O’Shea on the Myth of the Given (Sellars)

Summarize:

[The entire text of this paper was added below the above, which is omitted here for copyright reasons although it is open access and you can just go read it.]

Here’s the gist of O’Shea’s article in plain terms.

What is the “myth of the given” (per Sellars) — and what’s new here?

O’Shea argues the “myth” is not just the familiar anti-foundationalist point about sensory givens failing to justify beliefs. Its most basic form is the myth of the categorial given:

If you’re directly aware of something that really has categorial status C, you’re aware of it as C.

This smuggles in the idea that some framework of categories (what kinds of items there are, what they’re like) is authoritative and unrevisable—as if reality stamps its structure onto us. Sellars denies that: any such categorial scheme (innate or learned) is, in principle, open to revision or replacement by better explanations.

Two common ways people think they dodge the myth — and why they don’t

1. “Thick” conceptual/phenomenological views say the myth targets only thin sense-data. O’Shea: even richly conceptual accounts often treat their deepest categorial commitments as immune to recasting; that’s still the myth.

2. “Thin” non-epistemic views (e.g., C. I. Lewis) say their givens don’t justify, so Sellars’s critique misses. O’Shea: Lewis’s “ineffable, repeatable qualia” already presuppose a categorial picture (that there are such repeatables) and thus aren’t neutral; alternatives exist (e.g., the “expanse of red” could be a sense-datum, a manner of sensing in the perceiver, or a constituent of a physical object). Treating one option as compulsory is the myth.

Sellars’s broader strategy

• Always ask “What’s the alternative?” He undermines givenist confidence by sketching competing categorial frameworks (manifest image vs. scientific image; relocations of sensible qualities; process ontologies with “sensings” and “quarkings”).
• The myth shows up well beyond perceptual warrant: in how we picture language learning (quietly assuming a ready-made logical space), in ordinary language philosophy (taking background terms at face value), and in rationalist claims of directly grasping necessities. In each case, the background categorial scheme is treated as given.

Payoff

• The core Sellarsian lesson isn’t just “no nonconceptual foundations,” but: never treat your categorial starting points as sacrosanct. Keep the “marketplace of alternatives” open.
• This means the myth challenges both camps: nonconceptual “thin” givens and conceptual/phenomenological “thick” givens.
• Whether Sellars’s own framework escapes the same charge is a live, acknowledged question.

TL;DR: O’Shea reframes Sellars’s “myth of the given” as primarily a myth about unrevisable categories, not merely about justification. Because even “non-epistemic” qualia and “thick” conceptual experiences embed hidden categorial commitments, both are vulnerable to Sellars’s critique.