The systematisation of deductive inference can yield an account of the structure of sentences (propositions, thoughts) involved in such inference. In mainstream contemporary analytic philosophy, the idea of logical form is linked, explicitly or implicitly, with the idea of such a systematisation. But this is not the only thing one might mean by logical form. An enquiry into the structures of thoughts can be motivated by considerations besides inferential behaviour. In this dissertation I sketch an alternative conception according to which the uncovering of the logical structure of discourse proceeds from no single principle but rather piecemeal, from region of discourse to region of discourse. On this conception, the availability of a syntactic characterisation of the valid inference patterns in which a judgment participates is not a necessary condition for the attribution to it of a certain logical form. I argue that Freges revolutionary application of function-argument analysis to logic plays a central rôle in his equation of the categories in terms of which to ascribe structure to thoughts with the syntactic categories needed for the systematisation of inference. Though the application is plausible in the case of mathematics, I argue that function-argument analysis is ill suited to the analysis of predicative structure generally. As an illustration of this claim, following Michael Thompsons lead, I discuss natural-historical judgments, a type of generic judgment about living things. I walk through a series of formal-semantic proposals for generic sentences, arguing that each founders on its imposition of function-argument analysis on natural-historical judgments. The logical form of natural-historical judgments is not to be understood on the functional model; the categories deployed in their grasp are not explained by their use in codifying inference patterns. I associate the view that the uncovering of logical form is a piecemeal, unprincipled affair with the later work of Wittgenstein. I bring out how Wittgensteins engagement in the Tractatus with Freges and Russells conceptions of logic paves the way for his later development of the notion of grammar in the Investigations, in order to show how the conception of form I advocate has a genuine claim to logicality.

This dissertation is a defense of the claim that ideal theory is democratic theory. I begin with an interpretation of Platos famous critique of democracy. One is properly equipped, Plato argues, to exercise authority in politics in virtue of the possession of knowledge. Therefore, sane political arrangements involve distributing political authority to experts. But democracy does just the opposite: by putting political authority in the hands of the majority, it substitutes ignorance for knowledge where we can least afford it. I turn to Aristotle for help in answering this challenge. Aristotle argues that the political art belongs to an important category of rational but non-technical capacities, the exercise of which is essential to leading a good life. The Platonic argument in favor of rule by experts is objectionable because one is equipped to participate in the government of the affairs of ones community as a result of ones upbringing and life experience as a member of that community, and because it is wrong to deprive someone of the opportunity to exercise the capacity for self-government, even if this capacity is flawed. In the second half of my dissertation I explore the consequences of this argument for ideal theory. I argue against value pluralism: the doctrine that political values, like freedom, equality, and justice, conflict with one another. In order to be practicable, a conception of the ideal must consist of values that are compatible rather than incompatible. I also argue against the thesis of moderate scarcity: the claim that for ideal theory to be practicable we must assume that the polity lacks, to a moderate degree, the material resources it needs. On the contrary, for the political ideal to be practicable it must require only limited material resources. For the purposes of ideal theory we must assume that material resources are sufficient rather than moderately scarce. The conclusion of my argument is that ideal theory is the theory of a democratically self-organized society, governing itself in accordance with a set of compatible values, in conditions of sufficient material resources.

Lockes view in the Two Treatises not only allows for but embraces interference with individuals on recognizably perfectionist grounds. It is plainly a form of perfectionism. Yet it is also an early paradigm of deontological liberalism for Locke sharply emphasizes the importance of moral duties to respect the basic rights of the sovereign individual. It is tempting to conclude that he is confusedly appealing to two opposed forms of moral and political theory, indeed to what we have come to see as two opposed forms of moral reasoning, viz. consequentialism on the one hand and deontology on the other. This temptation should be resisted. Perfectionism and deontology are not necessarily at odds with one another; some perfectionisms may coherently and productively also be deontological liberalisms. Lockes is one such view. Respecting the constraints associated with justice through the exercise of practical wisdom may be held to be a constitutive element in the good life. Such a view is coherent and appealing insofar as it makes intelligible the relation of justice to flourishing without inviting the worries about tyrannizing that plague consequentialist forms of moral theorizing. This is theoretically unambitious as it rules out robustly explaining the nature of moral rectitude by appeal to the idea of maximizing the good. Yet it is not trivializing. Lockes liberalism fundamentally calls for every human being to be brought into full practical reason and to be accorded a minimally decent scope for exercising that capacity in various productive ways in society with others. The dissertation culminates in a demonstration that Locke was correct to hold the kind of perfectionist liberal view that he did, rather than the standard libertarian view often still attributed to him. Standard libertarianism is especially vulnerable to a kind of collective self-defeat, for while perfectly respecting the relevant constraints of libertarian justice, the members of libertarian society may undermine the realization of one of their characteristic basic values. Such degeneration would be no accident; it is brought about through intentional actions fully morally legitimate on that conception. Locke was hence correct to defend his actual view rather than this alternative.

This paper investigates Martha Nussbaums capabilities approach, which is influential in current political philosophy and policy making. The capabilities approach is contextualized within the scope of Nussbaums influences in section I. These influences are primarily Aristotle, Kant, Marx, John Rawls, and Amartya Sen. In section II her own view is explicated with attention to the influences previously described. This section also attempts to clarify certain aspects of her view, such as her use of person and human. This is in order to set the stage for section III, which critiques the various aspects of the approach which were explained in section II. In general, the capabilities approach is found wanting, however there are some useful qualities that are unique to a capabilities approach to political philosophy, ethics, or economics.

The received view is that absolutes lead to monisms. However, this paper argues just the opposite: there is prevalent philosophical tradition in which absolutes demand a pluralistic world of experience. We will explore this tradition starting with ancient Jewish philosophy. We will move through the 17th century rationalists and conclude by investigating how modern philosophies of language and science adopt a concept of absolutes that are only expressed in a pluralistic world.

Wittgenstein practices a critique of language, in a broad Kantian sense. This critique is animated by a fundamental concern with the human being, of which he sees language as an essential part. 1. The first part of the dissertation shows that there is a thin, insubstantial form of transcendental idealism in the Tractatus. It is insubstantial because it rejects the possibility of any substantial (one sense of synthetic) a priori truth about the world. The first stage of the argument shows that in both Kant and the Tractatus there is an identity of form between thought and reality. The second stage shows that the metaphysical subject in the Tractatus is a transcendental subject. In particular it shows that Tractarian solipsism, The world is my world, is an analogue and thin version of the transcendental unity of apperception. 2. The second part of the dissertation studies a strand in the Private Language Argument in the Investigations, namely the temptation towards treating the inner (one sense of subjective) and the outer as independently intelligible (dualism of the Inner and the Outer). The focus is on the dual-ism of Sensation and Sensation-Behaviour. The study aims to show that for Wittgenstein the deepest roots of this dualism lie in the very development of the capacity for the I think, of the intellect itself. Wittgenstein gives two diagnoses of the dualism of Sensation and Sensation-Behaviour. His real target is the intellectualist conception of language, which constantly derives its strength from the predominance of the intellectual use of our language. The deepest roots of this intellectualism lie in our development of a language of sensations, where the incision of language is salient. This phenomenon is a cause for ambivalence: it is crucial for the development of an intellect but at the same time also inflicts cuts between the inner and the outer, cuts that can easily tempt us into the dualism of the Inner and the Outer. To heal the dualistic cuts, we must restore the concept of a living human being at the center of philosophy.

Environmental decoherence is widely held to be the key to understanding the emergence of classicality in a quantum universe. However, in conjunction with traditional principles of interpretation, decoherence leaves unanswered a fundamental question, a version of the quantum measurement problem: Why should macroscopic objects have definite properties at all? I critically evaluate a variety of interpretive strategies intended to parlay the formal results of decoherence into the definiteness, or apparent definiteness, of familiar macroscopic properties. I argue that the crucial role of environmental decoherence in accounting for definite properties is effecting the dynamical decoupling of components of the global quantum state for which these properties are definite. This role of decoherence is most evident in the context of the Everett interpretation, where considerations regarding branch dynamics lead naturally to the conclusion that dynamical autonomy (non-interference) of branches is a restriction on any division of the global quantum state into branches. Environmental decoherence results in the requisite dynamical autonomy for branches in which familiar macroscopic observables are definite, thus providing a natural and principled way to identify an interpretation basis. The modal interpretation, with its property ascription rule based on the spectral decomposition of the reduced state, secures the right definite properties only in those cases in which it picks out properties that correspond almost exactly with the non-interfering components of the global quantum state. I argue that the non-interference of these components should be accorded interpretational significance in its own right; then the right properties can be specified without recourse to the distinctive property ascription rules of the modal interpretation. Finally, I criticize attempts of decoherence theorists to account for definite properties by appeal to effects of decoherence such as approximate diagonality of the reduced state and preservation of correlations with respect to a set of privileged states. I argue that definiteness can be accounted for by looking not to these effects but to their cause, the dynamical autonomy of the environmentally-privileged components of the global quantum state. Precisely because they are dynamically autonomous, these states can be accorded physical significance in their own right.

The question of how to educate our youth has been a tradition in philosophy since the time of the ancients and now has become highly debated issue in contemporary society. While answers to this problem take on many different forms, there is a way to interpret much of the canon as arguing for an education that strives to pass down the ability to learn on one's own. 'How educators are supposed to support such an aim,' is the primary question of this work. To thoroughly answer this question, many aspects of education must be considered: classroom behavior, curriculum, theories of learning, teaching, and evaluation. These problems are addressed in the spirit of a constructivist view on education and are supported foundationally by philosophical arguments primarily Wilfrid Sellars's views regarding the process of becoming a language user. Accepting Sellars's model of language acquisition and a modern view on the nature of knowledge, an immersive approach to 'learning how to learn' is taken. Designing a curriculum that emulates a structure of knowledge, slow and thorough inculcation of creative and critical thinking skills, and taking seriously the notion of teaching as a practice are all central themes to the proposed system. Elaborating on how to bring these pieces together into one view on education is the fundamental thread of the work, though, secondarily, there is discussion of harmful practices that are current in education. To actualize a system that truly aims at learning, it will be argued that grades and standardized tests are methods of evaluating that must be disabused. The argument for this is that their affectation on the attitudes of students and teachers has an undermining effect on the educational ideology that is central to this thesis. Bringing all of these parts together, the hope is to not only build an educational ideal with a system that inculcates students with the ability to properly learn, but also provide for an institution that supports human flourishing.

My dissertation develops a novel account of Kants moral philosophy by focusing on his conception of pure reason. As is well known, Kant contends that morality has its source in pure reason, and that the authority of moral considerations derives from this source. Yet recent commentators have shied away from Kants account of reason, emphasizing instead aspects of his view that seem to make it more accessible. In particular, influential constructivist readings have stressed the role of rational agents as autonomous subjects that construct the principles or values they commit themselves to. I argue that to properly grasp Kants distinctive conception of moral constraints, and his conception of rational agency, we must look to his underlying account of reason. My dissertation divides into two parts. In the first part, I reconstruct Kants account of the practicality of pure reason, i.e. reasons capacity to determine the will a priori, and show how all norms of practical reason are systematically derived from this capacity. In particular, I show: (1) that all possible moral constraints derive from pure reasons determination of the will and that each such constraint must be systematically related to all the others; and (2) that the norms of instrumental rationality equally depend on reasons capacity to determine the will a priori. In the second part, I broaden the focus to consider the relations between the theoretical and practical exercises of reason. I develop the formal parallels between the two exercises of reason and show how each exercise is governed by a corresponding rational interest. I then elaborate Kants notion of a rational interest to show that for Kant reason is fundamentally practicalin the sense that reasons theoretical exercise is in important respects shaped by its practical concerns. A key upshot of this argument is that we cannot fully grasp Kants account of practical reason unless we consider the relation between theoretical and practical reason. Once we consider this relation, however, we see that Kant takes morality, i.e. reasons legislation of the moral law, to be the grounding principle of all rational activity.

In my dissertation I explore the connection between intentional action and practical normativity from the perspective of motivation. I assume that an adequate theory of action motivation should embrace the normative commitment that to explain intentional action is to reveal it to be subject to practical norms. In the first chapter I argue that these are not the norms of so-called instrumental rationality. Against most theories of practical reason I argue that there is no irreducible, action-guiding requirement of practical rationality to take the means to ones ends. The normativity of means-end thought is not a type of practical rationality that guides action, but is internal to the elementary structure of intentional action itself. In the second chapter I argue against monolithic theories on which the relevant norms are the norms of non-instrumental practical rationality which are constituted as such by a single requirement: the requirement to approximate or satisfy an agent-general desire, to act in accordance with ones judgment about ones reasons, or to engage in a single type of practical reasoning. To allow for the possibility of primary motivational conflict, conflict between contrary motivations towards one and the same action at the same time, we have to assume a multi-dimensional theory which posits incommensurable practical requirements at the source of practical norms. In the final chapter I argue that we should explain choice in the face of conflict between these incommensurable requirements in terms of these very requirements alone. Against contemporary versions of Humeanism, Scholasticism and Kantianism I argue that we should not appeal to the existence of a separate purely executive or a more rational capacity for choice to explain how incommensurable practical requirements issue in unified intentional action. Instead, I propose, we should accept that these incommensurable requirements issue in unified intentional action because they constitute potential determinations of practical knowledge: knowledge of oneself as determined in ones reasoning about what to do by the right requirement for the circumstances. Intentional action is what meets the requirements of practical rationality, I show, as long as we take these requirements to be both incommensurable and cognitive.