The law too often avoids or misuses statistical evidence. This problem is partially explained by the absence of a shared normative framework for working with such evidence. There is considerable disagreement within the legal community about how statistical evidence relates to legal inquiry. It is proposed that the first step to addressing the problem is to accept Bayesianism as a normative framework that leads to outcomes that largely align with legal intuitions. It is only once this has been accepted that we can proceed to encourage education about common conceptual errors involving statistical evidence as well as techniques to limit their occurrence. Objections to using Bayesianism in the legal context are addressed. It is argued that the objection based on the irrelevance of statistical evidence is fundamentally incoherent in its failure to identify most evidence as statistical. Second, objections to the incompleteness of a Bayesian approach in accounting for non-truth-related values do place legitimate limits on the use of Bayesianism in the law but in no way undermine its normative usefulness. Lastly, many criticisms of the role of Bayesianism in the law rest on misunderstandings of the meaning and manipulation of statistical evidence and are best addressed by presenting statistical evidence in ways that encourage correct understanding. Once it is accepted that, put in its proper place, a Bayesian approach to understanding statistical evidence can align with most fundamental legal intuitions, a less fearful approach to the use of statistical evidence in the law can emerge.

Medical decisions should be based on good evidence. But this does not mean that health care professionals should practice evidence-based medicine. This dissertation explores how these two positions come apart, why they come apart, and what we should do about it. I begin by answering the descriptive question, what are current standards of evidence in medicine? I then provide a detailed critique of these standards. Finally, I address the more difficult normative question, how should we determine standards of evidence in medicine? In medicine, standards of evidence have been established by the pervasive evidence-based medicine (EBM) movement. Until now, these standards have not been subjected to comprehensive philosophical scrutiny. I outline and defend a theory of knowledge – a version of Helen Longino’s Critical Contextual Empiricism (CCE) – which enables me to critically evaluate EBM. My version of CCE emphasizes the critical evaluation of background assumptions. In accordance with this, I identify and critically evaluate the three substantive assumptions underlying EBM. First, I argue that medicine should not be held to the restrictive definition of science assumed by proponents of EBM. Second, I argue that epidemiological evidence should not be the only “base” of medical decisions. Third, I argue that not only is the particular hierarchy of evidence assumed by EBM unjustified, but that any attempt to hierarchically rank research methods is incoherent and unjustifiably restricts medical knowledge. Current standards of evidence divert attention from many legitimate sources of evidence. This distorts medical research and practice. In the remainder of the dissertation I propose means for improving not only current standards of medical evidence but also the process of producing and defending future standards. On the basis of four CCE norms, I argue that we have reason to protect and promote those features of the medical community that facilitate diversity, transparency, and critical interaction. Only then can we ensure that the medical community retains its ability to produce evidence that is both rigorous and relevant to practice.

1. Intuitions are often treated in philosophy as a basic evidential source to confirm/discredit a proposed definition or theory; e.g. intuitions about Gettier cases are taken to deny a justified-true-belief analysis of ‘knowledge’. Recently, Weinberg, Nichols & Stitch (WN&S) provided evidence that epistemic intuitions vary across persons and cultures. In-so-far as philosophy of this type (Standard Philosophical Methodology – SPM) is committed to provide conceptual analyses, the use of intuition is suspect – it does not exhibit the requisite normativity. I provide an analysis of intuition, with an emphasis on its neural – or connectionist – cognitive backbone; the analysis provides insight into its epistemic status and proper role within SPM. Intuition is initially characterized as the recognition of a pattern. 2. The metaphysics of ‘pattern’ is analyzed for the purpose of denying that traditional symbolic computation is capable of differentiating the patterns of interest. 3. The epistemology of ‘recognition’ is analyzed, again, to deny that traditional computation is capable of capturing human acts of recognition. 4. Fodor’s informational semantics, his Language of Thought and his Representational Theory of Mind are analyzed and his arguments denied. Again, the purpose is to deny traditional computational theories of mind. 5. Both intuition and a theory of concepts – pragmatic conceptualism - are developed within the connectionist computational paradigm. Intuition is a particular sort of occurrent signal, and a concept is a counterfactually defined set of signals. Standard connectionist theory is significantly extended to develop my position, and consciousness plays a key functional role. This extension – taking connectionism seriously – is argued to be justified on the basis of the failure of the traditional computing paradigm to account for human cognition. 6. Repercussions for the use of intuition in SPM are developed. Variance in intuition is characterized – and expected - as a kind of bias in the network, either inherent or externally-provoked. The WN&S data is explained in the context of this bias. If SPM remains committed to the use of intuition, then intuition must be taken as a part of a larger body of evidence, and it is from experts – not the folk – that intuitions should be solicited.

I defend a version of cognitivist motivational internalism which I call belief internalism. The constitutive claim of any version of cognitivist motivational internalism is that moral belief entails motivation. But, while this internalist thesis captures the practical nature of morality, it is in tension with the dominantly held Humean theory of motivation. The constitutive claim of the Humean thesis is that no belief could entail motivation. In defence of this internalist it is tempting to argue either that the Humean constraint only applies to non-moral beliefs or that moral beliefs only motivate ceteris paribus. But, while succumbing to the first temptation places one under an ultimately insurmountable burden to justify the motivational exceptionality of moral beliefs, succumbing to the second temptation saddles one with a thesis that fails to do justice to the practical nature of morality. I avoid the temptation to defend this thesis in either of these flawed ways by defending a more radical departure from the Humean theory of motivation. I avoid the first temptation by arguing for a motivationally efficacious conception of belief. I start the defence by demonstrating that it is conceptually coherent for belief to entail motivation. I then argue that all beliefs have behavioural dispositional properties that are not predicated on desire; in particular, all beliefs can motivate assent without the assistance of a conceptually independent desire. I then develop a unified and inclusive account of cognitive motivation, according to which unqualified normative cognition—which includes moral cognition—motivates normative actions without the assistance of such a desire. Beliefs of the form ‘I ought to ф’, in other words, motivate the believer to ф. I avoid the second temptation by arguing that moral belief motivates simpliciter as opposed to ceteris paribus. There are, however, both commonsense and scientifically informed counterexamples which prima facie demonstrate that it is possible to both fully believe and fully understand one’s first person cognitive moral judgement and yet not motivated by that judgement. I argue that the commonsense prima facie counterexamples are not decisive; and I argue that the scientifically informed prima facie counterexamples misinterpret the empirical research on salient psychological conditions.

Part I investigates the idea that kinds (as opposed to individuals) have some modal properties. I argue that concerning typical kind-essentialist claims there is a non-trivial question—the transworld identity problem—about what the relevant kind terms are supposed to refer to in non-actual possible worlds. I reject several ideas for solving the problem. The upshot is a worry about the coherence of modal talk concerning kinds. Waiving this worry for the sake of argument, in Part II the target is the use of modal talk in the sciences. I offer a deflationary account of modalities, based on the familiar idea of reducing modalities to logical relationships between non-modal statements and non-modal background theories. I argue that this account is adequate for making sense of modal talk in the sciences. Moreover, I argue that irreducible modal properties of the world, if there are any, cannot be scientifically discovered or inferred. Thus we have a number of arguments against modalities: the threat of incoherence, their epistemic inaccessibility, and the dispensability of modal talk in the sciences.

Over the past decade, there has been a turn in applied health research towards the use of performance as a tool for knowledge translation. The turn to performance in applied health sciences has emerged as researchers have struggled to find new and engaging ways to communicate complex research findings regarding the human condition. However, the turn to performance has occurred within the political landscape of the knowledge economy, and thus conforms to contemporary practices of knowledge production and evaluation. Recent studies about health-based performances exhibit two hallmarks of economized modes of knowledge production. First, these studies focus their attention on the transmission of knowledge to health care professionals through an exposure to performance. Knowledgeable, and thus more useful or efficient, health care providers are the end-product of this transaction. Second, many of these productions are created in the context of application, and thus are driven by an accountability and goals-oriented approach to knowledge acquisition. This thesis argues that economized and rationalized modes of knowledge production do great harm to performance’s pedagogical and ethical potential. By utilizing scientific evaluative methodologies to monitor performance’s ‘success’ as an evaluable, predictable and ends-oriented practice obscures performance’s libratory value, and thus misses performance’s potentially most potent and critical contributions. To mount this argument, I present a case study of Margaret Edson’s play Wit, which has been used widely in medical education. Drawing from the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, I critically explore the impact of the knowledge economy on arts-based pedagogical models within health research and education. Further, I seek to redress potential harms inflicted by the knowledge economy by developing the notion of ethical “response-ability.” Through this concept I argue that performance challenges normative conceptions of reason, rationality and scientific evaluation, making the use of theatre in contemporary educational settings at once troublesome and vital.

John Rawls's The Law of Peoples has been criticized for focusing on the interests of peoples rather than individuals and for compromising individuals' fundamental human rights in order to tolerate nonliberal ideas of justice. This dissertation develops a new political liberal approach to international justice theory that responds to these concerns. This approach gives explicit moral primacy to the individual while also upholding the political liberal commitment to toleration. I do this by developing a political conception of the person specifically for international justice theory and a global original position of persons for working out principles of international justice. This involves the specification of an idea of freedom that is not parochially liberal and the development of a new political liberal human rights framework. This dissertation does not offer a defense of political liberalism as the right account of justice; the aim of this work is to consider whether a political liberal theory of international justice is able to give the individual moral primacy and to explore how it might do so.

Philosophers commonly distinguish between an experience’s intentional content—what the experience represents—and its phenomenal character—what the experience is like for the subject. Separatism—the view that the intentional content and phenomenal character of an experience are independent of one another in the sense that neither determines the other—was once widely held. In recent years, however, separatism has become increasingly marginalized; at present, most philosophers who work on the issue agree that there must be some kind of necessary connection between an experience’s intentional content and phenomenal character. In contrast with the current consensus, I believe that a particular form of separatism remains the most plausible view of the relationship between an experience’s intentional content and phenomenal character. Accordingly, in this thesis I explain and defend a view that I call “moderate separatism.” The view is “moderate” in that the separatist claim is restricted to a particular class of phenomenal properties: I do not maintain that all the phenomenal properties instantiated by an experience are independent of that experience’s intentional content but only that this is true of the sensory qualities instantiated by that experience. I argue for moderate separatism by appealing to examples of ordinary experiences where sensory qualities and intentional content come apart. First I argue that an experience’s intentional content does not determine the sensory qualities it instantiates by appealing to cases where two experiences share the same intentional content but instantiate different sensory qualities. Then I argue that the sensory qualities instantiated by an experience do not determine its intentional content by appealing to cases where two experiences that instantiate the same sensory qualities differ with regard to intentional content. I consider a number of alternatives to my account of the intentional content and phenomenal character of the experiences at issue and argue that none is plausible. If so, it follows that the intentional content and sensory qualities instantiated by an experience are independent of one another.

Abstract The research presented in this dissertation is an examination of the manuscript tradition of John Scottus Eriugena’s Latin translation (the Versio Dionysii) of the Greek works of Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite. The goal of this project is fourfold: first, to establish the relationship between the extant families of the manuscripts; second, to re-examine the state of Greek studies in the 9th century based on the relationship between the manuscript families; third, to trace the continued use of these recensions through the 12th century; and, finally, to examine Eriugena’s interpretation of the writings of the pseudo-Areopagite based on the Irishman’s translations of certain philosophic ideas. The First chapter establishes the existence of three distinct recensions, rather than two, as previously thought. Two of these recensions represent attempted corrections of the third. All three recensions (together with their corrections) are attributable to Eriugena (whether directly or indirectly). The second chapter examines the level of Eriugena’s understanding of Greek, especially within the context of the state of Greek studies in the 9th century. Special attention is given to the corrections of the later recensions, which suggest an improvement in Eriugena’s Hellenism. The third chapter examines the continued use of the Versio’s during the Middle Ages through the 12th century, with special care to clarify which recensions were known to which readers. The fourth and final chapter presents the originality of Eriugena’s interpretation of the pseudo-Areopagite’s thought. This originality stems in part from his understanding of the Greek text, and in part from his attempts to harmonize his sources.

Let me share with you Ubuntu oralities. These stories will connect us in a familial dialogue about how we can and are regenerating beyond neo colonialism by using Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a philosophical and ethical system of thought, from which definitions of humanness, togetherness and social politics of difference arise. Ubuntu can also be viewed as a complex worldview that holds in tension the contradictions of trying to highlight our uniqueness as human beings among other human beings. My interpretation of our Indigenous Ubuntu knowledge communicates how my understanding of Ubuntu is influenced by my Maseko Ngoni and Shona ethnic identities. Another influence of my understanding of our Ubuntu worldview comes from the African languages of my familial communities which are the main tools that I draw on for accessing our shared meaning and creating new shared meaning. The geopolitical experience of being Black in Africa and then leaving Africa for the West also has influenced my understanding of Ubuntu. These are my strengths and limitations in engaging Ubuntu. I give you this information because it is not my aim to create a false dichotomy about Blackness; rather, it is my aim to enter our global contemporary Black academic discourse with another form of remembering Blackness. My remembering is grounded in my own experience which has found constancy through Ubuntu languages and other social symbolic expressions. This cultural transmission process has allowed knowledge from my ancestors to cascade down to me. I believe that by sharing our social stories we build collective confidence to engage and challenge each other with respectful curiosity and, above all, with love. Love is the expression of relational care for our interconnectedness, which is the basis for researching our truths in our shared humanity. Ubuntuness has many ways of transmitting knowledge. This being said, for this work I will focus on how we can share our fragmented memories through our stories of family, community and nationhood, as a way of better understanding our Ubuntuness. This is the process of love creating possibilities beyond pain, isolation, abandonment and hate.