It is generally supposed that a supportive family can have an influence on outcomes for an adult with severe brain injury, but there is very little known about what effective families actually do. In this research the ...

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 ...

Metaethical constructivism holds that a judgement is normatively compelling for an agent if that judgement follows from within the standpoint of the judging agent. Christine Korsgaard, a Kantian constructivist, holds that ...

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 ...

The belief in supernatural agents is a universal feature of human social cognition. Recent cognitive theories of religion might explain the origins of supernatural concepts, but they do not adequately explain religious ...

In this study, I discuss the role of mathematics in Francis Bacon’s natural philosophy. Bacon was one of the important figures of early modern philosophy and has been accepted as one of the frontier philosophers of modern ...