Abstract

Wilfrid Sellars and Donald Davidson agree on the thesis that the characterizations that concern conceptual facts must be distinguished, because of their fundamental generality, from the characterizations that concern natural facts. The problem they share in return concerns how to make possible the integration of the way of thinking according to the principles of the one with the way of thinking according to the principles of the others. This article shows how Sellars and Davidson criticize the traditional response of scheme/experience dualism, according to which conceptual thinking organizes a non-conceptual Given of experience, on the grounds that this dualism makes the relationship between mind and world contingent. However, both draw a different reconstructive consequence from their critique. According to Davidson, we must reject scheme/experience dualism altogether: it relegates experience to a strictly causal dimension, on the grounds that the semantic or conceptual content of statements is directly related to the objects of the world. In contrast, Sellars defends a renewed form of dualism. The article attempts to defend Sellars' point of view: it tries to show that Sellars reformulates dualism via his depiction theory in a way that renders it exempt from Davidson's critique of traditional dualism.