Sellars, Wilfrid

"The manifest image is our primary sense of ourselves; the scientific image is secondary."

"To understand language is to understand the space of reasons."

"Our categories structure reality; reality does not simply impose categories upon us."

"The unity of science is the ideal that should guide inquiry."

"Persons are not substances but complex nodes in the space of reasons."

"All experience is conceptually shaped; there is no pre-conceptual given."

"The sense-datum theory confuses the logical structure of perception with psychology."

"Intentionality shows that consciousness is always directed toward an object."

"Facts are not determinate until they are placed in a conceptual framework."

"The theory-laden character of observation undermines naive empiricism."

"Language is the house of being, as Heidegger suggested, but Heidegger failed to understand how."

"Normativity is constitutive of concepts; a non-normative concept is a contradiction."

"The given cannot serve as a foundation because it is itself conceptually loaded."

"Epistemology must be naturalized, but naturalism itself requires critical scrutiny."

"The order of knowing is not the same as the order of being."

"Materialism faces a fundamental problem: how to account for intentionality."

"All determinate thoughts have conceptual content."

"The space of reasons is autonomous; not every reason reduces to a cause."

"Understanding requires grasping the role of a concept in a system of concepts."

"The synthetic a priori is a coherent category if we reject Kant's theory of intuition."

"Scientific progress consists in moving toward a unified, systematic description."

"To think is to be in the space of reasons, subject to justification."

"Reality has a structure, but that structure is accessible only through conceptual frameworks."

"The given is a myth because consciousness is always conceptually structured."

"Explanation proceeds by subsuming particulars under universals."

"Language and reality are not two independent domains that must somehow connect."

"The logical positivists were right to reject the synthetic a priori, but wrong about its implications."

"Universals are not created by abstraction; they are discovered in the world."

"Every concept has a role in a system of concepts; isolated concepts are impossible."

"The problem of other minds dissolves when we understand linguistic competence."