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Ideas of Michael Devitt, by Text

[American, b.1938, Professor at the University of Maryland, then Professor at the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York.]

1980 'Ostrich Nominalism' or 'Mirage Realism'?
p.95 p.95 8501 Quineans take predication about objects as basic, not reference to properties they may have
p.97 p.97 8502 Realism doesn't explain 'a is F' any further by saying it is 'a has F-ness'
p.98 p.98 8503 The particular/universal distinction is unhelpful clutter; we should accept 'a is F' as basic
2005 There is no a Priori
§2 p.107 9353 We explain away a priori knowledge, not as directly empirical, but as indirectly holistically empirical
§2 p.107 9354 Why should necessities only be knowable a priori? That Hesperus is Phosporus is known empirically
§3 p.111 9356 The idea of the a priori is so obscure that it won't explain anything
2005 There is No A Priori (and reply)
1 p.185 19564 Some knowledge must be empirical; naturalism implies that all knowledge is like that
4 p.193 19565 How could the mind have a link to the necessary character of reality?
2008 Resurrecting Biological Essentialism
10 'Arb' p.243 17369 We name species as small to share properties, but large enough to yield generalisations
11 p.248 17370 Things that gradually change, like species, can still have essences
4 p.223 17367 Species are phenetic, biological, niche, or phylogenetic-cladistic [PG]
6 p.228 17368 Essentialism concerns the nature of a group, not its category
2009 Natural Kinds and Biological Realism
4 p.202 17371 Some kinds are very explanatory, but others less so, and some not at all
6 p.211 17372 The higher categories are not natural kinds, so the Linnaean hierarchy should be given up
7 p.211 17373 Species pluralism says there are several good accounts of what a species is