Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'poems', 'Resurrecting Biological Essentialism' and 'On Carnap's Views on Ontology'

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9 ideas

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 4. Metaphysics as Science
Quine rejects Carnap's view that science and philosophy are distinct [Quine, by Boulter]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / a. Ontological commitment
Names have no ontological commitment, because we can deny that they name anything [Quine]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / b. Commitment of quantifiers
We can use quantification for commitment to unnameable things like the real numbers [Quine]
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]
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 3. Analytic and Synthetic
Without the analytic/synthetic distinction, Carnap's ontology/empirical distinction collapses [Quine]
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention
Nomos is king [Pindar]
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]