Today most philosophers of science believe that models play a central role in science and that one of the main functions of scientific models is to represent systems in the world. Despite much talk of models and representation, however, it is not yet clear what representation in this context amounts to nor what conditions a certain model needs to meet in order to be a representation of a certain system. In this thesis, I address these two questions. First, I will distinguish three senses in which something, a vehicle, can be said to be a representation of something else, a target-which I will call respectively denotation, epistemic representation, and faithful epistemic representation-and I will argue that the last two senses are the most important in this context. I will then outline a general account of what makes a vehicle an epistemic representation of a certain target for a certain user-which, according to the account I defend, is the fact that a user adopts what I call an interpretation of the vehicle in terms of the target-and of what makes an epistemic representation of a certain target a faithful epistemic representation of it-which, according to the account I defend, is a specific sort of structural similarity between the vehicle and the target.

This essay presents a General Theory of Intervention-an account of what it is for anyone or anything to act and what it is for anyone or anything to be acted upon. It sets out, in the first instance, to re-lay the philosophical foundations of the science of cybernetics, putting them on a more robust and theoretically parsimonious basis, and to integrate cybernetics properly within the natural sciences where, it is argued, it belongs. At the same time, as a piece of revisionary metaphysics `in the grand style', this essay attempts nothing less than to put forward an alternative account of the nature of the physical universe and man's place in it. The Official view of the universe as consisting of a richly interconnected, hierarchically ordered system of causally interacting, homogeneous classes of events governed by a handful of fundamental, universal laws, is critiqued, and a radically and uncompromisingly empiricist alternative is put forward. The Official triad of notions of object-and- forces, cause-and-effect, and conformity to universal laws or regularities, is replaced with an alternative triad of notions: flux-and-constraint, purpose-and-design, and adjustment to locally prevailing conditions. The Official cosmology is replaced by an alternative picture of the universe as consisting of a myriad of fundamentally diverse, autonomous, idiosyncratic events unfolding in keeping with any locally present requirements of purpose and design, custom and practice. It is the General Theory of Intervention which provides the vehicle for this radical overhaul of our conceptual scheme for understanding man's relationship to nature. In re-conceiving human conduct as intervention-in-context, this essay puts forward an account of the nature of mind and action and their place within nature that is radically incompatible with any physicalist, causal view that involves the alleged supervenience of mind on brain. It is argued that most would-be neurophysiological `explanations' of human conduct are fundamentally and fatally flawed. And in this connexion, a new and scientifically grounded argument for the freedom of the will is put forward. Recent work in control theory as applied to neuroscience and biology is adverted to in support of the likely physical mechanisms of intentionality-the physics of purpose. However, the overall thrust is to demonstrate the logical impossibility of constructing an adequate causal account of human action and to put forward a detailed, alternative account of human conduct as a nonetheless natural phenomenon amenable to scientific understanding. At the heart of this work lies an alternative theory of explanation based on (`negative') cybernetic explanation-and its implications for the philosophy of science are examined. And since, up to a point, substance is 'where explanation stops', the inevitable implications for a philosophical account of substance are followed through, with particular reference to Locke and Leibniz. Taken as a whole, the General Theory of Intervention constitutes an organon for the study of transformation-change of form in nature (including the human arena). Arguably, the study of change is the very raison d'etre of all science, and this account adumbrates the principles of a metamorphology which is proposed as an alternative to physics as the basis for unifying the sciences( to the extent that they can still be unified), with physicst aking its place as merely one field of study amongst many. This metamorphology attempts, above all, to provide a rigorous philosophical basis for taking purpose as a fundamental in our understanding of human conduct and for including purpose within nature. The methodological implications of this new organon are presented in theoretical terms and some of the practical applications are illustrated in an Annex, demonstrating the power of these ideas in creating real-world transformations in the world of affairs.

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The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that metaphysics is a necessary discipline - necessary in the sense that all areas of philosophy, all areas of science, and in fact any type of rational activity at all would be impossible without a metaphysical background or metaphysical presuppositions. Because of the extremely strong nature of this claim, it is not possible to put forward a very simple argument, although I will attempt to construct one. A crucial issue here is what metaphysics in fact is - the nature of metaphysics. The conception of metaphysics which I support could be called Aristotelian, as opposed to Kantian: metaphysics is the first philosophy and the basis of all other philosophical and scientific inquiry. I will argue that this is indeed the most plausible conception of metaphysics. The thesis consists of a brief historical introduction of certain important views concerning the nature of metaphysics, namely Aristotle's, Kant's, Camap's and Quine's, and of a longer survey of the status of metaphysics in the context of contemporary analytic metaphysics. I make some critical observations of recent accounts by people like Hilary Putnam, Michael Dummett, Frank Jackson and Eli Hirsch before launching into a thorough analysis of the relationship between metaphysics and other philosophical and scientific disciplines. The central argument of the thesis is that our a priori capabilities, which I claim to be grounded in metaphysical modality and ultimately in essences, are necessary for rational inquiry. Detailed accounts of a priori knowledge and modality will be offered in support of this claim. In fact, my accounts of the a priori and modality are perhaps the most important contributions of the thesis, as given this basis, the 'necessary' role of metaphysics in other disciplines should be quite obvious. I also pursue topics like the metaphysical status of logic and the law of non-contradiction as well as truthmaking, the substance of metaphysical debates, and the methodology of metaphysics. There is, however, a distinct theme which connects the broad range of topics that I discuss: they are all analysed from a metaphilosophical point of view. Indeed, it could be said that this is a metametaphysical survey of the status of metaphysics. The upshot is an original account of the status of metaphysics in contemporary analytic philosophy - the conclusion that metaphysics is the core of all our rational activities, from natural science to logic, semantics and truth.

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This thesis aims to analyse in detail the metaphysical relation between social and individualistic phenomena. Social phenomena are taken to include social entities such as institutions or social groups, the social properties of these social entities and also the social properties of individuals. Individualistic phenomena include physical, physiological and mental or psychological properties of individuals. Chapter 1 considers whether social phenomena could be reduced to individualistic phenomena. A discussion of reduction, in so far as it would be applicable to the metaphysical relation between social and individualistic phenomena, reveals that this relation cannot be the one which holds between social and individualistic phenomena. In Chapter 2 a weaker relation than reduction is considered, viz the relation of determination. This is found to hold promise, especially in so far as it captures the relation between mental and physical phenomena. Reasons are considered which make it likely that this relation could be applied to social and individualistic phenomena. Chapter 3 considers a detailed formulation of one specific version of determination: supervenience. Again, the relation as it is applied to mental and physical phenomena is discussed, some objections are raised to it and modifications suggested. This relation is applied to the social-individualistic case in Chapter 4. Examples of its application are analysed and some doubts are raised as to the scope of its application. In this version it applies only to the social and individualistic properties of people. In the final chapter, the relation of supervenience is generalized in order that its application to the relation between social and individual phenomena be extended to cover the relation between social entities and their properties as well as the social properties of individuals. It is shown that all these aspects of the social can be taken to supervene on individualistic phenomena. In this respect, supervenience is shown to be at least a potential candidate for the relation holding between social and individualistic phenomena. Some caveats are raised in the conclusion.

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In this thesis, I develop and defend a distinctive version of a position I call (following Schwitzgebel (2002)) phenomenal dispositionalism. On this view, having such-and-such beliefs, desires, character traits etc. is just a matter of having such-and-such behavioural, cognitive and phenomenal dispositions; dispositions, roughly, to act, think and feel thus-and-so in such-and-such circumstances. Phenomenal dispositionalism has its roots in Ryle (2000) (who, I argue, is no behaviourist). Just as Ryle frames his position as an alternative to the Cartesian ‘Official Doctrine’ of his day, I frame mine as an alternative to what Baker (1995) calls the ‘Standard View’ in contemporary philosophy of mind (roughly, the view that mental states are brain states). In Baker’s view and in mine, Standard View theorists repeat the Cartesian error of construing the mind as a causal system. I attack this error at what I take to be its root, arguing (contra Mumford (1998)) that disposition ascription does not and cannot work by picking out particular internal properties or states of the object of ascription, occupying particular causal roles. Nonetheless, I argue, disposition ascriptions (including mental state ascriptions) can explain - and (pace Ryle) explain causally. The role of ‘folk psychological’ language, I argue, is not to pick out internal states occupying particular causal roles. Nor (pace Schwitzgebel) is it to assert subjects’ conformity to ‘dispositional stereotypes’ for each individual mental state ascribed to them. Rather, it is holistically to describe subjects’ dispositional profiles - their overall sets of behavioural, phenomenal and cognitive dispositions. I argue that our rich, everyday mental-state taxonomy is fit for this purpose, and stands in no need of revision either by those who are inclined to boil it down to beliefs and desires, or those who posit ‘aliefs’ in order to fill the explanatory gaps this leaves us with (Gendler, 2008a).