noninferentially—the only sense available once the Myth of the Given has been rejected) aware of both sorts of inner episode. In the case of sense impressions, this is awareness of the impressions “of the sort which is common to those experiences in which we either see that something is red and triangular, or something merely looks red and triangular, or there merely looks to be a red and triangular object over there [45].” Such noninferential reports of sense impressions, reports of the form “I am now sensing a sense impression of a red triangle,” are quite different from those made using ‘looks’, which were considered in the first half of the essay. A noninferential report using ‘looks’ takes a ‘that’ clause as its content-specification, and indicates the inferential potential that is being forwarded as a candidate for endorsement. A noninferential report of a sense impression takes a description of a particular of a sort modeled on replicas as its content-specification, and indicates the causal antecedent common to reports of how things are and of how things look. (Recall the diagnosis of [7].) Running the two together would re-enact the Myth of the Given. These two essentially derivative and parasitic strata of language, both centering on noninferential uses, express different aspects of perceptual experience. The conceptual awareness of sense impressions that Sellars has now made available in an unmysterious and unthreatening way is the “something more” that (according to the opening sentences of [16]) our perception involves, besides endorsement of propositional contents “wrung [noninferentially] from the perceiver by the object perceived.” They are what was promised in the first paragraph of [45]. The sense impressions of which we are aware (once both the concept of sense impressions and the corresponding noninferential reporting practices are fully in place) explain the fact that “when I say ‘X looks green to me now’…my experience is, so to speak, intrinsically, as an experience
noninferentially—the only sense available once the Myth of the Given has been rejected) aware of both sorts of inner episode. In the case of sense impressions, this is awareness of the impressions “of the sort which is common to those experiences in which we either see that something is red and triangular, or something merely looks red and triangular, or there merely looks to be a red and triangular object over there [45].” Such noninferential reports of sense impressions, reports of the form “I am now sensing a sense impression of a red triangle,” are quite different from those made using ‘looks’, which were considered in the first half of the essay. A noninferential report using ‘looks’ takes a ‘that’ clause as its content-specification, and indicates the inferential potential that is being forwarded as a candidate for endorsement. A noninferential report of a sense impression takes a description of a particular of a sort modeled on replicas as its content-specification, and indicates the causal antecedent common to reports of how things are and of how things look. (Recall the diagnosis of [7].) Running the two together would re-enact the Myth of the Given. These two essentially derivative and parasitic strata of language, both centering on noninferential uses, express different aspects of perceptual experience. The conceptual awareness of sense impressions that Sellars has now made available in an unmysterious and unthreatening way is the “something more” that (according to the opening sentences of [16]) our perception involves, besides endorsement of propositional contents “wrung [noninferentially] from the perceiver by the object perceived.” They are what was promised in the first paragraph of [45]. The sense impressions of which we are aware (once both the concept of sense impressions and the corresponding noninferential reporting practices are fully in place) explain the fact that “when I say ‘X looks green to me now’…my experience is, so to speak, intrinsically, as an experience
EPMGuide11496a.docx