Kenneth A. Taylor examines the complex relationship between semantic analysis and metaphysical inquiry with the aim of bringing philosophical methodology into closer alignment with total science. He urges philosophers who seek metaphysical insight to interrogate reality itself rather than language and concepts.

Dennett’s work has had a profound impact on philosophical and scientific understanding of consciousness. However, interpreting Dennett’s work on consciousness is notoriously challenging. Some have even suggested that his ideas are contradictory. This paper develops and defends an interpretation of Dennett’s views, on which consciousness is a real pattern. I argue that this interpretation can make sense of some initially puzzling features of the view, including: multiple drafts, global workspace theory, qualia eliminativism, consciousness as a user-illusion, and the claim that (...) our reports about consciousness have a special kind of authority. Far from being a tangle of contradictory ideas, this interpretation of Dennett consists of a consistent and robust theory of conscious experience. (shrink)

Manipulation cases have figured prominently in philosophical debates about whether moral responsibility is in some sense deeply historical. Meanwhile, some philosophers have thought that folk thinking about manipulated agents may shed some light on the various argumentative burdens facing participants in that debate. This paper argues that folk thinking is, to some extent, historical. Across three experiments, a substantial number of participants did not attribute moral responsibility to agents with manipulation in their histories. The results of these experiments challenge previous (...) research indicating that folk thinking is not historicist. Furthermore, perceptions of reduced free will, but not of a change in personal identity of the agent, account for the attenuation of moral responsibility when the agent was manipulated. To the extent that folk thinking is relevant to philosophical debates about the nature of moral responsibility, the results helpfully illuminate the dialectical burdens facing competing conceptions of responsible agency. (shrink)

There has been much recent debate about the nature of the omnivoyant image that introduces Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei. In this paper, I argue that Cusa’s concept of contraction and his ‘radical perspectivism’ lead us toward stretching the concept of omnivoyance beyond a simple dichotomy between a phenomenology of the image and a phenomenology of the icon. Instead of putting such emphasis on what is seen by the omnivoyant, we should think an omnivoyant optics starting from the material (...) milieu from which it sees. To this end, I define the concept of omnivoyance through the concept of the elemental. Using both the concept of an element derived from Presocratic Ionian philosophy and recent French and American continental philosophy, I put these discourses into conversation with Cusa in several ways: the way omnivoyance functions as a substratum of contracted seeing rather than as a transcendence, its operation as a pure frontality without objectifiable aspects, and the way in which omnivoyance implies not only a gaze that sees ‘all and each’ but also a plurality of modes of vision. To help us understand this enlarged concept of omnivoyance, I use the example of animal vision, particularly the gaze of the whale. With respect to cetacean vision, I deploy Melville’s metaphysical speculations in Moby Dick as our primary guide. (shrink)

Being a medically qualified patient can be an unpleasant experience for a person who is used to making decisions. For the most part, this applies to the vast majority of doctors and other healthcare professionals. Becoming passive and surrendering the decision-making process to others is alien to the medical culture we were taught. However, when as a hospitalised medically qualified patient, one sees fellow patients in difficulty, or deteriorating clinically, unnoticed by medical staff, the question of whether it is ethical (...) to intervene arises. I report my views on this as a largely passive, but still actively thinking patient. (shrink)

Light pollution is a topic gaining importance and acceptance in environmental discourse. This concept provides a framework for categorizing the adverse effects of nighttime lighting, which advocacy...

At the core of Swedenborg’s thought is the understanding that our purpose in this life is to progress spiritually—to learn, to grow, to do good works, and, ultimately, to allow as much of God’s love as possible to enter into us and manifest through us. Scattered throughout his works are descriptions of our mind and how it relates to both the physical and spiritual worlds. In this book, Taylor pulls these loose threads together and weaves them into a simple, (...) coherent whole, presenting Swedenborg’s teachings as a system that anyone can follow. Taylor describes the external or natural mind as primarily concerned with material things, and the inner mind, in its essence, as love. As we elevate our thoughts toward higher and higher types of love and wisdom, we draw closer to God and begin the process of regeneration, or rebirth as spiritual beings. This is the first time in many decades that a book has been published on Swedenborg’s philosophy of the mind. Taylor’s straightforward commentary gives readers a rare insight into this crucial aspect of Swedenborg’s theology. (shrink)

A follow up to 'The Easter God'. John V. Taylor sets out God's incarnation in Jesus and his interaction with the world.

As legal scholar Ariela Dubler notes, the institution of marriage casts a long shadow across contemporary social life. Much more than a way of conferring social sanction on sexual and romantic relationships, marriage unlocks a wide range of social goods, from inheritance rights to medical records access. In addition, though, and as generations of feminists, queer activists, and others have made clear, this institution is part of a wider network of power relationships that it helps to shore up and conceal. (...) Critics most often point to the way the marital regime quietly reinforces patriarchal, bourgeois liberal, and heteronormative assumptions, hiding them in the shadow of putatively benign, private, and natural social structures. This article brings the overlooked connections between marriage and race out of the shadows and more fully into view. Using and refining a fourfold notion of racial invisibility developed in Taylor’s Black Is Beautiful, we consider two respects in which this ocularcentric metaphor for racialized epistemic short-circuiting is particularly appropriate for discussing the marital regime. (shrink)

As Ricœur scholars know, the literature by and on Ricœur is vast. Material written by Ricœur that is not collected in published volumes is often difficult to locate, and even in the published volumes it is frequently a challenge to locate where Ricœur discusses a particular topic. Given the amount of his work it can be a challenge too to determine changes in his analyses over the life of his corpus. And locating secondary literature on Ricœur can be equally problematic. (...) In response, we have been working to establish a model for how Ricœur’s corpus might be digitized so that the issues of access, keyword location, and pattern might all be addressed. To develop the model, we are starting with Ricœur’s primary texts in English and plan to expand over time to other languages and to the secondary literature on Ricœur. In the present article we discuss our model and its five steps: digital access; copyright; text preparation for digital searches and analysis; examples of digital searches and analyses; and an archive portal interface that allows users to query based on an extensible set of search variables without needing to know or access the underlying search logic. We also invite interested researchers to help assist the development of this digitization project. (shrink)

In a recent exchange in this journal, I argue that accounts of emergence face the collapse problem, and I defend an explanatory approach to emergence as a solution to this problem. Alexander Skiles objects to my account, and proposes an alternative solution to the collapse problem. In this discussion note I take up this conversation, defending the explanatory account of emergence against Skiles’ critique, and arguing that his alternative approach fails to solve the collapse problem.

The living world features prominently in a number of disciplines. In this context of theoretical maturation and media attention, poetry, too, has a contribution to make (via words and sounds) to this debate. As a type of voyance that seeks to reconnect us to the living world by promoting its voice and visibility, poethics (as conceived by Michel Deguy and Jean-Claude Pinson) is intent on relaunching the motif of “poetic dwelling” by delineation of a sensorial and memorial process of “taking (...) place” (Emmanuel Merle). Poethic ambition relies on a type of language that might “stimulate our imaginaries” (Patrick Chamoiseau). The aim of this ethico-phenomenological approach in the wake of Gaston Bachelard and Gilbert Durand is to rehabilitate a poetic practice typically exemplified by Emmanuel Merle and Jean-Pierre Chambon (and Yves Bonnefoy as their predecessor) as an essential ally of science and philosophy; it is about cultivating attention, emotion and wonderment, and sensitizing us to our “geosolidarities” (Olivier Remaud) in order to create an affinity between vigilance and hope. It is quite something, as Michel Deguy might say…. (shrink)

This article is an evocatively written account of Bernard Baars’ latest ideas about the Global Workspace approach to consciousness, one he pioneered in his important book on the topic in 1988. He writes fluently and brings strong images to mind, especially with the metaphor of the ‘Working Theatre’. As with everything he writes, I enjoyed reading it. It is strong and heady stuff. When I finished I sat back and attempted to assess the claim that the best answer today with (...) which to understand the present evidence about consciousness is a ‘global workspace architecture’, especially along the lines of the Global Workspace of Baars. (shrink)