stopdash > period > semicolon-dash > semicolon > comma-dash > dash > comma > space
the Church as bright, blazing, and bannered
the standard connexive schemas (both Aristotelian and Boethian) as capturing kinds of implicature
A crowd of people on a corner can be explained simply by an explanation of each person's being there only if the possibility of their being there together has a distinct prior explanation.
belief vs a sense of believability
Fictional characters can include impossible (inconsistent) versions of themselves.
"When a material body is transported from one point to another, it involves an action that depends on the speed of the body and on the distance it travels. However, the action is neither the speed nor the distance taken separately; rather it is proportional to the sum of the distances traveled multiplied each by the speed at which they were traveled." Maupertuis
(1) Life as such is not title for killing.
(2) Life does not become title for killing even when inconvenient.
One of the natural responses of the human person to reflection on being is to hymn it.
Part of scientific progress has always been aleatory, taking advantage of what chance presents.
from-, to-, and about-experiences
analogical arguments vs metaphorical uses of argument
"...metaphor draws into the intelligibility of the better-known-to-us those things that are lesser-known-in-themselves and thereby builds bridges of language to new concepts only yet incipiently realized in expression." Brian Kemple
metaphor as "the permanent possibility of expanding the field within which logic works" (Deely)
Semiosis is itself a sign of thought, or at least of its possibility.
unlimited semiosis -> God as infinite intelligible
For something to be expressive, there must be something in it by which it can be expressive.
limitlessness of play -> God as infinite intelligible
The sense in which a representamen 'gives rise' to an interpretant is not an efficient causal sense but the form sense of the interpretant being informed by or inclusive of the representamen as mediating its object.
Redescription is not interpretation but only a tool for it.
The permanence of permanent possibility is always from actuality.
Rorty takes it to be derogatory to say that his opponents treat texts as 'honorary persons', but treating texts as 'honorary persons' is just a neutral description of the act of interpretation. For instance, I just attributed this to 'Rorty', when in reality I got it from a text interpreted as 'honorary Rorty', an attribution required by the ethics of honorary persons; and the claim Rorty makes is based itself on treating the texts of his opponents as 'honrorary' intellectual opponents.
* Interpret in such a way that one's standard of interpretation could be consistently treated by a rational being as the strandard of interpretation by all rational beings.
* Interpret in such a way as to treat natural or moral personhood always as an end of interpretation and never merely as a means.
* Interpret according to such a standard of interpretation as could be the standard of interpretation for an ideal republic of letters.
The universe of semiosis cannot be capture in a semiotic encyclopedia, which can only be an articulation of it.
We obviously may use texts without interpreting the texts themselves (as opposed to their context);.e.g., by using it as an example or a lorem-ipsam or in asemic writing.
We know there is a distinction between intentio operis and intentio lectoris, because in readin gthe reader finds resistance to his intention, and also something whose intentional structure continues independently and over against his own intention, as a causal matter of interpretation.
Total depersonification of a text makes it no longer recognizable as a text.
We conjecture in interpreting, but interpretation is not constituted only by infinite conjecture.
Every interpretation is potentially divisible into further interpretations; many of the quirks of postmoder accounts of interpretation repeat the kinds of errors made by people trying to treat the infinitely divisible as the actually infinitely divided.
A lump of clay very obviously has a coherence that does not depend only on what previously happened on the last turn of the wheel; it would be useless for pottery otherwise.
We not only treat texts as honorary persons, we treat persons as honorary texts.
A single interpreter is already an interpretive community.
To experience something as a sign is to experience it as something with more.
cognitive powers as general standing interpretances
Every interpretable sign in use is structured by its aptness to be interpreted, by its actually being interpreted, and by its ultimately interpretation in which the actual interpretation is wholly adequate to its aptness to be interpreted.
As a sign moves from one system of signs to another, it generates new meaning.
The ultimate interpretant cannot be a habit, but only that which makes habit possible.
The interpretant that receives is the interpretant that imposes (active and passive interpretancy).
The notion that you can change your moral standard on the basis of what is pleasant, clever, and useful is the temptation of Eve.
The first step in good parenting, sometimes forgotten, is jsut to be an adult doing adult things in a way that takes into account that there are children around.
For salt to keep its savor, it must stay distinguishable.
Acts don't have to be equivalent to be related.
That truth manifests more fully in dialectic does not mean it doesn't manifest in rhetoric.
The human race has been engaged in a niche construction project for its entire discernible history, niche-building on an extraordinary timescale, and no end in sight.
Finding common ground among values and preferences requires realism about the common ground.
We are able to reflect on our actions because we are able to reflect otherwise.
People often say that standards have risen when they ahve merely become more specific.
Political progressivism changes as city-cores, and thus urbanizing, changes.
Not all grounds are necessarily grounds.
A life is not a vote, and cannot be aggregated as if it were a vote.
Kalambo Falls preserves a 500000 year old wooden structure.
We speak with signs because we are signs.
the infinite intelligible as the Agent Future of inquiry
evidence as a relation to contingent cognition
Inquiry is not merely a matter of finding truths but also of knowing what to do with them.
the virtue ethics implicit in fiction
-- perhaps better: the implied internal aretology of fiction
The verb describes that which makes things communicable.
Gratitude for good makes us more able to seek and find other good.
It is misleading to talk about the social utility of religion because religion is one of the determining factors in social utility, one of the things that makes things have any social utility at all.
We guide our actions by classifying them, giving preference to the relevant classifications associated with higher ends; these classifications establish what counts as success or acceptability of action and its achievement.
Privacy is something we generally only have with the assistance of others.
Elections create oligarchies, and therefore elected offices must be divided in separation of powers.
Mathematics qua liberal art studies and makes use of necessary possibles by means of mental creations; this raises teh question of whether there are necessary possibles for rhetoric.
Intuition is important in mathematics because we learn how to construct mathematical elements form teh appearances of divine mathematical construction.
"Mathematics is that portion of our intellectual activity which transcends our biology and our environment." Errett Bishop
Brouwer takes the intution of twoity to be more fundamental than that of a unit (the unit is conceived as that which may be in a twoity, e.g., that which may be added to something like itself).
Most of the mistakes that are ever made in mathematical proof-writing involve treating as final steps of proof development what are in fact just possible intermediate steps.
Proof by inspection in mathematics generally seems to indicate a case in which the conclusion arises directly from the application of a technique that the very set-up of the problem would require to be already granted as adequate.
A more deeply understood but less adequate method may get you farther than a more poorly understood but more adequate method.
ethical proof by intension and remission of reciprocity
ad hom & ad ver proof in ethical reasoning
-- qualified retorsion
-- Socrates gives an ad hom refutation of Thrasymachus, but as Glaucon & Adeimantus note, this only extends as far as Thrasymachus (it is not ad iud)
-- Polus and Callicles both attempt to give ad ver refutation of Socrates, but fail. Socrates, on the other hand, successfully gives an ad ver refutation of Callicles.
Classics have depth because you can pick them up at different stages and learn more; the depth is in a sense in the reader, and the classic is adequate to it.
We live in a world in which we sometimes benefit by luck more than any skill could guarantee.
Consent does not release from duties.
"Since act remains itself by going beyond itself, and to do this is proper to cognition, act simply speaking is intelligent and thus alive." James Chastek
It is a mistake to think there is a set of texts that are 'open' and a set of texts that are 'closed'; all texts are open and all texts are closed, in different ways.
A problem with Eco's account of metaphor in The Role of the Reader is that the 'Minucius Mandrake' does not seem to be functioning as a metaphor. (Indeed, there are all sorts of problems with using Finnegan's Wake as a source of examples for how languages generally work.) Even on Eco's own account it is more properly an allusive neologism.
-- Eco also consues an argument for metaphor buidling on metonymies -- a common phenomon -- for an argumetn for metaphor depending on metonymies -- a claim taht is, at most optimistic, a stretch. This leads him to ignore innovative metaphors that break or reorganize prior codes, and ignore prior expectations of substitution, and, what is more, the common metaphorical practice of conceit in which one starts with a shocking or jarring metaphor and then creates the substitutions for it. I take any two nouns in different classes and transfer, and *then* explore how viable or interesting or useful the metaphor is for a given context. Again, poets often come up with metaphors driven by rhyme or alliteration (actual resemblance but of signifiers) rather than metonymy. And, of course, metonymies often presuppose metaphors -- we talk about the Crown, when we mean the King, not merely as a metonymy but as a metaphor for royal authority (which explains perhaps why we do not talk about the (Royal) Stocking). We in fact crown as a metaphor, and this gives force to the metonymic use of Crown to speak of the King.
We understand possible worlds by contrast with impossible worlds.
argument by sample argument
We do not value by feeling alone.
creation ex nihilo as a type for divinization (cf. St. Bernard to Peter, Cardinal Deacon)
-- God, fullness of Being, calls forth what is not so that it is. // God, fullness of Love, calls forth that which is nothing in love, so that it is in Love.