Fire Serpent and Water Mountain IV

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 Chapter Four: Brickanbreck Receives Visiting Gods

Tera came down to breakfast the next morning to find Uncle Llew already there, taking a second helping from the sideboard. The sideboard itself was practically overflowing: dark rye bread, devilled kidneys, cold chicken, smoked fish, salted pork, oatmeal cakes, bread and jam, radishes on toast, pickled goose, cinnamon pilaf, and more. Tera helped herself to the pilaf and to an apple turnover; the moment she sat down and ate some of the pilaf, she regretted it. It was not that it was bad, exactly, nor was it quite bland, but it was flat, as if it were a distant imitation of the real thing. Uncle Llew had obviously not made it. Tera's heart sank at the thought that she would have to endure several weeks of mediocre breakfasts. And in The City of the Gods, no less. She bit into the turnover. It was serviceable, no more, no less. She ate it, and then grabbed a slice of bread which she buttered and jammed.

"What are we doing today?" she said.

Uncle Llew looked at her with a vaguely baffled expression. "What do we do everyday?"

Tera's heart sank again, and she wondered how low it could end up going. "Surely you're not going to make me study and do exercises again?" she said in a voice that she did not want to be a whine but sounded suspiciously like a whine even to her own ears. "It's the first day. Surely there is more to see!"

Llew's baffled expression became outright astonishment, as if it had never occurred to him that there might be anything at all to see in The City of the Gods.

Easy for him to be uninterested in it, thought Tera; he was born and raised here and no doubt used to it.

"Well," said Llew doubtfully. "It is mostly like anywhere else."

"Then people to meet!"

Uncle Llew seemed even more skeptical of this, as if meeting gods was a tiresome chore better avoided. But he said instead, "Yes, we will have to meet some people. Morning is visiting time here, so we'll even meet some this morning. Before you arrived, we received requests from Bleiz Twelve-Sery and from Rhiannon Fifteen-Mury."

And who was Bleiz Twelve-Sery? Llew seemed at loss at this question, and finally said, "Hmm, well, he is someone I knew well once." Then, after a moment: "I suppose he is your third cousin four, no, five times removed. A consummate ass and busybody, if he hasn't changed any, and Davnan rarely change."

"We will endure it," said Tera with energy. "And this afternoon?"

Llew looked at her a moment, then sighed as if defeated. "Fine," he said. "I have to look around the estate to see what needs to be done, anyway, so might as well be today. The clan was supposed to keep things maintained, but a thousand years is a long time for things not to fall apart, even in The City of the Gods. We can slow change to a crawl, but we cannot stop it."

He rose suddenly, "If we are going to have a day like this, I will have to get some work done before our guests come. I will be in the basement workshops; you can call me up if you need me by means of the mirror in the drawing room." He then grabbed a knife on the sideboard and, using it on a cheesewheel, carved off a truly impressive chunk, then left, cheese and knife and all.

Tera went back up to get ready, then decided that she had made the wrong decision about what to wear, then got ready again. She was inspecting all the equipment in the loom room she had seen the day before when a long, low tone, reverberant like a bell, sounded throughout the house, followed by a voice: Bleiz Twelve-Sery Metal Hand will arrive by Platform in half an hour, as appointed. She finished what was she doing and then made her way down to the welcoming hall. Uncle Llew met her there soon afterward saying, "It is an informal visit, so we will meet him directly in the receiving room. He doesn't deserve any better, anyway."

Bleiz Twelve-Sery Metal Hand was immensely disappointing as a god. He did have some features vaguely like those of Uncle Llew and her mother, with slightly paler skin, but he had rather bulbous eyes that were permanently fixed in an opened-wide state that would ordinarily look like someone boggled with astonishment. Yet he also somehow managed to convey the appearance of someone who was entirely incapable of astonishment, for he had despite his eyes a dull expression on his face. He was also dressed in a rather shabby walking outfit. The walking outfit annoyed Tera somewhat, since the Platform made it possible to go directly from one place to another; he had not actually had to walk much of anywhere at all. She had only walked downstairs and had still made more of an effort. She stopped herself, and mentally waved all of this away. There was no point in complaining about such things, and she was beginning to sound like Uncle Llew.

"Delighted, delighted," Bleiz Twelve-Sery said as they sat down after introductions had been made. But the delight did not apparently translate into interest in Tera, because he immediately turned to Uncle Llew and said, "Llew, you are back."

"It does seem to be that way," said Llew drily.

"You have been gone too long."

"Have I?"

"Yes," said Bleiz decidedly. "You have been utterly unjust to the clan in denying us all the support of your gifts."

Llew's facial expression, which until now had been forbearingly impassive, became icily cold. "Have I?" he said.

Bleiz swiveled around to look at Tera. "Your uncle," he said in an accusing tone, as if it were Tera's fault, "was the greatest mind of the age, and did he put it to good use? He did not. He hid it all away in Mizur." He swiveled back around to Llew without waiting for a response.

Correctly recognizing that although the comment had been physically directed at Tera, it was actually directed at him, Llew said, "I hid nothing. The clan made very clear that I was more trouble to have around than they wanted."

"We did nothing of the sort!"

"My sister and I were exiled from The City of the Gods."

Bleiz snorted derisively. "It was simply a cool-down! It was temporary!"

"It was betrayal," Llew said angrily. "If clan actually mattered to any of you, it would never have happened."

"Haughty Llew is haughty still!" said Bleiz derisively. "You always thought you knew better than anyone else, better than all of us together. All you had to do was make a small sacrifice for the good of the clan!"

"Being stabbed in the back and cast out is not a 'small sacrifice'."

"It was temporary!"

"So you said before," said Llew, through gritted teeth. "And Amaethon said the same. But it was betrayal."

"And that is another thing," said Bleiz, ignoring this entirely. "We have ever since had to endure Amaethon as Captain of The City. You should have been Captain."

This caught Llew off guard, and for the first time in her life, Tera saw Uncle Llew in a state of utterly baffled confusion. He sat back and in perplexity asked, "Why would I want to be Captain?"

"Again, it is all about you," said Bleiz dismissively. "It is not what you want. It is what you owe the clan."

"Owe the clan?" said Llew in something getting very near to a shout, this having pulled him back out of his confusion into his anger. "The clan who failed to protect my parents? The clan who went along with Mael's cover-up until Arianrhod and I forced the issue? The clan who sold us out for peace and the Captaincy? The clan who backed our exile? The clan who demand and demand and never give? Owe the clan? Let the Embiadwei be glad that Arianrhod convinced me to go along with it rather than give the Embiadwei what I actually owed them. And do not think that I do not know your role in it all."

There comes a moment in some conversations in which it becomes clear that someone has for the first time truly heard something that had been said, and this was the point in this conversation for Bleiz. His face went white. It was as if he had been exsanguinated. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, as if trying but failing to get words out. Tera thought, with perhaps a tiny smidge of malice, that he looked like a bulging-eyed fish suddenly finding itself out of water. He took a long, shaky breath.

"Now, now, Llew," he said, in what was presumably his attempt at a reassuring tone of voice. If that was what he was attempting, though, the attempt was ruined by the slight squeek to it. "I always supported you. Always. Always?" The last 'always' seemed less a statement than a plea for agreement.

Perhaps he would have said more, but Llew cut through it. "All of this is pointless. I am not here for myself, but for my niece. If the Embiadwei want to be a clan, let them do so by supporting her."

Bleiz had regained some composure, and spread his hands. "But of course we will support her. She is clan."

"Yes," said Llew drily, "that does seem what people say. It's the execution that I question."

Bleiz opened his mouth to say something in response to this, but the mirror in the receiving room interrupted: Rhiannon Fifteen-Mury Wood River will be arriving by Platform in one-quarter hour, as appointed. This gave Llew the opportunity to say cheerfully, more cheerfully than was entirely warranted by politeness, "We thank you for your visit, Bleiz; it is always good to catch up. No doubt we will see you often. I will walk you out."

As he stood, he bent over to Tera. "Please let the servants know to bring out the small beer and relishes for Rhiannon," he said in a low voice. Then he walked over and stood above Bleiz. Bleiz was quite clearly not happy to be ushered out so quickly, but he rose, nodded at Tera, and walked out with Llew with what Tera presumed was his attempt at being dignified.

Tera went off to start the process of setting up small beer and relishes. When she came back, Uncle Llew had still not come back, so she simply sat and waited until his return, as the servants set up dishes and plates around her. 

Llew returned with a harried look on his face.

"That did not go well," remarked Tera.

He shrugged. "Better than could be expected."

"Perhaps you could be less hostile," said Tera.

He looked at her, amused. "Fair enough. But if I were any nicer, they would assume that I was planning something nefarious. And they would probably be right. Haughty Llew must be haughty still."

They were quiet a moment, then Tera said, tentatively, "What role did Bleiz Twelve-Sery play in my mother's exile?"

"Hmm?"

"You said that he played a role."

"Ah," said Llew, and he shrugged. "I do not know. I doubt whether it was central; he is much less important than he thinks. But you notice that he did not deny it."

Rhiannon made a much better impression on Tera than Bleiz had, and in fact, Tera's estimate of her was revised upward. She was far more nicely dressed, with a sapphire-studded necklace above a neat vest over a sort of belted summer dress; she wore a trim hat and soft lace-up boots. She seemed much better suited to these kinds of clothes than to the formal robes Tera in which Tera had previously seen her. When Tera had first met her at the Hall of the Fire Serpent, she had seemed very 'flat and slow', but then Tera had had no references except her mother and uncle, whom Tera had begun to understand were exceptional rather than typical. Having now seen many gods in passing the day before and an unimpressive Bleiz close up that morning, Tera now found Rhiannon quite respectably 'rounded and swift'. Possibilities might not shift around her as madly as they did around Uncle Llew, but she was easily one of the more godlike gods Tera had seen.

"I hope you are settling in well," Rhiannon said to both of them as she filled a small plate with olives and veal-stuffed cabbage leaves.

"Well enough," said Uncle Llew. "The Embiadwei seem to have done well in furnishing the place for us. Beyond that, we have not had time to do much."

"And you, my dear?" she asked Tera.

"So far I am finding it quite exciting to be in The City of the Gods," said Tera.

"Manawydan, Rhys, and I always find it refreshing to return," she replied.

"And how are Manawydan and Rhys?"

"Quite well, thank you. Manawydan is out fishing, and Rhys is currently playing soule with friends near North Landing, which gives me time to do some visiting."

"Soule?" asked Tera.

"It is a ballgame of sorts, popular here," said Rhiannon.

"Something like a ballgame and something like a chaos," said Llew.

"Yes," said Rhiannon, amused. "Did you ever play it?"

"Many times," said Llew. "I once played in a game that stretched all the way from North Landing to First Landing, had over a thousand players, and lasted three days and two nights without a moment's pause."

"I suspect you were quite good at it."

"Not so much," said Llew. "I am too easily bored. But I was very good at taking back the ball."

"I have difficulty imagining you playing a ballgame," said Tera.

"All the boys among the gods play with balls," said Rhiannon, in a tone that suggested that she thought of this as an untreatable disease to be pitied. "Which brings me, before I forget, to one of the purposes of my visit. Rhys will be playing in a game of olam, Wenovar against Muriaki, the day after tomorrow. I was wondering, Tera, if you would be interested in joining us to watch it."

"I take it that 'olam' is another kind of ballgame," said Tera.

"Yes," said Llew. "Played on a court rather than in the fields."

"It is not just another kind of ballgame, really," said Rhiannon. "It is the game. And it is worth seeing."

"Then I would be happy to go," said Tera, "if Uncle Llew can spare me."

"I have no objections," said Llew.

"And I promise we will look after her," said Rhiannon.

"Well," said Llew cheerfully, "I will hold you to that promise."

Rhiannon looked very unsettled by this comment, but she was polite enough to try to hide it behind a long drink of small beer.

Llew continued thoughtfully, as if he had not noticed, although Tera could see very well that he had, and had been amused by it, "And it is good for training, too; so it would be good to have experience with it in the company of someone who has certainly been to an olam game much more recently than I have."

Rhiannon graciously inclined her head at this. "There is a second proposal I would like to make. The day after the game, I am intending to go down to River Market, but I never like to go alone, if I can avoid it, and both Manawydan and Rhys have other plans. Would it be possible for Tera to come with me?" She looked over at Tera. "If you wish to do so, of course."

 "I would love to," said Tera.

"I have no objections to that, either," said Uncle Llew. 

"I am glad of it," said Rhiannon with a bright smile. She set her plate aside. "If it would not be considered rude to do so, I must take my leave to meet other visiting obligations."

"Of course," said Llew. "Tera and I will walk you to the Platform."

Rhiannon did something with a strange bracelet on her wrist and rose. Llew and Tera rose with her and they walked out together, across the bridge and to the Brickanbreck Platform. 

"If it works for you, come out to Bryn Abernant the day after tomorrow, early in the Forenoon Watch, and we'll go down together, see the game, and take lunch. We should be back in the mid-afternoon."

"I look forward to it," said Tera.

"As do I, my dear."

The inside of the Platform was just an open space with a circle in the floor and mirror on the wall. Rhiannon held her bracelet up to the mirror and then stepped into the circle. She waved, and then suddenly she was gone.

to be continued

Inner and Outer Word

  Accordingly, the word that sounds outwardly is the sign of the word that gives light inwardly; which latter has the greater claim to be called a word. For that which is uttered with the mouth of the flesh, is the articulate sound of a word; and is itself also called a word, on account of that to make which outwardly apparent it is itself assumed. For our word is so made in some way into an articulate sound of the body, by assuming that articulate sound by which it may be manifested to men's senses, as the Word of God was made flesh, by assuming that flesh in which itself also might be manifested to men's senses. And as our word becomes an articulate sound, yet is not changed into one; so the Word of God became flesh, but far be it from us to say He was changed into flesh. For both that word of ours became an articulate sound, and that other Word became flesh, by assuming it, not by consuming itself so as to be changed into it. And therefore whoever desires to arrive at any likeness, be it of what sort it may, of the Word of God, however in many respects unlike, must not regard the word of ours that sounds in the ears, either when it is uttered in an articulate sound or when it is silently thought. For the words of all tongues that are uttered in sound are also silently thought, and the mind runs over verses while the bodily mouth is silent. And not only the numbers of syllables, but the tunes also of songs, since they are corporeal, and pertain to that sense of the body which is called hearing, are at hand by certain incorporeal images appropriate to them, to those who think of them, and who silently revolve all these things.

[St. Augustine, De Trinitate XV, chapter 11.]

Miracles as Signs

 I've been preparing for a busy next week, so I am behind on almost everything. But for whatever reason there has been talk of miracles in a lot of different places online, and I wanted to put down a few still-inchoate thoughts on the subject, in no particular order.

(1) A miracle is in its proper genus a sign. A sign is something manifesting something to something, or, to speak more precisely, using the terminology of C. S. Peirce, a representamen (R), an object (O), and an interpretant (I) in triadic relation. For the miracle to function as a sign, it requires three things to come together:

(a) a set of events and happenings in the world, having particular identifiable characteristics (R);

(b) something beyond itself to which it refers (O);

(c) a possible meaning or interpretation in a mind, allowing that mind on recognizing R to understand O (I). (Interpretants don't generally have to be mental, but for miracles always are.)

It's a 'possible' meaning in a mind for the same reason that signs in a closed book are still signs even if no mind actually interprets them.  But it also has the implication that R can be a sign of O even if someone takes it to be a sign of something else, or not a sign at all. This is actually quite important for miracles. To take a famous example:

"Father, glorify your name!” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. (Jn 12:28-29 NIV)

As signs, miracles are no more immune to misinterpretation, especially deliberate misinterpretation, than any other sign, and likewise, they are no more immune to a refusal to interpret. As with every other sign, the mind has to be prepared in order to become an actual I linking R and O.

(2) There is a bad habit of assuming that if you find a 'natural explanation' for a miracle, you don't need to recognize it as a miracle. This is obviously not right in an elementary sense -- the number of 'natural explanations' that have been offered for alleged miracles but that are certainly false is very large. Merely proposing an explanation does not establish it as the correct explanation. But the point goes even farther than this, because it very much matters exactly what the natural explanation explains. R is pretty much always capable of some kind of natural description because it's recognizable by our natural capacities, and all the parts of this admit of some kind of natural explanation. If water turns into wine, the behavior of the water admits entirely of a natural description, and the behavior of the wine admits entirely of a natural description. But it's also possible that the actual transformation does, as well -- for instance, assuming that it is not an instantaneous replacement of one thing by another, the transformation may well be a matter of molecules reorganizing in a way that is entirely describable by ordinary chemistry, even if it is a series of reactions and restructurings that never otherwise occur. The chemical description would in some sense be an 'explanation', but it would just explain the R's having the characteristics it does, and would be entirely inadequate to explain the actual change. 

Further, a natural explanation as to the proximate causes of a change is not a natural explanation of the meaning of the change. This plays a role in what were traditionally called preternatural miracles, which are by definition events entirely within the normal course of nature, but which involve a peculiar confluence of natural events in a context that makes it meaningful. Most of the plagues of Egypt were 'just' infestations and epidemics of frogs, gnats, flies, pestilence for livestock, boils, locusts. All of these admit of natural explanation. (Indeed, people have pointed out that some of the plagues seem naturally to follow on each other -- large quantities of dead frogs could easily lead to large quantities of gnats and flies.) But when we have done so, the matter is left exactly where it was. What makes the plagues of Egypt miraculous is their meaning:

"And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.” (Ex. 7:5 NIV)

But nothing about the biology of frogs and flies explains the apparent meaning arising from Moses demanding that the king of Egypt let the Hebrews leave and then plagues repeatedly following when the king refuses.

(3) A common temptation in apologetics is to assume that one must first establish the possibility of miracles in general, then establish that this particular case is a miracle, and then interpret the miracle. But this fails completely to have a proper regard for miracles as signs. As a sign, a miracle must appear, i.e., R must be able to relate to I.  Thus the actual path for understanding a miracle is to start with this appearance of miracle, which includes both the unusual event and the apparent meaning that can be communicated by it, then an elimination of the reasons to think it may be merely apparent. Then, finding apparent miracles that do not seem to be merely apparent, we have established the possibility of miracles in general. We do not deduce miracles from first principles any more than we deduce the existence of books from first principles; we experience them, or hear about people experiencing them, and proceed from there. First we have the apparentia, then we recognize it as an explanandum, then we determine what would be an adequate explanans. 

An apparent miracle, whether the appearance is direct experience or testimonial, can only be either: (a) illusory; or (b) an unusual natural event with no significance, as in the famous case when French peasants reported to their bishop that rocks were falling from the sky, and the bishop gathered all the evidence (which later became important for the study of meteorites) but eventually closed the investigation because he could find nothing to indicate that it meant anything; or (c) a supernatural work of some created spiritual power; or (d) a divine work. If it's illusory, it will be illusory either as a matter of physical misperceiving; or as a matter of psychological misperceiving, like delusion or hallucination; or as a matter of testimonial fiction. 

In other words, we find apparent miracles in the world, in a broad sense of 'apparent'; some of these turn out not to involve identifiable sensory, psychological, or testimonial defects, and therefore are genuine wonders, broadly speaking; genuine wonders with supernatural significance are supernatural wonders; and those that have efficacy, mode, or end appropriate to God are miracles in the most proper sense. Sorting all of this is just a matter of honest inquiry, although by the nature of the case the inquiry is often difficult. But it's also the case, that here, as elsewhere, we can accept any of these for the sake of following through the argument, and because miracles are signs, this is often enough for them to fulfill their function. Certainty is not a requirement for effective signification.

(4) Of what kind of thing are miracles the signs? They are signs of authority. In miracles worked directly by God this is obvious. But it is also the case in other kinds of miracles. St. Gregory the Great has a famous comment in which he says that the saints work miracles either by authority or by prayer. Miracles worked by prayer, of course, are actually worked directly under the authority of God; the role of the saint is merely per suffragium. They just put in the request, so the miracle is properly a sign of God's authority, and the prayer is just the occasion. In miracles worked by authority, however, the immediate authority signified by the miracle is that of the human being; but this sort of authority, of course, comes ultimately from God, and therefore ultimately signifies divine authority.

In the Desert of Zin (Nm. 20), Moses is told to make water come from a rock by speaking to it; he chooses instead to reprimand the children of Israel and strike the rock with his staff. Water comes from the rock, so the same result occurred. But Moses gets into very serious trouble over this -- indeed, it is given as the reason why God refuses to let him reach the Promised Land. And one way to interpret this is that Moses, in doing other than what God tells him, messes up the sign precisely as a sign of authority.

Profitable Sayings

 If you love knowledge, you will be a master of knowledge. What you have come to know, preserve by exercise; what you have not learned, seek to add to your knowledge; for it is as reprehensible to hear a profitable saying and not grasp it as to be offered a good gift by one's friends and not accept it. Spend your leisure time in cultivating an ear attentive to discourse, for in this way you will find that you learn with ease what others have found out with difficulty.

Believe that many precepts are better than much wealth; for wealth quickly fails us, but precepts abide through all time; for wisdom alone of all possessions is imperishable. Do not hesitate to travel a long road to those who profess to offer some useful instruction; for it were a shame, when merchants cross vast seas in order to increase their store of wealth, that the young should not endure even journeys by land to improve their understanding.

[Isocrates, To Demonicus 1.18-19.] 

Dashed Off XXIX

 "The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well." Elias Canetti

Beyond a very limited point, neither imagination nor sympathy suffice for inhabiting another's perspective, or even sharing their imagination and sentiment.

Morality is as much about the world in which we can live as it is about ourselves.

the service of calm passions to reason

It is an important step in maturity to recognize that your value is not because God needs you but because God loves you.

All of our acts of love are dim, distorted echoes of the divine creative act. Not recognizing the imitation and creativity is a grave failing; not recognizing the dimness and distortion is at least as grave a failing.

Mathematics looks superficially as if it were the realm of clean and clear conceptual analysis, but both history and acquaintance with mathematicians show that this is potentially misleading; all these apparently clear and clean results are the results of (1) generations of mathematicians working on precisely the same kinds of problems; or (2) large cooperative communities of mathematicians arguing intensively over the matter for decades; or (3) mathematicians stumbling accidentally on the solution, often in the middle of trying to do the opposite of what the solution required; or some mix of these. In reality, conceptual analysis in mathematics is difficult and messy, with mathematicians throwing everything they can think of at it, following thousands of possible clues, filtering heaps of possible stipulations. There is no general method or systematic process for it beyond trying and trying again, using every heuristic and analogy that seems even slightly relevant.

disordered hatred of evil (e.g., losing sight of the good)

People will do extraordinarily stupid things to avoid looking stupid, and extraordinarily evil things to avoid looking evil.

We modulate our assessment of goodness and badness of consequences in light of meaning or role in context; this is true of even basic things like pleasure or satisfaction of preferences. (The failure to allow this at a basic level is a reason why utilitarianisms so often get results that people find uncanny, creepy, and unsettling.)

In order to make decisions about what we should do, we fictionalize our lives and selves, as a way to consider the options.

Intellectual fields grow out of lives; mathematics (e.g.) grows out of mathematical life.

the role of plausible fictionalization in inquiry and discovery (the 'what if', the 'Suppose we did this')

reductio ad absurdum as using fiction to prove

The wise affect everything, the good endure always.

The balance of education is in every field both to learn widely but hold to the essential.

Even mathematicians are motivated by the mathematically heroic -- to achieve the height of Gauss or such, even if only for one moment on one small thing. All intellectual fields get their power from striving for a form of heroism, some kind of greatness of deed that puts one at the pinnacle of what it is to be a human being working in that field.

LLMs get their most impressive results because they approximate the human sense of relevance by statistically analyzing vast quantities of its results.

allusion and the feeling of depth

coordinated game pairs (hide/seek; DM / rpg character)

[justice (dike) -> order (eunomia)] -> peace (eirene)

joy : charity :: order : justice

We rely on the expressiveness of music not merely to express but also to compensate for the difficulty of expressing.

When we say that one thing (A) means another (B), we do not mean that B follows from A, even with background information; we mean that A is B for a relevant interpretational purpose, that A can be interpreted as B.

formal and instrumental norms
natural and voluntary norms
spontaneous and artificial norms

omniscient third person narration as an essential part of intellectual inquiry in general (e.g., to coordinate different perspectives or appearances, or to assess mistakes and erorrs)

To learn from inquiry, we must usually narrate it.

When we compare suffering to suffering, we never do so directly outside of philosopher's constructed cases.

We understand suffering and happiness only by telling stories about them.

We do not experience singular pains as bad, but more as resistance or pushback; and we do not experience singular pleasures as good, but more as interesting. Pain and pleasure become appearance of bad and good only as they cease to be singular, momentary, and unexplained.

Once there is a definite thing, there is a definite order for it.

Sympathy, the sense of fairness, and stable all-things-considered preference are all reasons to think something has non-instrumental value.

Maximizing happiness and maximizing utility (causes of /factors contributing to happiness) should not be assumed to be the same.

Harsanyi's aggregation theorem has a problem common to arguments of its general sort: it shows that a conclusion is required by certain assumptions which are taken to be 'reasonable', but fails to involve any recognition that 'reasonable' may be had in different modes, thus providing no effective argument that these are assumptions we need to posit always rather than assumptions we may want to posit sometimes.

The categorical imperative implies that every candidate standard of success in action must be considered from the point of view of the rational person sharing standards with other rational persons in a rational community structured by such standards.

Playing with dolls and pets is part of how children understand parenting and being parented.

God as infinite valuable // God as infinite intelligible

possible relations between one fictional character (A) and another (B)
(1) incorporation (e.g., B is by authorial attribution the same as A)
(2) extension (e.g., B is a different version of A by the same author)
(3) responsive imitation (e.g., B is a version of A by different author)
(4) allusive imitation (e.g., B is different but represents A, e.g., in a parody)

Many things that make us 'feel alive' do so contrastively, by touching lightly on our mortality.

Empathy is not the proper emotional response to horrors.

Pain and pleasure do not aggregate; some (but not all) of the measurements of pain and pleasure do.

Description is a style of speaking, not a metaphysical status.

Being grateful to beneficiaries for accidental benefits increases the chances that similar benefits will be given intentionally; gratitude is an encouragement to beneficence.

The state has no absolute claim on obedience; it has to earn it (although this is sometimes after the fact, on credit -- i.e., the state borrows the obedience with promise that it will turn out to be worthwhile to the lender).

A problem with 'gender' in discussions is that the word is deliberately used to blur sex, social role, and membership in a community; but these do not all work the same way. And because 'gender' blurs these things, it makes it impossible to work out their proper relations.

Anything we say about someone can be said as an insult or as a compliment.

An attitude is a way of relating.

rationality as capacity for at least eventually recognizing the necessary and the obligatory

docilitas as the true epoche

We understand the goodness and badness of pleasure and pain in terms of what they motivate.

Ways to be derivatively intrinsically bad are to be instrumentally bad in an excess that is destructive, or instrumentally good in an excess that is self-defeating.

The goodness and badness of pleasure and pain are in their contribution to a life.

-- All other things being equal, we help those beasts most who can most help us.
-- All other things being equal, we help most those beasts with which we most easily sympathize.
-- All other things being equal, we most help those beasts with which we see ourselves already co-contributing in a worthwhile system.

Faith is a trust in an intelligibility not yet seen, and hope in an improvement not yet had.

Whether or not something is a mere truism depends on context.

considering the various parts of man as though they were various persons (ST 2-2.106.3 ad 1)

The oblique is the path to power.

strands of morality (Dorothy Emmett)
(1) C-strand (Custom) -- "rules of thumb, wisdom of experience, and taboos"
(2) R-strand (Reciprocity) -- "attempts to bring some rationality into customary morality"
(3) G-strand (Generosity) -- "a highly personal kind of behavior, which certainly cannot e prescribed in any set of rules, or be expected as of right"

overflow obligations
(1) 'for all one knows' cases under uncertainty
(2) analogous cases
(3) cases that are preconditions
(4) cases that facilitate primary obligation

What some people call 'empathy' is just weak emotional regulation.

kinds of direct objection
(1) alethic
--- (a) logical
--- (b) probable
(2) epistemic
--- (a) probative
--- (b) common sense
(3) pragmatic
--- (a) deontic
--- (b) prudential
(4) functional
--- (a) irrelevance
--- (b) inadequacy

displausibilization: attacking a position indirectly by refuting things with which it is imaginatively and associatively linked

the casuistries of honor and shame

Obscure and confused ideas are not different kinds of ideas from clear and distinct ideas.

Almost all entrenched political controversies arise from an attempt of everyone to avoid the real point of disagreement.

It is part of the business of the moral philosopher to give what is useful for personal advice and exhortation, because an ethics useful for neighter would obviously be defective.

Moore's argument that Casuistry is part of Ethics is quite good

Moore's Trilemma
(1) Either 'good' denotes (a) a simple and undefinable notion or (b) a compelx and thus definable notion; or (c) an unintelligible or meaningless notion.
(2) As being good is good, (b) gets us the open question argument and, in addition, gives us analyses that are sometimes obviously too complicated to allow equivalence.
(3) As we do in fact understand questions about good, (c) is not sustainable.

The line between pleasure and pain is fuzzy.

Act in such a way as does not rule out sublimity in human life.
-- broadly related to heroism, which is to act in such a way as suggests the possibility of sublimity of character

Having too many jokes begins to spoil all jokes.

A philosophical notebook is an explorer's journal: partial charts, natural-historical studies, reminders for navigation.

Pleasure and pain agree in being means to further life and aids in navigating the world.

We should take seriously and appreciatively goods we cannot maximize, that are received only as gift or that are beyond our ability to guarantee.

Since possible worlds are constructed with propositions, taking propositions to be sets of possible worlds requires either (1) that propositions not have truth values for every possible world or (2) that every proposition is the set of all possible worlds. (Any truth value has to be considered for each proposition, whether true, false, or other.)

knowledge : proposition :: extension : constructed lines

Beneficence often takes advantage of luck.

'Bayesian arguments' as often arguments from fictional conversion testimony
-- as often used, they require that the probability assessments be both subjective and objective

hypotheticals as an instrument for approximating possibilities

presumptive True -> conditionally required Diamond

genius as rationality without logical fetters

We read with other readers, including the author as reader.

skepticism as glass cannon

Every virtue has an aspiring, an achieving, and a consolidating action.

kinds of difference between waking and dreaming: substantiality, efficacy, rationality, comprehensivity, teleology, intersubjectivity

First Reflection

 The first reflection of human beings 1. is lively precisely because phantasy is still fresh and vivacious, as it is in the youth of individuals, of nations and of humankind; 2. is new precisely because it is first reflection, discovering the relationships of things with a kind of creative inventiveness; 3. is sublime because it is necessarily concerned with relationships between the most important and necessary things, and indicates invisible beings such as a cause, a God; 4. is vast because it has not yet learnt to halt before particular things and their minute parts where there is nothing to hold its attention, but gazes around once more, ranging eagerly over everything to which, still unsatisfied, it adds the infinite.

[Antonio Rosmini, Certainty, Cleary and Watson, trs., Rosmini House (Durham: 1991), pp. 156-157.]

Rosmini notes that this is why ancient poetry often has the features it does. 'First reflection' is also responsible for the features of what he calls 'popular knowledge', which lies between direct or immediate knowledge and the philosophical knowledge that arises from what he calls 'second reflection'. In the sense that the terms are used here only direct knowledge is factive; that is, precisely because they are reflective, popular knowledge and philosophical knowledge can be mixed with various errors. But ideas arising from first reflection tend to have a vivid, common-sensical, concreteness to them, due to being a synthesis of different things into something that makes some kind of sense; their primary difficulty is a tendency to glide over potentially important distinctions. It is from dealing with this failing in popular knowledge that philosophical knowledge, arising from the much more analytical second reflection, comes; thus Rosmini says that philosophy first arises from the masses.

Two Poem Drafts

 Social Media

The chim-chim of conversation may lull to sleep the ear;
the termless perorations may eat through all the year;
the chatter on the branches may drown the highway-roar;
but one day it will falter.
One day it will end
and the mouth take bit and halter,
all blather to forfend.

The blatherskite may jabber with ishkabibble roar;
the monkeys sling their gibber, the jungle trees to bore;
the World our Foe may babble and repeat its mock and sneer;
but one day it will silence.
One day it will end,
and the tongue, despite its violence,
beneath the yoke will bend.

Strange Primates

I hear the music and your eyes
are lovely like the ocean-wave,
darkly blue and gray,
like wild and stormy skies,
like death, so deeply grave --
yet somehow they are bright with light
that overshadows day.
And in such times I know,
whatever the worldly-wisemen say,
whatever counsels fools may rave,
that we, strange primates,
are yet unbound,
yet timeless,
though even our timelessness dies;
that something eternal we somehow save
from rapacious time that flies --
and there, only there, are we found.