There is evidence that the practice of meditative reading was cultivated by Hellenistic Jews as a discipline analogous to the spiritual exercises of the philosophical schools. The present study traces (1) the Deuteronomic antecedents of this practice, (2) its reconfiguration in the Torah Psalms, and (3) finally its expression in Greco-Jewish translation, with special reference to the Greek Psalter. Taking its cue from the work of Pierre Hadot, it situates this development within the larger matrix of Hellenistic philosophical discourse. The (...) philological focus of the study is the use of the Hebrew verb I הגה Qal in contexts where Torah study is thematic and its rendering by μελετάω in the Septuagint. To frame the lexical analysis, it draws on the slot-filler model pioneered by Charles Fillmore. Contribution: This article situates a key Greco-Jewish translation with reference to both its Deuteronomic antecedents and to practices cultivated within the philosophical schools of the Hellenistic period. The analysis demonstrates the relevance of Frame Semantics to philological investigation. (shrink)

Understanding the origins of human social cognition is a central challenge in contemporary science. In recent decades, the idea of a ‘Theory of Mind’ (ToM) has emerged as the most popular way of explaining unique features of human social cognition. This default view has been progressively undermined by research on ‘implicit’ ToM, which suggests that relevant precursor abilities may already be present in preverbal human infants and great apes. However, this area of research suffers from conceptual difficulties and empirical limitations, (...) including explanatory circularity, over-intellectualisation, and inconsistent empirical replication. Our article breaks new ground by adapting ‘script theory’ for application to both linguistic and non-linguistic agents. It thereby provides a new theoretical framework able to resolve the aforementioned issues, generate novel predictions, and provide a plausible account of how individuals make sense of the behaviour of others. Script theory is based on the premise that pre-verbal infants and great apes are capable of basic forms of agency-detection and non-mentalistic goal understanding, allowing individuals to form event-schemata that are then used to make sense of the behaviour of others. We show how script theory circumvents fundamental problems created by ToM-based frameworks, explains patterns of inconsistent replication, and offers important novel predictions regarding how humans and other animals understand and predict the behaviour of others. (shrink)

In this 1970 introduction to philosophy Mr Taylor concentrates on two central topics - explanation and meaning. He takes the argument far enough to acquaint the reader first-hand with the methods and approach of analytical philosophy, and yet because of the scope of these two topics he is able to introduce many of the traditional philosophical problems in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and logic. By this approach he avoids the dangers both of superficiality and of undue technicality. Philosophers are (...) concerned to analyse and describe certain concepts and modes of argument, not to establish facts or conclusions of any sort that can be tested by formal demonstration or controlled observation; their findings cannot be conveniently categorized or graded into a comprehensive and progressive course of studies. Mr Taylor meets this difficulty with his extended discussions of specific topics and questions which have implications over the whole subject. (shrink)

Objective: To determine whether the marks in the third year Objective Structured Clinical Examination were affected by the collusion reported by the students themselves on an electronic discussion board.Design: A review of the student discussion, examiners’ feedback and a comparison of the marks obtained on the 2 days of the OSCE.Participants: 255 third year medical students.Setting: An OSCE consisting of 15 stations, administered on three sites over 2 days at a UK medical school.Results: 40 students contributed to the discussion on (...) the electronic discussion board. The main points raised were perceived inequity between students who did, or did not, have prior knowledge of the station content, and the lack of honesty and professionalism of their peers. Most contributors claimed to have received, or knew of others receiving, prior knowledge, but none confessed to passing on information. No significant difference was observed in the overall mark for the OSCE on day 1 ) and day 2 ). On day 2, marks were considerably greater for four stations and markedly lower for three stations. It was not obvious why collusion should affect these station marks. A clear indication of the effects of collusion could only be obtained from a single subsection of an individual station where 82 students on day 2 incorrectly gave the diagnosis from day 1.Conclusion: Marks do not provide a sound inference of student collusion in an OSCE and may mask the aspects of professional development of students. (shrink)

That they are ‘following the science’ has become the watchword of many politicians during the present pandemic, especially when imposing or prolonging lockdowns or other liberty-restricting regulations. The scientists who advise politicians however are usually careful to add that the decision what to restrict and when is ultimately a political one. In science, as in medical practice, there is a delicate balance to be maintained between confidence in the best available information, and the necessary caveat that the assumptions and calculations (...) on which that information is based are subject to further scientific enquiry. For politicians and the public, moreover, as for patients, whether those informing them are judged to be trustworthy is a necessary consideration, a judgement determined by a variety of personal and political contingencies and circumstances. Ethics, by contrast, unable to appeal to scientific consensus or political authority, let alone a confidence-inspiring bedside manner, must rest the case for its essentially contestable assumptions and arguments being judged trustworthy, on its willingness to admit all reasoned voices to a conversation that is potentially unending, but in the process often highly enlightening. That conversation is contributed to in this issue of the Journal by several reasoned voices, mostly on ethical aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Relevant to issues on which politicians claim to be ‘following the science’, but also raising fundamental ethical questions, is this month’s feature article. In Ethics of Selective Restriction of Liberty in a Pandemic, 1 Cameron and colleagues consider ‘if and when it may be ethically acceptable to impose selective liberty-restricting measures in order to reduce the negative impacts of a pandemic by preventing particularly vulnerable groups [for example, the elderly in COVID-19] of the community from contracting the disease’ [and thereby, for example, increasing …. (shrink)

In this article, I rethink the key arguments of my co-authored paper Teaching Pleasure and Danger in Sexuality Education (Author and Co, 2013 Author and Co. (2013). Teaching pleasure and danger in sexuality education. Sex Education, 13(2), 121–132.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]) by bringing the postmodern logic of critical sexuality education theory into conversation with the relational ontology of new materialism. I begin by rejecting the key problem presented in Author and Co’s (2013) paper (...) as a false problem. This false problem is the drawing of an ‘unqualified line’ between positive and negative sexual experience in sexuality education. Instead, I argue that the actual problem is the initial act of drawing a line to separate sexual experience into a binary. My modification of the problem is an ontological move that allows me to consider sexuality education outside the binaries of negative and positive experience. Elaborating on the ontology problem presented in my paper Teaching Pleasure and Danger in Sexuality Education, I explain new materialism and its key task of realizing the interdependence of dualist terms. Drawing on Bergson and Braidotti’s philosophies of difference, I argue that pushing for sex-positive sexuality education strengthens the sex-negativity in sexuality education. I further critique the logic of negation that structures sexuality education by interrogating the contemporary push for pleasure-based sexuality education. Through this process of rethinking my previous scholarship through new materialist logic, I begin the task of reconfiguring the phallogocentric sexual subject as a subject-in-the-process. The conclusion of this article offers a beginning consideration of sexuality as an act of becoming where forces brought into relationship are entangled, creating a new thing. (shrink)

This paper addresses an important multi-disciplinary issue of current interest, that is, the implications of technological design for fairness. A visual, graphical methodology centered on the Taylor-Russell diagram is proposed to address this issue. The Taylor-Russell diagram helps to identify and explore ways in which predictions built into designs can pit the interests of different constituencies against one another. The configuration of the design represents a trade-off between the interests of the communities involved. Whether or not the trade-off (...) is appropriate constitutes a problem of fairness or distributive justice. The breadth of this methodology is supported by a diversity of examples analyzed. These include a surveillance system, an automotive safety system, a civic information system, and the international food distribution system. These examples provide models for application of the methodology to the analysis of designs in further areas of concern. Limitations of the methodology are also discussed. While it helps to identify and clarify issues of fairness in technology design, the methodology does not provide a general theory of fairness, nor can it provide fair solutions to such issues without appeal to further principles or concepts. (shrink)

Robert Sibley examines how Watson, Grant, and Taylor found in Hegel the theoretical tools needed to respond to Canada's uncertain existence.

What should readers expect of a journal, not primarily of ethics nor of bioethics, but of medical ethics? The ‘Disclaimer’ on this journal’s inside front cover states that it is ‘intended for medical professionals’. That perhaps narrows the field: but what interests ‘medical professionals’? Writing in 1796, the young Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, polymath and professional patient, declared that ‘Physicians… are shallow animals: having always employed their minds about Body and Gut, they imagine that in the whole system of (...) things there is nothing but Gut and Body’. Very soon he would have to revise this opinion, as a growing number of medical professionals became his friends and collaborators, exploring together the heady mix of scientific discovery and metaphysical speculation that made the intellectual world of the early nineteenth century so exciting, and so available. It was still possible for a physician, possessed of a reasonable general education, to keep abreast not only of the latest developments in the emerging sciences but also of what was new in the arts and humanities. In the early twenty-first century, by contrast, that may be more difficult. The sciences have greatly multiplied, and often become so specialised that even other scientists may have difficulty in fully comprehending the intricacies and implications of developments in disciplines not their own; and similar difficulties may arise not only between scientists and practitioners of the arts and humanities, but also between scholars working in different branches of the arts and humanities. Gifted communicators, skilled popularisers and interdisciplinary journals of course, can and do go …. (shrink)

First published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Richard Boyd and Robert Adams have both developed semantic accounts of moral terms based on Hilary Putnam's causal regulation theory for natural kind terms, according to which the terms in question refer to the properties which predominantly causally regulated the terms. However, Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons have mounted an objection to Boyd's semantics—their Moral Twin Earth argument. If this argument is successful against Boyd then it might be thought that it should also be successful against Adams, (...) given the similarity between their semantic accounts. I will argue in this essay that Adams's semantics is sufficiently different from Boyd's to enable him to survive Moral Twin Earth, but that he is vulnerable to a modified version of Moral Twin Earth that I describe. (shrink)

This 2003 book offers an interpretation of Heidegger's major work, Being and Time. Unlike those who view Heidegger as an idealist, Taylor Carman argues that Heidegger is best understood as a realist. Amongst the distinctive features of the book are an interpretation explicitly oriented within a Kantian framework and an analysis of Dasein in relation to recent theories of intentionality, notably those of Dennett and Searle. Rigorous, jargon-free and deftly argued this book will be necessary reading for all serious (...) students of Heidegger. (shrink)

If a trademark becomes a generic term, it may be cancelled under trademark law, a process known as genericide. Typically, in genericide cases, consumer surveys are brought into evidence to establish a mark’s semantic status as generic or distinctive. Some drawbacks of surveys are cost, delay, small sample size, lack of reproducibility, and observer bias. Today, however, much discourse involving marks is online. As a potential complement to consumer surveys, therefore, we explore an artificial intelligence approach based chiefly on word (...) embeddings: mathematical models of meaning based on distributional semantics that can be trained on texts selected for jurisdictional and temporal relevance. After identifying two main factors in mark genericness, we first offer a simple screening metric based on the ngram frequency of uncapitalized variants of a mark. We then add two word embedding metrics: one addressing contextual similarity of uncapitalized variants, and one comparing the neighborhood density of marks and known generic terms in a category. For clarity and validation, we illustrate our metrics with examples of genericized, somewhat generic, and distinctive marks such as, respectively, DUMPSTER, DOBRO, and ROLEX. (shrink)

Over the past several decades, we have argued that cultural evolution can facilitate the evolution of largescale cooperation because it often leads to more rapid adaptation than genetic evolution, and, when multiple stable equilibria exist, rapid adaptation leads to variation among groups. Recently, Lehmann, Feldman, and colleagues have published several papers questioning this argument. They analyze models showing that cultural evolution can actually reduce the range of conditions under which cooperation can evolve and interpret these models as indicating that we (...) were wrong to conclude that culture facilitated the evolution of human cooperation. In the main, their models assume that rates of cultural adaption are not.. (shrink)

The child directed speech of twelve English‐speaking motherswas analyzed in terms of utterance‐level constructions. First, the mothers' utterances were categorized in terms of general constructional categories such as Wh‐questions, copulas and transitives. Second, mothers' utterances within these categories were further specified in terms of the initial words that framed the utterance, item‐based phrases such as Are you …, I'll …, It's …, Let's …, What did … The findings were: (i) overall, only about 15% of all maternal utterances had SVO (...) form (most were questions, imperatives, copulas, and fragments); (ii) 51% of all maternal utterances began with one of 52 item‐based phrases, mostly consisting of two words or morphemes (45% began with one of just 17 words); and (iii) children used many of these same item‐based phrases, in some cases at a rate that correlated highly with their own mother's frequency of use. We suggest that analyses of adult–child linguistic interaction should take into account not just general constructional categories, but also the item‐based constructions that adults and children use and the frequency with which they use them. (shrink)

The application of phylogenetic methods to cultural variation raises questions about how cultural adaption works and how it is coupled to cultural transmission. Cultural group selection is of particular interest in this context because it depends on the same kinds of mechanisms that lead to tree-like patterns of cultural variation. Here, we review ideas about cultural group selection relevant to cultural phylogenetics. We discuss why group selection among multiple equilibria is not subject to the usual criticisms directed at group selection, (...) why multiple equilibria are a common phenomena, and why selection among multiple equilibria is not likely to be an important force in genetic evolution. We also discuss three forms of group competition and the processes that cause populations to shift from one equilibrium to another and create a mutation-like process at the group level. (shrink)

Mackie famously argued for a moral error theory on the basis that objective moral values, if they existed, would be very queer entities. Unfortunately, his argument is very brief and it is not totally obvious from what he says exactly where the queerness of moral values is supposed to lie. In this paper I will firstly show why a typical interpretation of Mackie is problematic and secondly offer a new interpretation. I will argue that, whether or not we have reason (...) to live in the morally correct way, what seems queer about moral properties is that there is a morally correct way in which to live in the first place. This interpretation makes sense of Mackie’s claim that theism might be able to solve the queerness problem; the notion of an objectively correct way to live may make sense if theism is true, but not otherwise. (shrink)

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.

Philosophical Psychology, Volume 0, Issue 0, Page 1-5, Ahead of Print.

It is widely believed that the nature of love and friendship precludes them from being bought or sold. It will be argued in this paper that this view is false: There is no conceptual bar to the commodification of love and friendship. The arguments offered for this view will lead to another surprising conclusion: That these goods are asymmetrically alienable goods, goods whose nature is such that separate arguments must be provided for the views that they can be bought and (...) sold. The possibility of asymmetric alienability has not yet been recognized in the literature on commodification. (shrink)

Although what language users in different cultures say about their own language has long been recognized as of potential interest, its theoretical importance to the study of language has typically been thought to be no more than peripheral. Theorizing Language is the first book to place the reflexive character of language at the very centre both of its empirical study and of its theoretical explanation. Language can only be explained as a cultural product of the reflexive application of its own (...) creative powers to construct, regulate, and give conceptual form to objects of understanding. Language is itself, first and foremost, an object of cultural understanding. Theoretical analyses of language which have neglected its reflexive character, or simply taken its effects for granted, merely impose their own artificial structures on their analytical object. The first part of this book discusses the consequences of neglecting this reflexive character for the technical concepts and methods which are used in analysing different types of communicational phenomena. In the second part, normativity - a crucial aspect of language's reflexive nature - is examined. The book's third and final part focuses on particular issues in the history of linguistic thought which bear witness to the rhetoric of language theorizing as a reflexive form of inquiry. (shrink)

The story of Atlantis, inspiration of more than 20,000 books, rests entirely on an elaborate Platonic myth , allegedly based on a private, oral tradition deriving from Solon. Solon himself is supposed to have heard the story in Egypt; a priest obligingly translated it for him from hieroglyphic inscriptions in a temple in Sais. It might be added that Plato is less concerned with Atlantis than with her rival and conqueror, the Athens of that antediluvian age 9600 B.C. That Plato (...) himself made the whole story up is indeed virtually demonstrable. This is not the place for such a demonstration , but it is at any rate possible to eliminate completely one of the crucial props on which belief has always leaned. (shrink)

Nicholas of Cusa’s deployment of an omnivoyant image in the De visione Dei has been said to deconstruct Leon Battista Alberti’s mathematical determination of space in single-point linear perspective. While there has been some debate over whether the omnivoyant functions like a medieval icon or instead like a Renaissance painting, what has been neglected is a more careful analysis of what underlies the very structure of omnivoyance, namely the milieu from which its contradictions and paradoxes emerge. In this article, I (...) will show how thinking the milieu of vision, implicit in Cusa’s optics, lets us overcome any overly simple binaries in these debates and deepen our understanding of the meaning of omnivoyance. (shrink)

By the Roman age the traditional stories of Greek myth had long since ceased to reflect popular culture, and become instead a central element in elite culture. This book illustrates the importance of semi-learned mythographic handbooks in the social, literary, and artistic world of Rome. One of the most intriguing features of these works is the fact that they all cite classical sources for the stories they tell, sources which are often forged.

This paper explores the variety of ways that emerging sources of data are being used to re-conceptualize the city, and how these understandings of what the urban is shapes the design of interventions into it. Drawing on work on the performativity of economics, this paper uses two vignettes of the ‘new urban science’ and municipal vacant property mapping in order to argue that the mobilization of Big Data in the urban context doesn’t necessarily produce a single, greater understanding of the (...) city as it actually is, but rather a highly variegated series of essentialized understandings of the city that render it knowable, governable and intervene-able. Through the construction of new, data-driven urban geographical imaginaries, these projects have opened up the space for urban interventions that work to depoliticize urban injustices and valorize new kinds of technical expertise as the means of going about solving these problems, opening up new possibilities for a remaking of urban space in the image of these sociotechnical paradigms. Ultimately, this paper argues that despite the importance of Big Data, as both a discourse and practice, to emerging forms of urban research and management, there is no singular or universal understanding of the urban that is promoted or developed through the application of these new sources of data, which in turn opens up meaningful possibilities for developing alternative uses of Big Data for understanding and intervening in the city in more emancipatory ways. (shrink)

With reference to a qualitative study on everyday religiosity among Muslims in St. John's, Canada, this paper examines trends in academic sources and public policy on Islam that over-privilege the most committed practitioners, thereby narrowly depicting “Muslimness.” I situate this overemphasis by reflecting on what Mamdani calls “culture talk,” an essentializing discourse heightened in the post-9/11 west. Interview data, along with a trend in social scientific research on Muslims that emphasize the most pious and the outcomes following the Ontario “ (...) class='Hi'>Boyd Report” and the Quebecois “Bouchard–Taylor Report” show the pervasiveness of culture talk that erases Muslim multiplicity. (shrink)

Children are presumptively regarded as incompetent to make their own medical decisions, and the responsibility for making such decisions typically falls to parents. Parental authority is not unlimited, however, and ethical guidelines identifying appropriate bounds on this authority are needed. One proposal currently gaining support is the Harm Threshold (HT), which asserts that the state may only legitimately intervene in parental decision-making when serious and preventable harm to children is likely. This paper considers two questions: in virtue of what underlying (...) principle or property does the HT gain its purported justification?; and does this underlying principle or property ground the HT as its proponents conceive of it? I identify two separate grounds represented in the literature: (i) J.S. Mill’s Harm Principle; and (ii) the liberty interests of parents. I find that the HT is not sufficiently grounded in either of these, revealing a substantial conceptual difficulty for its advocates. (shrink)