”, as used within science, are not restricted to a narrow meaning.
True, and if we are talking about art then the physical object is only half of it, the other half being the human response to it. Thus if we were trying to do a “scientific study of art” then we’d be talking about the human mind as much as (or more than) the physical artistic object.
Björn,
Are you suggesting that any of those facts are outside the domain of science? If so, why?
Dan,
True, but it was also not intended to be about philosophical “intentionality”. It was a paragraph about mental states in general, and it was about placing human minds and human social interactions in general outside science.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Bjorn,
Ah, good point. Yes, scientific anti-realists like van Frassen very much wish to reduce talk of invisibles, to keep scientific metaphysics as close as possible to the manifest image. It would be interesting to know whether van Frassen was influenced by Sellars, though of course anti-realism goes back to logical empiricism, way before Sellars.
LikeLike