Another semi-random selection from my constant note-writing. Read at your own peril.
Continual ranting is dangerous because, however much it may have been originally justified, it inevitably carries one into regions of intellectual dishonestly as, through the the momentum of ranting, one begins making up flaws to rant about: often, it seems, without even being aware of doing so. This happens because ranting is parasitic on what is being ranted against; so the more one's views are made to find expression in ranting the more any perceived goodness in one's own view leads to the attribution of a corresponding flaw in the views of others; and in the absence of rigorous self-critique one begins doing this without close and careful examination of those views. Thus argument blurs into self-flattering fantasy.
2 kinds of habitus (second nature)
(1) inclination of power to act
(2) disposition of system so as to be well or ill disposed
virtue, knowledge, &c. are instances of (1); health, sickness, original sin, &c. are instances of (2)
There's little point in thinking through something if you are not willing to think it through in half a dozen different ways.
method of argument ex abundantia concessionis
descriptio, expositio, significatio
to hear an argument and play with it, as if in improvisational jazz
pie repone te
Heuristic principles are approximations, for practical purposes, to metaphysical principles.
Religious orders are training schools (cf. Aquinas ST 2-2.188.1) and research institutions for the practice of complete charity. This practice of charity is something with many facets, so it is necessary for religious orders to be diversified according to different special ends (e.g., hospitality to strangers, feeding the hungry, prayer in solitude) and different methods of practice (e.g., manual labor, ascetic discipline, communal life) in such a way as to contribute to the general end.
A thing may be due a person on account of
(1) necessity, which makes all common
(1a) from weakness of body that prevents work
(1b) from insufficiency of good work for livelihood
(1c) from background making unfit for work
(2) affordance of something
(2a) that is temporal (e.g., physical goods)
(2b) that is spiritual (e.g., teaching)
nonsatiation & utilitarian analysis
extensive, intensive, & protensive aspects of inquiry
- principles of the possibility of discovery
- we can call a society a heuristic institution to the extent that it is in accordance with practical principles derived from the motive of discovery
- unity, division, affinity classes of heuristic maxims
- a heuristic institution has a
(1) culture: positive development of inquiry skills
(2) discipline: elimination of things destructive to inquiry
(3) deposit: an archiving of results that may be taught, to further later inquiry
defensible extrapolation
+ progressive elimination of alternatives
+ progressive refinement of extrapolation
"It would be to banish reason from the world if we had to be infallible in order to have the right to reason." Malebranche DMR XIV.xiii
knowing things conjecturally by signs
Our souls should be the cloth of Veronica, bearing His imprint.
philosophical abstraction as a means of cultivating social agreement among diverse groups
"Blindness is a kind of preamble to sin." Aquinas ST I-II.80.1
- Permanent darkness of mind is a fatal condition; but temporary darkness may have medicinal value once it comes to be recognized.
For any language we may compare and analogize between it and another language (or some fragment of itself). Therefore not all intellectual activity takes place in a language.
- language-creating vs. language-presupposing
the concept of instances that fall under concepts
philosophical beachheads
"What would be ridiculous, if delivered to a jury of honest sensible citizens, is no less so when delivered gravely in a philosophical dissertation." Reid IP 6.5
Quot hominum linguae, tot nomina deorum. (Cicero)
difficulties that stall vs. difficulties that promise
It is possible for the same good to be a search, experience, or credence good, depending on the people involved. (This is especially noticeable where expertise is involved.)
It is possible for X, which we believe, to present itself suddenly under an aspect that repulses our mind, before deliberation can intervene; this sudden motion of disbelief, resulting from mood, or social pressure, or trick of mind, or insightful new perception, can then be confirmed or rejected by more deliberate consideration of the matter. Thus belief is not a unitary thing; it has undercurrents, in which we may consent on occasion in a way contrary to deliberation and decision, and decide in a way contrary to our occasional deviant consent.
Even a nonphilosopher may do philosophical work.
virtues-offices-cases-remedies
Where we cannot lay hands on the universe itself, we abstract from the universe and lay hands on the abstraction.
The Kantian noumenon faces the same problems Berkeley identified in the Lockean material substrate, and Kant has no significant defenses agains the Berkeleyan criticism.
- cf. A250: " a something = X, of which we know, and with the present constitution of our understanding can know, nothing whatsoever"
- cf. also B307: "a something in general outside of our sensibility"
Everything in philosophy should be done from love, or joy, or peace, or zeal for justice.
the good of the intellect overflowing into the body: dance & song
- it is because of this that dance & song are both fitting symbols of the glory to come
- laughter also, or, more broadly, making merry
Stability presupposes finality.
The potential for equivocation arises naturally from the fact that our limited languages must cover the unlimited things we might want to say.
satire as extended hyperbole (of the petty = anti-sublime)
- this shows the link w/, e.g., farce, which is also extended hyperbole, but w/ a different object
There are usually a thousand reasons why an argument wouldn't work; there is no ingenuity in picking some historical argument and giving one of these. The thing that requires wit is identifying the reasons why an argument would work. Critical thought is most manifest in cases where we've pinned down exactly the conditions that would have to obtain to make an argument an excellent one. The genuinely important flaws, if there are any, will fall out naturally from this in a way that they won't from active flaw-hunting.
2 facets of 'secularization'
(1) laicization
(2) insulation
(2) is the incidental effect of religious conflict; (1) is prob. an effect of economics & diffusion of education
Dante held that philosophers should take Aristotle as legislator for their domain. Clearly this wouldn't require accepting all of his conclusions without question. So here's an interesting exercise: what in Aristotle can be seen as legislative, i.e., promulgated as possessing a normative force for the activities of philosophers qua philosophers, and what does philosophy look like under such legislation? (A related, but distinct, exercise: How is this related to the legislation of the Dantesque Aristotle?)
Politics takes advantage of the principle that evil mars evil.
The best way to work for the greater good is to do good to those we know.
hospitality to children (babies)
accounts of reasonableness:
criterial
ideal spectator
impartial spectator
Survival is a movement from complete dependence on one's environment to relative independence from it.
It is bias against what is true, not language, that impedes the solution of philosophical problems and the dissolution of sophistries; and this bias is rooted in the wounds of original sin: craving for more proximate goods, regardless of reason; faltering of resolve and inconsistency of decision and choice; failure to think in light of what is true and good and noble, even to the point of Eichmann-like shallowness; and the perversity, plain and simple, whereby we take things as good merely because we do them and thus call good evil and evil good as it fits our whim and desire. Because these wounds are never eliminable, even very bad error is difficult to root out.
Every philosophical error gets its plausibility either from human sin, or from approximation to a truth, or from both.
Experimental controls are means of rational comparison; they prevent you from taking the data at face-value and require you to ask, "Compared to what?"
the control of intellectuals by material incentives as a major factor in stagnation
analogical products noncommutative
Intellectual progress is never step-by-step. Rather, at every stage inquiry has a teleological character, and what we call 'progress' or 'degeneration' is a sort of vector result arrived at when we take into account all the teleologies and the sucesses and failures in fulfilling them.
We oppose temptation most successfully not with resolve of will but with fidelity to others.
para-philosophical phenomena
Just as there is no universal strategy for winning games, so there is no universal method of rationality.
Formal systems, programs, recipes, geometrical constructions, languages, texts, are all intellectual residues.
One rule concerning the art of reasonable discourse is: one must pay special attention to the order.
People can be optimizing in their aims but satisficing in their evaluations of success.
The choice to punish using (say) a fine rather than (say) death is not a costless choice; it uses moral capital (so to speak).
Inability to reason about schema-inconsistent agents is an inability to abstract social information about minds from ordinary experiences.
Prudence prevents virtues from becoming vices.
Every problem is the beginning of a solution to some other problem.
teaching as the prolegomena to civilization
We should not confuse the claim that science is a kind of methodical inquiry with the claim that science is a kind of method.
practices, problems, affiliations
reasonable supposition
(1) it looks like things that are true
(2) we can tell a plausible story in which it is true
(3) we can give at least a decent reason to think it is in fact true
- these involve supposing something true. But we may suppose X w/o supposing it actually to be true (e.g., suppositions for the sake of argument)
real-node typology of positions & fictional-node typology of positions
How would you define the weights of links with fictional nodes?
- resemblance, number, affinity
wholeness, harmony, brilliance
philosophical progress
(1) suavitas: ability to develop generous & profound visions of important things
(2) subtilitas: systematizing and detail-work
- philosophical degeneration corresponds:
(2) obscuritas
(1) licentia
