Every magisterial authority short of God's is a ministerial authority. This includes the magisterial authority of reason.
The 'primity' of the Father is constituted by the processions (the Father is only 'First' relative to the other Persons), not vice versa.
The Father's filiation of the Word --> appropriability of divine essence to the Word (=divine intellect as attribute) --> participation of intellectual creatures qua intellectual in the similitude of the divine intellect --> use of intellectual terms to describe God
The counterfactual is a way of describing the actual.
Human actions among different people are capable of
(1) cooperative overlap
(2) coordinative interlocking
(3) imitative reflection
(4) motivated continuing.
coordinative inerlocking
(1) by communicated coordinating factor
-- -- (a) received from coordinator
-- -- (b) proposed and accepted
-- -- (c) negotiated
(2) by inferred coordinating factor
As our loves become mroe pure, their integrity takes on greater and greater simplicity.
Thought thinking itself, thinks itself as cause. (Brentano)
"...there is but one way for philosophy to last, which is for it to be true." Gilson
One can often move from a lower-order universal proposition to a higher-order particular proposition about regularity or general fact or necessity or the like; likewise, one can often move from a lower-order Box to a higher-order Diamond.
The point of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is not that you are going to hell but that hell is avoidable.
Models, by their very function, must hold up under approximation.
"The subject is a sign; the predicate is a sign; and the proposition is a sign that the predicate is a sign of that of which the subject is a sign." Peirce (CP 5.553)
validity: the possible states for all the premises all include possible states for the conclusion
deduction : Box :: induction : True :: abduction : Diamond
validity, convergence, and eventual guess as woven together in inquiry
Peirce's typologies of signs
mode of apprehension of sign: qualisign, sinsign, legisign OR potisign, actisign, famsign
mode of presentation of immediate object: descriptive, designative, copulant
mode of being of dynamical object: abstractive, concretive, collective
relation to dynamic object: icon, index, symbol
mode of presentation of immediate interpretant: ejaculative, imperative, significant
mode of being of dynamic interpretant: sympathetic, shocking, usual
relation to dynamic interpretant (manner of appeal): suggestive, imperative, indicative
mode of being of final interpretant: gratific, action-producing, self-control-producing
relation to final interpretant: rheme, dicisign, argument OR seme, pheme, delome
relation to dynamic & final interpretant: assurance of instinct, of experience, of form
-- Peirce's 'final typology' of sign is perhaps an attempt to bridge gaps between himself and Lady Welby.
Everything in the universe has interpretant-ward possibilities and object-ward possibilities.
the palaetiological problem for the universe itself
observability as a form of interpretant-ward possibility
evidence as a form of object-ward possibility
Semiosis is a potential infinite.
possible solutions to palaetiological problems: break, bounce, shuffle
All historical accounts get us only an approximation of the historical event insofar as it is signifiable by the sources and evidences, even under optimal conditions.
evidence as indexically converging
evidence as descriptively tessellating
evidence as abducitvely suggesting
the solidarity and subsidiarity of the virtues
the covenantal virtues (modes of acquired virtues under Torah)
Zhu Xi's analogies with respect to mandate of heaven
mandate of Heaven : command of sovereign :: li : receiving of office from sovereign :: qi : difference between those who can and can't discharge duties of office
Heaven : Emperor :: mandate : giving letters patent or credentials :: li : duty of particular office received :: sentiments : personal attention to duties :: capacity : various forms of effort and achievements
finite collections as allowing the syllogism of transposed quantity (Peirce)
Activism done badly tends toward rule of men, not rule of law.
Democratic societies consistently show themselves to be good at generating the material required for a just society and to be poor at generating the form required for a just society.
Diversity makes society beautiful; it does not necessarily make it work.
understanding of terms as involving reference, definition (account), and upshot
interpretability, interpretation, correct interpretation (or understanding)
The easiest way to attain a state of belief unassailable by doubt is to be stupid.
the human person as delomic symbolic legisign
postulation, assertion, proof
Who wins elections is largely about how votes are split. When we vote it is not the numbers that do the work but the relative division; we are not contributing by adding a unit but by adding a unit to a particular slice.
We do actual building and engineering with abstract concepts, not artist's renderings; abstract things are often more practical than concrete ones.
Intellectualized politics are not very flexible; in politics, the flexibility is usually in the muddle. Politics is the art of bounded pools of muddle.
only good --> ought
"The notion of practical sign merely requires that it signify its significate as something to be given in practice, not by causality of the sign itself but by causality of another cause, though signified by this sign." Poinsot
"The notion of practical sign does not come from the exercise of efficacy precisely in its nature as a sign, as though it had in itself an eeffective power, but rather that it is ordered to a work as its principal end, whether this work is brought about by means of a power communicated to the sign itself, or joined to it from without...."
The same signs are capable of functioning in speculative or practical orders.
The Church as we find it in the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers is an organization of organizations, heavily concerned with very mundane practical matters, although subordinating them to doctrinal and devotional ends.
practical signs & the ministerial efficient cause
A firm is a deontic system structured by obligations woven together; it is a pattern or structure in deontic space.
lawyers as deontic engineers
categorical imperative // postulate of relativity
(moral maxims are structurally the same law in all rational decision spaces)
It is generally impossible to know what an experience is evidence for unless one knows what the actual experience is.
computer programs as practical signs
sign of the Cross as zikkaron
Theology needs to be nourished by liturgy.
Civil societies are actual societies; states are general deontic structures instrumentally used by them to facilitate various activities of the civil society (including forming other deontic structures). The Church is more like civil society than the state, because it is also an actual society. The clergy and hierarchy in general is the analgoue to the state, although it is a very different deontic structure.
(1) A resembles B in respect R.
(2) B has property F in a way related to R.
(3) F is not inconsistent with other properties of A.
(4) Therefore A has property F in a way related to R.
Mackie's "argument from queerness" is just an attempt to turn Moore's open question argument on its head, and is subject to the same kinds of responses, as well as the obvious response that people do not, in fact, find moral qualities to be "queer", but instead treat them as ordinary parts of the universe, and take them to have any number of analogies and causal connections to 'natural facts', regardless of how one might explain these. His argument ends up being that moral qualities are queer if you dismiss or ignore most of what people say about them.
We obviously do not think that people ought to keep promises on the ground that we demand it; we demand it on the ground that promises are to be kept.
possible worlds considered rhematically, dicentically, and delomically
ordered pairs of possible worlds
-- unordered pairs are how one would identify single possibles to be one way or another; ordered pairs would be usable to identify signed relations between the options
Chalcedon's canon 28 explicitly ties Constantinople's authority to those privileges that Rome had that were specifically connected with Rome's being the imperial city. The obvious question to consider then, is whether Rome has privileges not derived in this way. And the obvious thought is that by privileges they specifically meant those identified in Nicaea canon 6.
the iconesque as an aesthetic category
Every period in history is structured by its narrative histories more than its actual chronological prelude, except where the latter is very recent (within living memory). Nonetheless, while as one goes back the actual prior events matter less and less, some continue to be influential, going even back to prehistory. The influence grows thinner and more sporadic, but never wholly fades.
Christ's atonement is a propitiation for divine wrath in the same way that God has wrath.
The tyrant is the philosopher king inverted, and likewise the democrat is the timarch inverted.
Note that Spinoza means by 'will' a faculty of affirming or denying (IIP48S) and takes faculties to be constructed to simplify thinking.
Spinoza's ignorance argument does not in fact explain why we think of ourselves as having free will; it would explain instead why someone who had the idea of free will would take deterministic beings to have it. Ignorance simply does not get us either alternative possibilities or ultimate sourcehood as an appearance. In reality, Spinoza's explanation has to be that the error of free will is an innate idea (Letter 58). Indeed, he takes infants, children, drunks, and lunatics all to be able to access this idea, so literally everyone has it. It's also worth noting that Spinoza himself has to appeal to ignorance (IIIP2S).
"Right is a kind of moral power, and obligation is a moral necessity." Leibniz
Job 41:11 "Who has a claim against Me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to Me."
Works of fine art are often impossible to characterize adequately without attributing values to the works themselves.
The Myth of Er teaches that philosophy is the only solution for tyranny; without philosophical pursuit of the Good, you will always slide toward tyranny.
lion : 1 Nicaea :: eagle : 1 Constantinople :: ox : Ephesus :: man : Chalcedon
First drafts of even very good ideas are often very flawed.
The merits of the saints are the merits of Christ in the saints.
"Scripturae enim non in legendo sunt, sed in intelligendo." Hilary of Poitiers (Ad Const. Aug. 2.9)
"The way of knowing God goes from the one Spirit, through the one Son, to the one Father; and inversely, essential goodness, natural sanctity, and royal dignity flow from the Father, through the only-begotten, to the Spirit." Basil
