Friday, September 01, 2023

Dashed Off XXVII

 Being a good sport involves playing a game not to get the best outcome but to get the best games.

Perhaps the most peculiar assumption of Carnap's *The Logical Structure of the World* is the assumption that to be unified is the natural state of science, that this unified science has been divided and this division must be overcome, that there is this thing that has never existed, *the* conceptual system of unified science.

On Carnap's characterization in LSW, science is a purely conceptual endeavor.

"...it is liberty which is ancient and despotism which is modern." Germaine de Stael
"When a nation feels the want of political reform, the personal character of the monarch is but a feeble barrier against the impulse."
"...the heart of a virtuous man is the sanctuary of the Divinity in this world."
"No revolution in a great country can succeed unless it takes its beginning from the higher orders; the people come forward subsequently, but they are not capable of striking the first blows."
"The three powers, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, are in the essence of things; they exist in all governments, as action, preservation, and renewal exist in the course of nature."

It is common, although not inevitable, for activists to treat a thirst for intrigue as a passion for justice.

Analogy often interprets analogy.

Where there is no willingness to endure agony, honor is unsure.

superheroes
(1) by birth (Superman)
(2) by appointment (Green Lantern)
(3) by training (Batman)
(4) by fortune (Spiderman)

possession proper, possession by merit, possession by favor

the three ways narrative represents: as it is, as it should be, as it is said to be

"We say that god is a living being, perpetual, most good, so that continual and perpetual life and duration belong to god; for this is god." Aristotle

hyponoia -> allegoria

The object domains for sciences are relative to their inquiries.

"The cultural objects have in common with the psychological ones the fact that they, too, are subject-bound, their 'bearers' are always the persons of a certain group. But, in contrast to the psychological objects, their bearers may change: a state or a custom can persist even though the bearing subjects perish and others take their place. Moreover, the cultural objects are not composed of psychological (much less physical) objects." Carnap

manifestation relations & documentation relations for cultural objects
"The psychological events in which a cultural object (cultural event) appears are called the latter's *manifestations*, the physical objects in which a cultural object is reflected are called its *documentations*." Carnap

Classes are objects of a distinct kind of inquiry from elements of classes.

Carnap's distinction between objects and quasi-objects seems fundamentally otiose and question-begging.

Whether an object is taken as simple or complex is generally dependent on the form of the inquiry.

sign itself, nominatum, sense
(1) x is a man, (2) x homo est, (3) x is a rational animal
-- same nominatum for each, x
-- (1) and (2) have the same sense, but not (3)
-- (1), (2), and (3) have different signs
-- What Carnap misses is that these may be conjoined; ie.., you may be talking about the nominatum under the description of the sense, or the sense qua nominatum, or nominatum qua signed, etc. In fact this is the normal way of things; losing the reduplications has to be done deliberately and sometimes quite artificially. Carnap's thesis of extensionality only applies to fields already deliberately extensionalized.

Use value is value because human skill has been embodied in it; but skill is not measured by duration of labor.

There is no total labor power of society; labor is not homogeneous. 

Marx's theory of use value is hylomorphic.

All of the first part of *Capital* is Marx struggling with making sense of ens rationis. (He actually does fairly well given that he is starting from scratch.)

money as an activity of equation

Everything one does as an academic is by nature temporary.

People used to wonder what things would be like if we spent for peace as we spent for war, and now with the welfare state we know: states go increasingly into debt trying to shove increasingly large quantities of money through increasingly baroque and administratively bloated state agencies, as quality of services fluctuates erratically.

"There are always limits to the intellects of those who have not felt the harmony that exists between the nature of things and the duties of man." Germaine de Stael
"No liberty can exist in that country where arms are borne only by soldiers, and not by citizens."

Replicability is a feature of experimental narrative, not the bare experiment itself.

No one is very good at arguing for things they think obvious.

The world only rarely persecutes Christians for devotion to Christ; it persecutes them for refusing devotion to the world's preferred idols, always insisting on its reasonableness and tolerance in allowing devotion to Christ to be added to devotion to idols.

The poor even in mass cannot outdonate the rich; but it is the poor, not the rich, who create cultures of giving.

Gregory of Nyssa explains Mt 26:24 by saying "on account of the depth of the ingrained evil, the chastisement in the way of purgation will be extended boundlessly (eis apeiron parateinetai), but as for what has never existed, how can any torment touch it?" ("On Infant's Early Deaths")

Societies are tapestries of classifications and analogies between classifications.

Opinions may or may not be consistent, but beliefs shift our minds into consistency with what is believed, although this often happens slowly.

"Christ came in one way to the active man and in another way to the contemplative man; again, he comes in another way to a man of vision, and yet a different way to the zealous or to those already deified. Even in that very vision of God there are many differences." Palamas (Tr. 3.28)

the humility of giving oneself over to God so as to receive oneself again from God, in God's way, as merited and not merely natural gift

Our being expresses God's love.

Human beings are not atomoi but overlap each other in many ways, distinct and usually only slightly overlapping, but overlapping nonetheless.

jurisdiction as formal abstract jural presence
possession as formal concrete jural presence

One's capacity to set society in order is always less than one's capacity to set oneself in order.

Even in doing the right thing, the intemperate person often throws other things into chaos.

What holiness we can have in this world is holiness on credit.

the righting reflex and the external world

pack-sociality vs. territory-sociality

George Washington's great military talent was being able to keep men on track, which made him able to do things like withdrawals or hard marches under conditions that would lead even well disciplined armies to struggle. Over and over again his armies, as armies, do things that exceed their apparent ability.

When language goes on holiday, it discovers interesting things.

"In a revolution, men have often more to dread form their successes than from their failures." Germaine de Stael
"It is in the art of directing public opinion, or of yielding to it at the proper moment, that the science of government consists in modern times."
"Now immorality of every kind is also borrowing at interest; it saves for the moment and ruins later."
"Equality in the eye of the law partakes of justice, and consequently of liberty: but the desire of annihilating every superior rank is one of the pettinesses of self-love."

"Every thing great, regular, or proportioned, excites *Veneration*, either toward itself, if we imagine it animated, if not animated, toward some apprehended Cause." Hutcheson

impartial spectator : conscience :: jury : court

fabric price of an argument (evidential) vs cut-make-trim price of an argument (structural)

large bundles of low-cost long shots as a problem-solving strategy

We are always most competent at things for which we are overqualified.

Hebrews 1:1-4 as giving the fundamental principles of Christian typology (we reduce the many steps and twists to Christ, in such a way as to show his greater eminence)

"The adequate or total cause of sensation is nto found simply in the senses themselves....A sensory impression is, then, the necessary complement of the sensitive power and the natural determinign cause of the act of perception." Mercier

Carnap's argument that cultural objects are reducible to manifestations seems to assume that the documentation does not itself introduce something distinctive and necessary, which we find to be false in many arts and elsewhere; translations between cultural objects and psychological objects are imperfect.

Coextensiveness is usually approximated rather than established.

Divine love is active, not reactive, and anticipates what it loves.

definition: definiens must be
(1) coextensive
(2) better known
(3) correspondent
(4) account-giving
nominal definition: (1) & (2); real defintion (1), (2), & (3); essential ((1), (2), (3), & (4)

Natural law clearly does require external worship of God, but does not specify the content beyond giving force to vow and oath, and requiring sacrifice or devotional gift in a broad sense, as well as some sort of sociality in these matters.

Religion always puts the rights of government in a different light.

"Poetry I take to be the continual effort to bring language back to the actual." C. S. Lewis

In the face of massive disaster, normal behavior is to act as normally as conditions allow, precisely because the vastness of the disaster makes panic pointless.

"The embarrassed cannot learn." Hillel (Pirkei Avot 2:5)