Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Homeostasis, Species and Higher Taxa' and '17: Of Superstition'

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4 ideas

21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality

468	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

15150	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!

15149	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

7399	Even without religion, there are many guides to morality [Bacon]
	Full Idea: Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not.
	From: Francis Bacon (17: Of Superstition [1625], p.52)
	A reaction: One might add to Bacon's list 'contracts', or 'rational consistency', or 'self-evident human excellence', or 'natural sympathy'. This is a striking idea, which clearly made churchmen uneasy when atheism began to spread.