Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind

Note: This paper was first presented as the University of London Special Lectures on Philosophy for 1955-56, delivered on March 1, 8, and 15, 1956, under the title "The Myth of the Given: Three Lectures on Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind." Reproduced with the permission of the University of Minnesota Press from: Wilfrid Sellars, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," in Herbert Feigl and Michael Scriven, eds., Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume I: The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis (University of Minnesota Press, 1956), pp. 253-329. When the essay was reprinted in Wilfrid Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963, pp 127-196), Sellars added a few notes which have been incorporated into the present version. I should also add that in the reprint British spelling was used. Republished as a separate book, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, with an introduction by Richard Rorty and a study guide by Robert Brandom (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). Republished in Willem deVries and Timm Triplett, Knowledge, Mind, and the Given: A Reading of Sellars' "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub., 2000). French translation Empirisme et philosophie de l'esprit (Combas (France): l'Eclat, 1992). (This version follows the pagination found in Wilfrid Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963, pp.127196.) 127