Dashed Off XXII

Every explanation is reduplicative or aspectual. (Even total explanations are total by being of all aspects.)

kinds of commentary arising naturally out of ruminative reading

count numbers vs fixed numbers
(round numbers as perhaps intermediate conceptually between the two)

Arguments, to have their proper force, must be understood in their proper light.

To deny people the right to be proud of their heritage, whether by being one of their predecessors and doing great wrong, or by denigrating what goodness there is in the heritage, is a serious matter.

universalist arguments focusing on limits of punishment, universalist arguments focusing on limits of sin
each of these seems to break down into extent-focused and intensity-focused -- how long and how much, in a sense
A -- extent of punishment -- e.g., 'God would not be victorious'
B -- intensity of punishment -- e.g., 'God would be cruel'
C -- extent of sin -- e.g., 'No one can sin forever'
D -- intensity of sin -- e.g., 'No sin is an infinite sin'

piacular responsibility and hell

seal, trumpet, and vial as symbols of preaching

arguments as ancillary to truths rather than instead of them

Common appeals to Ockham's Razor are often excuses for accepting what one's prejudices would find most convenient.

love as participation in good

Hope anticipates union in love.

By light of faith we see that the world is rich with hints of God.

PS 51:18-19 seems to be a later prayer added to the original.

layers of problematic language
(1) slurs, etc.
(2) malassociations
(3) historical malassociations
(4) problematic phrasings

Bishops are not vicars of the Pope but successors of the Apostles.

the two key elements of poetry: to say something the right way and to suggest more than is said

Symbols and traditions are how people maintain good relations to other people they cannot personally know.

Every sacrament is a kind of sabbath.

partial identity as implying vague identity
? Are all candidates for vague identity analyzable in terms of partial identity?
This question is obviously complicated by the possibility of indeterminate parts.
if there are indeterminate parts, there is certainly vague identity, if there is partial identity.

life as playful vs life as problem-solving

Liturgy is the life's blood of holy Tradition; sacred Tradition is inherently liturgical.

"Sin is shameful only at the time we commit it. Changed into confession and repentance, it is honorable and brings salvation." (Francis de Sales)

Implicit in all evil is an initial potential for good.

Catechesis is structured by drawing all things back to Christ.

Each sui juris church is a distinctive witness to the apostolicity, unity, and dignity of the faith, and all together witness to the catholicity of the faith.

Human politics is complicated by the fact that we can see that it is appropriate to authority to rise paradisially like a mist from the ground, but authority as we find it is more likely to descend in inconstant rains.

arthapatti as fit

All sensory impressions 'contain' power and efficacy; this is precisely why we call them all impressions.

We should admit not only that with which we are acquainted but that which makes possible the acquaintance itself.

That which can be abstracted from experience is given in experience.

marriage as the most future-looking institution of ordinary civilized life

rich experience account of tragedy // soul-making theodicy

Literature shows us the importance of temptation and challenge to growth.

Most quarreling is consensual.

romance as structured by pleasure, attention, and connection

(1) We all have an obligation to care for the common good of the human race.
(2) Preservation of the species is part of the common good of the human race.
(3) A major element of the means for preservation of the species is sexual behavior.
(4) Caring for the common good of the human race involves restraining oneself for its maintenance.
(5) We should restrain our sexual behaviors to facilitate the maintenance of the common good.
(6) We should restrain our sexual behaviors so as to facilitate in general the appropriateness of sexual behavior for caring for the common good.

ineffability, noetic quality, transiency, and passivity in figurative language itself

The common goods of humanity organize civilizational priorities.

the principle of decoration and the liturgical commonwealth

two forms of victory: over temptation and over challenge

stable goods, cycles of goods, ecosystems of goods

ecology as a science of a particular kind of good

pity and fear as motivators of inquiry

behaviors detrimental to common good
behaviors insufficiently conducive to common good
behaviors inadequately respectful of common good

the failure to distinguish private/individual from public/common utility as a weakness of preference satisfaction utilitarianism

parents as provident causes and instruments of divine providence

moral character of conclusion arises from
(1) structure
(1a) means-end/consequence (e.g., utilitarianism)
(1b) consistency/intrinsic (e.g., Kantianism)
(2) content

4 ways of placing oneself in the presence of God (Francis de Sales)
(1) lively awareness of divine omnipresence
(2) reflection on divine presence to spirit
(3) thought of the regard of the ascended Christ
(4) imagination of Christ as near

"For the fundamental thing about the passion is to consider who he is who has suffered." (Julian of Norwich)

the temptation to substitute a documentary Catholicism for a liturgical one

the filial piety of Christ

practical reasonableness as the first moral step

faith as illuminating intellect, thymos, and desire

"The Church continually gives birth to Christ, despite the dragon's attack." (Bede)
"The Church, too, every day begets the Church, which rules the world in Christ."

The world battles the Church with equivocations. No doubt the devil uses them too, and often, but he is even more fond of red herrings.

All of human tradition is both fruit of the vine and work of human hands.

Who has been taught his task is more lucky at it.

For a phenomenon to be an experiment, it must be taken to represent other phenomena. Note that the phenomenon itself must be taken to be representative.

The strength of reasons often lies in how they are layered.

Ps 28: the voice of the lord mentioned seven times; suggestive of sacraments:
on the waters -- baptism
in power -- confirmation
in magnificence -- eucharist
breaking the cedars -- penance
shaking the desert -- orders
dividing the flame -- matrimony
prepares the stages -- unction
Bellarmine himself reads the Psalm as discussing preaching

De profundis and purgatory

Jn 12:32-33 // Jn 21:18-19 (but note difference in tense)

preaching as unsealing truth, trumpeting judgment, pouring out wrath

Sin without contrition is as terrible as it is contrition-free.

Civilizations are reasonably evaluated in terms of
(1) preservation of life
(2) endurance and material progress
(3) pursuit of rational truth and social harmony

People will endure extraordinary pain for the sake of victory.

elliptical orbits as projections of circular movement in four dimensions (think of tilted circle and its projection on a plane it crosses)
All ordinary inverse square laws have symmetry involving rotation in four dimensions.

The Baptism of Jesus turns a baptism of repentance (material) into a baptism of filiation (formal).

After baptism must come the desert.

This is Heaven: for that which is not divine to be given divinity as something not from itself.
This is Hell: for that which is not divine to seek to seize divinity as something of its own.

Concupiscence is a grasping after what should be given.

Hume's discussion of causes as an argument against natural signs

The Two Barbara Problem: Aristotle holds that Box-True-Box modal Barbara is valid but True-Box-Box modal Barbara is not.
Note that predicate modality makes Aristotle's divergence claim make sense, whereas it is more perplexing with proposition modality (which seems to require that either they both are valid or neither are).
The big issue, of course, is that Aristotle thinks of the major functionally.

That for which Christ on the Cross gives us hope is that to which Christ Risen leads us.

Note that Newton's First Law, as found in Newton, is not time symmetric.

Metaphysics is essential for bridging scientific physics and folk physics for the purpose of popularization.

Euclid's common notions as a (minimal) theory of measurement

(1) Ex 3:14-15 admits of a timeless interpretation.
(2) By the time of Philo at latest, the timeless interpretation already exists.
(3) Jn 8:58 appears to suggest the timeless interpretation.

aim, restraint, ardor

Rv 22:16 // Mt 22:42-45 as undesigned coincidence

The key ethical sea changes caused by Christianity: that the martyr enduring is more brave than the soldier fighting; that the consecrated virgin is more temperate than the person of the world; that the voluntary poor who act with love are more just than the magnificent citizen; that the fool for Christ is wiser than the sage.

Mutual consent is never by itself adequate to guarantee the preservation of common good in an exchange.

4 aspects of the 'Napoleonic' idea of war (Corbett)
(1) total war
(2) unrelenting pressure
(3) primacy of offense
(4) armed forces as objective
-- he notes that these ideas are not especially Napoleonic, but are a combination of primitive/barbaric view of war (war made with the whole force of the people) and ideas found in Cromwell (persistent effort, armed forces as objective) and Frederick (primacy of offensive).

Clausewitz and the means-end structure of war.

"counter-attack is the soul of defense" (Corbett)
"The object of naval warfare is the control of communications, and not, as in land warfare, the conquest of territory."

For any vocabulary, one may identify through analogy (using terms in the vocabulary) concepts not covered by the vocabulary.

(1) base mereology; (2) dimensions; (3) additional structure (metric, distinguished elements, etc.

radius-tangent definition of perpendicularity

To say that someone acts wrongly is to say that the action is objectively unreasonable and the person's engaging in that action is unreasonable, relative to the circumstances of that person, and in such a way that the person could recognize the objective unreasonableness of the action and act to avoid it.

Every right is a form of authority.

decisions as microplans

Finish with a thrust, not with a cut.

To adapt dynamic logic to means and ends would require breaking any distinction between programs and states -- a program can be a state to be achieved by a program.

nondeterministic readiness to appear

plans appropriate and inappropriate to human beings

genius as relative to a domain

In inquiry as in physical search in the dark, one may receive insight from false patterns that seem true but fail; for there is a reason they seem true despite failing, & sometimes this is a useful clue.

inappropriateness of means to its end; inappropriateness to context; inappropriateness to agent; intrinsic impossibility of appropriateness

sense of external world as habitus

natural law and moral sociology

ethical reasoning based on
categorization
prioritization
measure by standard
-- strict and approximate (error-tolerant), developed & estimative forms

The measure of a rebel is that against which he will not rebel.

sloth and envy as vices opposed to joy (this seems to make devotion and kindness joy-supporting virtues)

hell as the point at which every sin becomes suffused with sin against the Holy Spirit

prayer as a way of seeking good and avoiding evil

Humean associationism as a sort of exemplar causation

greatness as goodness with power and wisdom

'parva sed apta mihi' as a motto of temperance

society as imitation of providence

analogy as at-least-some-overlap

analogical inference as possibility-preserving