Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Problem of Natural Laws' and 'Letter Seven'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts


3 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?
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / a. Preconditions for ethics
To understand morality requires a soul [Plato]
     Full Idea: Good and evil are meaningless to things that have no soul.
     From: Plato (Letter Seven [c.352 BCE], 334)
     A reaction: That is presumably psuché, and hence includes plants. Soulless things can still function well, but obviously that is not 'meaningful' to them.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 3. Laws and Generalities
Natural laws result from eliminative induction, where enumerative induction gives generalisations [Cohen,LJ, by Psillos]
     Full Idea: Cohen contends that statements that express laws of nature are the products of eliminative induction, where accidentally true generalisations are the products of enumerative induction.
     From: report of L. Jonathan Cohen (The Problem of Natural Laws [1980], p.222) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §7.1
     A reaction: The idea is that enumerative induction only offers the support of positive instances, where eliminative induction involves attempts to falsify a range of hypotheses. This still bases laws on observed regularities, rather than essences or mechanisms.