PHIL 203 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Vestigiality, Nominalism
Document Summary
Making up people, in the dsm and elsewhere. Nominalists do not believe in felinity, no thing as justice, there are just convenient words. Realists think there really are kinds i nature, not human invention but rather elements of mind-independent nature. What mechanism is responsible for turning ancient ancestral species into the ones that exist today (vestigial organs) Mechanism is random variation plus natural selection: homosexuality. There were no such things until 19th century, words make the people. Scooped up into category based on some property and then dictates how they are understood and treated: is important in how we act today and how we live.
