"It is an interesting and largely unexplored question whether Aristotle is in practice faithful to the general idea of science, and to the rules of method, sketched in his Analytics".It is this issue, "the Problem of Demonstration," which this study is concerned to explore. The objective of this study is not so much to render a detailed and definitive solution to the problem, but rather to suggest a context within which such a solution may be reached. Further, this study is intended not as an historical critique of an historical question in a classical author but as a philosophical enquiry into the roots, in Aristotle, of a perennial philosophical question. The structure of the study is as follows: In the first chapter the problem is stated, and the possible modes of response to the problem are briefly canvassed, in order to set the framework of the response to be offered here. The second chapter attempts, through an examination of certain texts from the Posterior Analytics and elsewhere, to specify and to raise objections to the particular elements in the traditional inter¬ pretation of Aristotle's methodological intentions which have generated the problem of demonstration. Aristotle's teachings concerning the nature of knowledge include reference both to the distinctive object of knowledge and to the psychology of knowing. At one time Aristotle gives a more subjective and psychological, at other times a more object-based account of what is essential to knowledge. In the third chapter it is suggested that we must examine the manner in which Aristotle accommodates these two aspects when he comes to design a methodology of science. Aristotle's views on the aim of science are, therefore, examined as a source of insight into the balance struck between these two aspects in his writings. It is here argued that when we attempt to understand Aristotle's methodological intentions concerning the apodeictic syllogism we must not underestimate the importance in Aristotle's thought of the doctrine. It is this doctrine which, chiefly, enables Aristotle to produce a methodological doctrine which is consistent with his accounts of the nature of knowledge. Chapter four considers the evidence for understanding the Analytics as a training in critical technique, and why Aristotle feels that the apodeictic syllogism is unsuited to the task of communicating findings. The principal theme of this chapter is an examination of the Aristotelian doctrine which holds that the logical training as provided by the Analytics constitutes a and, as such, is unsuited to the task of publication. Chapter five draws together the results of the discussion, and attempts to reconstruct the specific Aristotelian context which renders Aristotle's theory and practice coherent, and which may make it possible to determine the degree of consistency operative throughout his works. A model is presented which, it is suggested, reflects the position intended by Aristotle for those bodies of demonstrated judg¬ ments prefigured in the Posterior Analytics within the economy of Aristotle's methodological theory and practice in science and philosophy.

The topic of this thesis is logical revision: should we revise the canons of classical reasoning in favour of a weaker logic, such as intuitionistic logic? In the first part of the thesis, I consider two metaphysical arguments against the classical Law of Excluded Middle-arguments whose main premise is the metaphysical claim that truth is knowable. I argue that the first argument, the Basic Revisionary Argument, validates a parallel argument for a conclusion that is unwelcome to classicists and intuitionists alike: that the dual of the Law of Excluded Middle, the Law of Non-Contradiction, is either unknown, or both known and not known to be true. As for the second argument, the Paradox of Knowability, I offer new reasons for thinking that adopting intuitionistic logic does not go to the heart of the matter. In the second part of the thesis, I motivate an inferentialist framework for assessing competing logics-one on which the meaning of the logical vocabulary is determined by the rules for its correct use. I defend the inferentialist account of understanding from the contention that it is inadequate in principle, and I offer reasons for thinking that the inferentialist approach to logic can help model theorists and proof-theorists alike justify their logical choices. I then scrutinize the main meaning-theoretic principles on which the inferentialist approach to logic rests: the requirements of harmony and separability. I show that these principles are motivated by the assumption that inference rules are complete, and that the kind of completeness that is necessary for imposing separability is strictly stronger than the completeness needed for requiring harmony. This allows me to reconcile the inferentialist assumption that inference rules are complete with the inherent incompleteness of higher-order logics-an apparent tension that has sometimes been thought to undermine the entire inferentialist project. I finally turn to the question whether the inferentialist framework is inhospitable in principle to classical logical principles. I compare three different regimentations of classical logic: two old, the multiple-conclusions and the bilateralist ones, and one new. Each of them satisfies the requirements of harmony and separability, but each of them also invokes structural principles that are not accepted by the intuitionist logician. I offer reasons for dismissing multiple-conclusions and bilateralist formalizations of logic, and I argue that we can nevertheless be in harmony with classical logic, if we are prepared to adopt classical rules for disjunction, and if we are willing to treat absurdity as a logical punctuation sign.

Many philosophers have argued, and continue to argue, that if atheism is true - if there is no transcendent creator of the universe or parts of it (most importantly, no transcendent creator of life on earth and of human beings) - then there are no moral truths. In this essay, I argue for the related but different thesis that atheists have reason to accept the claim that all of their moral beliefs are unwarranted (or unjustified), a claim I refer to as "moral scepticism". After explaining atheism and providing some metaethical preliminaries, I consider some empirical findings that might be thought to support the idea that everyone should embrace moral scepticism regardless of whether they are atheists; I argue that they do not support that idea. Going on to discuss Darwinism and morality, I develop what I call the argument for atheistic Darwinian moral scepticism. While this argument gives atheists reason to embrace moral scepticism, advocates of theism - the most widely defended alternative to atheism - do not have reason to consider their moral beliefs unwarranted, or at least not the same reason that atheists do. Acknowledging that atheists could avoid the argument for atheistic Darwinian moral scepticism if they can maintain an expressivist (or quasi-realist) understanding of the function of moral thought and discourse, I nevertheless argue that there is good reason to believe that expressivism is false. Lastly, I consider some consequences of atheists embracing moral scepticism, arguing against the moral fictionalist idea that moral sceptics can simply pretend to have warranted moral beliefs and carry on much as before. I also suggest that atheists will not be able to endorse two kinds of argument that many of them have wanted to endorse: the argument from evil against theism and moral arguments against purported divine revelations.

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The premiss of this thesis is naturalism: viz., that psychological facts, whilst not reducible to, are determined by, physical facts. Pace Davidson's anomalism of the mental, the Author argues that token-token psycho-physical identity presupposes that the inferential inter-relations between psychological states are <i>projectably mirrored</i> by physical dispositional relations between those states. The Author aims to regiment our folk-psychological explanations because, he argues, we have warrant to apply the conceptual contents of our self-applied indices to the states so indexed, rather than treating those conceptual contents merely as indices of internal states. That warrant arises from the determinate conceptual content of our home language - pace the well-known arguments of Quine, Putnam and Davidson. The Author also aims to show that only a functional system wide enough to include the objects which we perceive and manipulate can generate those conceptual contents, not a narrow functional system which terminates at or before the bodily envelope. Field's subjective semantics for classical logic are used to show that narrow functionalism cannot account for the sense of 'exists', nor, adapting work of Hintikka and Rantala, for our quantifier rules, and narrow functionalism leads to brute psycho-physical correlations between sensational properties and inner physical states. Fodor's formality condition does <i>not</i> preclude mental operations having access to the semantic contents of mental states. And the Author argues for a wider functionalism which is blind to the particular identities and differences of <i>res</i>, but is not blind to their observable properties. The Author develops an account of quantifying into attitudes and quasi-binding variables in content clauses without inducing transparency, thus enabling individual attitudes to be linked up and mutually oriented in action explaining complexes. Such quantification is extensionally defined so as to fit an otherwise standard truth definition. (Kripke's puzzle about Pierre's beliefs is thereby solved.) The Author shows how <i>any</i> individual episode in a person's psychological history <i>can</i> be treated narrowly, as an hallucination, without explanatory loss, but provided enough of his episodes are explained widely, quantifying over <i>res, sufficiently</i> to account for the conceptual contents of all episodes.

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In this dissertation, I put forward an interpretation of Spinoza's seemingly intractable notion of the 'eternity of the mind', an enduring puzzle in the history of early modern philosophy. The originality of my contribution will lie in the use that I make of Spinoza's philosophy of freedom as a key to unlock what he meant by this notion. By presenting Spinoza as a philosopher who was genuinely concerned with human salvation and the need to provide an adequate response to the existential predicament posed bu human mortality, I begin b motivating a serious engagement with this aspect of his thought. After presenting a critical history of prior engagements with the question, from Spinoza's own time up until the recent efforts that make up the status quaetionis, I proceed to examine he various philosophical elements out of which his eschatology is composed, tracing their development through his intellectual career, and subjecting them to critical scrutiny. I argue for what I call a 'qualitative' reading of Spinoza's conception of eternity, and therefore also that the eternity of the mind described in Ethics V should be understood as a form of 'realised eschatology', in virtue of its implicit subversion of the classic theological distinction between 'this' and the 'next' life. I argue that what qualifies a state of human existence as eternal, and so as 'deathless', for Spinoza, is the autonomous expression of one's true nature, or freedom. Caught between the expression of our true nature and the unpredictable course of 'fortune', we struggle to align ourselves with the former and live 'authentically'. To the extent that we succeed, we 'feel and know ourselves to be eternal', but these transient episodes of eternity are threatened by our own 'superficial' shadow, a kind of self-imposed captivity.

In this thesis, I will argue that there are various considerations which drove Leibniz to the adoption of simplicity as a fundamental criterion for substantiality. ‘Simplicity’ seems to be a deceivingly obvious term, but on closer inspection it turns out to be nonetheless in need of further explanation. Leibniz’s definition as that which is ‘without parts’ does not lead us to an understanding unless it is clearly set out what ‘being a part’ entails and whether simplicity goes beyond indivisibility. The reconstruction of such considerations will be of help in carving out a more determinate content of this notion as it features in Leibniz’s metaphysical system, and will explain how it came to be assigned a core function in his philosophy. Various undertakings throughout his lifetime about activity, unity, indivisibility and impredicability finally culminate in the notion of simplicity. Within this overall development, several different areas of science and philosophy have taken influence on Leibniz’s considerations. There is, obviously, an overreaching metaphysical strand, which tries to account for a notion of substance that is in accordance with the requirements from other, more specific strands. Some demands derive from Leibniz’s reflections on physics, most importantly the notion of force, and from logical considerations concerning the concept of substance. Equally important are theological considerations concerning the simplicity of God, and thus the hierarchy of monads and their similarity with God. Part of the answer as to what to regard and not to regard as partless, i.e. simple, can also be found in Leibniz’s mathematical writings. First and foremost it is mereology that occupies itself with the notions of parts and wholes and will thus give clues as to how to understand the terms explicitly involved in the definition of ‘simplicity’. But Leibniz also frequently feels the need to resort to mathematics and the notions of ‘point’ and ‘function’ in order to illuminate the notion of a simple substance. Bringing all these strands together will finally give a clearer picture of what it means to be a Leibnizian simple substance.