Kenneth Taylor

(1954 - 2019)

Rampant moral relativism is widely decried as the leading source of the degeneracy of modern life.1 Though I proudly count myself a relativist, I rather doubt that relativism has anything like the cultural influence that its most ardent critics fearfully attribute to it. Much of what gets criticized under the rubric of relativism is often really no such thing. Relativists need not be hedonists, egoists, nihilists or even moral skeptics. Moreover, when it comes to the upper reaches of our intellectual culture, relativism is more often dismissed than defended.2 I don’t deny that in certain literary corners of academe, relativism retains a fashionable post-modern cache.3 But in more sober philosophical circles, the catalog of ills from which relativism is widely thought to suffer is impressive.4 When taken as a characterization of the nature of moral discourse and moral argument, relativism is often thought to be descriptively inadequate. Contra the relativist, we do not treat moral disputes as rationally irresolvable. We do not tolerate all alternative moral “codes” as equally valid. Relativism may be true of merely cultural norms or practices. But morality has a felt universality that makes it quite different in character from a system of merely cultural norms or practices. In the face of morally abhorrent practices, we don’t simply shrug our shoulders and say that while the relevant practices may be wrong for us, they are alright for them. Relativism is sometimes even said to be self-undermining. It makes the very thing it purports to explain – the possibility of rationally intractable disagreements – impossible in the first place. Partly because of its supposedly self-undermining character, relativism is sometimes accused of being a strictly incredible doctrine. Those who profess to be relativists must, if this is true, either be insincere, confused, or self-deceived. Though someone might well sincerely hold the mistaken second-order belief that she believes that she believes that relativism is true, no one, in his or her deepest heart of hearts, sincerely, non selfdeceptively and informedly believes that relativism is true..

Conventional wisdom has it that there is a class of attitude ascriptions such that in making an ascription of that sort, the ascriber undertakes a commitment to specify the contents of the ascribee’s head in what might be called a notionally sensitive, ascribee-centered way. In making such an ascription, the ascriber is supposed to undertake a commitment to specify the modes of presentation, concepts or notions under which the ascribee cognizes the objects (and properties) that her beliefs are about. Consequently, it is widely supposed that an ascription of the relevant sort will be true just in case it specifies either directly or indirectly both what the ascribee believes and how she believes it. The class of “notionally sensitive” ascriptions has been variously characterized. Quine (1956) calls the class I have in mind the class of notional ascriptions and distinguishes it from the class of relational ascriptions. Others call the relevant class the class of de dicto ascriptions and distinguish it from the class of de re ascriptions. More recently, it has been called the class of notionally loaded ascriptions (Crimmins 1992, 1995). So understood, the class can be contrasted with the class of notionally neutral ascriptions. Just as the class of notional/de dicto/notionally loaded ascriptions is supposed to put at semantic issue the ascribee’s notions/conceptions/modes of presentation, so ascriptions in the relational/de re/notionally neutral class are supposed not to..

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.

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