SELLARS ON BEHAVIORISM, LANGUAGE AND MEANING

Abstract

I was responding as commentator. sellar's identification of thought with speech propensity has virtues, but they dwindle as he stretches the propensity notion. his recourse to a logic of adverbs to avoid an ontology of events is uncalled for; physical objects can go proxy for events. his recourse to substitutional quantification to avoid abstract objects is appealing, but fails for impredicatve sets. his device of dot quotation, designed to avoid assuming meanings, leaves the problem of meaning untouched, for it assumes synonymy.