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ETHICS, PRACTICAL REASONING,
AGENCY
WILFRID SELLARS’S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
Edited by Jeremy Randel Koons and Ronald Loeffler
Ethics, Practical Reasoning,
Agency
This is the first volume devoted exclusively to the practical philosophy
of Wilfrid Sellars. It features original essays by leading Sellars scholars
that examine his ethical theory, his theory of practical reasoning, and
his theory of intentional agency.
While most scholarship on Sellars’s philosophy has focused on his
epistemology, metaphysics, or philosophy of language and mind, Sellars
himself regarded his practical philosophy as central to his overall pro-
ject of situating rational beings within the natural order. The chapters
in this volume address this neglected area of Sellars’s philosophy. The
chapters are divided into thematic sections covering Sellars’s theory of
we-intentions – influential in contemporary debates on collective inten-
tionality – naturalism and the manifest image, and the moral point of
view. Together, they demonstrate how Sellars’s practical philosophy con-
tributes to important debates in contemporary philosophy regarding, for
example, expressivist approaches to moral thought and group agency in
the collective intentionality literature.
Ethics, Practical Reasoning, Agency: Wilfrid Sellars’s Practical
Philosophy will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in
Wilfrid Sellars, American philosophy, and ethics.
Jeremy Randel Koons is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at George-
town University – Qatar. He is the author of The Ethics of Wilfrid Sellars
(Routledge, 2019), and the author or co-author of two additional books
as well as two dozen articles and book chapters on metaethics, epistemol-
ogy, and philosophy of religion.
Ronald Loeffler is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Grand
Valley State University, Grand Rapids, MI, USA. He is the author of
Brandom (Polity Press, 2018) and of articles on the philosophy of mind
and language.
Routledge Studies in American Philosophy
Edited by Willem A. deVries, University of New Hampshire,
USA and Henry Jackman, York University, Canada
C.I. Lewis
The A Priori and the Given
Edited by Quentin Kammer, Jean-Philippe Narboux, and Henri Wagner
Charles Peirce on Ethics, Esthetics and the Normative Sciences
James Jakób Liszka
The Ethics, Epistemology, and Politics of Richard Rorty
Edited by Giancarlo Marchetti
Intentionality in Sellars
A Transcendental Account of Finite Knowledge
Luz Christopher Seiberth
Disability and American Philosophies
Edited by Nate Whelan-Jackson and Daniel J. Brunson
William James and the Moral Life
Responsible Self-Fashioning
Todd Lekan
The Ethics of Richard Rorty
Moral Communities, Self-Transformation, and Imagination
Edited by Susan Dieleman, David E. McClean, and Paul Showler
Ethics, Practical Reasoning, Agency
Wilfrid Sellars’s Practical Philosophy
Edited by Jeremy Randel Koons and Ronald Loeffler
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.
routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-American-Philosophy/book-series/
RSAP
Ethics, Practical Reasoning,
Agency
Wilfrid Sellars’s Practical Philosophy
Edited by Jeremy Randel Koons and
Ronald Loeffler
First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Jeremy Randel Koons and
Ronald Loeffler; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Jeremy Randel Koons and Ronald Loeffler to
be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of
the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Koons, Jeremy Randel, editor. | Loeffler, Ronald, editor.
Title: Ethics, practical reasoning, agency : Wilfrid Sellars’s
practical philosophy / edited by Jeremy Randel Koons and
Ronald Loeffler.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022035201 (print) | LCCN 2022035202
(ebook) | ISBN 9781032301433 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032301440
(pbk) | ISBN 9781003303619 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Sellars, Wilfrid. | Practical reason. | Ethics. |
Agent (Philosophy)
Classification: LCC B945.S444 E84 2023 (print) | LCC B945.
S444 (ebook) | DDC 191--dc23/eng/20221024
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022035201
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022035202
ISBN: 978-1-032-30143-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-30144-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-30361-9 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003303619
Typeset in Sabon
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
for Abby
and
for Carla
Contents
Notes on Contributors ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
JEREMY RANDEL KOONS AND RONALD LOEFFLER
PART I
Understanding Sellarsian We-Intentions 13
1 Sellars on the Intersubjectivity of “We-Intentions” 15
STEFANIE DACH
2 We-Intentions and How One Reports Them 36
KYLE FERGUSON
3 Moral We-Intentions as Individualistic We-Attitudes 62
RONALD LOEFFLER
4 Cracks in the Foundation: An Anscombean
Critique of Sellars’s Practical Philosophy 84
HEATH WHITE
PART II
Naturalism and the Manifest Image: Extensions
and Critical Engagements 103
5 Persons and Their Categories 105
WILLEM A. deVRIES
viii Contents
6 ‘Causal Reducibility’ and Naturalism in Sellars’s
Conception of the Moral ‘Ought’ 123
JAMES R. O’SHEA
7 Norm, Nature, and Narrative: Stereoscopic Vision
in Sellars and Danielle Macbeth 147
ZACHARY GABOR
8 Practical Cognition, Motor Intentionality, and the
Idea of the Good: Considerations of Denotational and
Connotational Meaning 165
PRESTON STOVALL
PART III
The Moral Point of View and the Kingdom of Ends 189
9 The Community of Rational Beings 191
NICHOLAS TEBBEN
10 Morality, Tribalism, and Value 205
DANIELLE MACBETH
11 Sellars on External Reasons 224
JEREMY RANDEL KOONS
Index 245
Notes on Contributors
Stefanie Dach is a Post-doc at the University of West Bohemia. In her
research, she focuses on various aspects of Sellars’s thought, recently
with an emphasis on his practical philosophy. She has published
a book on Richard Rorty and post-analytic philosophy as well as
articles on Sellars, Wittgenstein, and pragmatism.
Willem A. deVries received BA from Haverford College; MA and PhD
from the University of Pittsburgh. Co-editor, Routledge Studies in
American Philosophy. He writes on Sellars and Hegel with forays into
related periods and topics. He taught at Amherst College, Harvard,
Tufts, the University of Vienna, and University College Dublin, now
emeritus at University of New Hampshire.
Kyle Ferguson is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Medical Ethics,
Department of Population Health, at NYU Grossman School of
Medicine. He received a BA in Philosophy from Augustana College
in his native Illinois and a PhD in Philosophy from The Graduate
Center, City University of New York.
Zachary Gabor is a Doctoral Candidate at Harvard University.
Jeremy Randel Koons is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at
Georgetown University – Qatar. He is the author of The Ethics of
Wilfrid Sellars (Routledge, 2019) and the author or co-author of two
additional books, as well as two dozen articles and book chapters on
metaethics, epistemology, and philosophy of religion.
Ronald Loeffler is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Grand Valley
State University. He is the author of Brandom (Polity Press, 2018) and
of articles on the philosophy of mind and language.
Danielle Macbeth is T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy at
Haverford College and the author of Frege’s Logic (HUP, 2005) and
Realizing Reason (OUP, 2014). She has been an NEH Fellow, an
ACLS Fellow, and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences, Stanford.
