Dancing to music is something suggested by the physical way we experience music, feeling the beat and the melody.
"Understanding music involves the active creation of an intentional world in which mere sounds are transfigured into movements, harmonies, rhythms -- metaphorical gestures in a metaphorical space. And into these metaphorical gestures a metaphorical soul is breathed by the sympathetic listener." Scruton
"Every sound intentionally made is instinctively taken to be an attempt at communication. And this is as true of music as it is of speech. In the presence of sound intentionally produced, and intentionally organized, we feel ourselves within another person's ambit."
cosmological arguments in the alethic order, in the deontic order, in the epistemic and doxastic order?
questions as a sign of our cognitive contingency
Extremisms often arise from an inadequate attention to everyday duties.
colors as actings (emission), sounds as products (emitted)
the sounding vs the sound
the experience of being acted upon by way of sound vs the acousmatic experience of sound
The physical and spatial experiences of singing and playing instrumetns give us orientations in the figurative space of music, as if we built a kind of coordinate system out of them.
the kinaesthetic inness and outness of speaking and singing
In experience of music we are in music and not of it.
virtual causality in acousmatic space
osculans, os, osculum as Trinitarian (Giles of Rome)
There is not a single order of existence, and existence that is not vague with respect to one order may be vague with respect to another.
A musical cover is not merely an instance of the music but an allusion to another instance of music, which serves as a sort of exemplar (although to varying degrees).
We experience music as both an acting and a product. (This is true of dance as well.) The product-ness is instrumental to the action-ness.
The acousmatic character of sound is experienced as received.
cives optimo iure vs. cives sine suffragio
-- note that in the Roman system, cives sine suffragio are specifically 'sine suffagio' in Rome -- they could have suffrage in their own communities, on independent grounds, but in Rome they had legal protection but no right to vote or hold office.
resonance : auditory medium :: transparency : visual medium
"Our Imagination loves to be filled with an Object, or to grasp at anything that is too big for its Capacity. We are flung into a pleasing Astonishment at such unbounded Views, and feel a delightful Stillness and Amazement in the Soul at the Apprehension of them." Addison (Spect 412, 23 June 1712)
Dante's Inferno is a depiction of the forms of being anti-creative.
Cantor's definition of a set requires
(1) a collecting operation
(2) resulting in wholes with parts
(3) where the parts are definite,
(4) separate,
(5) objects of intuition or thought.
The measure of how consistent a social movement or political position is with a free society, is how it treats pacific opposition. All free societies require a principle of respect for peaceable disagreement.
The handing down of tradition over a long period of time requires an interweaving of organic recoveries, artificial recoveries, extrapolations from precedent, restorative repairs, conserving actions, improvements of scaffolding, anticipatory preparations, functional substitutions, etc.
the Humean general (T 3.3.1.15) or common (T 3.3.1.30, EPM 9.6) point of view in aesthetics, unites us in 'the party of humankind' (EPM 9.5) against disorder and ugliness
-- involves putting ourselves in other spectators' perspectives than our own (cf. T 3.3.3.2)
-- lets us establish general rules (cf. T 3.3.1.20) that ignore possible responses dependent on happenstance circumstances (e.g., whether we are feeling sick or not at the moment)
-- lets us have common ground for aesthetic discussion (cf. T 3.3.1.15) and develop an appropriate language for it (cf. T 3.3.1.16)
-- facilitates practical coordination in aesthetic projects
the role of the principle of humanity (EPM 9.6) in aesthetic judgment
All virtues are useful and agreeable both to the person himself and to others.
Hume's claim that the 'monkish virtues' are not agreeable to their possessors does not exactly square with the history of the practices involved; the same is true of the claim that they are not useful to society.
Hume's 'artificial virtues' are not made-up virtues but virtues involving artifice, i.e., some sort of social machinery like a government, a legal system, or social custom. Hume tends to talks as if they presupposed the machinery, but there is at least an argument to be made that they are actually involved in the building of it -- the virtuous work of our tool-use ability (property-justice) creating the rules of property, ofr instance, or social graciousness creating the rules of etiquette. All of the artificial virtues would then really be natural virtues of cooperation that make use of ingenuity.
What is due someone is not and cannot be a purely conventional matter.
Human beings experience something like Hume's and also Smith's sympathy (both) even for nonhuman animals, plants, and landmarks.
While Hume's general point of view is not ideal in the sense of being that of an ideal-spectator, it is ideal in the sense of being idealized.
The possible meanings of words cover ranges of things with varying degrees of centrality or marginality; the range is constrained by context to varying degrees of precision in actual meaning.
The Copenhagen interpretation effectively treats the world as consisting entirely of possible and actual measurements.
yes/no questions as possibilities of premises
the first four categories as the fundamental preconditions of measurement
ecology and life-dependent being (esse vitalis) -- niche, etc.
(1) Some X's are Y's; therefore (2) All of the X's which verify (1) are Y's.
tutiorism // totalitarianism
laxism // the more extreme forms of liberalism
Only death is fully egalitarian.
Many things must be tried to reach great discoveries; genius discovers how to try things not one by one but as a group or mass.
"If you leave a thing alone, you leave it to a torrent of change." Chesterton
There is no being-in-the-world without co-being-in-the-world.
music as a symbol of the Holy Spirit
The experience of music as an interplay of memory, attention, and anticipation.
the moral sphere, the jurisdiction, and the templum of marriage
'field' as the mediating concept between point-like measurement and area-like measurement
the physical as that which always has a mass-momentum and energy-time measurement relationship
kinds of prudential judgment
(1) disturbance mitigation
(2) feedforward control
(3) feedback control
(4) reference selection (planning)
(5) noise mitigation
(6) state estimation
(7) evaluative reflection
perversion of the state (deliberate use of the state as a means to an end inconsistent with its natural end)
When economists say, 'The economy is in bad shape', they are talking about overall measurements, when ordinary laymen say, 'The economy is in bad shape', they mean that the parts around them are organized in a bad way.
Hb 1:4 -- The Son receives by merit in exaltation what He already possessed by nature in original filiation.
Epiphanius in the Panarium (Aer 65.8) distinguishes homousios with the Father from heteroousios (Arians) and tautoousios (Sabellians).
Lk 1:53 & the ecuharist: "He has filled the hungry with good things."
"For nothing is ever atoned for which the blood of Christ did not atone for and repair." Albert
modes of being
(1) tantum in ratione: negation and privation
(2) admixed with negation and privation: motion and mutation
(3) weakly existing (in alio): quliaties, quantities, and properties of substances
(4) completely existing (in se): substances
-- (3) are referred to (4) as in substances, (2) to (4) as tending to substances or accidents, (1) to (4) as removing substance, accidents, motions.
In every substance there is a power to be, and to be like, and to be so, and to be with respect to another.
God as that being with which all being has co-being
Predicamental vestment as it were forms an extended substance by making one substance subordinate co-substance with another. There is a substance, and it is vested with a co-substance.
being clothed as a physically realized moral status
Every human person re-presents the universe that is present to him or her.
accidental predicaments as systemic capacities (this is certainly defensible for sex principia)
forms of systemic relation: resemblance, mensuration, action
Fictional characters are not purely imaginary but involve references to real and actual beings, and ultimately to the storytelling-testimony, spoken or written, that communicates them.
The artist purifies, illuminates, and completes the materials of the work of art in making it.
What phenomenologists call 'world' is a representation of the world.
If a normative claim is successfully applied, then it is also a descriptive claim.
"People truly have a kind of feeling from human nature (xingqing) that surpasses individual life and finds completion in affective connection with people and things." Tang Junyi
"The most important point for our affirming the value of a kind of cultural activity is that it directly reveals the value of the human spirit itself, and not its instrumental or utilitarian value."
ontic personhood : ground of value :: moral personhood : response to value
In recognizing the personhood of anything, we recognzie that attributing personhood to it is not arbitrary but requires principled attribution.
"Even knowing God, I cannot describe Him; He cannot be described in words." SGGS 2
"No matter how much anyone tries to explain and describe them, / the actions of the Creator cannot be counted."
"You created the vast expanse of the Universe with One Word!"
"Virtue and vice do not come by mere words; / actions repeated, over and over again, are engraved on the soul." SGGS 4
"If anyone presumes to describe God, /he shall be known as the greatest fool of fools!" SGGS 6
"Everyone says that God is the Greatest of the Great. No one calls Him any less. / No one can estimate His Worth. By speaking of Him, His Greatness is not increased." SGGS 15
"The Wine of Truth is not fermented from molasses. The True Name is contained within it."
"Bathe in the waters of Goodness and apply the scented oil of Truth to your body, / and your face shall become radiant. This is the gift of 100000 gifts." SGGS 16
"To reach your True Home after you die, you must conquer death while you are still alive." SGGS 21
Pew Research (June 29, 2021) on Religion in India
| self-identified | Believe there is only one God | There is only one God with many manifestations | There are many gods |
| Hindus | 29% | 61% | 7% |
| Muslims | 66% | 22% | 3% |
| Christians | 68% | 24% | 5% |
| Sikhs | 57% | 36% | 0% |
| Buddhists | 39% | 22% | 5% |
| Jains | 41% | 54% | 5% |
"A value is characterized not by its strength but by its depth, by the extent to which it brings order to experience." Scruton
As an architectural work, a building is not merely lived in but lived through.
Gothic architecture as an architecture of the uprising symbolic city
Modern church architecture seems primarily cocerned with creating buildings indicative of a congregation.
the aesthetic syllogism:
major (aesthetic reasons)
minor (features of aesthetic object)
conclusion (way of experiencing aesthetic object)
Learning to experience works of art is learning to reorganize one's attention.
As the Body, Soul, and Divinity of Christ are in the Eucharist sacramentally and by real presence, so the sacramental Body of Christ is in the Eucharist representatively and by symbolic presence, in its Head.
Music works on us by being both inside and outside us.
One of the most common patterns is that human beings are stiffnecked on religious matters; we all get obstinate about what we like and find convenient.
All virtues create responsibilities; justice (and its potential parts) create them in the form of obligations.
glorying as an act of hope
the gift vs the effect of the gift (with respect to actual conferring, proportion/suitability to the recipient, and durability of the need)
-- the effect of the gift is the gift in the recipient
zikkaron and the presence of Israel in the heavenly liturgy
The first thing God gave Adam was God.
fictionalizations of fictions and fictionalizations
-- this is a common way versions of fictional chracters are related, e.g., I can write a Holems pastiche that is fictionalization of the Sherlock Holmes
perception, punishment, and argument as the three natural means of persuasion
Dancing and music are things we naturally do, which are then 'packaged' as artifacts in which the dancing or music is intentionally presented as dancing or music.
"Dancing creates a 'sympathetic space' whose meaning is corporate." Scruton
festivity, solemnity, and sublimity as the key values of church architecture
One way we affect other minds is by affecting the possibilities available to them.
We treat our bodies as having meaning in such a way as to require the bodies of others to have meaning.
The body as we experience it is both 'just now' and 'soon' as well as 'right now'.
