Lent X

Because Ephraim hath made many altars to sin: altars are become to him unto sin. I shall write to him my manifold laws, which have been accounted as foreign. (Hosea 8:11-12)

For salvation it is necessary, therefore, to cling to the divine altars and adhere to the things of God, and not to go after other things which are sinful. The latter in fact is what they do who do not live a truly Christian life, lapsing, after the saving sacrament of baptism, into pagan cusoms and observances; it behoves them to say what they find in Paul: "You cannot partake of the Lord's table and the demons' table."

[St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, Volume 1, CUA Press (Washington, DC: 2007), p. 172.]

Dashed Off VII

(1) error-avoidance
(2) personal-verisimilitude-seeking (appears to me)
(3) common-verisimilitude-seeking (appears from common pov)
(4) good-inquiry-verisimilitude-seeking
(5) truth-seeking
(6) Truth-Itself-seeking

tradition & common truth
shared aesthetic experience and common beauty

depth, height, compass, and endurance of character

the internal diplomacy of prudence

Most major cognitive biases seem to recur, or have analogues, at the level of scientific method.

The use of intuitions about scenarios in analytic philosophy often collapses into an attempt to explain the more well known by the less well known.
"fables make one imagine many events to be possible which are not so at all" (Descartes DM 7)

regressing arguments to their germinating ideas

In baptism, "man is made body of Christ because Christ also is body of man" (Leo I, Letter 59).

"Lo I am with you always" and the efficacy of the sacraments (Leo, Ep. 108)

The obligation to seek truth grounds religious freedom.
the right to free discussion about what is the true religion

Most formal fallacies can only be diagnosed holistically.

Whenever someone says 'intuition', substitute talk about interpretation and see if it still makes sense.

We already come into the world personated by others (our parents, for example).

2 Tim 3:16 and the Scriptures (as spirated) as the icon of the Holy Spirit

two primary maxims of equity (Snell)
(1) ubi jus ibi remediam (Equity will not suffice a wrong to be without a remedy)
(2) Equity acts on the person (in personam)

prime matter // logical genus (Symington)

Nothing can properly ground the persistence of law except reason itself.

The institutionality of law is ultimately grounded in common good.

vague objects as fusions across modal domains

immortality of the soul // tradition

Tradition may endure insofar as it is capax veritatis.

personation & the declaration of patron saints
- petitionary personation, perhaps?

Titus 2:11 & officia

Note the similitarities between Hobbes Leviathan 1.3.8 and the shadow-game in Plato's cave

The first principle regulating good teaching lies in the pure integrity of what is taught.

Even in a state of war there is common good, and thus law and justice.

the right to defend ourselves as we are part of human common good

the liturgical commonwealth as concerned with prudent preservation of holy things

On Hobbes' account of sovereignty, atheistic arguments from evil are impossible.

Rule of law is supported or constituted by all of the doctrines Hobbes calls seditious & poisonous:
(1) Every private man may judge of good and evil.
(2) To act against conscience is wrongdoing.
(3) Faith and sanctity may be attained by inspiration and infusion.
(4) Even the sovereign is subject to law.
(5) The rights of propriety may at times exclude the right of the sovereign.
(6) Sovereign power may be divided.

Dt 34:9 and apostolic succession. (Note Hobbes L 3.42.2)

The power to proclaim the kingdom of Christ contains in itself the authority to resist any sovereign but Christ in matters of Christ's kingdom.

Note that Hobbes rejects claims that the pope is antichrist (L 3.42.87-88).

The members of the liturgical commonwealth, as of a natural body, depend on each other.

On Hobbes's account of heresy, faithful followers of Christ may be heretics

"the teaching that matrimony is a sacrament giveth to the clergy the judging of the lawfulness of marriages, and thereby, of what children are legitimate; and consequently of the right of succession to hereditary kingdoms" (Hobbes, L 4.47.9)

Human dignity must be expressed by signs, or our ability to respect it fades; thus, as Douglass notes, we cannot respect those who show no signs of power. But at the same time, not all signs are equally suited to expressing such a thing.

solidarity with the martyrs and the virgins

immediate inferences as complex modal facts about terms

receivability as legal evidence
(1) relevant: tends to make a fact more probable than it would be without it
(2) material: is of legal consequence
(3) admissible (unexcluded); involves reasoning appropriate to legal process, as determined by the rules of that process, given the ends of that process

Haack's arguments that degrees of warrant cannot be probabilities:
(1) Weak evidence may require suspension of judgment (neither p nor not-p warranted), but probabilities must add to 1.
(2) Where probability of p and q are less than 1, conjunction is less than probability of conjuncts; but the warrant of a conjunction may be greater than the warrant of either conjunct (as in circumstantial evidence).

evidential weight as test survival

laws of nature as principles of object stability

interrogative function of propositions as analogous to Diamond

Willingness to endure the fire of purification is part of filial love.

Ascension : Pentecost : Parousia :: Orders : Confirmation : Baptism :: Ascension : Transfiguration : Baptism

analogies as implicit stories

three major concerns of prudence: consistency with rational order, consistency with friendship of virtue, consistency with common good

consistency with friendship of excellence as a constraint on licit consent

opposition to proselytism as contraceptive mentality

vocal argument, meditative argument, insight beyond argument

officium = kathekon

As marriage is understood, so society is understood.

PSR as like a conservation law for intelligibility

Joy is the destroyer of envy, peace the destroyer of wrath, love the destroyer of vainglory.

Hobbes's Calliclean account of happiness (Lev 1.11.1-2)

Hobbes allows for a morality-by-negative-impression, since on his account there are things that cannot be made moral because they violate the conditions necessary for morality.

Mackie attributes a queer power to the human mind, namely, its ability to identify objects as queer in themselves.

The rejection of summum bonum is perhaps the single most significant element of Hobbes's political philosophy.

If the papal office concerns the unity of the Church, it touches in its authority on all individuals.

anointing
priests Ex 28:41
kings 1 Sam 10:1
prophets 1 Kings 19:16
2 Cor 1:21-22

The text is an authorial disposition of mediate instruments.

Gadamer et al buy into the Protestantish notion of the text itself speaking to us, on its own, rather than having its meaning only within a spirit of communication proceeding from the author. This is nto to say that they never compensate for it in minor ways, but they start in the wrong place.

to consider & think about: hyperintensionality is just hybrid modality (& the hyperintensional paradox just involves leaving out relevant modalities)

A mechanism is a teleological system.

constant domain and variable domain interpretations of quantification

Strong Doxastic Voluntarism and Pragmatic Reasons

One of the more important discussions of doxastic voluntarism, the idea that belief is under our voluntary control, is Keith Frankish's "Deciding to Believe Again" [Mind, New Series, Vol. 116, No. 463 (Jul., 2007), pp. 523-547 ]. He argues for doxastic voluntarism, but a version he calls weak doxastic voluntarism. Actually, he identifies three different positions that often tend to get lumped together:

(1) direct activism: we can form beliefs directly
(2) weak voluntarism: we can form beliefs directly for pragmatic reasons
(3) strong voluntarism: we can form beliefs directly for pragmatic reasons and without epistemic support

(All of these would be classified as 'doxastic voluntarism' by most people.) Frankish suggests that (1) tends not to be separated out because there is a plausible case that it implies (2); but that it does not imply (3). Strong voluntarism he regards as necessarily false, but weak voluntarism as very defensible. The case against strong doxastic voluntarism is interesting and worth looking at.

Frankish begins with a principle, what he calls the Revised Williams Principle:

For any proposition p, it is impossible to believe in full consciousness that one consciously believes that p and that one's belief that p is both unsupported and deviant.

The basic idea, crudely put and without worrying too much about precise nuances, is that we can't believe something if we think that there is no reason to believe it (unsupported) and that the process of coming to believe it is not connected with the truth (deviant). The 'both' is important; Frankish thinks there are marginal cases where we probably can believe things we think are unsupported as long as we think they are nondeviant, and where we probably can believe things we know to be deviant if we think they are supported.

Now, let's say that we are being wanton if we believe ('in full consciousness') that we believe something on purely pragmatic reasons and have no evidence to believe it true. Strong voluntarists hold that we can do this. But, Frankish says, this violates the Revised Williams Principle: this would make beliefs accepted wantonly both unsupported and deviant, at least for typical cases. But this deals with coming to believe rather than believing. There are two kinds of change that could go on simultaneously with the possibly make the situation consistent with the Revised Williams Principle: (1) I come to believe that it is supported; (2) I forget that it is deviant. But, if we are talking about 'full consciousness', the belief in (1) runs into the same problem: it is unsupported and deviant. And we cannot simply forget things the way (2) requires -- Frankish, without committing to an explanation of this, suggests that it could be due to an analogous situation -- to forget something at will we would also have to forget that we forgot it. Thus, the idea goes, strong voluntarism requires that both conditions are under our voluntary control; but they cannot be simultaneously under our voluntary control.

As Frankish notes, this argument requires that it all be done in full confidence -- obviously people do believe things that happen to be both unsupported and deviant. What they cannot do, according to the argument, is will to believe things that are both, which requires consciousness of both the lack of support and the deviance. And, of course, Frankish goes on to argue that you can have doxastic voluntarism that does not require this incoherent willing.

I think an issue of slippage in the actual course of the argument, even granting its principles, is that Frankish assumes that when we recognize that we are believing something only on pragmatic grounds that we recognize that our belief is deviant. There's good reason to think this false, I think. That is to say, I think it is generally the case that people regard even purely pragmatic reasons as broadly and loosely truth-conducive, in at least the sense that much of the time they tend to get you closer to the truth even in the absence of supporting evidence. Take, for instance, the idea that we should go with the simplest theory that fits the evidence. By the very set-up of the claim, 'simplicity' does not affect the evidence; it's a purely pragmatic reason for accepting a theory. But most people would regard simplicity as truth-tending in at least some limited way. Frankish would fit this, I imagine, into the category of 'thought to be unsupported but not deviant'. But what pragmatic reasons do we actually take to be deviant when we are actually using them? What does it mean to take something as a 'reason' in the first place? Perhaps little more than 'it may be relevant to getting us closer to the truth or something in its neighborhood'. That's very weak, but it seems to suffice to block any certainty that it is deviant.

When Frankish originally characterizes strong voluntarism, he characterizes it as the position that "we can form beliefs directly, for pragmatic reasons, and without epistemic support" (p. 527). But if all pragmatic reasons are taken to be presumptively nondeviant when we are using them, then strong voluntarism in this sense does not violate the Revised Williams Principle: consciously believing that one's belief is only for pragmatic reasons does not suffice to make it a case of consciously believing that one's belief is deviant.

Most people who advocate doxastic voluntarism do not, I think, much care whether it is weak or strong in Frankish's sense, and probably actually accept a weak voluntarism; there are only going to be occasional situations in which it would make a difference. It's rarely if ever going to be the case that you literally have no epistemic support whatsoever and yet have pragmatic reasons relevant to belief. (Pascal's Wager, for instance, the most famous argument suggesting doxastic voluntarism, requires only weak voluntarism, if that: the agnostic whom Pascal is addressing can perfectly well have reasons both for and against that leave him in suspense, and the Wager appeals to pragmatic reasons to break the deadlock.) But Frankish's argument, as it stands, slides too quickly between 'based only on pragmatic reasons' and 'deviant'.

Lent IX

O ye sons of men, how long will you be dull of heart? why do you love vanity, and seek after lying? (Psalm 4:3)

That is to say, how long will you have a heart of stone, a hard one, inclined to the earth, thinking of nothing but the goods of the world? For, according to the Lord, "The hearts are weighed down by excess, drunkenness, and the cares of this world;" and because hardened hearts are not susceptible of celestial thoughts, but only of terrestrial and transitory, they only love what is terrestrial and transitory; and as we take trouble only in seeking for the things we ardently love, the Prophet adds, "Why do you love vanity, and seek after lying?" The goods of this world are called vain and fallacious, because they are neither stable nor solid, though they may seem to be so; and are therefore, with justice, designated as false and fallacious, especially when compared to those of eternity.

[St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, O'Sullivan, tr., Loreto (Fitzwilliam NH: 2011), p. 5.]

Lent VIII

And Jesus said to them: I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall not hunger: and he that believeth in me shall never thirst. (John 6:35)

When material bread is eaten, it does not permanently take away our hunger, since it must be destroyed in order to build us up; and this is necessary if we are to be nourished. But spiritual bread, which gives life of itself, is never destroyed; consequently, a person who eats it once never hungers again....

One reason why temporal things do not take away our thirst permanently is that they are not consumed altogether, but only bit by bit, and with motion, so that there is always still more to be consumed. For this reason, just as there is enjoyment and satisfaction from what has been consumed, so there is a desire for what is still to come. Another reason is that they are destroyed; hence the recollection of them remains and generates a repeated longing for those things. Spiritual things, on the other hand, are taken all at once, and they are not destroyed, nor do they run out, and consequently the fullness they produce remains forever....

[St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Chapters 6-12, Larcher & Weisheipl, trs., CUA Press (Washington DC: 2010), pp. 25-26.]

Nascent Strength

"Reason," says Rousseau, "is the bridle of strength." I would rather say that it should serve as a bridle to the first interior movements, which incline us to our strength. A child of ten years of age has a lively sentiment of his nascent strength, a sentiment active and vigorous prompting him to be active, to be continually fidgeting, to take those objects that are near at hand, and to turn them about and work them in every manner....This nascent strength in animals is governed by a certain unalterable instinct that guides them, but in man there is no immediate rule other than reason. Why then should reason be entirely useless to a child of ten years old? This interior propensity that stirs and agitates him, which prompts him to continual action and keeps him always out of breath -- does it not need some restraint? It is true that at this age reason is too weak to suffice by itself. It needs to be assisted and fortified by precepts, examples, and appropriate practices.

Hyacinthe-Sigismond Gerdil, The Anti-Emile, Frank, tr. St Augustine's Press (South Bend, Indiana: 2011), p. 48.

The essential argument here is against a combination of two claims by Rousseau, that children under the age of ten or even fifteen do not have a sufficiently developed reason to be capable of rational moral distinctions, and that the first inclinations of the heart are naturally right. Gerdil has just finished arguing that the former is in fact false -- if one child takes another's toy, for instance, young children who saw it, though they have no other connection, will tell you all about how it is wrong, and they can even distinguish between doing wrong accidentally and doing it deliberately. These are rational distinctions. Rousseau, on Gerdil's view, has diagnosed the situation in exactly the opposite way he should: they have the capacity for rational distinctions, but need assistance to be consistent with them, particularly given that their first inclinations drive them every which-way. This disagreement is in some sense the central disagreement between Rousseau and Gerdil about the nature of education, because everything else builds on the question of what this first, basic education is supposed to be doing.

Lent VII

A double minded man is inconstant in all his ways. (James 1:8)

In all his ways, he says, in adversities and in prosperity. The man, however, is double-minded, who both bends his knee to entreat the Lord, sends forth words of entreaty, and yet because of his consciousness accuses him within, he lacks confidence in being able to obtain what he requests. The man is double-minded who wishes both to rejoice here with the world and to reign there with God. Likewise the man is double-minded who in the good he does looks not for reward inwardly but for approbation outwardly. Hence it is well said by a wise man, Woe to the sinner entering the land by two ways. A sinner enters the land by two ways indeed when he both shows that what he seeks by his work is God's approbation and the world's in his thoughts. All such as these, however, are indecisive in all their ways, because they are both very easily discouraged by the adversities of the world and ensnared by prosperity, so that they turn aside from the way of truth.

[Bede the Venerable, Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles, Hurst, tr., Cistercian Publications (Kalamazoo, MI: 1985) pp. 10-11. A footnote notes that the word translated 'consciousness' is conscientia; that can indeed be translated as 'consciousness', but I'm not sure what was gained by avoiding the more obvious translation of 'conscience'.]