'freedom to make public use of one's reason in all matters' as an intrinsic freedom of citizenship, arising from the citizen's responsibility for common good (this is much more robust than Kant's version; Kant still thinks like a subject in a Prussian autocracy, and therefore only comes close when he thinks of cosmopolitan citizenship)
Reading begins not with the text but with common humanity as context for the text.
A key skill in mathematics is being able to distinguish relevant and irrelevant abuses of notation.
Set theory mostly succeeds by conforming fairly closely to what mathematicians usually do, taking a bunch of things together and considering relations on them, etc. The intuitiveness of set theory lies entirely in mathematical practice.
CEO's have an excessive tendency to see themselves as leaders when in fact they are just coordinators.
idea-based theistic arguments mapped on rationalism vs empiricism
Can the senses convey ideas of infinity, &c.?
YES: [weak empiricism] -- religious perception arguments
NO: Then do we have such ideas?
--- --- NO: [strong empiricism]: analogical design arguments
--- --- YES: [rationalism]: Then can we think them without language?
--- --- --- --- NO: [weak rationalism] traditionary arguments
--- --- --- --- YES: [strong rationalism] Then can we do so immediately?
--- --- --- --- --- --- NO: causal infinite intelligible arguments
--- --- --- --- --- --- YES: ontological arguments
Scientific inquiry requires a memory much larger than one person can hold.
heroism proper vs relative heroism in narrative
How a right should be protected depends on what makes it a right.
the internal dogmatism of practice
"Matter is never without some privation; insofar as it possesses one form, it lacks another, and vice versa." Aquinas
"It is on account of matter that a singular is both one in number and divided from other things."
"Every body is potential, because a continuous object, as such, is infinitely divisible."
"Although art is not able to introduce a substantial form by itself, it can nevertheless introduce such a form by the power of nature, which it uses as an instrument in its own operation."
"Meriting reward requires the grace of a disposition."
"People can make more or less use of the natural love they have for God over everything."
domain-relative mereological fusion
transformation, transmateriation, transubstantiation
God has typically destined human beings for at least three states, each of which is to contribute to our full completion as human:
(1) our natally embodied state
(2) our mortally disembodied (immaterial) state
(3) our resurrected state.
Whether there are others, we do not know. There is reason to think that (2) will not in the end be universal.
being in place by being contained by a boundary vs. being in a place by objectively containing the place through exercise of power vs. being in a place by being a precondition of place (place itself being contained as under a condition)
Scripture : innate human immune system of the Church :: Creed : adaptive immune system of the Church
-- Scriptures provides part of the Church's non-specific defense, good for some immediate and common problems; the Creed, building on this as background, provides a framework for specific targeting that requries recognition of the exact type of problem.
In physics, geometry describes effects on measuring devices.
We are close to understanding when we doubt that we doubt.
"As the garments of the saints still retain wondrous powers, so is many a word sanctified through some splendid memory, and has become a poem almost on its own." Novalis
"He who cannot make poems will also only be able to judge them negatively. True criticism requires the ability to create the product to be criticized oneself. Taste alone only judges negatively."
"Whoever first understood how to count to two, even if he still found it difficult to keep on counting, saw nonetheless the possibility of infinite counting according to the same laws."
The regular use of materials for signs makes the materials themselves signs.
stage/film acting as using oneself as a sign for a particular kind of context
relics as physical memory
The material of a text modulates its functions.
precepts, rights, rites
The literal sense has in it aspects analogous to the spiritual senses, but distinct from them as being in the text and not its objects.
The two questions people often are reluctant to answer carefully in any matters of reparation, but which must have exact answers for reparation to succeed: Reparation from whom? What, specifically, is required for actual repair and restoration?
That there are many things therapy cannot heal can be seen simply from the fact that nothing can be guaranteed from therapy that cannot be paid for.
The human form is called 'soul' or 'life' in this individual considered as such, and 'humanity' insofar as as this individual is considered as related to others with the form.
We say that God is one substance to deny division and that He is three Persons to deny confusion; attempts to reject such formulae are premised on the idea that all unconfused are divided and all undivided are confused. Neither of these is true, and it would be wrong to say that they are true even for all creatures, nor is it difficult to find counterexamples.
polyonym: different names, common meaning
The common/proper distinction is a distinction in applied functionality of names, not names as such.
We can only base human ethical reasoning in reason insofar as reason involves a template of orderly good for human persons.
From our earliest days, we answer to those who answer for us.
Scientific understanding grows within a social ontology of theories, experiments, and inquiries.
pre-designated vs post-designated evidence
No one likes all the parts of a vocation; no one has a vocation to the fun and easy.
orbitronics: uses orbital angular momentum rather than charge or spin
In the Principia, Newton takes geometry to get its principles from "mechanical practice" and to be "nothing other than that part of *universal mechanics* which reduces the art of measuring to exact proportions and demonstrations." Taking this to be so, he holds that geometry applies to magnitudes and mechanics to motions only in the most common cases.
In Carnap's understanding of verification, the verification principle has to identify meaning with an ideal series of possible confirmations tending toward complete verification, one that is probabilistic and infinite -- which corresponds to a 'method of verification' that unifies the series.
A sentence has many different contexts at once; the 'context change potential' of any given sentence is an extremely complicated matter, since one has to consider the likely contexts and their interactions or relations with each other.
In even very simple conversations, the 'current state of the conversation' is multi-layered, as are the 'information states of the conversational participants' -- e.g., we assess from a sentence something about the world., something suggested or implied or implicated about the world, the mood of the conversation, the emotional state of the participants, the wya this conversation relates to other conversations, etc.
Any account of language understanding that first requires identifying the literal meaning is a nonstarter; literal vs figurative is a post-hoc comparative distinction, not one immediately discernible or even discernible without serious thought.
Language understanding involves many things, most of which are not particularly associated with belief.
Whether or not a proposition is such as to allow one to determine a weight or degree of probability for it, depends on that to which one compares it.
Logical empiricists tended to confuse observation sentences with lists of measurements; but actual observations are perspective- and method-based unifiecations into a given set of relations that are selected for specific reasons, and observation sentences describe these observations.
(object -> value) -> evidence
evidence as value for conclusion-drawing in an inquiry
"When the same, similar, equal, or congruent principium is posited (i.e., efficient, defiicent, or occasional causes), then the same, similar, equal, or congruent principiates, causes, effects, occasions, etc., are posited as well; and vice versa." Baumgarten
--Baumgarten takes this to generalize Newton's 2nd Rule and Gravesande
experiments as premise-generators
Whether or not we can release ourselves from duties to ourselves depends on whether we can dissolve our relevant moral personhood, or, in other words, whether we can dissolve the moral situation in which the duty occurs.
Promises to oneself are taken to be binding to the extent that they are before a tribunal (conscience, public opinion, the gods, God, etc.).
Pr 29:27 -- being hated is not a sign of injustice, nor being loved a sign of justice, for one may be justly or unjustly loved or hated
The 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Amendments to the Constitution all block common means by which tyrants use state power to dominate people.
"The Lamb who is at the center of the Throne will lead them to the Springs of the waters of life." (Communion for St. Catherine of Alexandria, cf. Rv 7:17)
presential gratitude for gratitude and reflective gratitude for gratitude
War crimes often lie in the organization of martial actions rather than in the actions organized; this is why it can sometimes happen tthat one giving the orders commits a war crime although none of his subordinates do.
Falsifiability is important for physical theories because it is a guide for empirical interpretability, which is in fact more important.
Accurate probabilities presuppose correct classifications.
The regulative/constitutive distinction, if it does not simply reduce to practical/theoretical, presupposes assumptions about the nature of the world.
intelligible, ordered, enduring harmony
When one cannot find a solution, it is often because one misconceives the problem.
