The first-person pronoun seems to be very special; it has features which other kinds of singular terms lack. Uses of ‘I’ have guaranteed right reference (GRR), they cannot lack referent and a user of ‘I’ cannot use ‘I’ for the wrong object, and some uses of ‘I’ have immunity to error through misidentification (IEM). For an immune self-ascription made on a basis (like proprioception) the subject cannot misidentify who is F. I will elaborate in great detail how to characterise these essential features: IEM and GRR. Peacocke and Campbell suggested a Reference-fixing test for accounts of ‘I’. According to this test what fixes the reference of ‘I’ has to be able to account for the essential features of ‘I’ (GRR and IEM). I will use this test to evaluate the view I will propose, which I call the Simple View. I suggest that the subject uses ‘I’ or the object which she knows through internal ways of knowing. Examples of internal way of knowing are proprioception, introspection and nociception (painperception). What fixes the referent of ‘I’ is simply that the subject use ‘I’ for the object which she knows from the inside through internal ways of knowing. This explains how GRR is possible: why the subject cannot be wrong about the referent of ‘I’. And this explains IEM, why based on certain ways of knowing (internal ways of knowing) the self-ascription is such that who has the property cannot be misidentified. I try to show that other ways to fix the referent cannot provide the most fundamental explanation of ‘I’ because none of them can account for the essential features of ‘I’.

Theory of Mind: What is it, When Does it Develop and Who has it? Theory of mind is generally characterised as mental state understanding, i.e., the ability to impute mental states to the self and to others in order to predict and explain behaviour (e.g., Premack & Woodruff, 1978) and has also been referred to as folk psychology (e.g., Wellman, 1990) and mindreading (e.g., Baron-Cohen, 1995). Whilst researchers often stress a broad range of mental states involved in theory-of-mind understanding involving, for example, intentions, emotions, desires and beliefs (e.g., Astington, 2000) or desire and beliefs (e.g., Church land, 1984; Wellman, 1990) and acknowledge that theory-of-mind development is a lifelong process (e.g., Astington, 2001), much research has focused on theory of mind defined more narrowly as false belief understanding, during the preschool period. False belief understanding, i.e., understanding that someone can hold a false or mistaken belief about something, and furthermore will act on that mistaken belief, is demonstrated by a child's performance on the now classic "false belief' task (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985; Wimmer & Perner, 1983) A child sees a story character, e.g. Sally, playing with a ball and then leave it at a certain location. Whilst she is away, Anne comes along and moves the ball to another location. When Sally returns, the child is asked "Where will Sally look for her ball?" together with some control questions to make sure the child has followed the story. The ability to pass this task is taken as a clear and robust indicator that the child understands that the mind (i.e., what someone thinks is the case) is separate from the world (what actually is the case). In other words, the child is able to demonstrate a genuinely mentalistic understanding of behaviour, i.e., that they unequivocally take the mental state of another person into account when explaining or predicting their behaviour (Perner, 1991).

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As a work of constructive philosophical-theology, this disse11ation offers an account of theological anthropology by drawing from person-body substance dualism (e.g. pure, compound, and composite). To that end, I (i) philosophically defend substance dualism and parse out three kinds of substance dualism for exploration; (ii) show how substance dualism ontology persuasively accounts for the Scriptural narrative on human beings (the interface of philosophy and biblical-theology); (iii) defend person-body substance dualism as the most natural accounting for the New Testament teaching on the afterlife; (iv) constructively link contemporary dualism to the debate on the origin of the soul and put forward one novel model of origins; (v) draw out the implications from the various views on the soul's origin.

This investigation rearticulates the Hegelian-Marxist theory of alienation in the light of Derrida's deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence. It aims to demonstrate in what way Derridian deconstruction can itself be said to be a critique of alienation. In so doing, it argues that the acceptance of Derrida's deconstructive concepts does not necessarily entail the acceptance of his interpretations of Hegel and Marx. Derrida is shown to be a representative of a tendency in contemporary thought that is thought to have long since discredited the concept of alienation. He determines the characteristics of alienation as constitutive and those of de-alienation as involving the metaphysical myth of the plenitude and identity of presence and 'the proper'. The guiding question of the investigation is whether the notion of de-alienation necessarily depends on such 'metaphysical' conceptions. It is argued in the first chapter that notions of de-alienation to be found in German Idealism and its derivatives largely involve a concept of 'determinability' that is closer to Derrida's deconstructive concept of differance than to presence. There then follows a detailed discussion of Hegel's conceptions of alienation and de-alienation, where it is argued, in contrast to Derrida' s interpretation, that the latter is not the return of the logos to itself in its full presence, but is rather the actuality of infinity whereby the exclusionary identity of present determinacy transcends itself. The following chapter on Marx argues that Marxian de-alienation does not involve, as Derrida claims, the 'exorcism' of the 'spectrality' of the commodity form through the establishment of the fullness of presence, but rather involves the reabsorption of humanity's generic determinability into the life of the individual. The last two chapters involve a reassessment of the implications of Heideggerian and post-Heideggerian (Derridian) deconstruction with regard to its relationship to alienation. It is argued that Heidegger's deconstruction of metaphysics, despite claiming to be antithetical to the German Idealist tradition, is actually a critique of ontological alienation. It is then argued that Derrida's deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence is itself a critique of alienation, in that presence is itself the givenness of an objectified phenomenality. The investigation involves both the claim that the conceptions of de-alienation to be found in, among others, the works of Hegel, Marx, and Heidegger involve manifestations of differance rather than presence and the claim that the deconstruction of presence opens up the conceptual possibility of a genuine de-alienation.

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My aim in this thesis is to develop an account of the powers that are fundamental to human agency, by drawing out the similarities between human agency, the agency of non-human animals, and the agency of inanimate objects. Many accounts characterise our actions in terms of mental capacities unique to human agents. But focusing on what human agency has in common with agency of other kinds provides a novel perspective from which we can investigate the features of our agency that receive less attention in the literature. I develop the account by answering two closely related questions, both of which provide the opportunity to draw out the connections between human agency, the agency of non-human animals and the agency of inanimate objects. The first question is: what are the similarities and differences between dispositions and abilities? The second question is: what are the similarities and differences between human agency and agency of other kinds? I argue against the idea that the difference between dispositions and abilities lies in the former powers being necessitated to manifest in certain conditions. Rather, what distinguishes dispositions and abilities is that the exercise of ability involves selfmovement on the part of the agent. In light of this distinction, I argue that all human actions are exercises of bodily abilities of a kind possessed by many nonhuman animals. Possession of these abilities does not require high-level mental capacities, but only that the agent possesses a conscious perspective. There are many ways in which the things that we do require uniquely human mental capacities, but our agency is grounded in powers of a kind held in common with non-human agents.

Autonomous agents operating in a dynamic environment must be able to reason about their actions in pursuit of their goals. An additional consideration for such agents is that their actions may be constrained by norms that aim at defining an acceptable behaviour for the agents. The inclusion of normative reasoning into practical reasoning is derived from the necessity for effective mechanisms that regulate an agent’s behaviour in an open environment without compromising their autonomy. However, the conflict between agents’ individual goals and societal goals (i.e. norms) makes deciding what to do a complicated activity. Argumentation enables reasoning and decision-making in presence of conflict and supports explaining the reasoning mechanism in terms of a dialogue. The need for explanation of a complex task undertaken by an autonomous entity lies in the importance of facilitating human understanding of such entities and consequently increasing their trust in these systems. Existing argumentation-based approaches to practical reasoning often ignore the role of norms in practical reasoning and commonly neglect the dialogical aspect of argumentation to explain the process of practical reasoning. To address these shortcomings, the research presented in this thesis allows an agent to use argumentation to support deciding what to do while the agent is able to explain why such a decision is made. To this end, we demonstrate a model for normative practical reasoning that permits an agent to plan for conflicting goals and norms. We use argumentation frameworks to reason about these conflicts by weighing up the importance of goal achievement and norm compliance against the cost of goals being ignored and norms being violated in each plan. Such a reasoning serves as the basis of identifying the best plan for the agent to execute, while the reasoning process is explained using natural language translation of a proof dialogue game.