Wilfrid Sellars > Quotes

“The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term”
― Wilfrid Stellars

“The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term. Under 'things in the broadest possible sense' I include such radically different items as not only 'cabbages and kings', but numbers and duties, possibilities and finger snaps, aesthetic experience and death. To achieve success in philosophy would be, to use a contemporary turn of phrase, to 'know one's way around' with respect to all these things, not in that unreflective way in which the centipede of the story knew its way around before it faced the question, 'how do I walk?', but in that reflective way which means that no intellectual holds are barred.”
― Wilfrid Sellars

“Conceptual thinking is not by accident that which is communicated to others, any more than the decision to move a chess piece is by accident that which finds an expression in a move on a board between two people.”
― Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind

“What is characteristic of philosophy is not a
special subject-matter, but the aim of knowing one's way around with respect to the subject-matters of all the special disciplines.”
― Wilfrid Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality