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The immediate object is a determinate resolution of Aristotle's position in Nicomachean Ethics 7.3. over the Socratic problem and in particular the possibility of last-ditch akrasia. My approach seeks interpretational constraints and illumination from considering the argument as a structured whole. Moreover, the passage is a point on which larger issues in Aristotle's philosophies of mind, action, and morals converge: the elucidation offered attempts both to frame and throw light on these. Chapter One makes preliminary moves on several fronts. Firstly it looks briefly at Aristotle's position over last-ditch akrasia in De Anima and Eudemian Ethics. Then it outlines the problems of Nicomachean Ethics 7.3. and classifies previous lines of solution. Thirdly an intuitive picture is given of Aristotle's method and basic stance. Finally some contrasts are drawn between Aristotle's and modern approaches to akrasia. Chapters Two to Five discuss the four Sections of Nicomachean Ethics 7.3's argument. Chapters Two and Three take Section 1 and 2 together and consider two major problems of interpretation. Chapter Two asks whether these Sections concern akrasia at all, and, if so, how. I argue that their concern is direct, general (i.e. not confined to some akratic species), and inclusive (i.e. embracing non-akratic phenomena). Chapter Three asks about the interpretation of "exercising knowledge". Firstly the results of Chapter Two are defended; an aporetic discussion of this difficult issue then follows. Chapter Four examines Section 3. After analysing its structure, it distinguishes three principal issues. I argue firstly that Section 3, like 1 and 2, concerns akrasia directly, generally and inclusively; secondly that the knowledge that the akratic is temporally unable to use (that is 'tied') is his (universal) knowledge of what is worthwhile; thirdly that this failure involves a cognitive failure (I suggest a distortion of the agent's situational appreciation) - and not, as some scholars have recently urged, merely a motivational failure. Chapter Five, perforce selective, tackles firstly various problems of Section 4's argumentative structure, and then the interpretation of 1147a26-31 (the 'normal case'). Finally 1147a31-5 (the 'akratic case') is examined and a case argued for its offering two syllogisms but only one practical syllogism.

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With the advent of reasoning problems in dynamic environments, there is an increasing need for automated reasoning systems to automatically adapt to unexpected changes in representations. In particular, the automation of the evolution of their ontologies needs to be enhanced without substantially sacrificing expressivity in the underlying representation. Revision of beliefs is not enough, as adding to or removing from beliefs does not change the underlying formal language. General reasoning systems employed in such environments should also address situations in which the language for representing knowledge is not shared among the involved entities, e.g., the ontologies in a multi-ontology environment or the agents in a multi-agent environment. Our techniques involve diagnosis of faults in existing, possibly heterogeneous, ontologies and then resolution of these faults by manipulating the signature and/or the axioms. This thesis describes the design, development and evaluation of GALILEO (Guided Analysis of Logical Inconsistencies Lead to Evolution of Ontologies), a system designed to detect conflicts in highly expressive ontologies and resolve the detected conflicts by performing appropriate repair operations. The integrated mechanism that handles ontology evolution is able to distinguish between various types of conflicts, each corresponding to a unique kind of ontological fault. We apply and develop our techniques in the domain of Physics. This an excellent domain because many of its seminal advances can be seen as examples of ontology evolution, i.e. changing the way that physicists perceive the world, and case studies are well documented – unlike many other domains. Our research covers analysing a wide ranging development set of case studies and evaluating the performance of the system on a test set. Because the formal representations of most of the case studies are non-trivial and the underlying logic has a high degree of expressivity, we face some tricky technical challenges, including dealing with the potentially large number of choices in diagnosis and repair. In order to enhance the practicality and the manageability of the ontology evolution process, GALILEO incorporates the functionality of generating physically meaningful diagnoses and repairs and, as a result, narrowing the search space to a manageable size.

This dissertation identifies and criticises a fundamental characteristic of the philosophical discourse surrounding the animal issue: the underlying anthropocentric reasoning that informs the accounts of both philosophy of mind and moral philosophy. Such reasoning works from human paradigms as the only possible starting point of the analysis. Accordingly, the aim of my dissertation is to show how anthropocentric reasoning and its implications distort the inquiry of the animal debate. In extracting the erroneous biases from the debate, my project enables an important shift in the starting line of the philosophical inquiry of the animal issue. In chapters one and two, I focus on philosophy of mind. I show how philosophical accounts that are based on anthropocentric a priori reasoning are inattentive to the relevant empirical findings regarding animals' mental capacities. Employing a conceptual line of argument, I demonstrate that starting the analysis from a human paradigm creates a rigid conceptual framework that unjustifiably excludes the possibility of associating the relevant empirical findings in the research. Furthermore, I show how the common approaches to the issue of animals' belief and intentions deny that animals can have these capacities, and I demonstrate how such denials can be avoided. The philosophical discourse that I examine denies intentional mental capacities to animals. Such denials take place, I maintain, because the analysis is anthropocentric: it uses humans' most sophisticated capacities as the only possible benchmark for evaluating animals' mental abilities. A central example of such anthropocentric reasoning is the oft-mentioned view that there is a necessary link between language and intentionality. Such a link indeed characterises humans. Yet the claim that there is no intentionality without language is a problematic framework for analysing the supposed intentionality of non-linguistic and prelinguistic creatures. Employing a standard that applies to normal, adult humans excludes the possibility of animals' intentionality from the outset. It seems, however, that intentionality is a capacity that evolves in stages, and that simple intentional mental states do not require language. At the same time, such an analysis ignores, to a large extent, cases of attributing intentionality to pre-linguistic humans and even normal, adult humans. Thus, I show how the denial that animals may have intentional mental capacities results in a double standard. In chapters three to six, I critically examine the anthropocentric nature of the debate concerning animals' moral status. The anthropocentric reasoning relates to the conditions of moral status in an oversimplified manner. I show that human prototypes, e.g., rational agency and autonomy, have mistakenly served as conditions for either moral status in general or of a particular type. Seemingly, using such conditions excludes from the proffered moral domain not only animals, but also human moral patients. Yet eventually only animals are excluded from the proffered moral domain. I identify and criticise the manoeuvre that enables this outcome. That is, although the proffered conditions are based on individual characteristics of moral agents, they are applied in a collective manner in order to include human moral patients in the moral domain under examination. I also show that when animals are granted moral status, this status appears to be subjugated by human needs and interests, and therefore the very potential to substantiate animal moral status becomes problematic. Significantly, I also criticise arguments in favour of animals' moral status, claiming that they sustain the oversimplified nature of the inquiry, hence reproducing the major problems of the arguments they were originally designed to refute. As part of my critique towards both such arguments and anthropocentric reasoning, I suggest a non-anthropocentric framework that avoids oversimplification with regard to the conditions of moral status. The aspiration of anthropocentric reasoning as well as of pro-animals philosophers is to find a common denominator that is allegedly shared by all members of the moral community as the single foundation of moral status, which consists of individual characteristics. My framework challenges this aspiration by showing that this common denominator cannot account for all cases. The framework that I suggest enables establishing moral statuses upon distinctive foundations, and at the same time, my proposal avoids falling into the trap of speciesism.