TITLE:
The Ontological Presupposition of Sellars’ Criticism of the Myth of the Given
AUTHORS:
Yafeng Dang
KEYWORDS:
Cartesian Anxiety, The Myth of Given, Infinite Regression
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.11 No.12,
December
22,
2023
ABSTRACT: Descartes’ meditations based on the rational authority and the existence
of God left not only the metaphor of foundationalism and the philosophical task
of seeking the Archimedes point of knowledge, but also the Cartesian anxiety
that troubled philosophers. Cartesian anxiety promotes the opposition between
objectivism and relativism, which is not only the epistemological question but
also concerning the significance of ontology. Sellars’ criticism of the
metaphor of foundationalism, although it advances the revelation of Cartesian
anxiety in epistemology, still takes infinite regression as a prejudice to
solve its problem. Cartesian anxiety still disturbs Sellars’ criticism of the
myth of the given in the level of ontology.