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?

Wilfrid Sellars, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

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.¹ 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.² 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.³

The manifest image retains its centrality for the framework of persons — intentions, actions, normative life, the space of reasons.

Sources

1. 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.

   Science Perception and Reality - includes Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind EPM, p. 11

2. 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.

   Science Perception and Reality - includes Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind EPM, p. 11

3. 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.

   Science Perception and Reality - includes Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind EPM, p. 24

Where the argument is made

• 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

How the argument was received

settled-as-articulated