Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Vagaries of Definition', 'Resurrecting Biological Essentialism' and 'Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong'

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

8 ideas

6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 6. Mathematics as Set Theory / a. Mathematics is set theory
8203 All the arithmetical entities can be reduced to classes of integers, and hence to sets [Quine]
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 10. Essence as Species
17368 Essentialism concerns the nature of a group, not its category [Devitt]
17370 Things that gradually change, like species, can still have essences [Devitt]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 10. Denial of Meanings
8202 Meaning is essence divorced from things and wedded to words [Quine]
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 4. Analytic/Synthetic Critique
8201 The distinction between meaning and further information is as vague as the essence/accident distinction [Quine]
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / f. Ethical non-cognitivism
4761 The 'error theory' of morals says there is no moral knowledge, because there are no moral facts [Mackie, by Engel]
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 5. Species
17369 We name species as small to share properties, but large enough to yield generalisations [Devitt]
17367 Species are phenetic, biological, niche, or phylogenetic-cladistic [Devitt, by PG]