rhetoric and the logic of tone/coloring/illumination
apt inquiry: inquiry that finds truth by competence rather than luck
investigative competence
the integral parts of prudence & forms of being in the world
moods of inquiry: the cautious, the dreading, the enthusiastic, the perfunctory, the retaliatory, the musing, the hopeful, the suspicious, the hectic, the frantic
James's passional element of inquiry and the moods of inquiry
curiousity as craving for the new vs as love for truth vs as wondering
"An 'epistemology engine' is a technology or a set of technologies that through use frequently become explicit models for describing how knowledge is produced." Ihde & Selinger
investigative gear & handiness for inquiry
signs as gear for inquiry
handiness as accessibility + affordance
rational inference // alchemical transformation
(the parallel is not accidental; the latter borrows notions from spiritual conversion)
the spatiality of human inquiry
material; material semiotic; verbal semiotic; instrumental orientation; archetypal principle
Too many liturgical arguments err by assuming that there is only one possible mood for worship.
Collingwood reenactment // experimental repeatability
(the latter is mental reenactment with appropriate variations to clarify the non-obvious features)
accessible evidence vs admissible evidence
Whether something is probable cannot be assessed until you know what it means.
I & II Samuel and the principle of intercession
curation as an act of inquiry
the call of conscience as a participation in Logos
evening and morning knowledge and the call of conscience
conscience as making soliloquy possible
contiguity-searching for cause; resemblance-searching for cause; logical requirement/prerequisite-searching for cause
We most often use contiguity search for causes in singular cases without leisure for extended inquiry.
Every cause in its causing is a model for the effect it causes.
sacred liturgy progresses through (Mediator Dei):
(1) clarification of sacred doctrine
(2) improvement of ecclesiastical discipline in administration
(3) popular devotion and practice of piety
(4) progress of fine arts
(5) regulations to protect the purity of worship from abuses
the Lord's Prayer as summation of all Christian prayer
error accumulation in geometrical diagrams
the shape in which a pleasure exists, the seat in which it resides, the source whence it is derived, the inlet through it is derived
assessing inquiry in terms of
(1) intrinsic appropriateness
(2) sustainability
(3) promise of success
(4) accessibility
(5) likely fecundity
(6) likely avoidance of impediment
(7) general usefulness
People often appeal to 'Ockham's Razor' to perform the function that used to be performed by 'Uniformity of Nature'.
∃ as exception-to-not
∀ as not-exception-to
transitivity-breaking in analogy chains
Descartes's ideological argument for God can be seen as an argument that recognizing the being of anything requires recognizing being as such, characterized privatively by 'limitless' and 'lackless', and that this must be first being with respect to other being.
Skeptics about introspection tend still to assume the reliability of their introspective assessment of their own arguments and their understanding of them.
(1) identifying conceptual territory to explore
(2) scouting territory (initial probes)
(3) tentative mapping of territory (first approximate model of possible options)
(4) comparison to actual evidence of territory (history of problem)
-note that the history of the problem may itself provide the initial probes
(5) refinement of map
the works of religion transpose the potential parts of justice to a higher key:
filial piety to God as Father
honor to God as Good
truthfulness to God as True
gratitude to God as Benefactor
vindication to God as Lovable
amiability toward God as Friend
liberality with respect to divine glory
- note that in some cases, the virtue of religion can only do this at all if informed by charity (e.g., amiability) and in other cases can only do it imperfectly without charity
Virtue cannot be maintained without memory.
All believing entails some kind of knowing.
If language can only say those things we can imagine otherwise, that can be said,so we must be able to imagine that language can say things we cannot imagine otherwise.
The problem with too many pronouncements about philosophy is that they attempt to articulate a necessary principle structuring the most recent product of historical accidents.
All of the damned are after a fashion suicides.
weak-plausible vs strong-plausible
(wp is the most common sense, based on appearance; sp requires fit with what we can reasonably be said to know. wp can be inconsistent but sp cannot; wp makes few to no assumptions, sp makes substantive assumptions. A pyrrhonian, for example, can argue on wp, but not on sp.)
The problem with being seen as a victim is that everyone has a point at which they are more ashamed at the possibility of their own vulnerability than they are of the actual vulnerability of another. Past this point, strong will and clear sight is required.
the intrinsic warrant of the principle of noncontradiction
defeasibility as modally organized
Diamond-defeaters
Truth-defeaters
Box-defeaters
Counterexample games are better for building distinctions than for building refutations.
Quantifier placement cannot ground a sharp distinction between de dicto and de re; it can only distinguish them relatively.
'Cicero' and 'Tully' are not proper names in the same language (the former is Latin, the second Anglicized), and Cicero and Tullius are not proper names with the same function. If I am referred to by 'Brandon' and by 'Watson', or someone is referred to by 'Tollers' and 'Tolkien', these proper names are not functionally equivalent and are not used the same way. And every propre name can be made a common noun and vice versa: Xanthippe and Africanus. There is no difference between them beyond the use.
Proper names clearly have 'tone' and applied to the same thing can tonally differ.
incorporation of description into proper name: Olympiodorus the Younger, Mad Max, Honest Abe, Johnny Appleseed, Robin Hood, Wayland Smith, Sir Lancelot, Jesus Christ, Peterson, etc.
Notice that these often are uses of description to make the proper name function better as a proper name.
Note that "without sense" proper names are typically atrophied descriptions (or imitations of such atrophied descriptions). It is clearly an error to ignore the fact that these atrophied forms are atrophied.
"Archeology, in fact, is to the body social somewhat as comparative anatomy is to animal organization." Balzac
the relation between undercutting defeaters for claims and rebutting defeaters for consequences of claims
prima facie appreciables in aesthetics
"The hater is more disturbed by his hatred than is the hated." Kant
signs as originated distinctions manifesting their origin
Blackstone on 'The king can do no wrong': the legal fiction, far from placing the king above law, provides a means of subjecting the king to legal constraint without use of force
Blackstone's deterrence theory of punishment -- three primary forms of deterrence: reform of offender, dread of example, deprivation of future power of mischief
positions about hell
(1) state of hell: vacantism, sempiternalism
(2) who gets out of hell: particularism, universalism
(3) what ultimately happens to the damned: annihiliationism, salvationism, punitionism
One must build one's life on reason; but it is a highly irrational life that is built on assessment of individual arguments. Such assessment has its role, but it is not enough.
the two senses of rest: cessation of work, satisfaction of desire
The modern universe is a less durable universe than the Aristotelian.
The desire for vengeance is quite often an outgrowth of sympathy, for those perceived as wronged.
Sometimes when people talk about 'following where the argument leads', they are confusing means and ends; at other times they are confusing it with important activity of seeing where the argument goes, which is not the same.
An argument that one actually deserves faith is an argument for believing in the first place.
former-argument remnants in later arguments
Anything that concerns matter required for persons to live as persons is moral.
to ask of any freedom, "What love does it make possible?" -- for that gives the character of the freedom
clothing as an expression of self-control and dominion in the world
There is no communion without common aim.
sartorial shame -- tending to shun clothing that can obscure the value of persons (of oneself and others)
By use of clothing we show a facet of rationality.
"Holy Job is a type of the Church. At one time he speaks for the body, at another for the head." Gregory Moralia 13.21
Is the tendency to think taht good requires evil related to the tendency to think good is the pleasant?
"A likeness of one thing existing in another is essentially an exemplar if it stands to the other as principle." SCG 4.11
Different oughts imply different cans.
John 8:41 and the virgin birth
When we get the plausiblity of a statement in different ways, we cannot assume that it will be equally plausible from each direction. We experience disparity of plausibility according to ordering effects, asymmetries of association, ease of inference, and many other things all the time.
Augustine's general principles of Gospel harmony
(1) divine providence
(2) order
(3) thematic differences (priest, king, God)
(4) distinct talents (active contemplative)
(5) consonance with sameness of sense
Augustine's Gospel harmonization is intrinsically perspectival -- it is inconsistent with Diatessaron-forming because it is based on the principle that the Four are not inter-reducible. (the difference between tessellating harmonization and perspectival harmonization)
Conceptual entailment is more properly a matter of consistency than psychological association.
How modest a hypothesis is, depends entirely on the evidence. It cannot depend on how many claims are made by the hypothesis, because claims can be differently portioned (broken up, given further explanation, put in terse form, reduced by a more powerful vocabulary, etc.). It cannot be about specificity, because that is relative -- a hypothesis may be more specific in one context and less when compared to other hypotheses. And the appropriate level of specificity itself depends on the evidential context. And it cannot be about narrowness of scope, for the same reason.
Evidence is not extrinsic to a hypothesis, if by that is meant that hypotheses can be understood and analyzed independently of any evidence at all; for instance, the very reason for proposing this rather than some wholly different hypothesis is constrained by relevance to evidence.
the maieutic character of good counsel
Human sympathy is not bare affection; it involves counterfactual reasoning.
character arc as role discovery
repentance // acceptance of refutation
Applying moral noncognitivism, moral error theory, and moral subjectivism to norms of reasoning gives us three varieties of sophistry.
philosophy as ascetic endeavor (the distinction between real and apparent good)
humility, confidence, and attention as conditions of inquiry
penitential (i.e., purifying) practices as the most natural expression of infused moral virtues
interjections as predicate-like
(1) they work a lot like predicates for demonstrative subjects (they are comments on real rather than verbal topics)
(2) they can easily be modified into normal predicates ('the song was wow')
(3) Normal predicates under the right conditions can easily be modified into interjections (Bright! Fire! Sorry! -- i.e., secondary interjections)
the aizuchi use of interjections
"Philosophy can be driven out only by more philosophy." Scruton
space and time as abstractions from light, broadly considered
institution of sacrament : apostolicity :: integral composition of sacrament : unity :: operative efficacy of sacrament : holiness :: necessity of sacrament for salvation : catholicity
sacrament as instrument, as sign, as vestment, as juridical act, as Church in expression
clothing as imperfect effects of a person (Hume)
A Church cannot be less than a nation.
the sacrifice of the Cross as the principal indulgence, other indulgences as direct or indirect unions with this (cp. Sertillanges)
plotting as organization of problems
organic regulation as a principle of good administration
Each sacrament unifies, sanctifies, catholicizes, and apostolicizes the Church.
Traditions are capable of preventing ordinary people from being wholly at the mercy of purported experts, and of protecting the weak from the strong. They do not usually address the underlying problems, but they are powerful mitigators and resilient buffers. And indeed it is precisely by buffering everyone with rules and rites that all can learn, and by bringing the same pressures on all, that they have such an effect.
Repenting of the good is a dangerous thing.
The etiological theory of function requires that function come in degrees.
act/potency -> change -> clock -> time
act/potency -> composition -> container -> location (place)
act/potency -> active/passive -> cause/effect -> force -> resistance -> interaction
"As long as the child is in the mother's womb, it is not entirely separate, but by reason of a certain intimate tie, is still part of her; just as the fruit while hanging on the tree is part of the tree." Aquinas ST 1.113.5ad3
tradition as temporal hierarchy (subsidiarity through time) and as temporal friendship (solidarity through time)
the obligation of piety to draw on what is good in our predecessors
