The thesis explores the question of how should a rational moral agent reason and make choices when he finds himself accepting inconsistent moral judgments. It is argued that it is both conceptually and psychologically justified to describe such an agent as suffering from uncertainty. Such uncertainty, however, is not uncertainty regarding the truth of some descriptive claim, but rather uncertainty regarding the truth of a normative claim. Specifically it is uncertainty regarding the truth of a moral judgement. In the literature this is sometimes called “moral uncertainty”. Two different lines of philosophical literatures that explore the idea of moral uncertainty are discussed. The first line – the one that originated from David Lewis‟ argument against the “Desire as Belief Thesis” – explores the mere possibility of moral uncertainty, while the second line explores the question how ought a rational moral agent choose in face of moral uncertainty. The discussion of these two lines of research leads to the conclusion that a consistent account of moral decision making under conditions of moral uncertainty that will be applicable to the kind of cases that the thesis explores, must make use of degrees of beliefs in comparative moral judgements (i.e. judgements of the form “act a is morally superior to act b”) and of them alone. Specifically, no references to degrees of moral value should be made. An attempt to present such an account in the framework of an extension of Leonard Savage‟s model for decision making is carried out. This attempt leads to a problematic result. Several implications of the result to ethic and meta-ethics are discussed as well as possible ways to avoid it. The conclusion is partly positive and partly negative: While a plausible account of moral decision making under conditions of moral uncertainty is presented, an account of moral reasoning that aims at finding a complete moral theory (i.e. a moral theory that gives a prescription to every possible moral choice) is shown to be a very difficult – if not impossible - aim to achieve.

In the Introduction I briefly lay out the history of the value terms that I will be considering in my thesis and consider the philosophical relevance of the development of such values in the 5th century. The infiltration of modern ideas of morality into what was considered to be good to the Greeks has a great influence on the literature and philosophy of this period. Plato prioritises these quiet moral virtues, but also tries to hang on to some of what had come before, and thus faces difficulties with his moral theory. I will show that courage presents Plato with an acute difficulty when attempting to develop a consistent ethical theory. In Chapter 2 I look at the Protagoras where the main issues about courage that Plato will continue to discuss throughout his life are introduced. The questions of the extent to which the virtues can be taught and the unity of the virtues are introduced early on. What follows is an attempt to explain and justify the Socratic idea that the virtues are co-dependent and that they all in some way boil down to knowledge. In Chapter 3 on the Laches I will show that the discussion focuses more particularly on the virtue of courage and is mostly a more sophisticated attempt to understand courage than the one presented in the Protagoras. In the following three chapters (4-6) I examine the position taken in the Republic in detail, which I take to be more representative of the Platonic rather than Socratic position. Plato’s psychological model – which includes direct influence from the lower soul – is a more reasonable interpretation of the internal workings of the agent than the simpler model in the early dialogues of the only direct motivator being beliefs or knowledge. The chapter on the Laws considers the idea that some of the apparent differences between the Republic and the Laws are due to Plato’s growing realisation that courage will not be assimilated into a unified ethical theory of the type that he wishes to propose.

Background: Through their experiences of stigma and discrimination, people with intellectual disabilities may develop negative beliefs about themselves and compare themselves negatively to others. This may make them more sensitive to criticism from others. In addition, receiving praise may be discrepant with the self-views of people with intellectual disabilities and they may be less likely to benefit from praise. Being distressed by criticism has been associated with vulnerability to mental health difficulties in the general adult population. It is not known how people with intellectual disabilities perceive and experience criticism and praise. Method: Two study groups were recruited; one with intellectual disabilities, one without. The praise and criticism task (PACT) was developed for the study. Participants were presented with ten scenes in which they were asked to imagine someone saying something positive (praise) or negative (criticism). Following the presentation of each scene, participants were asked about their emotions, beliefs, thoughts and actions. Results: People with intellectual disabilities were more likely to believe and be distressed by criticism. Contrary to predictions, this group were also more likely to believe and experience positive affect in response to praise. No differences were found in the frequency of self-supporting thoughts or actions reported in response to criticism. Conclusions: The results may represent a difference in the way people with intellectual disabilities develop their sense of self and may suggest that the self-perceptions of this group are more dynamic and reliant on the views of others. In theory, such sensitivity could make people more vulnerable to mental health difficulties. On the other hand, the possibilities for positive influence have implications for psychological and social interventions.

In this thesis, I shall examine the question of physicalism through two papers criticising the formulation of the doctrine. In the first chapter, I discuss Tim Carne's and D.H. Mellor's influential (1990) There Is No Question of Physicalism, in which they argue that there are no real criteria by which the science of psychology can be separated from the paradigmatically physical sciences, and so no principled reason to suppose that the predicates of pyschology do not describe real elements of the world's ontology whereas those of physics do. I shall explain why I find their arguments unconvincing, and to show how some of the reasons they consider not to support the noncontinuity of psychology with physics actually can support the distinction. Crane and Mellor take physicalism to be an epistemological doctrine, according to which the empirical world "contains just what a true and complete physical science would say it contains". Physicalism can, however, be taken as a metaphysical doctrine, and indeed I think that many modern physicalists do take it this way. In his (1998) What Are Physical Properties?, Chris Daly argues that no principled distinction can be drawn between physical and nonphysical properties, and that therefore any metaphysical programme which assumes such a distinction is misguided. I shall agree with much of his reasoning, but not with his 'downbeat' conclusion: while I agree that there are serious difficulties involved in setting constraints on the bounds of the physical, I think that enough can positively be said to make physicalism a meaningful position. Between the two papers, a fairly broad survey of some recent accounts of physicalism is made and these two distinct avenues explored: physicalism construed as a doctrine about science, and physicalism as a doctrine attempting to limit the contents of the world a priori through a definition of what it is to be a physical properties. All in all, I think that there is much to learn from these two papers, but not all of it is as negative, conclusive, or 'downbeat' as their authors might have intended. Rather, I think that some new directions are indicated by the failure of some of the avenues they explore.

The thesis contrasts two hostile and divergent intellectual paradigms in social sciences: rational choice and critical theory. Both rational choice and critical theory offer contrasting perspectives on the structures of social interaction. However, both critical theory and rational choice theory share overlapping concerns ie., both are preoccupied with determining what rational can mean in the realm of social and political interaction. In the case of rational choice paradigm, instrumental reason forms the cornerstone of the theoretical edifice. Ever since the publication of Jurgen Habermas' The lhemy qf Communicative Action Vol. / (1984) and Vol. II (1986) instrumental reason has come under severe attack. His critique anchors on a theory of communicative reason. What makes Habermas' work distinctive is that he does not regard instrumental reason as the single inevitable concomitant of modernity. Habermas sees in modernity an alternative way of conceptualising social interaction in terms of communication rather than strategy. So in a way, his work is a challenge to the defenders of modernity aiming to build a unified social science Jurgen Habermas advances the notion of communicative reason as the centerpiece of a social theory as opposed to instrumental reason. By providing a systematic grounding of the concept of reason in human language, he hopes to establish normative basis of critical theory. This model of reaching agreement or consent constitutes a process of dialogue in which reasons are exchanged between participants. This process is perceived to be a joint search for consensus. Such a dialogic concept of collective choice would necessarily work not with fixed preferences to be amalgamated (as rational choice theories do) but with preferences that are altered or modified as competing reasons are advanced in the course of discussion. In rational discussion, the only thing supposed to count is the power of better argument. Both rational choice and critical theory conceptualise politics in different ways. Rational choice theories critique democratic mechanisms failing to generate general will. Consequently, the political prescriptions offered are limited government or market. On the contrary, the political implications of Habermas' theory of deliberative democracy is anchored in the notion of liberal public sphere envisaging a cognitivist, rationalist vision in which discourse forms a critical normative basis for evaluating the political and moral principles.

Part I is entirely devoted to current issues in the philosophy of language, logic and science. The burden of the Introduction is to familiarise ourselves with the strengths and weaknesses of scientific realism and scientific anti-realism, and to show that a synthesis of realist and anti-realist tendencies is desirable. Chapters Two and Three deal with a challenge stemming from semantic anti-realists concerning the proper understanding of the nature of truth. The remainder of Part I is devoted to the problem of demarcation. In Chapter 6, which deals with Quine's thesis concerning the indeterminacy of radical translation, I offer a method of distinguishing areas of discourse capable of bearing a realist interpretation from those demanding treatment along anti-realistic lines. Part II beings our study of Aquinas' philosophy of science. Aquinas is presented as offering an intellectual system consistent with conclusions drawn in Part I. Moreover, his attempt to make theology a science on the Aristotelian model is seen to be analogous to our attempt to reconcile realist and anti-realist tendencies in the realist dispute in science.

In this thesis, I examine the rival conceptions of modernity, crisis and critique developed in the work of Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor. Since the publication of Habermas's highly influential The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity in the mid-1980s, scholarship on the conceptions of modernity and critique contained therein has gained its keenest focus in the context of the 'modernity vs. postmodernity' controversy. Meanwhile, in Sources of the Self; the Making of the Modern Identity - a book of comparable range and philosophical ambition to Habermas's study - Taylor has made his own distinctive contribution to what Habermas calls the philosophical discourse of modernity. But as yet, there has been no sustained investigation into the internal consistency and mutual challenge of the conceptions of modernity, crisis and critique defended by Habermas and Taylor. Taylor himself has recently proposed that a debate begin between what he terms cultural theory of modernity (to which his own work contributes), and acultural theory (to which Habermas owes allegiance). My thesis takes this invitation for debate as its point of departure for examining the competing claims of these two important philosophers. The problem which organizes my contribution to a debate of the kind called for by Taylor is how, within the constraints of a philosophical conception of modernity, the claim to normativity can be brought to clarification. In chapter two, the sense in which the category of normativity is rendered problematic under conditions of modernity is explored. If the success of modern science shows that a moral order is no fit object of cognition, it can seem that the only rational action-orientation is instrumental in kind.

Attempts by several commentators to map categories from contemporary epistemology onto Aquinas' theory of knowledge, and their attempts to give an account of his theory of perceptual knowledge constitute the background to this thesis. In the opening chapter we outline Aquinas' theory of knowledge, we see that it is a complex theory, dealing not only with human knowledge, but also with divine and angelic knowledge. We note Aquinas' application of the doctrine of analogy to the concept of knowledge. Despite the radical differences between the Creator's knowledge and that of His creatures there are common elements: the grasp of being as true and the assimilation of the knower to the thing known. In the case of angelic knowledge we note its innateness and immediacy. In our analysis of human knowledge we see the consequences of what Aquinas refers to as the dimness of the human intellect, both in terms of how humans know and what they can know. In particular we highlight the fragmented nature of human knowledge, noting the absence of any mention of perceptual knowledge in Aquinas' account of human knowledge. In chapter two we sketch the various contemporary epistemological categories that philosophers have sought to map onto Aquinas' epistemology. Pollock's theory of Direct Realism is sketched as an example of internalism. Foundationalism is discussed with reference to Chisholm. Two examples of externalism and reliabilism are given: Nozick's tracking and Goldman's reliabilism. We also discuss the foundationalist externalism of Plantinga. We then outline how these various labels have been applied to Aquinas' theory of knowledge. We begin with MacDonald's foundationalist and internalist interpretation, noting his description of perceptual knowledge as secondary scientia. We then consider Ross' attempt to describe perceptual knowledge in terms of faith. In contrast to these we describe Stump's externalist reading of Aquinas, noting that she finds support in the work of Norman Kretzmann.

This Ph.D. thesis is, in large part, a deepening of my M. A. dissertation, entitled: "Différance Beyond Phenomenological Reduction (Epoché)?" - an edited version of which was published in The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 2, Issue 2, 1989. The M. A. dissertation explores the development of the various phases of the movement of epoché in Edmund Husserl's phenomenology and its relevance for Jacques Derrida's project of deconstruction. The analyses not only attend to the need for an effective propaedeutic to an understanding of phenomenology as method, they also serve to demystify the logics of Derridean non-teleological strategy by explaining the sense of such a manoeuvre - as a kind of maieutic response to the Husserlian project - which operates within the horizon of a radical epoché. According to this orientation, Derrida's deconstruction of phenomenology is permitted to open itself up to a phenomenology of deconstruction. This doctoral thesis develops these analyses and utilizes a form of critique that points the way to the possibility of a phenomenological-deconstruction of the limits of Derrida's project of deconstruction through the themes of epoché, play, dialogue, spacing, and temporalization. In order to trace the resources from which he draws throughout the early development of deconstruction, this study confines itself to a discussion on the texts published between 1962 and 1968. This subjection of deconstruction to a historical de-sedimentation of its motivational, methodological, theoretical, and strategic moments, involves a certain kind of transformational return to the spacing between phenomenology and deconstruction that urgently puts into question the alleged supercession of phenomenology by deconstruction. The expression of such a 'beyond' is already deeply sedimented in contemporary deconstructive writing to the point at which it is now rarely even noticed, let alone thematized and brought into question. This conviction (regarding the transgression of phenomenology by deconstruction) traces itself out in the form of an attitude to reading which is, in fact and in principle, counter to D6rrida's own call for care. The meaning and limits of the very terms, transgression, beyond, supercession, etc., must be continually subjected to deconstruction. The notions of play, dissemination and supplementarity - with the concomitant sense of transformational repetition that defines them - do not function as a mere excuse for lack of scholarly rigour. Deconstruction is a movement of critical return, which must insert itself (with a sense of irony) within the margins and intersections of that which gives itself up to this practice of textual unbuilding. The strategy of play encourages the structural matrix of that with which it is engaged to turn in upon itself, exposing its limits and fissures in a kind of textual analogue to a psychoanalysis. To be sure, this does involve a certain kind of violence -a violation of the ( system's' own sense of propriety (what is proper [propre] and closest to itself) -but in no sense is this an anarchical celebration of pure destruction. We speak rather of irony, parody, satire, metaphor, double-reading and other tactical devices, which permit a reorganization of the deconstructed's (textual analysand's) self-relation and the possibility of playful speculation. Such play demands care and vigilance in regard to the appropriation of the logics of the system with which it is in a relation of negotiation. In order to play well, one must learn the game-rules.

This thesis begins from an analysis of Derrida's specific readings of Plato and Platonism, identifying there a modernist bias, which interprets these metaphysical systems as if they were coextensive with Cartesian rationalism. Against Derrida, I argue for a repositioning of Plato and Platonism in the context of an ancient-modern quarrel. In replacing Descartes's "clarity and distinctness" with a pre-modern emphasis on "faith" (pistis), I am seeking to challenge Derrida's diagnosis of a perplexity or impasse (aporia) which cannot be overcome by philosophy. With specific reference to the Meno and the Phaedrus, one can locate a three-tiered Platonic dialectic beginning with an assertion of knowledge, followed by a necessary deconstruction of this knowledge with, thirdly, a tentative reconstruction of philosophy based on faith rather than knowing. In later chapters, I examine this dialectic as it is developed in the Neo- and Christian- Platonist traditions, particularly through the work of Plotinus, Boethius and Augustine. On my interpretation, deconstruction remains at the second level of the Platonic dialectic, that of impasse and perplexity (one of Derrida's most recent texts is in fact entitled Aporias). Again with reference to an ancient-modern quarrel, it is my contention that Derrida's unstinting stress on the "aporetic" is due to an overemphasis of the Cartesian paradigm. Derrida identifies the exhaustion of what Deeley calls "the classical modern paradigm" with the exhaustion of philosophy per se. But this identification of philosophy with Cartesianism can be seriously challenged through a renewed foregrounding of the premodern philosophical resources which Descartes (and now Derrida) have sought to obscure.