Dionysis Christias

This book offers a new understanding of naturalism and normativity by integrating them within a process metaphysics framework. Rejecting all forms of transcendence, Dionysis Christias advances a conception of ‘fractured immanence’ in which mind and nature are not ontologically distinct regions of being (they are both ways of being processes) yet diverge in the order of understanding, a tension enabling their ongoing self-correcting interplay as concepts without presupposing transcendence or complete mutual transparency. Drawing on Deleuze, Sellars and Peirce, the book replaces substance metaphysics with an anti-representational, univocal process ontology which throws light on core problems in contemporary analytic metaphysics of powers and emergence. Normativity is embedded in this naturalistic process framework by being understood as an emergent intensive regime whose function is hyperstitional: it stabilizes and projects ideal possible worlds expressed by unactualized universals, and performatively makes them actual over time by collectively treating them as real.

I investigate the possibility that ‘lifeworld phenomenology’ after Husserl (in Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger) escapes the critique of the Husserlian lifeworld. It is suggested that this depends on whether lifeworld phenomenology after Husserl can develop a non-instrumentalist account of scientific explanation, which moreover avoids importing manifest-image categories to the scientific image. Yet, Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, despite their resolute rejection of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology, both fail on this count as they adhere to Husserl’s privileging of ‘intuitive’ lifeworld explanations over ‘non-intuitive’ scientific explanations. In this connection, I also examine contemporary enactivism, considering it as a scientifically updated Merleau-Pontyanism.

I provide a novel interpretation and articulate in some detail Sellars’ central but cryptic and elusive notion of the stereoscopic fusion between the manifest and the scientific image at the level of lifeworld experience itself. It is argued that the stereoscopic fusion of the images can be understood in terms of the concrete realization of our practical ability for absorbed skillful coping within an ever-expanding range of (linguistic and non-linguistic) environments. It is also suggested that in this envisaged situation of the fusion of the images in the concrete context of the lifeworld, the latter will radically change not only in its specific content but also in its categorial form.

I show Sellars’ relevance for contemporary continental philosophy by comparing and contrasting his views to Meillassoux’s conception and use of Kantian transcendentalism for speculative realist purposes. It will be suggested that, from a Sellarsian point of view, Meillassoux’s conception of the transcendental as a sui generis mode of existence which cannot be reduced to merely ‘ontic’ empirical existence is problematic and is the reason why he does not succeed in fully overcoming all forms of correlationism. It is also argued that while Sellars’ view of the ‘non-correlational’ ‘in-itself’ is strikingly similar to Meillassoux’s own view in that they both reject the ontological import of the principle of sufficient reason and take it that worldly processes are ultimately contingent and not characterized by any causal necessity, from a more penetrating point of view, their views on these issues are in fact radically different.

In this chapter, it is argued that some features of Deleuze’s ‘monistic pluralist’ process metaphysics—especially his notions of virtuality and intensity—can put some flesh in the bare bones of Sellarsian process nominalism. Conversely, the Sellarsian resolutely non-representationalist notion of normativity can be used to amend a blind spot of Deleuze’s thought, as it shows that normativity is an indispensable form of thinking and a necessary condition of our individual and collective freedom in a way that does not fall foul of what Deleuze calls ‘the image of representational thought’.

I provide the beginnings of an account about how Sellars’ process ontology can function as a metaphysical model that overcomes and critically delimits Aristotelian and Kantian substance ‘manifest-image’ ontologies. In this connection, I attempt to fill another important gap in Sellars’ process ontology, by sketching a response to the objection that we cannot make full sense of how processual entities can have determinate identity and individuation conditions. Moreover, I consider the manner in which persons, conceived as loci of normative authority and responsibility, can be integrated to such a radically nominalistic world. I argue that persons can be thusly integrated in the sense that although a nominalistic process world does not admit persons in its ontology, persons do exist in such a world to the extent to which certain organisms, through the activation, sustenance and reproduction of recognitive we-attitudes, bootstrap themselves into (normative) existence.

I develop a neo-Sellarsian framework for distinguishing between an emancipatory and a non-emancipatory dimension of science, namely, about the precise sense in which science can be said (or cannot be said) to objectify important non-instrumental epistemic and moral values, central to our human flourishing. In this context, it is argued that the best way to make sense of an eventual integration of a radical scientific naturalism with the non-instrumental character of the moral point of view is by envisaging a post-human community of persons that directly relates the world to its purposes by construing its intentions and actions in scientific terms. I also briefly discuss the political implications of this vision of (post)-humanity-in-the-world.

In this chapter, I show how Sellars sees the manifest and the scientific image as critical metaphilosophical concepts capable of throwing light on the historical evolution and contemporary scene in both analytic and continental philosophy in the face of the continuing Weberian disenchantment. Based on this analysis, I propose that the scientific image, in its role as a critical metaphilosophical tool, and suitably enriched by sociological supra-personal explanations (a la Marx, Weber), can be used for criticizing Sellars’ own overall conception of science.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Lange’s (Philos Stud 101:213–51, 2000) argument in support of Sellars’ scientific realism (i.e. against ’the layer-cake picture’ of theoretical explanation), which, if successful, surprisingly, undermines Sellars’ scientia mensura principle and justifies the anti-Sellarsian view to the effect that certain domains of discourse which use irreducibly normative descriptions and explanations (e.g. folk-psychological discourse) are explanatorily autonomous. (However, interestingly enough, Lange takes himself to be a Sellarsian and does not put forward his claim as an explicitly anti-Sellarsian one.) It will be argued that Lange’s argument against the layer-cake view is not strictly speaking Sellarsian, since Lange interprets Sellars’ argument in an overly abstract or formal manner. Moreover, I will suggest that, within a properly Sellarsian context, Lange’s argument against the layer-cake picture can actually be used for quite un- Langean purposes, namely in order to show that folk-psychological descriptions and explanations are not if fact autonomous. However, Lange could insist that his reconstruction of Sellars’ argument is substantially correct (irrespectively of how Sellars himself understood it) and he does have the resources to do so. I will propose that the substantial issue between Lange and Sellars turns on their different views on the function of ceteris-paribus clauses, and ultimately, on issues about the unity of science. Finally, it will be suggested that the Sellarsian framework for tackling these issues constitutes a viable alternative to Lange’s picture of theoretical explanation, while at the same time incorporating be the sound insights of the latter.

The paper attempts to show that Predictive Processing (PP), despite recent attempts by its proponents to ward off accusations that lead to skepticism (Clark, A. (2016). _Surfing uncertainty: prediction, action and the embodied mind_. Oxford University Press, Clark, A. (2019). Replies to critics: In search of the embodied, extended, enactive predictive (EEE-P) mind. In M. Colombo, E. Irvine, & M. Stapleton (Eds.), _Andy Clark and his critics_ (pp. 266–302). Oxford University Press), is susceptible to undesirable skeptical consequences of a Kantian (rather than Cartesian) character. Specifically, I shall argue that Clark’s version of PP is susceptible to a particularly Kantian version of skepticism in which the external world directly revealed by PP generative models is a _phenomenal_ one in the Kantian sense: A world perceived and conceived _as_ external, but at the same time essentially ‘internal’ in its categorial form, where this ‘internality’ only diverges from Kant in that it is a consequence of evolution. It will be suggested that these skeptical consequences can be avoided by articulating a more nuanced notion of the boundary between mind and world in PP, namely, one that differentiates an _ontological_ from an _epistemological_ understanding of the boundary between mind (generative model) and world. Moreover, it will be argued that in order to avoid Kantian skepticism, we must construe the very distinction between the phenomenal world and the world as it is in itself in non-metaphysical, pragmatic terms, as a framework condition for epistemically coordinating empirical inquiry within an ever-changing and unpredictable world. As a bonus, this view seems capable of accommodating the insights of autopoietic enactivism without buying into the latter’s controversial ‘transcendental idealist’ organism-relative ontology.

This book brings together the work of Wilfrid Sellars with work in 20th century phenomenology and 21st century speculative realism in order to think through one of the most important predicaments of contemporary philosophy. As a result of the disenchantment of nature in late modernity, philosophy has struggled to account for the place of persons, construed as loci of normative authority and responsibility, within a scientifically, naturalistically described world, bereft of values and norms. The book argues that Sellars takes both the framework of persons and science seriously and thinks that this implies the need not just for reconciling the manifest and scientific images but for fusing them into one stereoscopic vision of reality and our place in it. One of the main aims of this book is to address the issue of the form which a non-alienated experience of ourselves-in-the-world would take in the Sellarsian cryptic stereoscopic fusion of the manifest and the scientific image. Through an extended discussion of Sellars’ relevance for contemporary continental philosophy and phenomenology, in which his views on perception, the commonsense ‘lifeworld’, science, normativity, personhood, morality and process metaphysics are presented and extended, the book sketches a novel view about what a stereoscopic fusion of the manifest and the scientific image would amount to at the level of our lifeworld experience.

In this paper I investigate Husserl’s central notion of the ‘life-world’ and its complex relations with science. I attempt to show four things: 1) Husserl’s life-world amounts to a sophisticated description of Sellars’ manifest image of man-in- the-world, which however absolutizes the latter’s categorial structure and mislocates the role of science within it. 2) A dialectical understanding of the relation between life-world and science could succeed in escaping the above kinds of problems, albeit only at the cost of blurring the boundaries between phenomenology and non-phenomenological philosophical standpoints. 3) Lifeworld phenomenology after Husserl does not offer a convincing response to our criticism of the Husserlian life-world. I argue that it could give such a response only if Merleau-Ponty or Heidegger could develop a non-instrumentalist account of scientific explanation. Yet, I attempt to show that both Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, despite their resolute rejection of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology, both steadfastly adhere to Husserl’s instrumentalist conception of science and scientific explanation. 4) Finally, I provide a rough sketch of a non-phenomenological and non-representationalist conception of life-world and science, as I consider it a more promising way of making sense of their structure and relations.

In this article, I suggest that reflection on a broadly Aristotelian-cum-Hegelian conception about the determination of the conditions of identity and individuation of objects and properties shows that it entails (what Brandom calls) the Kant–Sellars thesis about modality and identity, one consequence of which is that persons are not identical to human beings. This view is in conflict with the Aristotelian liberal naturalist view to the effect that to be a person is identical to being an individual of a specific animal kind—namely, homo sapiens—characterized by a specific and unique ‘form of life’ (and natural history) which differentiates it from all other animal kinds. I conclude that this novel and unorthodox liberal naturalist view about personhood constitutes an interesting and viable liberal naturalist alternative to more ‘orthodox’ liberal naturalist neo-Aristotelian views like Thompson’s, as it can better accommodate certain counterfactual ‘person-human being decoupling’ scenarios in our modern conception of ourselves-in-the-world.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: First, I provide a framework – based on Sellars’ distinction between the manifest and the scientific image – for illuminating the distinction between liberal and ‘orthodox’ scientific naturalism. Second, I level a series of objections against expanded liberal naturalism and its core commitment to the autonomy of manifest-image explanations. Further, I present a view which combines liberal and scientific naturalism, albeit construed in resolutely non-representationalist terms. Finally, I attempt to distinguish my own (Sellars- and Peirce-inspired) position from the very similar pragmatic liberal naturalist view, that of Huw Price. I do this by suggesting that a ‘monistic’ Peircian evolutionary naturalism which accepts the Sellarsian scientia mensura principle not only is consistent with ungrudging recognition of the irreducibility of normative facts and the plurality of our discursive practices, but also shows how this irreducibility, by being understood in terms of an evolution-by-selection of a population of perceptual-practical-inferential habits, can be at the same time considered as naturalistically explicable – without any appeal to an expanded manifest-image conception of nature.

In this article, I investigate the possibility of reconciling a radically disenchanted scientific naturalism in ontology with the unconditional and non-instrumental character of the moral point of view. My point of departure will be Sellars’s philosophy, which attempts to satisfy both those, seemingly unreconcilable, demands at once. I shall argue that there is a tension between those two demands that finds expression both at the theoretical and practical level, and which is not adequately resolved from a strictly Sellarsian perspective. I will then develop a neo-Sellarsian framework, close to the spirit—if not the letter—of Sellars’s philosophy, which, as I will suggest, can live up to this task. This solution depends (1) on insisting on both the semantic irreducibility and explanatory reducibility of moral normativity to non-normative facts, while simultaneously acknowledging that those two dimensions mutually presuppose and support on another, and (2) on recognizing that the instrumental facets of theoretical-scientific rationality need not imply a coercive attitude toward nature, ourselves, and others.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Lange’s argument in support of Sellars’ scientific realism, which, if successful, surprisingly, undermines Sellars’ scientia mensura principle and justifies the anti-Sellarsian view to the effect that certain domains of discourse which use irreducibly normative descriptions and explanations are explanatorily autonomous. It will be argued that Lange’s argument against the layer-cake view is not strictly speaking Sellarsian, since Lange interprets Sellars’ argument in an overly abstract or formal manner. Moreover, I will suggest that, within a properly Sellarsian context, Lange’s argument against the layer-cake picture can actually be used for quite un- Langean purposes, namely in order to show that folk- psychological descriptions and explanations are not if fact autonomous. However, Lange could insist that his reconstruction of Sellars’ argument is substantially correct and he does have the resources to do so. I will propose that the substantial issue between Lange and Sellars turns on their different views on the function of ceteris-paribus clauses, and ultimately, on issues about the unity of science. Finally, it will be suggested that the Sellarsian framework for tackling these issues constitutes a viable alternative to Lange’s picture of theoretical explanation, while at the same time incorporating be the sound insights of the latter.

This article examines Wilfrid Sellars's views on the epistemic status of philosophical propositions. It suggests that according to Sellars philosophical propositions are normative and practically oriented. They do not form a theory for the description of reality; their function is, rather, that of motivating actions which aim at changing reality. The article argues that the role of philosophical propositions can be illuminated if they are understood as a special kind of (proposed) “material” rules of inference, provided that the latter are construed as being firmly entrenched in practice. To this end, a distinction between “theoretical” and “practical” anomalies is drawn to better elucidate—and in some cases criticize and further expand—Sellars's position on the relation between the theoretical and practical dimensions of philosophical activity. In this connection, the Weberian notion of the “disenchantment of the world” is used to throw light on the relation between these two dimensions.

The aim of this paper is to properly situate and contrast McDowell’s and Sellars’ views on intuitional content and relate them to their corresponding views on the myth of the Given. Although McDowell’s and Sellars’ views on what McDowell calls ‘intuitional’ content seem at first strikingly similar, at a deeper level they are radically different. It will be suggested that this divergence is intimately related to their different understanding of what the myth of the Given consists in and how it should be best avoided. It will also be argued that certain McDowell-inspired objections against the viability of the Sellarsian concept of the Categorial Given actually misconstrue the place of this notion in Sellars’ system. If the myth of the Categorial Given can be considered as a genuine version of the Myth then McDowell’s account of intuitional content does indeed fall prey to it. I shall further argue that a McDowell-inspired objection against Sellars to the effect that his account of proper sensibles compromises the openness of intuitional content to the world ultimately fails, and, finally, I shall suggest that Sellars’ views on proper sensibles and intuitional content provide a more promising account of the way our thought and experience can be rationally open to the world itself than McDowell’s position.

The purpose of this article is to examine Sellars’s envisaged stereoscopic fusion between the manifest and the scientific image in regard to the central issue of the being of the normative. I shall propose that the best way to make sense of the notion of the Sellarsian ‘stereoscopic fusion’ is to hold both that (a) the core function of normative discourse is to point toward something that does not exist, but ought to exist, namely a regulative ideal and (b) that the raison d’être of normatively infused items is for them to be materially realized at the level of non-normative objects and processes. On this view, the effected elimination (denormativization) of the normative level itself in the Sellarsian ‘synoptic vision’ can be best understood in terms of the concrete realization of what I call ‘generalized absorbed skillful coping,’ that is, our ability for absorbed skillful coping within our—and indeed, in any possible—environment.

In this article, it is argued that Sellars’ view of normativity is the key for a proper resolution of the debate between normativism and anti-normativism, as the latter is described in Turner’s recent book Explaining the Normative. Drawing on an early Sellarsian article, I suggest that both normativism and anti-normativism are ultimately unsatisfactory positions and for the same reason: due to their failure to draw a distinction between causal or explanatory reducibility and logical or conceptual reducibility of the normative to the non-normative.