This completes the notebook finished in June 2023.
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Law crystallizes within an ocean of reasoning.
painting as involving practices of purifying, illuminating, and uniting
the entry of material things into the deontic world
"*Property* in its true and original sense is not a material thing, but the *Right* to something." H. D. Macleod
"The *Value* of any Economic Quantity is any *other* Economic Quantity for which it can be exchanged." --> As he notes, this means that something can have many distinct values, and that ther eis no absolute economic value, only value in something.
"Price is therefore simply the Value of anything expressed in Money or Credit."
"The Value of a thing is always something external to itself."
"When an Obligation is created by the transfer of the Property in goods and money, the Right to demand payment is the *Credit*, and strictly speaking the Duty to pay is the *Debt*."
"The Debt is *never*, under any circumstances, the Money owed by the Debtor: it is the *Personal Duty* to pay the Money."
"Every loan of money is in reality a sale, or an exchange, in which a *New Property* is created which is called *Credit* or a *Debt*: and when the money is returned, or the loan repaid, it is another exchange, by which this New Property is extinguished."
credit : steam :: money : water (Macleod)
We coordinate different perspectives through causes and general principles.
Confession is simultaneously medicinal, legal, and priestly.
Everything that appears has some kind of truth to it; it's just not always the kind that might be expected.
For A to represent B, it must do so for some end.
the 'external world' of a legal system -- philosophies of law often err by treating legal systems as 'idealist', i.e., as not recognizing that the legal has reference to more than the legal, that law must recognize a world independent, distinct, and continuing outside of itself. There are legal persons because there are persons; families and civil societies are not wholly constituted by law; etc.
Every art and productive skill has a purity, when its pinnacle is reached, that suggests much higher and more sublime intelligibilities.
Much of reasoning is just sorting out where things should go, and what they should go with.
water, fire, air : baptism, confirmation, ordination
modalities with respect to measure
clock: tense ; containing boundary : location ; logical rules : provability; combinatorial trials : metric-alethic (probability); extensional count : quantifier/existential
dignity as a sort of pre-merit
Song 4:7 // Lv 22:21
Song 6:9 // Lv 5:7
"The real idea behind time is causation; the time structure of the world is just its causal structure." Godel
Sufficient reasons and contrastive explanations are linked to each other.
"The Church is the heart and essence of the world, its hidden final cause." Bulgakov
"By nature the Holy Spirit in His substance (kat'ousian) substantially (ousiodes) proceeds (ekporeumenum) from the Father through the begotten Son." Maximos Ad Thal. LXIII
"...no intelligent person could conceive of a word without spirit." Palamas HC c.36
mind-word-love as the structure of tradition
conscience as quasi-regal: tribunal
conscience as quasi-sacerdotal: inner temple
conscience as quasi-prophetic: mission
the self as object and the ambit of the person
The presential self dwells within the self as object.
the drift of ideas from impression
All art aspires to the condition of the icon.
music as an art of ordered suggestion
It is remarkable how much of the history in Wundt's Ethics is simply wrong.
"Just as what Peter believed in Christ remains, there likewise remains what Christ instituted in Peter." Leo (Sermon 3)
"In this see his power lives on and his authority reigns supreme."
"He does not cease to preside over his see but unfailingly maintains that fellowship he has with the eternal priest."
"He willed, through the instrumentality of your work, to free the poor from the burden of need and you from the multitude of your sins."
"No human beings should be considered worthless by another. That nature which the Creator of the universe made his own should not be looked down upon in anyone."
natural vs. artificial duties and obligations in Bleak House
Sovereignty proceeds from the universal to the particular.
"God is witness that there is no God but He." Quran 3:18
We learn solidarity by practice with our families, our ancestors, and our community predecessors.
the four central administrative problems of the Church: presence, teaching, alms, mission
Some people do have a genuine distaste for metaphysics, but in academic philosophy 'distaste for metaphysics' is often really a cover for anti-religious bigotry.
The left-right terminology in political analysis obscures the actual sources and grounds of political oppositions in particular cases.
Assigning truth values requires prior knowledge of what is true.
God knows things as they exist in understood existence, in willed existence, and in actual existence.
the logical behavior of concepts under limit conditions
Genesis 14:18-20 and the transition from the natural religion of king-priest to the covenantal religion of Abraham
Jericho is the earliest known walled city, and one of the oldest known stone towers (although the towers at Tell Qaramel are much older), which was built about 8300 BC.
Every experiment is developed from an at least partially developed thought experiment.
One reason why there is a difference of feel to music recorded on wax, vinyl, magnetic tape, CD, etc., is nto just the sound itself, but that each of these has a different relative silence, to form a background to the sound, and thus set off the music differently, in something like the way different lighting sets off visual media differently.
It is tempting to think of local presence as sharing of location (containing boundary) but this would make everything in space locally present to everything else, since you can identify boundaries arbitrarily. Local presence has to be a matter of actual causal reach.
2 Cor 13:11-13
the love of God: divine love itself
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ: divine love to us
the fellowship of the Holy Spirit: divine love among us
civil society as a parable of the Kingdom of God (cp. Barth)
In many cases, the assets of early monasteries were held to be owned by the patron saints of the monastery.
In theology, analogies may be used as illustrations, as parables, or as models; these three are very different uses.
the possibility of miracles -> no model can predict God's behavior
narrative as theme expressed by temporally measured actions
"The King of Israel is the King of the world....The King of Israel is the God who rules all things." Barth
God as Creator : providence :: God as King : covenant
The Church is not the result of Scripture, but of divine actions to which Scripture gives witness.
"Strictly speaking, every angelological statement can only be an auxiliary or additional statement, an explanation and elucidation of what is not to be said properly and essentially of angels but -- corresponding to the ministerial nature and work of angels -- of the divine action in Jesus Christ and therefore of the divine lordship in the creaturely world." Barth
Barth creates an immense tangle for himself by not recognizing that angels are leitourgika pneumata, not pneumatike leitourgoi; and then trying to deny the clear affirmation in Joshua & Daniel & Jude & Revelation (not to mention implied in the name 'host') that there are real hierarchies among them. "If there is order in heaven, it is not order of rank, but of function and service" -- this is directly contrary to Scripture, which ties their functions and services to ranks. He also loves to have his cake and eat it too by insisting against any ontology of angels that their nature is wholly in service, and against hierarchy of angels that their service is not their nature.
Ps 34:7 and the guardianship of angels
"The history of science can be viewed as a search problem. Scientists look for observational text and theoretical text that will give mutual significance." Ackermann
-- NB Ackermann's modified use of literal diagrams for tracking evidence and hypotheses in *Nondeductive Inference*
"The mere Idea of God is at the same time a postulate of His existence." Kant
"...all images reveal and make perceptual those things which are hidden." Damascene
Wealth does not propagate wealth, but shared wealth acquisition practices do.
No matter how high-minded the speech , one finds over and over again that people tolerate only so far as they deem practical for themselves.
Twins are a very common motif in mythologies around the world, in Mesopotamia, Africa, Europe, etc.
"Now, one is the Holy Spirit, and he is proclaimed singly. he is joined through the Son to the one Father, and through himself he completes the famed and blessed Trinity." Basil
"The way, then, to knowledge of God is from the one Spirit, through the one Son, to the one Father. And conversely the goodness and holiness by nature and teh royal dignity reach from the Father, through the Only-Begotten, to the Spirit. In this way the persons are confessed and the pious dogma of the monarchy does not fall away."
"What hope would lift up the fallen, what medicine heal the wounded, if almsgiving did not remit faults and the needs of the poor did not become remedies for sin?" Leo
valuing as willing on understanding
value as that about a thing which, on being understood, makes it to be willable in a certain way
real vs. rational value
Value is posited through concept.
"We tend to acknowledge as cause what is most universal." Rosmini
People often treat laws as symbolic for practical guidance.
objective final cause (e.g., health) vs beneficiary final cause (e.g., patient)
Art takes place within a deontic framework established by the artist; but within that framework, the art does what it does and says what it says regardless of what it ought to be according to the framework.
An account of inquiry that does not have room for good guessing is intrinsically defective.
"There is, in being intuited by the mind, 1. essence, 2. objectivity and intelligibility." Rosmini
"...every moral virtue supposes love for infinite being."
"Presence is simply manifestation; without any manifestation, we cannot conceive a presence."
"The human mind is as unlimited and universal as undetermined being, but undetermined being is not unlimited and universal in the sense that it manifests an infinite actuality."
"Being is virtually moral in the measure that, with its order and totality, it has essentially the suitability for being willed (I call this suitability lovability)."
NB Rosmini's proof of eternal intelligence (Theosophy vol. 2 sect. 744)
(1) What is not intelligible is not possible.
(2) If there had been a time when nothing was understood, there would never have been a time when something began to be understood.
(3) If nothing had been understood, nothing would be intelligible.
(4) Therefore nothing would be possible.
(5) Therefore there is understanding that has always been.
Every contingent being posits a deontic structure constituting the conditions of its existence.
In the things we know best, evil is often the privation of harmonious interrrelationship.
the Church Militant as the messianic vicariate
dystopias as warnings about solutions to problem of evil
"Were he not indeed true God, he could apply no remedy. Were he not indeed true man, he could not show example." Leo
conceptual art as experimentation in social ontology
social entities:
explicit institution (marriage)
insinuated institution (friendship)
uninstituted (inflation)
Searle's account of social entities lumps in socially contextual relations with pure social objects; but this paper being a dollar bill is a relativity of the paper in a given context, which in this case just happens to be social. This contrasts with a social object like, say, a political party or a government office. (This is common, and regularly muddles discussions of 'social entities'.)
The world consists of entities described every which way by every field of human thought.
"Social objects are always constituted by social acts; and, in a sense, *the object is just the continuous possibility of the activity*." Searle
Anything with a regulative function can be represented as a rule.
the function of a design vs. the function of the thing designed
certification
We assert that X is Y in context C according to specification S;
We assert that there is a Y in context C according to specification S.
Marriage is unitive through signs.
"To say that something ought to be, or ought to be done, is to state that the being or doing of this thing is a necessary condition (requirement) of something else." von Wright
evaluative, normative, and imperative uses of 'ought'
three kinds of protection for the sacred: moral, jural, sacral
three dimensions of quality of pleasure: more rational, more shared, more broadly satisfying
Hume's sympathy as a kind of exemplar causation
romance : aristocracy : novel : democracy : epic : monarchy
oscillating hierarchies in human relationships
Ephrem seems at times to use the term 'Baptism' simultaneously as the name of a sacrament and as a name for the Church ('the Son has espoused Baptism').
Common decency, or the 'decency of the common man', is often a matter primarily of being prevented from depravity by practical necessities, but it is not less important because of that.
'Person' is not primarily a moral or legal status but something in response to which we create moral and legal statuses.
Rosmini's a priori argument
(1) The possible cannot be without the subsistent.
(2) If there must be some subsistetn, there must be the first subsistent.
"Everything that does not exist is not possible if there is no cause capable of producing it." Rosmini
Self-restraint in self-estimation, or humility, is often necessary to see the good in other people.
The primary reason to be skeptical about 'nonresistant nonbelief' is that there dont't seem to be even any 'nonresistant' believers.
Social entities are often truthmakers for other social entities.
The reason that there seems to be an "element of magic" in conjuring institution facts out of brute facts is that there are no brute facts, and all the least objectionable candidates are known in and through institutional facts, at least insofar as we have a well-rounded understanding of them.
Social groups are not constituted only by people; animals (e.g., pets) and important objects (e.g., inanimate mascots and landmarks) or institutions (e.g., corporate partners) may be included.
The Church is a population, a plural subject, and a moral person; it is simultaneously a shared-feature group and a structured-whole group; it subsists in the latter and extends to the former.
'Klerikos', from which we get the word 'cleric', means what pertains to an inheritance and is usually thought a reference to the LEvites, whose portion was the Lord.
we-intentionality vs you-and-I intentionality
(composite and divided modes of intentionality)
Counterfeit money, to the extent it succeeds as counterfeit, can fulfill all the functions of money and thus is economically money. What is counterfeited is not its status as money but the legal authority behind it.
We experience ourselves not merely as source of actions but also as proceeding from and through those actions in some way.
It is not an accident that so many wonders fo the world are tombs, temples, and statues.
the lectoral person as proceeding from the authorial person
Ex 33:22 -- I will cover you with my hand (i.e., Christ Incarnate)
Only divine love conquers all.
"Error is an element in the very goodness of the search for truth." William Temple
In assessment of evidence in law, we are not merely concerned with features of evidence in general but also directness of connection. This is in part because courts are concerned with responsibilities: whether a person was responsible for waht happened, what our responsibility is in assessing matters, what responsible handling of evidence requires, etc. Evidential chains need to have surveyability; failures of indirect chains need to be allowed as possible, decisions need to be protexted from the accusation of the tenuous, or the nonobvious, to the extent that this is practically possible.
In Hebrew, Egyptian, and Mayan mythologies, one finds the association of making the world with language.
There is no fundamental difference between an I-intention and a we-intention; we take ourselves to intend for and with and from and through others, so that in a we-intention the boundary between self and others is not sharp, and in I-intention there is often an aspect that accounts for the 'we'.
three kinds of imputation: of action, of effect, of property
Groups have values, can make decisions, and engage in deliberation; in fact, we attribute these things to ourselves because we find them in groups.
Academics deal with mights and possibilities more than truths simply speaking.
What is potential is present only to its associated actualities.
Anything actually existing is capable both of being an agent and of being an end.