Legg, Catherine (2024) Sellars and Peirce on Truth and the End of Inquiry. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Despite some notable similarities between the scientific realisms of Sellars and Peirce (such as both being anti-representationalist, and future-directed), in his mature work Science and Metaphysics Sellars explicitly critiqued Peirce’s account of truth, as lacking “an intelligible foundation” (Sellars 1968: vii). In this paper, I explore Sellars’ proposed remedy to Peirce’s purported lack, in his complex and enigmatic account of picturing – a non-discursive ‘mapping’ of the world. I argue that although Sellars’ development of this idea is largely sound, much of what he charges Peirce’s philosophy with missing is actually present there. By means of his semiotic icon / index / symbol distinction, Peirce manages to develop a philosophy of language which effectively coordinates the real order and the order of signification within the very structure of the proposition as he understands it, by contrast to Sellars’ claim that the two orders are merely connected by ‘analogy’. I also argue that in between Sellars’ ambitious account of veridicality, which appears to anticipate a form of scientific self-mensuration, and the dismissive ‘anti-truth’ quietism of neopragmatists such as Rorty, Peirce’s “contrite fallibilism” (Peirce CP 1.14) charts a wise middle path.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Legg, Catherine c.legg@deakin.edu.au 0000-0002-0231-5415
Additional Information:	forthcoming in "Interpreting Sellars: Critical Essays", ed. Carl Sachs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Keywords:	Sellars, Peirce, truth, reality, picturing, representationalism, inferentialism, signification, icon, index, symbol
Subjects:	General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism General Issues > Theory Change
Depositing User:	Dr Catherine Legg
Date Deposited:	06 Dec 2024 13:14
Last Modified:	06 Dec 2024 13:14
Item ID:	24360
Subjects:	General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science General Issues > Realism/Anti-realism General Issues > Theory Change
Date:	2024
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/24360

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