Dashed Off XV

Qualia-based defenses of dualism generally seem to require that all sufficiently developed animals are such as to require dualism (and 'sufficiently developed' would seem to have to be quite generous).

We do not need abstraction to explain the fact that we classify things; but abstraction does explain why we are so extraordinarily good at it, able to navigate rather high-level classifications when (e.g.) helping to sort books at a library, and why as a species we are able to take it so far as to build periodic tables that predict properties of elements not yet discovered, classify subatomic particles we can never sense, and sort stars by age and composition based on lines of light.

All of Hume is a sort of proof that intellectual abstraction is not reducible to phantasms and imaginative processes.

arguments from evil as falling into (1) quasi-ontological (2) quasi-cosmological (3) quasi-teleological (4) quasi-moral groups
(1) evil makes existence of infinite good (conceptually) impossible (2) evil rules out infinite good as cause (3) evil rules out infinite good as exemplar for world (4) evil rules out infinite good as practical postulate

respect & gratitude as essential elements of good stewardship

The translations of Enoch and Elijah, the assumption attributed to Moses, the Assumption of Our Lady, the Ascension of Christ, all perhaps suggest that what we call death is but the defective malfunction, the disordered falling-short, of something profound in us, of a transcendence that must be restored if we are to be whole.

What is especially significant of human classification ability is not that we classify but that we consider why we classify the way we do.

All accounts of scientific realism can be seen as converging on Aristotelian principles, although this is a matter of degree (it of course also follows that proponents of those accounts could well say instead that Aristotelian principles go too far in this way or that).

roles of metaphysical principles in fields of natural science
(1) to explain how and why those fields can explain
(2) to establish the general for what in that field is specific
(3) to relate that field to other fields
(4) to serve as heuristic in the inquiry of that field

(a) impressions are productive causes of future properties
(b) powers of an object are productive causes of future properties
(c) changing the course of nature may cause a change in the powers of the object
(d) custom is a cause of the idea of causation

A healthy government restrains itself not only in light of legal requirement but also in light of the way actions would function as symbolic precedents.

situationism as a problem for utilitarianism: the fragility of psychological states like pleasure & pain or satisfaction

artificial classifications as approximations

real numbers as: points in axis/lines in area/points in plane; infinite decimals; a particular kind of set construction given rational numbers; an ordered field with the least upper bound property
- the problem with the geometrical account is that reals and rationals do not seem easily distinguishable this way.
- the problem with infinite decimals account is defining the arithmetical operations
- the problem with cut-based accounts is construction the relevant subsets of rational numbers in the first place and defining arithmetical operations with them

A free society requires the ability of citizens on their own power and authority to form quasi-public institutions.

Note that Calvin holds that unction was an apostolic sacrament but that it ceased with the cessation of the gift of healing he regards it as having signified; the obvious difficulty is that the remission of sins seems to indicate that there was more to its signification.

The rule for the interpretation of Scripture is the Spirit that animates the whole Church.

baptism saves Mk 16:16; 1 Pt 3:21

clarifying & facilitating freedom as one of the functions of law

discipline, foresight, and thoroughness as properties of prudence

tea ceremony as training in civilization

"If the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator?" (CS Lewis)

preceptive, directive, and facultative rules in liturgical law

Schelling distinguishes two kinds of idea in Plato: those that ground the world with respect to materiality and those that do so with respect to form as such. (The former objects, the latter the Good, quantity, quality, causality, etc.)

The purpose of Descartes's Meditation IV is not to get God off the hook, but to put us on it -- i.e., to establish that we are responsible for our own judgment.

testimony as self-reflective (qua testimony, it can be regarded as being partly about its own causality)

the affinity of justice and truth

Paleatiology requires a temporal ordering of first causes aligned with their logical ordering (so that prior/posterior/indifferent in logic can be translated directly to time)
- in what domains does spatial ordering align with logical ordering? (and what kind of ordering? up/down, in/out, to/from, over/under)
(think of logical diagrams here, which use topological relations to model logical relations)

using etiological and causal role accounts of function in application to scientific inquiry itself

Etiological accounts of function, as given by analytic philosophers, are ironically not themselves historically structured, thus treating the function of intellectual problems, etc., as non-etiological.

sacred narrative as an expression of providential order

almsgiving and the temporal prosperity of the Church
Bellarmine's note of temporal prosperity is linked to the existence of communitas perfecta.

prosperity is relative to common good

Every etiology is an account of a series of causes that is itself an effect.

Bull's two arguments for angels: plenitude and best explanation for vastness of the universe

invocation of saints (1) to think and speak humbly of it (2) to proclaim them blessed (3) to ask for their prayers

The modern age favors the idea of faith without zeal.

principles of mutual forbearance in inquiry

Swiftness of progress along a certain line of inquiry may also be accompanied by shoddiness of constructive and critical thought. Pressure to progress swiftly, or even steadily, is pressure to take shortcuts.

Fiction and nonfiction alike are testimony, with different causal accounts.

simulations as artificial testimonies

People will usually act on their own interest; but they will also usually try to avoid ways of doing so that interfere with what they see as the general interest.

soil sampling requires
(1) representativeness of sample
(2) stability of sample
(3) representativeness of tested subsample
(4) accuracy of test
- it seems like error statistics would be appropriate here

Phenomena are not identifiable without appeal to causation.

A sample's role in inference is determined by its causal profile.

artificial analogies converging on natural analogies

Every actual being is intelligibly actual; what is intelligibly actual is either itself a principle of intelligibility or requires a principle such that its actuality is intelligible.

Meno as a comic dialogue

Ungoliant as envy

guidance by example and counsel as essential to integrity and health of law and government

the extent of lobbying as a sign of the extent to which a government is not sticking to its duties of governance

dreams & unsettled classification

'qualia' as a residue concept

As the books of the New Testament are being written, they proceed from and to churches already living in the Tradition of Christ and His Apostles, a tradition from those who had known Christ Himself or His Apostles who had known Him

Jesus scholarship as aggressive Gospel Harmony

Every pursuit of pleasure requires restraint.

Some punishments clearly do allow for penal substitutions like fines (cf. David Lewis)

philosophical systems as both discursive and intuitive in character

illusion of abundance as the principle of fast food

Barzun: decadence as good intentions exceeding power to fulfill them

Our body is mostly in the domain of allowing rather than doing, and the allowing shows a difference between an active and a passive allowing.

Every human being unfolds out of motherhood.

Mary Lk 1;42
Jael Jdg 5:24
Judith Jud 13:18
Jael crushes head of Sisera, Judith severs the head of Holofernes; Gn 3:15 in some mss

Knowledge requires a standard to exist at all; it is an inherently normative concept.

virtues admitting of infinite intension -- prudence and charity obvious candidates, poss. also justice
-- some virtues seem necessarily to have only finite intension (temperance & its parts, fortitude, as poss. candidates; possibly also faith and hope)
-- Aquinas explicitly argues that charity admits of infinite intension (ST 2-2.24.7)

Hope is an intrinsically narrative virtue.

Malachi 2:7 and the mark of priesthood

Every psalm as a standpoint and an addressee. (This is explicitly recognized by St. Hilary as the key to interpreting the psalms.)

The Gospel known by the prophets under symbolic veil was known by the apostles through manifest seal.

almsgiving as a discipline of humility

prevalence of distraction as a deteriorating factor in the availability of good counsel

It is important to grasp that people not only argue at others but also with and for them.

the moral as well as physical defenselessness of the infant

cooperative reinforcement of distinct lines of argument (parity, analogy, practical suitability, metaphorical/symbolic aptness, co-parsimony)

poignancy and precious pains (pains that make life better)

poetry:logic::music:mathematics

Jesus' resurrection in Mark: 8:31, 9:31, 10:32-34; aslo 9:2-13; 14:27-28; 16:6

Synoptic sharing shows a congeniality of shared material for diverse groups of early Christians.

galley effect as showing that sensory experience is more than sensory perception
constancy & coherence as aspects of semiosis

simultaneity (of time) as primarily a systemic concept

the principle of plurality of societies (Every human being is a member of multiple societies, each with some protection and good of its own)
the legitimacy and necessity of rational faction -- the modern state has attacked social pluralism under the name of faction

Arguments from evil require that our moral sense be sufficient to establish impossibilities and necessities of a high degree of metaphysical importance, or it cannot get its conclusion, indeed, cannot get more than a puzzle; but if our moral sense is this sure, it is itself a reason to believe that God as a moral principle exists.

the danger of using fuss over the appearance of tradition to cover lack of the substance

Some prices are too high for saving even the innocent. (Everyone actually recognizes such cases.)

personal and abstract ends of society (abstract ends include intrinsic interest, principle, and traditional loyalty)

Hund-Mulliken molecular orbital theory and the relation between part and whole in a molecule

gold:proclamation::frankincense:sacrifice::myrrh:reception

vagueness of location (note that this is quite intuitive -- we only locate things to a given precision -- but immediately causes problems for strict denial of multilocation

localizable abstractions (e.g., local jurisdiction)

Rehabilitation requires free will if it is not to be mere manipulation.

all patriarchal sees are as if one Petrine see (cf Gregory the Great to Eulogius; REg Ep Bk VII, Ep 40)
(this is obviously said analogically, via relation to Peter)
(but note especially the connection with John 17:21

"the good of a neighbor is common to one who stands idle, if he knows how to rejoice in common in the doings of the other" (Gregory the Great Ep 40)

Liturgy of St. James as the primary liturgical type of the Church
(various Latinate rites are from different sources, and Liturgy of St. Cyril is from Liturgy of St. Mark, but Liturgy of St. James splits into Liturgies of St. BAsil and St. John Chrysostom and Syriac Liturgy of St. James)

Note that the praise of creation in Sirach 43 prepares for and anticipates the praise of Simon the Just as high priest in Sirach 50.

A movie is not an illusion of motion; it is an actual motion of representation by light and filter.

Matrimony receives from baptism that our bodies are for the Lord.

Matrimony is pedagogical as law, as symbol, and as grace.

Pauline & Petrine privileges as linked to marriage's role in knitting together the Body of Christ and uniting it to Christ.

complete definition, varied examples, explicit reasoning, developed foundations

cultivation of asymmetric confusion as one of the fundamental problems of military strategy and tactics

"success at the cost of one's kindred is the greatest misfortune" 2 Macc 5:6

What passes for historical objectivity is usually just a certain sobriety of political judgment.

Observation is a change that is caused in such a way that allows reliable semiosis.

(1) principle of asceticism
(2) principle of purity
(3) needful things
(4) moral good taste
(5) making virtues manifest

realism vs anti-realism as being at root a question of the relation of intelligible to sensible

experiments as changes, experiments as effects, experiments as signs

Seraphic Doctor

Today is the Feast of St. Giovanni di Fidanza, better known by his nickname of Bonaventure, Doctor of the Church.

...God, the supreme good, is above us; our soul, an intrinsic good, is within us; our neighbor, a kindred good, next to us; and our body, a lesser good, below us. Therefore, the proper order of loving is to love God first, more than all else and for his own sake; our soul second, less than God but more than any temporal good; our neighbor third, as much as ourselves, as a good on the same level; our body fourth, less than our soul, as a good of lesser degree. It is here also we should place our neighbor's body that, like our own, is a lesser good than our soul.

[Bonaventure, Breviloquium, Monti, tr., The Franciscan Institution (St. Bonaventure, NY: 2005), pp. 201-202.]

Decorum

A recent tweet from Arlington National Cemetery:

We do not consider playing "Pokemon Go" to be appropriate decorum on the grounds of ANC. We ask all visitors to refrain from such activity.

— Arlington Cemetery (@ArlingtonNatl) July 12, 2016

ADDED LATER:

And I had missed this one: Holocaust Museum to visitors: Please stop catching Pokémon here

A Person of Taste

To be a person of taste, it seems necessary, that one have, first, a lively and correct imagination; secondly, the power of distinct apprehension; thirdly, the capacity of being easily, strongly, and agreeably affected, with sublimity, beauty, harmony, exact imitation, &c.; fourthly, Sympathy, or Sensibility of heart; and, fifthly, Judgment, or Good Sense, which is the principal thing, and may not very improperly be said to comprehend all the rest.

James Beattie, Of Imagination, Chapter IV

Rabban Bar Sauma and Thirteenth-Century Ecumenism

In the thirteenth century a Chinese Christian belonging to the Church of the East decided to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. His name was Rabban Bar Sauma, and he was born in Beijing and became a Christian priest. He set out on the pilgrimage with a student of his, named Rabban Markos, and they got as far as Persia, where they met with the Catholicos (patriarch) of the Church of the East, who was Mar Denha I. In the course of their travels they learned that the entire region around the Holy Land was in a state of tumult and war, so while they were wondering what to do, the Catholicos asked them to go to the court of Abaqa Khan, to get the documents officially recognizing Mar Denha as the patriarch. They did this, and Mar Denha intended to send them as messengers to China, but war to the east prevented that as well, so they stayed in Baghdad making themselves useful for a while. Mar Denha then died, and Rabban Markos was elected Catholicos of the Church of the East, taking the name Mar Yahballaha III. They went to Abaqa again to get the official confirmation letters, but Abaqa had died and his son Arghun had become ruler of the Ilkhanate.

The Mameluk territories to the south and west were extreme irritations to Ilkhanate, and so Arghun Khan hoped for an alliance between the Buddhist Mongols in the East and the Christian Franks in the West to fight together and conquer the Muslim Mamelukes Syria and the surrounding region. He asked Mar Yahballaha to recommend someone to go to the West with letters proposing it. Mar Yahballaha, of course, recommended his teacher Rabban Bar Sauma. So Rabban Bar Sauma, who had never been able to complete his pilgrimage to Jerusalem because of the dangers, in his old age now had a new pilgrimage.

It was quite a journey. He visited Constantinople and was stunned by Hagia Sophia; while there he met with Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos. He sailed to Italy, and as they were sailing past Sicily, he saw the eruption of Mount Etna on June 18, 1287. On June 24, 1287, he saw from a distance the Battle of Sorento, a naval battle between France and Spain in the War of the Sicilian Vespers.

A big part of Bar Sauma's mission was to deliver the messages to Mar Papa, the Catholicos of the West, but when he got to Rome, the pope had recently died. So he toured St. Peter's and talked with Cardinals. Since they were thirteenth-century Catholic churchmen, they wanted to discuss and argue, and so they asked Bar Sauma what his views on various theological topics were, and he acquitted himself fairly well, although he had to cut them short and finally tell them that he wasn't there to debate theology to deliver his letters and received the blessing of the Mar Papa in Rome. Since there was no Mar Papa at the time, he continued on his way: Tuscany and Genoa, where he spent the winter, and then on to France, where he met King Philip the Fair. King Philip was interested in the alliance, and so arranged to have a French nobleman go back with Bar Sauma whenever he ended up going back. In Gascony he delivered the message to King Edward I of England, as well, who would eventually send an ambassador to Arghun Khan's court. (Despite the interest, however, very little ever came of the attempt to build a Franco-Mongol Alliance.)

Bar Sauma was a bit worried about not having delivered a message to Mar Papa -- it meant his mission was strictly speaking a failure, and Mongol governments were not exactly tolerant of failure. One of the people Bar Sauma had talked to, however, had business that took him to Rome, and so Bar Sauma received a message from the newly elected Mar Papa, Pope Nicholas IV, inviting him to Rome. So back to Rome he went to meet with the Pope and deliver his message; the Pope asked him to stay for the holy days, because it was halfway through Lent. He was treated with great hospitality, and he suggested to the Pope that he should celebrate the Divine Liturgy one day so that the Pope would know what the Use of the Church of the East was. The Pope thought this was an excellent idea, so Bar Sauma celebrated the Divine Liturgy to a very large crowd who were curious to see how Christians among the Mongols said Mass. The people were impressed, and said that it was the same rite as their own, just with differences you'd expect from the differences in language.

So Bar Sauma asked for something a bit more courageous: he asked if he could receive communion from the Pope himself. And on Palm Sunday, he did. It was a very emotional experience for him. He saw the service of Holy Thursday in St. John Lateran, and the Maundy footwashing, the Good Friday procession, Holy Saturday and the Easter Vigil, and then Easter Day at St. Mary Major, and a week later a consecration of bishops.

The Pope invited him to continue to stay in Rome, but Bar Sauma had to get back to let people know that he had finished his mission. He asked the Pope for relics to take back with him. The Pope pointed out that they couldn't give relics to everyone who came to Rome, or they'd soon have none, but because Bar Sauma's pilgrimage had been so unusually long, they would make an exception in this case, so they gave him some small relics. The Pope also sent with him a tiara and vestments for Mar Yahballaha and a papal bull recognizing Mar Yahballaha's authority and jurisdiction as Patriarch over the Church of the East, and naming Bar Sauma as Apostolic Visitor to the East. And so Bar Sauma returned to Baghdad in honor, where he would die in 1294.

But not before he wrote a book describing his extraordinary journey. The original Persian text doesn't seem to have survived, but a Syriac abridgement was made at some point, continuing the story through the entire reign of Mar Yahballaha. The text was completely translated into English in 1928 by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, under the title, The Monks of Kublai Khan, Emperor of China, which you can read online.

Rabban Bar Sauma's visit may have piqued Pope Nicholas IV's interest in the East; not long afterward he sent several missions to various parts of the East. The most successful of these was that of John of Montecorvino, who founded a Catholic mission in Beijing that lasted for several decades. Mar Yahballaha, in turn, explicitly affirmed communion with Rome in a 1304 letter to Pope Benedict XI; but it was not a union that had much practical effect, or that lasted past his death.

Plato Was Closed; Mine Eyes No More Awake

Sonnet
by William Julius Mickle

Plato was closed; mine eyes no more awake;
But Plato's lore still vision'd round my head:
Meseem'd the Elysian dales around me spread,
Where spirits choose what mortal forms to take:
'Mine be the poet's eye; I crowns forsake.'
Sudden before me stood an awful shade;
On his firm mien simplicity array'd
In majesty, the Grecian bard bespake:
He thus: 'Bright shines the poet's lot untried;
Canst thou than mine to brighter fame aspire!
High o'er the' Olympian height my raptures tower'd,
Each Muse the fleet-wing'd handmaid of mine
Yet o'er their generous flight what sorrow plied,
While freezing every joy Dependence lour'd!'

William Julius Mickle was a Scottish poet most famous in his own day for translating the Lusiad. The narrator in this poem must have been reading the end of the Republic.

Themistocles in Plato's Gorgias

After this he equipped the Piraeus, because he had noticed the favorable shape of its harbors, and wished to attach the whole city to the sea; thus in a certain manner counteracting the policies of the ancient Athenian kings.

For they, as it is said, in their efforts to draw the citizens away from the sea and accustom them to live not by navigation but by agriculture, disseminated the story about Athena, how when Poseidon was contending with her for possession of the country, she displayed the sacred olive-tree of the Acropolis to the judges, and so won the day. But Themistocles did not, as Aristophanes the comic poet says, ‘knead the Piraeus on to the city,’ nay, he fastened the city to the Piraeus, and the land to the sea.

[Plutarch, Lives, Themistocles 19.2-3]

Themistocles (along with Pericles) was one of the architects of Athenian greatness. He is also (along with Pericles) something of a villain in the Platonic dialogues, and the above passage by Plutarch captures, I think, why this is, since Plato sees Themistocles as perverting the true nature of Athens. In the next sections Plutarch will note that the ancient Greeks thought of maritime empire as the "mother of democracy", because it puts the real power in the hands of those who control the ships; and I think the argument can be made that Themistocles' subversion of Athenian principles connects to Plato's skeptical views on the stability of democracy.

The place one can see the thematic opposition play out most clearly, although without any names, is in the Atlantis myth of the Timaeus and the Critias, in which the island is the symbolic representation of the ideal of maritime empire, which is opposed to the autochthonic, and thus land-focused, Athenians. The sea as a factor in Athenian corruption comes up elsewhere in the dialogues, e.g., in Laws. But it is in the Gorgias that Plato is fairly explicit about what, precisely, he sees wrong with the Themistoclean sea-dream.

Themistocles was the first politician fully to understand the implications of the overthrow of the Athenian kings and their replacement with the Demos: namely, that anyone could have any power that they wanted as long as they could convince enough people to give it to them. He is also very recognizable as a politician in our sense of the word. He moved to the poor part of town, playing the part of a man of the people, going from door to door and asking the poor citizens of Athens for their assistance, being careful to remember everyone's name. People, of course, loved it, and thus Themistocles built a constituency; on the basis of that, he campaigned for office. Being an excellent speaker, roused the crowds in his favor again and again. It is thus not surprising that Gorgias mentions him as an example of the power of rhetoric (455d-e):

GORGIAS: Well, Socrates, I'll try to reveal to you clearly everything oratory can accomplish. You yourself led the way nicely, for you do know, don't you, that these dockyards and walls of the Athenians and the equipping of the harbor came about through the advice of Themistocles and in some cases through that of Pericles, but not through that of the craftsman?

SOCRATES: That's what they say about Themistocles, Gorgias. I myself heard Pericles when he advised us on the middle wall.

Themistocles is certainly in mind when Socrates and Polus argue over whether one wants to be able to do whatever you like, "whether it's putting people to death or exiling them, or doing any and everything just as you see fit" (469c). One of the major early highlights of Themistocles' career was his convincing the people to ostracize (temporarily exile) his major political rival, Aristides. But another possible sign of it is when Socrates rejects Polus's idea by using the example of the "marvelous tyrannical power" of a dagger (469e):

On seeing it, you'd be likely to say, "But Socrates, everybody could have great power that way. For this way any house you see fit might be burned down, and so might the dockyards and triremes of the Athenians, and all their ships, both public and private." But then that's not what having great power is, doing what one sees fit.

We see a reverse of this in the life of Themistocles. At one point, it is said, Themistocles came up with a plan to guarantee Athenian sea superiority: he would burn the combined fleet of Athens's allies, which at the time was wintering at Pegasae. He told the Athenians that he had a plan that would be extremely advantageous to them -- but he couldn't tell them what it was beforehand because it needed to be done with secrecy. And the Athenian Assembly, in a moment of wisdom, told him to tell the plan to Aristides, and if Aristides also thought it was a good plan, he would be fully authorized. When Themistocles told Aristides, Aristides replied to the Assembly that there was no plan that could be more advantageous to the Athenians, and none that could be more unjust; so they refused.

Themistocles comes up again explicitly in the discussion between Callicles and Socrates. Socrates asks whether the oratory directed to the Athenian people is done with regard to the best; that is, whether such political oratory is concerned with making people better or gratifying them like children. Callicles responds that it is too simplistic to put it this way, because some do and some don't. Socrates concedes the point, and says that it suffices for his purposes: there is flattery, which is shameful, and there is encouragement to virtue, which is admirable. But has Callicles ever seen the latter? Callicles responds that none of their contemporaries seem to be such; and Socrates asks whether this is also true of former times. Callicles mentions Themistocles, Cimon, Militiades, and Pericles, all of whom were major players in Athenian military greatness. And Socrates' response is unequivocal (503c-d):

Yes, Callicles, if the excellence you were speaking of earlier, the filling up of appetites, both one's own and those of others, is the true kind. But if this is not, and if what we were compelled to agree on in our subsequent discussion is the true kind instead--that a man should satisfy those of his appetites that, when they are filled up, make him better, and not those that make him worse, and that this is a matter of craft--I don't see how I can say that any of these men has proved to be such a man.

Socrates will later press Callicles on the point again, and when Callicles insists that these Athenian heroes really did make the city better than it was, Socrates replies that if this is so, then when (say) Pericles started out, the people should have been worse, but as time went on, they got better. But, Socrates notes, as time went on the Athenians got tired of all of these people: Pericles was convicted of embezzlement (although he was later restored to office), Cimon was ostracized, Miltiades narrowly avoided being put to death, and Themistocles was ostracized and later, under encouragement from the Spartans, they tried to summon him to trial, probably on trumped-up charges, and he fled for his life.*

Callicles has throughout been arguing that someone who pursues philosophy rather than oratory can be charged on false charges and unable to defend themselves, so although it is not emphasized by Socrates, it is very relevant to the discussion. People like Themistocles work by flattering the people, and it is no more surprising that this makes the people worse than it is surprising if you became less athletic because you got nutritional advice from the doughnut shop, or that people become sick if they are given incentive to do things that are bad for their health. To be sure, people praise Themistocles for his achievements. But in reality they have sickened the city and erratic behavior is inevitable (519a):

For they filled the city with harbors and dockyards, walls, and tribute payments and such trash as that, but did so without justice and self-control. So, when that fit of sickness comes on, they'll blame their advisers of the moment and sing the praises of Themistocles and Cimon and Pericles, the ones who are to blame for their ills. Perhaps, if you're not careful, they'll lay their hands on you, and on my friend Alcibiades, when they lose not only what they gained but what they had originally as well, even though you aren't responsible for their ills but perhaps accessories to them.

Of course, this does not mean that they will not harm Socrates, either. But if the leaders of the city are already sickening the city, its behavior will be erratic regardless; the question is, what politics makes the city healthy rather than sick? And, of course, the answer Socrates gives is that he is the only one, or perhaps at best one of a few through history, who practice the "true politics", the kind that aims at what is really good for people rather than what they merely happen to like.


-----

* It is worth keeping this in mind when considering the argument Socrates gives in Plato's Meno that virtue cannot be taught because Themistocles, as a virtuous man, would have taught his sons more virtue than they show -- we should be wary of the ironic edge of the argument.

Quotations are from Plato, Gorgias, Zeyl, tr, in Plato: Collected Works, Hutchison, ed., Hackett (Indianapolis: 1997).

A Quick Trip to Italy, Miscellanea VIII

Rome: Walking Away from Vatican City

More shots of Castel Sant'Angelo:

The Tiber River:

Whoever does Roman advertising for Sky Box Sets has an impeccable sense of location:

The entrance to the Parthenon:

Milan

More external shots of the Duomo:

The equestrian statue of Vittorio Emmanuel in front. Because there were so many events going on, it was hard to get any good picture of it:

Inside the church:

Two more shots of Santa Maria delle Grazie:

Castello Sforzesco:

Can you spot the cat?

And those are the miscellaneous shots for the trip.

Maronite Year LIX

July 10 is the Feast of the Blessed Massabki Brothers, Abdel Mooti Massabki, Francis Massabki, Raphael Massabki. They lived in Damascus during a time when tensions were very high in the Ottoman Empire. A great civil war broke out in the region of Mount Lebanon and Syria in 1860 between Maronites and their Druze governors. The fighting was fierce, and the Maronites at an inevitable disadvantage against Druze forces backed by Ottoman troops. In July 1860, the fighting came to Damascus, and the results were brutal as much of the relatively peaceful Christian population was slaughtered by Druze and Muslim paramilitary groups while the government looked the other way -- thousands of Christians died in the Damascus Massacre, perhaps as many as ten thousand, and the Christian quarter of the city was almost entirely destroyed. The massacre might well have been total had it not been for cases of Christians being saved by their Muslim neighbors, especially in poor areas around the city. Of note as well was the work of Abdelkader El Djezairi, an Algerian Sufi freedom fighter who was living in exile in Damascus at the time; having forewarning of the trouble, he and his fellow Algerians sheltered hundreds of Christians in his house and sent his sons out into danger in order to bring Christians to safety.

But there were many who had no such protection, and no recourse but to pray. The Massabki brothers, prominent Maronites in the city, were praying in a Franciscan church on July 9, 1860 and given the choice to die or convert to Islam. They were beatified in 1926 by Pius XI.

Ninth Sunday of Pentecost
2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10; Luke 4:14-21

O Christ who knew no sin, but who was made sin for us,
in You we are transformed into divine holiness.
Who can praise Your mercy? We cannot count Your wonders,
which You performed on the day of Your resurrection.

With David we exclaim, 'This is the Lord's day; rejoice!'
This day has no equal; it is the crown of all feasts.
Let us welcome our Lord, who on Sunday has saved us.
O Lord, we ask that You forgive our sins and our faults.

Grant good works to us, Lord, rising like pleasing fragrance;
grant us genuine faith, an incense in Your presence;
grant us truth of witness, a temple for Your great name.
Send Your Spirit upon us in charity and hope.

Under lash, in prison, in the tumult of the mob,
in exhaustion and fast, in sleeplessness and torment,
in affliction, in need, in condemnation and fear,
grant us the patience of those who bear Your holy Cross.

Though they call us liars, may we speak Your holy truth.
Though they ignore our words, may we rest only in You.
Though they harm and slay us, may we live in Christ Jesus.
May our weapon on every side be true innocence.

Though they make us to mourn, let us in Spirit rejoice.
Though we are but beggars, may we enrich the whole world.
Though lacking legacy, may meekness inherit all.
May we be gracious with the grace that comes from Your Name.

May we be pure-minded, enlightened and forgiving;
may we rely on You -- in charity's graciousness,
in truth of the gospel, in the power of mercy --
whether we are honored or condemned, praised or betrayed.



The Feast of the Three Blessed Massabki Maronite Martyrs
Hebrews 12:1-9; Luke 12:6-10

Let us praise Christ the Martyr;
He shed His blood for our sins
and crowns those who persevere.
Behold the Massabki saints!
Their crown is of purest gold.
Holy martyrs, pray for us!

O brothers, You prayed in faith
and died in Christ, in His Church,
forgiving persecutors,
like the Lord upon His Cross.
Thus you are honored with Him!
Holy martyrs, pray for us!

Jesus said, "Follow." You did.
You heard the call of heaven
and for love of Christ endured.
Trusting in Christ's great mercy,
You won crowns of victory.
Holy martyrs, pray for us!

Rome, Naples et Florence: September 1816, Part II

A bit behind on this! My second course of the summer just started and I had underestimated how much re-working I needed to do for it.

The previous outing

We are currently on page 8.

[Milan, 24 septembre]

We finally get to Italy! Transports de joie, battements de coeur.

At least for the first day, I think, we can give Stendhal some sympathy in his enthusiasm; he comes into Milan tired from a long journey, and the Teatro alla Scala is the first proof of the worthwhileness of it all. And it is true that it was one of the greatest opera houses of the day, and like every great opera house, it is a bit of royal glory.



[25 septembre]

Unsurprisingly, he then makes sure to attend a performance at the «premier théâtre du monde», in particular a performance of La testa di bronzo. He is enthusiastic about it; in fact, he will not stop talking about it for most of his stay in Milan.

What I can find about this opera is interesting. La Scala had a contest in order to find new librettists, and in 1816, it chose Felice Romani, who was just starting out. (Felice Romani would become a very famous librettist.) For the music, it chose Carlo Soliva, also a novice, who was about twenty-five. Soliva was known for writing his operas in the style of Mozart, which will be why Stendhal will keep comparing him to Mozart. La testa di bronzo was wildly popular, with 47 performances in 1816-1817. And Soliva would never top that. Mozart not long afterward fell out of fashion and Soliva would go on to have a respectable career as a composer of chamber music and choral pieces. There is a video with excerpts from La testa di bronzo (and an analysis of the libretto), at YouTube, so you can get a sense of what Stendhal is geeking out over.

The reviewer at the Edinburgh Review finds Stendhal's ecstasies at Milan a bit excessive:

...when he gets to Milan, and sees the Scala, he is beside himself.... This is the first impression; but the second is still more violent; and he concludes a page and a half of rapture by saying that he is 'intoxicated and transported while he writes.' Night after night he goes to the same place, and his transports suffer no sensible abatement; for he goes on raving about the actors, actresses, decorations, and orchestra, the whole time of his stay at Milan.

[26 septembre]

In the brief mention of Desio (added for later editions), Stendhal is probably thinking in particular of the Villa Tittoni Traveris.



We get more of La Scala, and why it is the «premier théâtre du monde». The end of the entry, I think, involves a nice turn of phrase: «Le degré de ravissement où notre âme est portée est l'unique thermométre de la beauté, en musique». That's a very Romantic view, of course, the notion that the only measure of beauty is transport of the soul. And it raises interesting questions about the relative importance of the Romantic thermometer (emotional intensity) and the Classical measuring-stick (rational order). In any case, unless Stendhal is a faulty thermometer, everything about La Scala is very, very beautiful.

[27 septembre]

Stendhal goes through the story of La testa di bronzo, enthusiastically. It is perhaps notable that all of this is toned-down from what Stendhal originally published.

Is it a work of genius? Stendhal asks.

[28 septembre]

It is a work of genius, he insists. I don't know why it took him a day to answer the question, but presumably he put some thought into it.

«Cela plus beau comme les plus vives symphonies de Haydn», he says; one of the comparisons that the reviewer in the Edinburgh Review refers to in discussing how over-the-top Stendhal's raptures are. As noted above, we can give Stendhal the comparisons to Mozart; Soliva was a famously Mozart-ish composer. But his comparison to Haydn does seem to rest on a rather slender thread.


We are done with September, but not with Milan or La Scala. Or La testa di bronzo. Or Carlo Soliva. But fortunately, Stendhal will discover other things to talk about in Milan in October. I'll pick up on page 13 in two weeks.

Dashed Off XIV

The modern age gets much of its texture from the tendency of people to think pleasure must be pursued unless it is obligatory not to do so. This is why it can seem libertine one moment and intrusively intolerant the next.

It seems plausible that some potential parts of a virtue would have greater affinity to some quasi-integral parts than others. Think about this & whether it would, or could, establish a principle of extrapolation in the classification of virtues.

Note that while John and Mark mostly record different events, the overall narrative chronology of each is very similar (the two major exceptions being the cleansing of the temple and the anointing with oil, with John clearly making a thematic point) -- i.e., the fit of various ministries and missions is quite close.

Wealth seems to lead people to overestimate their quality of life.

evolutionary trees as etiologies of types

Every age overassimilates thought itself to its preferred intellectual genres and formats of intellectual communication.

temperance as the virtue suitable to trying things out

exploitation of workers by government agencies

usurious taxation: taxing without regard to specific service, risk, or expense

Assessing scientific progress requires considering many distinct lines of progress.

true induction as a discovery of the potential through the actual

Whenever someone speaks of free will, substitute (what is really the same) 'love with understanding'. Strange views will sometimes emerge.

intemperance as the overflow of craving

health as a means to effective virtue

statistical pareidolia

Most of statistics is classificatory.

the intrinsic ecclesial responsibility for preserving and reconstructing records

Baptism : baptism :: Transfiguration : confirmation :: Ascension : ordination

The priest is to (1) prepare the faithful to take their place with Christ; (2) intercede for them; (3) administer sacraments by which they may receive grace. Each of these reflects a work of Christ Ascended.

The efficiency of resource allocation is always relative to a goal.

Institutions are structured by expectations.

The veil of ignorance gets us only to the least unhelpful system that operates on the assumption that human beings are interchangeable.

Prediction, and what can be predicted, is always relative to means of measurement.

philosophical systems as interactions of design solutions

Beauty opens out to sublimity.

'Aristotelian propositions' as switches

Medical decisions must not only focus on health as their primary end but must do so realistically, recognizing that health can be subordinate to other ends.

One who is noble does before saying; in doing, says.

Moral luck is weightable luck.

classification as a way of solving multiple problems simultaneously

Descartes's argument can be seen as an argument that the capacity for doubt requires the existence of God (or, what amounts to the same, that the free will required for inquiry into truth requires the existence of God).

Consequentialism is intrinsically biased in favor of those who have the physical and social means of manipulating consequences.

Note that Rashi reads the woman in Pr 31 as Torah: woman of valor = Torah; husband = Holy One; wool & flax = Mishnah & Midrash; food = teaching; dressed in crimson = circumcision or commandments; children = students of Torah.

Rashi glosses the key of the House of David (Is 22:22) as 'The key of the Temple and the government of the House of David'.

Social movements, carried on long enough, always have elements that metastasize.

the twofold primacy of the sacraments and the Life of Christ for liturgy and liturgical law -- note that if the latter is understood broadly to include sacramental anticipation of Christ in OT and Christ as Head of Mystical Body and His anticipated coming again in glory, then the primacy of the Whole Life of Christ

obedience as self-sacrifice (Montessori)

goods capable of encompassing other goods

(1) care for divine things (seek ye first...)
(2) rendering to others what is due to them in the economy of salvation (be perfect as...)
(3) endurance as witness of divine things (take up your cross...)
(4) love of the beauty of divine life (Rejoice...)

It is curious that Whewell's Moral Ideas amount to Justice in the broad sense (Benevolence, Justice, Truth, Order) and Temperance (Purity), particularly given the fact that he criticizes the traditional list for not being complete. What is more his two preferred supplementary principles, for Zeal/Earnestness and Moral Purpose seem to be associated with Prudence.

Hope as the means to victory over pain
victory over ignorance, victory over pain, victory over evil

Revelation 5 as establishing the principles of Christian liturgy

Every gift is a sign of the giver who is principle for it.

Almsdeeds of the Church are signs of salvation.

well-being as participation in a network of positive fulfillment of the needs of human life (successful participation in the active work of being human) -- note convergence of the Aristotelian and the Confucian here

virtues as the principles of the operative networks of human life

Exodus 34:6-7 as the essential nerve of the Old Testament -- it is explicitly referred to in Nm 14:18; 2 Chr 30:9; Neh 9:17; Ps 86:15; Ps 103:8; Ps 111:4; Ps 145:6; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; poss Mic 7:18

Focus on replication emphasizes effect production and minimizes all things not relevant to effect, including normal features and natural invariances. Thus replication is important for establishing that an effect exists and what the effect is -- but it puts us in a weak position for explaining it properly.

(1) All things are known representationally; therefore idealism or something like it; therefore skepticism allowing idealism or immaterialism.
(2) All material things are known representationally; mind is not known representationally; therefore immaterialism

The Holy Spirit is the author of Church teaching, the witness to Church teaching, and the expositor of Church teaching. By the first we know that Scripture is authoritative; by the second we know what Scripture is; and by the third we know that Scripture may be correctly understood, and what errors to avoid in understanding it.

to be ordered, rational, and restrained

Respect for women derives from respect for motherhood and for virginity, as the schools of this respect. Where neither mother nor maiden is respected, women in general tend not to be repsected -- these are not the whole, but they are the minimal crystals from which the rest grows.

Innocence alone protects only against obvious evils.

Everyone including saints resist God; in this life we all drag when it comes to divine vocation. But we may lessen our resistance.

Human beings construct meaningful relations discursively: being socially rational animals, it is inconsistent with our nature to have meaningful relationships that are instantaneous rather than reasoned out.

Human meaningful relationships are mediated (1) by signs and (2) by institutions and social structures.

For every atheistic argument that is not a priori, ask what kind of history it requires.

Scientific inquiry continually faces new problems of how to go beyond mere trial and error -- as possibilities increase, one needs more.

Proper liturgy is a sacred action of union with God.

The devil's preferred method is to attack the weakness in our strength -- not our bare weakness, nor, head on, our full strength, but that in our strength that can run out of control.

Inquiry is itself a good.

authority as a union of wisdom, power, and goodness (note that in practice any of these three can be indirect and/or derivative -- e.g., the authority of the politician may not be from his own wisdom, power, goodness, but those of the makers of the constitution, or the people, or whatever happens to be relevant)

interpretation, translation, and arbitration networks in teh Chruch

If Epicurean atoms work like dust motes or water droplets, you would in fact expect them to swerve. And it seems likely (cp Lucretius) that this is indeed the root of the idea.

beauty in each part, sublimity in the whole

Safety, like efficiency, is relative to ends.

rule of law, triage, regulated civil service, comity of authorities, solidary practices, honest market, hortatory forum, protections of human dignity, humanitarian traditions, due process

the Church as a seedbed and greenhouse for the formation and cultivation of humanitarian traditions

5 soil-forming factors; climate, parent material, topography (relief) organisms
edaphological concept of soil: medium for plant growth
principles of soil fertility: drainage, tillage, organic matter, lime, fertilizer
relief : statics :: climate : dynamics
perhaps - :: climate : thermodynamics
Time seems to be a soil-forming factor only in the sense that some things deteriorate or transform by inherent factors, or do so by external factors not in the main traceable (as in erosion through occasional wind or deposition through microtremors). These kinds of factors are mostly characterized statistically or by long-term probabilities for the aggregate; thus rates; thus time as the primary hold on this slow but ever-changing bubbling activity of the soil in its immediate environment.

the teleology of a problem within a system of problems

vice filiation as indicating (or paralleling?) high-probability failure cascades in the transformation of ethical positions
- it's certainly the case that the doctrine of the mean indicates areas of potential confusion allowing such shifts.

Paul clearly attributes miracle-working to himself (2 Cor 12:12, Rm 15:18, Gal 3:5) and to others (1 Cor 12:28). Christ identifies miracles as signs of his divine mission (Mk 2:10, 11:2-7; Jn 10:38).

Mk 6:13 establishes oil as a sign of instrumental work in the Holy Spirit

H.E.G. Paulus's account of the life of Jesus makes it even more fantastically astounding than the traditional account. This tends to be true of mistaken-natural-event interpretations of miracles -- they trade small, relatively modest miracles for a truly massive preternatural miracle constituting the life of Christ itself.
Mythological interpretations have an analogous problem, except with preternatural moral miracle rather than a mix of preternatural physical and moral, but it is less obvious because (1) the miracle would be purely moral rather htan an integration, and moral real allows more flexibility; (2) moral miracle is less obvious and apparent simply by its nature and conditions.

quantity & parts outside of parts ('outside' is situal -- relation with respect to whole and other parts -- rathe rthan local)

relatedness (referentiality)
(1) subject in which the reference is present
(2) term to which the reference is directed
(3) foundation by which the reference is constituted truth as the stabilizing and supporting skeletal structure of happiness

Practical philosophy only reaches its natural destination when it contemplates the fullness of civilization.

Overflow (redundantia) reflects purity, and transfigures it.

Jewish purity laws as focused on table, household, and sanctuary

The human mind delights in generic forms combined with distinguishing surprises.

-- jurisdictional overlap and 'overlap in one respect or way but not in another'

To talk only of scientific method overlooks the civilizational factors required to make it viable.

Gnome Ann

Re-Post: Sterne and Fun with Argument Classification

[This is a re-post, with some revision and expansion, of a post from May 2010.]

My uncle Toby would never offer to answer this by any other kind of argument than that of whistling half a dozen bars of Lillibullero.—You must know it was the usual channel through which his passions got vent, when anything shocked or surprised him;—but especially when anything which he deemed very absurd was offered.

As not one of our logical writers, nor any of the commentators upon them, that I remember, have thought proper to give a name to this particular species of argument, I here take the liberty to do it myself, for two reasons: first, That, in order to prevent all confusion in disputes, it may stand as much distinguished for ever, from every other species of argument—as the Argumentum ad Vericundiam, ex Absurdo, ex Fortiori, or any other argument whatsoever:—and, secondly, that it may be said, by my children's children, when my head is laid to rest,— that their learned grandfather's head had been busied to as much purpose once as other people's;—that he had invented a name,—and generously thrown it into the TREASURY of the Ars Logica, for one of the most unanswerable arguments in the whole science. And, if the end of disputation is more to silence than convince,—they may add, if they please, one of the best arguments too.

I do, therefore, by these presents, strictly order and command, That it be known and distinguished by the name and title of the Argumentum Fistulatorium, and no other;—and that it rank hereafter with the Argumentum Baculinum and the Argumentum ad Crumenam, and for ever hereafter be treated of in the same chapter.

As for the Argumentum Tripodium, which is never used but by the woman against the man;—and the Argumentum ad Rem, which contrariwise, is made use of by the man only against the woman,—as these two are enough in conscience for one lecture —and, moreover, as the one is the best answer to the other—let them likewise be kept apart, and be treated of in a place by themselves.

[Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, i. xxi.]

Argumentum fistulatorium means, roughly, 'argument by piping'.

Ad verecundiam, ex absurdo, and ex Fortiori are, respectively, argument from authority, from the absurdity of the position, and from the truth of a stronger conclusion. They are legitimate, and would have been fairly standard argument classifications.

All the rest are jokes, but argumentum baculinum was already a very old joke by Sterne's time; it occurs when you resolve an argument by beating your opponent with a club or a stick. Sterne might have Henry Fielding's joke essay on argumentum baculinum in mind here, and another possible background source is Spectator 239 -- although, again, it is an old joke. Remarkably, later lists of fallacies (which are descendants of the argument-classifications Sterne is mocking) by humorless authors will often seriously list argumentum ad baculum as an actual fallacy, namely, one in which you try to end a conversation by threatening someone.*

Argumentum ad Crumenam would be appeal to the purse; it is also a joke argument-form that was later taken to be a serious one, and is later toaken to involve claiming that your view is better because you are richer. [In fact, Sterne's use of the phrase is to mean arguing by betting that something is true.] Fielding's essay makes a similar joke, but calls it argumentum pecuniarum; the Spectator does as well, without labeling it. I don't know of any source earlier than Sterne who uses this phrase, so it's possible that Sterne invented it on the spot.

Argumentum Tripodium and Argumentum ad Rem are bawdy jokes, involving references to genitalia. The second one is rather clever; literally it means something like, 'argument to the point or purpose', i.e., a relevant argument, and so he manages simultaneously to be bawdy and make the age-old and otherwise tired joke about how only men stick to the point.

----
* Sterne, however, is not listing fallacies; it was Whately in the nineteenth century who adapted earlier lists of argument-forms to discussion of fallacies. In Sterne's day ad verecundiam et al. are simply treated as kinds of arguments, with no implication that they are bad arguments. (Whately recognized this; later textbook authors following him did not.) If we look at the Logic of Isaac Watts, which is probably the best 18th-century logic textbook written in English, he takes argumentum ad verecundiam to be a logical common-place or topos -- i.e., one of the ways you would come up with the middle terms to build an argument is by drawing them from the sentiments of "some wise, good, or great man". The whole point of Sterne's joke is that there is no suggestion of fallacy at all.

Three Poem Re-Drafts

Sooner or Later

Sooner or later we meet face to face
with the hard, bitter truth of life's urgent chase:
There is never a winner. We will all lose this race,
no matter our talent, no matter our pace.

"Sooner or later: yes, but how long?
This race may not go to the swift or the strong,
but we think some may win." There we are wrong.
The bells in the tower toll loss in their song.

"But maybe the race is not meant to be won!"
Time is the swiftest; no feet can outrun
the pace of its step. "But look at the sun
and tell me it's pointless, even when done.

"Maybe the race is supposed to be lost!
Where is the worth in the work without cost?"
And if by the storm we are endlessly tossed,
our hearts will grow cold with an undying frost.

But maybe the point is to learn how to lose,
how to let go the past, every wound, every bruise,
how to capture true joy, or (better yet) choose
a life with more colors than victory's hues.

Nighttime

Where am I, but here?
Fresh, cool wind pours on my face;
Frost-bright moon shines in my eyes.
Swift fish play, splash, in the lake.
High stars sing hymns in the skies.
Where are you, but here?

Where are you, but here?
Breeze-blown leaves shush in the trees,
Small birds trill flutes in the dark.
Sweet blooms raise scent for the bees.
Shy deer eat shoots in the park.
Where am I, but here?

The Thieves of Night

The thieves of night have stolen sleep.
I abetted them.
The moon is high, my heart is hot,
the world is evendim;
I wonder if you walk somewhere
beneath the sickle slim
of moon that hunts the wayward stars.
Unslept, I wonder where you are.

With ink of night I write a verse.
I understand it not --
my heart unknowing lyrics writes
with subtle pen of thought,
but at the end oblivion
will come and take the lot;
my thoughts are stolen with my sleep --
I seek in vain the paths you keep.

The night itself is stolen, too;
I aided con and heist:
the bait is laid, the trap is set,
the prey thereby enticed.
The spring is sprung, the teeth close down
with ruthlessness of vise:
the dawn! And yet my thoughts still stray
to wonder if you'll chance my way.

Art Crime

This article arguing that all stolen art is on a level seems to make the error of assuming that the only consideration is whether a crime was originally committed, and not also (for example) the moral obligations of current possessors, the length of possession, the conditions of its being seized, the general curatorial responsibility for maintaining art, and the like, and also not to make an adequately sharp distinction between what is obligatory and what is merely good. On small scales and for individual pieces these don't always make much of a difference, but on large scales the moral interactions are rather more complicated. (Although it does seem a very good idea for museums to explain how each item in their collection came into their possession.)

Consider just one kind of complication. The bulk of the major churches of northern Europe, all of which are themselves highly expensive works of art, and the subsidiary art belonging to them, as well as monasteries, were seized from the Catholic Church by Protestant governments. Is this a theft or is it a legal shifting of jurisdiction (albeit under a legal regime that would certainly be regarded as absurd today)? If the latter, how does it differ from the appropriation of the Elgin marbles by the Ottoman Empire -- which had unquestioned legal control at the time? And whose shared heritage matters? Salisbury Cathedral and its clock are part of the shared heritage both of all the English people (most of whom are no longer Catholic) and of all Catholics throughout the world. I raise these points not because I think it's reasonable to demand that the Church of England give back all the seized churches -- this would be an unreasonable and pointless demand requiring the modern C of E, consisting entirely of people who did not actually cause the problem, to do something massively difficult from which they would not benefit at all -- but because whose heritage, whose tradition, whose jurisdiction, whose culture is in play is not a straightforward question.

But the single most important take-away is that it is possible to grow up to be a Professor of Art Crime, which admittedly makes for a more striking CV in every way. (A small field, though.)

Classification and the (Non)Primality of 1

Chances are, when you were told in your elementary school days what prime numbers are, you were told (as I was) that the number 1 is prime. The usual definition given is that a prime number has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself, and this is certainly true of 1. But in fact this has never been universally accepted among mathematicians, and seems only to have been widely accepted (as far as I can tell) for a brief period from the late nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century.

The ancient Greeks did not regard 1 as a prime number; they didn't regard 1 as a number, so they would have regarded the idea of 1 being a prime number as absurd. (1, they thought, was the source or principle of number -- it is not a number because it is what you use to make numbers out of. If 1 is not a number, then you can explain how you get numbers; otherwise, it's a bit of a mystery.) On the authority of the Greek mathematicians (and above all Euclid himself), pretty much nobody in the ancient or medieval West would have even thought of the primality of 1 -- someone proposing it would have sounded like they were making up new definitions for no good reason at all.

It's only about the sixteenth or seventeenth century that significant mathematicians occasionally start treating 1 as a prime number, and this slowly increases over time. The reason is primarily due to the idea that all positive numbers should be either prime or composite. (Those who are interested can look over some of the basic evidence in Caldwell, Reddick, and Xiong, "The History of the Primality of One: A Selection of Sources", which is available free online; there is commentary by Caldwell and Xiong in another paper, also freely available.)

The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic, however, has been the determining issue. The basic idea of the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic is that all whole numbers greater than 1 have a unique prime factorization -- for instance, the unique prime factorization for 25 is 5x5, that of 12 is 3x2x2, and so forth. This idea, extremely important since Gauss, has played an increasingly large role in the mathematician's conception of what whole numbers are. If we take 1 to be a prime number, though, there are no unique prime factorizations. You can still get the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic, without that much difficulty, just by adding additional 'except for 1'. But if you do that, then you have to add the exception every single time you use it -- and the importance of the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic is such that this might be a lot. So the very practice of mathematics has pushed against the idea that 1 is prime; taking it to be prime is extra work that doesn't get you anything important, but only makes it harder to reason smoothly and communicate simply -- only a little bit, to be sure, but it's a little bit that can add up very quickly. The rough and basic is described in the following Numberphile video:



What interests me about all of this is that it's a straightforward case of classification in mathematics. There's a lot of classificatory work in mathematics, but it tends to get overlooked when we are talking about how classification in general works. The question of whether 1 should be classified as prime, however, strikes me as a good example of what Whewell has in mind in discussing the primary elements of classification.

Whewell takes the basic regulative principle of all classification to be that it enables the assertion of true and general propositions, or, as he also puts it, general propositions (of science) should be possible. This is the end or goal of classification, and it is according to Whewell the measure of progress in classificatory sciences. Whewell is usually thinking of botany, zoology, and his own field of mineralogy, but it is a perfectly general point, and recognized as such by Whewell himself. In Aphorism VIII Concerning the Language of Science, Whewell gives an entirely general version of it: "Terms must be constructed and appropriated so as to be fitted to enunciate simply and clearly true general propositions". He calls this "the fundamental principle and supreme rule of all scientific terminology", and he goes on to say that it "applies equally to the mathematical, chemical, and classificatory sciences." Classification is the foundation of terminology, and both classification and terminology subserve the ends of rational inquiry.

Interestingly, Whewell recognizes that this general principle could lead to situations in which different contexts might require us to go in different directions. His example is that of whether whales should be counted as fish, and his answer is that it just depends in context on which happens to be more useful to expressing true general propositions, and it could be that in biology we should say No, while in law, however rational or rigorous, we should say Yes, because the relations that matter for true general propositions in law are not necessarily those that matter for true general propositions in biology.

Rule of Law, We Hardly Knew Ye

Multigrade Loves

C. S. I. Jenkins has an interesting paper at Ergo called "Modal Monogamy" which concerns the position that the only possible romantic love relationships are dyadic and exclusive (that's the 'modal monogamy', which is a horrible name for it). Jenkins argues (correctly) that such a view is both poorly motivated and inconsistent with actual facts about human behavior. One could add, I think, that it involves a conception of how love works that is dubious at best -- this idea that love is like a pipe between people, hermetically sealed off and easily discernible from all the other pipes. In reality, love by its nature diffuses and reflects onto other loves, and is refracted into different kinds of love. We see this quite clearly with other kinds of love than romantic love. Love of mother and father is not perfectly separable from the love they have for their children, for instance. Even if we stay at the level of purely romantic relationships, this self-diffusion of love is one of the very things that requires regimentation of relationships by custom and mutual understanding in the first place -- to keep it from diffusing badly.

In the course of the discussion, Jenkins suggests, although no more than suggests, that it is reasonable, given all of this, to conclude that (romantic) love is a multigrade relation. A relation is unigrade if it always has the same number of relata ('adicity' is the technical name for this number). Thus 'x is after y' is a binary relation; afterness will be a unigrade relation if every case of afterness is a binary relation. In topology, betweenness is a ternary relation ('x is between y and z'); it is unigrade because this always has to be the case. A relation is multigrade if it can relate a different number of relata in different circumstances. So if romantic love is multigrade, and R is the relation of mutual romantic loving (I add the 'mutual' because it simplifies things somewhat for exposition), we could have one case of L(x,y), 'x and y are related by loving (each other)', and another case in which the relation is L(x,y,z), 'x, y, and z are related by loving (each other)', where this is not taken just be shorthand for L(x,y) & L(y,z) & L(x,z).

I think Jenkins's suggestion is, in fact, correct of the actual relation of romantic love, and true of love in general, in fact. A parent loves his or her child; suppose he or she has another child; it makes no sense to count 'loves of children', and say that he or she has added a new and distinct love of child to a previous love of child. A friend loves a friend; suppose a new friend of them both joins them, now a Three Musketeers; this is not in any way adequately analyzable into each person having two loves-of-a-friend. Romantic love is not any different, whether the result happens to be tragedy, farce, or something else. (Jenkins pretty clearly has active polyamory in mind, as in n. 16, but there are obviously many other ways one can end up in such situations, including many in which one did not intend or want to end up in such a situation.)

There are a number of relations that seem to be very difficult to analyze in a purely unigrade way. For instance, very general relations, because they are very general: Let R be the relation of being related; then you can have R(x,y), R(x,y,z), R(w,x,y,z), and so on for any number of things -- and it has to be the same relation that can have all of these adicities. Interpersonal relations often also seem to be resistant to analysis entirely in terms of unigrade relations; because human beings are capable of structuring their relationships with each other in highly complicated ways.

There are arguments that all relations should be either unigrade or at least reducible to unigrade relations, but I've yet to come across a good one. The main one I know of, for instance, which is based on work by David Armstrong, manages both to confuse self-identity with identity across situations and to beg the question by treating adicity as intrinsic to all relations. Perhaps somewhere there's one worth taking seriously, but I've yet to find it. And the prima facie evidence against the idea is quite strong.

A Free Land or the Traitor's Block

One of the Signers
by John Greenleaf Whittier

O storied vale of Merrimac
Rejoice through all thy shade and shine,
And from his century's sleep call back
A brave and honored son of thine.

Unveil his effigy between
The living and the dead to-day;
The fathers of the Old Thirteen
Shall witness bear as spirits may.

Unseen, unheard, his gray compeers
The shades of Lee and Jefferson,
Wise Franklin reverend with his years
And Carroll, lord of Carrollton!

Be thine henceforth a pride of place
Beyond thy namesake's over-sea,
Where scarce a stone is left to trace
The Holy House of Amesbury.

A prouder memory lingers round
The birthplace of thy true man here
Than that which haunts the refuge found
By Arthur's mythic Guinevere.

The plain deal table where he sat
And signed a nation's title-deed
Is dearer now to fame than that
Which bore the scroll of Runnymede.

Long as, on Freedom's natal morn,
Shall ring the Independence bells,
Give to thy dwellers yet unborn
The lesson which his image tells.

For in that hour of Destiny,
Which tried the men of bravest stock,
He knew the end alone must be
A free land or a traitor's block.

Among those picked and chosen men
Than his, who here first drew his breath,
No firmer fingers held the pen
Which wrote for liberty or death.

Not for their hearths and homes alone,
But for the world their work was done;
On all the winds their thought has flown
Through all the circuit of the sun.

We trace its flight by broken chains,
By songs of grateful Labor still;
To-day, in all her holy fanes,
It rings the bells of freed Brazil.

O hills that watched his boyhood's home,
O earth and air that nursed him, give,
In this memorial semblance, room
To him who shall its bronze outlive!

And thou, O Land he loved, rejoice
That in the countless years to come,
Whenever Freedom needs a voice,
These sculptured lips shall not be dumb!

The signer in question is Josiah Bartlett, of New Hampshire; Bartlett was born in Amesbury, Massachusetts. In publication, Whittier provided a note of explanation:

Written for the unveiling of the statue of Josiah Bartlett at Amesbury, Mass., July 4, 1888. Governor Bartlett, who was a native of the town, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Amesbury or Ambresbury, so called from the “anointed stones” of the great Druidical temple near it, was the seat of one of the earliest religious houses in Britain. The tradition that the guilty wife of King Arthur fled thither for protection forms one of the finest passages in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King.

Radio Greats: The Fourth of July (Yankee Yarns)

Alton H. Blackington was a photojournalist who loved New England and who was also a passionate pursuer of human interest stories. He liked the weird, the silly, the heartwarming stories people told about their heritage. (Old-fashioned parts of New England have an almost unlimited number of such anecdotes, full of ghosts and clever tricksters and silly greenhorns and extravagant exaggerations drolly passed off as undeniable fact.) And he had a knack for re-telling them. Yankee Yarns, running from 1943 to 1951, was the distillation of all these traits.

"The Fourth of July", from 1951, tells a tale of some boys from Fairhaven, Massachusetts, who decide, after the town passes a law prohibiting noise on the night of Fourth of July, that they will make a big to-do anyway. They end up causing a bit more bedlam than even they were expecting to cause....