This thesis proposes a new interpretation on what is called the method of collection and division prominent in Plato's certain later dialogues.

Protagoras, the first and greatest sophist in the fifth century BCE, is known to have performed professionally as a teacher of various subjects, having interests in human language, political and ethical theories and activities, and education, associating himself with major and influential politicians of his time. Ever since Plato’s interpretation of Protagoras’ Man-Measure Doctrine in the Theaetetus as a thesis of radical relativism regarding perceptual epistemology (‘each individual is the criterion of the truth of a judgement about a given object or a state of affairs’, thus, ‘a thing which appears/is perceived as F to/by a is F for a, while the same thing which appears/is perceived as ¬F to/by b is ¬F for b’), Protagoras has been criticised by intellectuals both in antiquity and modern times for self-contradiction. This thesis makes an exhaustive investigation of the ancient evidence for Protagoras and concludes that in fact it supports an objectivist reading which, if right, would absolve Protagoras of this criticism. For this purpose, I first analyse the so-called Great Speech of Plato’s Protagoras as a source for Protagoras’ ethical and political ideas (Chapter II). In the light of this, I suggest that an alternative reading of the Man-Measure Doctrine is possible in a political-ethical context (Chapter III). My interpretation of Protagoras’ peri theōn (‘on the gods’) fragment suggests a new understanding of the sophist’s epistemological views (Chapter IV). Then, I examine Protagoras’ interest in the correct use of language (Chapter V), and finally his rhetorical sophism through the investigation of the so-called ouk estin antilegein (‘it is not possible to contradict’) doctrine (Chapters VI). My investigation of the evidence for Protagoras shows that, in his version of objectivism, the things that are related to human affairs, such as political virtues, can and should be known and taught on the basis of the common and objective civic senses; knowledge and teaching of them is accomplished through the human objective epistemological condition and a process of synthesis of human experiences, in a correct linguistic and grammatical manner, for a good life lived in human community. If this is right, then Protagoras is not vulnerable to the accusation of self-contradiction; in fact the sophist holds a coherent ‘epistemological’-‘political and ethical’-‘linguistic’ position according to which his political and ethical ideas are supported by objectivist views of epistemology and naturalism of language.

I propose to develop a phenomenologically-informed ontological model of the subject of experiences. This model will attempt to explain how it is possible for a subject to have experiences with a subjective character, which are like something for their subject. It will also address how the subject can have experiences whose subjective character plays an intentional role, making the subject aware of objects. The subjective character of experiences and their intentionality have both been widely discussed in the philosophy of mind. However, these discussions have focused on whether or not these features can be explained in naturalistic or physicalistic terms. As a result, there has been relatively little detailed description of the subjective character of experiences. In particular, complex experiential states such as those involving a combination of different kinds of experience have been neglected in the recent literature. There has also been little discussion of how we can be aware, not just of individual objects, but of situations, and indeed how our everyday awareness of objects involves an awareness of the world as the background to all our activities. In order to provide detailed descriptions of the subjective character and the intentionality of experiences, I shall turn to the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Husserl developed concepts and techniques for studying the subjective character of intentional experiences independently of their non-experiential aspects. I shall use these techniques to focus on the subject qua experiencer, and on experiences as states or episodes which are like something for the subject. By studying the subject in this way, I shall provide a model of subjectivity, the ontological relation holding between a subject and its experiences. I shall argue that subjectivity can be explained by appealing to the temporality of experiences, the way they flow in a stream of consciousness. Every subject has a temporal structure which is the form of its particular stream of consciousness. What it is for a subject to have an experience is for that experience to pass through this temporal structure. I shall also examine how a subject can have experiences which are objective, that is, which make the subject aware of objects as having more than the features directly presented to the subject. One view is that to explain objectivity, we must adopt a special perspective on the world, allowing us to compare how objects appear to us with how they really are. I argue that we do not need to appeal to such a special perspective. Our everyday awareness of objects and of the world is essentially structured by a sense of objectivity. Lastly, I shall address a problem that arises for any transcendental study of the conditions for the possibility of our awareness of the world. This is the paradox of subjectivity, the problem of understanding how the one subject can be both a part of the world and that which makes sense of the entire world. I shall argue that applying phenomenological techniques can help us to understand how the one subject can answer to both of these descriptions. This thesis will thus use phenomenological methods to develop an ontological model which can explain certain key features of the subject. In doing so, it will serve both as a contribution to the philosophy of mind, and as an illustration of what can be gained by applying phenomenological methods in this area.

Current treatments of cultural heritage as an object of moral concern (whether it be the heritage of mankind or of some particular group of people) have tended to treat it as a means to ensure human wellbeing: either as ‘cultural property’ or ‘cultural patrimony’, suggesting concomitant rights of possession and exclusion, or otherwise as something which, gaining its ethical significance from the roles it plays in people’s lives and the formation of their identities, is the beneficiary at most of indirect moral obligations. In contrast, I argue that cultural heritage, as something whose existence can go well or badly, can itself qualify as a moral patient towards which we may have obligations which need not be accounted for in terms of subsequent benefits to human beings. Drawing inspiration from environmental ethics and suggesting that heritage, like an ecosystem, is a complex network of interrelations which invites a holistic understanding, I develop a framework for thinking about cultural heritage which shows how such a thing can feature in our ethical reflections as intrinsically worthy of respect in spite of its most obvious differences from the ‘natural’ world: the very human origins of cultural heritage and its involvement with human life in all its forms. As part of the development of this framework I consider the epistemic difficulties which arise when for all our holistic sophistication we do find ourselves in the predicament of having to judge the moral worth of some item of heritage, possibly someone else’s heritage and possibly something which we find ourselves disposed to value more because of than despite any mysteries surrounding it. I conclude by offering some tentative illustrations of how such a framework might operate in the practical course of normative moral reasoning about what should be done with items of cultural heritage.

This thesis aims to provide a phenomenological exploration of relatedness and alienation in interpersonal understanding, which elucidates and supports recent interdisciplinary critiques of more traditional accounts of interpersonal understanding. Orthodox accounts of folk psychology, namely theory and simulation theories, have focused on the role of attributing mental states in understanding others. This focus has led to a neglect of how interaction and forms of relatedness contribute to the task of interpersonal understanding. Building on recent interdisciplinary research, my work aims to rectify this neglect through an exploration of how various forms of relations, particularly interactive relations between interlocutors, support interpersonal understanding. My account, therefore, emphasises understanding as a shared process, moving away from the spectatorial orientation of the orthodox accounts. My approach is distinctive in its use of Gadamerian hermeneutics to offer a novel and detailed account of the central role played by collaborative refinement of interpretative presuppositions. Examining face-to-face interaction, it becomes apparent that affective interactions often frame and underpin an ability to attribute mental states. I explore how, in conversational instances of interpersonal relatedness, understanding involves a continual collaborative refinement of interpretive presuppositions, resulting in a modification of understanding. From this my work broadens, taking into account how reciprocal embodied expression, space, and stance tacitly support an ability to relate to and understand others, in virtue of jointly inhabiting mutually meaningful social situations. To clarify the ways in which affective interaction and shared situation are partly constitutive of ability to understand others, I consider impaired forms of interpersonal understanding in the illnesses schizophrenia and depression. Examination of these instances highlights the central role held by an ability to dynamically engage and inhabit relations with others.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the role that the imagination plays in the later philosophy of René Descartes. The thesis will look at two related questions: (i) the status of the imagination as a mode of thought dependent on the body; (ii) the role of the imagination in object-perception. Throughout, the traditional view of Descartes as a Cartesian Dualist is rejected and a more holistic approach is taken towards the relationship between mind and body, in which Descartes’ claims that the two make up a “substantial union” are taken seriously. Part One deals with the relationship between mind and body. I argue that Cartesian Dualism cannot account for the faculties of sensation and imagination, because they have a corporeal basis. However, the ‘union of mind and body’, Descartes’ device for explaining their interaction, can. I end Part One by identifying a problem with the paradigm case of mind-body interaction, object-perception. To determine the object of an idea there needs to be a mechanism to marry the two ingredients of perception: the innate ideas of geometry in the intellect, and ‘adventitious’ ideas of the object delivered by the senses. Otherwise we have no explanation for how the essentially ‘inward-looking’ intellect can apply its ideas to the essentially passive sensations. Part Two focuses on the imagination and the question of object-perception raised in Part One. I argue against the largely-held view in the secondary literature that, with the advent of the cogito, the imagination’s cognitive profile declined sharply. I argue that, in fact, the corporeal basis of the imagination places it beautifully to bridge the gap in object-perception, and that this is part of its role in all Descartes’ discussions on the topic. The other, related, role of the imagination is to conjure fictions and hypotheses, suiting it for scientific and epistemological endeavours. The fact that the imagination is not tied to what is present to the senses, even though it receives its original content from them, means that it can manipulate ideas of corporeal things; including the innate notions of extension, shape and motion so key to gaining a clear and distinct idea of matter.

This work is divided into three main parts or chapters. Chapter I deals with the concepts of the basic entities with which historians are concerned. ‘Fact’ (something that is the case) is distinguished from ‘event’ (something that occurs or happens) and also from ‘interpretation’ or ‘theory’. ‘Event’ is delimited from ‘Situation’ (something which is changed by an event) as well as from ‘thing’ (something which is a situation) but it is shown that the differences between the three – as well as the deference between event and ‘superevents’ – is relative to the point of view adopted by the historian. Chapter II deals that the question of how the knowledge of simple historical fact (as opposed to connexions between facts) is acquired and validated. The general presuppositions are examined which are necessary for the inference of facts from evidence, and the concept of evidence itself is subjected to an analysis whereby the role of the interpretation of data is emphasised and distinction are drawn between different kinds of evidence (direct and circumstantial, records and remains) and their reliability. Chapter III deals with the adequacy of whole historical reconstruction (as opposed to the adequacy of dingle historical statements), i.e. with the criteria for deciding whether a historians account is adequate, or more adequate than a rivals account. It is pointed out that conditions of truth alone cannot provide such criteria but that selection and emphasis play n important part, the selection and emphasis of what is ‘relevant’ or ‘important’. Thee two concepts are analysed in detail and several suggested solutions of the problems to when something is relevant or important are examined and rejected. Finally, the concept of representivness is introduced, explicated and put forward as a criterion of adequacy.

The representational theory of mind (RTM) explains the phenomenon of intentionality in terms of the existence and nature of mental representations. Despite the typical characterisation of mental representations in terms of their semantics, RTM is best understood as a metaphysical – more specifically formal ontological – theory whose primary defining feature is stipulating the existence of a class of mental particulars called representations. In this regard it is false, since mental representations do not exist. My argument is primarily methodological. Using an extended analysis of mereology and its variants as paradigmatic examples of a formal ontological theory, I argue for a 'synthetic’ approach to ontology which seeks to form a sound descriptive characterisation of the relevant phenomena from empirical data, to which philosophical analysis is applied to produce a rigorous theory. The value and necessity of this method is proved by example in our discussion of mereology which is shown to be defensible given certain assumptions, in particular perdurantism, but still inadequate as an account of parthood without considerable supplementation. We also see that there are viable alternatives which adopt a more synthetic approach and do not require the same assumptions. Having effectively demonstrated the value of a synthetic approach in ontology I critically examine the methodology employed by RTM and find it severely lacking. In the guise of ‘commonsense psychology’ RTM cavalierly imposes a theoretical framework without regard to empirical data, and this results in a severe distortion of the phenomenon of intentionality it purports to explain. RTM is methodologically unsound, and so its commitment to the existence of mental representations is utterly undermined. Furthermore the most attractive aspect of RTM – its semantics – can be separated from any commitment to mental representations existing. Even RTM’s strongest advocates lack motivation to believe that mental representations exist.

In this thesis I explore what consequences taking development seriously in evolutionary considerations will have for how we understand the evolution of psychology and culture. I first explicate the relationship between development and evolution that informs a number of approaches to evolution, including neo-Darwinian evolutionary biology and evolutionary developmental biology. I argue that, to a greater or lesser extent, developmental processes have been misconstrued in these accounts and that the full role of development, from an evolutionary point of view, has not always been acknowledged. Instead, I suggest that a better model of the relationship between development and evolution can be found in developmental systems theory. I explore the neo-Darwinian underpinnings of a number of accounts of the evolution of culture and psychology, including the branch of evolutionary psychology associated with the work of, among others, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, and the gene-culture co-evolutionary account of Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd. I argue that as well as being vulnerable to the same sorts of problems that plague neo-Darwinian evolutionary biology, they face other difficulties. These accounts suppose an internalist model of the mind, and this model is neither justified nor useful. The extended mind hypothesis offers a different model of the mind whereby cognitive processes can be partially constituted by structures in the environment. I sketch an alternative account of what the evolution of human psychology and culture by combining a developmental systems approach to evolution and development with the extended mind hypothesis. This will result in a very different understanding of the relationship between biology, psychology and culture.

The following work develops a new and general theory of minimalism – one addressing both its transhistorical and interdisciplinary dimensions, and capable of accounting for existing minimalism of every epoch and in every medium, while suitably open to embrace minimalist work yet to be created. To offer such a theory it is necessary not only to revisit the histories of minimalist practice and criticism, but also to consider its radical philosophical ground and implications. Hence its principal thesis – that minimalism exemplifies the persistence and facticity of the Real – grapples at once with the ontological heart of minimalist theory, and its practical instantiation through canonical as well as rarely considered examples. Divided into three parts, the first part addresses minimalism as the manifestation of particular aesthetic properties in relation to critical and theoretical trends. Since it becomes apparent that no single descriptive or theoretical account adequately frames minimalism, the discussion turns to the possibility of discovering a philosophical ground equally radical to the minimalist objects it addresses. The Real – an indifferent field of forces from which contingent entities are subtracted from within an irreversible temporal passage – offers precisely this radical continuum. Minimalism, by exposing the continuity between radical poiesis and an essentially quantitative understanding of Being, clarifies the indifferent persistence of the Real in every existential situation. Penetrating to the heart of this proposition, parts two and three respectively address minimalism in terms of its quantitative logic of Being – every exemplary subtraction from which is instantiated a type of existential calculation – and its exemplary aesthetic manifestation in terms of an existential transumption – a constructive poietic displacement by which minimalism renders itself maximally intelligible in terms of its objecthood and persistence. The work concludes with a typology which reorients and confirms the substance of the preceding argumentation.