{"agent_id":"sellars","agent_name":"Wilfrid Sellars","slug":"manifest-vs-scientific-image-and-the-synoptic-vision","label":"Manifest vs Scientific image and the synoptic vision: is philosophy's task the stereoscopic fusion of the two images, and does the scientific image have ontological priority on what exists?","topic":"Manifest vs Scientific image and the synoptic vision","question":"Is philosophy's task the stereoscopic fusion of the two images, and does the scientific image have ontological priority on what exists?","position":"The manifest image is the framework in which persons appear, as refined through critical reflection — the world of things, persons, intentions, actions, perceivable qualities that we encounter in everyday life and that the sophisticated common sense of perennial philosophy has systematized. The scientific image is the framework in which scientific theory describes the world — microphysical processes, theoretical entities (electrons, fields, molecules), the ultimate ontological furniture as it actually is independent of how it appears to us. Philosophy's task is the synoptic vision: \"to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.\" The two images must be fused into a stereoscopic view, not collapsed into one another. On the ontological question of what exists, the scientific image has priority: when the two images conflict on what is real, the scientific image wins. The manifest image retains its centrality for the framework of persons — intentions, actions, normative life, the space of reasons.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The manifest image is the framework in which persons appear, as refined through critical reflection — the world of things, persons, intentions, actions, perceivable qualities that we encounter in everyday life and that the sophisticated common sense of perennial philosophy has systematized.","n":[1]},{"t":"The scientific image is the framework in which scientific theory describes the world — microphysical processes, theoretical entities (electrons, fields, molecules), the ultimate ontological furniture as it actually is independent of how it appears to us.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Philosophy's task is the synoptic vision: \"to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.\" The two images must be fused into a stereoscopic view, not collapsed into one another.","n":[2]},{"t":"On the ontological question of what exists, the scientific image has priority: when the two images conflict on what is real, the scientific image wins.","n":[3]}],[{"t":"The manifest image retains its centrality for the framework of persons — intentions, actions, normative life, the space of reasons.","n":[]}]],"texts":"*Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man* (PSIM, 1962 in *Philosophical Perspectives* 1967) — the canonical statement of the manifest/scientific images distinction and the synoptic vision; \"Scientific Realism or Irenic Instrumentalism\" (SRI, 1965); \"The Refutation of Phenomenalism\" (RPH, 1966); \"Theoretical Explanation\" (TE, 1963); *Science and Metaphysics* Ch V (the language of theories); *Naturalism and Ontology* (NAO, 1980) the John Dewey Lectures — the late synthesis on naturalism + scientific realism. Reception: Paul Churchland's eliminativist scientific image (*Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind* 1979, *Matter and Consciousness*); Daniel Dennett's manifest image / intentional stance (*The Intentional Stance* 1987); Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism as the anti-realist alternative on the scientific image (*The Scientific Image* 1980, which takes its title from PSIM); Richard Rorty's pragmatist appropriation in *Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature* (1979); James O'Shea's *Wilfrid Sellars: Naturalism with a Normative Turn* (Polity 2007); Willem deVries (Wilfrid Sellars 2005 Ch 6).","works":["*Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man* (PSIM, 1962 in *Philosophical Perspectives* 1967) — the canonical statement of the manifest/scientific images distinction and the synoptic vision","\"Scientific Realism or Irenic Instrumentalism\" (SRI, 1965)","\"The Refutation of Phenomenalism\" (RPH, 1966)","\"Theoretical Explanation\" (TE, 1963)","*Science and Metaphysics* Ch V (the language of theories)","*Naturalism and Ontology* (NAO, 1980) the John Dewey Lectures — the late synthesis on naturalism + scientific realism"],"reception":"Paul Churchland's eliminativist scientific image (*Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind* 1979, *Matter and Consciousness*); Daniel Dennett's manifest image / intentional stance (*The Intentional Stance* 1987); Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism as the anti-realist alternative on the scientific image (*The Scientific Image* 1980, which takes its title from PSIM); Richard Rorty's pragmatist appropriation in *Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature* (1979); James O'Shea's *Wilfrid Sellars: Naturalism with a Normative Turn* (Polity 2007); Willem deVries (Wilfrid Sellars 2005 Ch 6).","status":"settled-as-articulated","era":"1912-1989","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Science Perception and Reality - includes Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind EPM","page":"p. 11","canonical":"","quote":"And let me explain my terms. First, by calling them images I do not mean to deny to either or both of them the status of 'reality'. I am, to use Husserl's term, 'bracketing' them, transforming them from ways of experiencing the world into objects of philosophical reflection and evaluation. The term 'image' is usefully ambiguous. On the one hand it suggests the contrast between an object, e.g.","label":"Science Perception and Reality - includes Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind EPM, p. 11"},{"n":2,"work":"Science Perception and Reality - includes Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind EPM","page":"p. 11","canonical":"","quote":"The philosopher, then, is confronted by two conceptions, equally public, equally non-arbitrary, of man-in-the-world and he cannot shirk the attempt to see how they fall together in one stereo scopic view.","label":"Science Perception and Reality - includes Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind EPM, p. 11"},{"n":3,"work":"Science Perception and Reality - includes Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind EPM","page":"p. 24","canonical":"","quote":"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.","label":"Science Perception and Reality - includes Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind EPM, p. 24"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-myth-of-the-given","label":"The Myth of the Given: are non-inferential cognitive states that ground empirical knowledge independent of any conceptual framework incoherent, and does EPM destroy the foundationalist tradition?"},{"slug":"psychological-nominalism-and-the-space-of-reasons","label":"Psychological nominalism and the space of reasons: is all awareness of universals, abstract entities, and sense-qualities mediated by language, and is knowledge placement in the normative logical space of justification rather than a natural-causal relation?"},{"slug":"the-jonesian-myth-and-the-language-of-mental-episodes","label":"The Jonesian myth and the language of mental episodes: are thoughts inner-speech analogues introduced as theoretical posits to explain behavior, and are sensations theoretical posits introduced to explain perceptual states?"},{"slug":"scientific-realism-sellarsian-kantianism-picturing","label":"Scientific realism + Sellarsian Kantianism + picturing: do theoretical entities have ontological priority, does language picture the world in a second-order isomorphism beyond inferential semantics, and does the Cassirer Lectures' transcendental project complete the Sellarsian system?"}]}