causal and compositional reasoning as the primary source of questions
'spurious' is a causal term
Everything in liturgy requires title:
(1) divine scripture
(2) passions of the martyrs (hagiography)
(3) Church tradition
--- --- (a) global traditions
--- --- (b) local traditions consistent with global
(4) practical necessity
(5) episcopal authorization for purpose consistent with liturgy
The church of LDS interprets 1 Cor 15:29 as justification for the baptism for the dead (cf. Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Dead, but cf. also Tertullian, Against Marcion) -- in Mormon vicarious baptism, a living person is baptized as proxy on behalf of the deceased; it's difficult to find any account of how this works theologically (but see D&C 128). [It does not make the dead members of the church, but 'makes available' the ordinance to them because 'what the Saints record on earth is recorded in Heaven'; thus the expansion to other ordinances as well. Socially, since it must be done in a temple, it provides a way for young people to get early acquaintance with temple practices.]
All physical theories are mathematical representations of ensembles and systems of experiments.
Causal reasoning is necessary for distinguishing effective and ineffective experimental strategies, a distinction with which every experimentalist is familiar. (Cp. Cartwright's more general point.)
nomological machine (Cartwright): a stable-enough arrangement of components whose features acting in consort give rise to relatively stable input/output relations
"What matters about nomological machines, whether constructed from iron and steel or from flesh and blood, is tha tthey are made of parts with features that have powers and potentialities." Cartwright
No physical theory can be interpreted except in light of associated experiments and observations.
'Conforming a science to cause and effect' is more generally called 'experiment'; and anything that doesn't have it is not a natural science at all.
Mature natural sciences don't need a 'supplement' of causal notions and principles; mature sciences are experimental and therefore already have them as part of their evidential panoply.
Both phenomenon and noumenon must be understood under the concept of being.
Our relation to the cosmos is not merely objective but intersubjective, or at least quasi-intersubjective.
logic as a symbol of wisdom
fictions cum fundamento in re (e.g., idealizations)
We need our lives not merely to be structured a certain way but to express something.
Every non-self-defeating theory must have something like a veracitas Dei, i.e., a real, general, stable principle of reliability and accuracy.
The natural tendency of academia is to bureaucratize away things that were originally occasions of creative ingenuity.
Every actual object of cognition requires an explanation of its being an object of cognition.
Our own existence is a persumptive existence, but the presumption is inevitable.
The perception-memory-imagination relations mean that we all do a rudimentary form of phenomenological variation.
God as that which is present to all presences
Our internal sense of time is a sense of differential obscurity; the perceptive relatively less obscure, the retentive more obscure, the protensive even more obscure. But our sense of this is also differentially obscure; yesterday's sense more obscure than today's.
The body is an extraordinary assemblage of measuring apparatuses.
At all times, the life of the Church is Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter; the Church is always living all three days.
Nobody actually believes that violence is the last resort; it would be closer to say that shamefully abject surrender is the last resort; people go to violence well before that.
Stupidity in an educational context is entirely a matter of cultivated habit, not native ability.
Cognitive claims will often also express noncognitive mental states. Where expressivists generally err is in jumping too quickly to the notion that this is all they do.
The magnetism that Stevenson attributes to ethical claims is due to authority, not the claim as such, and is common with other kinds of claims taken as authoritative, e.g., scientific claims. Likewise, the aura of feeling he attributes to ethical words is often found around scientific terms as well (e.g., due to the 'romance of science' or historical associations over time).
People do not commend things on the basis of particular properties but on the basis of fit in context.
In order to obey imperatives, we must reason with them.
People often claim taht things are not consistent which are clearly logically so (e.g., being married and committing adultery). One wya to interpret this is in terms of a lack of smooth coherence of attitude.
Almost all discussions of metaethics assume that ethics is much simpler and much less rich than it actually is; even kindergarten ethics is usually more sophisticated than what one would assume if one went only on metaethical discussions.
1 Cor 11:34 & tradition (e.g., there are practices arranged by the apostles but not given directly in Scripture)
The body is always already a quasi-object of the mind, an availability for being an object that to the mind is already beginnign to be object in many ways.
In experience of the divine, people regularly experience things 'around' the divine, the royal pageantry and insignia of divine majesty, so to speak.
mediate divine presence & theological metonymy
our bodies as standing systems of physical abilities
-- We cannot adequately reason about and use our bodies without considering them as potential as well as actual.
We experience our bodies as interweavings of the material correlates of the voluntary with that which is involuntary, the field of doing and enduring. In certain experiences, we find a shifting -- the correlated of the voluntary stops being so (e.g., by drunkenness) , or the involuntary comes into the scope of the voluntary (e.g., waking up).
We have to incorporate our body into ourselves; we are constantly doing this and sometimes modify our way of doing it. Sometimes we do it primarily by directed attention, sometimes by use, sometimes by how we deal with pain and pleasure in action, sometimes by holding readiness, etc.
-- This is related to the mansions of St. Teresa & Edith Stein.
We have presential knowledge of oru bodies as we do of our minds.
present to vs present for
stories as giving us a better sense of the possibilities of personalities and relationships
our body as anticipated object of others
To wrap us all up into monads, Leibniz had to fold the entire universe into us, and to stop thinking of us as substances, you have to diffuse us entirely through the universe.
Our bodies are our first experience in end-giving and also our first experience in having ends imposed on us.
In 1 Apol 63, Justin seems clearly to distinguish Christ and Spirit. (Cf. Trypho 87-88)
Christ is the Apostle of God (Hb 3:1) and makes his chief students Apostles of God.
The artificial necessarily presupposes potentiality; nothing can be an artifact that is not an actualization of potential in a certain way according to art. The natural, however, does not have such a limitation. This sugges that the natural has three versions:
(1) That which is merely potential without prior potential
(2) That which is purely actual
(3) That which is actualized potential, directly or indirectly, but not according to art
make-plan vs use-plan
(they are related in that a use-plan of ingredients or parts can be directed toward a make-plan, and a make-plan can be directed toward a use-plan)
reactive attitudes --> moral quasi-persons (things personish in a respect)
Openmindedness is not conducive to truth as such, but to certain kinds of inquiry, by removing common impediments to such inquiry.
We experience not merely to experience but to comprehend, and comprehension of any experience requires going beyond that experience.
Human ardor goes in and out, lathough for some it is like great tides and for others like little lapping waves; a common mistake is to assume that the receding is a vanishing rather than a prelude to a different surge. This is true in romantic love, commitment to profession, religious devotion, parental love, and devotion to inquiry. One of the functions of deontic structures like roles and institutions is to keep us involved in important things throughout, so that our tidal nature enriches rather than cuts short the relationships and pursuits that matter.
magic tricks // slapstick
-- Magic tricks work like jokey things in that they are interweavings and nestings of small things with a potential for the wanted reactino, whcih build up when organized together properly; they also both rely on foiled expectation.
-- Magic tricks are like slapstick particularly in that they are physical and therefore easily allow you to build things up not just serially (like stand-up usually must) but parallel or vertically (so, e.g., the trick or joke is actually several tricks or jokes striking simultaneously).
-- A difference is in the relation to incongruity -- slapstick usually plays it up to get the laugh, magic trick usually plays down the incongruity of what would obviously be incongruous, in order to avoid making it look like an obvious cheat and get the puzzlement. Nonetheless, this is not an absolute (jokes used to misdirect, joke tricks, etc.) -- partly because the two easily blend (as in the movie, Now You See Me).
The rule of law begins with reason as legislative.
-- the principle that constitutional law must be interpreted from the bench as broadly coherent and rational (i.e., if inconsistent only partly and by accident) and such as a deliberative body reasoning together might give
"An experience is a reference to a further experience. It is a constant return to the same in ever new ways." Patocka
Every work of fine art is already philosophical, whether a result of philosophical meditation or a result of a philosophical lark, a playing on ideas. This does not mean, of course, that its philosophical character is fully developed; it may be no more than a gesture at one step in philosophical thinking. But the greatest works of art certainly become more. Fine art, like logic, although perhaps less properly, is an organon of philosophical thought. It is the transcendental character of beauty that seems to make it so, beauty's complicated coextension with being.
"Every name befitting God befits him either causatively, similitudinally, adjunctively, or negatively." Alanus of Lille
The habits for using propositions well, for using arguments well, and for using systems of arguments well are all quite distinct, and one often finds philosophers who only have one or two of the three, because they all take work to build, and some forms of training shortchange one or the other.
