Sellars, Wilfrid

"Understanding requires the ongoing negotiation between theory and practice."

"The given is not a deliverer of truth but a challenge to our explanatory powers."

"Concepts allow us to universalize from particular cases to general principles."

"Language is the home of being, the medium through which we encounter reality."

"Our rational practices are both constrained by and constitutive of reality."

"Scientific understanding integrates the manifest and physical images into a unified view."

"The justification of our beliefs reaches not a foundational bedrock but a coherent system."

"Imagination and reason work together in the construction of understanding."

"Truth is not found in nature but achieved through the use of language."

"The manifest image and the scientific image are two different ways of understanding the world, and philosophy must reconcile them."

"Language is not merely a tool for expressing thoughts; it constitutes the very structure of thought itself."

"To be is to be the value of a bound variable in our best scientific theory."

"The given is a myth, and empiricism must abandon the idea of a pure sensory foundation."

"Conceptual frameworks shape what we can even perceive as real."

"Meaning is not in the mind alone but in the role concepts play in our practices."

"The aim of philosophy is not to solve problems but to dissolve the confusions that generate them."

"We must distinguish between what is given and what is interpreted in experience."

"The logical space of reasons is what distinguishes the rational from the merely causal."

"Scientific realism requires that our theories refer to entities beyond our observations."

"Mental states are inherently representational—they are about something."

"Rules cannot be mechanically applied; they require understanding and judgment."

"The private language argument shows that meaning depends on communal criteria."

"Thought without language is not genuinely thought but mere sensation."

"Physicalism alone cannot explain the normative force of concepts."

"Our intuitions about consciousness are often confused and need philosophical clarification."

"The intentionality of thought is not a mysterious property but a matter of functional role."

"Categories are not discovered but imposed on experience through conceptual schemes."

"Understanding requires seeing how concepts fit into a coherent whole."

"The problem of other minds arises from an inadequate conception of what minds are."

"Sensation without conceptualization is empty and blind."