Abstract
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I would like to bring into the light the almost unexplored Sellars’s theory of particulars. Second, I would like to show its surprising degree of compatibility with the thesis supported by some contemporary tropists (Lowe, Gozzano and Orilia (eds), Tropes, Universals and the Philosophy of Mind, Ontos Verlag, 2008; Moltmann, Mind 113:1–41, 2004 and Moltmann, Noûs 47:346–370, 2013). It is difficult to establish whether Sellars possessed an own theory of tropes, developed independently by the classical form it took in Williams 1953, but as a matter of fact the peculiar features of his “complex particulars” model it is very much like Williams’s theory. So much so that to all intents and purposes it represents a tropes variation. One of its strengths is that it is not part of a constituent ontology, since it is essentially developed from a linguistic and phenomenological point of view. It is for these reasons that this theory manages to avoid some of the classic objections to tropes and it shows to be compatible with the argument of Jonathan Lowe’s “proper visibility” as well as with Friederike Moltmann’s exquisitely linguistic interpretation of tropes.
Highlights
I would like to do two things in this paper
There were authoritative positions against it (Stout, Russell), and favorable positions (McTaggart, Bergmann, Alston), and subtly intermediate opinions (Williams). In his two works of 1949 and 1952, Sellars strives to show that the root of the error of bare-particularism consists in a confusion between “facts” and “particulars”, and it is through this route that he construes part of the conceptual scaffolding that supports the first sections of EPM
To go back to the initial questions, it would be wrong to imagine that Sellars would reason in a foundationalist way: his argument is not that there are basic particulars from which universal qualities are formed
Summary
I would like to do two things in this paper. First: to show the arguments through which Sellars constructs a theory of “particulars”, which has been rarely discussed both by contemporary metaphysicists (Bailey, 2012; Campbell, 1990; Morganti, 2012), as well as by those who deal with Sellarsian studies (Olen, 2016; Rauzy, 2009). The main asset of this theory is that it highlights the confusion that bare particularists often make between “particulars” and “epistemic facts” by switching them with each other This leads Sellars to defend the thesis that particulars (such as cabbages and kings) are fundamental individuals that, insofar as they are part of a single unified spatio-temporal system, represent the ontological counterpart of our ordinary talk (Strawson, 1959). Given the scarce popularity of this theory, my exposition will be slightly asymmetric: I will analyze in an extended way the “complex particulars” theory as an alternative position (not immediately tropist) to bare particularism and to bundle theories; while I will reserve the last part of my analysis for the topic of tropes (which is much better known and with respect to which a consistent literature already exists)
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