Links of Note

 * Matt Whiteley, His Reason is Love, on Julian of Norwich, at "This Isle is Full of Noises"

* Daniel D. De Haan, Freeing the Will from Neurophilosophy: Voluntary Action in Thomas Aquians and Libet-Style Experiments (PDF)

* The Medieval Purse, at "Medieval Histories"

* Dean Zimmerman, The Metaphysics of Divine Presence and the Appropriateness of Worship (PDF)

* Kitten, College kids can't do math, either, at "Adorable and Harmless"

* Aaron Wells, Arguments for the Continuity of Matter in Kant and Du Chatelet (PDF)

* Amelia McKee, Albert the Great in a Gothic Painting: Teacher, Preacher, and Saint, at "Art for the Liturgical Year"

* Jordan MacKenzie, Just humour me: humour, humourlessness, and mutual recognition (PDF)

* Flame & Light, Speech Acts and Fictions II: The Fictive Use of Language, on Richard Gale's speech act theory of fiction

* Giulia Piredda, What is an affective artifact? A further development in situated affectivity (PDF)

* Gregory B. Sadler, Five States of Nature in Hobbes' Leviathan

* Miguel Garcia-Godinez, Easy Social Ontology (PDF)

Morning and Evening

 Now the commemoration of the passion that takes place daily on the altar in the offering of this sacrifice is signified by the perpetual sacrifice that was made at morning and evening. In the morning for the grace of strength, since in this life we require it in the morning that we may merit, but in the evening in dangerous weakness, since then we need the sacrament for viaticum. Both of these are spoken of in Psalm 141.2, "Let my prayer be directed as" -- supply "morning" -- "incense in your sight; the lifting up of my hand" -- supply "in the commendation of [my] soul" -- "as the evening sacrifice." [Eccl 11.6] "In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening let not your hand cease; for you know not which may rather spring up, this or that: and if both together, it shall be better."

[Albert the Great, On the Body of the Lord, Surmanski, tr., The Catholic University of America Press (Washington, DC: 2017.]

Habitude V

 To the fourth one proceeds thus.  It seems that it is not necessary that there be habitudes. For habitude is that by which something is disposed well or badly to something, as was said. But something is disposed well or badly by its form, for something is good according to its form, as also being. Therefore it is not a necessity that there is habitude.

Further, habitude involves order to act. But power sufficiently involves principle of act, for even natural powers without habitudes are principles for act. Therefore it is not necessary that there be habitude.

Further, just as power has itself toward good and bad, so also habitude, and just as power does not always act, so neither does habitude. Powers existing, therefore, it is superfluous that there be habitude.

But contrariwise is that habitudes are sorts of completions, as is said in Phys. VII, but completion is maximally necessary for a thing, because it has the notion of an end. Therefore it is necessary that there be habitude.

I reply that it must be said that, just as it was said above, that habitude involves a sort of disposition in order to the nature of a thing, and to its operation or end, according to which something is disposed well or badly to it. But to this, that something needs to be disposed to another, three things are required. 

(1) First, that what is disposed be other than that to which it is disposed, and thus that it have itself to it as potential to actual. Thus if there is something whose nature is not composed of potential and actual, and whose substance is its working, so that it is for itself, then habitude or disposition has no place, as is clear with God. 

(2) Second, it is required that what is potential to another is determined in many ways and to diverse things. Thus if something is potential to another, but in such a way that it is not potential except to the same thing, then disposition and habitude have no place, because such subject from its nature has due having [habitudinem] to such act. Thus if heavenly body is composed from matter and form, then because that matter is not potential to another form, as was said in the first place, then disposition or habitude to form, or even to working, has no place there, because the nature of heavenly body is not potential except to one determinate change. 

(3) Third, it is required that several things, which are able to be commensurated in diverse ways, concur to disposing the subject to one of the things to which it is disposed, so that it is disposed well or badly to form or to working. Thus the simple qualities of the elements, which concur [conveniunt] in one determinate way to the natures of the elements, we do not call dispositions or habitudes, but simple qualities; but we call dispositions or habitudes health, or beauty, or suchlike, which involve a sort of commensuration of several things that can be commensurated in diverse ways. Because of this, the Philosopher says in Metaphys. V, that habitude is disposition, and disposition is order of what has parts either according to place or according to power or according to species; as was said above. 

Therefore because there are many beings to whose natures and workings it is necessary for several things to concur that can be commensurated in diverse ways, it is therefore necessary that there be habitudes.

Therefore to the first it must be said that the nature of a thing is completed by form, but it is necessary that in order to the form the subject be disposed by some disposition. But the form itself is further ordered to working, which is either an end or a way to an end. And if a form has only one determinate such working, no other disposition is required for the working, beyond the form itself. But if it is a form of such kind that it can work in diverse ways, as is a soul, it must be disposed to its workings by some habitudes.

To the second it must be said that power sometimes has itself toward many things, and then it must be determined by something other; but if there is some power that does not have itself toward many things, it does not need a determining habitude, as was said. And because of this natural forces do not enact their workings by way of some habitudes, because according to themselves they are determinate to one.

To the third it must be said that it is not the same habitude that has itself toward good and bad, as will be clear below, but the same power has itself toward good and bad. And therefore habitudes are necessary so that the powers may be determined to good.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.49.4, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

Thus the definition of habitude that we have at this point is something like, Habitude is an acquired quality ordering the nature of some subject (either directly or by way of some power) either well or badly to some specific act (either form or operation) by mutually disposing several things to one out of several possibilities. In this definition, accidental quality involving order to act, seems to be the primarily formal cause; the act seems the final cause; the quasi-material cause seems to be the several things disposed; and the quasi-efficient cause the subject (as the principle of the accidental quality). But there are several ambiguities and thus parts that are still unclear. Note for instance, that this argument tells us that the following things don't need habitudes:

(a) simple things, like God
(b) things determinate to one action, like celestial bodies
(c) things where action does not arise from several mutually adjustable things, like natural forces or simple elemental qualities

But it's not clear that this is exhaustive, and there are several other questions Aquinas will have to answer to clarify the matter. Angels, for instance, are simple, but are they simple enough? (Aquinas will argue that they are not; angels also require habitudes, although in a different way than we do.) Beasts and plants can be classed as 'determinate to one' or not 'determinate to one', depending on how strictly we take that. Do they have habitudes? (This is a more complicated question; very briefly, Aquinas will say that plants don't, and beasts only incompletely sometimes, if we are talking about habitude in strict sense.) And what about cases, like the intellect, the will, or, for that matter, angels again, in which we don't have parts in the ordinary sense? (Aquinas will argue that integral parts are not necessary; potential parts are sufficient.)

Albertus Magnus

 Today is the feast of St. Albert the Great, Doctor of the Church. From the De domini corpori, on the Eucharist:

That it is nothing but grace is shown by the name, because it is and is named the Eucharist, which means "good grace". Although we receive grace in all the sacraments, there is in this sacrament the whole of grace, which we see, touch, and taste. Thus Zechariah 4.7 says about this sacrament, "And he will give equal grace to its grace." Whatever graces are scattered to be gathered in all the [other] sacraments and virtues, the whole is found here together in one grace. This is signified by the omer, which was the measure of the manna, which was sufficient for each one. [Exodus 16.16-17] 

 For the measure which is sufficient for man's salvation can only be that which contains the grace in which the whole Christ is contained.... 

 [Albert the Great, On the Body of the Lord, Surmanski, OP, tr., CUA Press (Washington, DC: 2017) pp. 31-32.]

Beautiful Words

  The rhetorician ornaments [his speech] with the vox significativa, as when he says “April” and “May”, which are more beautiful words than when one says “October” and “November”, because they signify flowers and leaves, and the song of birds, and seasonal renewal and regeneration, whereas this is not true of “October” and “November”.

[Ramon Llull, from the Ars generalis ultima, quoted in Anthony Bonner, The Art and Logic of Ramon Llull, Brill (Boston: 2007) p. 200.]

Dashed Off XXVIII

 The spirituality and immortality of the soul establish that the state cannot be the source or fount of the most fundamental rights, and that it is illegitimate to subordinate the person entirely to the ends of the state.

natural rights of man -> God
inalienable rights of man -> God
sacred rights of man -> God

People do not just want a pleasant life, they want a pleasant life that they in some way deserve.

Dicey effectively makes parliamentary sovereignty to be the total subordination of every tribunal to Parliament when the latter acts formally as such.

No legal system in existence has a single well-defined 'rule of recognition'; recognition may not be regular or explicit; where there is any rule of recognition, it is more like a family of rules in complicated and loose relationships; there is never completely unified agreement about them; senior officials are usually operating in ways that suggest analogy and overlap rather than shared agreement.

A legal system, like a living thing, will eventually expel any purported law that has insufficient analogy or means of integration with the rest of itself.

Citizens are the primary enforcers of law, enforcing them on themselves and to a lesser extent on those around them.

Volitional differences are never overcome by the clash of opinions or any similar kind of friction.

our body as physically existing, as continually sensed, as attentively sensed, as continually imagined, as attentively imagined

our body as memory device -- we don't have to continually recollect our body's posture and position (e.g.) but often use these to remind ourselves of what we are doing -- if I get distracted, I can come back and say, "OK, why did I pick up this pen?"

Schaff on the Petrine Confession (HAC pp. 350-355) is quite good. What he chiefly misses from a Catholic perspective is that Christ's promise indicates that 'foundation' is not a temporal origin (indeed, as we would also gather from the most reasonable interpretation of the word itself, and thepermanent title given to Peter, so that Simon becomes Simon Rock just as Jesus is Jesus Anointed).
He is also good on Peter in Rome (HAC pp. 362-377), a topic on which he attempts to develop an evidence-guided position between extreme Protestant and extreme Catholic views; it is an imperfect solution, but an excellent attempt.

"A work of art has to be seen in many different lights and to test itself against many different kinds of capacity and experience before it finds its level." C. S. Lewis

Interpreting Mk 13:32 as a flat claim of ignorance doesn't make much sense in context, particularly of the man on a journey analogy to which it is directly tied.

Augustine in various places compares Mk 13:32 to places in the OT apparently implicating nonknowledge of God (Gn 22:12, Dn 13:3).

The piety of a society is often associated with a willingness to maintain the institutions that unify the society.

poetry as "the universal symbolical art" (Schlegel)

Designs are constructed from material constraints, functions, and values, which when organized constitute solutions to problems.

no intrinsic limitations as to being: simplicity, immutability
no extrinsic limitations as to being: aseity, infinity, immateriality
no intrinsic limitations as to ontic presence: immensity, eternity
no extrinsic limitations as to ontic presence
--- --- (1) as to measure of presence itself: alocality, atemporality
--- --- (2) as to measure of that to which it is present: omnipresence, omnitemporality
no intrinsic limitations as to moral and jural presence: sublimity, sovereignty
no intrinsic limitations as to sacral presence: glory
no extrinsic limitations as to moral, jural, and sacral presence: sanctity

"If the government of the Church could be defined, it might be called an immense aristocracy, directed by an oligarchical power placed in the hands of an absolute king, whose duty is to perpetually offer himself in holocaust for the salvation of the people." Donoso Cortes
"The Church is love and will burn the world in love."
"The supernatural is above us, without us, and within us. The supernatural surrounds the natural, and permeates through all its parts."
"When we say of one being that it has understanding and will, and of another that it is free, we say the same thing of both, but expressed in two different ways."

"The world demands as its ground a God who need not have made it." E. L. Mascall

One may by mercy uphold justice, as when one pays for another what is due.

God as that whose presence makes all other presences possible

We only think of time having a forward and backward because counting numbers do.

Time as such has order and not direction, properly speaking; we use direction to symbolize order when we analogize temporal measurements to lines and include caused, especially deliberately imposed, incipits and desinits.

Free will is the personal power of attaining to contingent good.

 People regularly use equality as a justification for not helping others; the same is true of liberty.

One Welsh Triad says that Cadoc, Illtyd, and Peredur became Keepers of the Grail.

Causation is implicit in being.

Being is open to being, truth is seed of truth, goodness sparks goodness. These are imitations and reflections of divine creation.

The analogy between sin and dying is worth more consideration than it is usually given.

"Everything purely human Christianity attracts, develops, and perfects." Schaff

diakonia
of the word: Acts 6:4
of the Spirit: 2 Cor 3:8
of justice: 2 Cor 3:9
of restoration: 2 Cor 5:18

In understanding the Eucharist as commemoration, one must recognize that in the Old Testament, certain forms of prayer are treated as a kind of shared or public memory.

The priest by sacramental character represents Christ as Priest, the bishop by sacramental characer represents Christ as High Priest and Head.

Matthew, Hebrews, James, and Jude make a pretty good representation of the spectrum of fourth-century Judaism.

There is a tension in the first two sentences of Hume's Treatise, which tells us that all perceptions of the mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, and the difference between the two is a matter of degree. Hume does admit this oddity, but claims that they are "in general very different" so that it is still makes sense to rank them as distinct. This however does not suffice to address the scruple, particularly given how Hume relates the two in the copy principle.

The Eucharist is not an 'encounter' but a union.

Christ deliberately made apostolic testimony essential to knowing Him, an apostolic testimony not merely direct but also for us indirect and mediated through others. It is a grave error to think one can leap over it.

Democratic societies turn everything into aesthetics.

Hypocrites will be found whenever there is an appearance of the divine.

The book of Revelation is an unveiling in vision of what is behind history.

'Worldbuilding' is an exploration of the preconditions and possibilities for narrative (which is distinct from the preconditions and possibilities *of* narrative).

All human beings have a protective resistance to wholehearted relationships.

Nothing about divine love requires that God love us one way rather than another; indeed, as divine love is wholly free, the ways God can love us surpass all human conceiving.

We improve common sense by increasing experience and improving classifications in light of experience and practice.

"Not even a deterministic (nonstochastic) law statement describes only what is actually the case: *every law statement describes possibles* -- without of course the help of modal operators." Bunge
(he links this to the fact that laws identify possible behavior depending on initial conditions)

There is a weirdly schizophrenic character to everything Bunge writes; he will develop an interesting formal system and give it an interpretation on the most vague and inadequate grounds; at times he will discuss scientific practice in an interesting way and then refer it to a formal system whose adequacy in describing that practice is nowhere established.

Bunge's definition of the cell (Def 3.2) seems to require us to say that biological cells are not Bungian cells, due to mitochondria being both components and biosystems. Indeed, this seems to highlight the flaw in Bunge's entire approach to the sciences; however Bunge's definitions may fit a given state of inquiry, eventually many of the things defined become fixed ostensively, not by abstract definitions. The cell is the cell, whether it lacks components that are biosystems or not.

As probability is abstraction from finite frequences (coins, marbles, etc.), a serious interpretation of probability should simply be / reduce to the frequency itnerpretation in such cases, which are the anchoring cases of the theory.

Huntington's df of the point: a sphere such that it includes no other sphere

Introspection includes environmental factors in its object; we do nto have introspection of every thought but introspection of, e.g., thinking of a dog. Thus the object of introspection is not identical to the object of brain examination, although the two can be correlated in various ways. Thus far, at least, the dualist is right.

Contiguity is inferred, not directly experienced, and is inferred on causal grounds. If I see two things, I must distinguish apparent contiguity (e.g., due to perspective) from real contiguity by means of causes.

What we call reciprocal action or interaction is the cooperative production of an effect.

All scientific explanation grows in a soil of everyday, common-sense explanation.

The history of science shows that scientific methods diversify about as fast as they unify, and that fields multiply about as fast as they jump together in consilience.

Animal learning involves many subsystems of the organism, including digestion and muscle development.

The external world is that which continues to exist independently of an contrastively to our minds, but each of these three admits of different kinds and variations.

Physical laws are not propositions but systems.

"...every physical theory presupposes the *philosophical hypotheses* that there are physical objects (mind-independent things), that most of them are imperceptible (Hertz 1894), and that some of them are available if only in part (Thomson 1963). Should these hypotheses be dropped we would turn to introspection and mysticism." Bunge
"The effective approach to problems is both creative and critical."

causes as productive vs causes as historical ingredients

Much great art involves bringing out the glory of the simple.

Teaching is a poetical art, using analogy, metaphor, and example to convey the universal.

Most scientific theories have a 'pictorial' element, namely, abstract representation of concrete experiments to which things outside of the experiment are analogous or assimilated.

Hypothetico-deductive structure is a format into which scientific theories are forced, not the natural form of scientific theories.

Most metaphorical statements are no more ambiguous than most literal statements.

Pr 9:1 literally says, "Wisdoms [hakhemot] has built her house"; the plural perhaps indicates the highest sort of wisdom.

the serpent's question: Why did God allow there to be wrong?

surreal numbers as the nodes of the complete infinite binary tree

free will as a capacity for graciously receiving grace, of choosing aspects of one's relation to God

The analogy between art and nature is essential to the development of many arts.

(1) Human reason requires testimony.
(2) Human independence requires assistance.
(3) Human autarchy requires providence.

The 'tone' or 'coloring' of a term is often what relates it to its context in such a way that its sense and reference can be properly determined.

Interactions are overlaps of changes, where part of one change is also part of another change.

forces as negative potential energy gradients

You should never try to steal from physicists what you have not earned in philosophy of physics; physicalists regularly violate this principle.

Habitude IV

 To the third one proceeds thus. It seems that habitude does not involve order to act. For anything acts according as it is actual. But the Philosopher says, in De Anima III, that when someone becomes knowing according to habitude, then he is so still potentially, but in another way than before learning. Therefore 'habitude' does not involve habitude as principle to act.

Further, what is put in the definition of something, pertains to it per se. But to be a principle of action is put in the definition of power, as is clear in Metaphys. V. Therefore to be principle of act is appropriate per se to power. But what is per se is first in any genus. If therefore habitude is also principle of act, it is posterior to power. And so habitude or disposition will not be the first species of quality.

Further, health is sometimes habitude, and likewise slimness and beauty. But these are not said through order to act. Therefore it does not belong to the notion of habitude that it be principle of act.

But contrariwise is what Augustine says, in the book on the good of marriage, that habitude is that by which something is enacted when there is need. And the Commentator says, on De Anima III, that habitude is that by which one enacts something when one wills.

I reply that it must be said that order to act can converge [competere] with habitude both according to the notion of habitude and according to the notion of the subject in which it is a habitude. Indeed, according to the notion of habitude, it is appropriate for every habitude to have, in some way, order to act. For it is in the notion of habitude that it involves a certain habitude ordered to the nature of the thing according to what is appropriate or inappropriate. But the nature of the thing, which is the end of generation, is further ordered to another end, which is either working or some work to which one comes by working. Thus habitude not only involves order to the very nature of the thing, but also consequently to working inasmuch as it is an end of nature, or leading to the end. And thus in Metaphys. V it is said in the definition of habitude that it is disposition according to which the disposed is disposed well or badly, either according to itself, that is, according to its nature, or to another, that is, in order to an end. 

But there are certain habitudes that also, first and principally, involve order to act on the part of the subject in which they are, because, as was said, habitude involves, first and per se, habitude to the nature of the thing. If, therefore, the nature of the thing in which it is a habitude consists in some order to act, it follows that the habitude principally involves order to act. And it is clear that the nature and notion of power is to be principle of act; thus every habitude that has some power as its subject principally involves some order to act.

Therefore to the first it must be said that habitude is a sort of act inasmuch as it is quality, and accordingly can be a principle of working, but it is potential with respect to working. Thus habitude is called first act and working second act, as is clear in De Anima II.

To the second it must be said that it is not in the notion of habitude that it is related to power, but that it is related to nature. And because nature precedes action, to which power is related, habitude is placed as a species of quality before power.

To the third it must be said that health is called a habitude or habitual disposition in order to nature, as was said. However, inasmuch as nature is a principle of act, it consequently involves order to act. Thus the Philosopher says in De Historia Animal. X that man, or some member, is called healthy when it can do the work of someone healthy. And likewise for the others.

[Thomas Aquinas, ST 2-1.49.3, my translation. The Latin is here, the Dominican Fathers translation is here.]

This article may seem somewhat dry and abstract, but it is the root of some puzzles in the Thomistic account of habitude.

The lesser puzzle is how and in what way health and beauty are habitudes. For Aristotle, health and beauty are paradigmatically habitudes; he constantly goes to them for examples. Aquinas in a number of places seems to accept this, but he also in a number of places pulls back from it, and this particular article's conclusion, that habitude involves ordering to act, seems to be one of the reasons. How health and beauty are active in this way is not immediately obvious. The key seems to be the point that Aquinas makes to the third objection, that health is a "habitude or habitual disposition" to the extent and in the way that it is concerned with healthy operation. Merely to be healthy by happenstance is not a habitude; it is health-as-habitude when you as-if-naturally carry yourself and behave in ways that are healthy ways of acting. Many people at any given moment happen to be healthy, but we can recognize that some people live in something like an anti-hypochondriac way; health for them is an active possession, as their attitudes, the actions and appetites to which they tend, their responses to things, all tend toward health. They are healthy-livers, not in the sense that they pursue health fads or the like, but in the sense that health is not just something that they happen to have but an expression of their way of living. Something similar can be said of beauty; some people happen to be beautiful because of youth or a chance combination of factors, but some people are beautiful in a way that expresses their life -- part of their beauty is how they carry themselves, the kinds of behaviors they tend toward, and the like. They make themselves beautiful, but it's not as if they are trying to force it; making themselves beautiful is just what they have come to tend to do, so that it's part of what living is for them.

A more complicated puzzle is the relation between habitude and will. This requires some further pieces in place, so can't but fully handled here, but this article plays a role in the puzzle, so it's necessary to say a few things here before the knot becomes too tangled. A later objection will refer back to this habitude in terms that seem to suggest that this article should be read as establishing that will is essential to habitude, and Aquinas doesn't seem to deny it. This would complicate the health and beauty examples even further, and would constitute a massive change from Aristotle, who (first) does not have an account of will at all, despite saying things relevant to willing, and (second) pretty clearly holds that developing habitudes is something found across the animal world, and, indeed, given what Aristotle says about habitude, it would make sense for him to extend it to plants, as well. Unlike a number of commentators, I don't think we are actually committed by the evidence to Aquinas deviating so completely from Aristotle, but obviously how this article is interpreted is of some relevance to this.

Notably, the only place in the article in which 'will' even shows up explicitly is in the sed contra, with the reference to Averroes (the Commentator). The reference here is a summary paraphrase, not a translation. Aquinas, in Summa Contra Gentiles 2.78.6 (on the agent intellect), gives a more direct translation:

“For the essence of habit,” as the Commentator, Averroes, says on this very text, “consists in this, that its possessor understands by means of that which is proper to him -- understands by himself and whenever he wills, with no need of anything extrinsic”; since Averroes explicitly likens to a habit, not the effect itself, but “the intellect by which we make all things.”

Thus the summary paraphrase is generalizing from Averroes's original point, which is specifically about the intellect understanding. Voluerit occurs in both the original and the summary paraphrase, but it seems clear that generalizing affects how we have to understand it -- it, too, needs to be generalized, and therefore we seem to have to allow that it may be used metaphorically or merely representatively here.