Dashed Off XIX

the alchemy of analogy

Most arbitration in human life is just arbitration by strength and skill; other forms, while common enough, are islands in a sea of negotiation by force and ingenuity.

Although Richard II says, 'Is not the King's name twenty thousand names?' it is Henry V whose name actually shows it to be true (2 Henry VI). Note too that Henry V does not make Richard's mistake of indulging false advisors.
Note Richard III's comment on the King's name (RIII Act V, Scene 3).

As Jewish Torah is to natural religion as square is to line, so Christian Christ is to Torah as cube to a square. Thsu any great public revelation after must be as tesseract to Christ, which none have been, and none shall be until Christ Himself be shown in His own exponentiation in His wedding feast of glory, united to His Bride, the New Jerusalem, the Mystical Body, in full revelation. Thus we may say of any supposed improvement on Christianity: Does this really take Christ, the Word Incarnate, as manifest in the Gospel, and raise Him to a power?

Richard III (in 3 Henry VI) & purely positivistic accounts of oaths

'And what makes robbers bold but too much lenity?'

the 'love which virtue begs and virtue grants'

Culture is a cooperative venture.

the role of vestment in dance
Dance is more properly a context than a (bare) motion, despite the importance of the latter. Because of this it has a curious affinity to architecture. (But music for the performer also has something of this quality.)
Dance must be made, produced; otherwise it is just a fidget.
the factibility of dance
the imitaiton of dance by breath, of breath by dance

conditions for public accessibility of service
(1) affordability (money)
(2) flexibility (time)
(3) proximity (place)
(4) preparation (preconditions)
(5) existence
(6) visibility (knowledge)

The gloomy sky on verge of tears
may smile with rainbows;
so too, my love, take heart,
have hope, look up, take cheer.

the series of lapses in Genesis as recapitulating various aspects of the Fall

evangelizing as an act of Tradition

Purgatory presupposes true repentance and love of God.

protection of Eucharist as an especial duty of the Pope (Feed my sheep)

Confirmation and disconfirmation are both just reasoning about the aboutness or intentionality of theories and hypotheses.

To have a rational certainty that one is right one must first consider what could make you wrong.

The general structure of most naturalistic accounts:
(1) We know naturalism is true by clairvoyance.
(2) Everything else follows.

How one knows something cannot be ignored in argument because the status of premises (and thus the evaluation of arguments) partly rests on it.

Many forms of analogical reasoning are also comparative forms of causal or structural analysis.

Knowing that fire is a form of oxidation is for many people little more than recognition of the analogy between rust and flame. Popular understanding of the sciences is largely a system of analogies warranting inference. (For that matter, scientists themselves often fall back on such analogies, particularly in discovery and in pedagogy.)

Faith, completing reason, completes its social aspect as well.

museums as structures of subsidy -- 'draws' like the Mona Lisa make possible the protection and display of much more, so that hte prestige of the 'draw', and its capacity aon that basis to draw money from visitors and governments, subsidizes much more

Eliminativism about intentionality entails solipsism; there is no way to get out of the head unless we can think about things outside the head.

virtual quantity as quality -- work, force, etc., are measured as virtual quantities

concupiscence as twisting what it craves into itself (Albert the Great) -- but as Aquinas notes one may have non-self-regarding concupiscence

experience as analogous to saccades

passions are marking thoughts for practical classification

Note how common it is to think of death as requiring toll payment -- Styx, Sanzu, the tollbooths of Orthodox tradition) -- and as hazardous (Totpenpasse, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Vaitarna)

the counter-coercive powers of citizens
The freedom of a society is protected less by the official limits of the government than by the power of the citizenry to enforce those limits.

'the King must be himself' (found in Richard II, 1 Henry IV, and 2 Henry IV) -- cp. the 'the warlike Harry like himself' in Henry V

If something seems to be X, then there is at least something that is evidence of X, even if it is misleading evidence.

Subordinating reasoning in general to persuasion cuts out anything that does not appeal to the stupid and the prejudiced.

sex as consent to parenthood

the mereological structures of government
note that overlap, while occasionally found, is not especially natural -- governments tend to be structured by proper parts

things so good that trying for them is worthwhile even at risk of failure or loss

It takes a lot to beat dancing out of a human being. Remarkably, though, it is sometimes done.

Every marriage is an act of godlike ambition.

internal emulations of the Great Philosophical Conversation

ritual as philosophical compression

Intelligence increases the ability to see one's own errors, and even foresee them, but only so far.

the image of the Free Society as the 'teaching picture' of our age

the battle between the world and its future

Artificial intelligence requires group intentionality.

4 causes of scientific inquiry:
intentionality (mind), measurement, sensible phenomena, finality (intellectual ends)

body as sub-subject, as co-subject, as extra-subject

In the Mass we proclaim the Life of Christ, in both type and antitype, in both Himself and in the Church His sign, and then participate the Life of Christ so as to be the Church His Body.

monogamy as the first step in rule of law

distraction-based society (cp. Pascal)

absences as quasi-signs
related to negation-as-failure

Purgatory is completion of penance, for purification is completion of repentance.

4 kinds of certitude
(1) demonstration
(2) authority
(3) interior illumination
(4) external persuasion

Three things can carry one's inquiry into sublime matters: perversity, study, and love.

The illumination saints give by word and example implies a source that illuminates by nature.

"Truth slightly hidden becomes more acceptable once it becomes clear." Bonaventure

the Life of Christ as the norm for sacramental economy

Self-examination is necessary before correcting and after punishing.

Reforming and rushing never go well together.

mercy as subcreation

Insinuation signifies manifestation of will by telling without ordering.

the Church itself as the pragmatic vindication of sacred doctrine

Through art in its artistic inspiration we can know our smallness before god; and by this inspiration, like a magnetic field, we are joined together.

the magnet metaphor in ion and the nature of tradition

finality, functionality, proper intentionality
compositions of finalities into functions

Theory of intentionality is linked to theory of external world.
conceivability, causality, historical-contextuality, and instrumentalist structures of the external world
(external world as conceptual role, as causal role, as etiological history, as useful idea or stance)
-- the obvious desideratum is that these be unified

the indeterminacy of the empirical with respect to the external world

first person perspective and external world (relating to external world as intersubjective medium)

Guilt and contrition are not the same.

Calvin on Ps 72, and the liturgical commonwealth

relics as 'a piece of history'

The questionableness of a research practice is generally related to the failure to include it in the causal reasoning of the research.

Scripture as internal repair system

Faith is an assent not to articles but to a whole truth that may be articulated, i.e., to that of which articles are the anatomical diagram.

Some evidence becomes recognizable as evidence only through careful reflection.

the tendency of liberal societies to use 'free speech' or 'free expression' as a substitute to compensate for the lack of a substantive notion of justice

One of the things that ontological arguments show is that whether an argument can be classified as begging the question depends on the theory of knowledge that is assumed.

The existence of a meaningful average is something that must always be established never assumed.

the notion of a crime scene
decomposable into evidential signs
this seems to involve a distinction between the nomically regular and usual, on the one hand, and the anomalous and atypical on the other
crime scene analysis as the reverse-engineering of the effects of machines in a space (angle of entry, etc.)

love as not confusing the superficial and the substantial

Reasoning qua method is always instrumental to reasoning qua skill.

conditions for just wage
(1) dignity of work
(2) integrity of worker's family
(3) security of worker
(4) freedom of worker (from what creates a degrading dependency)

parallels between different accounts of time travel and different approaches to consistency in argument
the root of the parallel is obviously directional forms of modal logic
raises question of Since and Until functions in consistency contexts

proofs in diagnostic mode vs proofs in persuasive mode

ceremony as lived calendar

Error, merely considered as such, is less dangerous to inquiry than might be thought, because the erroneous would have to be considered anyway; part of understanding the significance of the true is knowing the implications of its false alternatives.