Ontological (Re-)Turn: Husserl, Sellars and the Families of Worlds

<p>The notion of «family of worlds»» (hereafter, FWs) is</p> <p>introduced for the first time by Wilfrid Sellars towards the</p> <p>end of his famous paper on Particulars of 19521 (to be more</p> <p>appropriately appreciated if read together with the essay Is</p> <p>There a Synthetic A Priori? from the year before2) to express</p> <p>one of the aspects of his linguistic or, as he would rather say:</p> <p>«semantic» and «pragmatic» interpretation of the synthetic a</p> <p>priori, notably, «synthetic a priori propositions». More properly</p> <p>said, the turn of phrase «family of possible worlds» is</p> <p>introduced with the claim that it must be «interposed», Sellars</p> <p>writes, between the Leibnizian sounding concept of «a</p> <p>possible world, and that of the totality of possible worlds»3.</p> <p>The goal of my paper here is not so much to combine Sellars</p> <p>and Edmund Husserl on the notion of (possible) world</p> <p>(and then of FWs) as to outline and propose (within the narrow</p> <p>limits of an essay) a re-appreciation of FWs in light of</p> <p>Husserl’s conceptuality.</p>