I seem to have misplaced the May-August notebook from 2020; I suppose there was a lot of unusual disruption. I'll put it up when I find it again, and in the meantime here I start the notebook that begins August 2020.
What counts as evidence depends on whether you are thinking of the requirements for investigating or of the requirements for concluding.
the modalities of inquiry: preparing, opening, exploring, narrowing, concluding, post-assessing
Angels know God by knowing themselves immediately as images of their source and end. Human beings can know God in this way but not immediately, having to come to it by piecing it together.
Laws are enforced by threat and promise.
expressed potential vs exercised potential
Demonic life is evening knowledge without morning knowledge, and thus darkness.
While not all wrongdoing involves ignorance, all wrongdoing involves ignoring.
inflation as creating a kind of pressure toward wealth inequality
Loving is a new-ing and renewing.
An abstract idea is a profoundly living thing.
Progress in intellectual, moral, artistic, etc. matters requires more and less; thus every field in which there is genuine progress leads to the Fourth Way.
supposition as taking out a loan from reason
Every choice an angel makes is an agelong choice, each enriching each, not like our choices written in water.
There is often a strange self-hatred in our wrongdoing, a wish to be less than we are, that we may have less than we might. So very much of sin is self-sabotage, sometimes quite intentional.
God commands us, that we may know our capabilities.
sovereignty as the public-making and -sustaining power
fourfold source of revelation (Schlegel): conscience, nature, Holy Writ, universal history
"...supposing that God has imparted a knowledge of Himself to mankind -- has spoken to them, and revealed Himself to them -- is it not highly probable that He has ordained some institution for the further propagation and diffusion of revealed truth and also for the maintenance as well of its original integrity as also of the right interpretation of it?" Schlegel
It is a fact of human experience that not all certainties are equally certain.
Ceremony has its root in family life.
three aspects of fitness for episcopal office
(1) assiduity of service
(2) endurance even unto death
(3) solicitude with regard to truth, in both word and deed
a lifecycle of systems: theorization -> practicalization -> overtheorization -> deterioration
Communicative thought abhors a contradiction.
localized vs nonlocalized historical periodization
We are least ourselves when we are least restrained, although we are not necessarily most ourselves when most restrained.
A bishop must always remember that the end and purpose of his office is everlasting life for the Church.
elements of contract law
(1) turpitude avoidance
(2) agreement security
(3) adjudication facilitation
"Qui enim accipi munus, debet operari secundum congruentiam muneris." Aquinas, In 2 Tim.
militia martyrum contra tyrannos
"The great, the fundamental need of any nation, any race, is for heroism, devotion, sacrifice, and there cannot be heroism, devotion, or sacrifice in a primarily skeptical spirit." Anna Julia Cooper
"...a sense of freedom in mind as well as in body is necessary to the appreciative and inspiring pursuit of the beautiful."
proper narrators (tell the story) vs. redactor-narrators (pull together elements, e.g., Mina Harker)
The author writes under a persona. The persona structures the voice that tells the story.
safeguards against totalitarianism
(1) presumption of liberty
(2) due process guarantees
(3) search and seizure restrictions
(4) integrated popular accountability
(5) checks and balances
(6) pluralism of societies
(7) recognition for conscientious objection
(8) entrenched symbolic national traditions
(9) state-independent institutions
(10) penalty and punishment restrictions
Judicial review sometimes protects and sometimes erodes safeguards against tyranny and abuse of power; there needs to be some safeguard against the erosive kind. (The American system has very little beyond impeachment, which is inadequate.)
We experience death not as the completion of life but as its forced incompletion, its disruption. It makes a human life an unwhole whole. (the paradox of death)
the sacrament of reconciliation and the precarity of our being
Art has an immense power to show corruption as corrupting, but artists, being fallen and fallible, face a temptation to revel in the aesthetics of corruption itself.
Better a poor man in an optimistic age of aspirations than a wealthy man in an age with no vision and hope.
Active support for the elderly is as important for preserving civilization as paideia for the young; to preserve and conserve civilized life requires a large pool of cautious experience, or, if not large, at least a well respected one to which everyone listens.
A society is only worthwhile to the extent it springs from reason or grace.
philosophical positions as structured by squares of opposition
the prophetic people, the apostolic community
the menorah of the Temple a symbol of meditation on Scripture
-- the cups are shaped like almond blossoms; almonds are symbols of watchfulness (the Heb. word for 'almond' is a homonym for 'watchful, vigilant') -- cp Jer. 1:11-12
the busy-ness of life vs the fullness of life
mortality as the shadow on our natality
Hierarchy arises from power, wisdom, and goodness, as they initiate, cultivate, and complete other power, wisdom, and goodness.
space, time, and cause as constituting relations among evidences
theoretical physics as an abstract account of physical evidence
the substrate technologies of philosophical schools in various eras
modes of Box and Diamond
per se / per accidens
prius / posterius
oppositum / non-oppositum
simpliciter / secundum quid
causa / causatum
-- perhaps also idem/diversum and unum/multa modes?
Christ -> saints -> relics -> secondary artifacts
the consecrated church building as a liturgical vestment for the congregation itself
Grenier takes all of the following to be equivalent formulae of the principle of causality: Everything that becomes has a cause. Everything composed of potency and act has a cause. Every composite being has a cause. Every being whose essence and existence are distinct is caused by another. Every finite being has a cause. Every being by participation has a cause. Everything moved is moved by another. Act is absolutely prior to potency. A thing cannot be efficient cause of itself. Every effect has a cause. Everything caused has a cause.
Peirce to Lady Welby (EP 2:478)
Intentional Interpretant: a determination of the utterer's mind
Effectual Interpretant: a determination of the interpreter's mind
Communicational Interpretant: a determination of that mind into which the minds of the utterer and interpreter are fuse din order to communicate (the commens)
-- the commens: "It consists of all that is, and must be, well understood between utterer and interpreter at the outset, in order that the sign in question should fulfill its function."
"No object can be denoted unless it be put into relation to the object of the commens."
People often overestimate the importance of persuasion in argument by misclassifying deontic components as purely rhetorical and normativity as persuasive attempt.
environment as the 'conscience' of the unexamined life
Doubt is the mother of dualism; doubt has a dualistic structure by its nature.
Reasons resonate with reasons.
Fascism works not by imposing order (which is sometimes impossible) but by destroying alternative sources of order, in order to create a monopoly of order.
Within the Zeitgeist, at any moment, the old gods are dying and the new are being born, but above and beyond the Zeitgeist, the one God is ever ancient, ever new.
As love of wisdom, philosophy posits the possibility of its completion. But this completion is not a termination, for love is no completed by terminating it in any way.
instrumental signs -> formal signs -> exemplars -> first exemplar cause
three modes of ratiocination: inclusion, exclusion, exposition
the categories as a classification of answers to natural questions
Lying, murder, adultery, and idolatry all directly harm the human common good.
Freedom of speech is the most basic test of whether a state actually regards citizens as having priority over itself.
necessity : deduction :: sufficiency : induction
induction by sufficient enumeration vs induction by sufficient exemplification
complete sufficiency vs incomplete sufficiency (adequacy) of induction
per se sufficiency vs per accidens sufficiency of induction
induction by proxy enumeration
usefulness as necessity in a certain respect
Christ walking on the water -- Job 9:8, "who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea"
teh Catholic brand as a juridical entity distinct from but supervenient on the Church itself
taste, skill, virtue
We experience the possibilities of materials in the work of skill, through its facilities and resistances.
modes of knowledge: definition, division, enunciation, ratiocination
'measure for price by deadline' as the essential element of business negotiation
geomorphological duals
strait - isthmus
gulf - peninsula
archipelago - lake system
bay - cape
lagoon - island
Stable genres are formed around literary canons, or institutional requiremens, or both.
falsifiability as connected to the boundary between the a priori and the a posteriori
the flit of reason
being, cause, and sign as the modes of participation
factors in doxastic synousia
(1) co-association (esp. social)
(2) mental economy
(3) ease of inquiry
(4) practical utility
-- (1) and (2) are transition-easing, (2) and (4) are salience-shifting
Money varies in value according to market access.
We can only recognize conscience as calling by recognizing it first as a context in which a call may arise.
Kant takes conscience to be a court of due diligence.
call of petition vs call of authority
Kant on conscience as diversifying our moral personalities: it is a phenomenon in which we, one natural person, are several moral persons
faculties as self-instrumentalities
Job as the book of Dasein
the quasi-oral character of the storytelling in the Gospel of Mark
predication as the union of the predicate *into* the subject
photography as always a presenting-for
sign : human world :: movement : physical world (Maritain)
the supersignifiable intelligible
- zeptowatt (10^-21 watts) as the rough minimum of energy required for a single cell to continue living so as to repair essential damage (usu. sub-seafloor cells that focus on methanogenesis are the kinds of cells that hover near this)
mildness as the virtue that covers disputation
exparticipation vs inparticipation
the categories as signification-anchors
In God, thing, concept, and sign are one.
Knowledge is not given but educed.
consent as self-deeming
the relation between conscience and dying well -- conscience as summoning us to live well and thus to die well
Decoding and deciphering generally involve causal mechanism.
'What one man can invent, another man can discover.'
persona, personal brand, social role, as relationes
External tribunals are imitations of conscience.
Schooling is something for which you have to make yourself fit.
The primary purpose of norms of journalistic objectivity is always to protect journalists; only if they are at leas normatively objective, and seen as such, are they not treated as opponents spreading enemy propaganda.
A vote is not an aspiration.
knowing through an intermediary as a mark of created being
-- another way to put it: the distinction between signified and signifier is a mark of created being
the liberal arts as paths to philosophy
Hell has no power to blackmail Heaven.
actions evocative of virtue
actions symbolic of virtue
actions appearing to imply virtue
actions implying virtue
divisibility, operativity, relativity
Mill's Methods as instruments of dialectic
Almost everything in a written constitution would be better done spontaneously through reason and regard for good precedent and the opinion of an at least decent and broadly honest public; but it is better to have the written guideline than nothing at all.
responsibilities, rights arising from responsibilities, responsibilities consequent to rights
Money does not arise directly from exchange but from honor.
Hypothesis confirmation is a matter of fit to experience; the emphasis, however, can be on the experience or on the fit to it.
"Symbols grow. They come into being by development out of other signs, particularly from likenesses or from mixed signs partaking of the nature of likenesses and symbols." Peirce
Peirce links reasoning too close to belief.
Peirce on excluded middle and noncontradiction:
(1) MAY BE: EM but not NC
(2) WOULD BE: not EM but NC
(3) IS: EM and NC
(4) empty: neither
Our Being-toward-death is a Being-under-judgment.
Communicative Acts
-- (1) Articulate
-- -- -- (a) Speech
-- -- -- (b) Writing
-- (2) Direct Semi-articulate
-- -- -- (a) Affectionate
-- -- -- (b) Pantomime
-- (3) Indirect (Mediated) Semi-articulate
-- -- -- (a) Painting
-- -- -- (b) Sculpture
-- -- -- (c) Architecture
-- (4) Expressive
-- -- -- (a) Music
-- -- -- (b) Dance
Cooperative Acts
-- (1) Mutual
-- -- -- (a) Communicative (speech)
-- -- -- (b) Physical (fight)
-- -- -- (c) Mediated Game (chess)
-- (2) Coordinately Directed (rowing a boat)
-- (3) Subordinately Structured (general and army)
-- (4) Auxiliary Provision (providing aid)
liturgy as a training of attention
(1) Trial and error concerns singulars whereas creativity extends to universals.
(2) Although creativity extends to universals, it also deals with singulars.
(3) Trial and error is often more efficacious in innovation than creativity, but creativity is better able to prioritize innovation in a given direction.
Logic is a form of creativity as well as knowledge.
ways of developing ideas
(1) go more general (generalize)
(2) go more specific (specify)
(3) analogize
(4) translate
(5) diagram
Godel's 2nd Incompleteness Theorem arguably shows that Peano's axioms cannot constitute a pure definition of 'natural number' (only one conditional with respect to other systems)
police as investigating vs as law enforcement vs as procedurally available force/coercion reserve for exigencies
deeds and dones
If you do not know how a fact demands explanation, you do not know what makes an explanation adequate.
All worthwhile things are easier to say than to do.
ordered use of chaos
Liberal regimes regularly mistake deflecting and coopting for learning.
Overspecialization always arises more from a large labor market than from a need for specialization.
Liberal democracies are generally poor at transmitting lessons across generations.
(1) social unity
(2) majority rule
(3) minority protection
(4) primacy of citizenship
-- these four elements are the major components contributing to success in liberal states, and a significant part of their attraction
Monarchy limits the growth of a centralized state, although it does not prevent it.
principle
-- negative
-- positive
-- -- logical procession
-- -- real procession
-- -- -- without dependence
-- -- -- with dependence
to be a mine and not a kine
a man might kill or die
the universe as delomic symbolic legisign
the adorability of God even considered only hypothetically (Peirce)
Peirce's humble argument as related to erotetic ontological argument
the plurality of subsidiarities and solidarities
Logical positivism confuses meaning and hypothesis.
Pop culture is more or less equally superstitious in every age; the topics that gather superstitions are all that change.
Mutual trust is more powerful than conspiracy, more flexible, more effective.
Education
Track 1: Schooling
Track 2: Job Training
Track 3: Entertainment
Track 4: Law and Politics
Protesting is most effective when it gives clear expression to a shift of incentives.
John the Baptist went before the Lord in death as well as in life.
formal logic : digital :: informal logic : analog
Analogies will often play you false, but even then they will often lead you astray in interesting ways.
Papal and conciliar declarations never put an end to controversy, generally speaking; they merely shift it off of load-bearing pillars.
'mine' by nature, by assimilation, by acquisition, by positive assignment
All created agents have agency with some measure of chance, or susceptibility to chance, or both.
the responsibility-ishness of the human response to the world
right to pursue happiness -> rights of conscience
change, composition, and boundaries as preconditions of experiments
relativity of impenetrability
being in a place circumscriptively, operatively, informatively, or semiotically
operative and semiotic compenetration of bodies
transcendental parthood // transcendental multitude
