There is nothing wrong, as such, with having an opinion because it is convenient; the vast majority of our opinions are had because they are convenient. We get problems when we treat such opinions as more than opinions.
the bodily kinship of animal to animal (including human to nonhuman animal and human to human) as allowing a communication; given the generic commonality, we do something to make a specific commonality
We apprehend things precisely as apt for classifying.
Attention is inherently reduplicative.
the as-structure of an experiment
Functions are ends (teloi) of things as parts of interactive systems.
We are more capable of fully incorporating other animals into our life-system than other animals are capable of fully incoprorating us into theirs. This is precisely what it is for us to be superior to, and more noble than, other animals.
Following the law arises from our occupying 'the justice' for that part of society that is our life.
use and possession within the peace
Bureaucracies are dilatant, hardening against sudden change.
For a wide range of technologies, optimal use of the technology requires skill to do the thing without the technology. People who are capable of mental mathematics are better calculator users than those who are not, etc.
Preferences have no consistent inertia.
Many forms of moral anti-realism would apply in dreaming life as in waking, in fiction as in reality.
What is rightfully yours is yours up to the heights of heaven and down to the depths of hell.
A poem is not just about something but of and for it, as well.
We never really stop being willful children; we just become much more selective about it.
The 'greatest happiness' is indefinitely expandable.
'Bodily autonomy' requires that one be a person and also that the personhood of others be recognized.
Unreasoned change of law is always immensely dangerous to common good.
It is reasonable to hope that there will always be a reasonable hope.
Our natality begins before we are born, and continues afterward.
The Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic in origin, in structure, in doctrine, in sacrament, and in end.
the poem and architectural 'surprise'
Wisdom is not something human beings reach on their own, although there are many different ways others can contribute to the pursuit.
The Apostles who most appear by name in the Gospels are Simon Peter (about 40 passages), John (about 21 passages), James (about 18 passages), Judas Iscariot (about 13 passages), Andrew (about 7 passages), Matthew (about 4 passages). The others appear no more than 3 times (i.e., in the disciples lists).
Many things that are fine when said in limited contexts as figures of speech are heretical if taken literally or outside those contexts. This is true even of things that are known to be impeccably orthodox when understood correctly.
Martyrdom reconciles all saints.
All effects are indexical signs of their causes; some (e.g., impress in wax) are iconic signs of their causes; and others (e.g., design of machine) are symbolic signs of their causes.
A theory is always a way of considering something, and no theory as such rules out other ways of considering it.
People evaluate moral systems by personifying them, thinking of a pure practitioner.
the body as standing objective correlate
The many are often right for reasons of convenience rather than substance, which leads sophists to draw the false conclusion that there are no reasons of substance for it.
Every partisan political position, when not bound by prudence, leads to a counterfeit justice.
Every culture in every age is inured to unwise things.
Both progressivism and conservatism have a tendency to argue by proxies.
Realpolitik has always been a form of liberalism, the kind that chooses to emphasize that in liberalism which is most easily linked to effectual power.
Much of our practical moral reasoning has to be such as to be something that can be learned by children.
Most moral anti-realists are metaethical realists.
Defining probability spaces first requires being able to reason with undefined probability systems.
harmonies of higher-order attitudes (attitudes toward attitudes)
All human jurisdiction arises from a legitimate deputation by mission.
The light of rational sun is reflected in imaginative moon.
We learn what is by being guided by what ought to be.
Stress in English is the relatively greater working of the mouth.
Every profession has its mysteries, the things with which one must simply become familiar.
Events may be linked narratively or episodically. This is relevant to discussions of 'event causation'.
Lawyers and judges tend to make the mistake of thinking that the rule of law is rule by lawyers.
By the Incarnation and the founding of the Church, God maximizes His extrinsic glory by forming glorifiers who are divine and divinized, God giving extrinsic as well as intrinsic glory to God.
means-making causation
Every right creates an etiquette around itself.
potential, disposition, function, intention
The key question of philosophical cosmology: What is the actual necessity that makes the universe possible?
Every meaningful journey outside is also a journey inside.
the haiku-esque
the jural ubiquity of the crown
advice and assistance as latent functions of friendship
jural : occupation :: sacral : consecration
Sometimes by meaning we mean availability for use for communication as such, sometimes the actual use, sometimes the valuation of the use.
Laws of nature can only be a version of one of the following:
(1) immaterial agents or prior ideas of immaterial agents
(2) universals or relations between universals
(3) ends of action
(4) positive summaries of actual behavior.
Both individual right and social right are imitations of God.
"...a *single* subject lives at the same time in several acts of different content." Edith Stein
generic epistemic box : memory :: generic deontic box : anticipation
To apply the laws of nature to a scenario, we must also take into account the structure and organization of the scenario, which is entirely distinct from the laws of nature themselves. (It is false that we only need initial conditions unless we are including structure, which is often not the case.)
enjoying another's enjoying of a thing vs. enjoying a thing in another's enjoyment of it
As time goes on, differences in language inevitably create differences in spiritual practice.
the death of Moses as a type of the baptism of desire
How strange to have a Christianity only as wide as one's own mind working alone; how strange that people are so often tempted toward this.
scientific statements used purely expressively in social discourse
Friendships seed networks of advice and assistance.
priesthood
(1) as natural office
(2) as spiritiual fraternity
(3) as convenantal ordered ordering
(4) as sacramental participation
Love begins with not trying arbitrarily to select whom we love.
How loose and impressionistic a metaphor is depends on the metaphor.
Human beings experience being forced or manipulated to do good as a kind of humiliation.
"Every act of nilling presupposes some act of willing." Scotus
The more virtuous, the more free.
We train our empathy by stretching it and by precisifying it.
the final causality account of laws of nature
In making rules for a game, we make a right and wrong and in so doing also make something to count as cheating.
We could equally call Langauge 'Narrativity' or 'Story'.
contrition as baptism of tears
fine-tuning as sign of contingency vs fine-tuning as sign of teleology
counterfactuals of power vs counterfactuals of attribution
All of human knowledge is compatible with ignorance about many closely associated things.
No institution, however well designed or built, can survive perpetual vice.
If there is no human teleology, there is no human fulfillment.
You prove that there are proofs by proving things; likewise, you establish that things can be reliable by successful inductions.
The nation-state is a mish-mash of familial, feudal, civil, and ecclesial powers, which is why it is so congenial to dictatorship.
Virtues integrate with each other in such a way as to suggest even further unities of virtue, and the limit of this ever-increasing unity of virtue is divine, which is why ever-more integral character seems ever more divine.
While spiritual sense is not the source of demonstration, interpretation of the literal sense that is not confirmed by the spiritual sense is at least incomplete.
We recognize the actual by contrast to what is not but could be.
A running problem with how analytic philosophy is often taught is that it leads people massively to underestimate the amount of work required to build proper regimented-premise arguments, with the result of a lot of unnecessary sloppiness right at the beginning.
The truly vulnerable can only ultimately be protected by their neighbors, i.e., the people actually associated with them in an ongoing way.
The capacity to have moral stances is a stance-independent moral property.
An outcome is good insofar as it can be a good means to a good end.
Global moral anti-realism requires anti-realism about friendship.
"The will is free, so that freedom is both the substance of right and its goal, while the system of right is the realm of freedom made actual, the world of mind brought forth out of itself like a second nature." Hegel
Liberalism has tended to confuse inchoate initial freedom and consummate or perfected freedom.
producing signs by ostension: example, sample, replica, charade
producing signs by stylization
producing signs by stipulation
Everything Eco attributes to convention seems to presuppose signs and to be done by means of signs.
It is within friendship that we learn the attitudes that are moral.
We are in the image of God not just individually but also socially.
In storytelling, people often confuse the main character of the story and the object that the story is about, which can be a character. These functions can be united (but it is difficult); they are not the same.
The consistent actions of the good are inherently exemplary; regular solutions by virutous people create models that we copy; regular methods of prudence establish precedent; etc.
One of the signs of a bad political system is that it doesn't benefit its true believers, but uses them to benefit its cynical opportunists.
The power to hold multiple points of view with regard to the same thing -- this is a stick and a staff and a weapon -- is one of humanity's major survival powers.
The great things of human life never have only one value.
We should always use means consistent with necessary ends.
the natural fit of attitude and facts
-- Some situations easily give rise to some attitudes and make it difficult for other attitudes to be maintained.
-- Some attitudes are overreactions to events and some are underreactions.
It is easier to be sad when the skies are gray.
We are never reasoning without oughts.