People crave and seek for a kind of infinity in every aspect of their life -- in ability and in pleasure, in access and in reward, in sex and politics and entertainment and work. Unable actually to achieve it, we either roam restlessly from one thing to another, or try to find symbolic substitutes of the infinite, or ape the infinite by breaking boundaries and crossing lines as if doing so were itself infinity.
live as occurring within cycles: energy cycle, oxygen cycle, various material cycles, chronological cycles, ecosystemic cycles
All coherent and adequate theories of experimental inquiry require both free decision and free choice in the experiment inquirers.
Norton's "Causation as Folk Science" only establishes that 'cause' is not univocal, not that the world is not fundamentally causal.
To be usable in an ensemble, an experiment must be abstractible from its history.
sat (true) as mearked by being trikalaabaadhyam (available always) [cf. Shankara, Brahma Sutra Bhasya 1.1.2]
"That ominscient and omnipotent source must be Brahman from which occur the birth, continuance, and dissolution of this unvierse that is manifested through name and form, that is associated with diverse agents and experiences, that provides the support for actions and results, having well-regulated space, time, and causation, and that defies all thoughts about the real nature of its creation." Shankara
People regularly attribute to the state powers that it is difficult to see how it could have unless citizens were natural slaves, with the state as their master.
Many fine arts proceed by massive numbers of revisions of the same thing, which are made more manageable by (1) development of a planning process (2) ongoing anticipation of kinds of revision that will be needed (3) blocking and chunking and layering of revisions of specific kinds (4) condensation of multiple stages of revision into one by experience or ingenuity.
For a number of rights, we have both personal title (with respect to the community of persons) and human title (with respect to the human community specifically), just as we often give civil title for rights to which personal and human title already exist.
No legal system is hermetically sealed from all others.
change to a philosophical system by
(a) formal pressures (objections and replies)
(b) quasi-material pressures (changes in available archive of evidence, etc.)
(c) agential pressures (imposition from outside)
(d) final pressures (internal refinement and following of implications)
(e) accidental gain, loss, and drift
Exodus 9:16 and the Great Commission
substantial inexhaustibility of inquiry
(1) mathematical and logical infinity of domain
(2) indefinite artifactual expansion (cognitive & material)
(3) inexhaustibility of persons
Over time, human beings pull apart philosophical systems into aphorism and then re-form and re-systematize them.
If there is error, there is omniscience in light of which it is genuinely error.
Freedom only becomes real to the extent one can answer the question, "Freedom for what?"
A person generally has reasons to favor her own reasons over those of others, namely, greater familiarity and more common understanding.
We accept things on memory not because we have experiences of confirmed memory but because memory is already on the premises: experiences of disconfirmed memory may qualify our acceptance, but even they cannot prevent memory often being a starting point. We accept memory because it is always already there.
The phenomena of archeology are detritus, artifacts, and other traces specifically insofar as they are associatable with a timeline.
central market, circuit market, and periodic market forms of intellection interaction
"...we are bound to be baptized in the terms we have received, and to profess belief in the terms in which we are baptized, and as we have professed belief in, so to give glory to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit..." Basil
"I, however, call on all who trust in Christ not to busy themselves in opposition to the ancient faith,b ut, as we believe, so to be baptized, and as we are baptized, so to offer the doxology."
"As we are baptized, so we profess our belief. As we profess our belief, so also we offer praise."
"History is largely meaning." Lonergan
To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see: none of the are the same as perceiving.
The interesting thing about Hume's 'when I enter most intimately into what I call *myself*' is the unexplained notion of 'entering', which is taken as already obvious in meaning.
Perceptions overlap with perceptions both as to act and as to object.
if we say 'X is predictable from Y', we must explicate this 'from Y'; people are not usually meaning that we treat Y as a divine omen or magical oracle, for instance.
unintentional humor vs wit
knowing how as a rationally selective tendency to hit a mark
'Intelligent action' involves not just acts from know-how but also acts to know-how.
We may know how to do something before we know what it is.
objecthood --> co-objecthood --> general objectivity
the use of non-insight in inquiry
Impressions only become ideas in relation.
Abilities have integral, subjective, and potential parts.
Given any experience, we form ideas of similarity, contiguity, and causality with respect to it.
In psychoanalysis, one reshapes oneself to the model of humanity used in that form of psychoanalysis, simulating it in oneself and attempting to instrumentalize that simulation to particular ends.
A continual temptation in academia is the temptation to treat scaffolding as substance.
"One promotes progress by being attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible not only in all one's cognitional operations but also in all one's speech and writing." Lonergan
Inquiry is only as authentic as the liberty by which it is done.
"A society which wants to preserve a fund of personal knowledge must submit to a tradition." Polanyi
"The large amount of time spent by students of chemistry, biology and medicine in their practical courses shows how greatly these sciences rely on the transmission of skills and connoisseurship from master to apprentice."
Sometimes inquiries just need a starting point, and any initial assumption will do; these cases seem to be when the inquiry is to find investigating material. In other cases, the assumptions structure the inquiry and its potential, and must be selected carefully.
Through the instrumentality of his humanity, Christ gives us grace not merely individually but also communally. There are specific graces for the Church as a social entity, a moral person.
Historically the creeds have not only settled doctrine but have been used by laity to hold bishops to account and as guides in the interpretation of common law.
How often do we think we are being just or kind when in reality we are just being silly? As with all things worth doing, developing the real quality involves much blundering. Thus we should also give some good will toward those we see blundering.
In matters of morality, we often confuse urgency and overall importance; the common morality of every age treats some things that are merely matters of urgent attention in a society as if they were definitive for all morality.
validity as obligation to conclude, invalidity as permissibility not to conclude
In matters involving the state, start with determination of authority, not the assumption of it.
We can only bind ourselves because we are already normatively bound.
What is known per se is necessary for theoretical reason and normative for practical reason.
It is easier to have a character arc for a shallow character than for a deep one; deep character is slow-changing.
Most character arcs involve no character development, just character adjustment to new situations.
The simplicity of notation of physical law is somewhat misleading because it hides (e.g.) the entire apparatus of real number arithmetic and analysis.
A notation distinguishes what can be taken for granted and what needs in the circumstances to be tracked.
-- Spinors involve rotations whose properties are path-dependent, such that these properties can be differentiated into classes that differ by sign.
-- Spinors seem to represent the spatial affordances of rotatable things -- the ability of things to rotate without their spatially structured relationships 'tangling' -- which seems to be why they can represent all known material particles.
-- Note that physicists often attempt to train intuition for spinors using orientation entanglement scenarios and the need to distinguish twisted and untwisted cases.
Andrew M. Steane, "An introduction to spinors": "One could say that a spinor is the most basic sort of mathematical object that can be Lorentz-transformed." "It [a rank-1 spinor] can be pictured as a vector with two further features: a 'flag' that picks out a plane in space containing the vector, and an overall sign." "The spinior has a direction in space (flagpole), an orientation about this axis ('flag'), and an overall sign...."
