Wilfrid Sellars Semantics and Synthetic

Wilfrid Sellars, Philosophical Semantics & Synthetic Necessary Truths
Kenneth R. WESTPHAL
Department of Philosophy
Boðaziçi Üniversitesi (Ýstanbul)
A revised version of this paper forthcoming as chapter 20 in: K.R. WESTPHAL,

Grounds of Pragmatic Realism: Hegel’s Internal Critique & Transformation of Kant’s Critical Philosophy.
Leiden: Brill, 2017 (series: Critical Studies in German Idealism, ed. Paul Cobben).
ABSTRACT. One feature of Sellars’s ‘philosophical’ semantics (EAE ¶¶40, 67) concerns ‘syn-
thetic necessary truths’ (SM 2:53, 3:18–19), a direct successor to C. I. Lewis’s (MWO, 1929:
227–9, 254–8) relativised pragmatic a priori. Following Reichenbach, Lewis and Parrini, I argue
(briefly) that the relativised synthetic a priori required for natural science cannot be merely
linguistic (§3). I then argue in detail that the relevant, relativised synthetic a priori cannot be
merely meta-linguistic (§§4–7). So doing identifies the key distinction between empiricism and
pragmatism; the role of that distinction in contrasting Lewis’s robust pragmatic realism in
MWO (1929) to his empiricist relapse in AKV (1946); the key contrast between the robust
pragmatic realism of Classical American pragmatism and meta-linguistically inclined neo-prag-
matism; and shows that Brandom’s (2015) inferentialist semantics is neo-pragmatist, not prag-
matically realist; and that Sellars developed his philosophical semantics on behalf of robust
pragmatic realism. Unlike Brandom, Sellars made his way back to robustly realist classical
pragmatism by attending closely to Carnap’s use of his formal semantics and its methodologi-
cal links to Carnap’s explication of conceptual ‘explication’. Carnap’s explication of ‘explica-
tion’ reconnects to Lewis’s pragmatic realist semantics in MWO. (Draft: 23.05.17)
© 2017 Kenneth R. WESTPHAL, ALL rights reserved. Work in progress: Comments and criticism
welcome, no matter how severe! Do not quote, cite, copy, replicate, distribute or publish in any form
whatsoever, neither in part nor in whole, without express, written permission of the author. Thank you!
1 INTRODUCTION.
1.1 In his critique of Carnap, Sellars contrasts Carnap’s ‘formal’ or ‘formalised’ semantics to
his own proposed ‘philosophical semantics’ (EAE 40, 67), though without telling us outright
just what constitutes, nor what justifies, some specifically philosophical semantics, nor what such
a philosophical semantics is to achieve. Sellars does, however, provide many of its features and
characteristic analyses, which stand out in greater relief when compared and contrasted to both
Carnap’s and Quine’s semantics in critical detail. This task I have already begun (Westphal
2015a) and further develop here. I do so both to understand Sellars’s own views, but more
importantly, to understand the relevant philosophical and semantic issues. In particular, I seek
to understand whether, how or to what extent Sellars developed – or contributed to – an ade-
quate nominalist account of universals, one consistent with what Peirce called ‘real generals’
(CP 5:48, 312, 430, 431, 503; 6:485) or what we would call causal laws of nature and natural
kinds.1 Important as those semantic issues are – both as such and to my aims here – more im-
1
In this regard, I attempt to catch up to Seibt (1990).
© 2017 Kenneth R. WESTPHAL; ALL rights reserved. 1 Do not cite, quote, copy or distribute in any form.
portant still is Sellars’s successor notion to C. I. Lewis’s (1929, 227–9, 254–8) relativised prag-
matic a priori, which Sellars designated ‘synthetic necessary truths’ (SM 2:53, 3:18–19).2
1.2 In focussing on Sellars’s philosophical semantics in this way and in this regard, I jettison
his commitment to a fundamentally atomistic ontology, a commitment devolving ultimately
from commitment to first-order predicate logic. This is incompatible with the modal realism
about causality central to many natural sciences, including centrally Newtonian Mechanics
(Harper 2011) – an issue not mooted by General Relativity (Redhead 1998, Parrini 1983, 2009).
In rejecting the sufficiency of first-order predicate logic for epistemology I agree with Hintikka
(2014) that first-order predicate logic cannot formulate the counter-factual (subjunctive) claims
and inferences required by and used in even commonsense empirical knowledge (see below,
§7.4). Whilst sympathetic to the prospects of an ultimate process ontology, those processes will
be causally structured; only as causal processes can they perdure through some period of time
in some region of space, transform as they do, effect whatever they bring about and exclude
other particulars or processes from the region they occupy (cf. Westphal 2015b).
My case for Sellars’s notion of ‘synthetic necessary truths’ begins by reviewing Paolo Parrini’s
(1983, 1995, 2009, 2010) important point, following Reichenbach (1920), that the relativised
synthetic a priori required by and used in fundamental physics cannot be merely linguistic (§3).
To pose these issues properly, I first recount four results of my examination of how Quine and
Sellars respond in contrasting ways to some fundamental tensions in Carnap’s semantics (§2).
After arguing (briefly) that the relevant, relativised synthetic a priori cannot be merely linguistic
(§3), I then argue in detail that the relevant, relativised synthetic a priori cannot be merely meta-
linguistic (§§4–7). Examining these points allows me to demonstrate four significant points:
1) The key distinction between empiricism and pragmatism;
2) The role of that distinction in the contrast between C. I. Lewis’s robust pragmatic
realism in Mind and the World Order (1929) and his relapse into empiricism in An Analy-
sis of Knowledge and Valuation (1946);
3) The key contrast between the robust pragmatic realism of Classical American pragma-
tism and meta-linguistically inclined neo-pragmatism;
4) Sellars developed his philosophical semantics on behalf of robust pragmatic realism.
One central theme in the ensuing analyses is that Sellars had made his way back to robustly
realist classical pragmatism because he paid close attention to Carnap’s use of his formalised
semantics and its methodological links to Carnap’s explication of conceptual ‘explication’.
(Many of the texts and issues I examine are discussed by Brandom (2015); I shall take issue
only with the most important points, see §§6, 7.)
2 SELLARS, KANT & SEMIOTICS.
Three results of my previous examination of how Quine and Sellars respond in contrasting
2
Citations of Peirce’s Collected Papers (‘CP’) are by volume:¶ numbers; citations of Sellars, SM, are by
chapter:¶ numbers. Except those Sellars divided by numbered sections (§), citations of other writings by
Sellars are by the initials of their titles and ¶ number; title abbreviations are listed at the head of the
References; book chapters are indicated by Roman numerals; e.g.: SM I:23 = Science & Metaphysics, chapter
1, ¶23. Page references for Lewis (1929) are to the corrected (1956) re-issue; ‘¶’ = ‘paragraph’.
ways to some fundamental tensions in Carnap’s semantics form the basis for the present fur-
ther development of my reconstruction of Sellars’s philosophical semantics.
2.1 First: the central theme uniting all of Sellars’s comments on the ‘Myth of the Given’, all
the forms this Myth takes and all of the items said by others to be simply ‘given’ is this: simply
being confronted by something does not suffice to recognise it as whatever it is, nor what is its
kind nor what are its characteristics. Any recognition of anything whatever – whether a particular
individual (of whatever scale), any particular universal as distinct to any other universal, any
mark used as a symbol or any inscription, or the kind or features of any of these – requires
classifying it, however approximately or fallibly, where any such classification involves judg-
ment (Westphal 2015a, §6.4).3 In this regard, Sellars’s examinations of mythical givenness serve
to highlight Kant’s point about the inherently judgmental character of human thought and
knowledge, even about the apparently simplest matters (or whatever may appear utterly sim-
ple), at a time and in a context where the animus against any and all possible varieties or resi-
dues of ‘psychologism’ led his colleagues to focus respectable philosophical attention exclu-
sively upon propositions (cf. Carnap 1950b, §11), and thus to neglect the kinds of capacities
required for us to form or to assess relevant propositions or their appropriate use in any actual
context on any particular occasion.
2.2 Second: for any classifying of anything whatever or any of its characteristic as falling under
any classification to constitute, not merely differential response but judgment, whoever so classi-
fies something must be able to consider whether S/he judges as S/he ought. This is Sellars’s
insight into the fundamental, irreducibly normative character of rational judgment, constituted by
assessing which judgment (if any) is proper to make in view of available information and relevant
considerations (Westphal 2015a, §6.3).4 This fundamental insight is Kant’s. Kant noted that, in
any judgment about objects, events, actions, principles or cognitions, we must consider whe-
ther the various factors we happen to consider are integrated by us into a candidate judgment
as they ought best to be integrated (KdrV A262/B318, cf. B219). Such normatively structured
judgment is required to guide our thought or action by evidence, reasons or principles. Kant
states this point most concisely in the Groundwork:
Everything in nature works according to laws. Only a rational being has the capacity to act
according to a representation of laws, i.e., according to principles, and so has a will. Since
deriving actions from laws requires reason, the will is nothing but practical reason. (GMS,
GS 4:412; tr. KRW)
The ‘I think’ which must be able to accompany any of one’s own thoughts is, in Kant’s as in
Sellars’s view, the ‘I judge’. The normativity of rational judgment concerns our judgmental
capacity to assess what is to be judged, to assess our judgin g and to assess our judgment of it. This
3
‘... there are various forms taken by the myth of the given in this connection [sic], depending on other
philosophical commitments. But they all have in common the idea that the awareness of certain sorts—and
by ‘sorts’ I have in mind, in the first instance [sic], determinate sense repeatables—is a primordial, non-
problematic feature of “immediate experience”’ (EPM ¶79, cf. FMPP 1.44). For detailed discussion, see
James Conant’s contribution to the present volume.
4
This rules out the rationalist form of mythical givenness, as alleged ‘immediate judgments’ – an oxymoron.
In EPM (note 10) Sellars indicates his debt to Linnell (1954), of which little was published; see Linnell
(1956), (1960). Directly comparable research appeared shortly thereafter by Sellars’s doctoral student,
Robert Turnbull (1959), though it assesses Broad’s empiricist theory of ideas; on Hume’s, to much the
same effect, though by different means, see Westphal (2013).
point holds, regardless of further considerations about how accurately, adequately or justifiedly
we judge. These further considerations involve further normative aspects of rational judgment
and assessment. These points about the normative character of rational judgment hold univer-
sally, across all formal and non-formal domains, including cognition, action, aesthetics – and
also philosophical semantics.
2.3 My third preparatory reminder is that Carnap sought to supplant epistemology by logical
explications of scientific languages, on the one hand, and the minimum necessary behaviourist
psychology of observation on the other. In this connection, Carnap (1963b, 923) denied his
semantical rules did or should contain anything prescriptive. In ‘Truth by Convention’, Quine
(1936) was rightly exercised about the character and status of the most elementary use of logical
symbols, connectives and inference required to first specify the basic signs and rules of any
Carnapian linguistic framework, and indeed, for any formally defined logistic system (including
e.g. natural deduction). Now Carnap never mistook mere marks for meaningful symbols, but his
repeated attempts to be as descriptive, non-normative and as behaviouristic as possible pro-
duced some unfortunate equivocations, confusions and misunderstandings (Westphal 2015a,
§3).
The corrective lies in Carnap’s (1931, 91; 1934 [1959], 175; MCTC 49–52) view that inferential
differences constitute differences in meaning: the meaning of a term or phrase can be specified
by determining which inferences can, and which cannot, be drawn by using that term or
phrase. This same point holds also of marks used as signs or symbols: Their meaning, too, can
be specified only by specifying their proper inferential roles (cf. EAE ¶54). This is why Sellars
stressed that understanding a sign, term or phrase involves recognising and being able to draw
such inferences, together with recognising in what circumstances various of those inferences
may or may not be relevant, permissible or even obligatory, and behaving accordingly (whether
verbally or corporeally).5
In this important regard, Sellars sides with Carnap’s colleague at Chicago, Charles Morris
(1925, §20), who like Peirce stressed that semiotics concerns the intelligent use of signs, that is,
intelligent behaviour using signs, which is indeed behavioural, but cannot be explained merely
causally or behaviouristically (simply in terms of physical stimulus and physiological response).
As fundamental as this point is to semiosis and to semiotics, it also indicates why the proposed
science of semiotics did not deliver the expected riches: The signs don’t do the work, we who
use signs in various (potentially) intelligent ways do the significant intellectual work; such work
is already the subject matter of and within the various disciplines, professions, trades and prac-
tices – including games and typography. This is no surprise: behaviourist stimulus-response
relations are insufficient to distinguish between what Descartes called the ‘formal’ and the ‘objec-
tive’ reality of ideas, a distinction which also holds of signs and their significance, in contrast to
their physical characteristics, whether as sign design, (semantic) counter or mere mark.
2.4 A fourth and final preliminary is to recall the three main aspects of the study of language
identified by Morris: syntax, semantics and pragmatics. These correspond roughly to grammar,
meaning (intension) and specific statements made by particular people on particular occasions.
Carnap first developed formal studies of syntax in The Logical Syntax of Language (1934). He
5
Michael Williams’ presentation on Sellars (Rome 2012) helped me appreciate these two different
considerations Sellars indicates; cf. Williams (2013), 67–71, (2015).
added formal semantics in his Introduction to Semantics (1942), which he extended to intensional
semantics in Meaning and Necessity (1956). Both branches of Carnap’s formal studies expressly
abstract from pragmatics, that is, from what people actually say and do by speaking as, when-,
wherever and about whatever they do. All of that belongs to pragmatics. Early on, Sellars learn-
ed the hard way that pragmatics cannot be formalised (Olen 2012, 2015; Westphal 2015a, §6.2).
As we shall see, the fact that the pragmatics of language use cannot be formalised is linked in
significant ways to the fact that the relativised pragmatic a priori cannot be merely linguistic –
nor merely meta-linguistic.
3 WHY THE RELATIVE SYNTHETIC A PRIORI CANNOT BE MERELY LINGUISTIC.
3.1 Carnap & Linguistic Frameworks. Classical analytic philosophy aspired to conceptual analysis,
i.e., to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the proper use of any interesting though
puzzling or controversial term, phrase, concept or principle. However, conceptual analysis is
inadequate for understanding science. It is also inadequate for epistemology (Gettier 1963). In
part this is because philosophical puzzles or problems typically arise, not in isolation, but be-
long to networks of terms, phrases, principles, puzzles, problems and issues. Accordingly, the
conceptual analysis of any one key concept rarely suffices, by itself, to resolve any serious
philosophical issue. Instead, some network of related terms, principles and usage must be clari-
fied, by developing an improved linguistic framework for the relevant domain of issues and
phenomena. Carnap’s use of the formal mode of speech developed conceptual explications
into explicitly defined ‘linguistic frameworks’.
Carnap’s semantics is the pinnacle of logical empiricist thought, which remains invaluable to-
day, both for its insights and its deficits. Carnap specified far more carefully than any other
empiricist what sorts of semantic meaning can be assigned to high-level theoretical statements
within a scientific theory, and what aspect(s) of their semantic content can be confirmed by
empirical observations. Carnap recommended the most liberal approach to the semantics of
theoretical statements consistent with empiricism about confirmation.
3.2 Conceptual Analysis vs Conceptual Explication. In 1950, Carnap (1950b, 1–18) explicated his
method of philosophical explication, which he had been using since the 1920s. The conceptual
‘explication’ of a term or principle provides a clarified, though partial specification of its mean-
ing or significance, for certain purposes, and seeks to improve upon the original term or phrase
within its original or proposed context(s) of use. Explications are thus both revisable and are
rooted in actual usage and thus in prior linguistic practices, which are rooted within whatever
practices use the terms or phrases in question. Successful explication aims to better facilitate
the practice from which the explicandum derives.
It is striking and significant that Kant drew exactly this same distinction between conceptual
analysis and conceptual explication, using these same terms, and for very much the same rea-
sons in the Critique of Pure Reason (A727–30/B755–8). Mere analysis of concepts is insufficient
for understanding or resolving any substantive issue in philosophy, whether in practical or in
theoretical philosophy. All the key concepts required in practical and in theoretical philosophy
can at most be explicated, sufficiently for the purposes of a specific inquiry; none can be de-
fined by providing necessary and sufficient conditions for their proper use. (This is one main
source of the terminological flexibility which vexes many of Kant’s readers.)
This distinction between conceptual analysis and conceptual explication maps neatly onto the
distinction between semantic internalism and externalism. According to semantic internalism,
any and all conceptual content or linguistic meaning (descriptive content, intension) can be
fully specified without reference to anything non-mental, in particular, without reference to any
features of one’s physical environment, or to features of one’s merely somatic (bodily) states.
In contrast, according to semantic externalism, at least some conceptual content or linguistic
meaning (descriptive content, intension) can be fully specified only by reference to non-mental,
non-linguistic or non-conceptual phenomena, especially, by reference to objects or events in
someone’s physical environment, or perhaps to features of someone’s merely somatic (bodily)
states.
In brief, conceptual analysis requires semantic internalism, because only if we can identify by
mere reflection upon our concepts or our meanings their exact content or significance (inten-
sion), can we also determine whether any purported ‘conceptual analysis’ is complete, and so
provides the necessary as well as the sufficient conditions for its proper use. By contrast,
conceptual explication requires semantic externalism, because only within the original context
of the use of a term or phrase or principle (the explicandum) can its explication be assessed, as
improving or failing to improve upon the original explicandum (in whatever significant re-
gards) within its proper context of use. That usage will be, not merely a manner of speaking,
but a manner of speaking developed to conduct and facilitate some activity, typically some
form of inquiry, the context of which in part determines the content or significance (intension)
of the original term or phrase, and likewise of the newly explicated concept(s) or principle(s).
Accordingly, conceptual explications are tied to the context in which the relevant speech-acts
(usage) occur. In fact, Carnap’s ‘linguistic frameworks’ are conceptual explications writ large, as
formalised fragments of a language fit for one or another form of empirical inquiry, investiga-
tion or experimentation.
3.3 Conceptual Explication & Semantic Externalism. Carnap’s semantic views in 1950 point in two
opposite directions: In ‘Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology’ (1950a) his empiricist account of
‘ontology’ as always internal to one or another linguistic framework requires semantic internal-
ism, because the linguistic framework alone is to specify the relevant ontology of the relevant
context of linguistic use. However, Carnap’s (1950b) account of conceptual explication requires
semantic externalism, because only framework-independent facts – at an utter minimum: rates
at which various mundane regularities occur – can provide any context for assessing whether,
how or how well a new conceptual explication improves upon whatever term(s) or phrase(s) it
explicates. Carnap never reconciled these two tendencies. His framework-internal ontology
(1950a), however, is untenable for internal reasons, and also for a further reason, widely ne-
glected by his successors.
Carnap recognised – indeed he insisted – that his formal syntax and his formal semantics were
only two aspects of any complete semantics. The third aspect he called ‘descriptive semantics’;
its task is to identify which observation statements are uttered by natural scientists. What Car-
nap calls ‘descriptive semantics’ belongs to the third class of linguistic studies identified by
Morris, namely to pragmatics. Without this pragmatic ‘descriptive semantics’, Carnap’s linguis-
tic frameworks are – officially and inevitably – nothing but uninterpreted semi-axiomatic sys-
tems, altogether lacking empirical significance or use.6
Now semantic externalism is fundamental to classical American pragmatism. According to
classical American pragmatism, our pragma – what we do, how we do it, and what we do it with; in
short: our practices and procedures – have philosophical priority over whatever we say about
our practices, because they have (inter alia) semantic priority over what we say about our prac-
tices.
In contrast, according to neo-pragmatism, what there is, what we do, what we can say, and
what we can ascribe to one another as believing or claiming, are all hostage to one’s preferred,
merely conventional meta-language (of whatever kind or level). Neo-pragmatism clings to Car-
nap’s (1950a) untenable view, according to which ‘ontology’ is hostage to one’s preferred lin-
guistic framework. Neo-pragmatism only appeals to ‘pragmatics’ as the third, poor cousin to
formalisable syntax and semantics, as a garbage category collecting whatever cannot be assimi-
lated to formalisable techniques within syntax or semantics. To neo-pragmatists, ‘pragmatism’
designates nothing more than another rather chatty species doing its best to muddle through.
The route back to genuine pragmatic realism is via Carnap’s account of conceptual explication
and its semantic externalism. Sellars recognised and understood this important semantic and
pragmatic aspect of Carnapian explication (Westphal 2015a, §6.5).
3.4 A brief example drawn from Huw Price (2004) about linguistic reference nicely illustrates
the contrast between semantic externalism and internalism, and between pragmatic realism and
neo-pragmatism.7 Consider whether linguistic or cognitive reference is a significant, substantial
relation between any person and any particular(s) about which S/he makes a claim or state-
ment. Presumably, such reference relations are proper subject matter for empirical linguistics,
cognitive psychology, philosophy of language and epistemology. Accordingly, different theories
of reference must be true of actual linguistic reference, however it occurs, yet only one can be
true of actual linguistic reference, and different theories of reference must be able to conflict
(disagree) with one another. Call actual linguistic reference ‘REFERENCE’.
Price (2004, 82–3) asks us to consider two theories of REFERENCE, ‘T’ and ‘Z’, where
According to Theory T: (1) REFERENCE = relation R.
In contrast, according to Theory Z: (2) REFERENCE = relation R*.
Hence these two theories of reference appear to conflict about what REFERENCE is, or how
REFERENCE occurs, or how we secure REFERENCE to whatever we discuss. Price argues, how-
ever, that according to theories T and Z what actually holds is, respectively, the following:
According to Theory T: (3) ‘Reference’ stands in relation R to R.
Whereas, according to Theory Z: (4) ‘Reference’ stands in relation R* to R*.
These claims ((3) and (4)) do not conflict. Therefore, Price concludes, REFERENCE is not a
substantial, empirically specifiable relation; there is no such phenomenon as REFERENCE, there
are no facts about what actual linguistic REFERENCE is. This is Price’s ‘deflationary’ view of
6
For detailed discussion of these points, see Westphal (2015a), §2.
7
For discussion of Price’s (2004) views, see Knowles (2014). Here I only discuss this one sample argument
because it illustrates a wide-spread pattern of thought and argument. I do not purport to assess Price’s
‘subject naturalism’ here; although I have doubts about that view, I join his opposition to ill-founded
metaphysics, especially that which purports to argue on semantic grounds; see Westphal (2014b).
REFERENCE, or rather: of ‘reference’.
This argument cannot be sound; I do not think it can even be valid. By this line of reasoning,
how can any deflationist about REFERENCE formulate statements (3) or (4)? How can the advo-
cates of Theory T or Theory Z affirm either statement (1) or (2)? These statements, and any-
one’s capacity to formulate, to assert or to deny them, require that theorists of REFERENCE can
refer meta-linguistically to linguistic formulations of theories of linguistic REFERENCE. Now if
actual linguistic REFERENCE is supposed to be problematic, why is meta-linguistic ‘reference’ to
any theory of REFERENCE – or any theory of ‘reference’ – less problematic? What, exactly, enables
the deflationist about ‘reference’ to refer to anyone else’s theory of REFERENCE or of ‘reference’
without using the very resources of linguistic REFERENCE s/he purports to deflate? I pose this
challenge to the deflationist advocate of this argument: to explain cogently how s/he can refer
meta-linguistically to anyone’s theory of REFERENCE, or to anyone’s theory of ‘reference’, with-
out invoking referential resources officially denied by her or his deflationary view of ‘refer-
ence’.
Here we have a meta-linguistic situation exactly parallel to an important point of Carnap’s
semantic practice that Quine never understood, for which Carnap’s own semantic theory could
not account (Westphal 2015a, §§5.7–5.9, 6.5–6.6, 6.12). Carnap always used natural languages
as informal meta-languages in which to formulate his formal syntax and his formal semantics.
That is not a problem, so long as one understands what one is doing. Carnap himself did not
always adequately understand what he was doing in this regard, insofar as he often sought to
treat mere marks as meaningful symbols. For example, ‘v’ by itself is just an angle, but has no
meaning. Within some logical notations, ‘v’ is used to indicate exclusive disjunction; in others,
‘v’ is used to indicate addition; rotated, it is used otherwise in arithmetic and in geometry to
indicate, respectively, ‘greater than’, ‘less than’ or ‘angle’; in other contexts, the same mark can
be used to indicate a direction. The reason why semiotics was not the boon to philosophy and
to the sciences that Peirce, Saussure, Morris and Apel expected is that by themselves marks do
no semiotic work, we use marks as signs or symbols. Their intelligent use by us makes signs or
symbols out of mere marks, as Sellars rightly pointed out in criticism of Carnap’s formal se-
mantics (Westphal 2015a, §6.4).
To bring this point back to the above deflationary argument about REFERENCE (or of ‘refer-
ence’): If linguistic REFERENCE is only what one or another theory happens to say ‘reference’ is
– this is the only sense to be made of statements (3) and (4) – then no one can or does refer to
anything without first formulating and affirming a theory of reference! And this is paradoxical in
the extreme, because affirming any theory of ‘reference’ requires referring to that ‘theory’, which
requires being able to refer to that ‘theory’! By the above reasoning, no one can refer to one’s
own preferred ‘theory of “reference”’ without first formulating and affirming one’s own pre-
ferred ‘meta-meta-theory of “meta-reference”’ – a meta-theoretical ‘theory of “reference”’ used
for referring to any ‘theory of “reference”’, etc. This anti-realist, allegedly deflationary regress is
infinite, vicious and absurd: a reductio of deflationism about reference.8 This point parallels
Quine’s (1936) point about the inevitable, necessary use of principles of inference in any explicit
statement or definition of rules of inference – or likewise formation rules, etc. It also parallels
8
This reductio does not license the ‘metaphysical’ claims some have tried to draw from mere semantic
(referential) resources; on this count I concur entirely with Huw Price – though for very different reasons;
see following note.
Carroll’s (1895) point that demonstrating any conclusion by deductive reasoning requires
using principles of inference which cannot themselves occur in and as explicitly stated premisses
within that deduction.
This argument drawn from Price recalls its progenitor, Kuhn’s (1976, 101–2) argument for the
‘incommensurability’ of Classical Newtonian Mechanics (‘CM’) and Einstein’s General Theory
of Relativity (‘GR’), which cannot conflict (Kuhn argued) because the term ‘mass’ is not used
the same way in both theories. Instead, according to CM, mass is constant regardless of veloc-
ity, whereas according to GR, mass varies with velocity. Both Kuhn’s argument about ‘mass’
and the above argument about ‘reference’ require a strong semantic internalism, together with a
‘descriptions’ theory of reference, according to which any term, phrase or proposition refers
only and exactly to whatever is described when the content (intension) of that term, phrase or
proposition is completely analysed into an explicit description. In fact, both Kuhn’s argument
about ‘mass’ and Price’s about ‘reference’ descend directly from Carnap’s (1950a) account of
framework-internal truth and ontology. Indeed, Carnap’s (1956a) semantics directly prefigures
Kuhn’s account of theoretical change and consequent theoretical incommensurability in the
natural sciences.9
In contrast to that kind of anti-realist, constructivist internalism about semantic meaning and
reference, Sellars rightly observed:
It is essential ... to note that the resources introduced (i.e. the variables and the term ‘proposi-
tion’) can do their job only because the language already contains the sentential connectives
with their characteristic syntax by virtue of which such sentences as ‘Either Chicago is large or
Chicago is not large’ are analytic. In other words, the introduced nominal resources mobilize
existing syntactical resources of the language to make possible the statement ‘There are proposi-
tions’. (EAE ¶3, cf. ¶28)
In this important regard, Sellars rightly focussed on Carnap’s (1950b) formalised explication of
terms or phrases in use, to improve their functioning within those contexts of actual usage. The
significance of Sellars’s semantic externalism is amplified by the following considerations.
4 MEASUREMENT PROCEDURES, CONVENTIONS & THE RELATIVE SYNTHETIC A PRIORI.
A common theme – or at least: a common denomination – running through neo-Kantianism,
pragmatism, logical empiricism and neo-pragmatism is the appeal to synthetic principles which
are ‘relatively’ a priori, rather than absolutely a priori like Kant’s. The point of designating a ‘rela-
tive’ a priori is that the synthetic principles in question are revisable; the point of designating
these revisable synthetic principles ‘a priori’ is that they cannot be established empirically, be-
cause they constitute basic definitory conditions for empirical inquiry, analysis and justification.
9
These forms of argument are also central to Putnam’s ‘internal realism’; see Westphal (1997), xxiv–xxvi.
In traditional terminology, the ‘extension’ of a term or concept (classification) is whatever individuals or
features of individuals would properly fall within the scope of that classification or ‘intension’. Carnap’s
‘descriptive semantics’ acknowledges that semantic extension (in this sense) neither constitutes nor suffices
for linguistic reference by anyone to any specific individual. Additionally, any linguistic reference to actual
particulars only becomes a candidate for cognitive standing or evaluation when the Speaker locates and
individuates the relevant individuals within space and time (Westphal 2014b). These points are central to
Sellars’ ‘non-relational’ account of meaning (intension and extension), and its distinction to the truth-
aptness of specific judgments or statements Someone refers to designated specific individuals or
circumstances.
Most logical empiricist and neo-pragmatist versions of the relative a priori are merely linguistic,
as in the L- and P-rules of Carnap’s (1950a, 1956) linguistic frameworks; such are the views of,
e.g., Goodman (1978), Rorty (1979), Putnam (1981, 1983), Caruthers (1987) and Friedman
(2001).
A more robust, pragmatic account of the relative a priori begins with a point made by C. I.
Lewis (1929, chapter 6, esp. 172–80): relativity requires relata which have their own characteris-
tics; else they cannot even be relata: Utterly characterless individuals – if there could be any
such bare particulars – can bear no relations whatever to anything – nor to anyone – else. This
point holds, too, Lewis emphasised, for human experience and empirical knowledge: Only
because the world we inhabit has its contents, characteristics and structures can we at all in-
habit, experience, know and act in or upon it – and it upon us and our behaviour. This point is
significant, yet consistent with a merely linguistic version of the relative a priori, insofar as it is
consistent with the point Quine and Rorty never tired of stressing, that we could alter our lin-
guistic classifications or designations ad libitum, and get our most cherished sentences to be
assigned the value ‘true’, or preserve the (purported) truth value of any particular sentence we
wish.
Toulmin’s (1949) defence of ‘synthetic necessary truth’ makes a good case against that kind of
conventionalist fiat regarding redefining our terms: Many of our key terms and many of the
kinds of statements we make in those terms are neither logically necessary nor merely conven-
tional truths – they are logically synthetic statements – although they are necessarily true be-
cause they are constitutive of (or with regard to) a kind of activity or procedure to which they
are fundamental. Change the assigned meanings of those key terms by stipulation obviates their
relevance to that original activity or procedure and simply changes the subject matter at issue
(if there be any after such re-assignment); such stipulative alteration shows nothing about the
meaning, justification or truth-value of the original statements.
A further significant point in this connection was made by Lewis (1923; 1929, chapter 8),
though developed more carefully by Reichenbach (1920) and highlighted by Parrini (1983,
1995, 2009, 2010); it concerns the character and status of measurement procedures in Ein-
stein’s General Theory of Relativity (‘GR’). With antecedents in Mach’s (1908, 303–33/1919,
256–72) treatment of mass determinations, Einstein stressed that certain measurement proce-
dures must be established regarding what is to count as simultaneity – or likewise as equal peri-
ods of time or as equal lengths or distances. These procedures themselves can be established
neither by experiment alone nor by theory alone, nor solely by theory and experiment together,
because they are required to conduct any relevant experiments, to make any relevant measure-
ments and to construct any relevant theory; where establishing them presupposes though can-
not demonstrate that no other phenomena interfere with their establishment or use! Mach ne-
glected and misrepresented this latter point (Laymon 1991, 173–7). So far, this much is consis-
tent with a merely linguistic relative a priori. The key point is that these measurement proce-
dures cannot be set arbitrarily! These measurement procedures can be set by theory plus proce-
dure together only if nature cooperates through sufficient, relevant, calculable stability. Estab-
lishing measurement procedures is tightly constrained by physical phenomena and by any at-
tempts to investigate, measure or explain those phenomena. That is why the relative a priori,
synthetic and revisable though it be, cannot be merely linguistic, merely conventional nor mere-
ly stipulative. This point about measurement procedures requires a robustly realist pragmatic a
priori, albeit a ‘relative’ rather than an ‘absolute’ a priori. Neo-pragmatists – including in this
significant regard Quine, Kuhn, Putnam, Rorty, Friedman, Brandom and Price – are commit-
ted by their use of neo-Carnapian linguistic frameworks to a merely linguistic account of any
relative a priori. The relativised a priori cannot be merely linguistic, because our relatively a priori
principles must be such that they can be used to make sound and proper sense of natural phe-
nomena within the exact sciences – centrally including those regular natural phenomena by
which various processes or events can be measured. As Toulmin (1949) stressed, neither his
case nor this stronger case for ‘synthetic necessary truths’ requires the empiricist’s bogey of
special mental powers of intuiting reality an sich.
Though he did not make this point specifically regarding measurement procedures, James un-
derstood the general, relevant point about our formulation of quantified natural laws very well:
... in the choice of these man-made formulas [viz., quantitative laws of nature] we can not be
capricious with impunity any more than we can be capricious on the commonsense practical
level. We must find a theory that will work; and that means something extremely difficult; for
our theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences. It must
derange common sense and previous belief as little as possible, and it must lead to some sen-
sible terminus or other that can be verified exactly. To ‘work’ means both these things; and
the squeeze is so tight that there is little loose play for any hypothesis. Our theories are wedg-
ed and controlled as nothing else is. (James 1907, 216–7)
Not only as a theoretical but also as a practising metrologist, a consulting chemical engineer
and as Head of the US Office of Weights and Measures (Oct. 1884–Feb. 1885), Peirce under-
stood the importance and the difficulties involved in detecting and eliminating sources of sys-
tematic error from precise measurement procedures. Indeed Peirce was the first to devise a
procedure to use the wave-length of light as a standard unit of measure, and use it to determine
the standard length of the metre.10 Why would Peirce believe in the existence of real generals?
Inter alia because he measured some of them with unprecedented precision by constructing his
innovative procedures and apparatus!
Similar kinds of measurement considerations led Newton to affirm the universal gravitational
force of attraction (Harper 2011). This similarity is not superficial. Harper shows that central to
Newton’s analysis and causal explanation of periodic motions, both celestial and terrestrial, is
the use of various independent procedures to obtain converging measurements of a causal
parameter which satisfy these two explanatory ideals:
i) Systematic dependencies identified by a theory make the phenomenon to be explained mea-
sure the value of the theoretical parameter which explains it.
ii) Alternatives to the phenomenon would carry information about alternative values of the pa-
rameter which explains it.
As Harper shows, Newton’s own methods and explanatory ideals are far more adequate and
stringent than anything devised by philosophers of science, including Glymour’s ‘boot-strap’
methodology. Newton’s methodological analysis, measurement and use of such systematic
dependencies is found in many other measurement procedures for causal and for statistical
10
Many of the relevant primary sources are contained in volume 4 of the Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A
Chronological Edition (Peirce 1982–); his contributions to metrology are summarised in Nathan Houser’s
Introduction to this volume.
(whether stochastic or ergodic) regularities, including GR. The use of successive approxima-
tions to regulate the development of both measurement and exact phenomenological descrip-
tion are also evident throughout Galileo’s and Kepler’s terrestrial and celestial kinematics. Har-
per (2011) shows – contra Kuhn – that Einstein’s theory of relativity better satisfies Newton’s
ideals of explanatory adequacy than does Classical Mechanics (‘CM’), even in its highly refined,
late 19th-century form: When provided the relevant data and analysis, Newton’s ideals of ex-
planatory adequacy favour GR over CM.11
The interrelations of practice, classification, measurement, experiment and theoretical explana-
tion were succinctly stated by Lewis in these terms:
The determination of reality, the classification of phenomena, and the discovery of law, all
grow up together. I will not repeat what has already been said ... about the logical priority of
criteria; but it should be observed that this is entirely compatible with the shift of categories
and classifications with the widening of human experience. If the criteria of the real are a pri-
ori, that is not to say that no conceivable character or experience would lead to alteration of
them. (Lewis 1929, 263)
This interdependence and mutual regulation appears to many philosophers – rather too glibly –
to be either entirely arbitrary, merely conventional, or else viciously circular. However, as both
Peirce (1902, ch. 3 §11) and Alston (1989, 319–49) recognised – and long before them both:
Hegel (1807) – not all forms of epistemic circularity are vicious.12 As Reichenbach (1920), Lay-
mon and Parrini rightly stress, the relativised synthetic a priori cannot be merely linguistic, it
cannot be merely conventional, because the effective use of relatively a priori synthetic princi-
ples requires sufficient, relevant, identifiable natural regularities. These considerations can now
be extended to show that the relativised synthetic a priori also cannot be merely meta-linguis-
tic.13
5 WHY THE RELATIVE SYNTHETIC A PRIORI CANNOT BE MERELY METALINGUISTIC.
5.1 To avoid potential misunderstandings, I shall speak of causal modalities when discussing
physical causality, in the forms of causal processes, causal structures or causal laws of nature.
Physical processes and their causal structures, together with empirical inquiries and physical
sciences are my topic, not ‘metaphysics’. I shall also avoid the common terminological contrast
11
For concise introduction to Harper’s landmark findings, see Huggett et al (2013), Westphal (2014b).
12
Peirce states: ‘In studying logic, you hope to correct your present ideas of what reasoning is good, what
bad. This, of course, must be done by reasoning; and you cannot imagine that it is to be done by your
accepting reasonings of mine which do not seem to you to be rational. It must, therefore, be done by
means of the bad system of logic which you at present use. Some writers fancy that they see some absurdity
in this. They say, “Logic is to determine what is good reasoning. Until this is determined reasoning must
not be ventured upon. (They say it would be a “petitio principii” ...) Therefore, the principles of logic must
be determined without reasoning, by simple instinctive feeling.” All this is fallacious. ... Let us rather state
the case thus. At present, you are in possession of a logica utens which seems to be unsatisfactory. The
question is whether, using that somewhat unsatisfactory logica utens, you can make out wherein it must be
modified, and can attain to a better system. This is a truer way of stating the question; and so stated, it
appears to present no such insuperable difficulty as is pretended’ (Peirce 1902, CP 2:191). My attention to
this passage and its significance I owe to F. L. Will (1981 [1997, 89 note]); for discussion of Alston’s views
on this topic, see Westphal (1989), 74–84; on Hegel’s, see Westphal (1998a), (2014a).
13
I note with gratitude and no small relief Steen Brock’s observation that the view presented here is
consistent with the further developments of measurement procedures required for quantum mechanics
(QM); see Brock (2003).
between logical modalities and ‘alethic’ modalities, because the latter is a misnomer. ‘Alethia’
concerns truth and knowledge, literally unconcealedness, not ‘truth makers’, i.e., actual objects
or events or processes (whether causal or otherwise). Kant’s account of modality as merely
epistemic would much more rightly be designated ‘alethic’ modality, but it is better to avoid the
designation rather than to risk the confusions or misunderstandings it invites.
5.2 Brandom’s Metalinguistic Kant-Sellars Modal Thesis. In opposition to empiricism and its seman-
tic atomism, Brandom identifies and seeks to articulate and to justify the following idea:
Sellars’s idea is that what one is describing something as is a matter of what follows from the
classification – what consequences falling in one group or another has. (Brandom 2015, 180–1; cf.
idem. 2008, 79–80)
Anyone familiar with Classical American Pragmatism knows that the idea Brandom here attrib-
utes to Sellars is common stock amongst Peirce, James, Dewey, Mead and C. I. Lewis (MWO).
The core pragmatist idea is that description and classification as we actually make and use them
are subjunctively, counter-factually, causally structured by what we expect we can, shall or
could DO with anything so described or classified: how it would respond and how our actions
and their results would develop as we execute whatever actions we consider or actually con-
duct. This core pragmatist idea is, I believe, correct. The relevant semantic point, about the
meaning of our descriptive terms or the content of our descriptive concepts, is both basic and
very strong: Even our most ordinary descriptive terms are modally rich, as is our use of them.
Predicating any characteristic of any observed particular involves expectations of how it can
and shall behave in the short, medium or perhaps also long term, and how it can be observed
to behave as we – or others – continue (however intermittently) interacting with it.
5.3 Empiricism & Basic Empirical Descriptive Terms. Carnap rejected Quine’s extensionalism and
developed sophisticated accounts of meaning in terms of ‘intension’ or classificatory content,
including ‘semantic postulates’. There remained a role, however, for non-modal elementary
observation predicates in Carnap’s empiricist semantics, because all confirmation was ulti-
mately to be based upon the use of observation terms, instances of which could be completely
verified by relevant, proper observations reported in simple protocol sentences. Though Car-
nap wisely eschewed epistemological concerns about infallibility, indubitability and incorrigibil-
ity, his empiricist requirement of complete verification of basic observation statements requires
that those statements can be made and confirmed independently of any other statements or
terms. This strand of semantic atomism is constitutive of empiricist semantics. Although Car-
nap did not discuss whether basic observation predicates are or are not modally laden, for
statements containing them to be confirmed completely, and hence independently of other state-
ments or terms, requires that these basic empirical descriptive terms only describe occurrent
characteristics of whatever is observed. Counter-factual relations cannot be completely con-
firmed by any individual, self-standing observation (or observation statement) simply because
counter-factual relations are counter-factual, because they constitutively involve non-occurrent
conditions which (purportedly) would trigger other manifestations of the (supposed) disposi-
tion purportedly reported in observation reports (protocol statements). This is why Carnap
(1936–37) required ‘reduction sentences’ to partially explicate dispositional concepts, such as
solubility in water.
The mutual independence of the meaning, and likewise of the confirmable use, of basic obser-
vation predicates to report fully confirmable observations, which is constitutive of empiricism,
is untenable for three main reasons internal to Carnap’s semantics.14 One reason is that, ac-
cording to Carnap (following Frege), the semantic meaning of an expression is in part specified
by which inferences can, and which cannot, be drawn using that expression. Which inferences
these are, however, is set not only by the predicate(s) in question, but also by the syntactic form
of the observation statement(s) in which those predicates occur, and this syntactic form is set
by the formation rules of the linguistic framework to which those statements belong, as Sellars
notes (ITSA 49, 57). A second reason is that simple observation(s) alone cannot determine
whether an observed, occurrent characteristic is or is not affected by (and so dependent upon)
further, non-observed physical circumstances and causal laws. For example, whether something
appears to be red is in fact – whether known or not – dependent upon the relative velocity of
the observer to the observed. This is a version at the level of observation terms of the problem
noted in previously (§3) about why the relative synthetic a priori cannot be merely linguistic. A
third reason is that any actual observations are always conditional upon the circumstances of
observation, so that the confirmation or disconfirmation of any observation statement, how-
ever simple, is cognitively interdependent with observation conditions and the observer’s as-
sessment of those conditions. For all three reasons, there simply are no non-modal descriptive
predicates (see further below, §7.2).
6 MATERIAL INFERENCES SANS ‘INFERENTIALISM’.
6.1 Brandom’s ‘Inferentialism’. Brandom’s ‘Modal Expressivism’ is designed to articulate or make
explicit the modality he says is ‘implicit’ in ordinary, allegedly nonmodal descriptive terms or
‘vocabulary’. His point is to explicate the material incompatibilities amongst various empirical
properties. He states:
Square and circular are exclusively different properties, since possession by a plane figure of
the one excludes, rules out, or is materially incompatible with possession of the other. Square
and green are merely or indifferently different, in that though they are distinct properties,
possession of the one does not preclude possession of the other. An essential part of the de-
terminate content of a property – what makes it the property it is, and not some other one – is
the relations of material (nonlogical) incompatibility it stands in to other determinate proper-
ties (for instance, shapes to other shapes, and colors to other colors). (Brandom 2015, 200)
These observations are correct, so far as they go. However, they neither require nor do they
justify any specifically expressivist, inferentialist semantics (regardless of whether, or to what
extent it may be either ‘metalinguistic’ or ‘pragmatist’). Brandom seeks to articulate these sorts
of material incompatibilities by using sentential negations. Sentential negations, however, only
provide bivalent distinctions between any predicate term and its negation; bivalent sentential
negation does not express the kinds of material incompatibilities Brandom highlights, which
are supposed to include disjunctive families of characteristics (shapes, colours, flavours, spe-
cies). Yes, such material incompatibilities can be stated in complex sentences in first-order
predicate logic, but such statements are no more than logical exercises in ‘translation’: They
neither explicate nor clarify, they merely restate those material incompatibilities which we must
understand and identify prior to and independently of any such logical translations, in order to
make or to assess any such ‘translation’ into logical notation. To properly grasp and formulate
14
For detailed discussion, see Westphal (1989), 50–62.
the disjunctive relations amongst families of characteristics Kant did not treat negation truth-
functionally, and insisted upon the logical distinctness of the ‘infinite negative judgment’ (KdrV
A71–3/B97–8; see Wolff 2017).
6.2 Subjunctive Conditionality & the Failure of Monotonicity. Brandom (2015, 72–7, 160–6, 192–4,
225) stresses that inferences involving dispositional properties and most material inferences are
nonmonotonic:
... the subjunctive conditionals associated with dispositional properties codify inferences that,
like almost all material inferences, are nonmonotonic. That is, they are not robust under arbitrary
addition of auxiliary premises. (Brandom 2015, 72)
Brandom is correct that material inferences and especially those involving causal dispositions
are non-monotonic, and he (2015, 164–5) is correct that this feature is not repaired or re-
moved, but only acknowledged, by explicitly adding a ceteris paribus clause, which typically is
understood implicitly in causal reasoning, whether commonsense, diagnostic, forensic or scien-
tific. The non-monotonic character of causal reasoning, however, only underscores the irrele-
vance of sentential negation to explicating the kinds of material incompatibilities and causal
dispositions central to Rylean ‘material inference tickets’ (which are Brandom’s model of mate-
rial inferences).
The defeasibility of all empirical classifications, even the most ordinary – and hence the non-
monotonicity of all inferences based upon empirical classifications – was already highlighted by
Waismann’s (1945) criticism of verifiability theories of meaning and the consequent ‘open tex-
ture’ or ‘porosity’ of all our empirical concepts – a point underscored also by Austin’s (1946)
inexplicably loquacious or exploding goldfinch. Their points about the ‘open texture’ of
empirical concepts and the defeasibility of our use of them corroborate the point made above
about conceptual explication supplanting conceptual ‘analysis’ (§3.2). Goodman (1946) made
the general case about counter-factuals, which van Fraassen (1980) used to support his ‘Con-
structive Empiricism’. The general case about counterfactuals was re-affirmed by Hempel
(1988) when announcing the demise of logical empiricist philosophy of science – well after
these points had been developed by Frederick Will (1969) to argue for semantic and mental
content externalism, and for robust pragmatic realism. Perhaps Brandom (2015, 72–3) is cor-
rect that a substantial body of literature on dispositional causality neglects the nonmonotonic
character of any actual, empirical statements about dispositions, but apparently both he and
those (unnamed) authors neglect long-standing achievements within philosophy of language,
philosophy of mind, epistemology and philosophy of science.
6.3 Brandom’s Lingering Logicism. Although Brandom (2015, 175–6) repudiates ‘the anachronistic
extensional quantificational reading’ of Frege’s notation in Begriffschrift, he inherits from his
reading of Frege the ideas that ‘modal force’ lies in ‘relations between concepts expressed by
generalized conditionals’, insofar as
... [Frege’s] generality locutions ... codify relations we think of as intensional. Fregean logical
concepts are indeed second- and higher-order concepts, but more than that, the universality
they express is rulish. ... Frege’s logical vocabulary permits us to assert necessary connections
among empirical concepts that themselves can only be discovered empirically: physically or
causally necessary connections. (Brandom 2015, 176).
Whether Brandom uses or misuses Frege’s Schriften I shall not examine; important here is Bran-
dom’s neo-Fregean, neo-pragmatist meta-linguistic inferentialist account of physical modality,
which he calls his ‘Modal Expressivism’. Its key ideas Brandom extracts from Frege’s Begriff-
schrift in these terms:
The necessity (whether natural or rational) of the connections between empirical concepts is
already contained as part of what is expressed by the logical vocabulary, even when it is used to
make claims that are not logically, but only empirically true.
The capacity to express modal connections of necessitation between concepts is essential
to Frege’s overall purpose in constructing his Begriffschrift. Its aim is to make explicit the
contents of concepts. Frege understands that content as articulated by the inferential relations
between concepts, and so crafted his notation to make those inferential connections explicit.
(Brandom 2015, 177).
Can logical notation(s) be used to explicate causal modalities? Yes. Are they useful for such
explication? Not particularly. Are they required for such explication? Not at all (see below, §7).
Brandom thinks otherwise due to an unacknowledged relic of empiricist semantics. Brandom
observes:
We philosophers and logicians do not have very good conceptual tools for dealing with the
nonmonotonicity of inferences and of the conditionals that codify those inferences. Improv-
ing those tools is a central philosophical challenge, particularly, but not exclusively, for seman-
tic inferentialists. The current primitive state of our thought about the phenomenon of
nonmonotonicity is, however, no reason for ignoring it. The literature that addresses the rela-
tions between dispositional properties and subjunctive conditionals would be very different if
those conditionals were thought of as nonmonotonic, as I think we ought. (Brandom 2015,
72–3)
There is simply no reason whatever to expect illumination about robust subjunctive condition-
als used in causal contexts from philosophers’ semantics! As Alan Chalmers (2009) has made
abundantly clear, there are excellent reasons why scientists, rather than philosophers, gained
knowledge of atoms. As Bill Harper (2011) has made abundantly clear, there are excellent rea-
sons why scientists, rather than philosophers, devised robust methods for the development,
refinement and justification of dynamic causal theories which precisely measure the forces in
question. There are two related points here. First: scientific disciplines have developed many
diverse reliable methods of empirical research for examining, identifying and by many methods
measuring natural causal phenomena. Second, there is no reason to expect specifically
logical procedures to illuminate scientific methods or findings, because no strictly logical proce-
dures are sufficiently subtle to capture the semantically and quantitatively refined, fine-grained
analytical and quantitative methods of the sciences – much less to clarify them. Logic in any of
its rigorously defined forms – which is to say, in any of its forms – requires monotonicity; waiv-
ing monotonicity is to waive provability, which is to waive strictly demonstrative (deductive)
reasoning. Yes, there is plenty of non-formal reasoning in the sciences, arts, trades and every-
day life, but all such non-formal reasoning requires semantic and existence postulates, none of
which can be formulated, assessed or justified by the formal techniques of logic alone.15 There
15
Wolff (2009) has demonstrated that the one strictly formal domain consists in a precise reconstruction of
the Aristotelian square of opposition (sans conversion); beyond that domain, richer forms of deductive
reasoning require semantic and existence postulates which are, in principle, non-formal and cannot be
stated, assessed or justified by strictly formal reasoning alone. Yes, much richer formalised logistic systems
is no reason to expect philosophical logicians or philosophers of language to make any better
headway with suitably robust, non-monotonic subjunctive conditionality, such as pertains to
physical causality. We shall soon see that Sellars, too, looked to the sciences, not to philosophy,
for the required developments (§7.6).
6.4 Brandom’s Explanatory Aspiration. Brandom proudly pronounces:
Modal realism claims that there are objective modal facts. One important species of modal
facts is laws of nature. Modal realism makes essential use of the concepts of fact and law, but
does not by itself explain those concepts. Modal expressivism does. (Brandom 2015, 207–8)
What sort of ‘modal realism’ fails to explain the concepts of ‘fact’ and (causal) ‘law’? Perhaps
mere philosophical avowals of modal realism – such as Brandom’s own avowal – do not ex-
plain those concepts, but Brandom’s inferentialist ‘Modal Expressivism’ fares no better in that
regard. At most Brandom’s logistic explications can restate quasi-formally causal laws and cau-
sal relations identified, examined, formulated – and in many sciences: measured – empirically. To
explain the basic concepts involved in causal explanations requires empirical investigations and
causally informed history and philosophy of science. Brandom’s inferentialism is still predi-
cated on the presumption that semantics is first philosophy.16 Semantics may contribute to
philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, epistemology and philosophy of science, but it
does not suffice for those inquiries, nor can it supplant them (Westphal 2014b). More and bet-
ter attention to actual scientific explanations would be salutary within philosophy, insofar as it
could lead to greater caution on the part of philosophers who claim to ‘explain’ anything.17
Through empirical inquiry alone can we discover whatever factors we may have heretofore
unwittingly covered by one or another implicit ceteris paribus clause. Only empirical inquiry can
relieve us of our ignorance of whatever phenomena Brandom underscores by the ‘nonmono-
tonicity’ of our claims and reasoning about those causal phenomena – namely: whatever we
may discover which specifies something previously shrouded under a ceteris paribus clause and
the insufficiently discriminating theory or explanation to which that clause petains. That Bran-
dom stresses the point using the term ‘monotonic’ underscores his lingering logicist predilec-
tions: viz., that he expects philosophical analysis to illuminate the special class of statements
containing all and only subjunctively robust counterfactual statements. Consider Brandom’s
claim about the deductive-nomological (DN) model of causal explanation.
6.5 Brandom on DN Explanation. Regarding explanation, Brandom states:
The kind of generalization implicit in the use of subjunctive or modal vocabulary is what is
invoked in explanation, which exhibits some conclusion as the result from an inference that is
good as an instance of a kind, or in virtue of a pattern of good inferences. This is what was
intuitively right about the deductive-nomological understanding of explanation. What was
wrong about it is that subjunctive robustness need not be underwritten by laws: modally quali-
fied conditionals whose quantifiers are wide open. (Brandom 2015, 194)
can be developed (Lewis 1930, rpt. 1970, 10), but their use within any domain requires substantive
semantic and existence postulates to link them to that domain, and their use within any such domain can
be neither established nor assessed by strictly formal techniques alone (Lewis 1929, 298; cf. Carnap 1950a).
16
This is evident in his aim to devise a form of pragmatism suitable for ‘the linguistic turn’ (Brandom 2015, 8),
and his (2015, 91–8) likening his own ‘modal expressivism’ to Huw Price’s ‘subject naturalism’ (above, §3.4).
17
I examine this issue in connection with contemporary internalist and naturalist theories of mind and of
action in Westphal (2016a). For related issues, see Wimsatt (2007).
Nothing right about the DN model of explanation is ‘intuitive’, and Brandom’s claim about the
DN model is vacuous. Establishing laws of nature requires exacting physical analysis; explana-
tory laws require (ultimately, if not proximately) measuring the relevant, constitutive forces.
Constitutive forces underwrite all mechanical explanations, insofar as such explanations appeal
directly or indirectly to the material structure of the mechanisms or components involved
(Westphal 2015b). Using any law of nature to explain an event, process or structure requires
determining the actual boundary conditions of that event or process. Brandom is correct that
subjunctively robust causal explanations need not be underwritten by causal laws, but by its
very designation the Deductive-Nomological model concerns the use of causal laws in explana-
tions. Recall Carnap’s statement of the point:
Notice here that the if-then translation is well suited to the universal conditional, even though
it is not always adequate for the simple conditional ‘A e B’ (cf. 3b). Another reading for
‘(x)(Px e Qx)’ is: “All P is Q”. Most of the laws of science – physics, biology, even psychology
and social science – can be phrased as conditionals. E.g. a physical law that runs something
like “if such-and-such a condition obtains or such-and-such a process occurs, then so-and-so
follows” can be rephrased as “for every physical system, if such-and-such conditions obtain,
then so-and-so obtains”. (Carnap 1958, 3618)
Brandom’s purported error of the DN model, quoted just above, merely indicates that some
causal explanations are particular, under-specified and invoke no causal laws. Such explanations
merely invoke causal conditions and causal conditionality; Brandom’s claim about ‘explanation’
merely reiterates the conditional modality involved in any causal relation.
6.6 There is, however, an important epistemological point regarding the lack of monotonicity
concerning statements reporting empirical classifications, causal dispositions and empirical
justifications: This characteristic lack of monotonicity entails that infallibilist standards of justi-
fication are, in principle, irrelevant to all non-formal domains, including the entirety of morals
and the entirety of empirical knowledge (Westphal 2014b). Strict logical deduction may con-
tribute to empirical justification (in some domains, in some contexts), though it does not con-
stitute, nor does it suffice for, empirical justification. Consequently, the long-standing, multifar-
ious efforts to bring deductive logic to bear upon the analysis of the empirical phenomena of
semantic meaning, mental content, empirical knowledge and cognitive justification are in princi-
ple insufficient. The key reason for this was already noted by Kant: deductive logic is a canon of
judgment, but no organon of knowledge (KdrV A60–1, 795/B85–6, 823). The sole competence
of deductive logic is to avoid inferring false conclusions from true premises. In principle, Bran-
dom’s attempt to use sentential negations to articulate material incompatibilities is misguided.
Only to empiricists is it news that our minds work by differentiation rather than by abstraction
and generalisation. Regarding abstraction, Gombrich (1963, 2) laconically observed: ‘Our mind,
of course, works by differentiation rather than by generalization ...’. Gombrich’s observation
has been elaborated and confirmed by recent psychological investigations (e.g., Gardner &
Schoen (1962), Vygotsky (1978), Toomela (1996), Wertsch (1985), Martin & Caramazza
(2003)).
6.7 Brandom’s Mistaking of Carnap’s Semantics. Brandom ascribes the following semantic view to
Carnap:
18
Note how the concluding formulation matches the syntax of Carnap’s reduction sentences.
first, by one sort of procedure one has privileged, nonempirical access to, one fixes meanings
(concepts, the language) and then subsequently, by another sort of procedure, which is empiri-
cal, determines the facts (what to believe, one’s theory) as expressed in those meanings (con-
cepts, language). (Brandom 2015, 186; cf. 213–5)
Brandom’s attribution mistakes four important features of Carnap’s semantics. First, Brandom
neglects altogether Carnap’s ‘descriptive semantics’ – the empirical inquiry (belonging to Mor-
ris’s domain of pragmatics) into what observation protocols are reported by scientists of our
cultural circle. Brandom also neglects a feature of Carnap’s semantics which Quine never un-
derstood, namely Carnap’s willingness to use natural language as an informal metalanguage for
(re)constructing any linguistic framework. Third, Brandom neglects Carnap’s urging us to re-
vise or replace such linguistic frameworks to improve our scientific efforts and successes.
These three points indicate the fourth, most important point: Brandom neglects how Carnap’s
linguistic frameworks are conceptual explications, which are rooted in their use – both the
original context of use of whatever terms or phrases we explicate, and the new, now altered
context of use of the newly explicated linguistic framework. These features of Carnap’s seman-
tics lend themselves to what Friedman (2001) called The Dynamics of Reason; these features of
Carnap’s semantics are central to Sellars’s appropriation and transformation of them (Westphal
2015a, §6).
In commenting critically on Brandom’s inferentialism, Redding (2015) distinguishes between
‘strong’ and ‘weak’ inferentialism. Strong inferentialism holds that inferential incompatibility is
constitutive – and not merely explicative – of material characteristics and their differences and
incompatibilities. By contrast, ‘weak’ inferentialism rescinds the constitutive and holds only the
explicative thesis. As Redding shows (yet again) Brandom’s ‘inferentialism’ is committed to the
strong thesis. However, Brandom’s ‘strong’ inferentialism is incompatible with the semantic
externalism and fundamental (pragmatic) realism required by, and for, conceptual explication
(as contrasted to conceptual analysis).19
7 SELLARS ON THE MODALITY OF ORDINARY EMPIRICAL DESCRIPTION.
7.1 In contrast to Brandom’s lingering logicist predilections, Sellars’s use of Carnapian explica-
tion verges upon hermeneutics:
It is essential ... to note that the resources introduced (i.e. the variables and the term ‘proposi-
tion’) can do their job only because the language already contains the sentential connec-
tives with their characteristic syntax by virtue of which such sentences as ‘Either Chicago
is large or Chicago is not large’ are analytic. In other words, the introduced nominal re-
sources mobilize existing syntactical resources of the language to make possible the state-
ment ‘There are propositions’. (EAE ¶3, cf. ¶28)
Sellars clearly recognises that we are able to state explicit definitions only because we are al-
ready competent speakers and thinkers. This point holds both with regard to ordinary language
and to any explicitly stated meta-language. This circumstance appears to be a predicament – as
it did to Quine – only if one denigrates ordinary (or any lower-order) language, by insisting that
these can only be fit for use if, when and insofar as they are specified by an explicitly defined
metalanguage. Sellars is committed to the semantic externalism required by Kant’s and Car-
19
This problem in Brandom’s inferentialism persists uncorrected from Making it Explicit (1994) into his
most recent work; see Redding (2015), Westphal (2015d), §§3.4, 3.5.
nap’s methods and practices of conceptual explication, which is characteristic also of Classical
pragmatic realism from Peirce to C. I. Lewis (MWO) and F. L. Will (1997).
7.2 Like the Classical American Pragmatists, Sellars knew that there is no problem about how
to relate modal vocabulary to some basic non-modal, merely descriptive vocabulary. Recall Sel-
lars’s discussion of our typical, commonsense ways of distinguishing between how things look
and how they happen to appear, keyed as they are to our commonsense understanding of light-
ing conditions (EPM §§13–18/¶¶37–58ff.). Sellars’s example of the apparent colour of the tie,
inside the shop under artificial light, or outside in daylight, is a direct counterpart to Carnap’s
(1949) protocols regarding the presence of his keys on his desk. Sellars’s example makes plain
that even the simplest observation report is not made in isolation from other considerations
regarding one’s observational circumstances, nor from one’s (corrigible) understanding of the
character and characteristics of whatever one observes. Sellars’s point is at once semantic,
epistemic and ontological – just as one should expect of a robustly realist classical pragmatist.
Consider first the epistemic point.
7.3 As noted above (§5.5), Carnap’s empiricist semantics must maintain that basic observable
predicates can be used in protocol statements, each of which can be fully confirmed (or discon-
firmed) independently of any others. This cognitive, justificatory independence is the Achilles
heel of empiricism. In An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, C. I. Lewis formulated this point in
these terms:
If anything is to be probable, then something must be certain. The data which eventually sup-
port a genuine probability, must themselves be certainties. We do have such absolute certain-
ties, in the sense data initiating belief and in those passages of experience which later may
confirm it. But neither such initial data nor such later verifying passages of experience can be
phrased in the language of objective statement – because what can be so phrased is never
more than probable. Our sense certainties can only be formulated by the expressive use of
language, in which what is signified is a content of experience and what is asserted is the
givenness of this content. (Lewis 1946, 186; cf. 180–92)
We may set aside the initial allegation about how any probability requires some certainty, and
further note that the relevant certainty does not require sense data or any special forms of
mind- dependence. The key point is that these alleged empiricist ‘certainties’ are obtained ex-
actly as Descartes (2 Med., AT 7:29) did by defining ‘sensing strictly speaking’ as whatever he
seems to sense, seems to see, seems to hear, seems to feel: nothing more, nothing less and noth-
ing other than exactly that.20 This is to assimilate the alleged object of perception to the proposi-
tional form of whatever one takes oneself to perceive – at that moment!21 Such ‘certainties’ must
be momentary and they must be indicative. They must be momentary because whatever now
appears to one may change unexpectedly at any moment in some apparent if aberrant way; and
they must be indicative – they must concern only manifest, occurrent qualities and merely ap-
parent quantities, expanses or shapes – because any dispositional characteristic may manifest
20
‘... I certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed. This cannot be false; what is called “sensing” [lat.:
‘sentire’, fr.: ‘sentir’] is strictly just this, and in this restricted sense of the term it is simply thinking’ (Med.
2, AT 7:29; tr. emended).
21
This is part of why Sellars (e.g., SM I:11–16, ; SK I:48–50, 55, II:5, III:32–4), following Kant, stressed the
importance of the distinction between ‘this red cube’ and ‘this cube is red’: concept empiricism requires
their conflation; cf. Westphal (2013).
itself differently in different circumstances or on different occasions, none of which can be
apprehended presently in or by apparent experience. These alleged claims about mere appear-
ances are ‘certain’ and ‘infallible’ only because they are by definition stripped of any and all impli-
cations for anything not presently apparent now within that same appearance, to whomever it so
appears. This cognitive-justificatory point, and it alone, requires any empiricist supposition
regarding mutually independent observation predicates and individually completely
(dis)confirmable protocol sentences. The cognitive (epistemological, justificatory) problem is
that once such claims are stripped of any and all further implications (to insure their infallible,
incorrigible certainty), they can provide n o cognitive justification whatsoever regarding any
other or further empirical circumstance, not even in the next moments! This epistemic point
holds independently of semantic issues about the language purportedly used in formulating any
‘looks talk’.22
7.4 The complementary semantic or conceptual point is the following. Our ordinary descrip-
tive vocabulary is modally rich, insofar as ascribing any characteristic to any individual uses the
material mode of speech, the ‘thing language’ as Carnap called it, in which we discuss perduring
objects and their features. Any merely momentary, fleeting appearance of something we do not
ordinarily regard as any perception of one of its features. The relevant ‘is of identification’ is
distinct to the ‘is of identity’, to the ‘is of predication’ and to the ‘is of existence’; this ‘is of iden-
tification’ is linked to the perhaps modally stronger ‘is of identification’ which Hintikka (2005,
2014) argues is required for epistemology, insofar as knowledge of any individual requires dis-
criminating that actual individual from counter-factual impostors and requires being able to
identify or re-identify that individual counterfactually across ‘possible world’ scenarios in which
that individual recurs though in different circumstances than it actually inhabits. (Such
discrimination of individuals involves their individuation.) The ‘is of identification’ used in
attributing any observed characteristic to any observed particular is modally rich, insofar as it
constitutively – if fallibly, corrigibly and indefinitely (indeterminately regarding duration) –
attributes that characteristic to that particular as one of its perduring, if perhaps transitory char-
acteristics. As Sellars (EPH, p. viii) was fond of stressing (Bill deVries tells me): to be is to have
power, which involves persisting over some period of time within some region of space, and
effecting results – including observable effects – all the while; this is how and why ‘to be is to
make a difference’ (CE 6, emphasis added; cf. CDCM §§36, 41/¶¶65–6, 74; PHM 58; cf. Lewis
MWO 44, 261).
7.5 Accordingly, not only are our ordinary descriptive terms modally rich, so is our use of them
in any actual knowledge of any actual individual. Everyone’s favourite example of a sensum: an
after image, is modally structured insofar as we expect it to fade within minutes. If ‘it’ doesn’t,
we seek medical attention, or perhaps await the dissipation of intoxicants. Even ‘looks’ talk
about colours – or ‘sounds’ talk about audition – is materially modally rich because it connotes
that if we change our perceptual circumstances by changing the lighting (or, e.g., our velocity or
angle of perception relative to the source) we anticipate a corresponding changes in its sensory
appearance.
22
For detailed discussion of Descartes’ infallibilist sensory states, see Westphal (1989), 18–34. Lewis’s
discussion of ‘the given’ in MWO (36–66) is a bit delicate, but does not constitute knowledge in any form:
‘This given element is never, presumably, to be discovered in isolation’ (MWO 66); ‘There is no knowledge
merely by direct awareness’ (MWO 37); instead the sensory ‘given’ is a theoretical postulate within Lewis’s
account of empirical knowledge (MWO 39, 52, 54); see Westphal (2017).
Our perceptual behaviour is fundamental to distinguishing – and to cognitively exploiting the
distinction – between the subjective order in which appearances happen to occur to us and the
objective order in which worldly (natural or social) objects and events transpire. Hume (T
1.4.2.20–21) stumbled over this distinction when a porter delivered to him a letter in his upper-
storey apartment. Kant exploited this distinction in his appeal to our bodily comportment in
his examples of perceiving a house, a sailing ship, or the earth and the moon (in the Third
Analogy of Experience; KdrV A190–3/B235–8, 257, 277–8).23 Pragmatic realists appeal to our
behavioural expectations in determining what ‘things’ are, and our adapting our behaviour, our
expectations and our classifications to how ‘things’ respond to our dealings with them, including
our classifications and mis-classifications of them.
Underlying all of these epistemological appeals to the cognitive significance of the modally rich
structure of human perception, of its typical objects and of our use of descriptive classifications
and predicative attributions, is a basic point regarding sensory reafference. Through sensory
reafference organisms distinguish between changes in their sensory intake due to their sur-
roundings, and those due to their own behaviour or comportment. Neurobiologist Björn
Brembs (2011) reports on the fundamental role of sensory reafference identified by recent
research on the behaviour of invertebrates such as snails, worms and Drosophila. This research
reveals:
... a general organization of brain function that incorporates flexible decision-making on the
basis of complex computations negotiating internal and external processing. The adaptive
value of such an organization consists of being unpredictable for competitors, prey or preda-
tors, as well as being able to explore the hidden resources deterministic automats would never
find. At the same time, this organization allows all animals to respond efficiently with tried-
and-tested behaviours to predictable and reliable stimuli. (Brembs 2011, 930)
The results examined by Brembs make evident forms of behaviour which cannot be reduced to
merely stochastic sequences, because they reveal goal-directed processes of learning based
upon the following principle of sensory reafference: Through sensory reafference an organism
distinguishes those sensations which result from its own bodily motions from those sensations
occasioned by the organism’s surroundings (Brembs 2011, 936). This feedback loop of sensory
reafference is also fundamental to human actions, because executing any action requires moni-
toring how the world responds to our actions (ibid.).24
7.6 Here we have THE key distinction between empiricism and pragmatism. Empiricism seeks
to identify descriptive terms which can be used in protocol sentences which can be conclu-
sively (dis)confirmed individually by simple perception. This cognitive requirement dictates a
fundamental role for semantic atomism, specifically requiring non-modal basic descriptive
terms. To both empiricists and to neo-pragmatists, ‘pragmatism’ is merely ‘pragmatics’, the
morass of linguistic phenomena which defy assimilation to formalisable syntax and semantics.
There are, however, no such predicates known to humankind! Against that lingering ‘spectator
view’ of human experience and knowledge – and like the Critical realists, including Roy Wood
23
For concise discussion of Kant’s account of the discriminatory character (identification through
individuation) of perceptual and of causal judgment, see Westphal (2016b).
24
All of these points Brandom neglects, apparently because ‘experience’ is ‘not one of’ his ‘words’ (Brandom
2000, 205n7), and because he is committed to supplanting epistemology with philosophy of language; for
discussion of this latter issue, see Westphal (2014b).
Sellars – pragmatic realists stress that our corporeal actions are both temporally and spatially
extended executions, which we guide by monitoring – and as needed modifying or halting –
them. No elementary non-modal descriptive predicates – nor modally dessicated descriptive
predicates (‘presently seems to me like ...’) – are required for knowledge, and no elementary
apparent certainties are required for knowledge, because our experiences, our techniques, our
classifications and our theories are all corrigible, not merely fallible, if we but attend with dis-
cernment to how our experiences of things unfold as we proceed upon our fallible habits, expec-
tations and corrigible theoretical and practical understandings (including classifications, i.e.,
intension), all of which are rooted in our corporeal embodiment and in our natural and social
environs. In this important regard, Peirce, James, Dewey, C.I. Lewis (MWO), Ralph Sleeper
(1983), and F.L. Will – as also Ingarden, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Rein Vihalemm, and Mc-
Guire and Tuchañska (2000) – speak with one pragmatically realist voice.25 Appreciating, un-
derstanding and justifying the realism afforded by this pragmatic approach to knowledge and to
epistemology requires understanding how constructive self-criticism and constructive mutual
criticism and assessment are possible. Those require resolving the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the
Criterion. Solving these problems are amongst Hegel’s chief contributions to pragmatic realism
(Westphal 1998a, 2014a).26
7.7 Brandom is perplexed about how some modal truths may appear – or may indeed be –
both conceptual and empirical. One of his puzzles is to reconcile two characterisations of these
modalities he claims to find in Sellars (CDCM), saying:
it is not easy to see how to reconcile these two characterizations of the modality in question:
as causal, physical necessity and possibility, and as some sort of conceptual necessity and pos-
sibility. (Brandom 2015, 185)
Brandom’s perplexity results directly from misunderstanding Sellars’s links to classical pragma-
tism, especially to the C. I. Lewis of MWO, a misunderstanding linked to his persistent misquo-
tation of his favourite passage from Sellars’s (1958) paper on causal modalities. Brandom’s
(2015) book aims
to explicate what Sellars means by saying that “the descriptive and explanatory resources of
language advance hand in hand.” In addition to Kant’s idea, Sellars here takes over Carnap’s
idea of understanding concepts whose paradigm is modal concepts as (in some sense) metalin-
guistic. (Brandom 2015, 43)
Brandom (2015, 40, 43, 57, 68, 135, 178, 180, 182, 195, 214) quotes this passage ten times,
usually more fully, though always omitting Sellars’s concluding phrase. Sellars states:
25
See Ingarden (1964, 1965, 1974; 2013), Vihalemm (2011, 2012, 2014); regarding Heidegger, see McGuire
and Tuchañska (2000). Vihalemm calls his view ‘practical realism’; we concur about the basics highlighted
herein.
26
These aspects of mental content, semantic and justificatory externalism are all solidly underwritten by
Kant’s two sound transcendental proofs of mental content externalism (Westphal 2004), one of which was
also noted by Hegel (Westphal 1998b) and developed independently by C.I. Lewis (Westphal 2010, §2) and
by Wittgenstein (Westphal 2005). These forms of externalism are also strongly supported by Kant’s
semantics of singular, specifically cognitive reference (Westphal 2004), an analysis adapted and further
developed by Hegel (1807); see Westphal (2000, 2002–03, 2011). Hegel first discerned how to disentangle
Kant’s critique of rational judgment from transcendental idealism, and to reconstruct Kant’s critique on a
pragmatic realist basis (Westphal 2015c, d).
The descriptive and the explanatory resources of language advance hand in hand; and to aban-
don the search for explanation is to abandon the attempt to improve language, period. (CDCM
§108/¶201/1958:307)
Brandom neglects Sellars’s nearly verbatim quotation from Lewis (MWO 263, quoted above §4)
in the phrase he does quote. The closing phrase Brandom omits shows that, like Lewis (MWO,
esp. 259–65), like the Classical pragmatic realists, like Ralph Sleeper (1986) and F.L. Will, Sel-
lars recognised that, and how, empirical inquiry into causal structures, laws, processes and ex-
planations is likewise inquiry into how to refashion relevant portions of our languages in order
better to express and assess our discoveries, understanding and explanations. (These points
comport well with, and further support, Toulmin’s (1949) defence of synthetic necessary
truths.)
In connection with ‘inductive’ scientific confirmation of a significant natural regularity, and the
implications of such confirmation for the meaning of the terms used to formulate this regular-
ity, Sellars contends:
... scientific terms have, as part of their logic, a “line of retreat” as well as a “plan of advance”
– a fact which makes meaningful the claim that in an important sense A and B are the “same”
properties they were “before.” And it is this strategic dimension of the use of scientific terms
which makes possible the reasoned recognition of what Aldrich has perceptively called “rene-
gade instances,” and gives inductive conclusions, in spite of the fact that, as principles of in-
ference, they relate to the very “meaning” of scientific terms, a corrigibility which is a matter
of “retreat to prepared positions” rather than an irrational “rout.” The motto of the age of
science might well be: Natural philosophers have hitherto sought to understand meanings; the task is to
change them. (CDCM §86/¶157, cf. §59/¶111)
Notice that Sellars’s contrast between ‘retreat’ and ‘rout’ distinguishes his view not only from
Hume’s inductive scepticism, but also from Popper’s falsificationism. In contrast to Brandom,
though like pragmatic realists, Sellars recognised that empirical truth and conceptual meaning
(intension) are interrelated in myriad ways through empirical and especially through scientific
inquiry. In part this is because our explicit definitions do not serve to completely formulate the
norms they express, because our norms have rich and wide-ranging ‘latent aspects’, as F.L. Will
(1988, 1997) calls them, aspects of which can become explicit during periods of fundamental
conceptual change, although these guiding latent aspects of norms and their significance func-
tion constantly, both in confirmation and in conceptual change.
In this connection, exclusive focus upon the semantics (intension and extension) of scientific
terms and principles lends an illegitimate appearance of legitimacy to conventionalism, which
evaporates when actual scientific methods and procedures are examined with the care they
deserve and require, including centrally Newton’s fourth rule of method:
In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by induction should be
considered either exactly or very nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until
yet other phenomena make such propositions either more exact or liable to exceptions. (New-
ton 1999, 796; 1871, 389)
By ‘redefining’ (inter alia) space, time and simultaneity, Einstein’s GR succeeded (inter alia) at
better satisfying Newton’s Rule 4 at astronomical distances and at velocities approaching or
equalling the speed of light (Harper 2011). Newton’s Rule 4 embeds the key thesis of Kant’s
semantics of singular cognitive reference, that no statement or surmise has any specifically
cognitive status unless and until is it referred by Somone to some particulars (structures, phenom-
ena) S/he has localised within space and time (Westphal 2014b). This thesis about specifically
cognitive reference was also emphasised by Austin, and is central to Sellars’s epistemology
(SK): ‘meaning’ is not a referential relation, though specific statements by specific persons on
specific occasions in specific circumstances can refer to and be about designated particulars (of
whatever scale), and must refer to and be about some localized particulars in order for Some-
one to know (or even to err about) anything at all – and accordingly to have or to assess any
kind or extent of approximate accuracy or cognitive justification.
Brandom’s disregard of important details even of recent philosophical history appears to be
linked to his excesses of semantic ascent, also evident in his (2015, 91–8) likening his own ver-
sion of Sellarsianism to Huw Price’s subject naturalism. Brandom fails to identify any clear or
consistent sense in which important concepts, terms or ‘vocabularies’ are metalinguistic be-
cause he misunderstands Carnap’s linguistic frameworks. In direct connection with the passage
quoted just above, Brandom states:
For Sellars, the rules which modal vocabulary expresses are rules for deploying linguistic locu-
tions. Their “rulishness” is their subjunctive robustness. Following out this line of thought,
Sellars takes it that “grasp of a concept is mastery of the use of a word.” He then understands
the metalinguistic features in question in terms of rules of inference, whose paradigms are Car-
nap’s L-rules and P-rules. (Brandom 2015, 43)
Carnap’s L- and P-rules are rules of inference; they are to state the logical principles and the
physical laws constitutive of a linguistic framework. In Meaning and Necessity (1956) and thereaf-
ter these rules are supposed to be subjunctively robust. However, they are not themselves meta-
linguistic!! Carnap’s L- and P-rules are specified for and within any linguistic framework govern-
ing the use of terms – descriptive and otherwise – by an informal meta-language, by whatever
natural language Someone uses to (re-)construct that linguistic framework. The linguistic
framework itself is a conceptual explication of terms, concepts, principles or theoretical laws in
use within some specific context of inquiry and explanation. The linguistic framework itself is
not a meta-language for the language used in that context; the explicated and thereby explicit
linguistic framework is to substitute for its original, though only insofar as it improves upon the
original in that context, for its original, and perhaps now also augmented, purposes.
Brandom of course says that
To find out what the contents of the concepts we apply in describing the world really are, we
have to find out what the laws of nature are. And that is an empirical matter. (Brandom 2015,
186)
However, neither Brandom’s inferentialist semantics nor his ‘Modal Expressivism’ substanti-
ates, illuminates, justifies nor otherwise entitles Brandom to these assertions. Brandom’s ‘Mo-
dal Expressivism’ is a proposed solution searching to create a problem for itself to solve. Noth-
ing in his current account shows that modality must be meta-linguistic (in any, even minimal
sense). Nor does his current account show that Sellars’s semantic resources – his meta-linguis-
tic devices of dot quotes, distributed singular terms and so forth – do not work equally well for
modal concepts as for other ‘ontological’ classifications such as ‘property’, ‘universal’ or ‘fact’
(Brandom 2015, 188–9). Indeed, Brandom’s current account funds nothing.
Brandom neglects how some synthetic necessary truths are identified by natural sciences, either
as constitutive characteristics of various natural systems, structures, events or phenomena, or
as constitutive regularities identified and exploited by basic measurement procedures, whereby
natural regularities are exploited as information channels in Dretske’s (1981) sense.27 Accord-
ingly, the relative synthetic a priori required to obtain, to assess and to understand scientific
knowledge cannot be merely meta-linguistic.
8 CONCLUSION.
Understanding and appreciating empirical knowledge must be much more historical, much
more hermeneutical and much more detailed and informed than formal methods afford or
(when used in isolation) facilitate. Wilfrid Sellars had already developed his technical and ana-
lytical semantic resources to serve the non-formal domain of our actual empirical knowledge of
the world. Exactly how he did so, and how well, I turn to next.28
ABBREVIATIONS for SELLARS’s Works (cited), listed alphabetically.

CDCM ‘Counterfactuals, Dispositions, and the Causal Modalities’, 1958.
CE ‘The Concept of Emergence’, with Paul Mehle, 1956.
EAE ‘Empiricism and Abstract Entities’, 1963.
EPM ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’, 1956.
IM ‘Inference and Meaning’, 1953.
ITSA ‘Is There a Synthetic A Priori?’, 1953.
LRB ‘Language, Rules, and Behavior’, 1949.
PHM ‘Phenomenalism’, 1963.
SK ‘The Structure of Knowledge’, 1971.
SM Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes, 1968.
SPR Science, Perception & Reality, 1963.
27
Regarding a scientist’s observation report of a ì-meson by using a cloud chamber, Brandom (2015, 115)
states: ‘the original [observation] report ... was the exercise of a reliable differential responsive disposition
keyed to a whole chain of reliably covarying events, which includes ì-mesons, hooked vapor trails, and
retinal images. What makes it a report of ì-mesons, and not of hooked vapor trails or retinal images, is the
inferential role of the concept the physicist noninferentially applies’. Intelligent use of that concept certainly
is relevant, insofar as it is required to decode information provided via the observational apparatus and the
scientist’s visual system. However, reliable co-variation of relevant states does not suffice, for reasons
Dretske (1981, Part I) provided: these covarying states must also satisfy the constitutive constraints of an
information channel; see Westphal (2016a).
28
Drafts of this paper were presented to ‘Sellars’ Legacy: Consequences, Ramifications, New Directions’,
hosted by the Department of Philosophy, American University Beirut (May 2015), to ‘Sellars’s Place in
Twentieth-Century Philosophy’, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (June 2015), to
Johanna Seibt’s seminar (Aarhus, November 2015), to the philosophers at Bilkent University (Ankara,
March 2016), and to ‘Continental and Analytic Kantianism: The Legacy of Kant in Meillassoux’s and
Sellars’ Realism’, University College Dublin, June 2016. I am very grateful to the respective organisers for
their very kind invitations and to all present for their excellent discussion throughout these occasions, from
which the present paper has benefited decisively. I am particularly grateful to Danielle MacBeth and to
Mark Lance for their constructive critique of misapprehensions in the initial version of this paper, and to
Paolo Parrini for continuing discussions of these and related issues. Thank you, each and all!
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Wilfrid Sellars Semantics and Synthetic

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Wilfrid Sellars, Philosophical Semantics & Synthetic Necessary Truths

A revised version of this paper forthcoming as chapter 20 in: K.R. WESTPHAL,

ABBREVIATIONS for SELLARS’s Works (cited), listed alphabetically.

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