Kenneth Taylor

(1954 - 2019)

Much of neuroscience is currently dominated by an information processing metaphor which is largely conceptualized in discrete terms. An alternative metaphor conceptualizes information flow as continuous. A qualitative set of hypotheses based on this metaphor, the energy model, is described here. This model considers information transfer in terms of the flow of an abstract variable, energy, between points in a field comprising the extent of the nervous system. Although extremely simple, it generates some intriguing consequences. In particular, it provides a useful way in which to look at consciousness. Traditional problems of consciousness, such as qualia and the unity of consciousness, are briefly addressed, and outlines are sketched of the answers given by the energy model

For Millikan, purpose pervades the biological order, including the genes and genetically encoded traits of every living thing, the unconditioned reflexes and conditioned behavior of every animal, artifacts produced by humans or non-humans. There are also the conscious, explicit purposes and intentions of human beings. These are purposes in “a quite univocal sense,” Millikan insists. “In all cases,” she says, “the thing’s purpose is … what it was selected for doing.” Moreover, “…the purposes we attribute to whole persons … are composed of no more than the purposes of [their] parts and aspects, and of the ways these have been designed to work together.” (13) The chain of purposes forms a double helix with another great chain -- the great chain of signs. At the bottom of the great chain, sit locally recurrent natural signs. These are wholly natural occurrences or states of affairs that carry “local information.” Locally recurrent natural signs are not yet intentional signs but they are the ground on which intentionality ultimately rests. Local natural signs are “basic” representations in the following sense: … when the systems that produce and/or use intentional representations perform the tasks they were designed to perform and perform these tasks by means of their normal mechanism … then the intentional representations are basic representations. (69) When an intentional sign producing/consuming system is functioning “normally” its intentional signs will just be local natural signs. Systems don’t always function normally; So we can’t quite say that intentional signs are built out of locally recurrent natural signs. Still, without such signs subsisting at the ground level, there apparently could not be intentional signs. But it is far from clear whether locally recurrent natural sign can really carry the load Millikan needs them to carry. Locality seems designed to exorcise the ghost of disjunction that haunts many correlational theories of content..

This paper examines and rejects some purported refutations of eliminative materialism in the philosophy of mind: a quasi-transcendental argument due to Jackson and Pettit (1990) to the effect that folk psychology is “peculiarly unlikely” to be radically revised or eliminated in light of the developments of cognitive science and neuroscience; and (b) certain straight-out transcendental arguments to the effect that eliminativism is somehow incoherent (Baker, 1987; Boghossian, 1990). It begins by clarifying the exact topology of the dialectical space in which debates between eliminativist and anti-eliminativist ought to be framed. I claim that both proponents and opponents of eliminativism have been insufficiently attentive to the range of dialectical possibilities. Consequently, the debate has not, in fact, been framed within the correct dialectical setting. I then go onto to show how inattentiveness to the range of dialectical possibilities undermines both transcendental and quasi-transcendental arguments against eliminativism. In particular, I argue that the quasi-transcendentalist overestimates the degree to which folk psychology can be insulated from the advance of neuroscience and cognitive science just in virtue of being a functional theory. I argue further that transcendental arguments are fallacious and do not succeed against even the strongest possible form of eliminativism. Finally, I argue that that transcendental arguments are irrelevant. Even if such arguments do succeed against a certain'very strong form of eliminativism, they remain complete non-starters against certain weaker forms of eliminativism. And I argue that if any of these weaker forms is true, folk psychology is in trouble enough to vindicate Paul Ckurchland's claim that our common sense psychological framework is “a radically false and misleading conception of the causes of human behavior and the nature of cognitive activity”

This essay In this essay develops and defends the view that a “self “ is nothing but a creature that bears the property of selfhood, where bearing selfhood is, in turn, nothing but having the capacity to deploy self-representations. Self-representations, it is argued, are very special things. They are distinguished from other sorts of representations,not by what they represent – mysterious inner entities called selves, say -- but by how they represent what they represent. A self-representation represents nothing but a living human animal but it does do in a special way. It follows that a "self" is not a thing that a living human animals has or contains within, but something a living human animal is. The view defended represents a principled middle ground between Cartesianism and Factionalism or Eliminativism about the self.

Philosophers of language have lavished attention on names and other singular referring expressions. But they have focused primarily on what might be called lexicalsemantic character of names and have largely ignored both what I call the lexicalsyntactic character of names and also what I call the pragmatic significance of the naming relation. Partly as a consequence, explanatory burdens have mistakenly been heaped upon semantics that properly belong elsewhere. This essay takes some steps toward correcting these twin lacunae. When we properly distinguish that which belongs to the lexical-syntactic character of names, from that which belongs to the lexical semantic character of names, from that which rests on the pragmatics of the naming relation, we lay to rest many misbegotten claims about names and their presumed semantic behavior. For example, though many believe that Frege’s puzzle about the possibility of informative identity statements motivates a move away from a referentialist semantics for names, I argue that the very possibility of Frege cases has its source not in facts about the lexical-semantic character of names but in facts about the lexical-syntax of the naming relation. If I am right, Frege cases as such are insufficient to justify the introduction of the distinction between sense and reference. In a similar vein, I offer a new diagnosis of the widely misdiagnosed felt invalidity of the substitution of coreferring names within propositional attitude contexts. That felt invalidity has been taken 1 to justify the conclusion that an embedded referring expression must be playing some semantic role either different from or additional to its customary semantic role of standing for its reference. I argue, to the contrary, that failures of substitutivity have their source not in the peculiar semantic behavior of embedded expressions but entirely in certain pragmatic principles.

Moral relativism is often rejected on grounds that it is either descriptively inadequate, at best, or self-defeating, at worst. In this essay, I swim against the predominant anti-relativistic philosophical tide. My minimal aim is to show that relativism is neither descriptively inadequate nor self-defeating. My maximal aim is to outline the beginnings of an argument that relativism is a truth resting on deep facts about the human normative predicament. And I shall suggest that far from being a source of cultural degeneracy, the fact of relativism has the potential to ground a culture that is deeply life-affirming. My argument against the twin charges of descriptive inadequacy and self- defeat turns on a distinction between tolerant and intolerant relativism. I concede that many of the standard arguments against relativism do have force against tolerant relativism. But against intolerant relativism, those arguments are entirely unavailing. The crucial difference between the tolerant and intolerant relativist is that although the intolerant relativist agrees with the tolerant relativist that norms are relative, she insists that agents are sometimes entitled to hold others to norms by which they are not bound. I shall argue that just because the intolerant relativist allows that we are sometimes entitled to hold others to norms by which we are bound but they are not, she is able to escape both the charge of descriptive inadequacy and the charge of self- defeat. In particular, I shall show that the intolerant relativist has a coherent and satisfying account of the nature of moral disagreement and moral argument. Establishing the ultimate truth of relativism, however, would take more than showing that one form of relativism escapes certain standard arguments against relativism. Though I do not pretend to conclusively discharge the burden of showing that relativism is true in the space of this essay, I do sketch the beginnings of an account of what I call the bindingness of norms that has intolerant relativism as more or less straight-forward downstream consequence. If there are independent grounds for accepting that account of bindingness, then there are independent grounds for accepting intolerant moral relativism

I argue that a certain initially appealing Fregean conception of our shared semantic competence in our shared language cannot be made good. In particular, I show that we must reject two fundamental Fregean principles‐what I call Frege's Adequacy Condition and what I call Frege's Cognitive Constraint on Reference Determination. Frege's adequacy condition says that in an adequate semantic theory, sentence meanings must have the same fineness of grain as attitude contents. The Cognitive Constraint on Reference Determination says that in an adequate semantic theory mechanisms of reference determination will fix routes of epistemic access to referents and will mediate one‐sided recognition judgments about referents. I argue against Frege's adequacy condition that if meanings are sliced as finely as it requires there will be too many meanings to go around. I argue against the cognitive constraint on reference determination that even in an adequate theory of reference, mechanisms of reference determination must be sharply distinguished from routes of epistemic access. If so, we have little reason to expect an adequate theory of reference determination to directly illuminate Frege's cognitive puzzles or be sufficient to explain the basis of our one‐sided recognition judgments.

This essay defends three interlocking claims about singular beliefs and their ascriptions. The first is a claim about the nature of such beliefs; the second is a claim about the semantic contents of ascriptions of such beliefs; the third is a claim about the pragmatic significance of such ascriptions. With respect to the nature of singular belief, I claim that the contents of our singular beliefs are a joint product of mind and world, with neither mind nor world enjoying any peculiar priority over the other in the constitution of content. This view amounts to a rejection of the priority of so-called narrow or notional content over wide or referential content for singular beliefs. About the semantics of ascriptions of singular belief, I claim that such ascriptions ascribe what I call predicative doxastic commitments and nothing more. In particular, I will argue that to ascribe a predicative commitment is merely to say what property is being predicated by she who undertakes the relevant commitment to what object. My view has the consequence that ascriptions of singular beliefs typically do not either semantically specify or pragmatically implicate the modes of presentations, notions, or conceptions via which the ascribee cognizes the objects and properties relative to which she undertakes predicative commitments. To be sure, many maintain that at least one class of belief ascriptions -- so called de dicto ascriptions