Truth and Certainty and the Human Mind

 If truth and certainty had been committed to the care of human free will, they would have languished and in all probability soon been annihilated by human perversity. For this reason we saw that the first truths were entrusted by creating Providence to human nature, to to an individual human being. Human nature, essentially intelligent, sees the first truths essentially. Human beings cannot but see them, nor can they annihilate them; just as they have no power to create anything, they have no power to destroy anything that has received existence from God....

[Antonio Rosmini, Certainty, Cleary & Watson, trs., Rosmini House (Durham:1991), p. 138, sect. 1245.]

Dashed Off XXII

 All accounts of sensation are in terms of action, passion, and object; they just differ on how these interrelate.

The pleasures we take in things are heavily modulated by both habit and context.

What God accounts as being, is.

All arguing has a measure of performance and self-presentation to it.

myths as mnemonics for rites

Experimentation has an internal morality that involves carefulness, circumspection, honesty, etc.

Statements in scientific articles express 'objective voice', careulness, reasonableness, and pro-attitudes to the results as not merely achieved but properly and honestly achieved.

The metonymic tendency of the Jewish theology of names proliferates the quasi-divine non-divine; this is especially clear in Second Temple Judaism, which does not yet have the carefully balanced constraints and checks of Rabbinical Judaism.

mind-dependent
(1) as effect: e.g., work of art or crat
(2) as expression: e.g., intellectual activity and habits
(3) as object: beings of reason

fictions may be classified
(a) as to subject to which they are applied: fictionalzing vs nonfictionalizing
(b) as to the beings on which they are modeled: persons, trees, events, etc.,
(c) as to the fiction as fiction?  (as to the act of fiction?)

'Now' is not a part of time but a construct upon it.

what is meant to be vs what has meaning in being

Many people, when they say 'plot hole', only mean 'implausibility'; these are not the same thing.

controlled improbabilties as a primary technique in writing fantasy

While chimpanzees drumming have rhythm, they notable do not metricize their rhythm.

Every argument is surrounded by a cloud of related and semi-related positions, hypotheses, arguments, experiential evidences, pragmatic considerations, rhetorical formulations, and poetic images.

physical size as poison resistance

hard fact / soft fact distinctions for locations, possibilities, and permissibilities as well as times

People often reason themselves into absurd positions by treating loose metaphors as if they were strict reductions.

"The information coming from more people to more people has greater built-in redundancy than if it were to flow in one channel of communication." Jan Vansina

Consumption is never the sole end of production.

Everyone has preferences with regard to particular kinds of interactions, particular models of the world, and particular sources of authority, and large scale miscommunications genreally arise when any of these are significantly diferent, as people push toward specific kinds of associations, of diagnoses, of solutions, because of them.

Rights of free speech exist to subserve the virtue of eleutheria.

People are rarely arguing the argument right in front of them.

An opinion is something not yet concluded.

It is difficult to follow the evidence rather than what one assumes the evidence to be.

The classical theory of meter for English is somewhat confused because it conflates length and stress of syllable without recognizing this properly.

Poetic meter is consistent relative placement of sustainable syllables; footing is an artificial device for identifying the consistency, both in kind and in degree.

In spoken poetry you can have 'headless iambs', etc., by breath-rest taking the place of spoken syllable.

Genesis 1:6-8 as a symbol of mercy (waters above the firmament) and justice (waters below the firmament)

Mill's use of the Brutus example may be influenced by Smith's use of the same in TMS.

morality transfigured to sacramentality
community -> baptism
responsibility -> confirmation
social order -> ordination
repentance -> reconciliation
marriage -> matrimony
hope -> unction
devotion -> eucharist
(notably, marriage changes the least and devotion the most)

The story of the modern Catholic Church has been one of actively refusing to draw on its actual resources and consequently failing to press any of its advantages.

statistics as the recovery of structure from uncertainty

"One's own body is in the world just as the heart is in the organism." Merleau-Ponty

(associated experiences + experiences of interventions -> ensembles of possible experiences) + ensembles of measurements -> theorization

Even when one disagrees with it, the conscience of others must be given some respect.

civic discretion (i.e., of citizens) // prosecutorial and executive discretion

computers and corporations as 'technical persons' (i.e., skillful interaction requires treating in some respects as if person) -- this would include the 'lectoral person' of books

corpses as residual moral persons

church-buildings as signs of the incarnate/embodied nature of the Church as deriving from and appropriate to the Incarnate Word

Human beings are the animals who do not belong. All of human greatness arises from what we do about our nonbelonging, whether making peace with it, or building temporary belonging, or guesting to find the belonging we are missing. We build societies because we do not belong, so every day we get up and make a kind of belonging. Art, science, religion are formed as we seek in varoius ways a belonging we know we do not yet have. And in the end all of us face death, the ultimate expression of our nonbelonging, and have to find our peace with it.

All arguments arise out of banal observations.

Scientific realism is a metaphysical position and therefore implies metaphysical realism.

Checks and balances in government require that there are operative rational principles and an authority higher than the checking and balancing departments.

People are more comfortable evaluating personal interactions than arguments as such, so naturally tend to fall back on such evaluations.

judgments of taste as dealing with quality as quasi-relation

Phenomenology follows Descartes in treating necessity as inevitable presumption.

When responding to an argument, the stage of response matters -- e.g., an immediate negative response based on plausibility might in a short while give way to a cautiously positive response based on 'trying things out' in mind, later to give way to outright rejection through methodical proof.

All authority is based on nature and will.

In evidential analysis we decompose things into signs.

Faced with a set of signs, or things recognized as interpretable as such, the scientist will usually focus on the relation to the object, and the artist usually on the representamen as such. But thi sis difference in emphasis, not difference through exclusion.

Christ as natural person
Christ as moral person (Head of Church, etc.)
Church as moral person (baptized community)
Church as juridical person (People of God)
Church as sacramental person (Body and Bride of Christ)

When we eat, we (so to speak) sacrifice to ourselves.

Most progress is not ours.

Plane engines do not fly; planes with engines do.

Genuine diversity is downstream of freedom.

The institution that primarily enforces the rights of children is the family; a tiny fraction of the rights of children are enforced by the state or church, due to the way children are related to each, but in such cases, it is still to be assumed that families enforce most of the rights of children, because neither state nor church can practically engage in that level of enforcement and still achieve their legitimate ends.

Varzi & Casati call holes "locationally gracious," i.e., they allow their location to be shared.

As a prophetic people, the whole Jewish community will tend to be more right in essential things than is immediately obvious; things common to Jews in general, things generally shared by the whole rabbinical tradition, will tend to be right, even if in unexpected ways.

It's somewhat misleading to talk of the 'second coming', because the first coming is still going on, as Christ, the Messiah, continues His advent through the Church until He completes it in the end days.

The Goldenword

 Today is the feast of St. Peter Chrysologus, Doctor of the Church.

We have heard, my brothers, how high God's graciousness have brought us, and how high the celestial paternity has exalted us. Let us believe that we are sons of God, let us prove equal to our lineage, let us live for heaven, let us represent our Father by our resemblance so that we do not destroy with our vices what we have attained through grace. 

 Bring to the Lord, you sons of God. Bring. You see that our heavenly Father declares his love by his generosity, he manifests his affection by what he has given and his charity by his gifts. And truly, brothers, who does not compliantly obey the Author of his life, whoever does not unite with him through worship, whoever does not honor him with gifts does not know that he is his son, is heartless, denies his nature, and is ungrateful to his Father. 

[Peter Chrysologus, Selected Sermons, Volume 2, William Palardy, tr. Catholic University of America (Washington, DC: 2004),  Sermon 10, section 2,]

Knowing Something Unknown

 Let us imagine something that we have never known either through perception, or by likeness, analogy of nature, or relationship with any other thing we have perceived. What we are imagining is altogether unknown to us. But its existence is then revealed to us. We begin to know something about it, without however knowing anything of its essence. In a word, we know that something unknown to us exists.

What else could we know about this thing without at the same time knowing its essence? We could know all the infinite relationships it can have with things known to us.

When we speak of God, we are talking of one who has relationships with real things, with feelings, and with ideas, the three activities we have previously distinguished. 

[Antonio Rosmini, Certainty, Cleary & Watson, trs., Rosmini House (Durham: 1991), pp. 135-136, sect. 1239. 'Feelings' is Cleary & Watson's translation for what would usually be translated as 'sensations', presumably because it includes internal as well as external sensations.]

Society of Persons

 Not only did God create man in his image and likeness, but also he modeled human society after the society of the Persons in the most holy Trinity. For this reason, just as in that adorable society, the Father loves his Son as himself, and loves himself in his Son, and the same is true for the love of the Son toward the Father and toward the Holy Spirit, and for the love of the Holy Spirit toward the Father and the Son, he also wants man to love his neighbor as himself. 

This is why he gave this second commandment: You will love your neighbor as yourself, which Jesus Christ said was like the first (Mt 22:39), because it also conforms to the divine and eternal life of the Persons in the most holy Trinity. 

[Jean-Jacques Olier, Introduction to the Christian Life and Virtues, Chapter 14, in Bérulle and the French School, Thompson, ed., Glendon, tr. Paulist (New York: 1989) p. 267.]

The Witch of Endor

 I was thinking about the Witch of Endor today, which is an entire story with many layers, and many more, I think, than appear on the surface. You know the basic story: Samuel has died, and Saul still has to deal with the Philistines, but he is afraid of them, and no longer has Samuel to advise him. So, despite the fact that it is illegal, he sends his servants out to find an 'owb, which literally means a 'mumbler' but is usually translated as 'medium'. They find one in Endor, and Saul goes to her; he asks her to call up Samuel. Then, I think, the story gets particularly interesting.

(1) The woman sees the spirit of Samuel and suddenly realizes that Saul is Saul. It is probably not an accident that the medium only just now realizes that she was deceived by Saul (whom we know not to be the most cunning of men). 

(2) But when the woman describes what she sees, she does not say that she sees Samuel. What she says is, literally, "I have seen God rising from the earth." This is often translated as 'a god', but the word is just Elohim, the common name for God (or perhaps, given the fact the Hebrew sometimes uses the plural form for cases which in English would use abstract terms, for the Godhead). That's an interesting thing to say.

Saul, of course, asks here what He looks like ("What is his appearance?"), and she says, "An old man is rising and he is wrapped in a cloak." Most readers assume that she is answering his question, but note that her response could be seen as not answering it but saying what is happening now. That is, there are two ways to read it:

I have seen God rising from the earth

and

An old man is rising, wrapped in a cloak

can be read as describing either the same thing or different things, one following after the other, in the same vision. (More on this in a moment.)

(3) 'Old man wrapped in a cloak' is about as generic and unidentifying a description as one can give, but immediately Saul takes it to be Samuel. This could be a nod to the common psychic trickery of giving vague descriptions and letting the mark do the work of specifying. But it could also be a bit of a joke. That is, Saul is (if he takes the medium's remarks to apply to the same thing, as most readers do) told that God is rising from the earth as an old man wrapped in a cloak, and his first response is, "Oh my God, that's Samuel!" That perhaps conveys something about Saul's attitude toward Samuel, however rocky their relationship often was!

(4) Saul then bows down to Samuel. Did Saul see Samuel? Verse 14 says that Saul was aware that it was Samuel; many translations use 'perceived' (and this seems to be how most people read the story), but the word in Hebrew seems to be quite broad, and probably just means that he took it that she was describing Samuel. At no point are we told that he actually sees anything. The woman herself might still be speaking. In fact that would make sense. The Jewish laws forbid recourse to 'knowers and mumblers' who are associated with 'dead-seekers', so we usually translate them, plausibly, as 'spiritualists and mediums'. But to this point, we have the 'knowing' part; now we get the 'mumbling' part. 

(5) In any case, Samuel says, "Why have you shaken me by raising me?" Saul replies that he is distressed because the Philistines are fighting him and God (Elohim) has left him, and he can't get any answers from dreams or prophets.

Then Samuel says, "Why ask me, since the Lord turned away from you and became your foe because the Lord Himself spoke by me? Thus the Lord has torn your kingdom from your hand and given it to David your neighbor, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord and exact burning wrath against Amalek." Notably, Samuel, or the apparent Samuel, turns Saul's reasoning against him Saul is asking Samuel because the Lord spoke by him, but given that he already knows why the Lord is no longer favoring him.

The word for wrath, by the way, literally means 'nose', so the Hebrew literally says that Saul did not do a fiery nose against Amalek. But 'nose' is sometimes used for 'face', and the link with anger, which it sometimes has, is generally thought to be because extremely angry people breathe heavily. So with only a little liberty we could translate this as "You did not obey the voice of the Lord and breathe fire against Amalek."

(6) Then Samuel continues, "Thus the Lord will do this thing to you today, and tomorrow will deliver Israel, with you, into the hand of the Philistines, and your sons to be with me, and the Lord will deliver the army of Israel into the hands of the Philistines." 

Saul, Israel, and the army of Israel are into the hands of the Philistines, but Saul's sons will be 'with me'. This is naturally (and reasonably) taken to be a way of saying that they will die, and indeed, some of Saul's sons, namely, Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malkishua, die in battle. But could be there be contrast here? The account of their deaths in 1 Samuel 31:6 makes very, very explicit that these three sons and Saul died on the same die. But note that Samuel only says that Saul's sons will be 'with me'; he does not say that Saul will be.

Also, one of Saul's sons does not die with the others, Eshbaal lives and becomes king for two years until he is assassinated by his own generals. (Eshbaal is sometimes called 'Ishbosheth' because of the later Jewish practice of bowdlerizing names of foreign deities; thus 'Man of Baal' is transformed into 'Man of the Shameful'.) Is he just not being included here, or is he also 'with me' even if not in the same way.

I keep saying 'with me', which is what Samuel says. It's natural to read it as 'with Samuel', but Samuel's role as voice of the Lord has been very pronounced here; one could also read it as 'with the Lord'. If that's the case, the contrastive reading has another level of bite.

(7) At this point, Saul falls, "in his full height", to the earth, extremely afraid. Again, the words seem carefully chosen. The woman had begun with, "I see God rising from the earth," and then we end with Saul falling (one could even interpret it as being cast down) to the earth. This certainly is symbolic -- Saul, in the fullness of his greatness, will soon be thrown down to the earth -- but it might also be meshing with the contrastive reading: God and Samuel ascend, and Saul's sons will be with them, but Saul descends. He sought Samuel to alleviate his fear about the Philistines, but the result is that he is now terribly afraid.

(8) The symbolism of Saul's fall as king continues: "There was no power in him" because he had not eaten for a day and a night, just as there will soon be no power in him because he had not fed from the words of the Lord. The woman, worried about her situation (and perhaps, to be fair, Saul's), asks him to listen to the voice of his maidservant (a big fall in itself, from the voice of the Lord to the voice of your slave). She offers him some bread to regain his strength. He refuses, but his men (the word is a different word, but could also mean 'slaves') encourages him to follow her advice, and he listens to their voice. Then he stands up from the ground, and the woman feeds him and his men.

(9) Earlier, the spirit of Samuel had called David Saul's neighbor; it could mean comrade, friend, or neighbor, and is the same word used in Leviticus when it says that the people of Israel should love their neighbor. Saul, of course, then goes on very much not to love his neighbor, since David has to flee for his life.

(10) The story is rather brilliantly written in that everything in it can be read in three different ways:

(a) The woman is a sham and she is making this all up. Again, the story does not actually say that Saul saw anything. Everything the woman does is consistent with the sort of medium-trickery that is even still practiced today. No secrets come out; everything we are told about the relationship between Saul and Samuel is public knowledge. But symbolically what happens in Saul being taken in, does in fact capture the low to which Saul has fallen and is falling.

(b) A spirit comes, but it is not Samuel, but merely mimics him; but in fact the spirit happens to speak the truth about Saul. (The passage calls him Samuel, but that need not be taken to mean more than that is how Saul understands it.)

(c) Samuel is really Samuel and has one last prophecy for Saul.

Interpretations consistent with each of these three can be found in both the Jewish rabbis and the Christian Church Fathers.

As for my preference, this is highly speculative but one possibility, out of many, that catches my fancy is this: The woman is perhaps a quack, and cannot really summon up a spirit, much less Samuel, but by God's providence, she has a vision of God rising from the earth. That is to say, Samuel is not there; rather, the medium is seized by God in such a way that she genuinely foresees the Harrowing of Hell. And the Samuel seen is not a spirit summoned up then and there, but a vision of Samuel at the 'leading captivity captive'. The real Samuel tells Saul that he and Israel will given into the hand of the Philistines, but "your sons are with me" (i.e., either with Samuel or with the Lord, or both, in rising to Paradise).

A very interesting story, in any case.

Iakobos

 Today is the feast of St. James the Greater, Apostle of the Lord, who according to tradition was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I on July 25, AD 44. He was the first of the Twelve Apostles to be martyred; he is also the only Apostle whose actual martyrdom is explicitly recorded in the New Testament. According to Acts 12, Herod Agrippa was trying to curry favor with the local rulers, so he arrested first James, then Peter; James he beheaded. He wanted to make a spectacle of Peter, since it was around the time of Passover, so he put him in prison under tight guard. Peter was rescued by an angel, and eventually made it to the house of Mary the mother of John Mark, where a number of Christians were praying. When Peter came knocking, the servant-girl, named Rhoda, was so excited to hear his voice that she just left him standing there on the porch while she went to tell everyone. Because of the fate of St. James, no one believed her. I'm always struck by how careful the author is to name the people involved.

His brother was St. John the Apostle (who traditionally is the last of the Apostles to die); his father was a fisherman named Zebedee, and his mother was possibly (given Mk 15:40 and Mt 27:56) Mary Salome, who may have been a relative of the Holy Virgin. (Medieval tradition took her to be, like the Virgin Mary, the daughter of St. Anne, but given how families worked, the relationship could have been looser than that.) James, John, and Peter are consistently treated as the leaders of the Apostles; they are the Apostles admitted into Jesus' confidence at the healing of the daughter of Jairus, the Transfiguration, and the Agony in the Garden.