Friday, July 14, 2023

Dashed Off XXIII

 Plausibility is not linear, there are different modes of plausibility.

True and false are not species of probability.

interplay of immanent and transitive acts in art

An ecclesia is not a happenstance grouping but a formally constituted body to which people are summoned.

persons as known by relations and removal of relations (thi sis proper, i.e., identifying knowledge)
kinds of these proper notions
-- (1) removal of relation
-- (2) to and from relations (orderings)
-- (3) with relations (sharings)

Trinitarian appropriation is based on the reduplication of essential acts as notional acts. (White has good discussion of this reduplication.)

pantheism as confusing the divine moral, jural, and sacral personality (in dominion and the referentiality of creation to the divine) with the divine person metaphysically considered.
-- thus the confusion of sign and thing, exemplate and exemplar, effect and cause, expresser and expressed

spark -> network -> instrumentalities
(growth of a movement in the most basic form)

material quasi-exemplar
-- we appeal to this when dealing with remains and traces. Imagine a wall with writing on it that lasts for centuries; the original wall and writing is the material quasi-exemplar. As time goes on, it deteriorates; the different stages of this are material quasi-exemplates. They aren't literally exemplates because they are the same thing. But we can treat them like exemplates because of the analogy betwene continuity and transmission -- the original state is like the original manuscript that results in a series of copies; the later states are like increasingly deficient copies.

Given connections in our experiences, we seek deeper connections. We are always with a connection-ward momentum.

constellations as beings of reason conventionally constituted by particularly selected apparent spatial relations organized by the relation of likeness

unconditional love requires an object unconditionally lovable

"A consent of ages and nations, of the learned and vulgar, ought, at least, to have great authority, unless we can shew some prejudice as universal as that consent is, which might be the cause of it." Reid

Signs are of objects in a respect, objects are things in a respect.

Human reason requires not merely arguments but narrative plots.

understanding as a kind of acting on behalf of (in the name of) the thing understood

Pop music is dominated by C major, D major, and G major, because of their use of use for both piano and guitar, the two dominant pop instruments. Digital music, however, has begun a flattening process : more indifference to key, fewer dramatic key changes.

God as universal pertinent

Every proposition that is Box is free from error to the extent that it is Box, in the way that it is Box. Thsu Box that is temporal is free from time-based deviation as a source of error, etc., and Not-Box-Not is the introduction of ways the proposition can be wrong.

verum factum as the foundation of all liberal arts

liability for intentional harm involves four things
(1) duty
(2) causation
(3) damages
(4) breach of duty

the 'reasonable person' is a legal 'diagram', related to what can be accounted for in a decision

Despite what some may think, cost-benefit analysis is often highly dependent on intuitive feel for assessing what is a cost and what is a benefit. These are determined relative to our model of a reasonable person's judgment of cost and benefit.

legislatures as customary ways of modifying custom

a reasonable person (as a legal construct)
(1) acts legally
(2) acts safely
(3) acts effectively
(4) acts adaptively
(5) acts in view of the perspective of other reasonable people

Annunciation: Mary as metaphysical, moral, jural, and sacral Mother of God, moral Mother of the Church
Crucifixion: Mary as jural Mother of the Church
Assumption: Mary as sacral Mother of the Church

reconciliation : removes sin from sinner :: eucharist : removes sinner from sin

Symbolic means of guidance and persuasion are not very precise but over a long period they can be very powerful.

It is an important lesson of physics that you can establish something as true even if you don't know what it means or what its qualifications/limitations are.

'It is probable that what is true is probable' vs. 'It is probable that what is probable is true'

"We can never conceive that a man's duty goes beyond his power, or that his power goes beyond what depends upon his will." Reid
"Every indication of wisdom, taken from the effect, is equally an indication of power to execute what wisdom planned."

Every medical issue is also a moral issue, sometimes indirectly but often directly.

the aleatory aspect of education

Pr 13:22 as a principle of tradition

Something is called 'potentia', power or capability, relatively; when that which is called so is not contrary to act, it is called active power, and when it is contrary to act, it is called passive power.

the schools of prophets as the incorporation of the shamanic into the dispensation of Torah

the human person as having by nature a shamanic quality

Fr. Peter Totleben on 'evangelizing catechesis'
(1) propaedeutic: opening people to transcendence
(2) evangelizing catechesis proper
--- (a) proclamation
--- --- (1) kerygmatic proclamation
--- --- (2) apologia
--- (b) participation
--- --- (1) meeting the mystery in adoration, contemplation, worship, and liturgy
--- --- (2) meeting the mystery as lived out in Christian community
--- (c) mystagogy

the forms of bad influence: corruption of character, obfuscation of truth, separation from good

You cannot do legitimate cost/benefit analysis unless you ahve first calibrated on how a reasonable person would assess costs and benefits.

"Society in judgment, of those who are esteemed fair and competent judges, has effects very similar to those of civil society: it gives strength and courage to every individual; it removes that timidity which is as naturally the companion of solitary judgment, as of a solitary man in the state of nature." Reid

Reasoning is fundamentally co-reasoning.

fandoms as constructed microcultures (but notice that fans pre-exist fandoms)

churches in the US as modes of religious freedom (in the context of civil society)

church edifices and liturgical gospels as moral persons (in particular, each is a persona moralis non-collegiales)

About 3/4 of Matthew has parallel in Luke; about 3/4 of Luke has parallel in Matthew, roughly.

the human being as relatively primary mover; as relatively primary maker; as relatively necessary being; as relatively a source of being, goodness, nobility, and other perfections; as relatively directing intelligence

We construct counterfactuals by considering causal powers.

Democratic politics is the politics of distraction.

Every age lauds some vices and condemns others; the best societies we make are not saintly, having a strong vicious streak, like any other; what makes them best is a sense of proportion, not lauding terrible vices and not treating minor vices as great evils. There are societies that will encourage depravity and depradation, but treat rudeness or the like as damnable offenses that give others a permission to destroy; those are the societies to avoid most.

All higher animals in some sense see the future, in that they are always already anticipating what is not yet, and acting in light of it; present action forms in a pond of extrapolations.

arguments as vocations to a greater coherence

the principiation that is one with procession

People often confuse love-with-reasonable-conditions and unconditional love.

"Culture is shared analogies." Guy Davenport

Society is not built merely on trust but on shared trust.

Charity does not subserve the purpose of dialogue; it is not a rhetorical tactic.

Whether something should be legal or illegal is always context-dependent.

Highly influential technologies tend to be cheap and multi-use, facilitating adoption in a lot of different populations.

the privity of a promise and mediated privity

Negligence is always relative to what is reasonable.

There has never been a time in which medicine has not had a religious tinge.

"When the State gives, it will always take. The Quid pro quo in Christian Legislation is Imperial Prerogative." Newman

The State, unlike the Church, is very temporally and locally bound; the Church does not play opposite to or as the complement of the State, but interacts with many different States at many different times/places.

Matthew 5:20 explains the point of the sections that follow it, which give examples, rather than an exhaustive checklist.

When we are subject to gravity, we are not refraining from levitation.

Continually doubling down in argument, as in gambling, will eventually leave you bankrupt.

Elections as measurement devices are not precise; a large election even well-run may not be accurate to more than a thousand or more, given accidentally botched ballots, confusion of names, bad instructions, judgment calls in how to count, etc.

"The real ground for the 'liberal' or 'democratic' devotion to freedom was a religious love of a God who set an absolute value on every individual human being. Free speech and free inquiry concerning political and scentific questions; free consent in issues arising out of economic activity; free enjoyment of the produce won by a man's labour -- the opposite of all tyranny and oppression, exploitation and robbery -- these were ideals based in the infinite dignity or worth of the human individual; and on the fact that God loved the human individual and Christ had died for him." Collingwood

It is a peculiarity of pseudo- and semi-intellectuals of the chatty classes that they think the book version of something is always the most authentic version of it. Regardless of what people in a movement actually believe, for instance, they'll take even a loon's version in a book as the real version, if the real version weren't also put in a book they had come across.

Harms and benefits are not all of one kind. Some are deeply personal, some closely linked, some indirect. It makes some sense to maximize deeply personal benefits for everyon, or minimize deeply personal harms; it makes no sense to maximize indirect benefits or minimize indirect harms unless deeply personal or closely linked cases are already handled. The great flaw of utilitarianisms of all kinds is not recognizing that welfare or happiness is not a mass but a structure, and thus not distinguishing the central from the peripheral, the fundamental from the superficial, the personal from the circumstantial.

Contracts get their authority and sanctity from the highest tribunal before which they exist.