This finishes the notebook that was completed in September 2025.
What is the relation between causation and memory?
--- Irrelevant (Noncausal Theories)
--- Relevant: Is appropriate causation necessary and sufficient?
--- --- No: Is it neither necessary nor sufficient?
--- --- --- --- No: Hybrid Causal Theories
--- --- --- --- Yes: Post-causal Theories
--- --- Yes: Does it involve some form of transmission?
--- --- --- --- No: Distributed/Procedural Causal Theories
--- --- --- --- Yes: Does it involve some form of preservation?
--- --- --- --- --- --- No: Constructive Causal Theories
--- --- --- --- --- --- Yes: (Neo-)Classical Causal Theories
[Roughed out from Michaela & Robins, "Beyond Causal Theory?"]
There is no violation of rights that one can make that cannot be done by a state through its officials or representatives.
human beings collectively as utility monsters relative to other species
rhetorical inventio: thinking through the true and true-like that render a case or its explanation probable
(1) We know how to make moral statements.
(2) This competence requires that some of tehse be true.
(3) Therefore some moral statements are true.
-- (2) would be based on the idea that skill at using kinds of statements excludes systematic misuse.
Persons are causes of both order and exception to order.
Most things can be done by genius, by art, by method, or by diligence.
method as external art, as skill-like diligence
A middle term may be descriptive, comparative, relational, circumstantial, or authoritative.
stages in deterioration of factional politics
(1) argumentative collaboration
(2) passive-aggressive negotiation
(3) aggressive negotiation
(4) passive-aggressive reaction
(5) preemptive prevention
(6) aggressive reaction
(7) aggression on grounds of what is anticipated
(8) hostility
justified true at-least-belief
justified true no-less-than-belief
justified true beliefishness
order : system :: form : substance
observational vs narratival counterexamples to arguments
sign proper (manifests object) vs sign inverse (manifests interpretant)
fictionalisms that appeal to fiction vs those that use 'fiction' as an analogy vs those that are structurally like other fictionalisms but have no clear relation to fiction
Unlimited semiosis implies a capacity, not a process or network.
Pascal's Wager is not based on expected value but on a theory of reasons.
We find external bodies not only resistance to our wills but obscure to our intellects.
interpolative vs extrapolative inferences in reading fiction
grounds of reasonable incredulous stare
(1) apparent direct contradiction
(2) apparent self-defeat
(3) apparent contradiction of experience
(4) apparent violation of consensus sapientorum
(5) apparent violation of consensus gentium
(6) apparent practicability
(7) apparent lack of evidence
interpolation into a model of an extrapolative object
In every discipline, there are rules of thumb and simple methods done at first for practical convenience that then slowly settle into confirmation as more than merely practical.
We use the term 'make believe' of a wide variety of activities that have a wide range of quasi-doxastic effects and formats.
Need does not entitle, although it may give priority or further specification to already existing title.
Paradigm case arguments got correct the idea that an account of meaning must accommodate ostension when relevant, and actual ostension rules out empty classification. Paradigm case arguments, however, cannot establish the quality of the classification itself. They prove that a position is not purely verbal, in the sense of using words that correspond to nothing, but not that it is articulated into words on the most appropriate way.
PCA's work most effectively against *unqualified* skepticisms, specifically about *existence*, where this is taken to imply that discourse is *either meaningless or purely verbal*; it also can serve as a *ground of challenge* (the skeptic must clarify the classification/analysis/definition relevant to his conclusion).
What counts as a mistake depends on the ends.
It's odd that philosophers discussing the 'method of cases' talk about 'intuitions' and 'elicited judgmetns' rather than the cases themselves. They talk about whether *responses to cases* are evidence, whetehr this is due to the constitution or the causation of the *responses*, and not about the cases.
appearance + reliability principle -> truth of, inferred from, or evidenced by appearance
appearance + causal principle -> existence of causes of a sort to cause appearance
appearance + method of questioning -> questions suggested by appearance
Taht something is a 'category mistake' is established by reductio ad absurdum. (Ryle)
Some of what is imaginary is not dependent on us and some of what is real, is.
Intellectual inquiry is not a Markov process.
"Every philosopher of the present day has his 'aggressive' as well as his 'affirmative' position. You understand his 'aggressive' position so far as you understand what those tenets are which he desires to overthrow; and you understand his 'affirmative' position so far as you understand what those tenets are which he desires to establish in their place." W. G. Ward
free will in a state of probation vs free will in a state of consummation
God is always in our future and unavoidable.
the experience of anti-impulsive effort
the experience of anti-inertial effort
the experience of meaning in action not derivable from circumstance or antecedent because different in kind
the experience of selection of alternatives
Value is what the intellect understands through the will; inquiry is what the will intends through the intellect.
categorizing kinds of fiction by modal axioms
the sensible as a kind of representamenality
We storytell ourselves to ourselves and otehrs, characterize ourselves and organize our memories by plot and scene and episode, extract themes from our lives, and take for the diction, spectacle, and melody of those lives.
The structuring of language is an exegesis of phenomena.
Meaning is intelligible structuring or ordering to an end
Realism in excessive doses is highly toxic to fine arts.
"If we are open to recognize a person in one member of a species, we are open to recognize a person in all members of it." Oliver O'Donovan
Persons are both providential and provident.
conscience as the High Court, consciousness as the adminsitrative court
People are not hypocrites about things that can't be done; hypocrisy is only about the attainable.
Millians confuse a use of proper naming with proper names themselves; in fact, you can treat even common nouns in a Millian way without their ceasing to be common nouns with an articulable sense.
Gn 2:24 as a prophecy of the Church (Grosseteste argues on this ground that the union of Christ and the Church would have happened even without sin)
Proper names should not be conflated with singular reference.
being is not a genus -> no division can dequately divide being into well defined classes or concepts
one : reference :: true : sense :: good : function
Fiction is possible because of the mind, but is not itself a psychological matter.
Words are always mediate rather than immediate signs; they are signs of signs, not incidentally, but by nature.
definition per additamentum
Every concept virtually contains other concepts.
Not all doubts are the same kind of doubt, and skeptics generally do not recognize these differences.
Augustine De Trin 8 on Alexandria
nominatio per se vs. nominatio per alio
We know ourselves with the help of other people.
It is often a great advantage to let nature do your detailed thinking for you; this is an advantage of the experimental sciences.
We inject realities into our imaginations and coat our realities with imaginations.
binary incipit and desinit
incipit (x,y): x incipiates y; x makes y begin to b
Much of the work of the Church is done by kind and pious friends.
Relaxation and inactivity are not the same.
We tend to reject the idea of death as an end because we see ourselves as having an affinity with eternal things.
In assessing evidence, we need to consider not just probabilities of and given particular evidences, but the quality of the overall state of evidence. We assess this by cultivating expert familiarity.
figments of the saints as icons (we find something like this in Bridget of Sweden, Margery Kempe, and other mystics with very visual, or sometimes auditory, experiences)
iconology as providing the framework for all private revelation
mystical experience -> internal realization as icon -> communication in writing -> internal realization for reader as icon -> testimonially mediated sharing in iconic experience
Dreams and ambitions without clear-eyed prudence are merely lovely temptations.
"For that is to be called love which is true; otherwise it is desire." Augustine
In human society, necessity often works like a declarative speech act.
From our social ontology interacting with the world, we causally extrapolate a physical ontology.
Human beings unite around particular people and around abstractions.
exists as, true in, good for
"Given any sufficiently determinate standards, it will be an objective issue, a matter of truth and falsehood, how well any particular speicmen measures up to these standards." Mackie
(1) It is objectively true that rational beings in societies have standards.
(2) Therefore it is objectively true or false whether human actions measure up to them.
"I concede that if the requisite theological doctrine [i.e., divine purpose for human life] is true, a kind of objective prescriptivity could be thus introduced." Mackie
In solving a problem we have to have some sense of what is solving it *enough*.
Bail is a social threshold -- those who can make bail have social connections at least sufficient to make it.
Truth is warrant for daring.
Our happiness consists not only of good results, even if we assume consequentialism, but also reasonableness and proportion and nonregrettableness of means.
Relative to a fictional world, everything in the real world is *hypothetical* and confirmed or disconfirmed (1) by what is true in the fictional world and (2) by authorial intention.
"The response to fiction is a complete product of make-believe and judgments about the work that do not occur within the scope of the make-believe at all." Gregory Currie
They style of fiction affects the style of the fictional world.
Make-believe is not an attitude but an activity.
Most M are P --> All non-R M are P
Most S are M --> All non-R S are M + All M where S are non-R M
--> All nonR S are P
Therefore Some S are P
(one would always need a way not to equivocate on residue R)