Where there are demonstrative arguments, there are probable arguments.
2 Macc 15:12-14 and the intercession of saints
Measurement is not a sign but by means of signs.
objective causality & incomplete disposition to an end
possible solutions to Peirce's Puzzle about boundaries:
(1) boundaries are overlaps
(2) boundaries are (possibly vanishingly) small distinct regions
(3) boundaries are on one side
(4) boundaries are nonoverlapping superpositions (disjunctions collapsing to disjunct depending on manner of approach)
(5) boundaries don't exist
Gan (2023): If mereotopological connection is interpreted as the intersection of one set with the closure of another, all the major topological and mereotopological definitions align.
Massin on modes of location (2008)
partial-sporadic, partial-pervasive, entire-sporadic, entire pervasive
What is the alethic analogue of a boundary?
-- to give an answer, if there is an answer, would need an analogue of connection, then interior, then exterior, then boundary.
Compensatory duties are always relative to a law of compensation. (Such duties are duties of repair with respect to a specific means of measurement determined by the law.)
The only authentic reform is the reform that begins with love of good things.
"With the notion of value we are in a static order, in the order of what Aristotle called formal causality." Maritain
"Moral obligation is a constraint exercised by the intellect on the will."
"All human rights are comprehended under the formula: The human being must be treated as a person." Erhard
the aesthetic of formulas: elegance as clarity of relations in economy of form
elegance in contemplation vs elegance in use
Every permissibility requires a permitting authority, allowing for a broad sense of what might count as an authority.
the facultating power of will
The sacraments depend rigidly and constantly on God (in Thomasson's senses) and generically and historically on relevant priestly powers (including priesthood of believers for baptism and matrimony).
In concentrated learning, like acting, one must develop a process.
Most factional politics is a luxury game for the upper classes.
perceiving a historical figure in and through a fictional version
Every soul is tending toward its Ragnarok.
The human being is a transfiguring creature; it is our nature to take the world around us and make it something new, as instrument, as symbol, as reflection of ourselves, as counterpoint to ourselves.
Even heretical and schismatic sects can have true sacraments such that those who in good faith and not knowing better receive them with zeal may be incoprorated thereby into the Catholic Church by honest desire. (This is not the same as to say that formal heretics and formal schismatics may be so; but a sect will often have people who are not themselves guilty of the heresy or schism, and, having come to it, are seeing the truth it reflects without being in a position to to see the defects in the reflection.)
Wisdom is not merely rational; it is free.
indulgences as stipendiary remissions for devotional services rendered (this is similar to some medieval accounts)
For us to say that something is a potential person, we have to be able to identify some act or process that is person-making.
slide rule as physical memory palace
Art operates not merely on formless materials but also on things that are already products of art. I set an artificial pen with artificial ink to an artificial page to produce an artificial text.
In listening to music, our imagination is both guided and free; its restlessness is given material on which to act and a framework within which it may more easily associate.
Grammar is written language's attempt to capture the fluid order of spoken language. Spoken language is more fundamentally rhetorical and poetic than written language, in the liberal arts senses of those terms.
Liguori's interpretation of 'truly, really, substantially'
truly: rejects merely figurative presence
really: rejects imaginary presence (presence by mere representation)
substantially: rejects merely virtual presence (presence by mere spiritual power)
We may and do obviously use the term 'knowledge' figuratively in non-factive cases.
Constant conjunction in experience requires an enduring self to whom such constant conjunction would exist.
formal wave vs. mediated wave
experiment -> experimental ensemble -> network of experimental ensembles -> theories
scientific research as massive parallel computation with coincidental variation
In our experience we do not find anything even approximating the appearance of a brute fact except arbitrary freely chosen results of will. Thus whenever we find anything attributed to brute fact, by analogy we should look for the relevant act of will.
Dice and coins are random because we deliberately choose them to be signs of objects that have an irrelevance to the dynamic features of their material nature.
fire on the altar as a symbol of the Ascension
Theological modernism often gets the direction of signification wrong, taking the cognitive expression as the ontic ground.
Modern states often function by trying to buy loyalty from subjects; activism is as effective as it is because it is a method of continually raising the price for loyalty.
The features of mystical phenomena include the majesty of God, the sinful states of soul, the dangers of deception, and our responses to them; it is a mistake to think that 'the mystical phenoman' are separate from these things.
the prayer of quiet as the Sabbath in us
The soul is the enclosure for itself, through which it itself moves. It is its own interior world, in which it itself abides and dwells. This is a result of its being present to itself both actually and objectively, immediately and reflectively, by direct presence and by sign.
Sometimes mystical phenomena are described modally (by how they are received) and sometiems objectively (by how they are perceived).
In mystical experience, the same thing may be experienced in different 'rotated' ways: as object of one's powers, as subject to which one is instrument, as cooperative with one in some action, etc.
The mind has both a dualistic and a monistic relation to itself; it is both united with and opposed to itself.
Social forms of phenomenology have to combine experience of with experience in.
People studying religious experience underestimate the extent to which one kind of experience can be embedded within another.
Drug-induced phenomena are generically interesting in that they trace out potentials for experience. Some of these potentials are not particularly interesting in themselves -- one does not need drugs to know that one has a potential for experiencing moving colors. But sometimes, while the drug-induced phenomenon is not itself important, the potential is something easily missed or overlooked in everyday experience; and in other cases, the phenomenon may have importance in a given context, as in entheogenic cases.
When people claim there are unmediated experiences of a given type, they often have weird views of what counts as 'mediated'.
One of the difficulties of evanglism in the post-medieval West is the constant need to spell out what in a more traditional society would be obvious.
the liturgical as an expression of Christ's mediatorial role, at the level both of society and of sacrament
Social justice cannot be upheld without regard for social roles.
The correct thread in early modern (and not always Protestant) antipathy to 'popery' is the essential importance of ecclesial subsidiarity.
In human life, nature and artifice intertwine.
Scripture as text transcends community-individual divides.
Faith and hope are habitual states of divine objective presence. Technically thi sis true of charity as well, but it is inadequate as a description of love's union with God by God's presence in love.
"Charity, the mother and guardian of all that is good, which binds together in union the hearts of many, regards not as absent him whom it has present in the mind's eye." Gregory the Great
"Your prayers are in the place where you are not, while your holy operations are shown in the place where you are."