Abstract

In this paper I would like to explore Sellars' answers to these general epistemological questions in order to get clear about the sense in which he can be said to be in the empiricist tradition broadly construed and to ascertain what resources he has available to demarcate science from other (rationally acceptable or unacceptable) forms of inquiry. My contention will be that to the degree that one moves away from the notion of basic empirical proposition in the strong sense it becomes increasingly difficult to draw the distinction between empiricism and other general epistemological traditions and increasingly difficult to distinguish science frow other forms of inquiry. Moreover, this latter difficulty tends to render vacuous the claims of scientific realism.