Book contents
- Interpreting Sellars
- Interpreting Sellars
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Editor’s Introduction Why Sellars Matters
- Chapter 1 Sellars’ Conception of Categories as Classifying Conceptual Roles and Its Consequences
- Chapter 2 Practical Reality Defended
- Chapter 3 The Place of Spirit in Nominalistic Metaphysics
- Chapter 4 Epistemological Foundationalism, Metaphysical Dogmatism, and the Myth of the Acategorial Given
- Chapter 5 Recovering the Original Image
- Chapter 6 Discursive Animals
- Chapter 7 Some Reflections on Language Games … and ChatGPT
- Chapter 8 Analyzing “Ought”
- Chapter 9 Sellars, Naturalism, and the “New Failure of Nerve”
- Chapter 10 A Clue to Sellars’ System
- Chapter 11 Sellarsian Picturing and Neo-Kantian Theories of Representation
- Chapter 12 Sellars and Peirce on Truth and the End of Inquiry
- Chapter 13 Sellars in Light of Dewey
- Chapter 14 Taking True and Making True
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 14 - Taking True and Making True
From Sellars to Rorty
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 April 2026
By
Edited by
Book contents
- Interpreting Sellars
- Interpreting Sellars
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Editor’s Introduction Why Sellars Matters
- Chapter 1 Sellars’ Conception of Categories as Classifying Conceptual Roles and Its Consequences
- Chapter 2 Practical Reality Defended
- Chapter 3 The Place of Spirit in Nominalistic Metaphysics
- Chapter 4 Epistemological Foundationalism, Metaphysical Dogmatism, and the Myth of the Acategorial Given
- Chapter 5 Recovering the Original Image
- Chapter 6 Discursive Animals
- Chapter 7 Some Reflections on Language Games … and ChatGPT
- Chapter 8 Analyzing “Ought”
- Chapter 9 Sellars, Naturalism, and the “New Failure of Nerve”
- Chapter 10 A Clue to Sellars’ System
- Chapter 11 Sellarsian Picturing and Neo-Kantian Theories of Representation
- Chapter 12 Sellars and Peirce on Truth and the End of Inquiry
- Chapter 13 Sellars in Light of Dewey
- Chapter 14 Taking True and Making True
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Sellars’s quest for a comprehensive philosophy led him to consider the possibility and desirability of somehow fusing or joining two distinct ‘images’ of humanity-in-the-universe: the manifest image of common sense and the scientific image that has come to rival it. Against this, Rorty urges a conception of “vocabularies” that we use to engage in self-fashioning and self-transformation. I argue that we should reject the identification of the manifest image with common sense in order to make room for what Rorty calls “abnormal discourses.” Abnormal discourses play an important role in how we change our conception of what we are. However, I agree with Sellars that the scientific image does tell us something about how things really are. I conclude that we should not want to fuse or join the two images, because they have distinct roles to play in human life.
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- Interpreting SellarsCritical Essays, pp. 267 - 284Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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