Sellars, Wilfrid

"All rationality presupposes a community of reasoners."

"The categories of understanding are not innate but historically developed."

"Scientific laws express regularities in the order of nature."

"Substance is not an absolute category but a functional one relative to our interests."

"Consciousness is not a metaphysical mystery but a logical category."

"The unity of apperception requires linguistic competence."

"Being is logically prior to becoming; the static is more fundamental than the dynamic."

"Concepts are public; they cannot be private to an individual."

"The empirical observation is already laden with theory."

"To be a person is to occupy a role in the space of reasons."

"Truth is not correspondence to reality but coherence within a systematic whole."

"The synthetic-analytic distinction is not absolute but relative to a conceptual system."

"All knowledge claims presuppose a background of unquestioned assumptions."

"The aim of science is not certainty but systematic, coherent understanding."

"Language and thought are not two separate faculties but two aspects of one capacity."

"The problem of universals arises from a confused picture of the relationship between language and reality."

"Rationality is the norm that governs correct thinking."

"The given presents itself as objective, but its objectivity is a function of our categories."

"All explanation involves placing facts in a rational system."

"Freedom and responsibility presuppose the capacity for reasoning."

"The content of a concept is determined by its role in a linguistic system."

"Being conscious is being subject to normative constraints."

"The physical order and the normative order are distinct but not separate."

"Every scientific claim is revisable in light of evidence and argument."

"Thought requires participation in a tradition of rational discourse."

"The manifest image is not illusory, though it may be incomplete."

"All understanding involves a hermeneutical circle of interpretation."

"Reality constrains our concepts, but does not determine them uniquely."

"The space of reasons and the causal order must be reconciled."

"No concept has meaning in isolation; all meaning is relational."