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Are all languages equal?
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 ...
Newton's Epistemic Triad
Isaac Newton condemned the use of hypotheses with his (in)famous methodological statement, Hypotheses non fingo, and yet employed hypotheses explicitly in every edition of the Principia. Some commentators have argued that ...
Locating “I think, therefore I am” in the Meditations
“I think, therefore I am” (Cogito, ergo sum) suggests a “naïve” interpretation whereby anyone who argues as follows is certain of their existence.
I think.
Therefore, I am.
Curiously, the famous line doesn’t appear in ...
Composition and Identities
Composition as Identity is the view that an object is identical to its parts taken collectively. I elaborate and defend a theory based on this idea: composition is a kind of identity. Since this claim is best presented ...
Ersatzer Presentism and the Limits of the Modal Analogy
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 ...
The Philosophy of George Turnbull
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 ...
McDowell's Realism
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 ...
A Justification of the Evolutionary Debunking Argument
In recent decades the debate over the metaethical conclusion from the theory of evolution has intensified. Michael Ruse’s epistemological argument has been taken up by Richard Joyce, Guy Kahane and Sharon Street and ...
Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s Sceptical Solution and Donald Davidson’s Philosophy of Language
This thesis is an attempt to investigate the relation between the views of Wittgenstein as presented by Kripke (Kripke’s Wittgenstein) and Donald Davidson on meaning and linguistic understanding. Kripke’s Wittgenstein, via ...
The Role of Mathematics in Francis Bacon's Natural Philosophy
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 ...