Wilfrid Sellars was an American philosopher whose work bridged logical positivism and the post-positivist developments of analytic philosophy. His most influential contribution came in 1956 with “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” which attacked what he called the “myth of the given”—the idea that some beliefs or experiences serve as self-justifying foundations for knowledge without requiring further justification.
The myth of the given
Sellars argued that the empiricist tradition, particularly logical positivism, wrongly assumed that sensory experience could provide a foundation for knowledge that was both:
- Epistemically basic (requiring no further justification)
- Capable of justifying other beliefs
He contended that all awareness, even perceptual awareness, involves conceptual classification and therefore cannot serve as a theory-neutral foundation. This critique undermined foundationalist epistemology and contributed to the internal crisis of logical positivism in the 1950s.
Historical significance and political containment
Together with Quine’s attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951), Sellars’s demolition of the given destabilised the core assumptions of logical positivism at the very moment it appeared to have secured institutional dominance in American philosophy. This internal crisis, rather than weakening analytic philosophy, fostered a shift toward new forms of rigour emphasising formalisation, technical precision, and political neutrality.
Crucially, Sellars’s critique—though devastating to positivist epistemology—posed no threat to the political economy of philosophy or the broader social order. The debate about the “given” remained safely within technical epistemology, never questioning the institutional structures, funding sources, or political commitments shaping philosophical work. This made Sellars’s intervention paradigmatic of post-positivist analytic philosophy: internal criticism that appeared radical whilst remaining entirely within professionally and politically acceptable bounds.
The shift from positivism to post-positivist analytic philosophy thus represents not a break with capitalist technocracy but its refinement. Where positivism’s crude scientism had become philosophically untenable, the new emphasis on formal precision and technical sophistication preserved philosophy’s alignment with technocratic rationality whilst appearing more philosophically respectable.
Legacy
Sellars’s work influenced later developments in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and epistemology. His critique of foundationalism shaped subsequent debates about the structure of justification and the relationship between experience and conceptual thought.