Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Darwinian Metaphysics: Species and Essentialism' and 'Metaphysical Foundations of Mathematics'

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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?
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / g. Time's arrow
When one element contains the grounds of the other, the first one is prior in time [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: When one of two non-contemporaneous elements contains the grounds for the other, the former is regarded as the antecedent, and the latter as the consequence
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Metaphysical Foundations of Mathematics [1715], p.201)
     A reaction: Bardon cites this passage of Leibniz as the origin of the idea that time's arrow is explained by the direction of causation. Bardon prefers it to the psychological and entropy accounts.
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 5. Species
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.