Wilfrid Sellars, Language Acquisition, and the Necessity of Joint Awareness
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2022
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Haverford College. Department of Philosophy
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
I argue that a surface reading of Wilfrid Sellars's thoughts on the split between the conceptual and pre-conceptual leaves children without the necessary tools for language acquisition. With the interpretive tools Sellars makes available to the reader, episodes of joint awareness between infants and adults––a necessary condition for language acquisition––are not conceivable. Thus, work must be done to find room for non-conceptual awareness within Sellars's project if Sellars's account is to hold water. This help comes from John Campbell, who develops a theory that understands humans as non-conceptually aware of objects in their environment. By capturing both a similarity in the perceptual content of awareness between child and adult as well as a similarity in the salience of awareness, Campbell can account for joint awareness between infant and adult, enabling young children to gain sufficient footing in the world of the conceptual. Importantly, Campbell's theory of non-conceptual awareness is compatible with the more general features of Sellars's project. In this light, Sellars's lack of explicit tools to account for joint awareness is not a detriment to his project at large.