Thought, Consciousness, and the Given

European Journal of Philosophy September 1, 2025 DOI: 10.1111/ejop.13039 (opens in new tab)

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract

Characteristics	Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed
Key points	Argues that we understand the nature of thoughts in a third-person way, by appeal to the speech acts that express them, rather than through subjective awareness of our own conscious thoughts. The author defends Wilfrid Sellars's view against two objections, contends that any picture of consciousness as revealing the nature of thoughts is untenable and underlies what Sellars called the "Myth of the Given," and proposes that this third-person account explains how some thoughts become conscious.

Characteristics

Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed

Key points

Argues that we understand the nature of thoughts in a third-person way, by appeal to the speech acts that express them, rather than through subjective awareness of our own conscious thoughts. The author defends Wilfrid Sellars's view against two objections, contends that any picture of consciousness as revealing the nature of thoughts is untenable and underlies what Sellars called the "Myth of the Given," and proposes that this third-person account explains how some thoughts become conscious.

Abstract

AbstractHow do we come to understand the nature of the thoughts that we and others have? And how do we come to have the conceptual resources needed to formulate such understanding? Many would say we understand the nature of thoughts simply by being subjectively aware of our own conscious thoughts. But it is unclear how consciousness could, on its own, provide the conceptual resources required for such understanding. An alternative account holds that we understand the nature of thoughts in a third‐person way, by appeal to the speech acts that can express those thoughts. Such an account readily explains how we come to have the required conceptual resources. Wilfrid Sellars, in “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” and elsewhere, developed a view along those lines, appealing to considerations related to and in the spirit of the foregoing concerns. I'll describe and defend that view against two main objections. And I'll argue that any picture of consciousness on which it could reveal the nature of thoughts is independently untenable, and also that such a picture underlies what Sellars denounced as the Myth of the Given. In closing I explain how, given that we understand the nature of thoughts in such a third‐person way, some of our thoughts come to be conscious.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Related reading