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 2 - Practical Reality Defended
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 April 2026
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
I identify and propose to resolve a contradiction in Sellars’s ontology. On the one hand, as a scientific realist, he is committed to the thesis that scientific descriptions and explanations have priority over nonscientific descriptions and explanations. Insofar as science itself is descriptive and eschews all normative concepts, it would seem that there is no room for any normatively governed phenomena in Sellars’s scientific realism. On the other hand, Sellars is committed to the existence of at least one major kind of normatively governed phenomenon: persons. I have argued that persons have a distinct kind of reality that I call practical reality. In this chapter I explain why Sellars’s own approach to ontology is compatible with the idea of practical reality, what kinds of things have practical reality, and why persons have practical reality.
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- Interpreting SellarsCritical Essays, pp. 30 - 45Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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