Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'How there could be a private language' and 'Darwinian Metaphysics: Species and Essentialism'

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4 ideas

18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 4. Language of Thought
2604 We must have expressive power BEFORE we learn language [Fodor]
     Full Idea: I am denying that one can learn a language whose expressive power is greater than that of a language that one already knows.
     From: Jerry A. Fodor (How there could be a private language [1975], p.389)
     A reaction: I presume someone who had a native language of limited vocabulary could learn a new language with a vast vocabulary. I can increase my expressive power with a specialist vocabulary (e.g. legal).
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 5. Infinite in Nature
1748 Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless.
     From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 3. Evolution
5989 Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield]
     Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime.
     From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus
     A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea.
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 5. Species
17366 Virtually all modern views of speciation rest on relational rather than intrinsic features [Okasha]
     Full Idea: On all modern species concepts (except the phenetic), the property in virtue of which a particular organism belongs to one species rather than another is a relational rather than an intrinsic property of the organism.
     From: Samir Okasha (Darwinian Metaphysics: Species and Essentialism [2002], p.201), quoted by Michael Devitt - Resurrecting Biological Essentialism 4
     A reaction: I am in sympathy with Devitt's attack on this view, for the same reason that I take relational explanations of almost anything (such as the mind) to be inadequate. We need to know the intrinsic features that enable the relations.