Writers, Like Other Mendicants and Mountebanks

Paradox has been defined as "Truth standing on her head to attract attention." Paradox has been defended; on the ground that so many fashionable fallacies still stand firmly on their feet, because they have no heads to stand on. But it must be admitted that writers, like other mendicants and mountebanks, frequently do try to attract attention. They set out conspicuously, in a single line in a play, or at the head or tail of a paragraph, remarks of this challenging kind; as when Mr. Bernard Shaw wrote: "The Golden Rule is that there is no Golden Rule"; or Oscar Wilde observed: "I can resist everything except temptation"; or a duller scribe (not to be named with these and now doing penance for his earlier vices in the nobler toil of celebrating the virtues of Mr. Pond) said in defence of hobbies and amateurs and general duffers like himself: "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." To these things do writers sink; and then the critics tell them that they "talk for effect"; and then the writers answer: "What the devil else should we talk for? Ineffectualness?" It is a sordid scene.

G. K. Chesterton, "When Doctors Agree," The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond. This is one of my very favorite Chesterton stories. All the Mr. Pond stories start by putting their puzzles in the form of paradoxes; the paradox for this one is that two men once agreed so completely that one of them naturally murdered the other one. The rest of the tale unfolds how this can be true, and the characterization of the benevolently ruthless philanthropist is quite splendid.

A Buddhist Parable

A man set out on a journey to sit at the feet of the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, who lived on a far mountain. It was a long journey and he was an old man, and it took him many months before the mountain even was in view. Upon seeing it, he stopped and asked an old woman working in a field how many days away the mountain was.

The old woman looked at him a moment, then went back to her work. Assuming she was hard of hearing, he asked her the same question in a louder tone of voice. Again she looked at him without speaking and then went back to her work.

Shrugging his shoulders, the man assumed that she was nearly deaf, and began again to walk toward the mountain. He had scarcely walked a dozen or so steps when he heard the old woman behind him say, "Two days! You will reach the mountain in two days."

Turning back to her angrily, the man said, "I had thought you were deaf. Why did you not answer my question when I asked it?"

The old woman shook her head. "When you asked the question you were standing still. How could I know how long it would take you to reach the mountain if I did not know how quickly you would walk, or with what resolve?"

Music on My Mind

historyteachers, "Chinese Dynasties." They have a number of good ones, including one for Thomas Aquinas*, but I think this is the one that works the best.

* Incidentally, I notice that there's a dispute in the comments section about whether "Aquinas was his name" is technically correct, the argument being that 'Aquinas' merely means 'of Aquino'. While this is right, the argument seems to me to assume naming conventions that don't apply in Latin, in which agnominal and cognominal names (of various kinds, depending on the era) were a tradition extending at least a millenium and a half before St. Thomas. It's like arguing that Karinsdatter can't be a name because it's just the description, 'daughter of Katherine' or 'daughter of Karen'; this, however, is to make an illicit conflation of distinct conventions of naming. Such is my two-cent contribution, anyway.

MacIntyre on Philosophy and Universities

Philosophy is in any case a social and not a solitary form of enquiry. It requires a setting in which different and rival answers to philosophical questions can be proposed and objections to each considered in detail, so that such answers may be revised or rejected and such objections themselves subjected to critical scrutiny. And, if the enquiries of philosophy are to be sustained enquiries, as they need to be, they must be continued through different philosophical generations, each of which in turn has to be introduced through teaching to the enquiries and debates that have made philosophical questions what they have become in that particular time and place. Moreover philosophy cannot but draw upon the findings and insights of other disciplines. So that the type of institutionalized setting in which it is most likely to flourish is that of a college or university.

Alasdair MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities. Rowman & Littlefield (New York: 2009) p. 17. The overall profile is right, although I think history shows that colleges and universities oscillate under social pressures between approximating this profile -- social, examining alternative answers, critical scrutiny, recognition of historical features of discussions, interaction among disciplines -- and deviating from it considerably, even setting aside the point MacIntyre goes on to argue, namely, that philosophy can be strongly affected by the principles of unified education on which the college or university bases itself.

Detection Club Ten Commandments

Another thing for which Ronald Knox is famous is the 'Ten Commandments' he proposed for the Detection Club:

I. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.
II. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
III. No more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
IV. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
V. No Chinaman must figure into the story.
VI. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
VII. The detective must not, himself, commit the crime.
VIII. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
IX. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but only very slightly, below that of the average reader.
X. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

The Chinaman rule is to prevent the villainous deed from being pawned off on mysterious foreigners. An interesting game is to think of mystery stories that are (1) competent; and (2) break at least one rule. Probably the most famous is Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Chesterton (like a number of others) tends to play with the possibility of breaking rules without actually doing so, but at times he does produce a whoppingly good one that breaks one of the rules; one of my favorites along these lines is "Dr. Hyde, Detective, and the White Pillars Murder" -- which, indeed, is probably the best example of a good mystery story breaking the particular rule it breaks, although one can perhaps argue that it does so by arranging things so that it can both break the rule and follow it simultaneously.

Sherlockismus

Monsignor Ronald Knox died on this day in 1957. From his classic 1912 essay, Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes:

There is a special kind of epigram, known as the Sherlockismus, of which the indefatigable Ratzegger has collected no less than one hundred and seventy-three instances. The following may serve as examples:

‘Let me call your attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.’
‘The dog did nothing at all in the night-time.’
‘That was the curious incident,’ said Sherlock Holmes.

And again:

‘I was following you, of course.’
‘Following me? I saw nobody.’
‘That is what you must expect to see when I am following you,’ said Sherlock Holmes.

This is the essay that is usually credited with initiating the "Grand Game," by which one conducts scholarly investigations on the Sherlock Holmes stories on the assumption that Watson and Holmes were real people.

His A Spiritual Aeneid, his account of how he became Catholic, is also worth reading.

Paradox of Suspense

I've talked before about the paradox of fiction, about the paradox of tragedy, about a possible paradox of comedy,and about the paradoxes of expressive music. This is by no means the end of paradoxes associated with the arts. Today I'd like to say something about another such paradox, the paradox of suspense.

In simple form, the paradox of suspense involves the apparent conflict between three apparently obvious claims:

(1) Suspense requires uncertainty.
(2) Knowing what will happen precludes uncertainty.
(3) We can find something suspenseful even when we know what will happen.

The paradox can be made even more acute than this makes it sound. One of Alfred Hitchcock's major suspense techniques, for instance, was to make sure that the audience knew what would happen. It wasn't his only technique, but very often in a Hitchcock movie, he will give you some crucial detail that the characters lack. They don't know what will happen -- but you do. And, of course, it's that sort of thing that, done well, has viewers shouting at the screen for the character to get out because the killer is in the apartment with them. That seems very odd, if you think about it: sometimes things can be more suspenseful if you reduce the uncertainty. The character isn't in suspense precisely because he or she doesn't know anything; but we know, and are on the edge of our seats.

There are three basic ways to handle the paradox. You could reject (3). The major approach people have taken to rejecting (3) has been to propose what is known as emotional misidentification accounts of suspense. If you know that a character will die, you can't be in suspense about it, this view says. Obviously you do feel something. So you must feel something that you are confusing with suspense. Robert Yanal argues, for instance, that you really feel fear, and think it is suspense. The difficulty all emotional misidentification accounts face is in explaining how we make the error. The emotion we confuse for suspense has to be so close to suspense that people commonly confuse it with suspense; but at the same time it has to be sharply different from suspense in not require uncertainty. Fear is an emotion that might plausibly be confused with suspense, for instance; but does it really not require uncertainty? Likewise, fatalistic dread seems to be something broadly in the vicinity of suspense that also doesn't require uncertainty, but is it really so close to suspense that we can easily mistake the one for the other?

You could instead reject (2). The major proposal for rejecting (2) is Gerrig's momentary forgetting account. On Gerrig's proposal, we can know what will happen, but we get so caught up in the story we forget it for a moment. The difficulty is that the knowledge still seems to be in play: if you know exactly what will happen, you notice things that you otherwise wouldn't, no matter how caught up in the story you may be. In general, any rejection of (2) is going to have to say that part of us is certain and part of us is not. This sort of thing does happen; but we'd need precise details of how it would work.

That leaves (1). Perhaps the major proposal for rejecting (1) is Aaron Smuts's desire frustration account. Smuts argues that we don't need uncertainty to experience suspense; all we need is a strong desire to change things, combined with an ongoing inability actually to do so. We want to make a difference -- we want that character out of the apartment -- but we have no way of making it. Uncertainty can enter into this -- it could be that there is some small chance that the character will leave. But it need not. One of the difficulties with this account is that we sometimes seem to feel suspense when it would be very difficult to pin down anything we strongly desire. Watching a very close game, you can feel suspense even if you don't care who wins. The basic issue here is that we can feel suspense when we are wrapped up in the events transpiring; so the question becomes, Do we really need strong desire to change things in order to become wrapped up in the unfolding story?

I'm not convinced any of these are particularly adequate as proposals; I think there is something to be said for rejecting (2), but Gerrig's particular version doesn't seem to be an adequate version of that. I also think there's something to be said for rejecting (3), and Smuts's proposal is a really good proposal for doing so; but I'm not convinced it actually covers all suspense -- in particular, I'm not convinced that strong desire to change things is necessary for the strong feeling of caring about what happens that lets us get wrapped up in the story and feel suspense. What do you think?

Quasi-Moorean Flavor

Moore's Paradox is a well-known epistemological paradox; in it we notice some something wrong with statements of the general form:

I believe such-and-such, but it is not true.

You can certainly believe that other people can believe things that are definitely false; and you can also believe that you yourself probably believe some false things, but if you could identify which ones were false, you couldn't still reasonably believe them. The point, of course, is not so much about psychology -- an ingenious writer could come up with a scenario in which someone could say it and it would make sense in context -- but about reasonable belief -- the ingenious writer's scenario would have to be one in which something strange and unreasonable is going on. And the most obvious implication of this is that belief has something to do with truth by its very nature.

Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse have a post at "3 Quarks Daily" that suggests that the following have what they call a "quasi-Moorean flavor":

[1] I believe that p, but my evidence has been rigged in order to favor p.

[2] I believe that p, but my sources of information are highly censored by those who favor p.

[3] I believe that p, but my evidence is unreliable and spotty.

[4] I believe that p, but my evidence is consistent with not-p.

[5] I believe that p, but all critics of p have been intimidated into silence or otherwise marginalized.

[6] I believe that p, but I always lose well-conducted arguments with reasonable critics of p.

Except for the first, if it is taken to suggest that I have made up the evidence for my belief, I don't think any of these are quasi-Moorean, in flavor or otherwise. Take [2]: this is entirely consistent with reasonable behavior, because it could very well be that this is just a mistake on the part of others who favor the belief in question. Sometimes, through prejudice, or ignorance, or pressure, people simply do not trust arguments that are actually good arguments. [5] is an uncomfortable situation to be in, socially, but it is entirely consistent with it actually being the case that all the best arguments and reasons support p. [6] is a little complicated because there is no single sense in which one can 'lose' or 'win' an argument; in most arguments you can identify losses and wins, of very different kinds, for both sides. But [6] is also consistent with my being a poor arguer, or my not understanding my reasonable critics' arguments well enough to be able to give them their proper refutations. Arguing with critics can be difficult: sometimes reasonable critics come at a problem from such a different perspective that it's difficult to know what to say to their arguments without much thought (and sometimes much subsidiary argument).

[3] and [4] are somewhat different. For [3] unreliable and spotty evidence may well be the only evidence one has, and may still support p much better than not-p. Historians, I think, are often in this position: there are always areas in historical study in which (current) evidence is pathwork and uncertain, but in which it still supports one side of a dispute better than the other. Historical evidence doesn't just fall into one's lap; it needs to be distilled, sometimes over many years. There may be decades in which the only evidence at all is weak, uncertain, and limited. But during those decades that weak, uncertain, and limited evidence may provide at least some basic support for one position over its alternatives. In [4] I suspect Aikin and Taliss are using 'consistent' in an unusual way; lots of reasonable beliefs are based on evidence consistent with opposing beliefs, because most evidence allows for more than one interpretation. But the fact that evidence allows for alternative interpretations doesn't mean that all the interpretations are equally reasonable.

I think that what worries me about the argument here is that labeling these as quasi-Moorean doesn't take into account the actual nature of inquiry. In actual inquiry, one often has to guess; but not all guesses are equally reasonable, and some guesses turn out later to receive at least some evidential confirmation later, with no such confirmation turning up for rival guesses. In such a situation, why wouldn't one believe one's guess to be right? To be sure, the evidence is weak and limited, and it could very well turn out that new evidence will show later that even our interpretation of the old evidence wasn't quite right -- but even so, the weak and limited evidence we have might so far be unchallenged, the guess may well be a reasonable extrapolation from plausibly analogous cases, and the work showing any flaws in our reasoning might be extraordinarily difficult, or even require some ingenious way of approaching the problem that we have not yet thought up.

I also find it somewhat strange that they come to the conclusion that responsible believing requires "an Open Society of the kind championed by J. S. Mill, Karl Popper, Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, and John Rawls." Their argument suggests that if you don't live in such an Open Society, even through no fault of your own, you can't responsibly believe anything at all. This seems simply absurd. I once wrote a (somewhat mediocre) paper on Longino in grad school, arguing that considerations of good science couldn't be divorced from certain kinds of ethical values, and one of the arguments was that not all social values are equally consistent with effective scientific practice. Although I would approach the matter differently today, I still think that social values play a major role in inquiry, and that the quality of one's inquiry can be affected by the society in which one is conducting it. But this is a very different argument than one suggesting that we can't have responsible inquiry at all unless we have "a social epistemic system marked by norms of free inquiry, freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, and reasonable disagreement." All these things are truly important for inquiry, but clandestine inquiry in an oppressive society may sometimes be quite as responsible as any other; it is simply false to say, as Aikin and Taliss do, that "Proper epistemological practice entails democratic social norms." There is no entailment between the two, no matter how conducive the latter may be to the former.

Some Links of Note

* Excerpts from Thomas Aquinas's childhood journal

* R. C. Sproul on Moby Dick.

* Matthias Shapiro looks at Texas job numbers. The short of it is that, contrary to some naysayers, they look quite good; yes, a massive amount of it is energy, but much of it is not; Texas unemployment seems to a great extent due to immigration exceeding job creation rather than flagging job creation; and public sector is a contributor but not a major one. There are some other things a full analysis would have to consider; for instance, one of Texas's major advantages throughout this period has been the fact that its mortgage regulations were unusually strict to begin with, and this combined with relatively low taxes and a management-friendly economic policy have made Texas a magnet for certain kinds of businesses. Karl Smith notes some of the complications in interpreting such data. But these get into more complicated issues. However one interprets the data here, one thing that is certain is that Texans need more Presidential candidates saying controversial things about the superior position of the Texan economy; not because Texas governors can really and truly take credit for such things, but because there has never been so much available to the general public, and so easily, for getting a good sense of the economic situation of Texas.

* Oohlah argues for taking 'experimental philosophy' seriously as an area of specialization.

* John Wilkins argues for abolishing the cohort system of education.

* Sperber & Mercier, Reasoning as a Social Competence (PDF)

* Elizabeth Anderson, The Epistemology of Democracy

* I'm looking for good book-length texts on dialogical logic and belief dynamic logics. Does anyone have any to recommend?

ADDED LATER

* Jack Layton, leader of Canada's New Democratic Party, died today at age 61.

* Catarina Dutilh-Novaes discusses the importance of abbaco schools in the development of algebraic notation.

* John Baez, & John Huerta, The Strangest Numbers in String Theories (PDF). This is a paper on octonions. More discussion by Baez here.

* Rishidev Chaudhuri on mathematical learning.

Hume and the French School

In my previous post on the French School I noted the Cartesians as one link between the French School and philosophy. Here is another, one that would perhaps be less expected.

Such a miserable disappointment I scarce ever remember to have heard of. The small distance betwixt me and perfect health makes me the more uneasy in my present situation. It is a weakness rather than a lowness of spirits which troubles me, and there seems to be as great a difference betwixt my distemper and common vapours, as betwixt vapours and madness. I have noticed in the writings of the French mystics, and in those of our fanatics here, that when they give a history of the situation of their souls, they mention a coldness and desertion of the spirit, which frequently returns and some of them, at the beginning, have been tormented with it many years. As this kind of devotion depends entirely on the force of passion, and consequently of the animal spirits, I have often thought that their case and mine were pretty parallel, and that their rapturous admirations might discompose the fabric of the nerves and brain, as much as profound reflections, and that warmth or enthusiasm which is inseparable from them.

David Hume, A Letter to a Physician. It would be interesting to know which French writers in particular he had in mind. Jean-Jacques Olier's Journée chrétienne, which was very popular, is a possibility.

On the Doctors of the Church

Since John of Avila has been named the 34th Doctor of the Church, this post needed some updating.

'Doctor of the Church' is a special, officially given, liturgical title in Rome's Universal Calendar: it indicates (1) saints in the universal calendar who (2) were doctors (i.e., theological teachers) and who (3) have left theological writings that (4) are of extraordinary quality and considerable value for the whole community of the faithful. It originally grew up on its own as applied to a small group of especially important theologians (Athanasius, Basil, Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great) and has since been extended outward by official recognition of a theologian as being in the same class. Because of (2) it is traditional not to consider martyrs for the title, despite a number of notable theologians in that category who fit all of the other criteria, because 'martyr' is a higher liturgical title than 'doctor' -- because of this martyrs would never be liturgically given a Mass for doctors, only for martyrs, and thus the title would be otiose. Likewise (3) is pretty restrictive; there have been some excellent theologians who don't qualify because we know of their work only indirectly and not from any writings they left (Saint Macrina comes immediately to mind). And, of course, there are extraordinarily important theologians who aren't saints in any calendar (Tertullian, Origen, Theodore Abu-Qurra). These are just some different ways of listing the Doctors of the Church for the purpose of seeing what patterns there might be.

I. By Death Year
(sometimes approximate; year in parentheses is the year they were officially recognized as Doctor of the Church; asterisks indicate approximate length of intervening interval)

368 Hilary of Poitiers (1851)
373 Athanasius
373 Ephrem the Syrian (1920)
379 Basil of Caesarea
387 Cyril of Jerusalem (1883)
390 Gregory Nazianzen
397 Ambrose of Milan
407 John Chrysostom
*
420 Jerome
*
430 Augustine
*
444 Cyril of Alexandria (1883)
450 Peter Chrysologus (1729)
*
461 Leo the Great (1754)
**************
604 Gregory the Great
***
636 Isidore of Seville (1722)
*********
735 Bede (1899)
*
749 John Damascene (1883)
******************************
1072 Peter Damian (1828)
***
1109 Anselm (1720)
****
1153 Bernard of Clairvaux (1830)
*******
1231 Anthony of Padua (1946)
****
1274 Thomas Aquinas (1568)
1274 Bonaventure (1588)
1280 Albert the Great (1931)
*********
1379 Catherine of Siena (1970)
*******************
1569 John of Avila (2011)
*
1582 Teresa of Avila (1970)
1591 John of the Cross (1926)
1597 Peter Canisius (1925)
**
1619 Lawrence of Brindisi (1959)
1621 Robert Bellarmine (1931)
1622 Francis de Sales (1877)
****************
1787 Alphonsus Liguori (1871)
**********
1897 Therese of Lisieux (1997)

II. By Birth Year
(often approximate, especially for earlier figures)

293 Athanasius
300 Hilary of Poitiers
306 Ephrem the Syrian
313 Cyril of Jerusalem
*
329 Gregory Nazianzen
330 Basil of Caesarea
337 Ambrose of Milan
*
347 Jerome
349 John Chrysostom
354 Augustine
**
376 Cyril of Alexandria
380 Peter Chrysologus
**
400 Leo I
**************
540 Gregory I
**
560 Isidore of Seville
***********
672 Bede
676 John Damascene
*******************************
1007 Peter Damian
**
1033 Anselm of Canterbury
*****
1090 Bernard of Clairvaux
**********
1195 Anthony of Padua
1206 Albert the Great (although perhaps as early as 1193)
**
1221 Bonaventure
1225 Thomas Aquinas
************
1347 Catherine of Siena
***************
1500 John of Avila
*
1515 Teresa of Avila
1521 Peter Canisius
**
1542 John of the Cross
1542 Robert Bellarmine
*
1559 Lawrence of Brindisi
1567 Francis de Sales
************
1696 Alphonsus Liguori
*****************
1873 Therese of Lisieux

III. By Year of Recognition

[Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great all received it by organically developed custom]

1568 Thomas Aquinas
**
1588 Bonaventure
*************
1720 Anselm of Canterbury
1722 Isidore of Seville
1729 Peter Chrysologus
**
1754 Leo the Great
*******
1828 Peter Damian
1830 Bernard of Clairvaux
**
1851 Hilary of Poitiers
**
1871 Alphonsus Liguori
1877 Francis de Sales
1883 Cyril of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Damascene
*
1899 Bede
**
1920 Ephrem the Syrian
1925 Peter Canisius
1926 John of the Cross
1931 Albert the Great, Robert Bellarmine
*
1946 Anthony of Padua
*
1959 Lawrence of Brindisi
*
1970 Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila
**
1997 Therese of Lisieux
*
2011 John of Avila

IV. By Number of Years from Death to Recognition
(Color Code, very rough: Patristic Era, Scholastic Era, Counter-Reformation)
[Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great all received it by organically developed custom]

1547 Ephrem of Syria

1496 Cyril of Jerusalem
1483 Hilary of Poitiers
1439 Cyril of Alexandria

1293 Leo I
1279 Peter Chrysologus

1164 Bede
1134 John Damascene

1086 Isidore of Seville

756 Peter Damian
715 Anthony of Padua

677 Bernard of Clairvaux
651 Albert the Great
611 Anselm of Canterbury

591 Catherine of Siena

442 John of Avila

388 Teresa of Avila
340 Lawrence of Brindisi
335 John of the Cross
328 Peter Canisius
314 Bonaventure
310 Robert Bellarmine

294 Thomas Aquinas
255 Francis de Sales

100 Therese of Lisieux

84 Alphonsus Liguori

V. Various Miscellaneous Lists

Because of the split between East and West there are no Eastern Doctors after Damascene, making eight in total (Hilary, Athanasius, Ephrem, Basil, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen, Cyril of Alexandria, John Damascene).

There are three Carmelites (Teresa, John of the Cross, and Therese), two Jesuits (Canisius and Bellarmine), three Dominicans (Thomas, Albert, Catherine (Tertiary)), four Franciscans (Anthony, Bonaventure, Lawrence, Francis de Sales (Tertiary)), one Redemptorist (Liguori), and five Benedictines (Isidore [it is thought], Bede, Anselm, Bernard, Peter Damian). There are three women (Catherine, Teresa, Therese), two of whom were nuns (Teresa, Therese). There are nineteen bishops, of whom two were Patriarchs of Rome (Leo, Gregory), two Patriarchs of Alexandria (Athanasius, Cyril A), two Patriarchs of Constantinople (Nazianzen, Chrysostom), and one Patriarch of Jerusalem (Cyril J). That's actually very nice balance, although notably Antioch is missing, with no plausible candidate (interesting, given how important the See has been theologically). There is one deacon (Ephrem).

Some notable and influential theologians who possibly meet all the criteria but haven't yet received the designation: Gregory of Nyssa (whose absence is very noticeable), Epiphanius of Salamis, Jeanne de Chantal, Jean Eudes, Louis de Montfort, Bernardino of Siena, Veronica Giuliani, Birgitta of Sweden, Gertrude of Helfta, John Bosco, Lorenzo Giustiniani, Antonino of Florence, Thomas of Villanova, Ignatius of Loyola, Vincent de Paul.

Some notable and influential saints who possibly meet all the criteria except being on the Universal Calendar: Clement of Alexandria, Isaac the Syrian, Hildegard von Bingen, Gregory Palamas, Symeon the New Theologian, Nerses Shnorhali.

Some notable and influential saints who would be good candidates except that they are martyrs: Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Cyprian, Boethius, Maximus the Confessor, Thomas More, Edith Stein.

Some notable and influential theologians who will possibly at some point be given the designation if their canonization process is ever completed: John Duns Scotus, John Henry Newman, Antonio Rosmini, Julian of Norwich.