Sellars’s Core Critique of C. I. Lewis: Against the Equation of Aboutness with Givenness

Abstract Many have taken Sellars’s critique of empiricism in “Empiricism and the Philosophy Mind” ( EPM ) to be aimed at his teacher C. I. Lewis. But if so, why do famous arguments its opening sections carry so little force against Lewis’s views? Understandably, some respond by denying that epistemology is among positions targeted Sellars. this incorrect. Indeed, Sellars had earlier offered more trenchant (if already familiar) critiques epistemology. What original about it criticizes empiricist like not because their foundationalism, but psychologism meaning. Since turns out unacceptable own lights, has a compelling implicit) Lewis offer after all, one strikes heart philosophical system.