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?

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

The position in brief

The Myth of the Given is the foundationalist epistemological tradition's claim that there are non-inferential cognitive states — sense-data awareness in classical empiricism, Cartesian self-intimating thoughts in the rationalist tradition, the empiricist's "given" sensations — that ground the rest of empirical knowledge while themselves being epistemically secure independent of any conceptual framework.1

The attack mounted in EPM shows this is incoherent. Any cognitive state with epistemic content presupposes placement in the conceptual order, and the conceptual order is itself learned, language-mediated, and intersubjective. There is no pre-conceptual epistemic floor on which the rest of knowledge rests; what looked like such a floor in foundationalist epistemology was the philosopher's own conceptual framework projected back onto a pre-conceptual stage where it does not belong.

The destruction of the Given is the most important negative achievement of twentieth-century epistemology and the precondition of the constructive space-of-reasons account that follows.23

Sources

  1. Kant commentators have been in disagreement on the extent to which Ka rejects Cartesianism. Sellars is, I think, quite determined to maintain that Kart views provide at least the beginnings for thoroughgoing non-Cartesianism.1ss Mc on how to understand this is forthcoming. Other problems still stand in the way (VI) IS THE "MYTH OF THE GIVEN" BACK? (a) Qualia, phenomenal individuals, and their ilk..{] 527.
    Kant's Transcendental Metaphysics - Sellars Cassirer Lectures Notes and Other Essays, pp. 171–172
  2. If this diagnosis i s correct, a rea sonable next step wou ld be to examine these two ideas and determine how that which survives critici sm in each i s properly to be combined with the other. Clear ly we would have to come to grips with the idea of inner episodes, for this is common to both.
    Science Perception and Reality - includes Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind EPM, p. 146
  3. These considerations make it clear that nothing whatever can be inferred about the complexity of the role played by the word 'red' or about the exact way in which the word 'red' is related to red things, from the truth of the semantical statement ' "red" means the quality red'. And no consideration arising from the 'Fido'-Fido aspect of the grammar of 'means' precludes one from claiming that the role of the word…
    Science Perception and Reality - includes Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind EPM, p. 170

Where the argument is made

  • Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (EPM, 1956 — delivered as the London Lectures, published in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science Vol I 1956 and collected as the lead piece of Science, Perception and Reality 1963) — the canonical attack on the Myth of the Given across Parts I-VIII
  • Some Reflections on Language Games (SRLG, 1954) for early anticipations
  • "Phenomenalism" (PH, 1963 in Science, Perception and Reality) for the application to sense-data
  • "The Structure of Knowledge" (SK, 1975) for the late restatement
  • The Metaphysics of Epistemology (Amaral ed., 1989) for the accessible lecture treatment

How the argument was received

settled-as-articulated