Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'German Philosophy: a very short introduction', 'Causation and the Flow of Energy' and 'Resurrecting Biological Essentialism'

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10 ideas

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 10. Essence as Species
Essentialism concerns the nature of a group, not its category [Devitt]
Things that gradually change, like species, can still have essences [Devitt]
11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / b. Transcendental idealism
Transcendental idealism aims to explain objectivity through subjectivity [Bowie]
11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / d. Absolute idealism
The Idealists saw the same unexplained spontaneity in Kant's judgements and choices [Bowie]
German Idealism tried to stop oppositions of appearances/things and receptivity/spontaneity [Bowie]
Crucial to Idealism is the idea of continuity between receptivity and spontaneous judgement [Bowie]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 4. Naturalised causation
Science has shown that causal relations are just transfers of energy or momentum [Fair, by Sosa/Tooley]
Fair shifted his view to talk of counterfactuals about energy flow [Fair, by Schaffer,J]
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 5. Species
We name species as small to share properties, but large enough to yield generalisations [Devitt]
Species are phenetic, biological, niche, or phylogenetic-cladistic [Devitt, by PG]