Willem deVries: Semantic Holism and the Clash of the Images

ABSTRAKT V ANGLIČTINĚ: I begin with a quick review of Sellars’ distinction between the Manifest and Scientific Images and why that distinction is significant for his thought.  He thinks the Scientific Image will replace the Manifest Image, but with an important qualification: we will need to “join” the language of intentions to the descriptive vocabulary of science.   I then explain why Sellars thought this qualification poses no particular difficulty.  But I then argue that he is wrong about that, presenting two arguments.  The first I call the argument from semantic holism, which makes the point that Sellars cannot presume that the descriptive resources science makes available and the expressive resources that underwrite normativity in his view are distinct enough that we can sensibly talk of “joining” the one to the other, as if they could initially be entirely separable.  The second argument, from the unity of a person is, in fact, perhaps the same argument from a different perspective: the holistic unity between the epistemic and agential aspects of a person again put into doubt any attempt to separate a purely descriptive vocabulary or language-fragment from the full-fledged language in which agents reason practically.   The relation between the language of intentions and the language of science will be much more dialectical than Sellars pretends.