This finishes off the notebook completed on July 20, 2016.
skepticism-blocking arguments for God's existence & the Logos
Intellectual humility requires respecting evidence for what it is; someone skeptical in the face of good evidence is not being intellectually humble, however much they may pretend.
We look for external information that allows us to reduce meander-problems to maze-problems and maze-problems to labyrinth-problems.
Universals are abstractions; instantial invariance is not a feature of how abstracting works, nor does abstracting appear to have any features that require instantial invariance. Indeed, since we often have to discover instantiations over time or with difficulty, and run into questions of vagueness, it seems abstracting must not involve any strict commitment to instantial invariance, even if such a principle is often useful to assume.
corruptible and incorruptible as disjunctive transcendentals (Aquinas In Met sect. 2145)
Governments tend to support ways of thinking about equality that require significant expansions of government power.
two aspects of authority: official (officium/munus) and assistive (subsidium/adjumentum)
Empires tend to have short dynasty lengths because of the difficulty of exercising control over diffuse populations and the inevitable rise of semi-independent frontier commanders.
populational influence, territorial control, sovereignty
state formation strategies: merger with established institutions, religious claims, and violence threat
Party politics takes pressure off of naturally arising local political conflicts (although, being artificial, it cannot end them). People are distracted by Congressional conflict from putting all their weight behind city council conflict.
Experiment by nature involves communicable certitude. (Chastek)
Dialogue must be structured by love of the true and the good.
deriving questions from premises by possiblity-preserving inferences
"Music forms a part of us through nature, and can ennoble or debase character." Boethius
to reflect, to gloss, to preserve
All sin is a sign of judgment to come.
Euclid's definitions are clearly set up for the recognition of the analogy between line and surface.
A man in sin may yet have authority.
notarial vs essential certification
ostension & abduction
Whewell's moral Ideas quite clearly function as ends for human action. This suggests that we should see the theoretical Ideas as ends for human understanding.
relics as tangible stories
a book considered as individual (this physical object) vs. a book considered as specific (the book that this physical book is)
argumentation as gift exchange (Dutilh Novaes)
giving reasons using only gestures (e.g., pointing where to go gives a reason to go there)
autocephaly as a recognition that a church preaches to all nations and enriches all the churches in its own right
The Maltese word for Lent is Randan, from Ramadan.
Probabilities derive from arguments, not vice versa.
We can assign probabilities to premises, sometimes, because we can sometimes argue for them.
We dream in allusions.
Protestantism as liber acephalus
Comedy is a defense against boorishness, and tragedy against frivolousness.
comedy & the temptation to iconoclasm; tragedy & the temptation to iconolatry
In the long run, Christianity pulls all philosophy into its orbit.
One only genuinely sees a hero if one can see the flaws and still see the heroism.
The poet, like Varda, scatters stars in defiance of Morgoth.
What one gets out of liturgy is in proportion to one's service, prayer, and study.
the notes of the Church as applied to the Church Patient, the Church Triumphant, and the whole Church together (Militant, Patient, Triumphant)
- intercession & both apostolicity and unity
- indulgences & both unity and sanctity
the notes of the Church Militant and the Church Patient reflect those of the Church Triumphant, in which the notes achieve their perfection (perfect unity, perfect sanctity, perfect catholicity, perfect apostolicity)
the Church Patient is likewise more one, more holy, more catholic, and more apostolic than the Church Militant
The suffering of the souls of Purgatory is a solidary passion, a com-passion, with each other and with all who suffer.
Purgatory is a discipline of not meriting for oneself, but of accepting grace from the prayers of others, a martyrdom of waiting.
the three aspects of purgatory: (a) suffering; (b) waiting; (c) learning
(a) : martyrdom :: (b) : virginity :: (c) doctorality
the peregrination of the Church Militant as a reflection of that of the Church Patient
The phenomenal can only be a sign of the noumenal if the noumenal in some way is in it.
wonder -> Beatific Vision
"The Temple of the Beautiful is the porch of the Temple of Religion." S. S. Laurie
"The book of philosophy will indeed by closed when it shall have presented God and the world to us as an Epic." Laurie
"The correspondence between the living pattern set before the Christian and the ideal of a perfect life as conceived by Plato is an argument that both are real." Campbell
the pastoral authority of parents: Bede, Hom Ev. 1.7
the attractive force of a useful classification on rational discussion
The sacraments work not only by infusing grace but also by drawing as ends of rational action.
indulgences as an overflow (redundantia) of public prayer into private prayer
Philosophical problems are thematic histories.
By 'relevant' people often mean 'reactive'.
acting by reason of ignorance vs acting in ignorance (Aristotle)
Definitions should not use metaphors because metaphors are by nature pre-definitive.
Most formulations of the argument from evil amount to asking why all causes aren't 'omnibenevolent' in their effects.
rightly combining reason and rite
papal social encyclicals as encapuslating a memory that commerce can be otherwise (Douglas Rushkoff)
The human mind does not systematize rather than rhapsodize; it systematizes out of its rhapsodizing.
the Persian Council of 410: the bishops of Persia accept Nicaea and its canonsas translated into Syriac and presented by Saint Maruta (Maruthas) of Maipherkat
Mary Magdalen as symbol of the laity: isapostolicity and evangelization
"betrothal is a kind of sacramental annexed to matrimony, as exorcism to baptism" Aquinas ST Supp 43.1ad6
fides pactionis, fides consensus
Too much irony destroys a love poem, but most love poems fail through having no irony at all.
Even Bentham recognizes that actual harms at hand should weigh more heavily than hypothetical harms in the distant future; but it is strange how many consequentialists do not.
"a language requires a suitable habitation, and a history in which it can develop" Tolkien
Propositions are actions of mind.
asceticism as the natural stimulus for the healthy building of new worlds
"The reason why we have said all should be called for counsel is that the Lord often reveals what is better to the younger." The Rule of St. Benedict
Etymology is better called the dreamwork of language than metaphor is.
hypothesis as experience with galley effect
relatedness of accident to substance as a transcendental relation
Time-Validity
P at all times until tomorrow
P at all times after today
Therefore P at all times
(Space would be more complicated, but would also be possible)
Extension-Validity
Everything nonB is C.
Everything B is C.
Therefore, everything is C.
Most A are B
Most B are C
Therefore, some A are C
scaling problems with philosophical methods
scaling problems with philosophical infrastructure
If truth is adequation of mind and thing, only mental actions can be 'truthbearers'.
If 'x is so even if y', this implies that x can be not-y; whereas this is not true of 'x is so if y'.
possible worlds manifold as representation of prime matter (as well as some of its conditions)
Common good is not built out of reasoning, but it is foolish to think of the latter as an optional extra.
to speak the truth even if no one hears
How fair and how lovely
the death of the gods
with their merciless fate
and their punishing rods.
the hierarchical character of purity
philosophy as cajolery
If there is a divine attribute, there is a divine being.
propositions as attributes of cosmophases (Carroll)
Carroll's 0 and 1 as 'cannot exist' and 'can exist'
infinite divisibility of matter // infinite analyzability of idea
Warburton interprets Job as an allegory of the Captivity.
the tomorrowladen day
impressional, presential, reflective, and expressional aspects of emotion
Every kind of Euthyphro Dilemma has an analogue at the positive level, with respect to positive law.
Particular propositions are consistency propositions.
"nothing-buttery...always part of the minor symptomatology of the bogus" Peter Medawar
Competent scientists do not work in order to make scientific progress or find breakthroughs (although many no doubt sometimes daydream of it) but to learn about things. They inquire because they love butterflies or are fascinated by light or want to figure out how the vine grows the way it does. But there is always a dangerous social pressure to lie about this -- dangerous because it misleads the public and creates false expectations, dangerous because it places scientific inquiry in a context that tends to falsehood, and morally dangerous for the inquiry itself, encouraging shortcuts and sophistry to blow up interesting learning so that it might pass, in rhetoric at least, as life-transforming progress.
mechanisms as modal structures based on mereological structures
comparative analogy (from known to unknown) vs contrived analogy (from unknown to known, e.g., in building a purely conjectural model to explain observations)
"Scientific truth should be presented in different forms, and should be regarded as equally scientific, whether it appears in the robust form and the vivid coloring of a physical illustration, or in the tenuity and paleness of a symbolic expression." Maxwell
(1) We start with the idea in the mind (the impression), ex hypothesi. Assume external world realism of a materialist variety. Then from the idea as effect we reason to the external prototype as cause, recognizing that the prototype is more real, and removing those things in the idea that are due to it qua idea. Thus causation, eminence, and remotion.
(2) Assuming external world realism of an immaterialist variety follows an analogous course, but the remotion is of what pertains to the idea qua my idea.
(3) We get something analogous if we remove the ideal starting point by recognizing that what is there being called the idea is the actual perception of the object, which itself can be taken as effect.
Rabban Bar Sauma and the ecumenism of pilgrimage
"Mere caprice can never be the object of any right." Rosmini
Of every law we must ask, how does this contribute to the friendship of the people? It is not the only question to ask, but always must be asked.
All the sacraments are linked to love of God and love of neighbor; but baptism especially is linked with love of neighbor and eucharist with love of God.
True love is not manipulable by slogan.
Both pilgrimage and relics in Christianity arise naturally out of the communion of saints, theologically, although both, of course, are transfigured versions of things people tend to do, anyway. The idea, at its root, is that we are all part of the story of the martyrs and of Christ's Passion.
a mereological analysis of rights analogous that of virtues
In decision-making, one must sift before one weighs.
evidence as itself structured by the Divided Line
-a semiotic reading of the Line
Laches & the opposition between philosophia and philonikia
"It is foundational to faith that God conveys prophecy to man." Maimonides (yesodei Ha-Torah 7:1)
Every theory of knowledge has an analogue among theories of happiness, and vice versa.
oikeiosis and homoiosis as two aspects of prudence
Academics and Skeptics as Ishmaelites (Philo, Q&A in Gen 3.33)
Appearances apparently conflict only because we already take them to be appearances of the same.
zetetic and aporetic modes of apologetics
the acts of faith: to inquire, to believe, to profess
preambles of charity
the natural ecumenism of reason
Even in the application of a tried and true technique, the technician matters more than the technique.
Techniques, like books, cannot defend themselves against abuses.
Note that Descartes's comments on Aristotelian gravitas would transfer to all forms of attraction as well.
verecundia and honestas of reasoning
meekness in reasoning (regarding the desire to overcome objection) and clemency (regarding the response?)
modestia about manner of argument: intellectual humility, studiosity, ornatus (appropriate to person), bona ordinatio (appropriate to circumstance), eutrapelia (humor), modesty of rhetoric
John 17:5,24 & and the Holy Spirit as Gift
We often think we ought to do what we cannot do if we choose; for instance, when an outside force prevents us. If parents recognize that they ought to protect their children, they recognize it as an ought even if outside forces clash with, impede, or even make impossible actually doing it. Only when people take, rightly or wrongly, a prevention to be preventing choice (whether they take that strictly or loosely) do they take it to dissipate the obligation.
Free choice requires a certain minimum of rationality; and it is more fully exercised the more fully rational we are.
relevance as primarily a relation among terms
the notion of merit in the context of intellectual inquiry
adaptationism as an aristocratic view of evolutionary facts (contrast this with monarchical theistic evolutionism and a democratic view in which there is no emphasis on excelling lines but simply each organism as being, as it were, a vote for the future)
Peano axioms cannot actually distinguish or define the set of natural numbers as such; they cannot distinguish them from the set of odds, or any other set for which one can have any kind of successor function. What is true that sets that fit the Peano axioms can be put into correspondence with natural numbers.
Intellectual and moral excellence by their nature require merit.
the 'etymology' of rites
volume-temperature indeterminacy
precedential causation as Humean
The modern world is afraid of relying on hope; people are constantly seeking certainty.
the second table of the Commandments read figuratively as describing our ecclesial duties
Social engineers, unlike real engineers, tend not to respect the qualities of the materials with which they work.
Every universalist argument either violates remotion or has a closely analogous counterpart among atheistic arguments from evil.
Love works by testimony.
Human beings are very poor at distinguishing intelligible requirements from strongly preferred choices in inquiry.
Everything looks like it is deterministic if you are coarse-grained and general enough, regardless of assumptions about what is really going on. This is because the more general the level of one's analysis, the more closely it conforms to an analysis considering only necessary preconditions.
slavery as usurious use of labor
as intemperance with regard to evaluation of human worth
as injustice in the broad sense (violation of amiability, perhaps also of religion?)
To say that something is not intrinsically evil does not mean that it may always be done rightly, but only that it may sometimes be done without being wrong.
Note that Aquinas's insistence on the possibility of demonstration in sacred doctrine is firmly opposed to the position of the Islamic philosophers (like Al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd) that theology, being based on religion, cannot rise above persuasion (cf. Kitab al-huruf).
Can one do an intrinsic/extrinsic title account for false-speaking, etc.? It seems plausible one could do it for killing.
Have any of the casuists done work on a general theory of titles, or toward such a thing?
Are there analogies with titles in the case of usury?
Manwë as prudence, Melkor as pride, Tulkas as decent thymos
The early church did not develop from local communities but into them, for it was a missionary church spreading out from the apostles.
