Taxonomies are an important part of conceptual modeling. They provide substantial structural information, and are typically the key elements in integration efforts, however there has been little guidance as to what makes a proper taxonomy. We have adopted several notions from the philosophical practice of formal ontology, and adapted them for use in information systems. These tools, identity, essence, unity, and dependence, provide a solid logical framework within which the properties that form a taxonomy can be analyzed. This analysis helps make intended meaning more explicit, improving human understanding and reducing the cost of integration.

1. What are called ‘intuitions ’ in philosophy are just applications of our ordinary capacities for judgement. We think of them as intuitions when a special kind of scepticism about those capacities is salient. 2. Like scepticism about perception, scepticism about judgement pressures us into conceiving our evidence as facts about our internal psychological states: here, facts about our conscious inclinations to make judgements about some topic rather than facts about the topic itself. But the pressure should be resisted, for it rests on bad epistemology: specifically, on an impossible ideal of unproblematically identifiable evidence. 3. Our resistance to scepticism about judgement is not simply epistemic conservativism, for we resist it on behalf of others as well as ourselves. A reason is needed for thinking that beliefs tend to be true. 4. Evolutionary explanations of the tendency assume what they should explain. Explanations that appeal to constraints on the determination of reference are more promising. Davidson’s truth-maximizing principle of charity is examined but rejected. 5. An alternative principle is defended on which the nature of reference is to maximize knowledge rather than truth. It is related to an externalist conception of mind on which knowing is the central mental state. 6. The knowledge-maximizing

I consider exactly what is involved in a solution to the probability problem of the Everett interpretation, in the light of recent work on applying considerations from decision theory to that problem. I suggest an overall framework for understanding probability in a physical theory, and conclude that this framework, when applied to the Everett interpretation, yields the result that that interpretation satisfactorily solves the measurement problem.

The central question addressed in this dissertation is, What, in the most general terms, is required for an object to have a disposition? In the formal mode, this is just the question, What are the truth conditions of disposition ascriptions, sentences of the form " "? The dissertation begins by criticizing existing answers to this question, answers which consist in accounts of disposition ascriptions according to which they entail conditionals of one form or another. By developing examples due to C. B. Martin, Mark Johnston and others, it is argued that no conditional account of disposition ascriptions can be correct. Instead, a "Habitual Account" of disposition ascriptions is defended: an ascription " " is true just in case has some intrinsic property in virtue of which . This account is shown both to escape the criticisms levelled against conditional accounts, and to have independently persuasive motivation. Essential to the Habitual Account of disposition ascriptions is that the sentences that it makes use of, so-called "habitual sentences" of the form " s when ," are not themselves to be understood as conditionals. How they are to be understood has been a matter of some debate in the recent semantics literature, and the dissertation engages with this debate by offering a novel account of the truth conditions of habitual sentences. It is argued that these sentences should be represented as containing an implicit, unpronounced adverbial quantifier, meaning something like "normally," "generally," or "typically," and a specific account of the semantic contribution made to habitual sentences by this quantifier is supplied. The dissertation ends by considering an issue in the metaphysics of dispositions, arguing, contrary to widespread philosophica...

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By far the most central and important question about laws of nature is this: Are they mere patterns in the phenomena (patterns that are in some way salient, to be sure—but still, nothing more than patterns)? Or are they something more, something that somehow governs or constrains those phenomena? Disagreement

Abstract: While engaged in the analysis of philosophically central concepts, analytic philosophers have traditionally relied extensively on their own intuitions about when such concepts can be correctly applied. Intuitions have, however, come under increasingly critical scrutiny of late, and if they turned out not to be a reliable tool for the proper analysis of our concepts, then a radical reworking of analytic philosophy’s methodology would be in order. One influential line of criticism against the use of intuition argues that they only tell us about our conceptions of things, and not the things themselves. This venerable line of criticism can seem considerably strengthened if one endorses ‘‘externalist’ ’ accounts of meaning. Nevertheless, the move from semantic externalism to the rejection of intuitions will be shown to be illegitimate if one has a constitutive rather than expressive understanding of the relation between our intuitions and our concepts.

Abstract: Ascriptions of content are sensitive not only to our physical and social environment, but also to unforeseeable developments in the subsequent usage of our terms. The paper argues that the problems that may seem to come from endorsing such ‘temporally sensitive ’ ascriptions either already follow from accepting the socially and historically sensitive ascriptions Burge and Kripke appeal to, or disappear when the view is developed in detail. If one accepts that one’s society’s past and current usage contributes to what one’s terms mean, there is little reason not to let its future usage to do so as well. 1.