“The we-intention Sellars regards as intrinsically valid-”It shallwe be the case that each of us rational beings so acts as to promote our welfare” — embodies a particular conception of what is good —namely, the welfare of rational beings. How, though, to establish the superiority of this account of the good over the rational egoist’s account? Sellars lays out a strategy for doing so but despairs of carrying this strategy through:
To have this intention is to think of oneself as a member of a community consisting of all rational beings. …
144. If … the following two premises were established, this community could be shown to be a reality:
To think of oneself as [a] rational being is (implicitly) to think of oneself as subject to epistemic oughts binding on rational beings generally.
The intersubjective intention to promote epistemic welfare implies the intersubjective intention to promote welfare sans phrase.
These premises would entail that the concept of oneself as a rational being implies the concept of oneself as a member of an ethical community consisting of all rational beings. To be sure, this implication need not be recognized. Indeed, it would take all the dialectical skill of a Socrates, a Hegel or a Peirce to bring it to the surface. Yet if the above premises were true, all rational beings would “implicitly” think of themselves as members of an ethical community consisting of all rational beings. But since a community exists if the relevant individuals think of themselves as its members, the ethical community of rational being would have an “implicit” existence.”
— Jeremy Randel Koons, Ethics of Wilfred Sellars —
“The we-intention Sellars regards as intrinsically valid-”It shallwe be the case that each of us rational beings so acts as to promote our welfare” — embodies a particular conception of what is good —namely, the welfare of rational beings. How, though, to establish the superiority of this account of the good over the rational egoist’s account? Sellars lays out a strategy for doing so but despairs of carrying this strategy through:
To have this intention is to think of oneself as a member of a community consisting of all rational beings. …
144. If … the following two premises were established, this community could be shown to be a reality:
To think of oneself as [a] rational being is (implicitly) to think of oneself as subject to epistemic oughts binding on rational beings generally.
The intersubjective intention to promote epistemic welfare implies the intersubjective intention to promote welfare sans phrase.
These premises would entail that the concept of oneself as a rational being implies the concept of oneself as a member of an ethical community consisting of all rational beings. To be sure, this implication need not be recognized. Indeed, it would take all the dialectical skill of a Socrates, a Hegel or a Peirce to bring it to the surface. Yet if the above premises were true, all rational beings would “implicitly” think of themselves as members of an ethical community consisting of all rational beings. But since a community exists if the relevant individuals think of themselves as its members, the ethical community of rational being would have an “implicit” existence.”
— Jeremy Randel Koons, Ethics of Wilfred Sellars
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