This ends the notebook that was finished on November 8, 2017.
"The logic of metaphor is so organically entrenched in pure sensibility that it can't be thoroughly traced or explained outside of historical sciences, like philology and anthropology." Hart Crane
"The whole of the external cultus of God is preeminently ordered to this: that people may hold God in reverence." Aquinas ST 2-1.102.4 (ut homines Deum in reverentia habeant)
"Thinking is, as it were, talking to oneself." Erasmus
The kingly authority of Confirmation begins with self-rule.
From good that has been given by those who came before us, to make new good, that more good may be given to those who come after us.
God as producer (1) with respect to possibility (2) with respect to actuality
God as conserver (1) with respect to possibility (2) with respect to actuality
God as governor (1) with respect to possibility (2) with respect to actuality
exemplar : possible :: final : actual
"No being is completely self-actualized [autenergeton], since it is not self-caused, and whatever is not self-caused is necessarily moved by a cause, which is to say that it is actualized by being naturally moved by its cause, for which and to which it continues to move. For nothing that moves does so in any way independently of a cause." Maximos, Amb 15
Maximos Confessor
fire -- prudence -- John
air -- fortitude -- Luke
water -- temperance -- Mark
earth -- justice -- Matthew
-- It is surely odd that fortitude is not assigned to earth, but Maximos is thinking of the earth not as stable so much as he is thinking of it as life-giving, and air not so much as fluid as a stable atmosphere. John, of course, is the natural candidate for fire & prudence, beginning as it does with Logos.
The senses function in our mental life not merely in themselves but as symbols of higher things.
love as theopoetic virtue
divine wisdom, philosophy, reasoning in play, sophistry
The notion that Exodus 34:11-26 represents a distinctive 'Ritual Decalogue' has always rested on a false view of progress, and especially a false view of the relation of ethics and ritual with respect to progress.
The character of a political movement is never constituted by its promises.
"To withstand anyone in public exceeds the mode of fraternal correction." ST 2-2.33.4ad2
(the point is, public correction requires in addition some relevant ground of authority)
-- but note that public correction may also be justified by things like imminent danger
Part of our color terminology clearly arises from manipulability, colors as within our causal domain.
The defeasible requires the indefeasible. Suppose 'X is defeasible'. Either this is indefeasible or it is defeasible; if it is defeasible, there are conditions under which 'X is defeasible' is false.
real separation, real separability, relative distinction, intentional distinction, distinction of reason
No one has a right to insert themselves into a community arbitrarily, because communities are formed by common good; they have a moral responsibility to be sure they can in good faith engage in the cooperative venture of seeking and upholding that common good. And the community has the responsibility to make sure, to the extent that it can, that they come to do so, because all right and responsibility in the community as such derives from common good.
Colleges and universities present themselves as middlemen, but give themselves liberties (with both students and faculty) that middlemen usually wouldn't.
Sometimes you have proof,
sometimes only prayer;
either way, you proceed
one foot after another.
Every philosophical system faces the problem of rhetorical fouling -- the slow encrustation of associations and attributions, some of them quite foreign.
The acts of the virtue of religion are subordinations to God:
(1) of intellect: prayer
(2) of will: devotion
(3) of body: adoration
(4) of possessions
:::: (a) by renunciation
:::::::: (1) to God directly: sacrifice
:::::::: (2) to support ministers: offerings and tithes
:::: (b) by promise: vow
Each thing subordinated to God in religion can be unfittingly subordinated in superstition: divination, fanaticism, desecration of body, and so forth.
potential parts of justice
(1) rigorous debt without equality: religion, piety, observance
(2) equality without rigorous debt
:::: (a) to preserve honestas of virtue in society: gratitude, vindication, veracity
:::: (b) to preserve debt better: affability, liberality
money-related virtues
(1) to use moderately: thrift
(2) to give: liberality
(3) to do great things: magnificence
Whether something is warranted is always relative to an end.
testing arguments by: parity, retorsion, challenge (search-based, aporia-based), diagnostic, interrogating the grounds
We apply a term like 'being' to God and to creatures as we apply a term like 'man' to a man and his reflection in the mirror.
To behold virtue in her proper form is nothing other than to present morality as transfiguring what is sensuous, even things like desire for reward and self-love.
Instead of talking about an internal morality of medicine, we should think more specifically in terms of an internal morality of treatment, an internal morality of diagnosis, etc.
Nothing can be an error without being inconsistent with a norm.
Human beings are implementations of Turing machines; we can perform all Turing machine operations in principle. The question of significance is: What else are we?
Note Kant's claim in One Possible Basis that 'Nothing exists but something is possible' is contradictory.
For anything to be possible, something must exist; for anything to exist, something must be necessary.
We can infer from anything that can be a sign.
"All building naturally divides into two classes, the architecture of the beam and that of the arch." WPP Longfellow
Propositional inference is composed out of terminal inference.
relation of noumenal & phenomenal (By relation to mind-body)
monist
:::: materialism -- empiricism
:::: idealism -- intellectualism
dualist -- Platonism, Kantianism
hylomorphist -- Aristotelianism
the inherent militia powers of the people
We infer from a footprint that a foot has been there; we don't need to articulate this in a proposition: the footprint, understood as such, suffices.
Atheistic superfluity arguments violate the principle of remotion. (Chastek)
Philosophy will not get you to heaven, but saints in heaven philosophize.
Virtually no conclusion of the highest mathematical certainty can be achieved in only one way.
Existence is not a purely empirical concept.
A theory of inference must recognize that we can infer 2 from 1+1, and 3 from x+1=4, and 2+2 from 4. Given an incomplete assertion one can infer the element of completion.
The potential is in the same genus as the actual, in the way in which it is potential to the actual.
We only ever know what would have happened by causal reasoning.
cats & meal-enrichment (i.e., the practice of making food something the cat obtains by solving a problem or performing a task rather than just being given it -- some kinds of cat species are more likely to eat properly if they are given the food in the context of problem-solving)
Filangieri on the need for a censorial chamber
chief-and-council structures in government
timing considerations in inquiry (patience in waiting for adequate evidence, coordination of lines of inquiry, inquiry ordering, ethical considerations about appropriate timing)
We can draw an inference from: the universe of discourse, a physical sign, a definition, a classificatory scheme, a resemblance, and so forth. All of these are in fact quite common.
"Designated matter is nothing but matter with a capacity for this quantity, and not that quantity." Cajetan
sacrifice as part of the aesthetics of the sublimity of morality (Kant)
the Fall of the devil: power :: the Fall of man : wisdom
Faith is a light not purely of intellect but of intellect-moved-by-will.
The body is included in the proper definition of the human soul.
Torah is a symbol and as it were a vestment of the Word of God.
bindingness-preserving & obedience preserving in imperative inferences (Peter B. M. Vranas)
It makes very little sense to treat all imperatives as available for imperatival inference.
Act (in some way)! as a categorical imperative
Take the true as true!/Act in a way consistent with what is true being true as a self-evident imperative
Kantian ethics requires a logic of imperatives; the entire ethics is structured according to principles in such a logic.
remotion transcendentals (one)
relation transcendentals (good, true)
correlation transcendentals (potency/act, infinite/finite)
God as principal unifier of: possibility, truth, necessity, space, time, cosmos, intellection, sensation, volition, laws of nature, moral laws, possibility of civil laws
(all of these have been proposed)
(my mind -> other minds) -> exemplar mind
vague something accounts of the external world
add supposition -> something that could be such-and-such
add pragmatic conflation -> somethign that appears to be such-and-such
add both -> broadly Humean accounts of external world
Only the Christian faith has explored the whole range of the notion of sacrifice.
The actions of bishops should be such as are consistent with willing the apostolic faith to be catholic, that is, universal.
the internal subsidiarity of the human person
NB Maximos's argument that the doctrine of the preexistence of souls is analogous to Manicheanism.
NB Maximos's argument that we have rational souls from first conception (Amb 42).
It is remarkably difficult to discover from ethical expressivists what they mean by expression.
Something can only be considered an expression if it is considered as a sign that is a possible means of communication.
"The sacrament of matrimony can be regarded in two ways: first, in the making, and then in its permanent state. For it is a sacrament like the eucharist, which not only when it is being conferred, but also while it remains, is a sacrament; for as long as married parties are alive, so long is their union a sacrament of Christ and the Church." Bellarmine
the robur of confirmation
If we take past and future to be modal operators, presentism denies the legitimacy of a kind of subalternation.
Approximate truth is a causal concept, for approximation is a causal process.
Three elements of a limit according to Whewell:
(1) hypothetical construction
(2) indefinite extension
(3) limiting property
various virtue vocabularies as artificial classifications -> convergence on the natural classification of the virtuous -> exemplar cause of virtu emaking the knowledge of the virtuous possible
God turns our very mutability into a way to save us from the failing that arose from that same mutability.
Every inference occurs within a system of classifications.
Official statements of Church doctrine are verdictives, not effectives.
A polarity (in Whewell's sense) defines a dimension.
Formalized schooling seems to arise to prevent youths in cities with free time from becoming a disaster.
"But to a language three things are necessary: it must express reason, contain reason, and speak to reason." Fairbairn
Ruth as an allegory of the 'Church of the Gentiles'
The earth is riven by the river
roving over land and hill,
roaming through the vale and forest,
never ending, ever reaching,
down to ocean's shore forever,
down to end and all fulfilled.
To say that marriage is a life-partnership is like saying that military service is a bit of adventure -- not exactly wrong, but not particularly insightful.
Sexual customs are often like jungle palaces beginning to rot.
It was three in the afternoon on Friday. In the distance, the bell of Our Lady of Shadows rang out one long, low tone.
I wished you well
by the wishing well;
it was an age and a half ago.
A wish cannot save
and your lonely grave
is draped in the fallen snow.
at times a man must whisper,
or else he blows away
the fundamental need for states of defeasible but presumptive consent
anti-natalism and the problem of evil for consequentialist atheists
half-belief as (a) belief with cautions versus as (b) nonbelief with inclinations
Halfheartedness cannot be a mere deficiency in motivation,b ecaus enot all deficiencies in motivation are halfhearted. Halfheartedness seems to require a deficiency in consent.
Belief by its nature is something that can be shared.
While belief does not come in degrees, its role in decision does, and almost all that is salvageable from the literature on the rationality of belief is due to the latter.
Rights only exist within a hierarchy capable of structuring them.
Prior probabilities should always only be set by a method of inquiry.
Note that Hilary in his commentary on Mt. 8 links justification to absolution (remission of sins): the Law cannot justify because it cannot itself absolve; faith can absolve sins. The reason is that God alone absolves, and in faith the Word of God abides in us so that our sins may be absolved.
Note that at Jericho and Ai, some non-Israelites are saved and some Israelites are condemned; the distinction between Israelite and Canaanite is not the locus of condemnation.
the lunar movement of myth, the solar movement of rational account
Our confidence with respect to a belief presupposes the belief and does not constitute it.
arguments from evil involving direct attribution (God would be author of evil) vs those that are indirect (the evil outweighs the good)
- the latter // antinatalist arguments
PSR denial is a denial that everything is either necessary or made possible; it is the claim that there are things not necessary that are not made possible by anything.
science fiction & Margaret Cavendish's three elements: romancical, philosophical, fantastical
It is remarkable how often in religious contexts 'being welcoming is in fact just an excuse for not going out to people.
We infer that arguments are valid directly from their logical structures, not by mediation of propositions.
In mercy, something good is always sacrificed for something better. There is no mercy without such a sacrifice.
Experiments are optimally described in four-cause terms: What materials are used? How are they given experimental form, and for what end? Who organizes these materials by that form for that end?
John Case: A polity is ineffectual without virtue, as seen in
(a) matter
:::: (1) of which it consists: multitude of men united by rule of virtue
:::: (2) about which it revolves: introduction of virtue in accordance with laws
(b) form: prudent administration involving justice
(c) efficient
:::: (1) remote: God, to whom virtue is referred
:::: (2) proximate: nature with virtue's bond
(d) end
:::: (1) external: peace, honor, and prosperity due to virtue
:::: (2) internal: happiness and peace arising from virtue
Plausibility seems always relative to a universe of discourse.
fine-tuning problems for physics, ethics, epistemology, and semantics (Pruss)
postmodern-ism vs post-modernism
A philosophical movement, to endure, must adapt while cohering together; thus philosophical movements vanish by either stagnating or simplifying into an inability to adapt or else by either diffusing or factionalizing into an inability to cohere.
face-structures // phonemes
Good writing should be as polytropic as Odysseus, traveling widely, figuring cleverly.
To live in the body is to live in a symbol.
Pallavicino's topics of inductive reasoning (see Knebel) and Hume's rules by which to judge of cause and effect
co-redemptrix principle (Frangipane): Mary merits congruously what Christ merits condignly.
Christ merits for us in Himself and through His Mother.
"...it is easy to say whatever you want, if you say it without arguments." Thomas Compton Carlton
Le Grand's three unions
mind-mind: love
body-body: local presence
mind-body: mutually dependent action
topics: dialectical enthymeme
rhetoric: rhetorical enthymeme
poetics: metaphor
A people without heroes cannot easily be free.
Charity orders the acquired virtues by means of the infused virtues.
