The Space of Reasons and the Realm of Freedom

"The essential point�, according to Wilfrid Sellars, "is that in
characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we
are not giving an empirical description of that episode or
state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of
justifying and being able to justify what one says�. (Sellars
1997, 76) The traditional empiricism maintains that all of
our knowledge rests basically on a foundation of truths
about sensory experience, assuming that sense data is the
junction at which external reality or the empirical world gets
in touch with the epistemic world. Even Quine"s attack on
the dogmas of empiricism does not call this presupposition
into question. What he pleads for is a holistic modification
of the dogma: "our statements about the external world
face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but
only as a corporate body� (Quine 1964, 41).