Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Human Society in Ethics and Politics' and 'Homeostasis, Species and Higher Taxa'

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4 ideas

21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality
Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.]
     Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice.
     From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where?
26. Natural Theory / B. Natural Kinds / 4. Source of Kinds
The properties of an electron can't be explained just as 'clustering' [Chakravartty on Boyd]
     Full Idea: Boyd's homeostatic mechanisms are not responsible for the co-instantiation of the mass, charge and spin of an electron.
     From: comment on Richard Boyd (Homeostasis, Species and Higher Taxa [1999]) by Anjan Chakravarrty - Inessential Aristotle: Powers without Essences 3
     A reaction: I would have thought that no one has the foggiest idea (unless I have missed something?) about why electrons have those three properties. What is it about electrons that makes them do that? Explanations always run out somewhere. Substratum!
Properties cluster together, either because of intrinsic relations, or because of an underlying process [Boyd, by Chakravartty]
     Full Idea: Boyd analyses 'sociability' between properties in terms of 'homeostasis', as causal relations between properties that favour clustering, or underlying processes that favour coinstantiation, or both.
     From: report of Richard Boyd (Homeostasis, Species and Higher Taxa [1999]) by Anjan Chakravarrty - Inessential Aristotle: Powers without Essences 3
     A reaction: Chakravarty criticises this claim, by Boyd is clearly onto something. If, like me, you think natural kinds are overrated, you have to like his view.
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 6. Divine Morality / b. Euthyphro question
If God's decrees are good, and this is not a mere tautology, then goodness is separate from God's decrees [Russell]
     Full Idea: Theologians have always taught that God's decrees are good, and that this is not a mere tautology: it follows that goodness is logically independent of God's decrees.
     From: Bertrand Russell (Human Society in Ethics and Politics [1954], p.48)