Two New Poem Drafts and a Poem Re-Draft

The fortnightly book should be out tomorrow; I want to give myself time to listen to the radio adaptations. I confess that the entire second poem grew out of a desire to use that most splendid of contractions, all'y'all'd've. I am unrepentant.

The Well

Amid the stones an ancient well stands;
druids, perhaps, once did their rites there,
or some fair nymph gave it sacred gifts.
Through long years men and women travel,
across barren lands, across the seas,
through forests deep and dark, wild wastes,
wholly that they may find the well
to cast their kingdoms into it.
One day you, as well, will seek it,
with all your heart's unwavering desire;
you, too, will cast inside your treasures.
Of all wells, it is the well most sought,
the unwishing well, which takes back a wish.

Good Advice

We 'scuse oursel's so o'ermuch,
"All'y'all'd've done it, too" 'n' such;
we take the easy way;
we ain't what we pretend we are,
'n'we're ne'er quite so distant-far
as when we think we're near.
"But ne'er fear; you're just as wrong" --
we'll make sure of it 'fore long,
'n' define a way you are!
For "you ain't better'n oursel's",
'n' if we're headin' to our hells,
we'll drag you with us, too.
But brother, God's no truck with pride,
'n' nary a hill's a place to hide
from comin' judgment day.
So when we think to point 'n' shriek,
let's remember the earth's made for the meek,
'n' be quiet a bit, 'n' still.

City Light and Darkness

Beneath the moon-sphere city lights
in foggy halos cast like stars
their asterisks upon the night
and make the concrete glow, and cars
in speed, unheeding moving scene
like blur upon the movie screen,
make motion, growling, headlights bright,
and slice their way through starlit night.

Beside the road, and unremarked,
a sidewalk-walker travels home,
with step on step through rushing dark
that he may shed his long-spent roam
like shoes on floors of well-lit rooms
and, reading, bunker from the gloom
until, now tired, a card to mark
his page, he thence to dreams embarks.

And weary now, with aching feet,
and all the world like to a dream,
I walk with steady march of beat
to final glimpse of homely gleam;
Of lights I see, what light can shine
upon my heart? They none are mine.
But yet I march without retreat
to window-shine and light most sweet.

Dashed Off V

Locke's four grounds for internal/external distinction
(1) causal reasoning about sense organs
(2) differences between sensations and memory
(3) differences between sensation and pleasure & pain
(4) testimonial assistance

Theology remits the errors of philosophy, integrates it into a greater body of truths, and transfigures it by use and association.

appropriate poetic expressions of rational arguments

Taking conscience seriously requires taking moral advice and moral education seriously.

The pope's full, supreme, and universal power of jurisdiction is a power whose end is the protection of the faith and the preservation of peace among the churches.

The philosophy of law in Marsilius of Padua's Defensor Pacis is quite clearly positivist.

law as cooperative assistance

The primary, essential, and efficient source of law is reason regarding common good.

A people legislating must consider not just their goods or wishes but also the true good of non-citizens among them.

As the good of the Church is a sacred good, the members of the Church have from that good a great authority to preserve and protect both it and their share in it, an authority which cannot be given limits except in light of that sacred good itself; and to the special guardians of that sacred good this authority must especially be attributed.

limits on papal power
(1) personal: baptismal, confirmational, ordinational
(2) official: patriarchal responsibility, unity and harmony of the churches
(3) divine: natural law, divine positive law, responsibility to Christ (stewardship)

Note Marsilius's attack on the Peter-Rome connection & his argument that Paul was the first bishop of Rome.

Note Ockham's argument for participation of women in general councils. (It follows pretty straightforwardly from his assumption that general councils are simply representative bodies.)

The authority of an ecumenical council is sacramental in its root.

"One of the greatest difficulties confronting a government which has entered on a wrong track is to retrace its steps and once more strike the right road." Ludwig von Pastor

One should fight on the fronts valuable to oneself, not taking the enemy's tastes as one's measure of a worthwhile fight.

By cultivating the incipient goodnesses of human nature, one may attain to good character. Good character begins to take from; taking form, it manifests itself; manifesting itself, it becomes splendid; being splendid, others are moved by it as the beloved moves the lover; moving others, it transforms them and enriches their lives. This enrichment of others is only found in the completion of good character. Good character is not merely the completing of one's nature; by means of it others are aided in becoming complete.

The Christian in charity honors both his nature an the grace that joins him to Christ. He achieves breadth and greatness of scope;he achieves subtlety and intensive precision. He attains to the sublime and splendid, and pursues the mean that endures. He draws from the old and learns the new, and devoted to mercy he esteems the liturgy. Given authority, he is not proud; under authority he is not seditious. Where the Christian faith prevails, he is rewarded; where it is persecuted, he endures. Although gentle as a dove, he is as cunning as a serpent.
For he is joined to Christ, and in Christ all grace is perfect. Through the grace of Christ he is able to set all social relations in order, to establish the human virtues, and know the first and fundamental things. On what else does he need to rely?
The excellence of charity does not cease; never ceasing, it endures; ever enduring, it pours forth as light; radiating as light, it extends far; extending far, it diffuses everywhere; diffusing everywhere, it is sublime and splendid. Because it is self-diffusive, it encompasses all things. Because it is sublime and splendid, it protects all things. Because it is far-extending and ever-enduring, it perfects all things. In its diffusiveness it equals the whole visible universe; in its sublimity and splendor, it equals the whole invisible world. Far-extending and ever-enduring, it is infinite. From its nature it radiates as light without showiness, it moves without moving, it perfects without effort. The Christian way can be expressed wholly in this word, charity, for the Christian way is Christ Himself, and Christ is broad, deep, sublime, splendid, far-extending, and ever-enduring. Great indeed is He! Abundantly, He produces and sustains all things. In His greatness He reaches Heaven. The requirements of goodness are endless; only in Him can they be achieved
The Christian in charity, wishing himself to be established in God, establishes others, and, wishing heavenly glory for himself, works for the heavenly glory of others. He learns widely, but is guided by liturgy and sacrament. Who does this will not turn his back on Christ the Way. He is neither anxious nor fearful, for in him is nothing wrong, and he is not a person of one virtue.

the cheng of transfigured nature, the cheng appropriate to grace

the relation of Christian as minister to Christ as King; as child of God to God the Father; as younger sibling to Christ as Firstborn; to Christ as friend to friend; of the Church as Bride of Christ to Christ as Groom

foundation, vocation, perfection

the virtual mortality of all human action

Combining the Silver Rule with our responsibilities to and under God yields the Golden Rule.

tradition as a kind of counsel

part of how matrimony functions as a school of charity is that it trains one to see others as sacred signs

In filial piety as children of God and fraternal respect toward our Christian brothers and sisters we learn to practice charity; the Christian in charity cares for these things.

To practice charity requires repentance and sacrament.

Butler's natural providence & Locke's comments on pleasure and pain

evidential tendency // function
as regular historical association // etiological
as probabilistic // survival-enhancement
as role in rational system // causal role

philosophical systematizing // architecture as art of organizing design solutions
(obviously it's not surprising that architectonic philosophy is analogous to architecture, but it's worthwhile to think about the analogy in terms of various philosophical accounts of architecture)

x is a part of y since t
x is a part of y until t

diagrams as analogies

The Initiated receive the robe of glory (Hoosoyo for Sundays of Epiphany; Maronite Rite of Chrismation) which is itself the robe of glory of the Church (Qolo for the Commons of Prophets, the Just, and Confessors).

scale-differences between analogues
field-of-inquiry-differences between analogues

the credible marvelous as a subject of poetry

Doxastic logic as usually developed is better interpreted as being about belief norms than about beliefs.

'temporal logic' for inward/outward; upward downward
'above' as some T in that which is covered by Box-up; 'below' as some T in all that covered by Box-down
in: boundary + inward
inward, outward boundary, contact, upward, downward, leftward, rightward

Shehtman & Goldblatt: the modal logic for relativistic spacetime is S4.2, i.e., S4 with confluence [Diamond][Box] -> [Box][Diamond].

Evidence suggests what ought to be the case.

justified true belief // permitted satisfied desire

analogy vs. representation of analogue by analogue

temperance & moral neatness/messiness

impartial spectator & the moral picturesque

neatness/messiness of argument

the morally gratifying and the morally beautiful

neatness and messiness of means to ends
fit of means to ends

isomorphism, contact, dependence

charity working in us, charity linking persons, charity unifying communities

causation, remotion, & eminence in each sacrament (sacrament as instrument, as beyond nature, as inexhaustible mystery)

natural filiation, adopted filiation, metaphorical filiation

asceticism : remotion :: devotion : eminence

the sympathy-like tending and approximation to that which exceeds what we can sympathize with

human ultra-sociality
note that this is not something merely in hand; it is something arising from the human ability to develop institutions and customs that over great lengths of time can be linked to other institutions & customs in new ways with new features

Market exchange depends on informal practices and customs -- for trust, reputation, customs of available quick solutions to common problems -- these affect transaction costs and the kinds of transaction even available.

Strong rule of law blocks the effects of people inclined to disrupt social connections.

Commonplaces as forms of relevance.

The Church on earth is actively and spiritually linked to the Church that has passed through death by two great works of charity: intercession and purgatorial suffrage.

doing good works for the dead
doing good works in the name of the dead
doing good works with the dead

'I am a worm, and no man': I am cut off from the things required to live a human life of reason and friendship and the like' I am reduced to devoting everything to preservation of the body, which I am powerless to guarantee or even make likely, to attending only to surviving this very moment, and the next, and the next, until I fail.

possibility, relevance, probability

Different ethical approaches loosely converge because they all have to be developed by reason.

The entire Part IV of Book I of Hume's Treatise can be tollensed into an argument that cogitative-imaginative accounts of mind do not suffice, that there is need of an intellect capable of abstracting in order to account for human life and reason.

facets of tradition
(1) memorative
(2) recollective
(3) experiential
(4) anticipatory
(5) divinatory

Poisonous Pestilential & Most Fatal

It behoves all men to consider whether that intelligence & piety and virtue in the great body of the people, upon which we have all acknowledged our whole security to depend, has not failed our expectations & disappointed all our hopes. We in this age are more unfortunate in one respect than the ancient gentiles. Among them the philosophers were divided into numerous sects—the folowers of Socrates of Plato of Pythagoras & of Zeno as well as of Epicurus. All the former had a mixture of good morals, manly virtues & true opinions among their errors & all of them served to counterpoise & counteract the poisonous pestilential & most fatal doctrine of Epicurus. The portico for example produced men like the Catoes, Cicero, Seneca, Brutus, Epictetus and others who were saints in comparison of Caesar and Anthony. But our modern philosophers are all the low grovelling disciples of Epicurus: Not one Stoick no Platonician among them. Where then are we going! Are we all to become Epicuri de grege porci?

John Adams to John Rogers, 6 February 1801. Pinning down what people mean by 'Epicurean' in the modern period is not an easy task, but Adams is likely thinking especially of Thomas Jefferson and his supporters, to whom he had just lost an election. In a different letter to Benjamin Rush, he identifies what he probably has in mind as the problem with Epicureanism: "banishing all Ideas of God, or Gods, of future Rewards and Punishments and of moral Government or Providence in the Universe, every Man may get into an habit of taking pleasure in ever Thing".

The emphasis in the letter to Rush on moral providence sounds Butler-esque, which led me to ask whether Adams had studied Butler, and, indeed, it turns out that he read Butler quite closely in college in 1756, since his diary for that year explicitly mentions his reading and is full of comments on matters related to themes in Butler and Richard Bentley. And Abigail Adams occasionally refers to Butler, as well, and recommends him to her son Charles. (Incidentally, an odd feature of the references for these online letters is that whenever Butler is referred to, the footnotes point to the Analogy. But outside the 1756 references, the references made by the Adamses are usually to the Fifteen Sermons.)

Polykarpos

Today is the feast of St. Polycarp, Martyr. We don't know the precise year of his death; some sources put it at 166/7, others at 156/7; the latter fits some other bits of evidence about his age at death and people he knew a little better than the former, so most people go with that. Irenaeus met him in person when younger, and tells us that he was converted by the Apostles, and knew John in particular. Polycarp also corresponded with Ignatius of Antioch. The letter of the Smyrnaeans on the story of his martyrdom is one of the earliest surviving testimonies of Christian martyrdom outside the New Testament.

From his letter to the Philippians, Chapter 12:

For I am confident that you are well versed in the Scriptures, and from you nothing is hid; but to me this is not granted. Only, as it is said in these Scriptures, "Be ye angry and sin not," and "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." Blessed is the man who remembers this, and I believe that it is so with you. Now may God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the "eternal Priest" himself, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, build you up in faith and truth, and in all gentleness, and without wrath, and in patience, and in longsuffering, and endurance, and purity, and may he give you lot and part with his saints, and to us with you, and to all under heaven who shall believe in our Lord and God Jesus Christ and in his "Father who raised him from the dead." "Pray for all the saints. Pray also for the Emperors," and for potentates, and princes, and for "those who persecute you and hate you," and for "the enemies of the Cross" that "your fruit may be manifest among all men, that you may be perfected" in him.

Harmonious

Suppose two persons, one having an ear for music, and the other totally destitute of it, were both listening to a symphony; the former would consider himself warranted in confidently expecting the continuation of harmony, while the latter would be in no way surprised by a sudden change into the most barbarous and clashing dissonance. And, in like manner, the most constant experience of undeviating regularity in the course of nature up to this time, would be no ground whatever for expecting its continuance, except to those who should perceive something of itself more admirable in order than in disorder, in harmonious government of the whole than in the chance and random dispersion of parts.

W. G. Ward, The Ideal of a Christian Church, p. 506. This is a very interesting idea -- that recognizing laws of nature at all requires a certain kind of cultivated good taste, a developed sense of the orderliness of the world, so to speak.

Evening Note for Wednesday, February 22

Thought for the Evening

'Fitch's Knowability Paradox', which derives from some common assumptions about knowledge is usually summarized in the predicate calculus as:

∀p(p → ◊Kp) ⊢ ∀p(p → Kp)

This is usually summarized in much the way the SEP article by Brogaard and Salerno on the paradox does: "It tells us that if any truth can be known then every truth is in fact known." Hence the 'knowability'.

However, this way of summarizing it introduces more confusion than it should, because ◊Kp does not mean 'p is knowable' in the way we usually mean knowable. It means 'it is possible that that p is known'. This doesn't undo the paradox -- that if it is possible that a truth is known, that truth is known, which is not something one would immediately expect. But 'knowable' in ordinary discourse doesn't mean 'it is possible that it is known'; it means 'it can be known' or even 'it can come to be known', neither of which would usually be understood as saying the same thing as 'it is possible that it is in fact known'. What the paradox actually says is that, if you accept some very common things people believe about knowledge, then if there is any proposition that has the feature that when it is true, it is possible that it is known, then it must be the case that when it is true, it is indeed known. This is very different from the usual summary. As I once noted on this blog (so long ago in ancient days of yore that I was still in graduate school):

I already said that the result is usually put in terms of knowability: KP [i.e., the left hand side above] is usually read, "If p is true, it is knowable." I translated differently, as you can see. This is because I think "knowable" is a very bad translation of the double operator, ◊K. To see this, think about what we really mean when we say the following two things:

This is knowable: The sky is blue.
It is possible that this is known: The sky is blue.

The two are not equivalent, and for good reason. The English word 'knowable' in all but a very small handful of uses hides a third operator, a temporal operator -- an incipit, to be exact:

This can come to be known (can begin to be known): The sky is blue.

So when I say that some claim is knowable, I usually don't mean that it is possible that it is known; I mean that it is possible that it could come to be known. So I think there's reason to stay away from the added complications that are introduced by the word 'knowable'. Using 'knowable' makes it sound even more paradoxical; but (1) it doesn't need to be made to sound more paradoxical; and (2) it is misleading.

(An incipit operator is an operator that tells us that something begins to be; incipit [it begins] and desinit [it ends] were modal operators that medieval logicians studied quite a bit but people nowadays not so much.)

This is not to say that the use of 'knowable' in this context is illegitimate; you can see why someone might use knowable to mean ◊K -- after all, K is knowledge and ◊ is possibility, so 'knowable' could be used to mean 'it is possible that it is known'. Possibly one could even find occasional conversational cases in which it is. But it's not usually. And one can tell from summaries that even philosophers regularly slip from the strictly correct, 'it is possible that it is known', to 'it can be known', and even 'it can come to be known'; you can tell this from their colloquial descriptions of what they think their results show. But these are different modalities from ◊K.

Mixing any modalities is very, very tricky; but ◊ and K, possibility and knowledge, are especially so, and it is often difficult to keep straight about how we are to understand them, and about the rules of inference we are using. In real life, when we are talking about knowledge, we are usually in fact talking about coming to know or having come to know; but the standard epistemic logic just talks about being known. There are lots of ways the difference can throw off interpretations.

This was all brought to mind thinking about Rutten's modal-epistemic argument for God's existence (PDF), which Red brought up in comments here a couple weeks back:

1. For all p, if p is unknowable, then p is necessarily false (first premise; the principle),
2. The proposition ‘God does not exist’ is necessarily unknowable (second premise),
3. Therefore, ‘God does not exist’ is necessarily false (from both premises)
4. Therefore, necessarily, God exists (conclusion; from (3)).

If someone is going to evaluate this, they have to be clear about what 'unknowable' means. Does it mean ~◊K, i.e,. 'it is not possible that it is known'? Does it mean 'it is impossible to come to know it'? Does it mean 'it is not such that it can be known'? And so forth. And it gets a bit worse, because (2) talks about 'necessarily unknowable'. So if we were to interpret 'knowable' as it would usually be interpreted in common conversation, we might have a whole string of at least 4 modal operators in one proposition: (1) it is necessary that (2) one cannot (3) begin (4) to know p. That's not necessarily how it would have to be understood; but you can see how it would be important to keep straight on exactly how you do understand it.

All of this is just interpretive; it doesn't directly give us a line on how to evaluate either Fitch's Paradox or Rutten's modal-epistemic argument. But it's good to avoid making such evaluation harder than it needs to be.

Links of Note

* Joseph Millum, The Foundation of the Child's Right to an Open Future. I discussed this topic here. Millum's is a good, and very thorough discussion of some problems with the notion.

* Tristan Haze, The Resurgence of Metaphysics as a Notational Convenience. I'm very interested, of course, in accounts of how philosophical scenes get transformed, how ideas transmogrify, and the like. This hypothesis for the rise of analytic metaphysics makes considerable amount of sense, and is probably true.

* Ellen Carmichael, Lafayette's America, on America's French Founding Father.

Currently Reading

Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth
Mary Beard, SPQR
Lois McMaster Bujold, Cryoburn
Jean Beathke Elshtain, Sovereignty: God, State, and Self
Dietrich von Hildebrand, My Battle Against Hitler

Cathedra Petri