Abstract
The overall contention of this paper, conducted through an examination of the idea of a ‘critical direct realism’ as this was developed across the twentieth century first in the thought of Roy Wood Sellars (1880–1973) and then in a different form by his son Wilfrid Sellars (1912–1989), is that such a view, in both its conceptual and sensory representational dimensions, is plausible as a form of direct realism. However, to the extent that the mediating sensory or qualitative dimension was itself conceived by both thinkers in what I characterize as strongly ‘phenomenal realist’ terms, the resulting philosophical commitments were of a kind that most current direct realists would generally not accept, even in cases where they themselves are phenomenal realists (perhaps naïve realists). The various perceiver-dependent forms of that additional, perhaps detachable commitment of most critical realists is likely responsible for the assessment of William Pepperell Montague (1873–1953) and other ‘neo-realists’ that ‘critical realism’ is not really, as advertised by Roy Wood Sellars, a version of direct realism, but ultimately a retreat to indirect realism. However, I argue that in both of its primary conceptual and sensory representational commitments, ‘critical direct realism’ remains a plausible competitor to direct acquaintance versions of direct realism.
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Notes
‘Single’ quotation marks will be used for use/mention and scare-quote purposes, with “double” quotation marks reserved for direct quotations from authors. All italics are as in the original unless otherwise noted.
For an insightful and detailed treatment of Wilfrid S.’s account of perception as a form of ‘critical direct realism’, see Levine (2007). For the further development of a critical direct realism that is informed by cognitive science and by the history of theories of spatial perception in particular, and which also attributes that position to both Roy Wood Sellars and Wilfrid Sellars, see Gary Hatfield (e.g., 2011 and many other works). For a detailed contemporary defense of critical realism explicitly along the lines of Wilfrid S.’s view, and including objections to direct realism in its most common contemporary versions, see Coates (2007).
His son Wilfrid (1954) focused on his father’s Philosophy of Physical Realism in one of his two primary discussions of his father’s views. His other main treatment is his (1971), which treats of his father’s (1923) ‘double-knowledge approach’ to the mind–body problem, where ‘double’ refers roughly to our “inner,” “inspectional” consciousness of certain cerebral processes in their conscious “qualitative dimension” as a datum, plus the perspective of the ‘outer’ or third-person knowledge of those same cerebral processes that science can provide. As Roy Wood puts the latter view in a nutshell at (1932, p. 432): “Sensa are qualitative events permeating and one with mind-brain events.” Wilfrid S. comments on the latter and on other remarks of his father’s similar to it that they seem ambiguous between ‘sensa’ as features of brain events as opposed to being a distinctive and fundamental kind of brain events themselves (1971, p. 285). Wilfrid S.’s own complex and controversial theory of sensa sought to clarify this particular matter, as we shall see at least briefly in Sect. 2. For a good overview and analysis of Wilfrid S.’s views on the latter topic, see deVries (2005, Chap. 8).
“When an act of cognition achieves knowledge it may be said to have the intended object cognitively given,” and “this depends upon the revelatory capacity of logical ideas” (1932, p. 79).
As a referee adds, clarifying the relevant non-agential sense of functional ‘use’ that is involved here was important to Wilfrid S. in a way that is left unclear in the sentence from Roy Wood quoted from p. 128. For an emphasis on these points in relation to Wilfrid S.’s views on meaning, see O’Shea (2007, Chap. 4, Sects. 1 and 2). As the same referee also notes, the direct disclosure by meanings of aspects of the physical object itself for both Roy Wood and Wilfrid S. thus requires a wider background of conceptually-informed capacities, whereas this was not the case for many of the ‘new realist’ direct realists (for example, direct acquaintance theorists).
Compare Russell’s similar claim, despite important differences in their views: “we know nothing about the intrinsic quality of physical events except when these are mental events that we directly experience” (Russell 1956, p. 164). I discuss this aspect of Roy Wood’s view further in the concluding Sect. 4.
This is my understanding of Roy Wood’s account of how the interpretive perception of objects ‘as’ such and such relates to the notion of direct intuition or apprehension that is also involved in that account (and which of course will be treated very differently by Wilfrid S. in light of his critique of ‘the myth of the given’).
For Sellars on the myth of the given, of course, see his 1956. For a recent in-depth examination of the arguments involved and their consequences, see O’Shea (2021a).
See O'Shea (2021b) for a defence of the view that C. I. Lewis, despite his recent defenders in this respect, does indeed commit to the positions that both Roy Wood Sellar and Wilfrid Sellars accused him of holding.
For a recent collection on Wilfrid S. that exhibits these interpretive debates, see O’Shea (2016).
For an in-depth account of the relationship between the views of the father and the son, with a particular focus on their differences on the question of the nature and value of Kant’s conception of the a priori categories of understanding, and with a substantive awareness of the changing historical backgrounds, see Gironi (2017).
As a matter of interest, as far as I have been able to determine W. Sellars (1964, p. 130) was the first to coin the term ‘Mentalese’, later used by Jerry Fodor, for the hypothesis of a ‘language of thought’, a view which Wilfrid had already been developing in a distinctive form in the 1950s.
In his third Carus Lecture Sellars states as follows a distinction between the all-comprehensive physical1 domain as opposed to sensings or (ultimately) ‘sensa’ as ‘physical1-but-not-physical2’ micro-particulars, a distinction that he had worked with since the 1950s (with Paul Meehl): “Roughly, those features of objects are physical2 which are, in principle, definable in terms of attributes exemplified in the world before the appearance of sentient organisms, i.e., attributes necessary and sufficient to describe and explain behavior of ‘merely material’ things. Physical1 features, on the other hand, are any which belong in the causal order” (1981a, III §76n15). ‘Sensa’, for Wilfrid S., are ‘physical1-but-non-physical2’ phenomena of sensory consciousness, in a way that Wilfrid S. argues will require fundamental revision of current theories within a future (micro-)neurophysiology of the central nervous system. I attempt to explain Wilfrid S.’s position on this matter in O’Shea (2007, Chap. 6). For present purposes, however, I am suggesting that certain aspects of both the father and the son’s conceptions of ‘intuited qualia’ (Roy Wood) and ‘postulated sensa’ (Wilfrid S.) need not be regarded as essential to any version of critical direct realism in its sensory-representational dimension.
It would be misleading in Wilfrid S.’s case to speak of shared qualia assumptions, given how comprehensively he criticizes and rejects the epistemological assumptions and arguments defended by most qualia theorists. I think it is clear, however, that both Roy Wood and Wilfrid S. make assumptions about qualitative sensory consciousness across veridical and non-veridical perceptual experiences in ways that are rejected in contemporary ‘disjunctive’ conceptions of perceptual knowledge, as for example by John McDowell, who in other respects is deeply influenced by the conceptually representationalist aspects of Wilfrid S.’s views. The relevant ‘common factor’ was conceived by both Roy Wood and Wilfrid S. in phenomenal realist terms that, I am suggesting, optionally go beyond what might be required of a cognitive scientific hypothesis of mapping and tracking sensory representations of the sort Wilfrid S. also recommends.
For one relatively brief and authoritative account of this long story, see Rosenberg (1982).
This novel conception of ground-level ‘emergent laws’ was originally put forward in Meehl and Sellars (1956).
For an example of a substantive view of sensory consciousness and representation that is in the close neighborhood of Wilfrid S.’s view but without the more controversial aspects of Sellars’ conception of sensory consciousness, see Rosenthal (2016) among his other works.
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Acknowledgements
My thanks to the participants and the organizers of the 2022 workshop on ‘Direct Realism: Historical and Systematic Perspectives’ at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz at which this paper had its start, and also to the two referees for Topoi for their exceptionally helpful comments.
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O’Shea, J.R. Critical Direct Realism? New Realism, Roy Wood Sellars, and Wilfrid Sellars. Topoi 43, 135–145 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-023-09958-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-023-09958-7