This finishes the notebook that was completed June 24, 2025.
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"Role activities purposively undertaken are likely to have evaluative meaning not only in that some modicum of effiacy in the role is presupposed when according to the name, but also in that, as we have already seen, the name may be withheld if certain generally acknowledged obligations of the role are not observed." Dorothy Emmett
Possibility is a way we talk about actuality.
"If history is going to be scientific, if the record of human action is going to be set down with that accuracy and faithfulness of detail which will allow its use as a measuring rod and guidepost for the future of nations, there must be some standard of ethics in research and interpretation." WEB Du Bois
Malebranche's watch SaT 2.1.4 sect. 3 (LO 99)
When we cannot reason directly with evidence, we reason with the best available classification.
We discover ourselves as persons in what is ours.
possession by long symbolic association
implicit modalities/functions of rights that can be actuated into new rights
right to X
(1) exercise: right to reasonable and available means to X
(2) defense 1: right to defend exercise of right to X
(3) defense 2: right to defend against development of impediments to exercise
(4) repair 1: right to reparation for violations
(5) repair 2: right to reconstitute essential conditions for right
standing reserves of signs for use
Every extant form of naturalism is a tissue of metaphysics.
To return to the things themselves is to turn to what is prior to knowledge.
The physicist sees the world through the model; this is distinct from when the physicist examines the model itself.
confirmation --> consilium et auxilium
constructive existence proof (broadly speaking; see Princeton lectures 1941 of Godel): A proof of an existential proposition that also provides a way to find an actual example of that whose existence is being asserted.
Experimental reasoning is necessarily cause because it has to assess and rule out defective causes that can interfere with the suitability of an experiment for drawing a conclusion.
The most basic fields of mathematics (e.g., arithmetic and geometry) are not explained by starting with parts and building absolutely consistent systems from them but by starting with the field, taken as consistent in its own particular terms, and educing out of it various systems, reducible to various parts, in accordance with particular purposes (e.g., proof or application of this or that aspect of the field).
ways of reasoning about consistency
(1) negation as failure of search
(2) utility for many things
(3) consturction in concrete intuition
(4) construction in abstract intuition
(5) proof by more powerful system
-- Mathematicians and logicians tend to disparage (1), but even they always begin with it.
-- Each has advantages and disadvantages. (3) is the 'safest' and most direct, but is highly limited. (2) is the everyday working one, but only gives 'consistent enough for practical purposes'. (5) gives proofs but only for relative consistency. (4) is the gold standard but has continually struggled with epistemological issues. But actual mathematics and logic require them all.
-- We can treat these as all converging on consistency simpliciter, or we can break them up into particular consistency-concepts: consistent as far as we know, consistent for practical purposes, consistent in concrete intuition, consistent in abstract intuition, consistent relative to other systems.
-- All of these are such they might work only for a domain.
Hume's three fundamental laws of nature' as actually the internal morality of property-interactions (contract-making in particular)
It is unjust for bureaucracies to impose requirements they cannot efficiently process.
Reasonable preference is always accommodated or adapted to moral principle.
transcendental distinctions (disjunctive transcendentals) as structuring explanations
Obligations may be fulfilled
(1) more or less clumsily
(2) more or less ardently
(3) more or less carefully (conscientiously, meticulously)
(4) with more or less concern for other obligations.
All of these are matters for prudence.
Etiquette as a lesser morality facilitates virtue in its social aspect, especially on points of communication and moderation.
The performative as such is purely instrumental.
Both knowledge and goodness expand the reach of power, although in different ways.
essence, interpretant, disposition
Kings create courtiers as keys to access useful social networks.
"Spirit in its purest form is pure act or pure being." Edith Stein
"Breathing is not only proper to personal spirits, for even things like a landscape and a melody radiate their own aura." [speaking of Condrad Martius; breating = Geisten = spiration]
"Soul in the widest sense is the quality-giving ground of every living being."
To have a soul is to live as from another.
Physical things reveal their inner natures. (This is what physicists sometimes actually mean when talking about 'determinism'.)
The set-theoretic paradoxes were inevitable because sets and their elements were originally conceived specifically as any objects of acts of thinking.
Every right in a context of potential injury develops a right of defense; every rigth in a context of actual injury develops a right of repair.
Actual propagandists don't usually care much about belief as such; they want to shape the *environment* for belief.
People often confuse critical thinking and obstinacy in the face of persuasion.
Propaganda that is difficult to avoid is already propaganda that is working.
rights with latent vicarious functionalities (both active and passive)
Poetic suggestions sometimes change how we think about evidence.
the commission of Jeremiah (Jer 1:10) as a type of the Petrine Commission
"First we have the home; then the city; finally the globe." Augustine (Civ Dei 19.7)
One thing I find in my own case is that one or two big problems will get me down, but add one or two more beyond that and my humor returns and mood improves -- so many major problems just start to seem ridiculous and I am less crushed by them. Subjectively, I'm more down with fewer problems than I am with more. But I would in fact still prefer to have the fewer problems rather than the more.
Necessity relations between universals can be either formal or final.
Tehre is a powerful rationality in even the residue of human reason.
Things you are allowed to do but better not do allow maneuvering room when things go very wrong.
A truck driver is not merely transporting; he is maintaining an office on the road, verifying paperwork, acting as agent, organizing security, serving as compliance officer for regulations.
Problems based on the 'causal inertness' of abstract objects or moral properties or the like are usually due simply to having no category of formal causation.
the internal morality of language
Probability requires the differentiation of posssibilities into subordinate possibilities.
States cooperate not only by treaty and official cooperation but also by personal cooperation. For instance, the cooperation of states is often affected by the personal interactions between chief executives.
The law of the New Covenant is deliberately general so that we may specify and extend it, both communally and individually.
Peace begins with the person.
Customs begin to get the force of law when they are required for common peace.
space and time as conditions of *mediation* of causation
People make themselves in the image of the gods they worship.
It takes a lot of orderly structure to make a random mutation.
Summer snow, harvest rain, foolish honor. (cf. Pr 26:1)
Pr 26:4-5 "Do not attend to the thick man in his silliness; otherwise you are also resembling him. Attend to the thick man in his silliness; otherwise he will be competent to the eye."
What you don't have in your memory is of limited value for creative thinking.
sharing preferences vs preferences fitting preferences
As time goes on, judiciaries always become less usable.
The creation of any society creates a freedom with respect to actions in that society, for which the society itself is the social infrastructure.
Existential risk discussions are always science fiction, but, as in other science fiction, bits and pieces of them sometimes get uncomfortably close.
authorization, authentication, and solemnization functions of signatures and seals
When people talk about technological progress, they often ignore ease to sustain it, despite this being a significant factor in any kind of progress.
All gifts affect the ledger of favors.
Many small economic exchanges mix money, gift, favor, gratitude-token, and barter, in various proportions; the media of exchange are often complex, and money is just the detachable and transferable part of the media.
The covert or classified is sometimes more about ambiguity or deniability than about secrecy.
What economists call 'costly signals' are actually preemptive tests. An advantage of them is tha tyou can select the kind of test you want to pass, and often get people to accept the test result; another is that they can save time and resources that would have to be spent in negotiating a test.
Economic actions are not merely a matter of preferences but also of scope of negotiability.
People's preferences are usually not satisfied; instead, they get acceptable approximations, and ventures with a probability of at least partial satisfaction.
Statistics sometimes seems to be a process of finding the falsehood most useful for calculation.
Most nonfiction should be called not-even-fiction.
Our hearts are signs of emotion even to ourselves.
"Before any systematic interpretation, the description of the *known facts* shows that the fate of an excitation is determined by its relation to the whole of the organic state and to the simultaneous or preceding excitations, and taht the relation between the organism and its milieu are not relations of linear causality but of circular causality." Merleau-Ponty
Part of reason is the impulse and initiative to reason; reasoning is active and not purely reactive.
Governance presupposes presence.
Over and over again, all over the world, people associate sunshowers and marriage (usually weird or unearthly marriage). This seems to be due to diffusion (probably out of India) but obviously also ha sa ground in the thing (which yokes together what is otherwise separate).
heresy and schism as a sort of avarice for spiritual things
"The intention of the one praying more than makes up for the defect of prayer." Augustine (on prayers consecrating baptismal waters that are theologically defective)
The sacrament begins, but only begins, with the honest intention to receive it; or perhaps more accurately, it is here that the first component of the sacrament is laid down.
sacrament as rite of process into grace (broad sense) vs sacrament as reception of grace (proper sense)
Our claims call for evidence because of their intentionality of the mind, which gives 'aboutness' to the claim.
Part of understanding is throwing oneself into the thing.
Deontic Box and epistemic Box, like alethic Box, play roles in reasoning tha tmake them par tof what we call 'real', i.e., talk of reality already presupposes them.
It belongs to every concept as concept that we ought to use it appropriately and well in matters of truth.
Antyhing real can also be treated anti-realistically for particular purposes (e.g., as guised being).
Stable public authority blooms into ceremony and pageantry.
natural vs designated agency on behalf of another
Everything we directly perceive, we perceive as diagnostic, even in false perception.
Some classifications in science are not derived directly from any experiment but are classifications convenient for organizing research. However, they can reflect reality depending on the reason for the convenience.
Locomotion is peculiar as a change because it is not actuality and potentiality in the res but in its designatable external border (contrast with diminution and growth, which is of teh natural things as measurable by border).
Politics as an activity is necessarily both rational and irrational.
The rule of law is not a check in a system of checks and balances; it is a state of the system at which one aims.
Rule of law is not the rule of rules but specfically of law.
The effectiveness of rules is not based on 'legitimacy' but on causal means and incentives.
Respecting dignity requires upholding honor.
Every freedom posits a kind of good living.
Our salvation is reincorporation into the heavenly liturgy, which is why it involves rite; because we are physical animals, ewe need sensible signs, which is why it involves sacrament.
One common error of universalists is that they often bleed hell into heaven; trying to take seriously the sins of this life, they make the ranks of heaven depend on penalty for this life. But penalty that is known and perpetual is hell; the ranks of heaven are not based on penalty but wholly on grace and charity.
harmonious integration of attitudes as a work of prudence
Where scholarship is done shifts how it is done.
Implicit faith is an essential part of relationships between persons, which require forms of trust and deference.
The sacramentum symbolically includes the res sacramenti.
broad symbolic containment: A symbolizes B not as other than itself.
narrow symbolic containment: A symbolizes B as not other than itself.
unavoidable vs negligent defects of title
Every art and science has its tedious things that must be done, and must be done personally, because that makes the difference between good and bad results in the long run.
All human intentions are good in some respect; it is the respect that matters.
Our habitual sins usually make our lives considerably worse; we just get it into our heads that what the sin gives us is necessary for good live, and then refuse to learn otherwise.
People often attribute to a way of life they reject negative characteristics that are in fact associated with the subversion and destruction of that way of life.
Most things taht can be thought cannot be thought clearly; most things that can be said cannot be said clearly. What can be thought clearly cannot always be said clearly; what can be said clearly cannot always be thought clearly.
precision as part of the asceticism of the mind
Stable competitions build systems of courtesy and etiquette out of shared conveniences and inconveniences; these systems themselves become stable when no one can easily ignore the consequences of inconviencing everyone else.
The law is never stronger than its community. Only strong communities have the means to maintain rule of law. If communities grow weaker, eventually the community just resets to rule by the strongest members.
Laws are instruments of liberty, the self-building of free societies.
Quality of education is mostly a matter of relevance, quality, and quantity of deliberate practice with substantive material.
legal fiction as classification in advance of formulated principle
seminal reasons and the fifth & sixth days of creation
Pr 25:20 -- As a remover of garment on a cold day, vinegar on soda, so the singer of songs to wretched heart.
It is no more necessary to take contradictory descriptions of fictional objects to imply contradictory objects than to take contradictory descriptions of physical bodies to imply contradictory bodies; the difference between the two cases is that there is a 'forced completion', a saturation with respect ot which the contradiction can be sorted, whereas in the former case, the contradiction may be unresolvable due to incompleteness / unsaturatedness.
reasons why things are similar
(1) that they are caused to be
(2) that the similarity was necessary
(3) that they are similar by happenstance (the similarity is among purely combinatorial possibilities)
Boxifying: given this weak modality, what is the strong modality on which it depends?
As power becomes greater it takes on features like knowledge; as knowledge becomes greater, it takes on features like power.
Part of the difficulty in eliminating war is that war obviously solves problems -- not enough in most cases, and it causes problems of its own, but people go to war precisely because of the solutions in most cases.
Stage props are not mere make-believe items. They enter into the deontic structure of the show & have roles in that structure -- this hat to be here in this scene for this reason; this sword ought to be in this place so that this actor might make use of it; etc.
To be a prop is to be incomplete and in need of completion.
In ethics there are many general matters that are not universal matters.
the prop room of memory
"A *mechanism* is a series of instrumental causes treated *as if* it were univocal." Chastek
expressive (i.e., of what you feel, of your attitude) vs shift-expressive (i.e,. what you want to be expressive of other people's feelings and attitudes)
-- various forms of expressivism muddle those together, but despite both being in some expressive, they have different structures and work differently because of them
-- advertising is a good example of a venue in which one finds a lot of shift-expressive language
A murder case becomes a mystery through defective causes that impede full communication of essential elements of the case, through
(1) obstacle to information (e.g., noncooperative witness)
(2) obfuscation of information (e.g., planted evidence)
(3) deterioration of information (e.g., evidence erased by rain)
(4) misplacement of information (e.g., key witness cannot be found again)
(5) privation of information (e.g., relevant surface does not hold prints)
(6) explosion of information (e.g., too many things pointing to too many suspects).
A goal being measurable is a sign that it is means to another goal.
Language is not a form of human understanding.
The complexity or simplicity of the problem does not always have any relation to the complexity or simplicity of the solution.
Milton's Satan claims that the fallen angels are equal in freedom to God even if not equal in power or eminence, but as Abdiel replies, there is no meaningful sense in which Satan can be equal in freedom with someone who can create the entire universe, including Satan himself.
We communicate by traces.
Metatethics is a study of scaffolding.
Freedom is rooted in three things: power, wisdom, goodness.