Friday, July 17, 2026

Dashed Off XX

 humility as respectful deference to God

Replicability gets us from experiment to experimental ensemble, which is the basis for theory.

The do-operator relates changes of probabilities to changes in structures of causal dependency.

Every experiment is a selection out of diverse possibilities.

The human mind does not obsolesce.

the ceremonializing aspect of due process (treating as serious waht is serious, showing respect to the person and the citizen)

"Society itself is an effect or work of justice which exercises its authority over mankind." Rosmini
"Truth, as something infinite, renders the person an object to be respected."

Reductionism is useful to science not because it has ever been successful -- every reductionist account of anything beyond very limited domains has had to be significantly revised -- but precisely because it fails in a controlled way.

Particles do not explain; their abstractible characteristics, giving the possibilities that are available to the particles, do.

Most physical equations describe wholes as wholes, not partwise.

equality as a holistic operator.

Explanation in terms of laws of nature is epxlanation in terms of the entire universe.

reductions as theoretical experiments

the sense of the power of an argument

Every scientific reduction is a skeletal idealization, and this is its value.

Law is an instrument, but it is not merely instrumentally valuable.

Systems of property rights, well designed, are not merely useful but also agreeable.

Money confers purchasing power by valuative causation, ie., objective causation as a desirable object, that is itself instrumentally usable.

Addiction is almost never the fundamental problem, although it is very often the worst solution to it.

The nature of law cannot be determined without regard for the nature of legislation.

concepts --> concepts' aptitude for being applied -->principles

Certainty is the structure of social unity.

Forgiveness requires symbolism adequate to it.

literary taste and factors of re-readability (aptitudes in the work for rewarding re-reading)

martyrs as the viaticum of the Church

Theology is such a huge field that it sometimes takes centuries to appreciate a point adequately.

Development of doctrine often occurs by oscillation.

The need of forgiveness for symbolism arises from its need for communication.

Violence always has costs that cannot be foreseen.

"The nature of right is to be sought in the nature of human beings." Cicero (Leg. 1:5)

In society, rickety structures continue to exist usually because they are protecting smoething important.

morally responsible as principle vs morally responsible as exemplar

Philosophy done well is always bubbling.

Gauss suggested direct, inverse, and lateral units, instead of positive, negative, and imaginary units.

The more advanced an animal is, the more it seems to act with something broadly like a sense of humor -- dolphins, elephants, dogs, cats, apes, ravens, and the like all have moments in which they seem almost joking.

abduction, intervention, prediction, confirmation

geometry as the study of possible distinguishable interactions

titles of appropriateness

Attitudes are evoked by perception of ends and functions.

God as omniprobable
necessity qua precondition of manifold of possibilities --> necessity qua omnipossibility --> necessity qua relevant (conditional) omnipossibility --> omniprobability

On many moral anti-realisms, moral realism is at least a useful fiction.

Every living thing is a hierarchy.

Religious movements survive only by being either passionate or profound.

The Scripture that we read is always the Scripture that passes through the community.

We learn how to use instruments by learning how to use our bodies.

We first learn how to learn by being parented.

hasty vs delbierate assault in refutation

Immoral judgments always have an incompleteness about them.

A problem with Kp&Kq -> K(p&q) is that it seems one could know p and know q without knowing the logical operation of conjunction.

Subjective Bayesianism often seems to have problems similar to those one gets when one assuems that implication and inference are the same.

imagining as vs imagining as like

epistemic K as converter between mind-dependent and mind-independent modalities

Francis of Meyonnes's 4 ways to divine ubiquity
(1) immensity
(2) causality
(3) immutability
(4) coexistence
(his assessment of these is somewhat complicated, so these should be considered a classification of ways in which people have tried to show that God is everywhere; the fourth seems mostly distinctive to him)

divine presence as a precondition of incipit and desinit (God as present to states of change)

prior and posterior presence

Common ways that mothers think and speak about the unborn, although quite diverse, usually have something to be said for them.

In matters of reason, a good effort is never wasted.

Much artistic crafting takes place in the realm of hypotheticals.

All trust has implicit and eplicit modes.

Norms are only as rooted as their known reasons.

In every field, the best generation to be a part of is the generation after the geniuses.

"Rituals are established to regulate the feelings of the world, either by curbing excesses or by exhorting them where they fall short, simply so that people understand the fitting mean in the world." Dai Zhen

The 'familiar instance' in the Nyaya syllogism is something commonsensical that also survives acute investigation.

All nonpresence is relative to a presence.

hauntological arguments

Mt 26:67 // Mic 5:1
-- note that Matthew has already attributed Micah 5:2 to Christ in Mt 2. Note also Jesus as Shepherd (Mt 9:36, Mt 26:31, in comparison to Micah 5:4.

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Seraphic Doctor

 Today is the feast of St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Doctor of the Church. From his Breviloquium, Part V, Chapter 8:

The First Principle, being first, is supreme; being supreme, it is supremely good; being supremely good, it is supremely happy and supremely delighting; being supremely delightful, it is supremely to be enjoyed. Therefore, because it is to be supremely enjoyed, we must totally cling to it with love and rest in it as our final end. Now a right and ordered love, called charity, bears us principally to that good in whom it finds its enjoyment and repose. This good is itself our reason for loving. Thus it follows that charity loves that good above everything else as that which will make it happy, and as a consequence it loves all other things which through that good are also suited for happiness. Now, our neighbor was created to reach that happiness along with ourselves -- which includes our body as well, for it was made to share that happiness together with our spirit. That is the reason why charity has but four objects: God, our neighbor, our spirit, and our body.

[St. Bonaventure, Breviloquium, Monti, tr., The Franciscan Institute (St. Bonaventure, New York), p. 201.]

Monday, July 13, 2026

Ah, Here's to the Vine

 The 'Boozer's' Health
by William Milton Byram
 

Ah, here's to the vine
That bears the fair wine
That banishes trouble away!
Forever be thine
Good Bacchus thy wine 
That vanquishes sorrow today!
And a health to the corn
Which we need at morn
To drive the mean headache away! 

May thy glory shine
One friend of mine
With freedom's foes ever at bay!
Long life to the vine,
That bears the fair wine,
That vanquishes sorrow to-day!
And a health to the corn,
Which we need at morn,
To drive the mean headache away!

Sunday, July 12, 2026

Reflective Knowledge

 A reflection on the knowledge we have, that is, knowing that we know, so increases our knowledge that the new knowledge relates to the former in the way that more relates to less, or even the infinite to the finite. With reflective knowledge we rule and control direct knowledge as we will; only reflective knowledge brings direct knowledge under our free will. We would never have discovered the art of writing if we had not reflected on language. Numbers are an invention arising from reflection on the ideas of numbers. Algebraic letters are the result of a reflection on numbers. Analytical functions arose from a third reflection on algebraic letters. This is the real meaning of the apparent play on words: 'we know that we know that we know'! It is the simplest formula expressing the order of ideas, to which the Analytical Functions of Lagrange belong.

[Antonio Rosmini, Certainty, Cleary & Watson, trs., Rosmini House (Durham: 1991), p. 111n131.]