Stefanie Dach, 'Sellars on the intersubjectivity of 'we-intentions''

The notion of intersubjective “we-intentions” is central to Sellars’s philosophical system, especially to his account of moral statements. However, what precisely makes these intentions intersubjective and why we need them often remains unclear in Sellars’s texts. My paper attempts to bring more clarity into these issues. I argue that a good way to characterize the moral domain from a Sellarsian perspective is as a domain of consonant practical reasoning with intentions. I show that personal intentions cannot serve in such consonant practical reasoning because of two shortcomings: their indexicality and their egocentricity. I reconstruct how Sellars can address these two problems. I then suggest that there may have been a change in Sellars’s ideas about the intersubjective features of we-intentions at the end of his career where Sellars seems to abandon his former “mode account”. Therefore, some central elements in Sellars’s practical philosophy may never have stopped developing during his career. Based on the discussion of Sellars’s motivations for introducing intersubjective intentions, I argue that this change is a sensible one.

Ethics, Practical Reasoning, Agency: Sellars' Practical Philosophy,
Grand Valley State University & Georgetown University in Qatar.
Online Philosophy Conference (2021).