Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Causality and Determinism' and 'Resurrecting Biological Essentialism'

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11 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]
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 3. Constraints on the will
Freedom involves acting according to an idea [Anscombe]
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 6. Determinism / a. Determinism
To believe in determinism, one must believe in a system which determines events [Anscombe]
23. Ethics / A. Egoism / 1. Ethical Egoism
The greatest good is not the achievement of desire, but to desire what is proper [Menedemus, by Diog. Laertius]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 5. Direction of causation
With diseases we easily trace a cause from an effect, but we cannot predict effects [Anscombe]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 6. Causation as primitive
The word 'cause' is an abstraction from a group of causal terms in a language (scrape, push..) [Anscombe]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / b. Causal relata
Causation is relative to how we describe the primary relata [Anscombe, by Schaffer,J]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / c. Conditions of causation
Since Mill causation has usually been explained by necessary and sufficient conditions [Anscombe]
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]