As usual with this sort of post, just sorting through my constant note-taking. Everything with spoons and buckets of salt, and all that.
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the use of cinematographical criticism to track features of the narrative structure of reasoning (composition, mood, plot device)
- e.g., normal reasoning not uncommonly has juxtaposition of flashbacks with current reasoning to build a point
An educational system not grounded on the cultivation of teaching by good example is an educational system doomed to fail.
fields as intermediate tertium quid between action by contact and action at a distance
In any sufficiently complex society we can say that each person, deliberately or not, exhibits racism, sexism, etc. in some form. In the best cases this is merely the residue of the age, which constantly settles on us all alike, in others it is worse, to the degree that infection is allowed to take root.
Human survival is always based on more than a drive to survive or a drive to pass on genes -- in part because such drives are not wholly effective at their aims in comparison with other aims. More genes are passed on from the drive to love and be loved than from a drive to reproduce, which few of us have as such in a very strong or efficient form, anyway. More people survive from the same drive than from a sheer push to survive. Indeed, we none of us have a 'drive to pass on our genes', although we have drives that result in passing on our genes and thus survive insofar as they are genetically linked. It is remarkable how even many who insist that evolution has no purposes fail to grasp this point.
Air is a standard symbol of anything that cannot be seen but nonetheless has effects, because wind is the most obvious instance of such a thing.
'field' as a generalization of affinity once the latter is conceived of as a kind of contiguity
We know from experience that we can feel pleasure and pain at the same time, for instance, if they are due to two different things.
scale failure for arguments
Facts confirm or disconfirm theories relative to a framework for applying them to theories.
Extend trust but minimize temptation.
each clause of the Lord's Prayer as giving a reason for confidence in God
something necessary vs. some necessary thing
Calvin regards preaching as the only method for expressing the power of the Keys (Inst. 3.4 sect. 19). - but he also includes excommunication (Inst. 3.4 sect. 23)
Doctrine does not consist merely of propositions -- images, practices, concepts, and the like also can be taught.
Hello, heart's desire; meet despair.
She is lovely, is she not, and moonlight-fair.
truth, action, help
Christ's baptism: he shares in our repentance, not in having sinned, but in transforming His mind so as to begin His ministry
Whether you realize it or not, your opponents train you to respond in kind. Therefore choose your opponents well.
demoplutocracy
the Paternoster as a petition for the gifts of the Holy Spirit
"Those who cling to their own judgment so as to mistrust others and trust in themselves alone invariably prove themselves fools and are judged as such." Aq
In the Paternoster, we do not pray in our own person but in the person of the Church, & more fundamentally Christ its Head.
Forgiveness and repentance do not remove all penalty but, as it were, change punishment into purification.
"By patience we obtain peace whether times be good or evil." Aquinas
Systematic intellectual study is the outgrowth of a community.
The New Testament "consists in the infusion of the Holy Spirit who instructs interiorly." (Aq In Heb. 82. sect. 404)
We should love all, but, not being in a position to profit all, love requires that we profit most those we can profit best because of our union with or relation to them.
the things of the Tabernacle and the Temple as representations of divine magnificence
wisdom : tablets of law :: power : rod :: goodness : pot of manna (intimations of presence)
tablets of law : lamps :: manna : shewbread :: rod : altar (intimations in approach)
to speak the truth of the Lord in tavern and tabernacle
two kinds of petitio principii
(1) ignotum per ignotum
(2) ignotum per ignotius
lagom-based society (lagom in society, temperance in soul)
Where there is no trust there is no honesty.
The connection of interest to action is given a measure of indeterminacy due to the ability to deliberate; or, in other words, superior interest's issuance into a particular action is always evitable by deliberation, and therefore must be described in terms of its place in a field of distribution of probabilities.
It is demonstrably the case that there are opposites that are not exact opposites.
One can engineer with precision without being able to predict with precision -- e.g., by tinkering -- and one can predict with precision without being able to engineer with precision -- e.g., through lack of a causal mechanism.
collapse, division, merger
The propitiation of those who have been wronged is a key element in just reconciliation, and in such a way that it more often is needed for the propitiator than for the propitiated.
mythologies of morals
secularizations of sacrificial concepts
The old slogan, libertée;, egalité, fraternité is exactly right: w/o fraternity there is no truly fair set of freedoms; without liberty there can be no lasting solidarity of equals; without equality there can be no amiable face to freedom.
To allow circular demonstration would be to treat all demonstrables as convertibles.
To claim that a demonstration presupposes infinitely many prior demonstrations is to claim that there are definitions with infinitely many elements.
three facets of death
(1) the natural cause (we are composite beings)
(2) the gift of immortality ( original justice issuing into the soul's certain grip on the body)
(3) the merit of death (whereby we do not merit the gift and by demirt are cause sof death and must take responsibility for it)
Torah is the shadow of glory and Gospel the image of it.
The distinction between understanding (intelligentia) and knowledge (scientia) guarantees that one may grasp a principle, fully and properly, yet not see its limits, for the latter pertains to conclusions demonstrable from the principles.
Faith becomes a virtue by being ordered toward beatitude.
anger as the impulse to vindicate
Anger is detrimental to liberty insofar as it suppresses reason rather than being corrected by it.
A sin that is less blameful may be more shameful and vice versa.
Detraction, theft, etc. take on a special social significance because they are such that restitution and repair are quite commonly difficult, and this can be troublesome for social peace. Thus they lend themselves naturally to treatment by law, which cna regularize prevention, punishment, and reparation.
Ordination and matrimony are sacraments perfecting the life of the whole Churhc; for through them both the assistance of nature and the strength of grace pour out into all the rest of the Church.
Even setting aside questions of sin and wrongdoing, piety itself, in various forms, serves to construct basic structures of government.
Lex aeterna is pure and universal rationality, to which other kinds of rationality approach, so that to extent a kind of rationality approaches it, to that extent excels as rationality. (This is speaking in terms of practical reason.)
Given the ideas of good that we discover by (say) sentiment, we can compare these ideas so as to examine on their own the relations of these ideas.
If human life were not in some way good but instead the reverse, "We ought not to take human life" could not be justified; but the reverse is not true, because human life can be good even were "We ought not to take human life" not justifiable. Further, the fact that human life is good has a more extensive role in reasoning than the dictum that we ought not to take it, which concerns only actions.
Lying is wrong because it disassociates one's character from the goodness of truth.
The notion of a right presupposes the notion of what is proper to someone, or, more colloquially, what belongs to someone, where 'belongs' is fairly general.
Not all immediate principles are principles of demonstration: singular and particular propositions may be immediate but not suffice for demonstration.
"Properly basic beliefs" are really opinions based on experience (sensible or otherwise) rather than other opinions. "Justified belief" is simply well-founded opinion.
The reason it makes some sort of sense to say taht something becomes property by your 'mixing your labor' with it is that in this way the thing becomes in some way yours; it is your own in some way. But that something is your own in ssome way does not entail that it is your own in the way required by discussions of what we call property, i.e., the way relevant to ownership in the strict sense.
In Descartes's view we learn about the nature of the soul through meditation by pure intellect, about the nature of the body through mathematical use of imagination, and about the nature of their union from the practices of living a life.
The family is an emblem of the Trinity insofar (and only insofar) as it exhibits condilection.
Every faculty of the soul can be said to have a 'theology'; for just as we think about God, we feel and imagine when we think about God. And which 'theology' you prioritize will affect your actual theological views. But these 'theologies' are not all on par, and a theology based on a sensibility, e.g., a phenomenology of the sense of the unconditioned, or on imagination, e.g., theological personalism with design, will be seriously defective if not corrected by the development of the 'theology' of the higher faculties.
The cogitative power mediates between imagination and intellect by (perhaps) organizing imaginations into experienceable groups by similarities and analogies. For instance, a striking feature of direct experience is that some things seem animate, self-moving, and some don't. Of those that do we find some interact, like humans, some move around, like other animals, and some merely grow, like plants. When we think of things that have such features, it presents us with a template, so to speak, base don these precedents and analogies of experience.
- how much of this can be handled by association in the imagination itself?
Catechism should not only teach dogmas; it should also teach icons.
testimony of justice as an effect of faith
faith as sparking a desire for justice (cf. Rom. 10:10)
unity of citizenship
(1) through peace
(2) through justice
(3) through mutual interaction so as to be self-sufficient as a body
(4) through shared stabilities
All the world's a symbol-set searching for its Logos.
idea development through stigmergy
It is the place of rhetoric and poetics, not analytics, to make language clear, elegant, and efficient.
Subalternation & universal instantiation as both following from dictum de omni
Vainglory builds a facade of reason for itself by substituting the perspective of a partial spectator for an impartial one.
True diligence is an act of love; all other forms are imitations.
sloth & the feeling of being besieged and alone
Since prudence opposes all vices, every vice defends itself by creating its own false prudence.
the bookishness of some virtues
If representation by State is not democratic representation, the Federal government cannot represent the people in (e.g.) the United Nations: the principles are the same.
depravity, deprivation, suffering, death
ameliorating grace
charity to travelers by hospitality, to prisoners by compassion, to the poor by assistance
Eliminating hypotheses is, in general, an inefficient form of inquiry. It only becomes valuable under certain conditions, namely those that have already yielded a reasonable basis for understanding how different hypotheses are relvant and capable of being eliminated in a reasonably clean way.
"Nature is as free as air: art is forced to look probable." GKC
belief revision by term refinement
affective register for an argument
A claim that seems trivial in one context may in another be of great moment.
a language in which interrogative is the default mood -- declarative requiring an evidentiary particle and imperative a particle of imposition
a historical sociology of philosophy in terms of its practices (& internal goods) & institutions (& exteral goods)
practice of philosophical inquiry
of philosophical teaching
of philosophical dispute
each of which requires the establishment of standards of excellence and virtues (excellences) of person
each of which requires the adaptation and use of institutions, which are capable of both furthering and impeding the practices
Is the virtue of constancy in Austen best seen as an important special virtue, or as a general feature of all virtue?
expedient agreeableness vs. true amiability
the one, the true, the good, the beautiful as ends of philosophical inquiry
The mean of virtue defines a range, not a point.
If it is worth thinking through philosophically, it is worth saying poetically.
Paleyan biology, like Paleyan ethics, is utilitarian.
Fusion is pretty much thoroughly useless for a mereology of arguments; arguments must be taken as given, not as being every which-way composed, and nothing about a fusion of premises makes it an argument.
catascopia as a function of philosophy
Hearing is especially suitable for faith because one may recognize by hearing things not available to sight.
3 elements of a sustainable business
(1) ethical interaction
(2) logical planning
(3) favorable mathematics
strategic vindications of probable inferences
We work so as to have good leisure.
concepts simultaneously ethical and religious (e.g., saintliness)
philosophy as midwivery (Theaetetus)
as assimilation to God (Theat.)
as practice for dying (Phaedo)
obligations of consistency maintenance
obligations of inference recognition
May you know the truth and in it see
where you were its steadfast enemy
Thus I curse you; so mote it be
May you find the good in purity
and know that you have not been free
Thus I curse you; so mote it be
the signs on the page are as prayer.
