Dashed Off IX

 The practical and theoretical sciences interpenetrate, each a means to the ends of the other.

Treating humanity as an end in itself requires treating human beings as united by a moral world.

The natural human being is already a human being who is being morally formed.

Sympathy is morally effective mostly as a bound rather than as the substance.

Human reason is naturally rhapsodic and only becomes systematic with much effort; and, given a system, it becomes rhapsodic again.

To say that the past is necessary is just to say that, for the present and future, they cannot be understood without the past; present and future cannot have an exemption or exception with respect to the past; the past is, so to speak, with the present and future, without exception.

Free will is an expression of a particular kind of intellectual goodness.

The success of science at providing unifying explanations for differing domains is a sign of infintie intelligibility as a final cause of intellect.

Actuality intrinsically suggests possibility and necessity.

Any actual thing doing anything suggests other things it could be doing.

Our ability to use experiments to understand the world depends on our ability to recognize the values (for theory, for confirmation, for research, for discovery) a given experiment exhibits.

No theory of sublimity is adequate that cannot include the sublimity of love.

Hooker's four tests of ceremony
(1) intrinsic reasonableness
(2) antiquity
(3) Church Authority
(4) dispensation in dispensable matters

Much of both learning and teaching is trying to find ways to do small things well.

S4.2 and Minkowski spacetime

Classification is a large part of the logic of discovery; we classify then fill gaps, classify and identify anomalies, classify and test membership, classify and compare classifications.

"Conscience and self-love, if we understand our true happiness, always lead us the same way. duty and interest are perfectly coincident, for the most part in this world, but entirely and in every instance if we take in the future and the whole; this being implied in the notion of a good and perfect administration of things." Butler

sench, sink; quench, quink; drench, drink
and thench him until he thinks

"No regularity will ever be found which can make a true substance out of several beings by aggregation." Leibniz

The argument from fulfilled prophecy is essentially a kind of argument from coherence.

objective causation as disposing to end

Human beings generally feel a craving for incorporation into a greater humanity, as if we are missing an integration that we feel should be there.

We may fall in love aesthetically or romantically or socially.

No particular possible worlds model can capture all possibilities.
(1) Different interpretations, different questions/propositions, different truth values;
(2) Something like a diagonal argument representing possible worlds by binary strings (if lists are finite)?
(3) Superpossibles
-- quantum uncertainty and the limits of our precision in forming possible worlds models?

Many universalist arguments only establish that heaven is a higher-order perpetuity than hell, as transfinite to infinite, as plane to line. They then jump to the conclusion that the lower-order perpetuity is not a perpetuity at all.

the palaetiological problem and historical Jesus studies

forms of testimonial evidence of Resurrection
(1) empty tomb stories
(2) appearance stories
(3) ecclesial power stories

the parabolic method in Trinitarian theology

Acts of the Apostles as a work on baptism

Paul mentions baptism in Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Colossians, Ephesians; it is also mentioned in Hebrews and 1 Peter.

The Father together with the Son brings forth the Spirit.
Reading 1: {The Father together with the Son} brings forth the Spirit.
Reading 2: The Father {together with the Son brings forth the Spirit}.
The 'Greek' view is something like 2-only; the 'Latin', taking the Son as mediate principle, accepts both.

The brief mentions of prophets in the New Testament seem to suggest that their role in the early Church was primarily to facilitate and ease conversion.

If we think of searches (or tests) that can be organized into ensembles of searches, then every ensemble allows us to identify 'search necessity' and 'search impossibility' for the ensemble. Suppose ensemble is e. Then Diamond-e(p) = p comes out true given at least one search in the ensemble; Box-e(p) = p comes out true for every search in the ensembles. We can then iterate modalities. Suppose set of ensembles S that includes e. Then Diamond-sBox(p) = p is the result of every search in at least one ensemble in S; Box-sDiamond(p) = p is the result of at least one search in every ensemble in S. We can perhaps relate this to probabilities.

A possibility: possible worlds frameworks cannot adequately model cases where Diamond -> Box is verified.

The intellect finds peace in what is immutable.

Seeing-as is selective; it implies other possibilities.

figures of speech as recraftings of language suitable for particular purposes

8:27-8:33 as the central idea of Mark's Gospel

Of Mark's fourteen uses of 'Son of Man', two refer to humanity in some fashion, three directly allude to Daniel, nine directly connect the term to the Passion.

"A citizen must always be regarded as a colegislative member fo the state (that is, not merely as a means, but at the same time as an end in himself...." Kant

We live in an ocean of grace, like fish in the sea.

The Book of Odes plays the role it does in Confucianism in part because an unpoetic people are poorly adapted to coherent participation in rites.

All of Kelsen's argument for disentangling justice and law is based on an absurdly defective, even laughable, understanding of justice. This is quite a regular feature of legal positivist arguments on these matters; legal positivism seems often motivated by caricatures of ethics.

Law is a regulative order; some of regulation is correction; some of correction is punishment; some of punishment is coercive use of force.

An account of law that does not recgonize legislative declarations of holidays as laws is already highly defective.

Most human-made laws are concerned with classification rather than coercion.

If only juristic persons existed in law, there would be no connection to social facts such that law could be anything more than a kind of fiction on paper.

Law hypostatizes.

Nothing prevents there being two states to a single territory except a common taste for orderly boundaries and distinct boxes.

It is necessary to see the state as a particular mode of cooperation.

The behaviors of states clearly assumes that there are tacit interstate obligations and rights.

Rhetoric is the field devoted to operationalizing and realizing logical principles.

A system of norms can only function as a system of norms when recognized as such by reason, under rational principles; nothing is a norm except in the context of reason.

Society cannot be sustained by only deserved good; it requries undeserved good.

Our usual experience of positive law is not as coercive but as a shared standard for coordination.

Humanity itself forms the framework of law.

When churchmen think of themselves as 'dialoguing with the world', they are more often dialoguine with phantoms in their heads.

Physicists often have to use colloquial terms analogically.

Scientific explanations often cannot use terms univocally because they have to order colloquial versions of terms to more rigorously defined versions of terms that are treated as more fundamental.

thought experiments as "distillations of practice" (David Gooding)

Civil Disobedience

 Rupert Read has an article at Aeon on climate-related civil disobedience. Its argument is somewhat difficult to follow because Read is never very precise about what one would be disobeying, but it also, I think, shows some sloppiness in Read's understanding of civil disobedience:

The classic philosophical debate around civil disobedience (or nonviolent direct action) asks: is there a right to engage in this form of conscientious law-breaking, under circumstances of deep wrong, where conventional methods of addressing that wrong have failed or are unavailable? It’s widely accepted among philosophers that there is such a right: it is virtually unknown for philosophers to argue against it; even an extremely mainstream liberal individualist such as John Rawls argues for it. And the climate crisis fits the bill for the exercise of this right. Because it is a case of a huge and urgent injustice – a threat to the very viability of ongoing human civilisation, an existential risk – where conventional methods have been tried and failed, and moreover where vulnerable unborn future generations are not able to stick up (let alone vote) for themselves to try to redress the matter. 

All of this is an argument that there is no need to debate this particular matter, which is "basically settled". It is, I think, clear that appeal to "vulnerable unborn future generations" is not anything about which anything has been "basically settled at all"; this, despite the fact that I probably have a view closer on this particular to Read's than most philosophers. But, that aside, Read seems to  misconceive the role of injustice in civil disobedience. The two (relatively) uncontroversial rights to engage in civil disobedience are (1) when a law requires you, yourself, to do something morally wrong and (2) when a law is inconsistent with your specific rights and responsibilities as a citizen. Anything beyond these is certainly controversial, regardless of the injustice in question, and, indeed, has to be, because of the 'civil' part of 'civil disobedience', which essentially means 'as a citizen'. If you disobey a law, it doesn't matter what injustice you claim is associated with it; you aren't engaging in civil disobedience unless you are doing so in your capacity as a citizen. In a case where this is not so, disobedience could, perhaps, still be justifiable -- that is itself controversial -- but it wouldn't be civil disobedience. 

Marchers in Birmingham, for instance, were specifically trying to call attention to provable violations of the rights of citizens in Birmingham, and the law they specifically disobeyed -- the law governing parade permits -- was being deployed to prevent the exercise of their freedom of assembly and speech, by being used in such a way as specifically to prevent them from calling attention to the violations. The protest was also, as Martin Luther King, Jr., noted in the "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", for the explicit purpose of trying to force the city to negotiate over its continued imposition of segregation; also in view (more indirectly and less immediately) was its failure to provide reasonable protection to citizens against the racist domestic terrorism that had earned Birmingham the nickname of "Bombingham". This kind of disobedience is clearly civil disobedience. The whole point was citizenship; the whole action was an attempt to act as citizens; the actions taken were carefully calibrated to leave open alliance and cooperation with other citizens; the whole problem was the failure of the city to take citizenship seriously, and the response was specifically to hold the structures of government responsible to the power of citizens; the intent was at least in part to uphold rights and protections that in the long term would also benefit all citizens, not incidentally, but precisely as citizens.

It is very difficult to fit most climate-oriented disobedience of laws into this kind of model. The laws disobeyed are often not being used specifically to harm anyone's role as a citizen and do not, in themselves or as applied, require anyone themselves to do something unjust; the injustice to which activists point is often diffuse and not specifically tied to citizenship; the actions are often not defending citizens against government action but bullying other citizens. To the extent that these are the case, one can call into question how much the disobedience is civil disobedience at all. This is not, of course, to say that civil disobedience is impossible on climate-related topics; but civil disobedience is an action of citizens, as citizens, on behalf of all citizens, and something can only be justified as civil disobedience to the extent that it is so.

Universal Capacity to Wonder

 I argue that philosophy is a universal intellectual activity that has been pursued by peoples of all cultures and that the propensity to raise fundamental questions about human experience can be found in peoples belonging to different cultures, even though the answers may be different, despite our common humanity, and may not all be equally compelling. Yet, our common humanity, which inclines human beings to adopt similar (or nearly similar) responses to experiences of various kinds, tends to lead thinkers to be exercised about fairly similar questions or puzzles and to reflect on them in search of answers or explanations. The human capacity to wonder is not only boundless but universal. The context of our wonder is of course human experience. We wonder about the nature of the universe and our place in it, about who or what we are, the existence of some ultimate being, the nature of the good life, and about many other aspects of our experience that are beyond our ken and are, thus, not immediately rationally explicable by us. Wonder leads some individuals in various cultures to raise fundamental questions and, in this way, to engage in philosophical reflections.

[Kwame Gyekye, An Essay on African Philosophical Thought, Temple University Press (Philadelphia: 1995) pp. xiv-xv.]

Philosophers and Poets, Bores and Murderers

 “I’ve had the most interesting talk of my life!” she exclaimed, taking her seat beside Willoughby. “D’you realise that one of your men is a philosopher and a poet?” 

 “A very interesting fellow—that’s what I always say,” said Willoughby, distinguishing Mr. Grice. “Though Rachel finds him a bore.” 

 “He’s a bore when he talks about currents,” said Rachel. Her eyes were full of sleep, but Mrs. Dalloway still seemed to her wonderful. 

 “I’ve never met a bore yet!” said Clarissa. 

 “And I should say the world was full of them!” exclaimed Helen. But her beauty, which was radiant in the morning light, took the contrariness from her words. 

 “I agree that it’s the worst one can possibly say of any one,” said Clarissa. “How much rather one would be a murderer than a bore!” she added, with her usual air of saying something profound. “One can fancy liking a murderer. It’s the same with dogs. Some dogs are awful bores, poor dears.”

Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out, Chapter IV.

Links of Note

 * Emily FitzGerald, How to Practice Embodied Pedagogy, at "The APA Blog"

* David A. Ciepley, Beyond Public and Private: Toward a Political Theory of the Corporation (PDF)

* Peter West, Philosophy is an art, on Margaret Macdonald, at "Aeon"

* T. Parker Haratine & Kevin A. Smith, Anselmian Defense of Hell (PDF)

* Chris Matarazzo, The Tao of the 80s Girl, at "Hats and Rabbits"

* Mark Sentesy, Are Kinetic and Temporal Continuities Real for Aristotle? (PDF)

* Daniel Dennett has died. His early work was always interesting; I think around about Freedom Evolves it became much more hit-and-miss. He was always one of the great philosophical communicators of his generation, though.

* Hao Dong, Leibniz as a virtue ethicist (PDF)

* Jeremy Skrzypek, Objects and Their Parts: The Problem of Material Composition, at "1000-Word Philosophy"

* Eric L. Hutton, On Ritual and Legislation (PDF)

* Richard Y Chappell, Utopian Enemies of the Better, at "Good Thoughts"

* Gregory Salmieri, David Bronstein, David Charles, & James G. Lennox, Episteme, demonstration, and explanation: A fresh look at Aristotle's Posterior Analytics (PDF)

* Freya Möbus, Socrates on Cookery and Rhetoric (PDF)

Annotation

 Passer Mortuus Est
by Edna St. Vincent Millay 

Death devours all lovely things;
 Lesbia with her sparrow
 Shares the darkness,--presently
 Every bed is narrow.  

Unremembered as old rain
 Dries the sheer libation,
And the little petulant hand
 Is an annotation. 

 After all, my erstwhile dear,
 My no longer cherished,
 Need we say it was not love,
 Now that love is perished?

Doctor Magnificus

 Today is the feast of St. Anselm of Canterbury, also known as Anselm of Aosta and Anselm of Bec, Doctor of the Church.

For injustice is not the kind of thing which infects and corrupts the soul in the way that poison infects and corrupts the body; nor does it do something in the way that happens when a wicked man does evil deeds. When a savage beast breaks its bonds and rages about wildly, and when a ship—if the helmsman leaves the rudder and delivers the vessel to the wind and the waves—strays and is driven into dangers of one kind or another, we say that the absence of chains or of a rudder causes these events. [We say this] not because their absence is something or does something but because if they had been present they would have caused the wild animal not to rage and the ship not to perish. By comparison, when an evil man rages and is driven into various dangers to his soul, viz., evil deeds, we declare that injustice causes these deeds. [We say this] not because injustice is a being or does something but because the will (to which all the voluntary movements of the entire man are submitted), lacking justice, driven on by various appetites, being inconstant, unrestrained, and uncontrolled, plunges itself and everything under its control into manifold evils—all of which justice, had it been present, would have prevented from happening. 

 [Anselm of Canterbury, De Conceptu Virginali, Chapter 5, Jasper Hopkins, tr.]

A Coronet I'll Weave

"Oh, Deck Me Not with Gems"
A Song
by Caroline E. R. Parker

"Oh, deck me not with gems," she said,
 "Oh, deck me not with gems;
 I care not, for the princely light
 Of jewelled diadems,
 But give me flowers, the fresh, the fair,
 Oh, give me fairy flowers
 To deck my robe, to deck my hair,
 From my own garden bowers."

 "I know where gleam bright gems," she said,
"Bright gems in emerald set,
 Fair rose-buds glistening in the dew,
 And blue-eyed violet.
The jasmine stars, like orient pearls,
 I'll twine amid my hair,
 And lilies of the valley sweet
 Upon my bosom wear." 

 "Nay, let me go," the fair girl said,
 "Nay, let me go and wreathe
 A chaplet of my garden flowers,
 A coronet I'll weave.
 You'll say 'tis fairer far than gems,
 You'll say it is more fair,
 My coronet of garden flowers,
 Than gems of beauty rare." 

 "I care not for bright gems," she said,
 "I care not for bright gems,
 I care not for the jewelled light
 Of princely. diadems.
 My heart is with its early home,
 And its dear garden bowers;
 Oh, deck me not with gems,” she said,
"But give me sweet home-flowers."

Holy High Elf

 Today is the feast of St. Aelfheah of Canterbury, more commonly known in English as St. Alphege or Alfege. He was born in the tenth century somewhere around Bath and became first a monk and then an anchorite, and in 984 was appointed Bishop of Winchester. He was a competent bishop, doing a fair amount to build up and maintain the local churches, but his claim to fame began to develop when a Viking raid in 994 went in an unexpected direction. Viking raids could be very, very nasty, but Vikings were also sometimes willing to listen to better offers, if you had any. The locals offered to negotiate so that the Vikings could go away wealthy without the hard work of seizing the wealth themselves, and it just so happens that one of the Viking leaders was a man named Olaf Tryggvason. Tryggvason's beloved wife had recently died, which is why he was out raiding in an attempt to get away from home and its memories, and he had some unusual experiences that led him to think that Christianity might actually be true. We don't know the exact timeline here. It's possible that Tryggvason was already baptized and was mostly just winding up his raiding voyage, or it might be that he was still considering it and saw this as a good opportunity to take the final leap. There's fairly good reason to think that St. Alphege was the bishop who gave him confirmation. In any case, Tryggvason received danegeld, was either baptized and confirmed or at least confirmed, and promised never to raid England again. Tryggvason, of course, would go home and begin the Christianization of Norway.

In 1006, St. Alphege became Archbishop of Canterbury, succeeding St. Aelfric. In 1011, a raiding party of Danes sacked Canterbury. He and several others were taken hostage, the Danes hoping to squeeze a ransom out of him. So he stayed a prisoner for seven months. As he refused to allow anyone to pay a ransom for him, however, the Danes saw no particular reason to keep him around. So one day, when they were drunk, they played the game of throwing rocks and bones at him and then finished him off by smashing his head in with the butt of an axe. Stories diverge on whether the axe-blow was part of the sport or a mercy-killing when he was already at the ragged edge. According to some stories, Thorkell the Tall, who was the leader of the Vikings, tried to protect Alphege, but it's hard to control a bunch of bored drunk Vikings; this may have contributed to Thorkell eventually joining the fleet of Aethelred the Unready, defending England from Viking invasion.

Aelfheah literally means 'High Elf', 'high' indicating either status (noble) or height (tall). 'Elf', of course, is a word used in Anglo-Saxon for spiritual beings, so we could perhaps also translate it as 'Noble Spirit'.

Two New Poem Drafts

 Despair

When I seek your charms to name,
I must despair, for words the same
poets skilled and hack have used
to sing through phases of the Muse
songs that did more justice then,
before they had been sung again.
I praise your eyes, but limpid pools
boys were taught in books at school;
I praise your hair, so silken fine;
every thought seems stolen line.
I hymn your lips; their cupid-bow
framed in words the bar-girls know,
my hope of lightly touching kiss
pre-known by every star-eyed miss.
It is unfair, and I could weep
tears long told through eons deep;
must I make a language new
to speak as speech should speak of you?

Worryless

The kite is dancing with the wind
arm in arm, as friend to friend;
worries gently drift away.
The blue of stream by drying grass,
swaying like a pleasant lass,
rejoices in the day.
The trees upraise their crooked arms
their leaves a-shimmer like a charm
that flashes in the light.
Beneath the bough that sways above,
the birds a-chatter, full of love,
the road goes straight and right.

The National Popular Vote Compact Scam

Since Maine is the most recent state to pass National Popular Vote Compact legislation, I will up this again, with some slight revisions.

 (1) We don't have any mechanism for getting information about a national popular vote; the add-all-the-state-numbers-together tally is a complete fiction that has no direct meaning. The United States under the Electoral College does not run one election; it runs fifty-one different elections (states plus D.C.), weights them by Congressional representation (a simple way to weight by population), and gives the laurels to the person who won enough elections of sufficient weight. Each of these elections is run on different laws governing means of collecting votes, times and places, means of counting, and even who can vote and how. Adding numbers from different elections doesn't get you a 'national popular vote' number, because they are measuring different things. A vote in one state is a different legal entity than a vote in another state. What is more, there is always a certain amount of uncertainty in elections involving large populations (and the U.S. electorate is very large); we have no mechanisms, as we would need if we were collecting a real national popular vote number, for minimizing this uncertainty, and, indeed, trying to guesstimate a real national popular vote number from the elections we do have necessarily multiplies the uncertainty.

(2) The 'National Popular Vote Compact' is not a national popular vote system; the name is a lie. It is an Electoral College system under which states agree to ignore the decisions of their own populations and distribute their Electoral College votes based on a number that was obtained inconsistently with their own election laws and by methods that they cannot themselves properly monitor and correct. It is indeed as stupid as that sounds. As I have said before:

On the NPV system, states would be committing themselves in the Electoral College to preferring votes elsewhere to those cast by their own citizens. If State A doesn't allow felons to vote and State B does for civil rights reasons, then on the NPV plan, State A is committed to accepting as legitimate felons voting in in State B despite the fact that people in A exactly like those in B don't get to vote, and State B is committed to accepting as legitimate the election numbers coming out of State A, despite knowing quite well that the numbers are derived in part on what people in State B regard as a civil rights violation, and that there are potential voters in A whose votes are not getting counted despite the fact that they would count in B. This is an absurd situation. Moreover, NPV guarantees that states with well-thought-out election laws and well-run election systems are held hostage to those without....Numbers can't be established for a 'national popular vote' (even one based on a fiction) under a state-by-state system like ours unless all the states have their act together. We know for a fact that this can't be guaranteed, and that a state can make a complete mess of things by poor collection methods, inconsistent vote-counting, and loopholes for voting fraud. And we also know for a fact that nobody can actually fix these problems except citizens of that state.

Any state legislature that is so stupid as to sign on to the Compact is failing in their responsibilities to their own citizens; it is also basing its use of electoral power on a process it has no ability to monitor and for which it has no ability to correct abuses, namely, how other states are organizing voting and count votes.

(3) Because it is not a real national popular vote, and involves nothing remotely like what would be required for a real national popular vote, no arguments for a national popular vote actually give one a reason for supporting the National Popular Vote Compact. And because it doesn't have any mechanism for guaranteeing equal votes, no argument for equalizing votes can give a reason for supporting the National Popular Vote Compact. And because it is an Electoral College system that is designed on principles inconsistent with the Electoral College itself, no arguments about how the Electoral College could better represent the people of the United States can possibly give a reason for supporting the National Popular Vote Compact, either. There is no good reason for it. The Electoral College is resilient enough that maybe -- maybe -- it could avoid disaster, but a proposal that is so incoherent -- and it is, again, literally incoherent -- cannot possibly be good for an electoral system.

(4) The proposal depends on an attack on the integrity of the Electoral College; it requires claiming that the Electoral College as it is intended to function is not getting good results. But at the same time, the proposal does not eliminate the Electoral College, and, indeed, the entire point of the proposal is to avoid going through the proper process to amend the Constitution. This is a further incoherence in the plan: it is, and this is often explicit in the defenses of the defenders, an attempt to treat a provision of the Constitution as defective while simultaneously pretending it doesn't need actual correction. Any citizen in any state should regard a legislator's vote for the NPV plan as an act of contempt for the United States Constitution and as a sign of incompetence, because it takes both stupidity and contempt for the Constitution to treat such a ridiculous proposal as a serious election system.

(5) It's impressive how much of a brazen lie the name is. I've pointed out at length that it is not any kind of national popular vote. But it is also lyingly billed as an interstate compact that will come into effect once a sufficient number of states agree to it. It cannot in fact be both.Any state can direct how its legislature should choose electors, if it does not run afoul of other Constitutional requirements. If the National Popular Vote Compact were seen only as a bit of state legislation, for instance, the state legislature is directing that the vote of its own constituents should be ignored in favor of an artificial number created by a process which swamps out the votes of its constituents. It's unclear how this is consistent with the Constitutional requirement that each state should have a republican constitution, since it is inconsistent for a republic simply to ignore the votes of its entire citizenry, but it's possible that a state could get away with this -- it's not as if this is a banner era for upholding the values that are essential to a healthy republic. Likewise, for the reason noted above about different voting requirements in different statements, it arguably is inconsistent with the equal protection clause; but, again, people are very selective in how they apply equal protection. But the legislation is consistently presented not as a state making a decision for itself, but as a compact, and yet every time it is described by its partisans it is treated as if it went into effect the moment it is passed by states with enough votes together to elect the President, which it cannot be.  According to the Constitution, an interstate compact cannot have effect without the consent of Congress. Literally everything about this political proposal is a lie.

Links of Note

 * Bryan Garsten, The Liberalism of Refuge

* Daniel Novotny, Prolegomena to a Study of Beings of Reason in Post-Suarezian Scholasticism 1600-1650 (PDF) and Scholastic Debates about Beings of Reason and Contemporary Analytical Metaphysics (PDF)

* George H. Nash, John Witherspoon: Educating for Liberty, at the Acton Institute

* Nira Arapovic, Aristotle's Hylomorphism and the Mind-Body Problem (PDF)

* Edward Feser, Boundaries of Belief, reviews Guy Mansini's The Development of Doctrine, at "First Things"

* Colin Marshall, Schopenhauer on the Futility of Suicide (PDF)

* Jess Cockerill, Expired Cans of Salmon from Decades Ago Reveal a Big Surprise, at "ScienceAlert", on an interesting way of researching changes of marine ecology.

* Renato Costa, Law and Reality: A Dialogue Between Herman Dooyeweerd and John Finnis (PDF)

* Richard Y. Chappell, Three Recent Papers I Liked, at "Good Thoughts"

* Parisa Moosavi, The Function Argument for Ascribing Interests (PDF)

* John Carlos Baez, Protonium, at "Azimuth". Protonium is a rare occurrence when a proton and and antiproton orbit each other.

* Karin De Boer, Kant's Transcendental Turn to the Object (PDF)

* Gregory Thompson, Hinges and a Lock: Hospitality in a World of Predators, at "Comment"

* Yvonne Chiu, Seven military classics: martial victory through good governance (PDF)

* Nathaniel Scharping, What Does the History of Natural History Museums Look Like?, at Discovery

* Elliot Polsky, The Modern Semantic Principles Behind Gilson's Existential Interpretation of Aquinas (Part 1) (PDF) and The Modern Semantic Principles Behind Gilson's Existential Interpretation of Aquinas (Part 2) (PDF)

Fortnightly Book, April 14

 The next fortnightly book is Blind Harry's The Wallace, one of the three fundamental pillars of Scottish literature. (The other two are the Bible and John Barbour's The Bruce.) We know almost nothing about the man who wrote the work, whose original title was The Acts and Deeds of the Illustrious and Valiant Champion Sir William Wallace, beyond the fact that his name was Hare or Hary or Harry or Henry or something like it. We do know that he was paid by King James IV for poetic services; he seems to have died in the 1490s. Some early authors say he was blind from birth, although this is often doubted.

The work itself is usually thought to have been written in the 1470s; our one extant manuscript of it is from 1488. However, the poet had the fortune of good timing; the first printing press in Scotland was set up in 1507, and print publishing was extremely good to the book. The Wallace was among the first books printed and it kept being one of the most popular books in Scotland for a very long time. It describes the fight of William Wallace against the English. The author's sense of geography is famously good -- scholars can literally trace the routes of armies on a map using the poem's descriptions -- and he is often thought to have been a soldier, because of a very vivid and accurate grasp on the tactics, logistics, and horrors of war. He also is extremely familiar with the historical events of the period. However, within this very historical framework, he invents freely to fill the gaps between Wallace's most famous achievements, and later historians often complain about just how freely he makes things up. (The volume I am using has an introduction by the editor, Anne McKim, who notes that some of the complaints about the accuracy of the movie Braveheart are actually due to the fact that the movie gets some of its major features directly from The Wallace.) But no one complains about the interest and excitement of the story.

This fortnightly book will likely take more than a fortnight; I am reading the Canongate Classics edition, which is not modernized. That is to say, I'm reading it in the fifteenth-century Scots. Fortunately, this edition is fairly generous with marginal glosses of the less obvious Scots words, and has a good set of notes in the back.

Peter Christian Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe, The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales of Asbjornsen & Moe

 Introduction

Opening Passages: Just a sample. From "About Ash Lad, Who Stole the Troll's Silver Ducks, Coverlet, and Golden Harp", the first tale in the collection:

There once was a poor man who had three sons. When he died, the two older sons were about to set off into the world to try their luck, but they refused to take the youngest with them.

"You!" they said. "The only thing you're good for is sitting here and digging in the ashes."

"Then I suppose I'll have to go alone," said Ash Lad. (p. 3)

From "The Virgin Mary as Godmother":

There once was a poor couple who lived far, far away in a great forest. The wife gave birth to a beautiful daughter, but they were so poor that they didn't know how they could afford to have the child christened. (p. 32)

From "Nothing Is Needed by the One All Women Love":

There once were three brothers. I don't really know how it happened, but each of them had been given one wish so they could have whatever they wanted. Two of the brothers didn't take long to decide. They wished that whenever they stuck their fist in their pocket, they would always find money. "For if a person has as much money as he wants, he will always make his way in the world," they said.

But the youngest knew to wish for something even better. His wish was that all women should fall in love with him the instant they saw him. As you will hear, this was better than either possessions or money. (p. 171)

From "East of the Sun and West of the Moon":

There once ws a poor farmer who had many children and not much to given them of either food or clothing, but the most beautiful of all was the youngest daughter, who was lovely beyond measure. (p. 182) 

Summary: In this collection of folktales we have everything one has come to expect from an anthology of fairy tales: beast fables, adventures of youngest sons of poor families, fantastic happenings, strange ingenuities, trolls, clever maidens, royal princesses, transformations, all mixed with vivid depictions and dry humor. 

Reading them all together, one notices some patterns. One very common pattern is that of the small thing that is actually big, whether literally or figuratively -- a ship that can be put in the pocket (derived from Freyr's ship in Norse myth), a person who seems insignificant but is great of heart or mind, and the like.  One of the recurring figures is Askeladden, Ash Lad, who is the Norse counterpart of the English Jack. (Apparently in the original tales, he was usually called Askefisen; but Norway has a curious language problem, in that there are different versions of the language, the Danish book-tongue and the more purely Norse dialects, and which you use can be politically charged. In the time of Asbjornsen and Moe, it was usual to 'Danicize' names, but there was a movement pushing for return to Norwegian roots, so rather than use Askefisen or the Danish equivalent, Askepot, they used one of the occasional nicknames, Askeladden. Of course, due to Asjbornsen and moe, Askeladden is now the dominant way of referring to him.) Ash Lad is not so much a character as a role. He is always the youngest son, generally the youngest of three. What family he has varies depending on what the story requires -- in some stories the family is royal, in others common; in some stories the family is wealthy, in most of them it is poor. He gets his name from the job of making sure that the fire does not completely go out, not a glamorous position, but one that figuratively seems quite significant. In the course of the story he goes on an adventure where he has to face a set of apparently unsolvable problems. He is sometimes innocent and sometimes mischievous, but he is always courageous and ingenious, and he tends to solve the problems in a fantastic way using unlikely means and a bit of quick wit. Faced with difficulties, he often finds them amusing rather than frustrating, and he always succeeds, winning the wealth, the kingdom, or the princess, as the case may be.

The stories that are best known from this collection are Norway's own perennial favorite, "Soria Moria Castle" (which I've talked about before), "The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Who Were Supposed to Go to the Mountain Pasture to Fatten Up", and the Scandinavian version of the Cupid and Psyche story, "East of the Sun and West of the Moon", which is probably, worldwide, the most highly regarded tale in the collection. There are also specifically Norwegian versions of tales that have better-known counterparts in other langauges, like "The Hen Who Had to Go to Dovre Mountain or Else the Whole World Would Perish", which is a version of what we would usually call "Chicken Little". A few others, like "The Mill That Keeps Grinding at the Bottom of the Sea", have alternative versions from other sources that are also popular. 

The tales don't strictly enforce a moral, and they are occasionally shot through with a bit of pessimism about life, but there are a few recurring moral features. Courage and wisdom are needed in order to have luck; the wise are lucky in exactly the circumstances that the foolish are most unlucky, precisely because they are not foolish. Fortune favors the brave, but perhaps favors the clever more. Advice is not always good, but it should never be treated lightly. And most of all, making a small sacrifice to do someone a favor may often be the key to success, because what seems small to you may -- not always, but sometimes -- mean the world to them, and they may -- not always, but sometimes -- return your small favor with a grand favor. A favor economy is a good economy for a fairy tale world; like so many other things in the fairy realm, a favor has a great power of amplification. All of these are true in our world as well, of course; precisely one of the values of a folktale is that its fantastic elements make it easier to see things that we forget because they are so obvious.

Favorite Passage: I like how the opening from "Well Done and Poorly Rewarded" is handled, with a neat twist in which the threat of the bear turns out to be rather different from expectation:

There once was a man who had to go to the forest to get some firewood. Then he met a bear.

"Give me your horse, or else I'll kill all your sheep in the summer," said the bear.

"Oh, God save me, no!" said the man. "There's not even a stick of firewood left back home. You have to let me take home a sled full of wood, or else we'll freeze to death. I'll bring the horse back to you tomorrow."

They agreed that he would do just that. But the bear told the man that if he didn't come back, he would lose all his sheep in the summer. (p. 217)

Recommendation: Highly Recommended. Norwegian Folktales is a lot like Grimm's Fairy Tales, but the Norwegian collection is much funnier than the German usually is.

****

Asbjornsen and Moe, The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales of Asbjornsen & Moe, Nunnally, tr., University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis: 2019).

Dashed Off VIII

 The human person was born to walk in a garden of symbols, and taste of all those that do not confuse good and evil.

The trees in the Garden of Eden represent all the greatest potentialities of the human spirit.

An imperium is not a territory but a jurisdiction.

A regularity theory of laws of nature is in effect a final cause theory, since final causes are what explain regularities; the only question is whether it is final causes in the things or in the mind.

'Science' can only do what scientists do.

People often speak of 'intelligence' when they mean 'imaginative facility'.

Two thoughts may be occasionatively tangled (come from same occasion) or objectively tangled (have same, overlapping, or linked objects).

von Wright on quantifiers as 'existential modalities'

Every positive law presupposes a prior legal right to make law.

Law is the only source of the state.

There is always a gap between something becoming a law and its being enforced; indeed, there is often a gap between its becoming a law and the way of enforcing it being worked out. (Anyone who knows how laws get implemented through civil service can find examples of this.)

The primary purpose of the state is coordination, not coercion.

Nothing prevents the existence of a state that does not have coercive power, but (e.g.) simply organizes things for the people themselves to enforce. (Medieval Iceland was fairly close to this.)

Deterrence is always achieved by signs under an interpretation.

The world in its opposition to the Church is like a vast and well equipped army, but it is also always overextended.

Husserl's noema // Peirce's interpretant

Thomasson on dependencies
A.1. x constantly depends on y iff when x exists, y exists.
A.2. x historically depends on y iff x needs y to come to be, but may continue to exist without y.
B.1. x rigidly depends on y iff y is a determinate and irreplaceable individual.
B.2. x generically depends on y iff y is a token of a type and can be substituted by another toke of that type
-- fictional entities depend rigidly & historically on the creative activity of the author, generically and constantly on the work of fiction itself, perhaps generically & constantly on potential readers.

Szanto on collective imagination
(1) identity: same intentional object
(2) mutual awareness: awareness of others participating in the same kind of activity
(3) normativity: joint commitment in imagining
-- i.e., an act of collective imagining involves taking the same object in the same kind of awareness within a single framework

A discipline is a traditioning of an object.

A tradition is a reserve of possibilities.

The self-evidence of mathematical truths is only uncovered within the context of mathematics as a tradition.

Intentionality is a form of dispositionality.

Individual intentionality has a social mode as well as prive and public individual modes.

As money needs to be used in negotiations, every kind of money is partly structured by a language associated with it.

When one has been hurt, forgiveness is an ongoing process, at least for a while.

purgative improvement vs. compensatory improvement

If A is a sign of B and B is a sign of C, A may be a sign of C or not, i.e., the series may be transitive or not.

We do not start with an understanding of the physical world and build from it an understanding of the moral world; we start with an understanding of the moral world and build within it an understanding of the physical world.

Legal positivism becomes more and more adequate to legal facts the more it approximates legal naturalism.

A philosophy of law must first and foremost be a philosophy of law for legislators and for citizens/subjects; lawyers and judges need to get in line behind them, and not take over the field, becayse they minister to legislators and citizens/subjects.

Legal powers are conferred not directly by law but by reason in light of law.

Social reality is a moral and rational reality before it is a legal reality.

The rational reconstruction of the legal system requires taking a higher rational standpoint than positive law.

Things are recognized as means and ends in terms of the first principle of practical reason.

(1) The existence of positive law always depends on what is merited or not in light of the originating reasoning from which the law comes.
(2) The existence of laws in every legal system depends on at least very general moral values recognizable by all human beings as in some way good.
(3) Any system of rules depends in application on prudence, and law even more than most.

In order to function as institutions, institutions must have obligations, norms, and rights within a larger normative scheme.

Legal systems, as legal systems, depend on the natural law precepts associated with peaceable living.

Legal systems are so diverse that no particular legal process or proceeding seems to be universal, and nothing seems to unite them except their general role in practical reasoning in social matters.

Law is a rational ordering; rules are merely particular articulations of law.

Reason is the most fundamental legal system; legal systems are only legal systems in a way derivative from natural law.

Fuller's inner morality of law: Laws must be general, open (promulgated), prospective, clear, consistent, stable, obeyable, and upheld. [John Gardner's summary slightly modified.]

In matters of salvation, Scripture is perspicuous for those to whom the Holy Spirit gives light, and dark to those who reject Him; but this perspecuity and this obscurity are not phenomenal qualities, and many have been gravely misled by the idea that the meaning of Scripture is what *feels* perspicuous.

Civil war arises through the undermining of shared institutions.

the infrastructure of liberty
(1) means of movement
(2) means of communication
(3) means of self-defense
(4) means of influence

Medical treatment must be
(1) appropriate to the patient
(2) appropriate to the illness
(3) with a view to possible consequences
(4) clear, particularly with regard to risks and dangers
(5) consensual
(6) stable (non-erratic)
(7) implementable
(8) implemented with appropriate means
(9) informed
(10) authorized by role of those doing treatment (appropriate to doctor etc.)

One difficulty that sacramental thoelogy always faced is that one rite may serve at any given time multiple functions.

the Mandatum as a symbol of confession

social justice as rendering what is due to others by their human nature and vocation

There is no actual legal system in existence in which people do not often appeal directly to moral principles in interpreting, applying, creating, or criticizing laws; people will often assume that laws tend to reflect their own moral principles, in general terms at least, or use their consciences as a guide to determining how it is to be taken.

Our obedience to law is always a matter of degree, and the degree is affected by custom, inclination, and moral principle.

Hart's rule of recognition is a philosophical fiction serving as a proxy for what is in fact merely custom.

(1) Many moral obligations pertain to matters minor in themselves.
(2) Many moral norms are susceptible to abrupt and deliberate change (cf. promises).
(3) Moral principles sometimes settle responsibilities on people without regard for fault.
(4) The primary social pressure exerted by law is exhortation; sanction is for when this fails. The same is often true of moral obligations.

Law-abiding citizens obey the law from custom, from conscience, and from enlightened self-interest.

purposiveness in nature as a requirement of systematic classification (this is a way of reading Kant)
principle of homogeniety: there are genera
principle of specification: there are specific differences
principle of continuity of forms: transitions are not per saltum (how species are related in classification)

"...man is destined by his reason to live in a society with men and to cultivate himself, to civilize himself, and to make himself moral, by the arts and sciences." Kant

Theorizing serves practice, practice contemplation.

Dignitas Infinita

 The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith recently published a Declaration, 'Dignitas infinita' on human dignity. It has the looseness of terminology that committee documents often have, and there is room, I think, to say that some of the things in it could be more precisely and carefully stated, but allowing for this, I actually like it. It is a much more robust document than one has come to expect from the bishops. From the first paragraph of the Introduction:

1. (Dignitas infinita) Every human person possesses an infinite dignity, inalienably grounded in his or her very being, which prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter. This principle, which is fully recognizable even by reason alone, underlies the primacy of the human person and the protection of human rights. In the light of Revelation, the Church resolutely reiterates and confirms the ontological dignity of the human person, created in the image and likeness of God and redeemed in Jesus Christ. From this truth, the Church draws the reasons for her commitment to the weak and those less endowed with power, always insisting on “the primacy of the human person and the defense of his or her dignity beyond every circumstance.”

'Infinite' seems to be the adjective (not wrong, but perhaps potentially misleading) that was chosen to capture the idea mentioned in the quotation from Pope Francis at the end of the above paragraph: that the dignity in question is "beyond every circumstance", i.e,. not limited by circumstances. Thus the point is that human dignity is infinite (i.e., not limited) relative to any circumstances in which the human person may exist. Personally, I would prefer the phrase used by the Second Vatican Council, "sublime dignity", but 'infinite', properly understood, works fine.

The Declaration distinguishes four different things that might be called 'human dignity':

(1) Ontological dignity: "belongs to the person as such simply because he or she exists and is willed, created, and loved by God" (7). It is this that is most properly characterized as "infinite dignity".

(2) Moral dignity: "how people exercise their freedom" (7), particularly with respect to conscience or the Gospel.

(3) Social dignity: "the quality of a person’s living conditions" (8).

(4) Existential dignity: while this is not precisely defined, the essential idea seems to be that it is the quality of a person's life in its actual conditions.

I'm not sure how adequate this division is, and the accounts of social dignity and existential dignity in particular do not seem entirely adequate, but I'm glad to see this attempt to distinguish different meanings. People in general, and bishops not excluded, have had a tendency to blur all of these things.

I think one of the fundamental problems that the Declaration wrestles with is that 'dignity' of the sort that the Dicastery is attempting to clarify has a paradoxical structure, one derived from the paradox of humanity. The paradox of humanity is that all of us are born human and all of us have to learn how to be human, that it is the nature of the human being to be a potential human being becoming an actual human being. This curious character of being both already human and becoming human is something we have by being very changeable living things. It is clear that we cannot already be human and not yet human in the same way and sense; but it is also clear that it is a very grave mistake to split them apart. The humanity we always have had is the formally necessary and integral framework for the humanity we must acquire; the humanity we acquire is the finally necessary completion of the humanity we always have had. As with humanity, so with human dignity. We are born with human dignity and we must live so as to acquire it; having human dignity always, we have to become the sort of people who live in a way appropriate to it. The Declaration is not particularly elegant about how it handles this paradoxical structure, but sometimes it makes a reasonable attempt, e.g., in sections 20-22. I am very glad to see it acknowledged, more or less explicitly; one of the great temptations when talking about human dignity is to flatten it out, and recognizing that human dignity is both natural to us and must be completed in us is a good preventative against doing so.

I think the primary weakness of the Declaration is in its discussion of violations of human dignity; I am not convinced that it has a unified account of what it means to violate or harm ontological dignity, and I think it needs to have one to do what it was intending to do in its discussion of practical matters. Nonetheless, the brief discussions of violations of human dignity are perfectly fine on their own, even if it's unclear how they relate to each other as 'violations of human dignity'.

All Your Winds Sang Battle-Lays

 April Days
by Amanda Theodocia Jones 

 Song. 

 Come through mist and dashing rain,
April days, April days;
Break the last light crystal chain,
Teach the snowbird livelier lays,
Deck with verdure wood and plain,
April days, April days. 

 Years are long--the years are three,
April days, April days,
Since my love went forth from me;
Craving neither gold nor praise,
But free scope for valor free,
April days, April days. 

 Sun-bright flags for marshaled men,
April days, April days,
Flung ye out o'er hill and glen;
All your winds sang battle-lays;
Southward soared your eagles then,
April days, April days. 

 Flaunt your sun-bright flags once more,
April days, April days;
For the ship is near the shore,
And he comes whom all must praise:
Northward doth my eagle soar,
April days, April days. 

 Gayly shine, oh, brightly shine,
April days, April days!
Wounded in the vanward line,
Victor of a hundred frays,
Welcome home this love of mine,
April days, April days! 

 1864

The Error of Cowards

 The sole philosophy open to those who doubt the possibility of truth is absolute silence--even mental. That is to say, as Aristotle points out, such men must make themselves vegetables. No doubt reason often errs, especially in the highest matters, and, as Cicero said long ago, there is no nonsense in the world which has not found some philosopher to maintain it, so difficult is it to attain truth. But it is the error of cowards to mistake a difficulty for an impossibility. 

[Jacques Maritain, An Introduction to Philosophy, Sheed and Ward (New York: 1933) p. 181.]

Social Operations of Mind

 There is another division of the powers of the mind, which, though it has been, ought not to be overlooked by writers on this subject, because it has a real foundation in nature. operations of our minds, from their very nature, are social, others are solitary. 

 By the first, I understand such operations as necessarily suppose an intercourse with some other intelligent being. A man may understand and will; he may apprehend, and judge, and reason, though he should know of no intelligent being in the universe besides himself. But, when he asks information, or receives it; when he bears testimony, or receives the testimony of another; when he asks a favour, or accepts one; when he gives a command to his servant, or receives one from a superior: when he plights his faith in a promise or contract; these are acts of social intercourse between intelligent beings, and can have no place in solitude. They suppose understanding and will; but they suppose something more, which is neither understanding nor will; that is, society with other intelligent beings. They may be called intellectual, because they can only be in intellectual beings: But they are neither simple apprehension, nor judgment, nor reasoning, nor are they any combination of these operations.

[Thomas Reid, Essay on the Intellectual Powers, Essay I: Preliminary, Chapter 8.]

Notably, the things that Reid mentions as social operations of the mind are today mostly studied as 'speech acts'; but Reid specifically includes what might be called receptive social operations as well as active ones.

Why Thus Invert Thy Wonted Pow'r?

 To Cynthia
by William Henry Charlton

(Written at the solar eclipse of 1827.) 

 Cynthia! we hail thy genial birth,
 And bless the borrow'd ray
 That smiles upon the slumb'ring earth,
 And turns our night to day. 

 But why, if thus at midnight hour,
 Thou reign'st supremely bright,
 Why thus invert thy wonted pow'r,
 And turn the day to night? 

 Strange usurpation this! if true
 What midnight sages tell;
 That all the darts you ever drew
 From Phoebus' quiver fell. 

 Ungrateful Dian! is it so
 His favors you requite,
 Stripping his beams of half their glow,
 His disk of half its light? 

 Say, wouldst thou reign, in boundless space,
 Unrivall'd and alone;
 Snatching that brightness from his face
 Which gives thee all thine own? 

 Alas! no more thou shin'st confest
 The night's resplendent queen:
 Thy form, array'd in ebon vest,
 Like envy's self is seen. 

 O then, withdraw from Phoebus' car
 Thine interposing pow'r;
 For shiv'ring mortals ill can spare
 His warmth, in wintry hour. 

 Like passing gleams of brief delight
 On life's uncertain way,
 So breaks the sunbeam on the sight,
 Upon a winter's day. 

 Then ah, that beam again impart,
 Unveil'd, to mortal view;
 Lest thou, who so inconstant art,
 Be deem'd invidious too.

Music on My Mind

 

Furor Gallico, "Future to Come".

Arts as Well as Men

 What is vital and healthy does not necessarily survive. Higher organisms are often conquered by lower ones. Arts as well as men are subject to accident and violent death. The philosophy of history outlined by Keats's Oceanus is not true. We ask too often why cultures perish and too seldom why they survive; as though their conservation were the normal and obvious fact and their death the abnormality for which special causes must be found. It is not so. An art, a whole civilization, may at any time slip through men's fingers in a very few years and be gone beyond recovery. If we are alive when such a thing is happening we shall hardly notice it until too late; and it is most unlikely that we shall know its cause. 

[C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama), HarperCollins (New York: 2022) pp. 133-134.]

 In context, Lewis is discussing the sudden and calamitous collapse of Scottish poetry at the end of the late Middle Ages, as it went from being a thriving. skilled, and creative tradition in Middle Scots to a fragmented, highly derivative, and imitative field in which Scottish poets regularly apologized for writing in Scots rather than English. But he is also deliberately drawing a more general moral.

Links of Note

 * Leif Weinar, The Deaths of Effective Altruism, at "Wired"

* Huaping Lu-Adler, Slavery and Kant's Doctrine of Right (PDF)

* David A. Ciepley, Is the U.S. Government a Corporation? The Corporate Origins of Modern Constitutionalism (PDF)

* Joseph Bottum discusses Ernest L. Thayer's "Casey at the Bat" at "Poems Ancent and Modern"

* John Baez, Why Mathematics is Boring, at "The n-Category Cafe"

* Erika Bachiochi and Rachel Morrison, Dobbs, Equality and the Contested Meaning of Women's Rights (PDF)

* Fernando Martins Mendonça, In What Sense Wrong Conceptions of Eudaimonia Get at Least Some Things Right (PDF)

* Michela Massima, Normative Foundations of Kant's Cosmopolitan Right: The Overlooked Legacy of Kant's Metaphysics of Nature (PDF)

* Edward Feser, Jesuit Britain?, reviews Projections of Spanish Jesuit Scholasticism on British Thought, at "Religion & Liberty"

* Anat Schechtman, Modality and Essence in Early Modern Philosophy (PDF)

* Michel-Antoine Xhignesse, Imagining Dinosaurs (PDF)

* Simcha Fischer interviews Daniel Mitsui at "Our Sunday Visitor"

* Helen Steward, What does causality have to do with necessity? (PDF)

* N. S. Lyons interviews Ryszard Legutko at "The Upheaval"

Isidorus Hispalensis

 Today was the feast of St. Isidore of Seville, Doctor of the Church. From the Etymologiae (Book VII, 38-39):

So one speaks of the vestiges of God, because now God is known by way of mirror, but in the completion is recognized as omnipotent when in the future he is presented face to face for all the chosen, so that they contemplate his beauty, whose vestiges they now strive to comprehend, that is, whom they are said to see by way of mirror. For position and vestment and place and time are not said properly of God, but are said metaphorically by way of similitude; thus 'sitting on the Cherubim' is said with relation to position, and 'abyss like a garment his clothing' is said with relation to vestment, and 'your years are not lacking' is said with relation to time, and 'if I ascend to heaven, you are there' is said with relation to place. 

What Bloom, Then, Shall Abide?

 Aftermath
by Willa Cather 

 Canst thou conjure a vanished morn of spring,
 Or bid the ashes of the sunset glow
 Again to redness? Are we strong to wring
 From trodden grapes the juice drunk long ago?
Can leafy longings stir in autumn's blood,
 Or can I wear a pearl dissolved in wine,
Or go a-Maying in a winter wood,
 Or paint with youth thy wasted cheek, or mine?
What bloom, then, shall abide, since ours hath sped?
 Thou art more lost to me than they who dwell
 In Egypt's sepulchres, long ages fled;
 And would I touch -- Ah me! I might as well
 Covet the gold of Helen's vanished head,
 Or kiss back Cleopatra from the dead!

The Reliable and the Unreliable Machine

 “I reckon you’ll be shocked,” replied Greywood Usher, “as I know you don’t cotton to the march of science in these matters. I am given a good deal of discretion here, and perhaps take a little more than I’m given; and I thought it was an excellent opportunity to test that Psychometric Machine I told you about. Now, in my opinion, that machine can’t lie.” 

 “No machine can lie,” said Father Brown; “nor can it tell the truth.” 

 “It did in this case, as I’ll show you,” went on Usher positively. “I sat the man in the ill-fitting clothes in a comfortable chair, and simply wrote words on a blackboard; and the machine simply recorded the variations of his pulse; and I simply observed his manner. The trick is to introduce some word connected with the supposed crime in a list of words connected with something quite different, yet a list in which it occurs quite naturally. Thus I wrote ‘heron’ and ‘eagle’ and ‘owl’, and when I wrote ‘falcon’ he was tremendously agitated; and when I began to make an ‘r’ at the end of the word, that machine just bounded. Who else in this republic has any reason to jump at the name of a newly-arrived Englishman like Falconroy except the man who’s shot him? Isn’t that better evidence than a lot of gabble from witnesses—if the evidence of a reliable machine?” 

 “You always forget,” observed his companion, “that the reliable machine always has to be worked by an unreliable machine.” 

 “Why, what do you mean?” asked the detective. 

 “I mean Man,” said Father Brown, “the most unreliable machine I know of. I don’t want to be rude; and I don’t think you will consider Man to be an offensive or inaccurate description of yourself. You say you observed his manner; but how do you know you observed it right? You say the words have to come in a natural way; but how do you know that you did it naturally? How do you know, if you come to that, that he did not observe your manner? Who is to prove that you were not tremendously agitated? There was no machine tied on to your pulse.”

G. K. Chesterton, "The Mistake of the Machine", The Wisdom of Father Brown. A point that many people these days need to remember.

Marco Girolamo Vida, Christiad

 Introduction

Opening Passage: First, in the original Latin:

Qui mare, qui terras, qui coelum numine comples,
spiritus alme, tuo liceat mihi munere regem
bis genitum canere, e superi qui sede parentis
virginis intactae gravidam descendit in alvum,
mortalesque auras hausit puer, ut genus ultus
humanum eriperet tenebris et carcere iniquo
morte sua manesque pios inferret Olympo.
Illum sponte hominum morientem ob crimina tellus
aegra tulit puduitque poli de vertice solem
aspicere et tenebris insuetis terruit orbem.
Fas mihi te duce mortali immortalia digno
ore loqui interdumque oculos attollere coelo
et lucem accipere aetheream summique parentis
consilia atque necis tam dirae evolvere causas. (p. 2)

And then in James Gardner's prose translation:

Gentle spirit, who fills with your divine presence the sea, the earth and the sky, help me to tell of the twice-born king who from his Father's throne in heaven above, descended into the womb of an untouched virgin and, as a mere infant, drew mortal breath; so that, by his death, he might avenge the human race, resucing it from darkness and sinful durance and leading the souls of the pious into paradise. The grieving earth bore him as he died willingly for the sins of men. For the height of heaven, the sun was ashamed to look on and harrowed the earth with a strange darkness. I am only a mortal man, but I pray that, with your help, I might sing a worthy song about immortal things. Lifting my eyes to heaven, may I receive for a time, the ethereal light, to reveal the counsels of the celestial Father and the causes of so piteous a death. (p. 3)

Summary: The Christiad is divided into six books, which cover the life of Christ. 

Book I begins, as is fitting of an epic, in medias res; Jesus' ministry is nearing its completion and he comes to Jerusalem, telling his disciples of his sufferings to come, which they have difficulty believing. While staying at the house of Zacchaeus, a messenger comes to tell him that Lazarus has died in Bethany,  so Jesus goes there. The devil, meanwhile, foresees that the Son of God will soon lay waste to his kingdom, and therefore he calls a meeting of the demons, and in that horrible council, concilium horrendum, he lays out his plan to deal with this divine messenger, who is either the Son or an angel sent by him, by stirring up the hatred of the priests in Jerusalem against them. The demons blast out of hell like a great hissing horde of bats, they fly forth to ensure that he does not escape. This whole passage is one of the most striking in the book, and of course is the primary influence on many other famous depictions of hell, most notably that of Pandemonium in Milton's Paradise Lost. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead and frees a prostitute named Mary (i.e., Magdalen) from demonic possession; she anoints his feet. Back in Jerusalem, Jesus and his followers visit the Temple, where Jesus casts out the moneychangers, which gives the narrator an opportunity to lay out the sacred history of the Old Testament, carved (symbolically rather than in images) on the temple pillars. It ends with the Transfiguration.

In Book II, the host of hell, flapping around like birds of the night, poison the hearts of the priests and the people, wherever they can find a heart open to their falsehoods. I thought that this part was very well done, as well; the demons proceed by taking the episode with the moneychangers in the Temple and exaggerating, suggesting to people's imaginations that Christ had attempted to destroy the altar with ax and torch, then threatened to destroy the entire building. Twelve demons try to poison the hearts of the disciples, but find them well-armored against anything the demons could provide. Only one succombs. Interestingly, even Judas (i.e., Iscariot), despite already not being a particularly good man, does not succomb immediately. The chink in Judas's armor is that he had given up everything for Jesus and has grown tired of the difficulties of the wandering life he has with Jesus; well intentioned, perhaps, in the beginning, his enthusiasm has waned and been replaced by nothing else. Nicodemus meanwhile tries to calm things down, but fails to do so. The narrator decides at this point to tell us about the tribes of Israel, and the geography of the land; the idea seems to be that members of all the tribes are coming at that time to Jerusalem for the feast. Jesus and the disciples have the Last Supper. Judas betrays Jesus in the garden and he is tried before the priests and they send him to Pilate in the hope that they can persuade Pilate to execute him. Peter, meanwhile, has denied knowing Christ three times and spends the rest of the night weeping.

The trial before Pilate in some sense takes all of Book III and Book IV, but that because Vida has two people give testimony before Pilate as witnesses. In Book III, Joseph of Nazareth tells of Jesus' early life, up to the wedding at Cana where Jesus turned water to wine. The story continues in Book IV with the testimony of John, who tells of Jesus' ministry and teaching. Considered as trial testimony, Joseph's testimony is arguably more successful -- John seems to keep forgetting that he needs to avoid talking about Jesus in terms that suggest that Jesus could in any way be a rival for Roman governance -- but the overall effect of both testimonies is that there is something divine and kingly about Jesus. It's interesting that we have Joseph rather than Mary -- I think the idea is that the Roman governor would be more likely to believe the testimony of a man, but there seems to be more going on, because Book IV ends with an explicit statement that John and Joseph are keeping Mary in the dark about what is happening to her son; she's not only not present at the trial, she is deliberately being excluded by Joseph and John from knowing anything about it.

At the beginning of Book V, Pilate is unconvinced that Jesus is a threat; in fact, having met Jesus directly and having heard the testimony of Joseph and John has convinced him that there might well be something to the notion that Jesus has some kind of divine origin or support. He demands that the crowds select someone to tell him exactly what crime Jesus is supposed to have committed. Meanwhile, Judas is anguished over what he has done and, maddened with guilt, hangs himself. Thus Vida's Judas despairs and commits suicide before Jesus has even been convicted of anything. Back in Pilate's chambers, the priests attempt to convince Pilate that Jesus is a threat to Rome, and are failing; but Pilate is equally failing to calm down either them or the increasingly belligerent crowd at his gate; Vida strikingly depicts the latter as being stirred up by the fiends of hell who are circling above the multitude and goading it. Pilate's wife warns him not to harm Jesus due to a dream she had; but the devil sends forth the demon of Fear to flap around Pilates face, casting terrifying images of what might happen if he resists the crowd. Thus Pilate gives in. Jesus is led away to be crucified and, in another of Vida's very striking passages, the angels of heaven rise up in fury to smite the earth with judgment. But the Father sends the angel of Mercy to calm them down and restrain them; they can only watch helplessly:

It was as if two youths were enclosed in a ring on an empty field, vying for glory and honor. As they fight hand to hand with equal might, all the other youths gather round, looking now at one side and now at the other. If one of them happens to be less skilful and shows fear or trips on the uneven ground, his faithful friends jump up, eager to help him. How they would like to succor their friend, but the rules forbid it! They stand about helplessly and curse from afar his bad luck. (p. 297)

Jesus is crucified and it is only now that his mother learns what has happened to her son; she rushes forth in sorrow:

As when a doe, returning at evening from the mountaintops to her familiar resting-place, mindful of feeding her tender young, finds the ground all about spattered with blood, but her fawns nowhere to be seen; running at once through the entire wood, she groans as she scans it with her eyes. (p. 301)

But she also can do nothing but weep at the foot of the cross as her son dies. Thus ends Book V.

 Jesus is buried in Book VI.  He then frees the souls of the just from hell, breaking down its gates, scattering the demons, and leading the righteous to heaven. In many ways, I think, the harrowing of hell is the strongest part of Book VI; Book VI is, I think, the weakest of the books, in part because there are so many things going on that Vida has difficulty doing justice to them all. Jesus is raised from the dead and visits the disciples; a considerable portion of text is devoted specifically to Thomas's doubting of what the other disciples claim to have seen. Jesus then ascends to heaven with all of the implements by which he was crucified, and from heaven he sends the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The disciples set out to sing the praises of Christ in all land and a new age begins. 

I was pleasantly surprised by this work. Most people who read it today are reading it because it is an influence on Paradise Lost and other notable works, and Vida often gets the worse of comparisons with Milton when people of this sort read him. It's true that Paradise Lost is in many ways a more striking work. It has two advantages over Christiad. First, Milton chose a much less ambitious subject for his poem; Vida's poem covers the whole Life of Christ, but to do so properly it also has to cover all of salvation history. The second and most important advantage, though, is that Milton can read Vida. When you read this poem it becomes clear that large portions of Paradise Lost are built around scenes that in Christiad are very effective and vivid. That is to say, part of the reason for the success of Paradise Lost is that Vida had already shown what areas of this whole general topic were amenable to very successful treatment in Neo-Classical terms, and Milton learned from this very well. 

But in any case, this is somewhat otiose. To say that a poem is less striking than Paradise Lost is not actually very informative; it's like saying that a novel is not as well constructed as Pride and Prejudice. Well, yes, but could you be more specific? And in fact my own view is that Christiad stands up very well; even keeping the comparison to Milton, it is mostly much more successful as a poem than Paradise Regained, for instance, and for short passages, Vida arguably does surpass Milton. He is, like Milton, somewhat hampered by the constraints of what he is writing; he has things he has to fit in, somehow, and he has to do it in Neo-Classical tropes derived heavily from Virgil. These constraints mean that he is often at his most effective in quasi-martial contexts -- with the exceptions, perhaps, of Jesus, Mary, Peter, and Pilate, the devils and angels are all more vividly depicted than any of the human beings. Poetically, I think the long passages that work best are the angels rising up to go to war at Jesus' crucifixion and Jesus' descent into hell, although there are many short passages that are very fine.

In any case, Vida tells us how he hopes his work will fit into the greater literary scene, putting it in the very mouth of God speaking to Christ:

Indeed the time will come when the ethereal sun has completed the course of fifteen centuries hence and poets, having forgotten the lies of the Greeks, will tell the nations of your death in song. All cities will resound with your praise, especially those by the happy shores of Italy the Blessed, in the regions of the wandering Addua and Serio, whose mossy banks are brighter than amber and as sinuous as a snake. (pp. 370-371)

Favorite Passage: From the depiction of the harrowing of hell (Book VI, ll. 198-220):

Behold! Their supreme avenger, beaming with divine radiance, stood even now at the gates. In his path was a n enormous portal and posterns of eternal brass, fortified with a hundred bolts. The portal was so strong that not even fire or the hardness of iron could overcome it. Here stood the Son of God and he pushed open the screeching door with his right hand. Frightened, the ground shook in all directions at the impact, and the wandering stars of heaven trembled, and the drear palace groaned in its shadowy caverns. At the noise, the brethren who flee the light, that timid crew, suddenly appeared from their deepest vales in a terrifying onrush, human down to their waist and dragons below. They began to roar strangely, breathing a baleful fire from their gullets and filling the palace with black smoke. At once the doors swung open and fell over of their own accord, violently wrenched from their jambs. Now the interior, with its lofty halls, was dimly revealed. The shadows grew thinner and blind night receded. For even so did the Son of God, seen amid the darkness of caves, blind their eyes with his divine radiance, like a jewel whose plendor rivals fire, a jewel that shines at night in royal chambers and, vanquishing the darkness, decks everything with its golden glow. (p. 329)

Recommendation: Highly Recommended.

****

Marco Girolamo Vida, Christiad, James Gardner, tr., Harvard UP (Cambridge, MA: 2009).

Fortnightly Book, March 31

 I am running behind on a number of things, so the fortnightly book summary and review for Vida's Christiad will be put up at some point tomorrow. But I did want to get started on the next fortnightly book, which will be The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales of Asbjørnsen & Moe. 

Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (1812-1885)and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe (1813-1882) are the Norwegian counterparts of the Grimm brothers; Asbjørnsen & Moe, as their book is usually called, was an attempt to do for Norway something like what Grimm's Fairy Tales (published in 1812) did for Germany. Asbjørnsen started collecting fairy tales and legends when he was in college; he and Moe had become friends as teenagers. By sheer happenstance, while Asbjørnsen was doing his own collecting folktales, he discovered that his old friend Moe was independently doing the same thing. They agreed to share results, and this began a longterm collaboration on the project. Asbjørnsen became a zoologist, which took him up and down the coasts of Norway. Moe became a tutor in Oslo, a position that allowed him to take long trips around Norway, and would eventually become a poet and a Lutheran bishop in the Church of Norway. Their collaborative work, Norwegian Folktales, began to come out in pamphlet installments in 1841; it did well enough that they began putting out slim book installments. The whole collection was completed in 1871.

The particular edition I am using is translated by Tiina Nunnally; this is actually the second translation of hers that has shown up in the fortnightly books; the other was Kristin Lavransdatter.

The Norwegian word for a fairy tale is eventyr, which is one of my favorite words. It's actually related to the English word 'adventure'.

*********

The cover of the 1914 edition, with illustrations by Theodor Kittlesen; these illustrations became classics in their own right.

Good Friday

 Good Friday
by John Keble

Is it not strange, the darkest hour
 That ever dawned on sinful earth
 Should touch the heart with softer power
 For comfort than an angel's mirth?
That to the Cross the mourner's eye should turn
Sooner than where the stars of Christmas burn? 

 Sooner than where the Easter sun
 Shines glorious on yon open grave,
 And to and fro the tidings run, 
 "Who died to heal, is risen to save?"
Sooner than where upon the Saviour's friends
The very Comforter in light and love descends?

 Yet so it is: for duly there
 The bitter herbs of earth are set,
 Till tempered by the Saviour's prayer,
 And with the Saviour's life-blood wet,
They turn to sweetness, and drop holy balm,
Soft as imprisoned martyr's deathbed calm. 

 All turn to sweet—but most of all
 That bitterest to the lip of pride,
 When hopes presumptuous fade and fall,
 Or Friendship scorns us, duly tried,
Or Love, the flower that closes up for fear
When rude and selfish spirits breathe too near. 

 Then like a long-forgotten strain
 Comes sweeping o'er the heart forlorn
 What sunshine hours had taught in vain
 Of JESUS suffering shame and scorn,
As in all lowly hearts he suffers still,
While we triumphant ride and have the world at will. 

 His pierced hands in vain would hide
 His face from rude reproachful gaze,
 His ears are open to abide
 The wildest storm the tongue can raise,
He who with one rough word, some early day,
Their idol world and them shall sweep for aye away. 

 But we by Fancy may assuage
 The festering sore by Fancy made,
 Down in some lonely hermitage
 Like wounded pilgrims safely laid,
Where gentlest breezes whisper souls distressed,
That Love yet lives, and Patience shall find rest. 

 O! shame beyond the bitterest thought
 That evil spirit ever framed,
 That sinners know what Jesus wrought,
 Yet feel their haughty hearts untamed --
That souls in refuge, holding by the Cross,
Should wince and fret at this world's little loss. 

 Lord of my heart, by Thy last cry,
 Let not Thy blood on earth be spent --
   Lo, at Thy feet I fainting lie,
 Mine eyes upon Thy wounds are bent,
Upon Thy streaming wounds my weary eyes
Wait like the parched earth on April skies. 

 Wash me, and dry these bitter tears,
 O let my heart no further roam,
 'Tis Thine by vows, and hopes, and fears.
 Long since -- O call Thy wanderer home;
To that dear home, safe in Thy wounded side,
Where only broken hearts their sin and shame may hide.

Duke Ellington & His Orchestra, "The Lord's Prayer".

Bonaventure for Lent XXXVIII

 God also willed that we pray through the saints, and that the saints prayed for us. This was to give confidence to the fearful, so that those who dare not or cannot ask by themselves may succeed through suitable intercessors. In this way, humility would be preserved in those who pray, dignity manifested in the saints who intercede, and love and unity displayed in all the members of Christ, by which the lower have faithful recourse to the higher while the higher generously condescend to the lower.

[St. Bonaventure, Breviloquium (5.10.3), Monti, tr., Franciscan Institute Publications (St. Bonaventure, NY: 2005) p. 208.]

Evening Note for Wednesday, March 27

Thought for the Evening: Illocutionary Points

A locutionary act is the saying or writing of a meaningful and relatively complete unit of thought; 'relatively complete unit of thought' is a little tricky to pin down, but relatively complete thoughts in this sense are things like sentences (relatively complete with subject and predicate), communicated arguments (relatively complete with premises and conclusions), or even larger units. More attention has usually been paid to the 'meaningful' part. There are two primary components of this. One of these, the perlocutionary act, is that which one does, or more broadly intends to do, through (per) the locutionary act -- for instance, someone's being persuaded or convinced or the like. The other, which is relevant here, is the illocutionary act, which is what one is doing in and with the locutionary act itself -- for instance, asserting, describing, promising, conjecturing, and the like.

The illocutionary act has several different aspects, but the key one is the central aim of the act, which is known as the illocutionary point. Searle famously argues that there are five and only five categories of illocutionary point:

(1) Assertive: The speaker is representing what is said as the way things are.

(2) Commissive: The speaker is committing himself to the course of action represented by what is said.

(3) Directive: The speaker is proposing to others the course of action represented by what is said.

(4) Declarative: The speaker is by what is said making the world to be the way it is represented by what is said.

(5) Expressive: The speaker is expressing an attitude or feeling about what is represented by what is said.

(A single illocutionary act could have more than one illocutionary point.) Searle's argument that these are the only five illocutionary points is based on the notion of 'direction of fit'. The essential idea (perhaps best discussed in Searle and Vanderveken's The Foundations of Illocutionary Logic) is that every illocutionary act relates a content of a proposition to the world in which the locution is given. This could be through a word-to-world direction of fit, a world-to-word direction of fit, a double or mutual direction of fit, and a null or neutral direction of fit.

(A) Word-to-World: Speech acts of this sort succeed by fitting what is said to the way things are. This gives us the assertive point.

(B) World-to-Word: Speech acts of this sort succeed by fitting the way things are to what is said. The responsibility for this success can be due either to the speaker (which gives us the commissive point) or the hearer (which gives us the directive point).

(C) Double: Speech acts of this sort succeed insofar as one can say either that the world is as things are said to be or are said to be as the way the world is. This gives us the declarative point; in a successful declaration, the world is the way one says because one says it is that way.

(D) Null: Speech acts of this sort relate what is said and the way the world is not by fitting one to the other but simply by relating them; this gives us the expressive point.

This is a nice argument in many ways. It does make sense of why the five illocutionary points identified by Searle are illocutionary points. But does it give us the 'only five' part? What always strikes me is that (B), and only (B) is associated with two points, and Searle's explanation of why there are two points associated with it is not the sort of explanation that would obviously be confined to (B) -- there are speakers and hearers for all four of these, and, failing an adequate argument for why this would only matter to (B), it seems that we could have up to eight illocutionary points. So let's consider what that might look like.

(B), of course, is taken care of for us. The world-word fit with respect to speaker gives us the commissive, while the same fit with respect to hearer gives us the directive. If we use this as a model for the others, we could get the following:

	with respect to self/speaker	with respect to others/hearers
(A) Word-World	confessive	assertive
(B) World-Word	commissive	directive
(C) Double	acceptive	declarative
(D) Null	expressive	impressive

When one thinks these through, I think it's clear why the five are the more obvious, because for the other three the speaker/hearer distinction seems a bit more strained, which is why I've generalized it somewhat to speaker-self and others relative to the speaker. Nonetheless, there is something to be said for the eightfold taxonomy here.

The easiest to defend, I think, is the acceptive. For instance, it sometimes happens that one declares something, but there is another step beyond the declaration, in which people apply the declaration to their own context, i.e., formally accept the declaration: This is our king; do you all accept him as king? Yes, he is our king. I'm pretty sure that Searle assumes that 'accepting' in these contexts is generally commissive, but I don't think this usually fits the linguistic profile -- a commissive illocutionary act has to describe a practical course of action, to which one is committing oneself. This is not true in the king example. You could argue that in this particular case, 'accepting' is just declaration, but it's unclear what would be happening in this case where we would then have a double declaration of the same thing. A declaration creates a status simply by declaring it; why one would then need to create it again by declaring it again is a mystery. But if we recognize that you can create a status that nobody actually makes any use of, we can recognize that there will be situations in which a status needs not only to be created but also accepted and formally recognized for oneself. An appropriate authority can declare that so-and-so has such-and-such right, thereby giving them that right, but it does not follow from this that what is declared is treated as the case by others, and to avoid this one may need a specific locutionary recognition from someone that they do, in fact, accept that this person has that right. The only other alternatives, then, to treating this as a distinct illocutionary point is to treat it as assertive or as expressive; but you aren't merely asserting it nor are you merely expressing an attitude toward it, you are making the status a part of the furniture of 'your world', the world as it is seen from your perspective. If there were only one person declaring things for only themselves, there would perhaps be no need to distinguish the declarative and the acceptive, but in social communication the two seem to come apart in important ways. I think, for instance, that complicated tangles in international law can often be described in terms of this distinction; a treaty may declare something, and successfully, but not in a way that everyone accepts what is declared, and international diplomacy is often a matter of formally and officially narrowing the gap between legal declaration and legal acceptance.

Assertion has more of a case for covering the whole of its direction of fit, I think, and arguably the way we usually use 'assertion' does make it this broad. But we do sometimes qualify what we say in such a way that we're not so much trying to say to someone the way things are, but trying to say the way things are to us. I think using Searle's taxonomy we get cases where it's unclear whether we're dealing with assertion or expression; it seems midway between both. These are confessions; we are asserting, if you will, the way things are in our perspective, or expressing, if you prefer, the way things seem to us. It's not actually expression, because we aren't necessarily communicating an attitude or feeling, but the appearance of a fact; but 'assertion' doesn't quite fit either, because we're not trying to represent a fact but an appearance of fact.

The hardest of the candidate illocutionary points to defend is what I have called the 'impressive', but a case can perhaps be made for it. There are situations in which we might say something like, "I get the sense that you are angry" or even "You seem angry?" One could perhaps take this to be an assertion, but really it is more like an expression; I am, so to speak, expressing an impression I have of your attitude. This differs from just expressing something, as when we congratulate someone or commiserate with someone; the direction is wrong. Congratulation goes from us and our attitude to those we are congratulating; but this goes inward, in which we are taking someone else's attitude and trying to 'express' what it seems to be. Given what expression means here, it would be odd to take this as literally expressive; we don't normally think of ourselves as expressing other people's attitudes to things, but we do have locutions where we are in fact trying to convey not our own attitude but someone else's.

Expanding from five illocutionary points to eight in one sense makes the taxonomy neater, as we no longer have (B) standing out as an oddball, and we can make some kind of argument for each of the extra three illocutionary points. It arguably does, however, make the underlying principle of the taxonomy murkier, and it can certainly be said that the three are less obvious than the five. Nonetheless, I think, the case for the expanded taxonomy is quite reasonable.

Various Links of Interest

* Tim Madigan, Thomas Duddy & Irish Philosophy, at "Philosophy Now"

* Gabriele Gava, Conceptual Analysis and the Analytic Method in Kant's Prize Essay (PDF)

* Iddo Landau, Should Marital Relations Be Non-Hierarchical? (PDF)

* Robert Blust, The Dragon and the Rainbow, is a currently open access book arguing that the rainbow is the original source of myths and legends about dragons.

* Christian Illies and Nicholas Ray, An Aesthetic Deontology: Accessible Beauty as a Fundamental Obligation of Architecture (PDF)

* Michael J. Kruger, The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Book of Esther, and the Argument from Silence, at "Canon Fodder"

* Richard Y Chappell, Hypothetical Imperatives and Normativity, at "Good Thoughts"

* Lorraine L. Besser, Virtue of Self-Regulation (PDF)

* David Francis Sherwood, The esse of the Eucharist (PDF)

Currently Reading

Marco Girolamo Vida, Christiad
C. S. Lewis, Studies in Words
Eusebius, The Church History
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Battle of Maldon together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth

In Audiobook

G. K. Chesterton, The Wisdom of Father Brown
Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out
Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body?
Hermann Simon, Confessions of the Pricing Man: How Price Affects Everything