phil essay

 

Choose one of the prompts below and in approximately 500-750 words, answer every part of it as directly, thoroughly, and precisely as possible, explaining key ideas in your own words and citing evidence from the course’s assigned texts:

Prompt A [Heidegger 1]:

According to Heidegger in “What is a Thing?”, what is the problem of ‘Eddington’s table’? In the process, make sure to provide not only A) an example of how the problem manifests but also B) an explanation of why it is a problem more generally, C) one possible attempt, entertained by Heidegger, of trying to resolve the problem, and D) the reasoning for why that attempt fails. What is the modern answer to what a ‘thing’ is, and what is at least one potentially problematic consequence of this answer?

Prompt B [Sellars]:

According to Sellars in “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man”, what are at least two obstacles to establishing the primacy of the ‘scientific image’ over the ‘manifest image’ (be sure to explain what these terms mean in your own words)? What are Sellar’s reasons for thinking that these are obstacles? In the process, reconstruct at least one argument he entertains for a possible reconciliation between the two images as well as an objection that he raises to it.

Prompt C [Heidegger 2]:

According to Heidegger in “The Question Concerning Technology”, what characterizes the essence of ‘technology’? How does Heidegger’s understanding of it differ from the ‘instrumental’ conception of technology (and why is the latter inadequate)? Along the way, make sure to explain the notion of ‘standing reserve’ and how the essence of technology relates to it. Explain the ‘danger’ of technology. How, generally, does technology relate to art?

 

Formatting: 12-point font, double-spaced. Cite appropriately (for any specific, direct attributions of claims to an author) either parenthetically at the end of sentences or in footnotes, indicating abbreviated source title and page number. Direct quotes and close paraphrases (considered together) should comprise no more than 30% of the text of your submission.

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Grading Criteria:

[Listed Roughly in order of importance, with ‘Relevance’ being the umbrella under which the other factors are understood.]

Relevance: Did you properly and fully address the prompt questions as they were asked?

Completeness/thoroughness: Did you answer every part of the question, explaining in your own words all the important key points of the content along the way?

Evidence (textual) provided: Did you make a solid case for your interpretation of the text by citing evidence in support of your specific claims about the author’s ideas?

Clarity/Precision of Expression: Did you write clearly, make your thoughts as transparent as possible to the reader, and choose words that aptly described what you meant to say? Did you include the material that is necessary in order to directly and completely respond to the question, avoiding confusing the reader with tangential thoughts?

Proper scholarship (citation format): Did you choose a coherent citation style and consistently stick to it? Did you cite readings that were assigned for the class?

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General Writing Tips:

– Answer the question as if you were answering someone who asked you in person (i.e., give a relevant, direct, complete answer; this does not mean that you should speak imprecisely or too informally).

– Explain key ideas in your own words, giving the reader the impression that you understand what you’re saying, but whenever attributing a claim to an author, cite (and in the few cases you directly quote, make sure to explain the quote).

– Don’t bother with flowery/drawn-out introductions or conclusion paragraphs; if you write these paragraphs at all, make them a very brief and to-the-point summary of the points you will make (or have made). In such a short submission, it’s likely better to skip them entirely and jump right into answering the question.

– Expect to include citations [but not necessarily direct quotes] often. Your citations are there to provide evidence that your claims about an author’s ideas are based in specific passages of the text, and to give your reader an easy way to understand how your claims constitute a direct interpretation of that text.

– You may cite the lectures, but your main source of evidence for your claims should be the text.

– This is an exercise in textual interpretation, not an encyclopedic summary of a thinker’s ideas. You should give only what background information is necessary to clarify your response to the prompt question, as it becomes relevant to the points you’re making.

Previous

 

PHILOSOPHY AND THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGE OF MAN

Wilfrid Sellars

Published in Frontiers of Science and Philosophy, edited by Robert Colodny (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1962): 35-78. Reprinted in Science, Perception and Reality (1963).

THE PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTI.
THE MANIFEST IMAGEII.
CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY AND THE MANIFEST IMAGEIII.
THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGEIV.
THE CLASH OF THE IMAGESV.
THE PRIMACY OF THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGE: A PROLEGOMENONVI.
PUTTING MAN INTO THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGEVII.

I. THE PHILOSOPHICAL QUEST

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.

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My primary concern in this essay is with the question, ‘in what sense, and to what extent, does the manifest image
of man-in-the-world survive the attempt to unite this image in one field of intellectual vision with man as conceived
in terms of the postulated objects of scientific theory?’ The bite to this question lies, we have seen, in the fact that
man is that being which conceives of itself in terms of the manifest image. To the extent that the manifest does not
survive in the synoptic view, to that extent man himself would not survive. Whether the adoption of the synoptic
view would transform man in bondage into man free, as Spinoza believed, or man free into man in bondage, as
many fear, is a question that does not properly arise until the claims of the scientific image have been examined

IV. THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGE

I devoted my attention in the previous sections to defining what I called the ‘manifest’ image of man-in-the-world. I
argued that this image is to be construed as a sophistication and refinement of the image in terms of which man first
came to be aware of himself as man-in-the-world; in short, came to be man. I pointed out that in any sense in which
this image, in so far as it pertains to man, is a ‘false’ image this falsity threatens man himself, inasmuch as he is, in
an important sense, the being which has this image of himself. I argued that what has been called the perennial
tradition in philosophy — philosophia perennis — can be construed as the attempt to understand the structure of this
image, to know one’s way around in it reflectively with no intellectual holds barred. I analysed some of the main
features of the image and showed how the categories in terms of which it approaches the world can be construed as
progressive prunings of categories pertaining to the person and his relation to other persons and the group. I argued
that the perennial tradition must be construed to include not only the Platonic tradition in its broadest sense, but
philosophies of ‘common sense’ and ‘ordinary usage’. I argued what is common to all these philosophies is an
acceptance of the manifest image as the real. They attempt to understand the achievements of theoretical science in
terms of this framework, subordinating the categories of theoretical science to its categories. I suggested that the
most fruitful way of approaching the problem of integrating theoretical science with the framework of sophisticated
common sense into one comprehensive synoptic vision is to view it not as a piecemeal task — e.g. first a fitting
together of the common sense conception of physical objects with that of theoretical physics, and then, as a separate
venture, a fitting together of the common sense conception of man with that of theoretical psychology — but rather
as a matter of articulating two whole ways of seeing the sum of things, two images of man-in-the-world and
attempting to bring them together in a ‘stereoscopic’ view.

My present purpose is to add to the account I have given of the manifest image, a comparable sketch of what I have
called the scientific image, and to conclude this essay with some comments on the respective contributions of these
two to the unified vision of man-in-the-world which is the aim of philosophy.

The scientific image of man-in-the-world is, of course, as much an idealization as the manifest image –even more
so, as it is still in the process of coming to be. It will be remembered that the contrast I have in mind is not that
between an unscientific conception of man-in-the-world and a scientific one, but between that conception which
limits itself to what correlational techniques can tell us about perceptible and introspectible events and that which
postulates imperceptible objects and events for the purpose of explaining correlations among perceptibles. It was
granted, of course, that in point of historical fact many of the latter correlations were suggested by theories
introduced to explain previously established correlations, so that there has been a dialectical interplay between
correlational and postulational procedures. (Thus we might not have noticed that litmus paper turns red in acid, until
this hypothesis had been suggested by a complex theory relating the absorption and emission of electromagnetic
radiation by objects to their chemical composition; yet in principle this familiar correlation could have been, and,
indeed, was, discovered before any such theory was developed.) Our contrast then, is between two ideal constructs:
(a) the correlational and categorial refinement of the ‘original image’, which refinement I am calling the manifest
image; (b) the image derived from the fruits of postulational theory construction which I am calling the scientific
image.

It may be objected at this point that there is no such thing as the image of man built from postulated entities and

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processes, but rather as many images as there are sciences which touch on aspects of human behaviour. And, of
course, in a sense this is true. There are as many scientific images of man as there are sciences which have
something to say about man. Thus, there is man as he appears to the theoretical physicist — a swirl of physical
particles, forces, and fields. There is man as he appears to the biochemist, to the physiologist, to the behaviourist, to
the social scientist; and all of these images are to be contrasted with man as he appears to himself in sophisticated
common sense, the manifest image which even today contains most of what he knows about himself at the properly
human level. Thus the conception of the scientific or postulational image is an idealization in the sense that it is a
conception of an integration of a manifold of images, each of which is the application to man of a framework of
concepts which have a certain autonomy. For each scientific theory is, from the standpoint of methodology, a
structure which is built at a different ‘place’ and by different procedures within the intersubjectively accessible
world of perceptible things. Thus ‘the’ scientific image is a construct from a number of images, each of which is
supported by the manifest world.

The fact that each theoretical image is a construction on a foundation provided by the manifest image, and in this
methodological sense pre-supposes the manifest image, makes it tempting to suppose that the manifest image is
prior in a substantive sense; that the categories of a theoretical science are logically dependent on categories
pertaining to its methodological foundation in the manifest world of sophisticated common sense in such a way that
there would be an absurdity in the notion of a world which illustrated its theoretical principles without also
illustrating the categories and principles of the manifest world. Yet, when we turn our attention to ‘the’ scientific
image which emerges from the several images proper to the several sciences, we note that although the image is
methodologically dependent on the world of sophisticated common sense, and in this sense does not stand on its
own feet, yet it purports to be a complete image, i.e. to define a framework which could be the whole truth about
that which belongs to the image. Thus although methodologically a development within the manifest image, the
scientific image presents itself as a rival image. From its point of view the manifest image on which it rests is an
‘inadequate’ but pragmatically useful likeness of a reality which first finds its adequate (in principle) likeness in the
scientific image. I say, ‘in principle’, because the scientific image is still in the process of coming into being — a
point to which I shall return at the conclusion of this chapter.

To all of which, of course, the manifest image or, more accurately, the perennial philosophy which endorses its
claims, replies that the scientific image cannot replace the manifest without rejecting its own foundation.

But before attempting to throw some light on the conflicting claims of these two world perspectives, more must be
said about the constitution of the scientific image from the several scientific images of which it is the supposed
integration. There is relatively little difficulty about telescoping some of the ‘partial’ images into one image. Thus,
with due precaution, we can unify the biochemical and the physical images; for to do this requires only an
appreciation of the sense in which the objects of biochemical discourse can be equated with complex patterns of the
objects of theoretical physics. To make this equation, of course, is not to equate the sciences, for as sciences they
have different procedures and connect their theoretical entities via different instruments to intersubjectively
accessible features of the manifest world. But diversity of this kind is compatible with intrinsic ‘identity’ of the
theoretical entities themselves, that is, with saying that biochemical compounds are ‘identical’ with patterns of
subatomic particles. For to make this ‘identification’ is simply to say that the two theoretical structures, each with its
own connection to the perceptible world, could be replaced by one theoretical framework connected at two levels of
complexity via different instruments and procedures to the world as perceived.

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I shall, therefore, provisionally assume that
although behaviouristics and neurophysiology remain distinctive sciences, the correlational content of
behaviouristics points to a structure of postulated processes and principles which telescope together with those of
neurophysiological theory, with all the consequences which this entails. On this assumption, if we trace out these
consequences, the scientific image of man turns out to be that of a complex physical system.

V. THE CLASH OF THE IMAGES

How, then, are we to evaluate the conflicting claims of the manifest image and the scientific image thus
provisionally interpreted to constitute the true and, in principle, complete account of man-in-the-world?

What are the alternatives? It will be helpful to examine the impact of the earlier stages of postulational science on
philosophy. Some reflections on the Cartesian attempt at a synthesis are in order, for they bring out the major
stresses and strains involved in any attempt at a synoptic view. Obviously, at the time of Descartes theoretical
science had not yet reached the neurophysiological level, save in the fashion of a clumsy promissory note. The
initial challenge of the scientific image was directed at the manifest image of inanimate nature. It proposed to
construe physical things, in a manner already adumbrated by Greek atomism, as systems of imperceptible particles,
lacking the perceptible qualities of manifest nature. Three lines of thought seemed to be open:

Manifest objects are identical with Systems of imperceptible particles in that simple sense in which a forest is
identical with a number of trees.

1.

Manifest objects are what really exist; systems of imperceptible particles being ‘abstract’ or ‘symbolic’ ways
of representing them.

2.

Manifest objects are ‘appearances’ to human minds of a reality which is constituted by systems of
imperceptible particles.

3.

Although (2) merits serious consideration, and has been defended by able philosophers, it is (1) and (3), particularly
the latter, which I shall be primarily concerned to explore.

First, some brief remarks about (1). There is nothing immediately paradoxical about the view that an object can be
both a perceptible object with perceptible qualities and a system of imperceptible objects, none of which has
perceptible qualities. Cannot systems have properties which their parts do not have? Now the answer to this
question is ‘yes’, if it is taken in a sense of which a paradigm example would be the fact that a system of pieces of
wood can be a ladder, although none of its parts is a ladder. Here one might say that for the system as a whole to be
a ladder is for its parts to be of such and such shapes and sizes and to be related to one another in certain ways.
Thus there is no trouble about systems having properties which its parts do not have if these properties are a matter
of the parts having such and such qualities and being related in such and such ways. But the case of a pink ice
cube, it would seem clear, cannot be treated in this way. It does not seem plausible to say that for a system of
particles to be a pink ice cube is for them to have such and such imperceptible qualities, and to be so related to one
another as to make up an approximate cube. Pink does not seem to be made up of imperceptible qualities in the way
in which being a ladder is made up of being cylindrical (the rungs), rectangular (the frame), wooden, etc. The
manifest ice cube presents itself to us as something which is pink through and through, as a pink continuum, all the
regions of which, however small, are pink. It presents itself to us as ultimately homogeneous; and an ice cube
variegated in colour is, though not homogeneous in its specific colour, ‘ultimately homogeneous’, in the sense to
which I am calling attention, with respect to the generic trait of being coloured.

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Now reflection on this example suggests a principle which can be formulated approximately as follows:

If an object is in a strict sense a system of objects, then every property of the object must consist in the
fact that its constituents have such and such qualities and stand in such and such relations or, roughly,

every property of a system of objects consists of properties of, and relations between, its
constituents.

With something like this principle in mind, it was argued that if a physical object is in a strict sense a system of
imperceptible particles, then it cannot as a whole have the perceptible qualities characteristic of physical objects in
the manifest image. It was concluded that manifest physical objects are ‘appearances’ to human perceivers of
systems of imperceptible particles which is alternative (3) above.

This alternative, (3), however, is open to an objection which is ordinarily directed not against the alternative itself,
but against an imperceptive formulation of it as the thesis that the perceptible things around us ‘really have no
colour’. Against this formulation the objection has the merit of calling attention to the fact that in the manifest
framework it is as absurd to say that a visible object has no colour, as it is to say of a triangle that it has no shape.
However, against the above formulation of alternative (3), namely, that the very objects themselves are appearances
to perceivers of systems of imperceptible particles, the objection turns out on examination to have no weight. The
objection for which the British ‘common sense’ philosopher G. E. Moore is directly or indirectly responsible, runs:

Chairs, tables, etc., as we ordinarily think them to be, can’t be ‘appearances’ of systems of particles
lacking perceptible qualities because we know that there are chairs, tables, etc., and it is a framework
feature of chairs, tables, etc., that they have perceptible qualities.

It simply disappears once it is recognized that, properly understood, the claim that physical objects do not really
have perceptible qualities is not analogous to the claim that something generally believed to be true about a certain
kind of thing is actually false. It is not the denial of a belief within a framework, but a challenge to the framework.
It is the claim that although the framework of perceptible objects, the manifest framework of everyday life, is
adequate for the everyday purposes of life, it is ultimately inadequate and should not be accepted as an account of
what there is all things considered. Once we see this, we see that the argument from ‘knowledge’ cuts no ice, for the
reasoning:

We know that there are chairs, pink ice cubes, etc. (physical objects). Chairs, pink ice cubes are
coloured, are perceptible objects with perceptible qualities. Therefore, perceptible physical objects with
perceptible qualities exist

operates within the framework of the manifest image and cannot support it. It fails to provide a point of view
outside the manifest image from which the latter can be evaluated.

A more sophisticated argument would be to the effect that we successfully find our way around in life by using the
conceptual framework of coloured physical objects in space and time, therefore, this framework represents things as
they really are. This argument has force, but is vulnerable to the reply that the success of living, thinking, and acting
in terms of the manifest framework can be accounted for by the framework which proposes to replace it, by
showing that there are sufficient structural similarities between manifest objects and their scientific counterparts to
account for this success.1

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I am not, however, concerned to argue that the manifest image is unreal because ultimately incoherent in a narrowly
conceived logical sense.

In contrast to this, the critique of the manifest image in which we are engaged is
based on logical considerations in a broader and more constructive sense, one which compares this image
unfavourably with a more intelligible account of what there is.

It is familiar fact that those features of the manifest world which play no role in mechanical explanation were
relegated by Descartes and other interpreters of the new physics to the minds of the perceiver. Colour, for example,
was said to exist only in sensation; its esse to be percipi. It was argued, in effect, that what scientifically motivated
reflection recognizes to be states of the perceiver are conceptualized in ordinary experience as traits of independent
physical things, indeed that these supposed independent coloured things are actually conceptual constructions
which ape the mechanical systems of the real world.

The same considerations which led philosophers to deny the reality of perceptible things led them to a dualistic
theory of man. For if the human body is a system of particles, the body cannot be the subject of thinking and
feeling, unless thinking and feeling are capable of interpretation as complex interactions of physical particles;
unless, that is to say, the manifest framework of man as one being, a person capable of doing radically different
kinds of things can be replaced without loss of descriptive and explanatory power by a postulational image in which
he is a complex of physical particles, and all his activities a matter of the particles changing in state and
relationship.

Dualism, of course, denied that either sensation or feeling or conceptual thinking could in this sense be construed as
complex interactions of physical particles, or mall as a complex physical system. They were prepared to say that a
chair is really a system of imperceptible particles which ‘appears’ in the manifest framework as a ‘colour solid’ (cf.
our example of the ice cube), but they were not prepared to say that man himself was a complex physical system
which ‘appears’ to itself to be the sort of thing man is in the manifest image.

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Now in the light of recent developments in neurophysiology, philosophers have come to see that there is no reason
to suppose there can’t be neurophysiological processes which stand to conceptual thinking as sensory states of the
brain stand to conscious sensations. And, indeed, there have not been wanting philosophers (of whom Hobbes was,
perhaps, the first) who have argued that the analogy should be viewed philosophically as an identity, i.e. that a
world picture which includes both thoughts and the neurophysiological counterparts of thoughts would contain a
redundancy; just as a world picture which included both the physical objects of the manifest image and complex
patterns of physical particles would contain a redundancy. But to this proposal the obvious objection occurs, that
just as the claim that ‘physical objects are complexes of imperceptible particles’ left us with the problem of
accounting for the status of the perceptible qualities of manifest objects, so the claim that ‘thoughts, etc., are
complex neurophysiological processes’ leaves us with the problems of accounting for the status of the
introspectable qualities of thoughts. And it would seem obvious that there is a vicious regress in the claim that these
qualities exist in introspective awareness of the thoughts which seem to have them, but not in the thoughts
themselves. For, the argument would run, surely introspection is itself a form of thinking. Thus one thought (Peter)
would be robbed of its quality only to pay it to another (Paul).

We can, therefore, understand the temptation to say that even if there are cerebral processes which are strikingly
analogous to conceptual thinking, they are processes which run parallel to conceptual thinking (and cannot be
identified with it) as the sensory states of the brain run parallel to conscious sensation. And we can, therefore,
understand the temptation to say that all these puzzles arise from taking seriously the claim of any part of the
scientific image to be what really is, and to retreat into the position that reality is the world of the manifest image,

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and that all the postulated entities of the scientific image are ‘symbolic tools’ which function (something like the
distance-measuring devices which are rolled around on maps) to help us find our way around in the world, but do
not themselves describe actual objects and processes. On this view, the theoretical counterparts of all features of the
manifest image would be equally unreal, and that philosophical conception of man-of-the-world would be correct
which endorsed the manifest image and located the scientific image within it as a conceptual tool used by manifest
man in his capacity as a scientist.

Vl. THE PRIMACY OF THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGE: A PROLEGOMENON

Is this the truth of the matter? Is the manifest image, subject, of course, to continual empirical and categorial
refinements, the measure of what there really is? I do not think so. I have already indicated that of the three
alternatives we are considering with respect to the comparative claims of the manifest and scientific images, the
first, which, like a child, says ‘both’, is ruled out by a principle which I am not defending in this chapter, although it
does stand in need of defence. The second alternative is the one I have just reformulated and rejected. I propose,
therefore, to re-examine the case against the third alternative, the primacy of the scientific image. My strategy will
be to argue that the difficulty, raised above, which seems to stand in the way of the identification of thought with
cerebral processes, arises from the mistake of supposing that in self-awareness conceptual thinking presents itself to
us in a qualitative guise. Sensations and images do, we shall see, present themselves to us in a qualitative character,
a fact which accounts for the fact that they are stumbling blocks in the attempt to accept the scientific image as real.
But one scarcely needs to point out these days that however intimately conceptual thinking is related to sensations
and images, it cannot be equated with them, nor with complexes consisting of them.

It is no accident that when a novelist wishes to represent what is going on in the mind of a person, he does so by
‘quoting’ the person’s thoughts as he might quote what a person says. For thoughts not only are the sort of things
that find overt expression in language, we conceive of them as analogous to overt discourse. Thus, thoughts in the
manifest image are conceived not in terms of their ‘quality’, but rather as inner ‘goings-on’ which are analogous to
speech, and find their overt expression in speech — though they can go on, of course, in the absence of this overt
expression. It is no accident that one learns to think in the very process of learning to speak.

From this point of view one can appreciate the danger of misunderstanding which is contained in the term
‘introspection’. For while there is, indeed, an analogy between the direct knowledge we have of our own thoughts
and the perceptual knowledge we have of what is going on in the world around us, the analogy holds only in as
much as both self-awareness and perceptual observation are basic forms of non-inferential knowledge. They differ,
however, in that whereas in perceptual observation we know objects as being of a certain quality, in the direct
knowledge we have of what we are thinking (e.g. I am thinking that it is cold outside) what we know
non-inferentially is that something analogous to and properly expressed by the sentence, ‘It is cold outside’, is
going on in me.

The point is an important one, for if the concept of a thought is the concept of an inner state analogous to speech,
this leaves open the possibility that the inner state conceived in terms of this analogy is in its qualitative character a
neurophysiological process. To draw a parallel: if I begin by thinking of the cause of a disease as a substance (to be
called ‘germs’) which is analogous to a colony of rabbits, in that it is able to reproduce itself in geometrical
proportion, but, unlike rabbits, imperceptible and, when present in sufficient number in the human body, able to
cause the symptoms of disease, and to cause epidemics by spreading from person to person, there is no logical
barrier to a subsequent identification of ‘germs’ thus conceived with the bacilli which microscopic investigation
subsequently discovers.

But to point to the analogy between conceptual thinking and overt speech is only part of the story, for of equally
decisive importance is the analogy between speech and what sophisticated computers can do, and finally, between
computer circuits and conceivable patterns of neurophysiological organization. All of this is more or less
speculative, less so now than even a few years ago. What interests the philosopher is the matter of principle; and
here the first stage is decisive — the recognition that the concept of a thought is a concept by analogy. Over and

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above this all we need is to recognize the force of Spinoza’s statement: ‘No one has thus far determined what the
body can do nor no one has yet been taught by experience what the body can do merely by the laws of nature
insofar as nature is considered merely as corporeal and extended.’ (Ethics, Part Three, Prop. II (note)).

Another analogy which may be even more helpful is the following: suppose we are watching the telegraphic report
of a chess game in a foreign country.

White
P-K3

Black
P-QB3

And suppose that we are sophisticated enough to know that chess pieces can be made of all shapes and sizes, that
chess boards can be horizontal or vertical, indeed, distorted in all kinds of ways provided that they preserve certain
topological features of the familiar board.

Then it is clear that while we will think of the players in the foreign country as moving kings, pawns, etc., castling
and check-mating, our concepts of the pieces they are moving and the moving of them will be simply the concept of
items and changes which play a role analogous to the pieces and moves which take place when we play chess. We
know that the items must have some intrinsic quality (shape, size, etc.), but we think of these qualities as ‘those
which make possible a sequence of changes which are structurally similar to the changes which take place on our
own chess boards’.

Thus our concept of ‘what thoughts are’ might, like our concept of what a castling is in chess, be abstract in the
sense that it does not concern itself with the intrinsic character of thoughts, save as items which can occur in
patterns of relationships Which are analogous to the way in which sentences are related to one another and to the
contexts in which they are used.

Now if thoughts are items which are conceived in terms of the roles they play, then there is no barrier in principle to
the identification of conceptual thinking with neurophysiological process. There would be no ‘qualitative’
remainder to be accounted for. The identification curiously enough, would be even more straightforward than the
identification of the physical things in the manifest image with complex systems of physical particles. And in this
key, if not decisive, respect, the respect in which both images are concerned with conceptual thinking (which is the
distinctive trait of man), the manifest and scientific images could merge without dash in the synoptic view.

How does the situation stand in respect to sensation and feeling? Any attempt at identification of these items with
neurophysiological process runs into a difficulty to which reference has already been made, and which we are now
in a position to make more precise. This difficulty accounts for the fact that, with few exceptions, philosophers who
have been prepared to identify conceptual thinking with neurophysiological process have not been prepared to make
a similar identification in the case of sensation.

Before restating the problem let us note that curiously enough, there is more similarity between the two cases than
is commonly recognized. For it turns out on reflection that just as conceptual thinking is construed in the manifest
image by analogy with overt speech, so sensation is construed by analogy with its external cause, sensations being
the states of persons which correspond, in their similarities and differences to the similarities and differences of the
objects which, in standard conditions, bring them about. Let us assume that this is so. But if it is so, why not
suppose that the inner-states which as sensations are conceived by analogy with their standard causes, are in
propria persona complex neurophysiological episodes in the cerebral cortex? To do so would parallel the
conclusion we Ye prepared to draw in the case of conceptual thinking.

Why do we feel that there would be something extremely odd, even absurd, about such a supposition? The key to
the answer lies in noticing an important difference between identifying thoughts with neurophysiological states and
identifying sensations with neurophysiological states. Whereas both thoughts and sensations are conceived by
analogy with publicly observable items, in the former case the analogy concerns the role and hence leaves open the
possibility that thoughts are radically different in their intrinsic character from the verbal behaviour by analogy

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with which they are conceived. But in the case of sensations, the analogy concerns the quality itself. Thus a ‘blue
and triangular sensation’ is conceived by analogy with the blue and triangular (facing) surface of a physical object
which, when looked at in daylight, is its cause. The crucial issue then is this: can we define, in the framework of
neurophysiology, states which are sufficiently analogous in their intrinsic character to sensations to make
identification plausible?

The answer seems clearly to be ‘no’. This is not to say that neurophysiological states cannot be defined (in
principle) which have a high degree of analogy to the sensations of the manifest image. That this can be done is an
elementary fact in psycho-physics. The trouble is, rather, that the feature which we referred to as ‘ultimate
homogeneity’, and which characterizes the perceptible qualities of things, e.g. their colour, seems to be essentially
lacking in the domain of the definable states of nerves and their interactions. Putting it crudely, colour expanses in
the manifest world consist of regions which are themselves colour expanses, and these consist in their turn of
regions which are colour expanses, and so on; whereas the state of a group of neurons, though it has regions which
are also states of groups of neurons, has ultimate regions which are not states of groups of neurons but rather states
of single neurons. And the same is true if we move to the finer grained level of biochemical process.

Nor do we wish to say that the ultimate homogeneity of the sensation of a red rectangle is a matter of each physical
particle in the appropriate region of the cortex having a colour; for whatever other difficulties such a view would
involve, it doesn’t make sense to say of the particles of physical theory that they are coloured. And the principle of
reducibility, which we have accepted without argument, makes impossible the view that groups of particles can
have properties which are not ‘reducible to’ the properties and relations of the members of the group.

It is worth noting that we have here a recurrence of the essential features of Eddington’s ‘two tables’ problem — the
two tables being, in our terminology, the table of the manifest image and the table of the scientific image. There the
problem was to ‘fit together’ the manifest table with the scientific table. Here the problem is to fit together the
manifest sensation with its neurophysiological counterpart. And, interestingly enough, the problem in both cases is
essentially the same: how to reconcile the ultimate homogeneity of the manifest image with the ultimate
non-homogeneity of the system of scientific objects.

Now we are rejecting the view that the scientific image is a mere ‘symbolic tool’ for finding our way around in the
manifest image; and we are accepting the view that the scientific account of the world is (in principle) the adequate
image. Having, therefore, given the perceptible qualities of manifest objects their real locus in sensation we were
confronted with the problem of choosing between dualism or identity with respect to the relation of conscious
sensations to their analogues in the visual cortex, and the above argument seems to point clearly in the dualistic
direction. The ‘ultimate homogeneity’ of perceptible qualities, which, among other things, prevented identifying the
perceptible qualities of physical objects with complex properties of systems of physical particles, stands equally in
the way of identifying, rather than correlating, conscious sensations with the complex neural processes with which
they are obviously connected.

But such dualism is an unsatisfactory solution, because ex hypothesi sensations are essential to the explanation of
how we come to construct the ‘appearance’ which is the manifest world. They are essential to the explanation of
how there even seem to be coloured objects. But the scientific image presents itself as a closed system of
explanation, and if the scientific image is interpreted as we have interpreted it up to this point the explanation will
be in terms of the constructs of neurophysiology, which, according to the argument, do not involve the ultimate
homogeneity, the appearance of which in the manifest image is to be explained.

We are confronted, therefore, by an antinomy, either, (a) the neurophysiological image is incomplete, i.e. and must
be supplemented by new objects (‘sense fields’) which do have ultimate homogeneity and which somehow make
their presence felt in the activity of the visual cortex as a system of physical particles; or, (b) the neurophysiological
image is complete and the ultimate homogeneity of the sense qualities (and, hence, the sense qualities, themselves)
is mere appearance in the very radical sense of not existing in the spatiotemporal world at all.

Is the situation irremediable? Does the assumption of the reality of the scientific image lead us to a dualism of

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particles and sense fields? of matter and ‘consciousness’? If so, then, in view of the obviously intimate relation
between sensation and conceptual thinking (for example, in perception), we must surely regress and take back the
identification or conceptual thinking with neurophysiological process which seemed so plausible a moment ago. We
could then Ague that although in the absence of other considerations it would be plausible to equate conceptual
thinking with neurophysiological process, when the chips are all down, we must rather say that although conceptual
thinking and neurophysiological process are each analogous to verbal behaviour as a public social phenomenon (the
one by virtue of the very way in which the very notion of ‘thinking’ is formed; the other as a scientifically
ascertained matter of fact), they are also merely analogous to one another and cannot be identified. If so, the
manifest and the scientific conception of both sensations and conceptual thinking would fit into the synoptic view as
parallel processes, a dualism which could only be avoided by interpreting the scientific image as a whole as a
‘symbolic device’ for coping with the world as it presents itself to us in the manifest image.

Is there any alternative? As long as the ultimate constituents of the scientific image are particles forming ever more
complex systems of particles, we are inevitably confronted by the above choice. But the scientific image is not yet
complete; we have not yet penetrated all the secrets of nature.

VII. PUTTING MAN INTO THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGE

Even if the constructive suggestion of the preceding section were capable of being elaborated into an adequate
account of the way in which the scientific image could recreate in its own terms the sensations, images, and feelings
of the manifest image, the thesis of the primacy of the scientific image would scarcely be off the ground. There
would remain the task of showing that categories pertaining to man as a person who finds himself confronted by
standards (ethical logical, etc.) which often conflict with his desires and impulses, and to which he may or may not
conform, can be reconciled with the idea that man is what science says he is.

At first sight there would seem to be only one way of recapturing the specifically human within the framework of
the scientific image. The categories of the person might be reconstructed without loss in terms of the fundamental
concepts of the scientific image in a way analogous to that in which the concepts of biochemistry are (in principle)
reconstructed in terms of sub-atomic physics. To this suggestion there is, in the first place, the familiar objection
that persons as responsible agents who make genuine choices between genuine alternatives, and who could on many
occasions have done what in point of fact they did not do, simply can’t be construed as physical systems (even
broadly interpreted to include sensations and feelings) which evolve in accordance with laws of nature (statistical or
non-statistical). Those who make the above move can be expected to reply (drawing on distinctions developed in
section I) that the concepts in terms of which we think of a person’s ‘character’, or the fact that ‘he could have done
otherwise’, or that ‘his actions are predictable’ would appear in the reconstruction as extraordinarily complex
defined concepts not to be confused with the concepts in terms of which we think of the ‘nature’ of NaCl, or the fact
that ‘system X would have failed to be in state S given the same initial conditions’ or that ‘it is predictable that
system X will assume state S given these initial conditions’. And I think that a reply along these lines could be
elaborated which would answer this objection to the proposed reconstruction of categories pertaining to persons.

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But even if the proposed reconstruction could meet what might be called the ‘free will’ objection, it fails decisively
on another count. For it can, I believe, be conclusively shown that such a reconstruction is in principle impossible,
the impossibility in question being a strictly logical one. (I shall not argue the point explicitly, but the following
remarks contain the essential clues.) If so, that would seem to be the end of the matter. Must we not return to a
choice between (a) a dualism in which men as scientific objects are contrasted with the ‘minds’ which are the source
and principle of their existence as persons; (b) abandoning the reality of persons as well as manifest Physical
objects in favour of the exclusive reality of scientific objects; (c) returning once and for all to the thesis of the
merely ‘calculational’ or ‘auxiliary’ status of theoretical frameworks and to the affirmation of the primacy of the
manifest image?

Assuming, in accordance with the drift of the argument of this Chapter, that none of these alternatives is
satisfactory, is there a way out? I believe there is, and that while a proper exposition and defence would require at
least the space of this whole volume, the gist can be dated in short compass. To say that a certain person desired to
do A, thought it his duty to do B but was forced to do C, is not to describe him as one might describe a scientific
specimen. One does, indeed, describe him, but one does something more. And it is this something more which is
the irreducible core of the framework of persons.

In what does this something more consist? First, a relatively superficial point which will guide the way. To think of
a featherless biped as a person is to think of it as a being with which one is bound up in a network of rights and
duties. From this point of view, the irreducibility of the personal is the irreducibility of the ‘ought’ to the ‘is’. But
even more basic than this (though ultimately, as we shall see, the two points coincide), is the fact that to think of a
featherless biped as a person is to construe its behaviour in terms of actual or potential membership in an embracing
group each member of which thinks of itself as a member of the group. Let us call such a group a ‘community’.
Once the primitive tribe, it is currently (almost) the ‘brotherhood’ of man, and is potentially the ‘republic’ of
rational beings (cf. Kant’s ‘Kingdom of Ends’). An individual may belong to many communities, some of which
overlap, some of which are arranged like Chinese boxes. The most embracing community to which he belongs
consists of those with whom he can enter into meaningful discourse. The scope of the embracing community is the
scope of ‘we’ in its most embracing non-metaphorical use. ‘We’, in this fundamental sense (in which it is equivalent
to the French ‘on‘ or English ‘one‘) is no less basic than the other ‘persons’ in which verbs are conjugated. Thus, to
recognize a featherless biped or dolphin or Martian as a person is to think of oneself and it as belonging to a
community.

Now, the fundamental principles of a community, which define what is ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’,
‘done’ or ‘not done’, are the most general common intentions of that community with respect to the behaviour of
members of the group. It follows that to recognize a featherless biped or dolphin or Martian as a person requires
that one think thoughts of the form, ‘We (one) shall do (or abstain from doing) actions of kind A in circumstances of
kind C’. To think thoughts of this kind is not to classify or explain, but to rehearse an intentions.2

Thus the conceptual framework of persons is the framework in which we think of one another as sharing the
community intentions which provide the ambience of principles and standards (above all, those which make
meaningful discourse and rationality itself possible) within which we live our own individual lives. A person can
almost be defined as a being that has intentions. Thus the conceptual framework of persons is not something that
needs to be reconciled with the scientific image, but rather something to be joined to it. Thus, to complete the
scientific image we need to enrich it not with more ways of saying what is the case, but with the language of
community and individual intentions, so that by construing the actions we intend to do and the circumstances in
which we intend to do them in scientific terms, we directly relate the world as conceived by scientific theory to our
purposes, and make it our world and no longer an alien appendage to the world in which we do our living. We can,
of course, as matters now stand, realize this direct incorporation of the scientific image into our way of life only in
imagination. But to do so is, if only in imagination, to transcend the dualism of the manifest and scientific images of
man-of-the-world.

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Notes

1 It might seem that the manifest framework accounts for the success of the scientific framework, so that the
situation is symmetrical. But I believe that a more penetrating account of theoretical explanation than I have been
able to sketch in this chapter would show that this claim is illusory. I discuss this topic at some length in Chapter 4
[“The Language of Theories”].

2 Community intentions (‘One shall . . .’) are not just private intentions (I shall . . .’) which everybody has. (This is
another way of putting the above-mentioned irreducibility of ‘we’.) There is, however, a logical connection between
community and private intentions. For one does not really share a community intention unless, however often one
may rehearse it, it is reflected, where relevant, in the corresponding private intention.

Transcribed into hypertext by Andrew Chrucky, June 10, 2000. Thanks to Nicholas Joll, I have corrected some
errors — July 7, 2008.

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