DOES ‘READY-TO-HAND’ NORMATIVITY STAND IN THE WAY OF THE

POSSIBILITY OF A STEREOSCOPIC FUSION OF THE MANIFEST AND THE

SCIENTIFIC IMAGE?

Introduction

In this paper we will focus on the divergent

interpretations of two leading Sellars’ scholars, Willem

deVries and James O’Shea, as regards Sellars’ view on the

being of the normative. It will be suggested that this

conflict between deVries’ and O’Shea’s viewpoints can be

resolved by the provision of an account of what we shall call

‘ready-to-hand’ normativity (i.e. the phenomenological

presence of normativity in our everyday practical dealings

with the world), which incorporates the insights of both

deVries’ and O’Shea’s interpretive perspectives, while at the

same time going beyond them.

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The divergence between deVries’ and O’Shea’s interpretation of

Sellarsian normativity

Both deVries and O’Shea are sympathetic to Sellars’

overall philosophical project and to his views on normativity

in particular. This explains their essential agreement on a

number of points regarding the proper construal of normativity

and its overall place within Sellars’ philosophical system.

However, there remains a crucial point of divergence between

them (which, to my knowledge, has not been properly thematized

in the literature), and this concerns the way in which ‘ready-

to-hand’ normativity, that is, the normativity of artifacts

(equipment) and, ultimately, the normativity of persons can be

smoothly joined to the ultimate ontology of the scientific

image.

Sellars’ conception of the being of the normative and of

persons

2

As is well-known, Sellars argues that normative

properties, being essentially functional (rather than

‘qualitative’) in their ‘being’, do not present any

ontological challenge to the scientific image; the normativity

of persons is not something that has to be reconciled with the

scientific image, but rather something to be joined to it

(Sellars 1963, 40). More specifically, according to Sellars,

normative discourse specifies certain functions or

(inferential) roles that various empirical (linguistic or non-

linguistic) items play, which serve as standards for assessing

their actual ‘behaviour’. And what one is doing when he is

functionally classifies certain expressions does not (only)

amount to describing or explaining the latter; one does

something more. By functionally classifying certain empirical

items normative discourse prescribes and evaluates the ‘behaviour’

of the latter (including human behaviour) according to

standards or ‘ideals’ about their proper ‘empirical

realization’ (see e.g. Sellars 1957, §79). A system of

normative prescriptions is not an explanatory theory for the

description of reality (or the mind), but rather a system

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which aims at motivating actions for changing empirical reality,

in case it fails to accord with certain ‘standards’ or ‘goals’

(Sellars 1949, §17-18)1. Moreover, for Sellars, the very

essence of personhood -i.e. its identity and individuation

conditions- is normative, rather than descriptive or

explanatory. As he himself observes regarding the essentially

normative nature of personhood: “To say that a certain person

desired to do A, thought it his duty to do B but was forced to

do C, is not to describe him as one might describe a

scientific specimen. One does, indeed, describe him, but one

does something more. And it is this something more which is

the irreducible core of the framework of persons. In what does

this something more consist? […] To think of a featherless

biped as a person is to think of it as a being with which one

is bound up in a network of rights and duties. From this point

of view, the irreducibility of the personal is the

1 Sellars, already in 1949, in his less well known article “Language, Rulesand Behaviour”, argued that at the core of the ‘phenomenon’ of normativitylie factually false empirical generalizations, which express in factuallanguage how the world should ideally be in certain respects, and that theraison d’être of normative discourse is to inhibit the occurrence of the eventsthat would falsify those generalizations. For instance, the core-generalization on which the moral rule ‘one ought to tell the truth’ isbuilt is ‘people always say what they believe’ which is, of course, false(§17), while the role of the rule is precisely to inhibit the occurrence ofevents that would falsify this generalization.

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irreducibility of the ‘ought’ to the ‘is’. But even more basic

than this (though ultimately the two points coincide), is the

fact that to think of a featherless biped as a person is to

construe its behaviour in terms of actual or potential

membership in an embracing group each member of which thinks

of itself as a member of the group […] Thus, to recognize a

featherless biped or dolphin or Martian as a person is to

think of oneself and it as belonging to a community” (Sellars

1963, 38).

Although the scientific image explains normativity (of

artifacts or persons alike) by identifying it with radically

non-normative states and events which stand in non-normative

relations to each other, this does not eliminate normativity

since the scientific image accounts only for its contentual

aspect. The material (‘contentual’) aspect of normative states

can be radically redescribed (e.g. in scientific terms)

without in the least affecting normativity as such (although

it may well affect our conception of its material realization

in the world) since the individuation of an empirical process

or state as ‘normative’ is functional, not ‘contentual’; that

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is, it not based on intrinsic or ‘qualitative’ material

properties or processes of the state in question, but rather

on its -‘relational’- inferential role within the logical

space of reasons (Sellars 2009, 221-24, 226; O’Shea 2011, 332-

34).

deVries on ‘ready-to-hand’ normativity

Now, the problem with ‘ready-to-hand’ normativity is that

it seems to be ‘phenomenologically laden’, so to speak; that

is, although it does not have the intrinsically qualitative

properties characteristic of sensory or affective experience,

it also does not seem to be exclusively functionally

individuated (e.g. on the basis of its inferential role within

an ‘inferential space’). Without putting it in this way,

deVries seems to have something like that in mind when he

insists that the normativity of artifacts, and ultimately of

persons themselves, cannot be adequately described and

explained in scientific image terms because 1) it is built in

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the very description of the artifact itself (or, in the case

of persons, it is built in the very description of ourselves

as persons) and, what is more, 2) it seems intuitively

undeniable that this normatively-laden description of

ourselves as persons-in-the-world has a phenomenological,

‘qualitative’ character. In this way, deVries in essence holds

that due to the absolutely fundamental practical role they play in

our lives some normative descriptions and explanations2 of

artifacts and of ourselves as persons cannot be

reconceptualised in scientific image descriptive and2 Notice that Sellars intimately connects the descriptive role of aproposition with its explanatory role (and, so far as I know, deVriesaccepts this Sellarsian view). He argues that no description is possibleexcept in a context in which explanation is also possible. As Sellarshimself observes “although describing and explaining (predicting,retrodicting, understanding) are distinguishable, they are also, in animportant sense, inseparable. It is only because the expressions in terms ofwhich we describe objects, even such basic expressions as words for theperceptible characteristics of molar objects locate these objects in aspace of implications that they describe at all, rather than merely label.The descriptive and the explanatory resources of language advance hand inhand” (Sellars 1957, §108). A necessary condition for an expression havinga descriptive role in language is being situated in a ‘space ofimplications’, which, moreover, for Sellars, must be counterfactuallyrobust ones -that is, they must extend to possible cases (for otherwise theputatively ‘descriptive’ term could not be applied to new cases). And it isan essential feature of this ‘space of (counterfactually robust)implications’ that to endorse a counterfactually robust inference in it(e.g. ‘the tomatoes are ripe’ → ‘the tomatoes are red’, ‘the match is dry’(no countervailing conditions obtain) → ‘the match lights up’), that is, aninference which is valid not only for actual but also for possible cases ofapplying the descriptive terms involved, is something that can be appealedto in explaining the applicability of one description on the basis of theapplicability of another (e.g. “the tomatoes are red because they are ripe”,“the match lights up because it is dry”) (see e.g. Brandom 2011, 8-9).

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explanatory terms, since any such description or explanation

would essentially abstract from the normatively-laden

phenomenological character of what it is to be a person or an

artifact -falsifying thereby the very phenomenon it attempts

to understand.3

More specifically, as deVries rightly reminds us,

artifacts or, in general, common-or-garden use objects of the

manifest world (e.g. tables, shoes, shelter, clothing) are

generally identified by reference to a (non-inferentially, but

holistically individuated) function that they are intended to

perform and which serves as a standard against which to assess

them as succeeding or failing to perform this function. Now,

according to deVries, artifacts have a practical dimension

which cannot, even in principle, be reconstructed in the

descriptive-explanatory terms of the language of science

3 In his early article ‘Language, Rules and Behaviour’ (1949) Sellarsspeaks of ‘living rules’, thereby already anticipating the fact that at afundamental level normative behaviour cannot be understood exclusively onthe basis of the concept of inferential role, but is instead manifested ata non-inferential, practical level of ‘engaged coping’ with the environment(i.e. at what, in Heideggerian terms, we could call the ‘ready-to-hand’ -asopposed to ‘present-at-hand’- level). Sellars puts this point as follows:“A rule, properly speaking is not a rule unless it lives in behaviour, rule-regulating behaviour, even rule-violating behaviour. Linguistically, wealways operate within a framework of living rules. To describe rules is todescribe the skeleton of rules. A rule is lived, not described” (Sellars 1949,§43).

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alone, because practicality -i.e. the normative relations

which provide the conditions of identity and individuation of

an artifact or of a corresponding common sense concept of the

manifest world- is already built into the artifact (or the

corresponding common sense object) itself. That is to say, if

we abstract from the functions that they are intended to

perform and which serves as a standard against which to assess

them, those objects could not even count (i.e. described) as

artifacts or common sense objects in the first place. For

example, no straightforwardly and purely physical (or, for

that matter, evolutionary) description of a complex object

will be equivalent to, say, ‘hammer’ and this would be so even

if this description were provided by an ideal scientific

image, that is, a scientific image with ideal explanatory

resources. This is because the very description of what it is

to be a hammer (e.g. ‘a hand tool consisting of a solid head

set crosswise on a handle and use for pounding’) essentially

involves normative vocabulary, which cannot be reduced to mere

empirical generalizations about the use of hammers for

pounding -and the same goes for a host of other concepts and

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objects which comprise what phenomenologists (e.g. Husserl)

have aptly called our ‘lifeworld’.4 As a Heideggerian would put

it, “things present themselves to me as governed by ‘in-order-

to’ relations, and the environment in which practical life

takes place is essentially a ‘totality of involvements’ or

network of such ‘in-order-to’ relations”5 (Crowell 2013, 244).

This is the phenomenologically-laden and irreducibly normative

core of the ‘lifeworld’ of persons.

4 deVries cites, in support of his interpretation as regards Sellars viewon ‘ready-to-hand’ normativity, a passage taken from Sellars’ paper‘Scientific Realism and Irenic Instrumentalism’ (1965) in which Sellarsconcedes that while the framework of common sense is radically false (thereare really no such things as the physical objects and processes of thecommon sense framework) this view is to be clarified in terms of theconcepts of its being reasonable at some stage to abandon the framework ofcommon sense and use only the framework of theoretical science, suitablyenriched by the dimension of practical discourse (189, emphasis mine). And he goes onto suggest that “this aspect of the situation […] is illustrated by thepractical dimension of such common sense concepts as that of what it is tobe a hammer” (n. 4). However, as we shall see, the Sellarsian viewdeveloped here is compatible with another reading according to which‘ready-to-hand’ normativity can be descriptively and explanatorily reducedto scientific image concepts and objects while at the same time retainingits irreducible normative character.5 And, even more interestingly, as Heidegger puts it, these networks of‘in-order-to’ relations “ultimately go back to a ‘towards-which’ in whichthere is no further involvement -that is, to a ‘for-the-sake-of-which’”(Heidegger 1962, 116-18). The ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ is not itself anotheraim or goal but a possible way of being a self. For example, I may hammernails in order to secure boards, but such action has a self-referentialdimension as well, in that, I perform this action as a way of trying to be acarpenter (i.e. as a way of trying to live up to the standards of a certainpractical identity) (Crowell 2013, 244-45). In this sense, for Heidegger,the ultimate foundation of normativity lies in the fact that Dasein’s beingis always already an issue for it. Interestingly, this can furtherelucidate the sense in which, as we shall see in a moment, for Sellars,persons have intrinsic value while artifacts have only derivative value.

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Moreover, deVries correctly observes that the reference

to functions, social institutions and practices, that

artifacts carry along with them is, in the last analysis,

imposed on them from the outside, namely from us, persons. By

contrast, the normativity of persons is not artificial or

imposed from the outside, but is instead, ‘intrinsic’. Persons

are intrinsically normative beings in the sense that they are

the source of all ‘extrinsic’ values: objects have value for

them. Accordingly, their states and behaviour have value; they

have pleasures and pains, virtues and vices, and perform

actions that are good or bad, justified or unjustified.

Ultimately, persons are basic and irreducible realities in a

‘practical’ sense of the term (the framework of persons is

‘practically real’ in the sense that there are within this

framework intentions that are intersubjectively reasonable and

universally applicable) and while this does not commit Sellars

to the existence of persons as metaphysical substances -since

persons exist only to the extent to which they recognize the

norms that make them possible- it seems that it does commit

him, at least on deVries’ interpretation, to a descriptively

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and explanatorily irreducible phenomenology of persons -i.e. to

an irreducibly normatively-laden phenomenological description

of ‘what it is like’ to be a person. As deVries puts this last

point: “persons and intentional states are phenomena available

only from a certain point of view, the point of view of a

self-conscious, rational, logic-using agent who is a member of

a community that is, individually and collectively, engaged in

pursuing various ends in a world that it did not make”

(deVries 2005, 278).6

The problem here is that deVries’ (partly interpretive,

partly philosophical) view of ‘ready-to-hand’ normativity of

artifacts and, ultimately, of persons patently violates

Sellars’ scientia mensura principle (“in the dimension of

describing and explaining the world, science is the measure of

all things, of what it is that it is, and of what it is not

that it is not” (Sellars 1956, §41)) since, as is well-known,

the scientific image in its ideal form describes and explains

the world and our place in it in resolutely non-normative terms

6 Notice that since persons are ‘practically real’ it follows that if oneoccupies that perspective then “it is objectively true that there arepeople around one who believe and desire, people with whom one shares alanguage and some intentions, with whom one can (and must) negotiate in thecourse of one’s life” (deVries 2005, 279).

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-i.e. in terms which do not make essential explanatory appeal

to normative states, processes or facts. Thus, according to

deVries, the only way to accommodate the normativity of the

‘lifeworld’ in our overall worldview is to reject -or at least

seriously qualify- Sellars’ scientia mensura principle. After all,

even if persons or their intentional states and worldly

‘projects’ do not show up as such in the non-normative

pictures of the world produced by the scientific image, it is

still an undeniable fact that both science and the (non-

normative) pictures it produces are the products of persons; it

is persons who inhabit the logical space of reasons and only

persons care about science and have the ability to use or apply

its methods in order to produce adequate pictures of reality.7

7 The fact that deVries’ takes the irreducible character of normativity(including ‘ready-to-hand’ normativity) to be preserved only if the scientiamensura principle is violated or seriously qualified is also confirmed byanother argument of his to the effect that since, as Sellars himselfconcurs, no language could be purely descriptive, independent of allnormative, prescriptive, or practical elements, we are no less committed toour ‘prescriptive’ ontology (i.e. the ontology implicit in the language weuse to deliberate about and act within the world) than we are to ourdescriptive ontology (the ontology implicit in the language we use todescribe and explain the phenomena in the world) (deVries 2012, 15). Now,the existence of a ‘prescriptive ontology’ would certainly violate thescientia mensura principle since it would imply that there are certain(‘prescriptive’) phenomena in the world which cannot -as a matter ofprinciple- be described and explained by concepts and methods of empiricalinquiry and its sophisticated extension, science. I do not have the spaceto properly address the issue here but I think that what goes wrong in thisargument is that deVries has actually conflated the issue of the evaluationof explanation (the standards of correct explanation, i.e. the conception

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Does O’Shea’s view of normativity ease the tension between

‘ready-to-hand’ normativity and the scientia mensura principle?

Now, turning to O’Shea’s interpretive perspective, we

should note right away that deVries’ above-mentioned

conclusions regarding the essential clash of the scientia mensura

principle with the ‘ready-to-hand’ normativity of the

‘lifeworld’ need not be considered as obligatory. By strictly

distinguishing between logical or conceptual and causal or

explanatory irreducibility of the normative to the non-

normative (a distinction which Sellars himself explicitly

makes (1953)), O’Shea seems to be in a position to accommodate

any kind of normativity in our worldview, including ‘ready-to-

of explanation as an ‘epistemic mechanism’ that is at the heart ofempirical inquiry and scientific discourse in particular), which is indeeda resolutely normative matter (and, in this sense, it is true that “nolanguage could be purely descriptive, independent of all normative,prescriptive, or practical elements”) with the issue of the content of theexplanation itself, i.e. that of the existence of entities and processesthat this explanation commits us to, which, in the case of the scientificimage, are resolutely non-normative. Hence, pace deVries, the fact that nolanguage could be purely descriptive independent of all normative,prescriptive, or practical elements does not necessarily commit us to a‘prescriptive’ ontology.

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hand’ normativity, without rejecting the scientia mensura

principle. This is because the sense in which the normative is

irreducible to the non-normative is not one that would

directly violate the scientia mensura principle; normative

phenomena are logically or conceptually irreducible to non-

normative phenomena but not explanatorily irreducible to the

latter -and only a claim of explanatory irreducibility of the

normative to the non-normative would directly violate the

scientia mensura principle (O’Shea 2010, 187-201).

This interpretation of Sellars’ view on normativity is

opposed to deVries’ perspective according to which the

distinctive irreducibility of the normative level lies in a

sui generis dimension of description and explanation of

reality, namely the realm of ‘prescriptive’ ontology. From the

point of view of deVries’ interpretation, the only way to

preserve normativity in our worldview is to posit the

existence of normative descriptions and explanations which are

immune from explanatorily driven redescription and

reconceptualization in the context of empirical-scientific

inquiry -on pain of eliminating normativity altogether from

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our self-conception and losing thereby our grip on absolutely

central elements of the ‘phenomenology’ of our own personhood

and of our surrounding ‘life-world’, which is what

distinguishes us from being mere ‘complex physical systems’.

On the contrary, from O’Shea’s perspective -which is closer to

Sellars’ own view on the matter-, this latter possibility of

reconceptualising the descriptive/explanatory categories,

concepts and conceptions pertaining to normativity on the

basis of explanatory scientific concerns of our ongoing

empirical inquiry is indeed genuine (in as sense to be

carefully specified in what follows).

From this standpoint, for example, it could be argued

that, properly thought through, the possibility of

reconceptualising the descriptive/explanatory categories

pertaining to normativity on the basis of explanatory

scientific concerns, far from eliminating normativity and

‘personhood’ from our worldview, would, if actualised, effect

a change in the descriptive and explanatory conceptual recourses

with which we refer to the world that is the material antecedent or

consequent of our normative responses. As a consequence, we

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would gradually come to have an alternative understanding of

this world as regards its material constitution, evolution,

causal efficacy or about the (material) consequences of our

actions, and, in this way, our conception of normativity would

itself change significantly -without thereby losing its

normative character. In the last analysis, the latter would be

revealed to be not a sui generis reality in which some

ethereal, ‘natural’, ‘hierarchical’ or otherwise inexplicable

‘demands of reason’ inhere, but rather a reflection of our

most embracing logical, modal and ethical commitments, as the

latter are expressed in what Sellars calls ‘we-intentions’.

And a proper understanding of the material (evolutionary,

historical, social-psychological) antecedents and consequents

of our normative responses not only would not eliminate

normativity (or personhood) from our practices, but it could

actually pave the way for its potential material realization by

liberating persons from unforeseen, uncontrollable, and

hitherto completely unknown worldly restrictions and

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impediments which nevertheless have a direct bearing and an

inconspicuous but pervasive effect on our normative practices.8

Of course, at this point, one can object, on deVries

behalf, that 1) what was mentioned above regarding the

material realization of normativity in the world can be

smoothly incorporated into deVries’ interpretive perspective,

and, more importantly, that 2) ‘ready-to-hand’ normativity has

not thereby been rendered consistent with the scientia mensura

principle since its distinctive qualities -themselves an

intimate blend of functional and phenomenological features-

make it phenomenologically (and not only logically or

conceptually) irreducible to the non-normative level. In other

words, it seems that O’Shea’s sharp distinction between a

conceptual and an explanatory sense in which the normative can

be irreducible to the non-normative (or our own related

Sellarsian distinction between the prescriptive function of

normative discourse and the descriptive function of

explanatory discourse) makes sense only on the basis of a8 The related reconceptualised descriptive and explanatory recourses wouldeffect this change by providing a more adequate understanding of theconsequences of our actions and, more generally and importantly, byexpanding or enlarging the domain of genuine or concrete practicalpossibilities -which could serve as raw materials for deliberating aboutthe desired or required course of action.

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resolutely functional, or better, formal understanding of the

being of the normative. On this latter view, the purely

functional (and prescriptive) aspect of normative states is

what makes them the normative states they are and this is

ultimately why they cannot be (logically, conceptually,

semantically) reduced to non-normative phenomena, but this

does not at all prevent the explanatory reducibility of the

former to the latter by scientific image concepts (i.e. their

identification with non-normative states and events which

stand in non-normative relations to one another) because the

scientific image accounts only for the contentual (material,

‘qualitative’) aspect of normativity -i.e. an aspect which is

irrelevant to the conditions of identity and individuation of

the normative as such. However, if we grant that there is a kind

of normativity, namely ‘ready-to-hand’ normativity, which, due

to its non-formal (i.e. not purely functional) qualitative

content, is phenomenologically irreducible to the non-

normative level, do we not also have to grant that the

distinction between conceptual and explanatory irreducibility

is less sharp than O’Shea, for example, thinks it to be? And

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if this is so, does this not mean that in the last analysis

deVries is right in his claim that normativity can be

preserved only if we reject or seriously qualify the scientia

mensura principle?

Going beyond deVries and O’Shea: Reconciling ‘ready-to-hand’

normativity with the scientific image

I take it that this is not so; however this is not to say

that O’Shea’s interpretation at this point is unproblematic.

In fact, I believe that the key to resolve the interpretive

dispute, in a way that incorporates but goes beyond both

deVries’ and O’Shea’s perspective, lies in drawing a sharp

distinction between the phenomenological and the contentual

(material) aspect of ‘ready-to-hand’ normativity (something

about which both deVries and O’Shea remain silent). Now, I

contend that both the phenomenological and the contentual

aspects of ‘ready-to-hand’ normativity can be considered as

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being ‘qualitative’ in nature.9 However, a crucial difference

between them is that the phenomenological aspect of ‘ready-to-

hand’ normativity is essentially first-personal (i.e. it is

essentially accessible to the subject) and is qualitative in a

‘relational’ sense of the term (that is, in as sense which is

not limited to strictly occurrent qualitative properties, but

can be extended to causal and dispositional properties of the

object) while its contentual or material aspect need not be

first-personal (i.e. it is phenomenologically opaque) and is

‘qualitative’ in a non-relational, strictly occurrent sense of

the term (restricted to proper and common sensibles of sensory

or affective experience).

If this is so, it can be conceded that ‘ready-to-hand’

normativity can indeed be (not only functionally but)

phenomenologically irreducible to non-normative phenomena,

while, at the same time, it can be also the case that ready-

to-hand normativity is explanatorily reducible to the non-

normative states and processes. More specifically, it can be

9 Notice that this fact makes O’Shea’s position problematic since it tendsto blur the very distinction on which O’Shea’s alternative interpretationof Sellarsian normativity depends, namely that between the purelyfunctional (conceptual) and contentual (explanatory) aspects ofnormativity.

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argued that so long as 1) this phenomenological character of

‘ready-to-hand’ normativity is understood in essentially

relational (e.g. dispositional, motivational) and first-

personal terms, and 2) if what the scientific image

descriptions and explanations are thought to capture is the

intrinsic, strictly occurrent (non-relational, non-

dispositional)10 and extra-phenomenological (non-first-

personal) aspects of what is ‘qualitatively’ present in ready-

to-hand ‘experience’ of normativity (i.e. the proper and

common sensible properties of sensory and affective states),

then it follows that the phenomenological aspect of ready-to-

hand normativity is a real and irreducible feature of the

latter without, at the same time, being in direct conflict

with the scientia mensura principle. This is because, on the one

hand, the identity and individuation of an empirical process

or state as ‘normative’ in a ‘ready-to-hand’ sense is not

10 Sellars takes it that the scientific image descriptions and explanationsin terms of thing-kind generalizations and their causal and dispositionalproperties are not ultimate but instead point towards a more penetratinglevel of description and explanation in which the world is considered as‘pure episode’ or ‘pure process’, i.e. as possessing qualitative propertiesthat are purely occurrent and non-thing like (Sellars 1957, §50-52). Thisis not the place to discuss Sellars’ peculiar version of what the idealscientific image might be. It would be sufficient for our purposes to showthat even this radical version of the Sellarsian scientific image can besuccessfully fused with the ‘ready-to-hand’ character of our ‘lifeworld’.

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exclusively ‘functional’ -in an ‘inferential role’ sense of

the term-, but is essentially based on ‘qualitative’ and

phenomenologically salient properties of the state in

question, while, on the other hand, the strictly occurrent,

intrinsic (non-relational) and extra-phenomenological features

of qualitative experiential states and processes to which

‘ready-to-hand’ normativity is explanatorily reduced, i.e. the

proper and common sensible features of sensory or affective

experience, are simply irrelevant to the identity and

individuation of empirical states or processes as ‘ready-to-

hand’ normative (though, importantly, not to the content of

that to which we normatively respond or that in response to which we

act in a ‘ready-to-hand’ manner).

Thus, it seems that the answer to our initial query about

the possibility of a stereoscopic fusion of ‘ready-to-hand’

normativity with the radically a-normative ontology of the

scientific image is that its phenomenological aspect remains

strictly irreducible to non-normative, scientific image,

terms, but this is does not preclude the possibility of

construing its contentual (qualitative but non-first personal)

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aspect in scientific image terms. Moreover, a truly stereoscopic

fusion between the manifest and the scientific image in this

case could be accomplished if, under pressure from the

scientific image’s superior methods of describing and

explaining the world, we gradually transformed our conception,

not of course about the phenomenological character of ‘ready-

to-hand’ normativity (which would remain as such in the ideal

scientific image), but rather about the realizing contentual

or ‘material’ vehicles of the latter. (Notice that in the

manifest image as it stands the phenomenological element of

‘ready-to-hand’ normativity is not strictly distinguished from

its contentual/material element11; and this entanglement

results in what Sellars terms the ‘descriptive ontology of

11 That is to say, our ‘lifeworld’ concept of, say, ‘table’ is composed oftwo, inextricably entangled, elements: the table qua ready-to-hand object,essentially involving its character as an instrument we use to satisfy ourpurposes, and the table qua proper and common sensible properties (i.e.considered as an object of sensory and ‘affective’ experience) (see alsoO’Shea 2009). Sellars’ move is precisely to break our ordinary ‘lifeworld’concepts in those two parts in order to highlight the fact that this lattercomponent can be radically transformed by successor scientific imageconcepts. Yet, Sellars’ ultimate purpose, as I understand it, is to reunite‘lifeworld’ concepts, preserving their phenomenology while at the same timechanging our conception of what this phenomenology really is about (byaltering our conception about its material vehicles) and eventuallyincorporating it in the phenomenological level itself (i.e. to the way weconceive of ourselves as persons-in-the-world).

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everyday life’.12) It is precisely our substantive concepts

about those contentual/material realizers of ‘ready-to-hand’ normativity

that would undergo radical reconceptualization and would

eventually be replaced by scientific image successor concepts,

but as we have seen, this fact would not at all compromise the

phenomenological and normative character or ‘form’ of ‘ready-

to-hand’ normativity. In fact, this revisionary process would

change our conception of what the lifeworld is in the ‘order

of being’; that is to say, not only would it not eliminate our

‘lived experience’, but, on the contrary, by expanding the

conceptual space of what counts as the material content of our

normative responses (language-entry transitions), it could

actually pave the way for the potential realization of

12 This is ultimately because ordinary describing of ‘lifeworld’ objectsgoes hand in hand with explaining, and it is in this latter dimension ofdiscourse that is reflected in the ‘descriptive ontology of everyday life’.Recall that, according to Sellars, a necessary condition for an expressionhaving a descriptive role is being situated in a ‘space of implications’,which, moreover, for Sellars, must be counterfactually robust ones -thatis, they must extend to possible cases; otherwise the putatively‘descriptive’ term could not be applied to new cases. And an essentialfeature of ‘the space of counterfactually robust implications’ is that thatthe inferences involved therein are explanatory -that is, they can beappealed to, precisely due to their counterfactual structure, in explainingthe applicability of one description on the basis of the applicability ofanother (see n. 2). In this sense, the ‘lifeworld’, the world in which wedo our everyday living, includes, as an essential part of its very meaning,substantial conceptions about the causal and dispositional (or, in general,modal) powers of its ‘objects’.

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regulative ideals which, arguably, are involved in the use of

the concept of ‘lifeworld’, through the corresponding

expansion of the ‘space of practical possibilities’ for

undertaking action (language-exit transitions) since this

would allow for the possibility of liberating persons from

unforeseen, uncontrollable, and hitherto unknown practical

restrictions and impediments. In this way, the content -

albeit, not the ‘form’- of our very ‘lived experience’ would

be transformed; or, to use phenomenological jargon, there

would be a change in our conception of what counts as an

‘action opportunity’ that objects ‘afford’ to perceivers.

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