John McDowell's work presents stimulating arguments on a broad variety of issues. In this thesis I shall look at three: his response to Dummett's manifestation argument (the argument that our understanding of truth must ...

George Turnbull (1698-1748) is one of the figures of the Scottish Enlightenment who has been largely overlooked. In this thesis I give the first detailed analysis of his major writings by focusing on a set of principles ...

In his 1615 letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine, Galileo argues for a “principle of limitation”: the authority of Scripture should not be invoked in scientific matters. In doing so, he claims to be following ...

While a great deal of abuse has been directed at intelligent design theory (ID), its starting point is a fact about biological organisms that cries out for explanation, namely “specified complexity” (SC). Advocates of ID ...

John Shelby Spong has recently advocated belief in a ‘God beyond theism’. While rejecting traditional theism, he also distinguishes his position from atheism. He suggests that there is a divine reality, which may be described ...

There is a general orthodoxy in linguistics that all languages are equal. Only in the past 10-15 years have linguists started critiquing this claim. In this thesis I critically examine structural interpretations of the ...

Presentism, the position that only present objects exist, is taken as the commonsense view of time, capturing our everyday temporal beliefs. However, presentism is also faced by a number of well-known objections. One of ...

This thesis explores methodological approaches to studying substantivalism in metaphysics and the philosophy of science. My primary aim is to show that it is only when these two disciplines come together, that we can hope ...

In this thesis I argue for aspirational naturalism. Aspirational naturalism is a metaphilosophical thesis that encourages a continuation of the interdisciplinary relationship between philosophy and science. It is a kind ...

Kant's writings on logic illustrate the comparison argument about truth, which goes as follows. A truth-bearer p is true if and only if it corresponds, or it agrees, with a portion of reality: the object(s), state(s) of ...