Representationalism and indeterminate perceptual content

Representationalists currently cannot explain counter-examples that involve indeterminate perceptual content, but a double content (DC) view is more promising. Four related cases of perceptual imprecision are used to outline the DC view, which also applies to imprecise photographic content. Next, inadequacies in the more standard single content (SC) view are demonstrated. The results are then generalized so as to apply to the content of any kinds of non-conventional representation. The paper continues with evidence that a DC account provides a moderate rather than extreme realist account of perception, and it concludes with an initial analysis of the failure of nomic covariance accounts of information in indeterminacy cases.

Experience,action and representations: Critical realism and the enactive theory of vision

This paper defends a dynamic model of the way in which perception is integrated with action, a model I refer to as ‘the navigational account’. According to this account, employing vision and other forms of distance perception, a creature acquires information about its surroundings via the senses, information that enables it to select and navigate routes through its environment, so as to attain objects that satisfy its needs. This form of perceptually guided activity should be distinguished from other kinds of semi-automatic responses to visual stimuli that do not necessarily involve conscious experiences. It essentially involves inner states, which involve both the awareness of phenomenal qualities, and also a representational component. The navigational account is compared here with the enactive approach to perception, which opposes the view that perceptual experiences are inner states. This paper argues that a full account of perception raises a number of different questions. One central explanatory project concerns questions about the kinds of processes that currently enable a creature to identify and respond appropriately to distant objects: the answer, it is argued, lies in acknowledging the role of conscious inner representations in guiding navigational behaviour through complex environments. The fact that perception and action are interdependent does not conflict with the claim that inner representational states comprise an essential stage in visual processing.

The ontology of intentionality II: dependence ontology as prolegomenon to noetic modal semantics

This is the second in a sequence of three essays which axiomatize and apply Edmund Husserl's dependence ontology of parts and wholes as a non-Diodorean, non-Kantian temporal semantics for first-order predicate modal languages. The Ontology of Intentionality I introduced enough of Husserl's dependence-ontology of parts and wholes to formulate his account of order as effected by relating moments of unity, and The Ontology of Intentionality II extends that axiomatic dependence-ontology far enough to enable its semantic application. Formalizing the compatibility [Vereinbarkeit] relation implicated in Husserl's notorious doctrine of impossible meanings, the essay introduces a compatibility restriction on relations to formulate Husserl's distinction between singular [einheitliche] and plural [mehrheitliche] objects, using plural relating moments to define first-order versions of Husserl's notions of relation complexes (i.e. Sachverhalte), abstracta of n-ary relation complexes, categorial relations, abstract eide as unifications of categorial relations, semantic domains as completions of abstract eide, and material regions as semantic domains which are compatibility upper bounds of categorial relations. These concepts will enable the formal dependence-ontological noetic semantics for two-valued, first-order modal languages introduced in the sequel Two-Valued Logics of Intentionality, the third essay in the sequence.     

Sustainable and responsible design from a christian worldview

Many aspects of design require engineers to make choices based on non-quantifiable personal perspectives. These decisions touch issues in aesthetics, ethics, social impact, and responsibility and sustainability. Part of Baylor University’s mission is to provide a learning community in which Christian life values and worldviews might be integrated into academic disciplines. In view of this institutional commitment, members of the Engineering faculty are investigating how Christian worldviews might interact with elements of engineering design in such a way as to produce uniquely Christian insights and inform the non-quantifiable aspects of the engineering process. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the “Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology” meeting, New Orleans, 2003.     

Crossan on the Couch, Along with the Rest of Us: Part Two: Six Proposals Toward a New Paradigm for a Psychologically Realistic Approach to the Search for the Historical Jesus as Suggested by the Work of Hal Childs

Building on the theoretical basis spelled out in my first article on Hal Childs' The Myth of the Historical Jesus and the Evolution of Consciousness, the present article engages in dialogue with Crossan's 2000 autobiography, A Long Way From Tipperary. The dialogue focuses on six proposals emerging from Childs' work that advocate the inclusion of psychological realism in rethinking the task, practice, and outcome of historical Jesus research. The six proposals are as follows: first, that psychological realism is an essential part of historical realism; second, that unconscious factors are to be considered at work in the viewer as well as in the viewed in historical Jesus research; third, that every reconstruction of the historical Jesus is mythic; fourth, that the preunderstanding that the Jesus scholar brings to historical Jesus research is generated within a hermeneutical circle constituted by a vast web of relationships, purposes, and meanings that include every aspect of the scholar's life; fifth, that the final goal of historical Jesus research is not the facts about the historic Jesus, but the meaning of these facts as archetypal images for self-understanding, world-understanding, and the evolution of consciousness; and sixth, that the purpose of the Gospel is to evoke new archetypal projections in the reader that can lead to new incarnations of the archetypal Self awakened and informed by the story of Jesus, often as recovered by the Jesus historian.     

Realism,Positivism and Reference

Summary  Depending on the realist or instrumentalist twist that is given to positivism, interesting arguments can be made for both causal and classical theories of reference with regard to the use of scientific terms in the language of theory. But my claim is that the rigid foundationalism that supports the theoretical terms via the correspondence rules of the Received View undercuts the notion that it is possible to argue coherently for a causal theory of reference as allied to a positivistic view.     

On the Christian in Christian bioethics.

What is Christian about Christian bioethics? And is an authentically Christian bioethics a practical possibility in the world in which we find ourselves? In my essay I argue that personhood and the personal are so fundamental to the Christian understanding of our humanity that body, soul, and spirit are probably best understood as the components of a triune (as opposed to dual) aspect theory of personhood. To confess to a Christian bioethics is to admit that Christians cannot pretend fully to understand either cures or their meaning. However effective and "knowledge-based" contemporary medical interventions are, a Christian must humbly and honestly confess a lack of complete knowledge on both levels. At the same time, a Christian bioethicist must express a total personal commitment to Christian Faith.     

Anti-Judaism in the Gospels According to Matthew,Mark, Luke,John, and Mel

Mel Gibsons film, The Passion of the Christ, has elicited great response, both positive and negative. The purpose of this article is to explore one controversial aspect of the movie, anti-Judaism. After addressing problems inherent in the term, anti-Judaism, the article highlights elements of the New Testament gospels that have been interpreted as anti-Jewish, offers an analysis of Gibsons interpretation of the role of the Jews in the death of Jesus, and closes with a discussion of the implications of Gibsons presentation of the Jews on contemporary Jewish/Christian relations.