The Role of Languagings in Sellars’ Theory of Experience
Abstract
Abstract. The picturing capacity of languagings is arguably a commitment central to Sellars’ account of intentionality. I reconstruct its transcendental role in three steps: First, I trace the Kantian background of Sellars’ thesis that ‘picturing qua languagings’ adopts a point of view outside of the series of actual and possible representations and the sequence of conceptual frameworks. Then, I discuss how languagings serve as fulcrum for the very idea of gradually improving epistemic practices on the whole. Finally, I show the plurality of articulations that the functions of languagings receive in their cognitive, computational, ecological, and social roles to be not only compatible but integrated and enriched by explicating their picturing capacity.
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