The modern age is an age of trying to replace the internal with the external.
A goal in writing a book is to say what should be said but in a way that seems, however long it may be, like it ends too soon.
the just city considered mythologically (Timaeus), legendarily (Critias), and actually (Hermocrates)
the enjoyment of things being legally and juridically square
the consolidation of poetic inferences by convergence (e.g., Samir is moon, therefore bright; Samir is star, therefore bright; Samir is intelligent, therefore bright; Samir is smiling, therefore bright; thus Samir is bright)
Part of what makes Golan Trevize irritating as a character is that he argues every little thing, but is this related to his intuition and 'knack for rightness'? i.e., his mind surveys many paths at once and filters by stability in argument.
The scientific honors system is possible and to some extent practically necessary because scientific communication and scientific reference archiving requires that so many things be distinctly named.
Everything ontological can also be represented logologically.
The power of petition is a legislative power of the People.
Our remedies for corruption almost always assume that corruption is occasional, not institutional or systemic, even when people claim they are addressing institutional or systemic corruption.
worldbuilding as character support vs worldbuilding as spectacle
what is inferrable about a fictional character in a story vs what is inferrable about a fictional character from a story or set of stories vs what is positable about a fictional character from what is stated or inferrable
When we have stories about the same character that conflict, we posit the characters as being 'farther' from the storytelling, creating space for treating the stories as distinct 'traditional' or 'testimonial' lines to the character.
languages as supplementary reservoirs for languages (this is common with classical languages, like Latin and Greek for scientific terms in English, and dominant market languages, like English for business terms in other languages, but it happens sporadically in a spontaneous way with any two languages in close contact)
Convention is loose enough that it creates ghost-convention, things that aren't actually conventional but taken as such, and if taken as such enough, solidify into real conventions.
The saints become perpetual memorials of divine victory.
Necessities and preferabilities of necessary and preferable roles sometimes approximate rights.
Something seeming wise is a sign of exemplar causality.
Around every important truth one eventually finds deceptive imitations.
complex number amplitudes as representing actively accessible possibilities
We can make no sense of actions except in terms of primary beings relating them to other actions, passions, and dispositions.
"While every human being possesses the seed of metaphysics, not all possess the soil in which it can grow." Dewan
(1) God is at least ens rationis.
(2) God cannot be merely ens rationis.
That we have concepts we know by their presence; what they are must be discovered through reflection and inference.
What ought to be and what is are the same in the necessary.
ram-stam: impetuous, headstrong, or reckless
bellycheer: gluttonous feasting and self-indulgence in food
The more perfect the love, the fewer demands can be placed on it, because it is adequate in itself, and nothing beyond itself is needed. We place expectations on imperfect lvoes because there are standards beyond it that it must meet in order not to be defective.
The more perfect the love, the more it exceeds what consciousness can take in, and the more it appears a kind of being.
The Lord of the Rings is structured heavily by ironies: the least does the greatest deed, strength turns against itself, the unexpected brings about the inevitable, and so forth.
God as that on which self-evident principles converge
Love cannot be held to a consequentialist standard.
Most of virtue, like most of anything, can be imitated, even flawlessly, but that last little bit is a gap no mere imitation can ever overleap.
Kooks and loons play a definite role in the cognitive ecology, provoking arguments and reducing complacency, forcing retread of conclusions that can consolidate understanding and re-route inquiry around minor obstacles and push the repair of minor flaws. We see these things happen. A society of kooks and loons is obviously undesirable, but a society without them may well (1) be impossible for human beings and (2) have coutnerbalancing negative effects if it did turn out possible for us.
Repeition alone is always enough to persuade some people of some thing, which ones depending on personal backgrounds.
I think and I know with the shadow of light
that the beginning of day is found in the night.
Trauma itself is never drama.
A landscape is a traversable environment experienced as a unity by a person within a visual perspective.
In the universe as a whole, we find something that is almost, but only almost, a fit interlocutory for the human mind.
Make-believe is a possible response to fiction, but this is distinct from our response to the fiction as such. We often do not make-believe in response to fiction.
Bias is not merely systematic deviation from a standard of correctness, pace Thomas Kelly, unless you are just meaning a statistical tendency to one side; it involves a disproportionate inclination prior to the relevant judgments. It is the latter, merely pulling a bit to the side of a perfect bull's eye, that is relevant to belief and knowledge in a robust sense.
US Code Title 36 as a Congressional honors system
"Totalitarianism's idolatrous course can only be arrested by coming up against a genuinely spiritual way of life." Weil
the phenomeon of 'just going with it'
abstract type of the philosophical argument --ingression--> actual occasion of philosophical argument in mind
actual occasion --is prehended by (along with other aspects of the world related to it)--> actual occasion
objective theories, illusion theories, and pretense theories of landscape expressiveness
The plural of majesty for pronouns always implies a plurality in unity, e.g., the people represented in the king.
the cosmos as God's right
Plurals can indicate: count, extension, composition, intensity, abstraction, excellence/majesty.
baptism : illumination :: confirmation : communion of operation :: ordination : divine fire
baptism : supplication :: confirmation : intercession :: ordination : sacrifice
Christianic Romanity
Putnam's 'minimal principle of contradiction': Not every statement is both true and false.
the Son of God as the one through whom all history is made (Hb 1:2)
For every statemetn to which a truth value is assigned, there must be a reason why that truth value is assigned to it.
A significant reason why we believe there are other minds is that we need there to be other minds.
congruence of life and value
factual statements as value statements concerned with truth
Harsanyi's distinctions between personal and impersonal preferences and between actual and hypothetical preferences are sound, but he errs in thinking the distinctions are the same. In reality, we have both actual and hypothetical versions of both personal and impersonal preferences.
Interpersonal utiltiy comparisons are only possible under specific and narrow circumstances.
Pace Harsanyi, moral hypothetical imperatives are as likely to be demands as advices, and may be causal as well as constitutive or formal.
Whether it is rational to take a bet depends first and foremost on the trustworthiness of the betting system and prayers. Assuming that those who bet can and will pay is a good way to get scammed.
New evidence often requires reassessing all evidence.
Our prayers begin before we pray.
Prudence is necessary because venture is part of the moral life.
Scripture was first lived, then written, then proclaimed, then lived within. All of these have divine purpose.
Kant on exemplary necessity
That tools 'withdraw' on good use does not mean that they stop being experienced; they are always already there in the experience of using them.
Every being manifests being's anteriority to manifestation.
Academic scholarship creates many good things; it also creates a lot of pollution of inquiry in doing so.
Hartmann takes values to be Platonic ideas of a sort.
The human voice does not hit notes but encompasses them, dances with them, flows througha nd above or below them.
"First comes knowledge, then a view, then reasoning, and then belief." Newman
thysia: sacrifices to the Olympian gods
enagisma: sacrifices ot heroes and the dead
sphage: sacrifices before battle
-- only in thysia was sacrifice divided and then shared and consumed; thysia is for major public festivals, important family events
-- enagisma as term is mostly used in the Roman period
Some pleasures are associated with more of what happiness can be, some with less.
