As usual, notes dashed off, to be taken with a grain of salt.
Pilgrim's Progress as a chimeric melding of many allegories
To participate in a ceremony is often more instructive than hearing it explained, if that is all one has.
the prudence, justice, moderation, and fortitude required of a good historian
Advice is not a matter of conveying information.
papal privileges and powers
(1) essential to the Chair of Peter
(2) necessarily concomitant to it under certain conditions
(3) arising from customary law and confirmed by special appropriateness
(4) arising from customary law and preserved as a matter of convenience
(5) delegated under positive law
The holiness of the Church is sacramentality.
mutual confirmation among classifications
"Mythology presents the most complicated structure ever devised by human intellect; inexhaustibly rich, but at the same time most variable in its signification..." (Schlegel)
revelation as preventing men from being debased into mere instruments (Schlegel)
In baptism we are painted with the colors of glory; in confirmation we receive the means of painting in the same colors.
Techne requires logos.
design//other minds; cosmological//external world; ontological//mathematical objects
idea-, essence-, & possibility-based views of mathematics
Hume seems carefully to regiment his discussion fo the design argument so that it always corresponds to other minds known indirectly; this raises of course the issue of Berkeley, for whom D //present OM.
D <- OM -> Sublimity (cp. Reid)
Cleanthes needs a sublimity branch; but lacks anything more than a gesture toward one. Contrast this with Reid.
Hume's discussion of design is about vestiges; one poss. weakness of his argument is that so much relies on precisely this vestigial, indirect character of the inference, both for questioning the robustness of the conclusion and for questioning its viability as a ground for religion.
tradition//prudence
- the counterpart of casuistics for tradition
- prudence as ground of inner tradition
- tradition // counsel
stable vs. unstable solutions to philosophical problems
argument structure conservation from position to position
labor:end::toil:impediment
liturgy as a dialogue between God and His people
What Jews attribute to the Sabbath, Christians often attribute to the Church.
Creation of Eve // Construction of Tabernacle // Marriage
the means of the Serpent; deception, violence, seduction
3 levels of sin: misstep, breach, rebellion (Ps 106:6; I Kg 8:47; Dn. 9:5)
Cryptography is an organizing of ignorance.
definite-bad vs. not-good-enough arguments from evil (limit vs. threshold)
Repeatability and falsifiability both presuppose underlying regularities.
Abstractions do not, as such, explain; we use abstraction in explanation to understand the actual, which explains.
Ethical relativism commits one to rational relativism.
government as formed not by giving up rights but by pooling them
tradition & following wise examples
"History sacred and profane tells us, that, corruption of manners sinks nations into slavery." John Dickinson
the rational interplay of life, knowledge, play, art, sociability, practicality, religion, labor, and romance -- rational atmosphere
Mill's essays on religion can be seen as philosophical attacks on the Christian virtue of hope.
traditions as structured by authority, education, and public opinion
- there needs to be a theological study of the Councils of Toledo
Baptism is a sacrament the Christian never stops encountering.
It is an utterly remarkable feature of--and dreadful warning from--the history of higher criticism that so many figures espousing 'higher criticism' have managed to engage in extensive magical thinking about their own critical and reasoning abilities.
memory:term::testimony:proposition::tradition:argument
drink offering & martyrdom
What is important to a translation is what one denies oneself in translating.
Luke's use of proleptic narration
(a) direct textual arguments
(b) parsimony arguments
(c) external evidence arguments
Most synoptic problem discussion is really occurring on the level of parsimony, even when the text is being discussed closely.
All debates are about words; the only question is whether a given debate is about anything else.
All sacramental rites have an essential feature plus a perfecting or sealing feature like the bloom on youth-- technically dispensable but naturally linked and a sign of health.
Catholic Social Teaching, rooted in the image of God, rises through Christ the King toward resurrection in glory and life in the world to come; in no other way can it accurately be interpreted.
arguments for finality
(1) continuity with mind/function (in art and nature)
(2) genesis of mind/function
(3) analogy with mind/function
(4) intrinsic nature
self-forming vs. sustained views of the continuance of the universe
(Whitehead is good in seeing the problem and developing an attempt at a self-forming account.)
- Outside of Whitehead, this is an important problem that is neglected by modern philosopher.
- endurantist vs. perdurantist views
- Whitehead comes to the subject through a related question, or can be seen as doing so: What makes this universe the universe of before? This links the topic to issues about skepticism concerning the past.
the sense of sublimity & the sense of the unity of the cosmos
subsumptive views of continuance (mingle self-forming & sustained)
Photographs have sense and reference.
Mariological mereological morality (linked to the Marian aspect of the Church, we as children as part of Mother Mary as whole, in the way Aquinas treats of children as related to parents as part in some way to whole)
personal selfhood as extending beyond personal substance (interior castle)
three factors of degree of love
(1) intimacy
(2) knowledge
(3) duration
matrimony as the sacrament of heritage
Physical->Psychological->Testimonial
Physical->Psychological = sensation
- hallucination
- illusion (including trickery)
Psychological (memory, imagination & understanding, sensibility & drive)
- dream
- deception
- misunderstanding (including being deceived)
- distortion
- misremembering
Psychological->Testimonial = formulation
- misstatement
- defective transmission
motives of credibility like the vestments of faith
To deny faith is to deny providence in intellectual matters.
Machines fail through part failure-- part as locus of possible failure for whole
two major kinds of part failure: overload, fatigue
The governing tendency of Rand's Objectivism is absolute opposition to dialectic; it is why she insists so much on the Laws of Thought; and why she hates KAnt so much, since the antinomies are the beginning of dialectic and Kant begets Hegel begets Marx; and this opposition is the primary core of what she takes to be reason.
symbolic & rational re-enactment in tradition
Political liberty is a means that has rational use of liberty of will as its end.
Teaching by charity is teaching by example.
Unrestricted competition is class warfare with millions of classes.
A genuine just wage theory must begin with gratitude for workers, gratitude for good work, and gratitude for good opportunity.
the omen-esque character of events (an aptness for symbolism)
Analytic appeals to intuitions are modified consensus gentium arguments.
The primary responsibility of a ruler is to study the means to good.
Evils are not corrected by greater naivete about evil.
Were Jesus not Jewish, He would not be the Christ.
arguments for private property // arguments for popular government
- this seems to be so even though structurally popular government is itself more like common property (although perhaps we should be taking into account overlapping private property claims, like private property of families and firms; or perhaps the bridge is corporate personhood)
Property is an inherently genealogical idea.
private property as a remedium avaritiam
The devil's greatest ally is Missing-the-point.
RElations of ideas and matters of fact can only cover all the objects of human inquiry if they are taken to come in several varieties, some of which overlap the divide. (Modalities provide a treasury of examples of why this is necessarily so. Another is that both must fall under a single category, or both be referred to a single category, or one be referred to the other, in order to be linked in as 'Hume's Fork' links them; and this also establishes the fact that htey cannot be exhaustive unless taken loosely and with overlap.)
The dignity of fair and rational inquiry is something that strikes almost everyone who seriously contemplates it.
arguments/positions converging to indistinguishability under ideal conditions (e.g., Lyons on rule & act utilitarianism)
the ordinative power of baptism
(1) the power of customary law and agency in the liturgical commonwealth
(2) the power of executing ecclesial laws applying to oneself in such reasonable manner as one deems appropriate
(3) the power to protest and to counsel in matters concerning oneself
(4) the power of material self-protection in the face of abuses
(5) the power to negotiate through civil and ecclesial agencies
(6) the power of voluntary association
Everything produced has an exemplar cause (effects follow on determinate forms).
charity and dignity as the pillars of Christian medical practice
Sacramental character gives us something analogous to angelic knowledge of God.
the four levels of matrimony as a sacrament
(1) reason
(2) revelation
(3) grace (sacrament proper)
(4) Christ (by sign)
the threefold characteristic of the marital covenant at each level: unity, justice, totality
- the covenant itself is structured as twofold: between spouses, between spouse and God. But these are interlinked.
Tolerance is a poor substitute for charity.
truth as the lure of reasoning
The ivory tower is often not different from an intellectual ghetto.
Discrete mathematics is an art of finding middle terms to explicate certain kinds of enthymemes.
Reasoning through faith cannot be purely deductive, because our understanding of truths of faith being usually indirect it must also involve comparison of the reasoning to an archetype. This is not unique to reasoning through faith; one finds it, for instance, in ordinary reasoning in matters where perspective or practical ends are important.
logical distribution as an ordered pair
(1) natural law -- reason
(2) Torah -- reason uplifted to divine things indirectly by teaching from divine reason
(3) Church -- reason uplifted to divine things directly by union with divine reason
(4) Logos -- divine reason
the introduction of the principle of private judgment into marriage
Baptism is the mother sacrament of the Creed; orders is the mother sacrament of Canon Law.
It seems to be confirmation rather than baptism that grounds the passive magisterium and the lay apostolate, in the proper sense. Think about this.
traditions as systems of education
confirmation // presentation in the Temple
Venial sins sap the readiness to do well.
Tone may interfere with argument structure.
Tradition is an activity requiring completion in one's own reasoning and acting.
Faith, hope, and love direct us to ends outside of our own power.
Infused moral virtues, theological virtues, and gifts of the Holy Spirit are known in ourselves only by probable and plausible signs.
The principle of intersectionality guarantees social fracturing.
Prohibiting tone policing solidifies the power of those with the social status to get away with contempt or worse without consequence.
the relation between humor and hope
All Saints as the feature of Catholicity; Peter & Paul as the feast of Apostolicity
Duplications are so common in the Pentateuch that it is seems odd that no one considers the possibility that this might sometimes be deliberate.
A tradition is guarded by its icons.
Serious methods of inquiry generally depend more on precedent than on rules.
the profound human need to put one's life on a rational basis
scene as quasi-material aspect of narrative (cp. Burke)
the Church itself as Tradition (cp Irenaeus Adv Haer 3.4.1)
The possibility of pragmatic inconsistency establishes the possibility of pragmatic circularity and vice versa.
Virtually every form of legal positivism has to import natural law elements to work -- Hart, Peczenik, and MacCormick are all good examples of this. And the reason is that law cannot really operate in isolation from reason.
Prudence requires regard for precedent; precedents function like counsels.
Advice increases the rational resources available for discussion.
OM0/D0 one's own mind
OM1/D1 another like oneself
OM2/D2 another greater than oneself
...
OMinf/Dinf God
criterial, IBE & analogical forms of recognizing one's own effects
-- the analogical will have to be of two forms:
analogy with others' effects
analogy with one's own (other) effects
-- this twofold possiblity is found in all D-ana arguments; one may, for instance, recognize designer X on analogy with oneself or on analogy with previously identified designers
-- actually, for others the latter splits into three: X itself may be a previously identified designer (cp. discovery of new work by known master)
D
(1) D-ana
(1a) D-ana-s (self)
(1b) D-ana-r (reflexive)
(1c) D-ana-o (other)
(2) D-IBE
(3) D-crit
Does Cleanthes concede the possibility of infinite regress too easily? obviously Humean principles allow him little room to maneuver, but even on Humean principles there is more problem with infinite regress than mere exhaustion of mind -- no empirical experience can include or establish infinite regress, which has no analogy to anything in our experience. (Q: How does Hume's account of equality in T affect this reasoning?) By analogy with our own experience, we may take the regress to be finite. To be sure, this might give results also not analogous -- but this must be established. The same applies to Philo's Epicurean possibility, which is not merely analogical inference from experience but also hypothesis. Since Cleanthes is willing to embrace finitistic theism, he can dismiss both the Epicurean supposition and any supposition of infinite regress quite easily; but even before this, how do they fit at all with experimental inference?
Molyneux's problem & deriving the unknown from the known
Transubstantiation is a nongradual, complete substantial conversion, neither annihilation nor creation nor material transformation, to real presence under symbolic characteristics that do not change.
IBE & pragmatic incentive
(Lipton's description of IBE as inference to the loveliest explanation seems to capture this well.) Thus taking greater understanding as the end(s) one frames the optative means in light of the evidence -- hopeful inquiry. The major difficulty, of course is avoiding stupidly optimistic inquiry. This seems to arise in general through overlooking solution desiderata that are important for the problem.
sign-to and sign-of aspects of a sign
terraforming as a symbol of philosophy
the rabbleward temptation of political movements
regular contiguous resemblance (all three admit of degree)
an analysis of the concept of home based on analyses of Aeneid, The Hobbit, & Mansfield Park
Providence works by mediations.
"By longstanding habit nature always either progresses or regresses." Chrysologus
Provision is of means to ends.
criterial arguments are semiotic arguments; the primary issue for them is reliability
- index/indicator signs seem to be the primary kind. Are there others?
sacramentalia as protections of sacraments
time table as part of the structure of actual reasoning
Metaphor as allowing the coding of one logical structure in terms of another
argument-auditing practices
reflection as the limit-case of inversion
literate programming & its analogue in argument formalization
customary tax law with minor statutory enforcement as a more reliable source of revenue
tally mathematics (tallying, grouping, m-n only defined for m>n, etc.)
proportions as the fundamental topic of arithmetic
calculation as dominated by the problem of ease of tracking operations
biological function as semiotic fit
the leonine, bovine, aquiline & human faces of philosophy
naturals
pairs of naturals - integers
pairs of integers - rationals
part, measure, operation, proportion
infinite sets as capacities to identify infinite series
prudence as a sense of metaphor
foresight, circumspection, & caution in use of metaphor
safe vs daring metaphor
objective vs intersubjective confirmation of metaphor
bridge-inference & jump-inference
Mission or sending is deliberate principiated presence.
Dwelling is mission, understood especially in light of the presence involved.
mission through command, through counsel, through consent
dedication of church as symbolic of baptism & confirmation
charity as hospitality to the indwelling Spirit
charity as
(a) desire for God
(b) hospitality to God
(c) friendship with God
(d) dwelling in God
necessitarian views of the continuance of the universe // monistic views of the self
'Forgery' is a functional term indicating how a word is used.
Acts 13:15 // Hb 13:22
Kahane's account of debunking arguments would guarantee that they are rarely of any use; it fails to consider postconfirmations & involves an uncritical notion of truth-tracking.
Much of rhetoric is impediment removal.
truth-tracking vs. truth-aptitude
The fundamental motivating principle of philosophy is that right is more fundamental than might (in reason, in politics, in everything else).
