Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind

A long essay, first given as three lectures in London in 1956 and published that year, now usually read as a short book with a study guide by Robert Brandom. Sellars attacks what he calls the Myth of the Given: the idea that some knowledge, such as awareness of sense data, is simply given in experience, presupposing no other knowledge, and can serve as the foundation for the rest. His example is a necktie salesman who learns that, under the shop's electric light, a tie can look green without being green; to report how things look, one must already master the concepts and conditions for how they are. To call a state knowledge is to place it in the logical space of reasons, not to describe it empirically. The final sections tell the myth of Jones, a genius among our 'Rylean ancestors', who explains behaviour by positing inner thoughts modelled on speech.

Its critique of the Given and its idea of the space of reasons are central to modern epistemology and philosophy of mind, and to later thinkers such as McDowell and Brandom.