Roy Wood Sellars

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Roy Wood Sellars (born July 9, 1880 in Seaforth (Ontario) , † September 5, 1973 in Ann Arbor ) was an American philosopher who advocated critical realism and evolutionary naturalism . In the field of political philosophy , Sellars advocated moderate scientific socialism and was co-author of the "Humanist Manifesto" of 1933. His son Wilfrid Sellars was also a well-known philosopher.

Life

Sellar's parents, Ford Wylis and Mary Stalker Sellars, were of Scottish descent. The father, who was originally a teacher, was still studying medicine for health reasons. The family then moved to Pinnebog, a small, rural town in Michigan. Because of its surroundings, Sellars was already active in sports in his youth. Because of his intellectual abilities, he was sent to the Ferris Institute in Big Rapids , Michigan for proper schooling . After studying at the University of Michigan from 1899 to 1903, he moved to Hartford Theological Seminary , where he studied Greek, Hebrew and Arabic so that he could read the original Koran, among other things. After an academic year in 1904 at the University of Wisconsin as a fellow, he returned to Michigan for a professorship. After a short stay at the University of Chicago in the summer of 1906 , he obtained a Ph.D. He then spent a year studying in Europe, including at the Sorbonne with Henri Bergson and in Heidelberg with Hans Driesch and Wilhelm Windelband . He then returned to Michigan, first as an instructor and then as a permanent faculty member until he retired.

Sellars married his cousin Helen Maud Sellars in 1911. The marriage has two children, Wilfrid and Cecily. The daughter died in a car accident in 1954. The son, Wilfrid Sellars , for his part became an internationally recognized philosopher who took up the work of his father and linked it with analytical philosophy .

Teaching

Sellars saw it as the task of philosophy to contribute to the elucidation of myths and to convey a worldview based on the sciences. The sciences have their starting point in common sense , but lead beyond this through new questions and methods. Philosophy has to harmonize the different worldviews.

Critical realism

Against any form of idealism , Sellars was of the opinion that real objects are the starting point for knowledge. He tried to defend a common sense realism. As long as a person perceives without reflecting on the perception, he assumes that he perceives real objects directly, without a mediating quantity between the objects and the content of consciousness. There are therefore no independent sensory data , perceptions , images or representations . For Sellars it is a mistake to distinguish between the perceived object and the perceptual content. Theories such as idealism, representationalism or positivism made the mistake of concluding from the dependence of perception on the conditions of the perceiving organism that the perceived objects are not independent of it. Based on this view, Sellars advocated a clear correspondence theory of truth .

Sellars, however, recognized the dependence of perceptions on the perceptual apparatus and therefore rejected a naive realism because it did not adequately take into account the scientifically ascertainable differences between the objects and the perceptions. Because of the organic conditions, perceptions are always interpretations for him in which the external causal conditions of perception on the one hand and the internal referential act of perception on the other.

Evolutionary naturalism

Common sense is also the starting point for Sellars' theory of science . In the sciences, new knowledge is gained beyond everyday knowledge through new questions and through the application of systematic and mathematical methods. Sellars rejected a simple physical structure of the universe, but postulated a hierarchy of several emergent levels of causation that emerged in the course of evolution . So life arises from matter under suitable conditions and spirit is also an emergent development from life. Sellars spoke of a creative synthesis in nature in which the new develops from the existing. The individual sciences such as physics or biology are limited to their respective level and cannot explain the higher levels of emergence on their own. One of the tasks of philosophy is therefore to create an overview of the relationships and the connecting structures.

Organism

In a contribution to the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead , Sellars claims that his philosophy deserves the title of a "philosophy of the organic" because, in his view, organisms are holistic objects, while Whitehead sees them as composite entities (as nexus or societies of original individual processes, see process and reality ). According to Sellars, the organisms created in the course of emergence are to be understood as wholes and not as a plurality. This holistic view is closely related to the conceptions of fields in physics or holistic forms in Gestalt psychology .

Value theory

Sellars closely linked his theory of value with the epistemological position of critical realism and with the ontological position of emergent organisms. Human freedom and the world of values ​​are the result of organic development and are inconceivable in a purely mechanical worldview. The physical world only provides the framework conditions for human life and its institutions that give consciousness its central orientation (the “hot center”). Sellars generally rejected any form of ontological dualism and saw therein damage to the theory of value. Value judgments only partially correspond to cognitive judgments because they cannot be derived from physical facts. But they are interpretations that affect human life and are therefore relevant to both individuals and groups. Sellars admits that value judgments are influenced by feelings, but believes that these can be traced back to objective facts.

socialism

Sellars advocated modern socialism early on in political philosophy . He distinguished between a utopian socialism, for example in Fourier and Saint-Simon, from a political socialism in the Communist Manifesto of early Karl Marx and, thirdly, scientific socialism as a further development of Marx's theory and orthodox Marxism in the light of his critics. Sellars clearly opposed radical changes in social structures based on a utopia, which he considered dangerous. Instead, he called for a gradual change in the existing institutions based on scientific insights. In particular, he rejected the deterministic materialism of orthodox Marxism and the associated theory of history, which was regarded as a necessity. The Marxian thesis that capitalism already has the roots of its downfall is historically falsified. For Sellars, people have to learn to emancipate themselves in the political process. This includes various virtues, such as cooperation, ingenuity, the willingness to find improved solutions in continuous processes and the patience to gradually achieve the desired goal. Instead of Marx's supra-individual necessity of history, Sellers saw the necessity of education for active participation in long-term processes of change.

humanism

In his early work, Sellars examined religion on a comparative basis from a scientific, humanistic, and atheistic basis. He advocated replacing supernatural phenomena on a scientific basis with values ​​of shared loyalty and thus contributing to people's wellbeing. With this view he was one of the first representatives of a religious humanism in America in the early 20th century, which had one of its main sources in Unitarianism . In 1932 Sellars was asked by the Unitarian Raymond Bragg, a co-editor of the magazine "The New Humanist" to contribute to a basic paper on humanism. The draft written by Sellars was subsequently modified in many ways and published as the "Humanist Manifesto" in 1933 under the editorship of Bragg. Since several texts with the same title were subsequently published, this paper is referred to as "Humanist Manifesto I". The manifesto is not only aimed at an academic readership, but is intended for the general public and consists of 15 theses with a framework text. It is expressly formulated as an alternative religious worldview, expressly rejecting theism , deism , modernism or other forms of “new thinking”. Instead, a profit-oriented society is rejected in the manifesto and a cooperative worldwide society with rational problem solutions is called for. Sellars is one of the 34 signatories of the manifesto and has also supported this in publications. Due to various reviews, a Humanist Manifesto II was later published, which was formulated less optimistically without a basic religious conception and also in terms of social goals. Sellars is also one of the signatories of this.

Fonts

literature

  • Norman Melchert: Realism, Materialism, and the Mind. The Philosophy of Roy Wood Sellars. Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, / Ill. 1968
  • CF Delaney: Mind and Nature. A Study of the Naturalistic Philosophy of Cohen, Woodbridge and Sellars. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame 1969
  • William Preston Warren: Roy Wood Sellars. Twayne, Boston 1975

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: The Philosophy of Physical Realism. Macmillan, New York: 1932, v; Roy Wood Sellars: Neglected Alternatives. Critical Essays by Roy Wood Sellars. (Ed. by William. Preston Warren with an introduction and a brief biography), Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg 1973 160-161
  2. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: Critical realism. A Study of the Nature and Conditions of Knowledge, Rand-McNally, Chicago 1916, 3
  3. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: Evolutionary Naturalism. Open Court, Chicago 1922, 70 (footnote 4)
  4. ↑ Roy Wood Sell Sars ". A Correspondence Theory of Truth" Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 38 (24): 653-54. and: "'True' as Contextually Implying Correspondence." Journal of Philosophy 56 (18): 712-22
  5. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: Principles of Emergent Realism. (Ed. and annotated by W. Preston Warren), Warren H. Green, St. Louis 1970, 6-8, 13, 15-16, 17-27, 33-35
  6. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: Evolutionary Naturalism. Open Court, Chicago 1922, 76-77
  7. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: Evolutionary Naturalism. Open Court, Chicago 1922, Chapter IX
  8. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: Evolutionary Naturalism. Open Court, Chicago 1922, viii, 214-215
  9. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: Neglected Alternatives. Critical Essays by Roy Wood Sellars. ed. by William. Preston Warren, Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg 1973, 161
  10. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: "Philosophy of Organism and Physical Realism". The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Paul A. Schlipp, (ed.). 1941, reprint Open Court, LaSalle 1991, 407-433
  11. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: Philosophy of Physical Realism. Macmillan, New York 1932, 446-447
  12. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: Philosophy of Physical Realism. Macmillan, New York 1932, 446-447
  13. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: Philosophy of Physical Realism. Macmillan, New York 1932, 450
  14. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: The Essentials of Philosophy, Macmillan, New York 1917, Chapter XVI
  15. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: Philosophy of Physical Realism. Macmillan, New York 1932, 459-473
  16. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: The Next Step in Democracy, Macmillan, New York 1916
  17. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: Principles of Emergent Realism. (Ed. and annotated by W. Preston Warren), Warren H. Green, St. Louis 1970, 272-334
  18. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: Principles of Emergent Realism. (Ed. and annotated by W. Preston Warren), Warren H. Green, St. Louis 1970, 308
  19. ^ Roy Wood Sellars: The Next Step in Religion. An essay Toward the Coming Renaissance, Macmillan, New York 1918, 12
  20. ↑ Humanist Manifesto I.
personal data
SURNAME Sellars, Roy Wood
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sellars, Roy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Seaforth, Ontario
DATE OF DEATH 5th September 1973
Place of death Ann Arbor