South African karst aquifers are mainly associated with the dolomitic lithologies of the Transvaal Supergroup. Despite the socio-economic and environmental importance of these aquifers, no scientifically based methodology to outline areas that need protection from potential harmful activities exists. Thus an intrinsic resource aquifer vulnerability mapping method for karst terrains in South Africa was developed. The methodology is a modification of the COP aquifer vulnerability mapping method, developed by the Hydrogeology Group of the University of Malaga. The method is predominantly based on the capability of the unsaturated zone to filter or attenuate pollutants by different processes but considers two additional factors that either increase or reduce the protection provided by the unsaturated zone. These are surface conditions that control water flowing towards zones of rapid infiltration, and the temporal availability of a transport agent (rainfall). These three factors are combined to obtain a final vulnerability index, which is spatially visualised using five vulnerability classes (ranging from Very Low to Very High). Modifications to the original COP method include, amongst others, the consideration of rock types commonly found in South Africa, a statistical redefinition of high rainfall (wet) years, a revised consideration of rainfall rates to account for dilution processes and the consideration of older, sediment filled swallow holes. The method was applied to produce a vulnerability map for Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site near Krugersdorp, South Africa. The vulnerability map clearly shows the generally inferior but variable aquifer protection in areas characterised by dolomitic lithologies, while surrounding non-karstic areas offer moderate to high resource protection. The proposed aquifer vulnerability mapping methodology should be used to assess karstic terrains during land use planning and environmental impact assessments. As an easily understandable planning tool the maps can reduce the likelihood of aquifer pollution. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Geology / unrestricted

The means in which fossil accumulations in the caves of southern Africa have formed is of great importance. One method of accumulation is via the collecting behaviours of a variety of mammalian species. The core of said behaviour is in the use of caves by these species. This project was designed to give insight to the way that animals in the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa are using caves today. The objective of this research is to give a new understanding to the amount that caves are used by various taxa in South African cave systems, with particular regard to taphonomic agents and potential taphonomic agents. This study was accomplished over a 20-month period by setting up motion sensor cameras outside of cave entrances at the Malapa Nature Reserve. Results have shown that animals use caves at high frequencies, crucial to recognize when examining fossil accumulations.

This dissertation collects four papers on common knowledge and one on introspection principles in epistemic game theory. The first two papers offer a sustained argument against the importance of common knowledge and belief in explaining social behavior. Chapters 3 and 4 study the role of common knowledge of tautologies in standard models in epistemic logic and game theory. The first considers the problem as it relates to Robert Aumann’s Agreement Theorem; the second (joint work with Peter Fritz) studies it in models of awareness. The fifth paper corrects a claimed Agreement Theorem of Geanakoplos (1989), and exploits the corrected theorem to provide epistemic conditions for correlated equilibrium and Nash equilibrium.

South Africa is well known for its many, important fossil bearing deposits of Plio-Pleistocene age. Many of these sites contain abundant remains of extinct and extant animals including hominins. Non-herpetological fauna have been used to reconstruct important information about past environments and for chronological data. This study tried a different method; using herpefauna to establish past environments of Cooper’s Cave. Herpetological fauna potentially have numerous advantages in their use for such questions, including typically limited ranging behaviors, and specific temperature requirements. Despite these advantages only a few studies have even mentioned the presence of squamate fauna in the fossil assemblages of these sites. This study has demonstrated that herpefauna exists, in reasonable levels of abundance and with adequate preservation within the fossil record of the dolomitic region now known as the Cradle of Humankind. It has also demonstrated for the first time the presence of a relative abundance of herpefauna at numbers far greater than any previous study has recognized. The present study was however, handicapped in not being able to fully utilize the material at hand to interpret past environments, owing to the lack of comparative material needed to move beyond the family or generic level in most cases with any degree of confidence. However, Agamids and Pseudocordylids were described to generic level. However, the many shortcomings that this work highlighted should not be seen as reason not to pursue the study of herpefauna, but to improve present comparative collections and collecting methods around the fossils themselves.

Subterranean ecosystems are regarded as the most extensive biome on earth, comprising terrestrial and aquatic systems - the latter constituting freshwater, anchialine and marine systems. This system plays a key role in the distribution and storage of freshwater, once it contains 97% of the world’s total liquid freshwater (Chapter 1), which has been progressively explored in quality and amount. Initial observation of the subterranean environment began with speleological studies by the recognition of a typical fauna adapted to live inside caves. The first studies to provide information about aquatic subterranean fauna commenced in Slovenia, with the description of the Proteus aguinus by Laurenti in 1768. After an initial faunal classification by the Danish zoologist Schiödte (1849), the Austrian naturalist Schiner (1854) established the most commonly used classification for cave fauna and a great portion of modern research dealing with ecobilogy of aquatic subterranean fauna has mostly evolved from the European biospeleology (Chapters 1 and 3). Studies in biospeleology have made a significant contribution to the progressive knowledge in aquatic subterranean ecology, especially in those circumstances where the access of the underground through smaller voids (e.g. crevicular spaces) is not possible. Accessibility to the underground environment is in fact a negative factor that has led a large number of studies consider about subterranean fauna initially being limited to caves. Spatial constraint was (and still is) a limiting factor in accessing a diverse range of subsurface habitats, although during the last decade, modern research has been using advance technology as a tool to overcome the physical barriers to subterranean research. For a long time the classification of subterranean aquatic organisms was an unclear subject, with the classification subterranean fauna mostly related to terrestrial cave fauna (troglofauna). The classification system dealing with aquatic subterranean groups (stygofauna) is more recent. A few nomenclature schemes have been proposed to describe these relationships, based on morphological, behavioural, and ecological adaptations of animals to the underground life and their level of relationship with groundwater (Chapter 4). The prefix “stygo” is suggested as the most descriptive to refer ecologically to a group of animals related to groundwater habitats. Groundwater related fauna (stygofauna) is comprised by groups of animals encompassing aquatic surface, intermediate and subterranean habitats. They represent diverse group of animals that have different interactive relationships with the groundwater habitat. Some may transact between surface water and groundwater systems, while others spend the whole life cycle in the subterranean voids (Gibert et al., 1994). This transition zone between surface streams and groundwater is recognized as a critically important boundary or ecotone, constituted by a habitat that contains a reservoir of invertebrate fauna biodiversity. It is therefore from the study of karst systems that most information on groundwater ecobiology is resourced, once the open structure of most karsts terrains promotes a number of caves, streams, crevices, sinkholes, and springs to allow human access. Karst systems are well fractured because of the relation between the rock mass and the action of meteoric water, as well as the dissolution rate of calcium carbonate rocks that high. The latter increases with time, producing a terrain with a great drainage potential (Chapter 2). Once porosity is high and the flow of percolating water is fast, it allows good vagility for subterranean fauna and nutrients, as well as penetration of contaminants. In subterranean karsts, much water saturates some areas inside rock spaces. The saturation in the rock in turn promotes large water pockets, known as aquifers. When these groundwater aquifers are found to be interconnecting with the adjacent ecosystems, they became active eco-hydrological components, due to their key participation in the surface-groundwater continuum. Groundwater has different degrees of importance, depending on the available sources of surface water. In many countries it supplies a significant proportion of urban and rural drinking water, industrial, and agricultural. Yet, groundwater systems are “hidden”, difficult in access and to study (Chapter 4, 5 and 7), consequently the recognition of the groundwater aquifer as a natural resource that needs to be protected is largely ignored. Moreover, studies in the ecobiology and distribution of stygobitic invertebrates (Chapter 5), and the need to identify a frame of methods for quality assessment and the suitability of groundwater invertebrates as bioindicative elements, has not been developed (Chapter 6). Finally, strong management and public education programs are required to emphasize the need for a better understanding of the nature of groundwater resources, their participation and complexity (Chapter 8), with the conceptualization of the groundwater aquifer integrity as an ecosystem still receiving little attention in South Africa. / Dr. J.F. Durand Prof. G.J. Steyn

The aim of this study is to examine and summarize what some Jewish, Christian and Islamic theologians answer to the question about why God created mankind. The theologians are divided in two categories. The first category deals with the time which the theologians are from; the medieval period and the modern period. The second is focused on the religions from which each one of them are a part of. The goal of this study is to reach an understanding of what different answers there are to this question and what can be concluded from what has been said. This study aims to solve this issue by working with three questions: What explanations and interpretations from medieval and modern theologians with Jewish, Christian and Islamic view give light to why God created man? What can be said of the examined answers to this question? What strategies can handle the problem of discord about why God created man? The conclusion of this study shows from the gathered data what can be said about human nature. The interpretations of the story of Adam and Eve for example, show that man and woman share a strong bond between each other due to having been created simultaneously and sharing one body. What this study contributes to as well is two alternative strategies that can help handle the problem of discord.

There have been recent explosions of interest in two fields: Madhyamaka-Pyrrhonism parallels and Pyrrhonism itself, which seems to have been misunderstood and therefore neglected by the West for the same reasons and in the same ways that Madhyamaka traditionally has often been by the West and the East. Among these recent studies are several demonstrating that grounding in Madhyamaka, for example, reveals and illuminates the import and insights of Pyrrhonean arguments. Furthermore it has been suggested that of all European schools of philosophy Pyrrhonism is the one closest to Buddhism, and especially to Madhyamaka. Indeed Pyrrho is recorded to have studied with philosophers in Taxila, one of the first places where Madhyamaka later flourished, and the place where the founder of Madhyamaka, Nāgārjuna, may have received hitherto concealed texts which became the foundation for his school. In this dissertation I explore just how similar these two philosophical projects were. I systematically treat all the arguments in the Pyrrhonist redactor Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism and Against Dogmatists and compare them to the most similar arguments available in the Madhyamaka treatises and related texts. On this basis, I ask whether the Pyrrhonists and the Buddhists would satisfy each other’s self-identifying criteria, or what characteristics would disqualify either or both in the other’s eyes. I also ask what questions arise from the linguistic and historical evidence for interactions between the Pyrrhonist school and the Madhyamaka school, and how sure we can be of the answers. Did Pyrrho learn Buddhism in Taxila? Was Nāgārjuna a Pyrrhonist? Finally I bring the insights of the living commentarial tradition of Madhyamaka to bear on current scholarly controversies in the field of Sextan Pyrrhonism, and apply the subtleties of interpretation of the latter which have developed in recent scholarship to Madhyamaka and its various difficulties of interpretation, to scrutinize each school under the illumination of the other. With this hopefully illuminated view, I address for example whether Sextus was consistent, whether living Pyrrhonism implies apraxia, whether Pyrrhonism is philosophy at all, and whether Madhyamaka is actually nihilism.

This thesis investigates whether beliefs acquired by way of prophecy are safe. By ‘prophecy’ I have in mind the presentation of the prophetic method as found in the Guide of the Perplexed, which was Moses Maimonides’ philosophical masterpiece. And by ‘safe’ I have in mind the work by Timothy Williamson on the safety condition for knowledge. Both authors have proven to be dominant forces on these respective topics. The significance of this investigation derives from the centrality of prophecy to the three monotheistic religions. My main goal in this thesis is to identify those safety risks associated with the prophetic method. In this manner I aim to undermine any presumption in favor of prophetic beliefs as a whole being safe. Importantly, this general conclusion does not entail of a specific prophetic belief p that p is unsafe. Additionally, the scope of these results is restricted to the model of prophecy found in the Guide. The thesis begins with a critical elucidation of Williamson’s extensive work on the safety condition for knowledge. Particular attention is paid to those issues related to method individuation and Williamson’s cumulative conception of bases. Matters concerning these two topics inform the reading of Maimonides on prophecy found in the second chapter. In particular, I argue that Maimonides should be read as defending a cumulative conception of prophecy. As I emphasize several times during the chapter, the epistemology of prophecy cannot be reduced to the epistemology of testimony since prophecy for Maimonides does not involve the transfer of a proposition from God to the prophet. The third chapter is devoted to identifying those elements of the prophetic method that involve room for error. I argue that while all belief-forming methods in a fallibilist epistemology contain room for error, some are riskier than others. Prophecy should be considered one of the riskier sort. The fourth and final chapter shifts attention to non-standard semantics for ‘knows,’ David Lewis’s in particular. I argue that the interaction between such semantics and the laws governing prophecy in Jewish law is problematic. In particular, I demonstrate that such semantics destabilize the prophetic phenomenon. As such, we must either choose invariantism and gain stability, or choose non-standard semantics for ‘knows’ and live with this lack of stability.

The notion that we are voluntary agents who exercise power to choose and, in doing so, determine some of what happens in the world has been an important notion in certain theological accounts concerning our relationship with God (e.g. 'the freewill defence' for God's goodness and omnipotence in light of moral evil and accounts of human moral responsibility in relation to God). However, it has been claimed that the physicalism supported by contemporary neuroscience research calls into question human voluntary agency and, with it, human power to choose. Emergentist (or non-reductive physicalist) accounts of psychological phenomena have been presented as a way of reconciling the physicalism supported by contemporary neuroscience and the theologically important notion of human power to choose. But there are several issues that remain for the plausibility of the required kind of emergentist account; namely - Does recent neuroscience research show that voluntary agency is an illusion? and Is there evidence for neurophysiological causes which, along with neurophysiological conditions, determine all we do? In this dissertation I set out to address these issues and, in doing so, present an account of voluntary agency as power to choose in the state of being aware of alternatives. I argue that this account allows for the notion that human beings determine some of what happens in a way that is consistent with what contemporary neuroscience shows. Thus, contemporary neuroscience does not undermine this notion of human voluntary agency; or, then, the predominant theological view that we are morally responsible in our relationship with God.

The thesis comprises three foundational studies on the topics named in its title, together with an introduction. Ch. 1 argues against a popular combination of views in the philosophy of language: Propositionality, which says that the semantic values of natural language sentences (relative to contexts) are the propositions they express (in those contexts) and Compositionality, which says that the semantic value of a complex expression of a natural language (in a context) is determined by the semantic values its immediate constituents have (in that same context) together with their syntactic mode of combination. Ch. 1 argues that the Naïve Picture is inconsistent with the presence of variable-binding in natural languages. Ch. 2 criticizes the strategy of using “operator arguments” to establish relativist conclusions such as: that the truth values of propositions vary with time (Time Relativism) or that they vary with location (Location Relativism). Operator arguments purport to derive the conclusion that propositions vary in truth value along some parameter P from the premise that there are, in some language, sentential operators that operate on or “shift” the P parameter. I identify two forms of operator argument, offer a reconstruction of each, and I argue that both they rely on an implausible, coarse-grained conception of propositions. Ch. 3 is an assessment of the prospects for semantic internalism. It argues, first, that to accommodate Putnam’s famous Twin Earth examples, an internalist must maintain that narrow semantic content determines different extensions relative to agents and times. Second, that the most thoroughly worked out version of semantic internalism – the epistemic two-dimensionalism (E2D) of David Chalmers – can accommodate the original Twin Earth thought experiments but is refuted by similar thought experiments that involve temporally or spatially symmetric agents.